Achebe, Everybody is pretty consistent on Political & Social issues in the Hangout Forum. I keep reading these threads looking for somebody to slip up and defect to the other camp, but it hasn't happened. Mango
You know, it's weird. When I first came to the hangout thread, I expected TheFreak to be a liberal, although I couldn't say why. When he wasn't, that surprised me. I mentioned this, and he said somethign to the effect of "Oh no, I'm only conservative on abortion and a couple of other issues. In general I'm slightly to the left" Yet I've yet to find any issues in which he has a liberal stance. He mentioned he had a life-changing event not too long ago... maybe that made him more conservative?
Yuse guys is so silly! Being around LOTS of journalists and media types, I've found that the general rule is this... (using a newspaper as an analogy) Reporters tend to be liberal. Editors tend to be moderate. Publishers tend to be conservative. (using a tv or radio station) Reporters tend to be liberal. Anchors tend to be liberal. Editors/Producers tend to be moderate. Station managers/owners tend to be conservative. No matter where I've gone or who I've spoken to, that is almost always the rule. Fox is conservative. PRI and NPR are liberal. Fox is Rupert Murdoch's ploy to beat our Ted Turner's CNN just like the Dogers are his way of attempting to crush the Braves. These two guys have a pissing contest and this is what you get. By the way, has anybody seen the "new" CNN Headline News. HORRIBLE. The slogan: real news, real fast. Ugh! Personally, I don't care about the slant of talk shows, but it does concern me when entire news segments (legitimate "we are reporting the facts of the new" stories) are bathed in either political ideology. It's one thing if you know it like Fox or NPR and you KNOW they are just that way. It's another if it is passed of as legitimate NEWS. And, this FAIR really doesn't seem very balanced either. With all due respect to them, they sound just as paranoid as the conservatives who cry "liberal media."
This is a damn good breakdown. Being around small newspapers for a few years, I'd agree this is a pretty good estimation. Which is funny, because at least on the lower levels, Publishers often have final say. Here's a question: why is it that those people who eventually grow into roles such as that of a journalist/writers, etc., whatever, do tend to have more 'liberal' opinions?
Jeff, I suppose we have excessively addressed this subject. Humor me, though, while I try to find an 'independent' news organization (i.e. cnn and msnbc might be centrist, but they answer to different board of directors, and several corporate sponsors, blah blah blah). What exactly did you find undesirable in the fair reporting? I realize I'm just chipping the tip of the independent news media iceberg, but it is important to me that I find out what's going on outside of the US in a non ADM/GE or ratings sort of environment. I just want to know what the hell is going on. What did you find 'paranoid' about FAIR?
Here are the stories on the right side of their front page. All are slanted either slightly or unabashedly to the left. If they are all about "fair and unbalanced reporting" why not report on the overly liberal reports too? ----- Media Downplay Bigotry of Jesse Helms (8/31/01) - self-explanatory Thirty Years Later, Memories of Attica Cry Out (8/30/01) - Complaining that no one reported about how the guards were at fault in the attack on inmates in 1970. Yahoo! News agrees with FAIR; Boston Globe apologizes-- sort of (8/24/01) - Here's the quote from their story: "FAIR noted that Yahoo!News Opinion/Editorial columnists are 67 percent male, 90 percent white, and only 24 percent liberal." New CNN Chief Trying to Please GOP Elite (8/15/01) - Self-explanatory Pacifica Refuses to Distribute Democracy Now! (8/14/01) - Democracy Now is one of the most liberal radio shows on the air. NPR Reporter Urges Israeli Retaliation (8/14/01) - Israel's treatment of Arabs is a target of liberals. I know. I don't like it much either. Diversity Gap in Online Journalism: Yahoo! News Op/Ed skews male, white and right (8/9/01) - See other story above. Police Violence in Genoa-- Par for the Course? (7/26/01) - Police crackdown on citizens. Their quote... "Media complacency helps normalize assaults on demonstrators." Action Alert: Stossel Tampers with the Facts (7/17/01) - Taking shots at Stossel's anti-environment piece. They are right, but it is still a very liberal bias on their part. Action Alert: Why Wasn't Kissinger Asked About War Crimes Charges? (6/29/01) - Trying to grill Kissinger over US covert operations in the 70's. ----- I'm all for liberalism but you SHOULD NOT say you are the defender of fair and balanced reporting if you are not. That isn't being a good liberal. That is being disingenuous. It makes all liberals look paranoid and as if we are all wearing blinders.
Why are you calling me a 'Republican'? I usually don't participate in politics. "Go sit down"...actually the statement was "You struck out big time on that one, buddy, go sit down". In baseball, when a man strikes out, he has to go 'sit down' in the dugout. That's basic stuff. I was merely applying that metaphor to RM95's attempted insult. You know, "swing and a miss". It was a JOKE. A little "Showplace Lanes humor", if you will. RM95 "striking out" means his attempt at insult was off-base. So I told him to "sit down", as in "in the dugout". There's no need for you to go all Elvis Costello on me. Relax. RM95 and I are friends...I'm sure he wasn't offended by what I said. I'm sure he appreciates you rushing to his defense, though. No less conducive than making personal attacks is. Forgive me. I was assuming that after you saw my third post in the thread, you would have apologized for your personal attacks in your reply. Apparently you have no qualms about making personal attacks, so the apology was lost on you. So, the fact that an apology was omitted in your subsequent thread, prompted my next response. It actually had nothing to do with you "not seeing my thread (I assume you meant "post")". You merely offered a lollipop, which I didn't think was sufficient. I wasn't detracting from the article, remember? Therefore I didn't need to read it.
haven -- sorry, forgot to respond to you in my previous post. I'd be curious to know how you've determined my stance on issues (aside from abortion) from anything I've posted here. The only other issues I can think of that I've disclosed my postion on are gun control (which I'm against) and affirmative action (which I'm for). Outside of that, I'm not sure where you're coming from.
This amuses me to no end. I love that there is the perception here that personal attacks are actually possible on an anonymous message board.
This amuses me to no end. I love that Freak gives the perception that he doesn't post aggressively, or that my personal attack was anything other than a rib from a previous conversation. TheFreak, sorry that the baseball metaphor completely slipped me. HEB don't do baseball. I may be completely ignorant of the sport, but that quote should have somewhere entered my conciousness as being baseball bound. Perhaps it's an issue of where our interests focus. If it were a programming, basketball, tennis, sexual, snowboarding, fly fishing, hiking, again sexual (did I say that already), anthropology, biology or geology metaphor I believe that I would have picked it up immediately. Jeff, I wonder what FAIR's breakdown would be. Since FAIR is determined to have both sides of the story illustrated, I wonder where their political ideologies truly fall. For that particular list of headlines, I don't see anything obnoxiously 'liberal'. When a group called "fairness and accuracy in reporting" complain that one group has 90% of whites or 70% of males (or whatever the numbers are), I believe they're covering their 'FAIRness' base fairly well. That doesn't seem liberal, IMO, at all. That just seems like something that a watchdog group should attack. The terms liberal, conservative here fall on death ears, b/c this specific example is caught up w/ doing the right thing. If that's conservative or liberal, that's great. If a conservative Christian sees rational to defend the environment b/c of his Bible, that's great. If a liberal develops an environmental ethic for other reasons... great too. It seems to me though, that FAIR's just trying to get things covered, regardless of where the politics fall. It's not as if they weren't around when Clinton was in the white house. It's not as if they protected Clinton (look at their archives).
I am ALL for fair and balanced reporting but the fact remains that all you have to do is look through their "action alerts" or "news archives" and find that every bias they find is slanted right of center. "Decency," "racism," "anti-feminist," "anti-environment," and others saturate those lists. I didn't see a single "Media going easy on Clinton" or "Media hammers conservatives unfairly" on that list. Also, they have a big section of the site dedicated to Pacifica's refusal to air Democracy Now!, one of the most liberal programs on radio. They even have places where you can protest. This is not to say I disagree with their ideology. I agree with most of it. I like Democracy Now!, but I also understand that you don't say we are "for fair and balanced reporting" if all you do is rail against conservative ideology. That is NOT fair and balanced.
regardless if this organization is fair or not, there is no doubt that foxnews is a republican newschannel. I remember watching it one day and they were complaining about other networks not saying that gary condit was a democrat enough .
It's not just that they were not saying it enough; they were often omitting/concealing it. Everytime a congressman's name is mentioned, it is usually associated with his party. That wasn't happening in Condit's case. To make matters worse, he was identified as Rep. Gary Condit which stands for Representative but is easily misunderstood as Republican. In some reports, Condit was mis-identified as a Republican in fact. For the first week or so, I kept wondering aloud if the guy was a Dem or Republican. In fact, I assumed he was a Republican because of the harsh play the story was getting and, of course, the way he dressed! No bellbottoms. No beads. California address. Two-tone dress shirt. All the telling signs of Republicans.
I got Achebe to apologize to me, ha ha! That was a rib? Dang, you're worse than me...I had no idea! I was joking about the apology stuff, by the way. Did I mention I didn't read the article?
I think the whole notion of being informed runs counter to being a conservative. --> <-- At least, that's what conservatives seem to imply when they criticize academia or educational elitism. In general, the world has become more liberal as the world has more readily distributed information (crispee, I fished a 16" Salmon last week up at Henry's for an hour and he ignored me, I switched flys, overcast the Salmon by accident (to the other side of the rock) and a 12" Rainbow nailed the fly... simply beautiful). Regardless, FAIR has been critical of Clinton as well. How often? Well, a lot. So much so, that I'm almost tired of being cute w/ all of these links. FAIR is obsessed w/ what is or isn't being covered. I read a comment where FAIR was critical of news agencies overcovering school shootings. That sounds pretty damn unsympathetic, imo. They argued though, that it was disproportionate to the rest of their shootings/killings coverage. Be FAIR. IMO, Democracy Now is an advocate of being in a Democracy. Was it last week they talked about Biko? Is Biko an issue for liberals? Only if Apartheid is a pet project of conservatives. Of what conservative ideology were they critical? A month ago Jeff, you made an aside about me "always feeling there are rights and wrongs", instead of differences of opinion (at least I read that as being directed towards me). That may be the central distinction here, and perhaps why I don't see your intuition. I would think that you would expect a group called 'Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting' to demand all of those items in the laundry list be taken care of... would you not? laundry list from previous post... Did you read this article? News that North Carolina's Jesse Helms will retire from the Senate when his term is up in 2003 received polite coverage in mainstream media. USA Today (8/22/01) described Helms' views as "unabashed and outspoken conservatism." To the Washington Post (8/22/01), Helms is one of the Senate's "most ardent champions of conservative causes…a man of bold colors and few pastels." Curiously using the past tense, the Los Angeles Times observed, "he personified the unvarnished, uncompromising, attack-dog brand of conservatism." (8/22/01) Nice words. The guy was the devil incarnate. And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in 1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93) More recently, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the ******s," Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I think." (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95) The news media patted an old man on the back as he retired. A watchdog group suggested they call it like it is. I expect nothing less of the watchdog group, and I was mildly sympathetic to the news media... until I read some of Helms' quotes. The watchdog group, FAIR, makes mention of the fact that the media accepted cut & dry what the political institution told them... that the inmates had killed all of the guards. This is the textbook lesson as to why groups like FAIR are needed... or better yet... a responsible news media. FAIR. FAIR asked Yahoo why their cartoonists were disproportionately white males. Yahoo agreed they weren't representing the national, let alone global community... so they were fixing the situation. Problem caught, problem fixed. The issue w/ the Boston Globe concerned a news source not taking an ad hostile to a local employer. I would think that you'd expect a watchdog group to catch something like this. Good read. If the CNN chief denies that he ever had those meetings, you can criticize FAIR. We already talked about Democracy Now... mainly that I think of it as a Democracy based program more so than a 'liberal' based program. Could we expect FAIR to criticize Pacifica for not carrying Rush? Well, I don't think FAIR's love extends to hate mongering morons. I assume their intuition is to have other intelligent discourse covered. The NPR/Israeli issue probably strikes a bit harder for me. I don't think of this as a conservative/liberal issue. I'm trying to understand what's right & wrong. I don't like the notion of Palestinians blowing up civilians, but something tells me if we were to step out of our own culture, we may see the Israels as a better armed colonialist power. Does that mean I'm all for the Utes to take Utah back? Hell no! But Linda Gradstein, w/ all due respect, said that Israel's only choice was to result to violence. There are a couple of things wrong w/ that: 1) Linda is a ****ing reporter, i.e. stick to reporting pretty please and 2) she carries a ton of respect (I know, I respect her). For someone in the national media, let alone National Public Radio to completely right off any chance at peace or responsibility in the middle east (let alone the fact that those words probably intone sympathy for Israel... "they have no choice"... (echo: have no choice, have no choice, )) is pretty damn irresponsible. The news media needs to get out of the commentary business. Give us data. If you want to include a summary at the end of the journal, have at it... but don't siphon every damn news element through the summary ("think this") filter. See other comment above. The media watchdog group, FAIR, criticized the media by its complacency in violence. BTW, is it conservative to normalize assaults on demonstrators? Liberal bias? They're right b/c they have the better argument (imo, the better argument is always on the side of the liberals, but I digress ). And a damn good piece it was too. Did you have any idea that Kissinger was called to testify? I didn't. I blame that on the national news media that glosses over everything. The national news media is turning into those groups of trio bonded pretty people that take up all of our local coverage. Maybe CNN can start telling us the important things, like 'kitty cat stuck on top of a telephone pole' (oh, already saw that one, nevermind). I guess this is perhaps one of those famous moments where we agree to disagree Jeff. I see FAIR as simply being a watchdog group that argues for better news coverage. Are all of their reporters liberal? Maybe! If they are, I'd assume it's because they have better data than we have.
