I have read a survey where 90+ percent of on air national media personalities admit to being left of center politically. I have questions about just how liberal networks owned by Megacorporations like General Electric, Rupert Murdoch, Disney etc can be, but I thought it might be interesting to find out where everybody stands. If this question has been asked before, I apologize...I haven't been haunting DnD long.
Both and neither. On the one hand, media is now controlled almost entirely by a few giant media companies (viacom, disney, News corp., Time warner). These guys traditionally favor the right wing because it favors the bottom line. On the other hand, media professionals tend to be educated urbanites, concentrated in largely coastal media markets; a generally left leaning demographic. On the other hand, (yes, many hands like a hindu deity) you have the specialty right wing media/regular media thing going on. The regular media (believed biased by the right wing) is ostensibly objective, or at least trying to be (whether or not it is successful). The right wing media is intentionally rightward to counter the perceived bias of the left wing. (note, there was a Harvard study last year that showed that right wing media was far more likely to be right wing, than lefty media was to be lefty, as righty media was far, far less likely to criticize its own than lefty media) Finally, you have the fact that the right wing media and political establishment work closer and are just plain better at getting their messsage out than the lefty media. It's relatively easy to reach right wing audiences (male, mostly middle aged) via cable or radio, not so easy to reach a diverse assortment of ethnic minorities, hippies, greens, academics, etc that populate the left wing, so that will naturally add to the confusion. So, both and neither.
I think it is way more complex than just one or the other. What stories get reported and how they are reported depend on so many things: the editor, the producer, the publisher/broadcaster, advertisers (and the ad department), journalists/reporters, copy editors, PR firms, what type of media it is (radio, tv, print), if the media is local, regional or national, the type of publication/network (political magazine, local newspaper, broadcast news network, etc) and on and on. There are some publications/networks that are clearly slanted and pretty much on purpose. There are others whose slant is noticable but still do good reporting. But, most of them slant towards the money more than anything else. You ask any editor, reporter or publisher the single most difficult part about getting stories to press and I guarantee the vast majority will tell you it is getting around advertisers and potential lawsuits. They are completely conscious of ratings, ad rates, etc. The better rated they are, the better ads sell and the more they can charge. That is more important to them than any political ideology.
Media has one goal: Sell product They use news and events to serve that goal. They market their product to as many different consumer sectors as possible. They have learned that this can be done best by placing a spin on the news. Too much spin, and they get a bad rep, like the National enquirer. Not enough spin, and they don't build enough emotion to maintain interest. Based on those market sectors, they select specific stores and place appropriate spin on them in order to appeal to a specific sector. They lean both ways. They lean any way they can consistently make money. -- droxford
Everyone who voted for the 4th option must identify themselves. Should they choose not to, then they will be called a liar. Sincerely, Batman Jones
How can the almost infinite variations of opinion available across the spectrum of human issues be classified as 'liberal or conservative'. All people have their own set of biases depending on their genetics, locale, socio-economic conditions, education, religion and experiences. Some believe in only their own betterment and some in the greater good for the the most people; but most people would be somewhere in between. Journalist are just as human as the rest of us but as a profession they generally pursue a truth and maintain an admirable level of integrity. Their subversion more usually comes from an economic manipulation from outside forces than from their own agendas. So here's to the Fourth Estate, May they always be a burr under the saddle of those who would ride roughshod over the people
I think if you took all the media with an intentional slant and tossed them (so goodbye to Pacifica, FoxNews, etc) and just looked at those that had pretensions of unbiased journalism, I would say they were slightly to somewhat to the left of the median American citizen. That's my perception of it.
Depends, because there are different types of media. For example, I was watching the Fox news channel just for laughs the other day and they seem conservative. And then the other day i was reading Rolling Stone magazine and they seem to be liberals. So it depends which type of media is being discussed. IMO the main stream media is conservative cuz FNC is bigger than Rolling Stone magazine.
I think the negativity out weighs the bias many times. To me most media would rather focus on the bad and not the good. I'd have less problems it they would try to balance the good with the bad.
It's interesting to me how biases can slip in even if the particular media organization works very hard to eliminate them. I don't think it's ever a case of a media organization making a concerted effort to lean one way or another (except for those organizations that are obviously biased like talk radio and the like), but despite the best efforts of everyone, little things can slip in now and again that can shade stories toward one way or another. Sometimes it's an obvious shade, like when the Chicago Tribune had a headline that said "Anti-Choice groups celebrate victories" in a story about gains in the anti-abortion movement. That's an obvious case of someone's bias (the headline writer, in this case, since the story used the Tribune's preferred "anti-abortion" phrase) slipping in and nobody else catching it before it went to press (it is interesting, though, that the Tribune, which was in years past a very conservative paper, allows the term "pro-choice" but not "pro life", but that's neither here nor there). But a bias can slip in, even if the reporter doesn't mean it to, all the time in very subtle ways. If I were covering the Dallas Police, for instance, I wouldn't believe a single thing they ever told me. I think the DPD is a bunch of crooks and time and again they prove me right. But I can guarantee that no matter how hard I tried to eliminate that bias, it would show up sometimes - in who I chose to talk to, in how I pegged the story, in what stories I pitched to the editors to cover, etc. it's going to come out. Hopefully, my editors would catch it and keep me on the straight-and-narrow, but a lot of times, the editor has to trust the reporter, and that's how some bias gets in here and there. For that matter, a reporter can realize he/she has a personal bias against a certain group, etc. and go overboard in trying to account for that and end up slanting stories the other way. By the same token, pressure from civic groups, local bigwigs, advertisers, etc. can cause publishers to put down the edict on how some things are covered or whether they're covered at all (I know Dallas newscaster Tracy Rowlett left an Oklahoma station over a dispute on a story about shady car dealers. Apparently some of the shadiest ones in the story were big advertisers on the station, so the piece didn't run). That, of course, is a far-less-subtle form of bias, but those kinds of issues can be more subtle, as well. But I don't think, as a whole, the media are biased one way or the other. I just don't think humans are capable of being unemotional, and because of that, these things can shade coverage from time to time.
Umm, since respondents weren't asked to identify themselves within the political spectrum in association with their selection, your analogy is forced and meaningless - much like your posts.
We have a saying the news business: "If it bleeds, it leads." Unfortunately, there is no better follower of this dogma than nightly local TV newscasts, where a big wreck or murder draws the TV vans like flies to a carcass. I think the bias comes in when in just the type of stories they decide to write about. If you're one idelogical stripe, you're going to view the world one way and all of your story ideas will stem from that viewpoint, no matter how skewed. Anyone who doesn't think that the vast majority of folks in the media aren't liberal need their head examined. Most major dailies in the U.S., most nightly newscasts plus most of the cable channels, lean left. It's not hard to tell watching them in the way they depict stories and what they decide to cover (Abu Grahib over and over and over and over and over again) Now what does that say about left-leaning folks here who think they lean right! You've also got to view it through the prism of ratings and therefore, money. Covering Clinton's salacious sex scandal boosts ratings. People want to watch about Laci Peterson (horrible murder, but to me not national news), Chandra Levy and other things I consider inconsequential, yet attract big ratings. So they might cover something that is harmful to one of their fellow liberals in politics, if it brings them ratings gold. It's all about the benjamins, folks, bottom line.
Of course it's national news. She was good looking and pregnant. He's a good looking guy. It's the perfect tv story. Do you think an ugly white trash couple would have made the news like this? Never.
Exactly. I read an article sometime between now and the murders about a Hispanic immigrant that was pregnant and missing, just like Laci Peterson. Up until that point, there had been no news coverage. How many people go missing everyday, yet we're supposed to care more about some rich white girl in Utah who gets abducted more than the hundreds of other, not as beautiful kids who go missing everyday? bamaslammer, it seems that you're arguing two positions. On one hand, you're saying that "if it bleeds, it leads", but then you say that networks have a liberal bias by showing things like the prison abuse photos. Wouldn't that fall into the "if it bleeds, it leads" category? I think you'd have few people agreeing with you if you think that they wouldn't show this kind of stuff if a Democrat was in office.
I just think that if there was a Democrat in office, I'd be willing to bet money it would be more muted (just like the stories on the homeless. It's a proven fact that when you go onto Lexis/Nexis and search during the Bush years, you find tons of stories on the homeless. During the Clinton years, I guess it marvelously vanished because the rate of hits was way down. ) I admit it is salacious, but why beat us to death with this repitition of repugnance? I think people have had enough. I think the Democrats are shooting their wad with all of these "scandals," like Plame, the Clarke book, etc in a failed attempt to find a silver bullet to shoot down Bush. I know this happened during the Clinton years, where people just got tired of hearing about Clinton scandals, even though most of them were true, sadly. So the GOP wasted all of their efforts on a simple BJ and perjury rather than going after real abuses like the campaign finance irregularities, etc.
