Leave Fox News news out of your consideration. They make no bones about being conservative. But the "mainstream media", that is: TV, newspapers, and news magazines will look you straight in the eye and claim they do NOT have a liberal or left-wing bias.
Here's your chance to weigh in on that assertion.
Are they showing a favorable bias toward Obama in the run up to the November election?
Here's your chance to weigh in on that assertion.
Are they showing a favorable bias toward Obama in the run up to the November election?
A few gifted or aggressive ones will find that to be true eventually, but for most, after about six weeks on campus, they realize that 90+% of the professors are lefties and if they want to 'fit in' or 'have any friends' then
they'd better drink the ideological Kool Aid along with the rest of the students. Otherwise they'll wind up feeling like a guy wearing a 'Right to Work' T-shirt at a union picnic.
Then they join a crowd at an auditorium who's shouting down David Horowitz or Ann Coulter or any other conservative who's been invited to speak.
The thought might briefly flicker across their mind that, "wait, we're supposedly the paragons of TOLERANCE, right? Well, here we are proving that we have virtually no tolerance at all for people who think differently than we do, right?"
Then they realize that they'd better not voice those thoughts to anyone or they could wind up being shunned. There's no one more lonely or in more pain than a shunned college student.
So they go along to get along. Then, because everyone they know thinks pretty much just like THEY do, THEY THINK THEY ARE MAINSTREAM.
Then, time passes and they get jobs with the media. Lo and behold, they're in an organization with people who think pretty much like they do.
Once again, "hey, we're MAINSTREAM; it's those right wing conservatives who are totally out of touch with normal people ... like us."
Their belief system colors their reporting of news and opinion and entertainment. This is how it all happens. It's pretty painless, really.
Then why do they call themselves "Fair and Balanced"?
I'm talking about news shows. Hannity is not a news show.
The ED Show on MSNBC is not a news show either.
Rush Limbaugh or Democracy Now! are not news shows.
These are political commentary shows.
On radio, that whole genre has been much more successful for conservatives than for liberals. All the libs could come up with after several miserable failures was to try to get the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" reinstated. It failed.
Ridiculing and mocking them is exactly what they do.
In fact, it makes sense for the media to favour whichever party is in government (or whichever party is likely to win the next election) because staying on the side of the government would mean the government would be less likely to legislate against the media (it's what Rupert Murdoch has been known to do in the UK). I don't think the media bias is fixed on the left or the right.
Out of curiosity, what makes you think there is a liberal bias in US media? I'm also not sure why you exclude political commentary shows when such shows usually discuss current events (i.e. "news"); why is that?
All from a non-American perspective.
Breaking the news this morning that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, ABC’s Good Morning America in a single hour employed no fewer than SEVEN “conservative” labels to label Ryan and his supporters. But four years ago as Barack Obama tapped Joe Biden, there wasn’t a single “liberal” label to be found on GMA’s coverage that Saturday morning.
Here are the types of bias:
Bias by commission
A pattern of passing along assumptions or errors that tend to support a left-wing or liberal view.
Bias by omission
Ignoring facts that tend to disprove liberal or left-wing claims, or that support conservative beliefs.
Bias by story selection
Ignoring facts that tend to disprove liberal or left-wing claims, or that support conservative beliefs.
Bias by story placement
A pattern of highlighting news stories that coincide with the agenda of the Left while ignoring stories that coincide with the agenda of the Right
Bias by the selection of sources
A pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of conservative views.
Bias by spin
Including more sources in a story who support one view over another. This bias can also be seen when a reporter uses such phrases as "experts believe," "observers say," or "most people think."
Bias by labeling
Emphasizing aspects of a policy favorable to liberals without noting aspects favorable to conservatives; putting out the liberal interpretation of what an event means while giving little or no time or space to explaining the conservative interpretation
Bias by policy endorsement or condemnation
When a reporter goes beyond reporting and endorses the liberal view of which policies should be enacted, or affirms the liberal criticism of current or past policies.
Listing types of bias does not prove that the left use them and the right don't. Do you think that the right don't employ any of those types of bias either? (also a non-rhetorical question)
As a side-note, I think you're guilty of bias by your own definition.
- Story selection bias by only giving an example of liberal bias.
- Spin bias by describing each type of bias as if it could only apply to liberals (e.g. "emphasizing a policy favorable to liberals" which is not a balanced definition, as opposed to "emphasizing a policy favorable to one side of the debate over the other" which is not presumptive of liberal guilt).
- Selection of sources; from a quick Google search I found our that your first paragraph in your response to me was just a copy-pasta from a single anti-liberal (unbalanced) website (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2012/08/11/abc-wraps-ryan-conservative-tags-no-liberal-labels-joe-biden-2008), hardly a wide range of accurate sources, and that all of your definitions are just copy-pasta from one other site which is also biased (http://www.fairpress.org/identify.htm). That's only two sources, both of which seem to be pro-conservative and none that seems to be unbiased or are pro-liberal, therefore you are biased for only including anti-liberal sources.
I didn't think I had to present myself as an 'unbiased researcher' so I don't apologize for not using a "wide range of sources". I had a point to make; mainly to people who haven't thought too deeply about the issue; not to "spitting-with-rage leftists" like my dreadlocked friend Luis, who still has a shrine to JFK and wears a "Free Mumia" t-shirt.
If you can't illustrate your point in an unbiased way that means your point is unfounded. If you have to make your point in a biased way to bring someone round to your side then your point is wrong.
The people who make a career of thinking about and explaining the differences have so thoroughly plowed the ground, that what a tyro comes up with is overwhelmingly likely to be weak, sophomoric, or just a poor attempt to illustrate a point much better made by professionals. Therefore, when making a point to a person of an unknown level of knowledge, using a point well-made by a respected thinker is a good use of your time and the person you are addressing. Now, if the person you're addressing is a real fan of the subject matter and snaps back with, "oh, come on, dude. You're just regurgitating the points John Harwood made in his New York Times column of May 16, 2010", well, I mean, whaddaya gonna do?
I can imagine you in geometry class, continually interrupting the teacher to inquire whether he independently derived the current theorem, because otherwise he has a bias by teaching someone else's work. Then doing the same in a history class, followed by English and manual arts.
>If you can't illustrate your point in an unbiased way that means your point is unfounded.<
Well, that's interesting. Could you make the point that black women are better 100 meter sprinters than Asian women without showing a bias.
Could you make the point that blacks are just as competent at calculus as Asians without showing a bias? Or would you decline to even TRY, which would show a bias all by itself?
But really, your assertion is quite wrong, but it's so simplistic and silly that I'm very willing to accept that it could well be original with you.
A Nobel prize-winning economist like Paul Krugman could explain to you why he feels that Keynesian concepts are more valid than Austrian school and you would just get in his face and call him biased because he failed to establish that everything he said was not his independent thought.
>. If you have to make your point in a biased way to bring someone round to your side then your point is wrong. <
OK, I think drunk driving is wrong. But then, I may be biased because my wife was T-boned at 120 mph by a drunk driver and I still haven't gotten over it. But because of my bias, my POINT is unfounded and WRONG.
So therefore it is invalid for me to assert that drunk driving is wrong.
Is that how it works with you?
You might want to play around with the statement and qualify it a little before you get it cut into stone somewhere.
Well, that depends on what you think constitutes original thought. As much as I agree that the ground has been well-ploughed many times over and you're unlikely to ever have a meaningful thought which nobody else has had before, coming up with a thought independently is still very different to reading it in an online post. That's what I meant by talking about original thought, and "original thought" may have been the wring term to use. I was meaning it in the sense of independent thinking, not in the sense of creating brand new ideas and meaning to say that I value ideas thought of independently more than those copied directly from elsewhere. Sorry for not being more clear :P
In regards to your second paragraph
In the same way that I value independent thought over ideas gleamed from something external, I also value independent wording over direct copy-paste. Regurgitating points is still better than (if not the ideal replacement for) regurgitated words. I was more annoyed that you copy and pasted instead of even bothering to use your own words, and what made it more frustrating was that your copy and pasting was very obvious and unsubtle.
If someone quotes an article word-for-word uncredited it is entirely different from taking their points and rewording them. The first is plagiarism and the second is, while not quite original thought, at least a display of knowledge of the topic enough to be able to reword it. By not bothering to reword it, you came across as not having a lot of knowledge about what you were talking about.
In regards to your third paragraph
Teaching someone else's work is not biased in itself. It is only biased if the sources they are teaching *from* are biased or selected in a biased way, which yours definitely were.
In regards to your fourth and fifth paragraphs
Yes, with the right budget I could make an unbiased point that black women are faster sprinters than Asian women (so long as that point was correct, anyway. Obviously I could not make that point if the results of unbiased research were that Asian women were faster). The same goes for your other scenario.
Shrugging off a contrary opinion as "wrong", "simplistic" and "silly" without expressing evidence as such does not make you look good or unbiased. Show me actual evidence from an unbiased source if you want me to take your point seriously, please.
In regards to your sixth paragraph
No, I wouldn't do that. If he failed to give me unbiased sourcing I'd question the validity of his opinions. I'd also question his status as a world-renowned economist if he was incapable of independent thought.
In regards to your final paragraphs
No, your point is not "wrong", you just haven't expressed it properly. Your point should be presumed wrong until you can prove it without resorting to biased or anecdotal evidence. Besides, there is no strict right or wrong in the world of opinions on a subject like drink driving.
Sorry if the cause of any confusion was my fault; despite using this site for over a year I still think I'm not very good at this :P
Conservatives are frequently labeled 'conservatives' because the liberal media wants people to think, "ah, no WONDER it's such a cruel/greedy/weird/oddball/elitist plan/scheme/event/policy/whatever because it's put forth by CONSERVATIVES and THAT'S the kind of people they are!" That's the implication which the MSM advances. It's in their makeup. Right down to the DNA level.
The implication that virtually NEVER using 'leftist', 'progressive', or 'liberal' advances is that THOSE are MAINSTREAM attributes; that 'everybody knows' that those are 'normal', so it would be superfluous to mention them.