davad70

Join Date 03/2001

(Not So) Liberal Media

Sunday Talk Shows Lean Right

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I hear a lot of references to "The Liberal Media" around here and elsewhere. While I concede that many in mainstream media would probably be considered by most as liberals, I don't think it's such an overwhelming majority any more. In my opinion, television news has become much less liberal lately, while it seems newspapers have become more and more liberal and confrontational to the GOP and the Bush administration.

CNN, widely considered by many to be the closest to the middle of the news networks, has even shown signs lately of leaning to the right. It seems appearances by Ann Coulter are becoming more and more frequent these days. CNN also recently hired conservative Bill Bennett as an analyst, and has enlisted conservative radio talker Glenn Beck and given him his own show on Headline News. The overwhelming popularity of Fox News Channel is undoubtedly a major influence on television networks growing more and more conservative. As we know, TV News has become big business, and the conservative FOX has been enjoying the largest slice of the pie for several years now.

The progressive web site Media Matters for America has become a very popular site in the last two years. Media Matters describes itself as;

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

A recent article in Washington Monthly by Paul Waldman, who also writes for Media Matters, details a recent study of the Sunday morning talk shows;

No, liberals, it's not your imagination. "Meet the Press" and the other Sunday political talk shows really have leaned more to the right in recent years. At Media Matters for America, we looked at every one of the 7,000 guests who appeared on the three major Sunday shows from 1997 through 2005—Bill Clinton's second term, George W. Bush's first term, and the last year. We found that the left has of late found itself outnumbered, in some ways substantially, on the television shows that define the Washington conventional wisdom. Liberals are already a disturbingly rare species among what Calvin Trillin refers to as the "Sabbath Gasbags." And in some debates—the war in Iraq, for example—they are in danger of becoming extinct.

The consequence of all this is that in every year since 1997, conservative journalists have dramatically outnumbered liberal journalists, in some years by two-to-one or more. Why would the producers of the shows believe that a William Safire (56 appearances since 1997) or Bob Novak (37 appearances) is somehow "balanced" by a Gwen Ifill (27) or Dan Balz (22)? It suggests that some may have internalized the conservative critique of the media, which assumes that daily journalists are "liberal" almost by definition, and thus can provide a counterpoint to highly partisan conservative pundits.

Waldman goes on to speculate whether the imbalance has anything to do with the GOP controlling the Congress and the Executive Branch. To a degree, that seems reasonable, as it would appear the networks are giving the people what they want. That could explain why things appeared to be more balanced when the Executive branch and Congress were represented by different parties. The people have spoken with their selection of so many Republican politicians in the last several elections. They have also spoken with the enormous ratings they've given Fox News.

So does the media truly have an obligation to remain "fair & balanced", or should they give people what they want?

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Here's the link to the full report by Media Matters on the Sunday Shows.Link

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To some extent I am not surprised, we're improving. But, that chart and Sunday am aside, when considering the "scope" of liberal media, a few hours during the week and some Sunday am shows go unnoticed. Now, let's consider who's watching TV Sunday am, and what their watching....a smattering of liberals and conservatives with nothing better to do, and kids watching cartoons.

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Ghe liberal TV medium died with Edward R. Murrow; withe the exception of a handful of liberal magazines, the print medium has never been on the left.

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When I start hearing good news from Iraq from the press before I read them in ShadowWar's blog, I'll start believing there is anything but venom in the press for America.

When I start hearing reports from natural and manmade disasters that aren't being retracted or discredited a few days later, I'll start believing that reporters are competant.

When I start hearing reporters from competing news sources actually covering different angles of a story, instead of paroting the same wire feed over and over, I'll start believing that investigative reporters actually investigate anymore.

When I quit hearing reporters whine and cry about now being spoon fed their stories, I'll accept that there are mature adults in journalism today.

It is a sad commentary on the "profession" when reporters have to produce their own documentaries to get the news out. I thought that was the job of the Main Stream Media?

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I think one thing that contributes to that is how vocal some members of the media are concerning their political views, and you don't see conservatives very often. They also make it obvious many times with how they word their articles and headlines.

It's like the old joke Jesse Jackson told when he hosted Saturday Night Live. He said that he had an audience on the Pope, and he and the Pope and all the rest take the ferry on the tour. As the Pope is standing at the railing, the wind blows his hat off and into the water.

Jesse says "Don't worry, your Holiness, I'll get it." He jumps over the side, walks on the water, picks up the hat, and walks on the water back to the boat. The Pope is amazed and everyone congratulates Jesse on the miracle.

The next morning the headline is "Jesse Can't Swim!"

You can read much of the time how stories are skewed, like today when CNN had the nerve to say "Cheney has been cleared of wrongdoing by authorites... but questions still remain." It's obvious they are milking it. If you watch where stories get put in, say, the New York Times, you'll find the preponderance of stories vindicating Bush don't end up on page one.

Sure, they always gang up on whoever is in charge, but the fact that they don't hide their personal biases when they are off camara makes it easier to spot how biased some of the statements in their stories are.

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for example, I just saw the headline: "Cheney's victim suffers coronary". The wording there just doesn't seem unbiased to me...

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for example, I just saw the headline: "Cheney's victim suffers coronary". The wording there just doesn't seem unbiased to me...

How would you write that headline in a more unbiased way? Is it the word "victim" that you have issues with?

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kingbee

Join Date 04/2004

+42

How would you write that headline in a more unbiased way?

headline? i dunno. song parody? voila!

shot thru the heart
and you're to blame
you give being a mean dick with a gun
a bad name.

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Another great article that casts doubt upon the "liberal media bias";

by Peter Daou

A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess: Prove it. One of the great absurdities of our time is the persistent notion that the traditional media skews left. Reporters buy into it, Democratic strategists and leaders buy into it, and rank and file rightwingers live by it. As I've written previously, the right controls all branches of government, talk radio is dominated by rightwing voices, there's a cable channel devoted to the rightwing perspective (and two others racing to do the same), there's a herd of rightwing pundits spewing anti-left venom across editorial pages, radio, television, the internet, etc., Bush's press conferences are cloying jokefests, and "neutral" journalists echo deep-seated pro-GOP myths.

Despite the glaringly obvious fact that major media narratives favor the right, we get bloggers like this, this, and this attacking the "MSM" for hyping the Cheney hunting scandal. Rather than waste cyber-ink explaining why it's a big deal that the Vice President of the United States shot a man in the face and heart and went to bed without letting the American people know about it, let me share a question I asked of a blogger at Real Clear Politics who questioned my premise about the pro-Bush press:

I know the assertion that [supposedly neutral or liberal] reporters favor rightwing narratives blows your mind; after all, the liberal media fiction is hard-wired into the right's political nervous system. But why should I believe your foregone conclusion that these people are left-leaning? Just because you say it with such conviction? Give me concrete examples of bias, not of negative coverage. (How can there not be negative coverage of the mess in Iraq? Or Katrina? Or the Plame outing? Or the NSA fiasco? Or do you want our media to simply fawn over the government? Is anything less than total pro-Bush propaganda considered media bias?)

This ties in - albeit tangentially - to a recent post by Glenn Greenwald about the Bush-cultism masquerading as conservatism on rightwing blogs. Glenn unmasks the ideological lie at the core of rightwing blogging. Similarly, digging beneath the surface of the anti-media stance of these bloggers reveals a philosophically bankrupt and logically fallacious position. If the definition of media bias is anything critical of the administration, then these bloggers must be advocating for a servile, state-run press. Which, ironically, seems to be where we're heading.

Of course, reporters take some comfort in being attacked from both sides, believing that it somehow justifies their actions and nullifies the complaints.

So here's my challenge to rightwing bloggers who assail the media for liberal bias (and to journalists who think it's all a he-said-she-said pissing match): Back up your claims. With concrete examples of bias. And without the tautological crutch that any story critical of the administration is proof of liberal bias.

I'll back up mine:

Daou goes on to hi-lite many examples of the media leaning to the right, rather than left

Link

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