Media bias (liberal or otherwise)
 

So, what are the thoughts on the board? I'm interested to see if anyone can prove that there is anything but a liberal slant in the media (aside from FOX news). Seriously, If someone can prove to me that there is no media bias, I'll buy it, but until then, I'm sticking with the obvious slant in the major media (Newspaper, Televised news) to the left on the political scale. I'm talking about NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, y'know, the MAJOR outlets. Granted, on an absolute scale of political slant, FOX news channel is slightly conservative. Relative to the rest of the media, I find them to be extremely conservative.

Thoughts?

It's all completely relative. I mean, if I'm very leftist then I'd say leftist news is nearer to the center than if I was rightist. People say the Daily Show has a left slant, while I disagree.

If it's more right than you, it's seems rightist. If it's more left than you, it seems leftist. So a 'liberal media bias' depends on each person.

I'm just not seeing this liberal media. Actually, I don't see any liberal or conservative slant in it, it's very generalized and oversensationalized. The major networks sometimes show a lot of bias in their columns and a lot of bias in their debates, but I've seen it go both ways. Haven't watched FOX in years, so I can't comment on it, but from what I've heard, it's more libel and slander than actually showing its views, which are implied from that.

Saturday Night Live has more Clinton jokes than any other politician, but it's definitely not republican oriented. The Daily Show is the same way: if a democrat somehow wins the 2004 election, they'll make fun of that guy instead.

The media isn't really leftist, it just uses card-stacking to create "better" stories. I've seen what national media has done to certain stories, I've been closer to one of the situations than you would beleive, and the news just picks sides on whomever would play the better victim. Sorry, but big corporations don't make good victims. Schools don't make good victims, but the angy chubby chearleaders do, even though they were kicked off from lack of talent and not weight, and that most of the stuff portrayed on the show was false, and... yeah, I've been close to this stuff.

Actually media bias in one of the 9 elements of public opinion. Isn't it great to know that you are tricked and dictated into an opinion? Don't believe me? Take an intro poly-sci/American gov class. They'll most likely cover it, and no, I won't post them all because frankly that school is behind me now and I can't remember a thing.

Yeah, playing off the point Aerodynamic made, I generally think that the media isn't so much liberal as it is populist, in the old-time sense of the term. The media loves to stand up for the "little guy" and often misconstrues facts to support alleged "victims". Unfortunately for Republicans, the "little guy" -- small business-owners, consumers, minorities, women, and the lower classes in general -- tend to be democratic, and the views that come across through interviews with them tend to side with liberal logic. The media almost mistakenly promotes leftist viewpoints when it's really only attempting to make good news to attract viewers. Because, let's face it -- issues like racism and sexism, which liberals try to expose and enlarge to the publics' eyes for political gain -- also happens to make great news.

Actually, there's some statistics from one of Larry Elder's books (Showdown, I think) about media bias that show a strong leftward slant. Not necessarily that the reporters try to tell you that you should believe leftist things, but that left issues get covered more often than right issues (like news outlets are more likely to interview a pro-choice organization than a pro-life organization, even though the reporters don't necessarily show any agreement or disagreement with either side). I don't have any of the statistics in front of me, though, and it's been a while since I read the book.

Yeah, The Daily Show has been covering the Democratic "Race from the White House," for a long time. The Daily Show has a funny slant. SNL has slightly less of a funny slant. Real news has an extremist boring slant. I don't watch real news enough to care about anything esle. I get my news from other people.

The problem with trying to show any sort of bias, is that it always becomes a kind of anecdotal case by case basis, and those are always hard to prove.

I mean, consider this story:

Back when Dean was up in the polls in Iowa, one reporter found an example of one person who had once supported Dean, but said they were changing their position. The report went on to go on in-depth doom & gloomish that this was a start of a trend. Stories like that, and the Newsweek 'Doubts about Dean' article persisted, and then Dean dropped in the polls.

Personally, I see the case that there was some sort of bias against Dean in and around the Iowa caucus. Not necessarily a Republican/Democrat bias, but a bias to make a more interesting story, as a story about a campaign falling apart is far more interesting than that of a unbeatable frontrunner.

But that's just my opinion, what about you?

SWB

did you see the daily show coverage of the iowa caucus and george bush's state of the union address?

he gives each side an equal amount of sarcasm that is so true it hurts.