Thoughts about the "liberal media"

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Gotta support the troops, whether or not you believe in the cause they fight for...

Before any troops were shipped out, Bush and others went around the country like salespeople trying to pitch the idea of war.

 

For those of us who are used to the US going to war because it absolutely must (WWII), is threatened by foreign powers (Cold War), or in retaliation (Afghanistan), it's pretty suprising to be sold the idea of going somewhere and starting a fight, instead of being called in to clean one up.

[EricMM 0]

AAAAARGH!!!

 

Can we all stop arguing about this PLEASE?

 

Some media (Not NEWS, M-E-D-I-A, which can include commentators) is liberally slanted. Obviously. I can think of the Daily Show for one. Some media is slanted Conservatively. O'Reilly is a self-professed conservative. Do either one of them take party marching orders? Probably not. But they feel one way about issues, for example, gay marriage. They disagree it comes out in their comments.

 

This is prevalent and pervasive in ALL media. Every journalist, editor, AND reader adds their slant to every story shown. It's why SOME people call Fox News "fair" and SOME call it "conservative"

 

God it's so endless. Yes, there is liberal media. We all appreciate this fact. But obviously if all media was as liberal as well, most "Liberals" they would be dissing Bush as often as most "Liberals" which is ALL THE TIME. We don't like the man, and we scoff at most of his policies. Most of the news media doesn't do that. Just because it doesn't call medicore, or average plans successful, doesn't mean it's wrong. Just because it doesn't bemoan successes, doesn't mean it's wrong.

[NoCalMike 0]

If the media is liberal, they sure as hell did one hell of a poor job showing it when it was time to question Bush's drum beat march to war. I don't think I have seen newspeople collectively fall in line and salute any administration like that before.

 

Gotta support the troops, whether or not you believe in the cause they fight for...My buddy and I argue ever Rembrance Day(also Nov. 11) about my wearing of a poppy. He says its a war monger thing to do. I disagree, citing my year-long hatred of war, but that we should appreciate what was done for us...It's vicariously the same thing when the newscasters fell in line before Iraq.

 

Ermm, I was referring to the drum beat to war, not once the war started. The media was giving Bush a free pass to basically make false claims and mislead america, without offering much resistence to what turned out to be a crock.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

O'Reilly is a self-professed conservative.

When did this happen?

 

 

Yeah, yeah, I know.

[The Robfather 0]

"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective" --- Peter Jennings

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Any theories on why TV tends to lean left, while radio is run by right?

 

Because the righties are in their cars and offices working for a living and the lefties are home collecting welfare. Plus right-wing commentators are uglier.

 

And before you scream WHAT ABOUT cBS NEWS?!?!?!?!

 

Thanks for asking for my permission...

[Guest SideFXs]

ABC News soliciting families who may have a loved-one die today in Iraq.

 

CNN reporting 48% of Americans unhappy on this day, Inauguration day.

 

And its only 1pm.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Fox news has shown Hillary Clinton during the inauguration coverage more than almost anyone else.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

I'm often surprised that the radio types that harp on and on about the liberal media don't back track ( Moreso when they called on their shit)as merely identifying members of newsrooms, anchors, reporters, etc as what they are talking about when picking out who these liberals are. Instead of that we get this overcast statment that ALL media is liberal leaning. Which IS what they want you to THINK. Cuz afterall, everybody loves an underdog, right? Why not play up the idea that conservatives are being opressed by a liberal agenda as motivation to get them to the ballot box? Politics of fear anyone?

 

Then when they get an idea or something they can't argue with, its "not in the mainstream". All of a sudden there is a mandate, and its a conservative world and everyone else is going against the grain.

 

Say what you want about CBS, Rather, etc. but its is the liberals who are outnumbered as they get the LEAST opportunity to talk their shit.

[The Czech Republic 0]

"For expert analysis, we'll bring on Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, and conservative Republican Trent Lott."

 

That's my thought about the liberal media

[Jingus 0]

Republican President + Republican-dominated Congress + mostly conservative Supreme Court = this whole argument means nothing anyway.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

I'm just going to enter my thoughts here, without response to others...except to ask NoCal to prove (with sources) actual misleading statements Bush made.

 

The media is liberally biased. With regard to commentators, the only relevant aspect is looking to the proportion of liberal vs. conservative commentators each outlet employs. The bias really occurs in reporting. Editorializing a non-editorial piece is a no-no. The problem arises in what constitutes editorializing. On ABC this morning, some journalist was on saying that no one in the country would doubt that George W. would not have won if his last name wasn't Bush. Saying there is bias doesn't mean I think all the journalists wake up each morning trying to find ways to stick it to conservatives. I think they earnestly believe their opinions to be reflective of the status quo, when clearly they aren't.

[The Czech Republic 0]

You're absolutely right. Dan Rather and friends all think they're being perfectly objective, or that the New York Times is middle-of-the-road, and that's exactly why the bias is so dangerous.

[Guest The Iron Yuppie]

From my perspective, rather than some ingrained, constant ideological/political bias, the media, on the whole, seems to demonstrate a bias more towards sensationalism. Ongoing speculation (here) as to the health of the ALP (the Australian federal opposition) leader Mark Latham, and how long he would last as the party leader is the kind of thing that receives most mainstream attention. On a more international scale, the kind of focus and hype on the Scott Peterson trial seemingly received as much (or more) coverage as some major political issues.

 

This is not to say that bias does not exist. No one could honestly claim that FNC on the whole is "fair and balanced", or that Bill O'Reilly does preside over a "no-spin zone". Others parts of the media are to the left (the New York Times being one frequently cited example, though having not read the paper, I won't comment on the validity of such claims). But on the whole, I don't believe that there is a strong bias one way or the other, politically speaking. And indeed, if there is, it is more of an issue by issue basis, rather than the media being consistently left-wing/liberal/pro-Democrats/pro-ALP (to use the Australian example) or right-wing/conservative/pro-Republican/pro-Liberal Party (to again use an Australian example).

[TheBigSwigg 0]

Liberal Media is a tactic played perfectly to the masses who aren't thinking too hard, just like "Conservative Christians." They say it enough so that when the media says something that isn't leaning right, people will say "There's that bias!"

 

I see this all the time at my in-laws. It is painful.

[Guest sek69]

I also find it hilarious that while Fox News leads the charge against immorality in the US, their parent company publishes a paper in England that has women running around with their titties a-flopppin'.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Liberal Media is a tactic played perfectly to the masses who aren't thinking too hard, just like "Conservative Christians." They say it enough so that when the media says something that isn't leaning right, people will say "There's that bias!"

 

I see this all the time at my in-laws. It is painful.

Be fair. There are some things like Jennings saying "let's check the election results in Florida and see if they got it right this time" or the use of the conservative modifier without the converse use of the liberal modifier.

[Jingus 0]

the use of the conservative modifier without the converse use of the liberal modifier.

Does anyone have any hard numbers on what the actual ratio there is?

 

I remember hearing a story on NPR a while back about a woman who actually did that, she used Google or something similar to conduct her own search. Her surprising results: the converse was actually true, liberals were more likely to be identified as such. (I posted that here, and got shouted down, "that's not the case, MEDIA IS LIBERALS LOL" despite the fact that nobody had any evidence to the contrary.)

[Gary Floyd 0]

There is no liberal media, or a conservative media. It's just what both sides say when things aren't going their way, or when someone disagrees with them.

[NoCalMike 0]

I'm just going to enter my thoughts here, without response to others...except to ask NoCal to prove (with sources) actual misleading statements Bush made.

 

The media is liberally biased. With regard to commentators, the only relevant aspect is looking to the proportion of liberal vs. conservative commentators each outlet employs. The bias really occurs in reporting. Editorializing a non-editorial piece is a no-no. The problem arises in what constitutes editorializing. On ABC this morning, some journalist was on saying that no one in the country would doubt that George W. would not have won if his last name wasn't Bush. Saying there is bias doesn't mean I think all the journalists wake up each morning trying to find ways to stick it to conservatives. I think they earnestly believe their opinions to be reflective of the status quo, when clearly they aren't.

I have already talked about this. After 9/11 happened, Bush took the oppurtunity to use Saddam & Iraq in every statement, speech & sentence that Bin Laden/Taliban/Al Qaeda were used in, when they had no business being grouped together. As time went on, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was slowly but surely dropped from these speeches, and Saddam/Iraq was used more, until eventually the entire forcus of our nightly news was on Iraq and Saddam. Over time, the mass naturally blurred the two, and leading up to the war, over 70% of the public felt that Saddam was directly responsible in some fashion for 9/11. This was just the general explanation of course, since I don't have access to every single one of his speeches and/or video feeds of all his speeches.

[Fuzzy Dunlop 0]

I get all my news from Mancow.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

This was just the general explanation of course, since I don't have access to every single one of his speeches and/or video feeds of all his speeches.

The text HAS to be online. Find a quote.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

 

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

 

President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat (Whitehouse.gov)

 

This is just one of dozens of clever statements implying--or outright stating--the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, designed to manipulate public opinion present in this speech alone, which was Bush's big eve-of-war chat on national TV. Dozens more out there; just search for "iraq al qaeda bush speech" to find them. Will that suffice?

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

And what's untrue about that quote?

[NoCalMike 0]

And what's untrue about that quote?

Well for one, I have never seen any documentation/reports or solidified FACTUAL accounts of Iraq training Al Qaeda in bomb making and deadly gases. Secondly, why was Iraq singled out as "cheering on Sept. 11th" as they were hardly the only ones celebrating. Like I said, it is statements slyly put together in order to sway public opinion. I also don't find it necessary to go look up these statements and quote them when you can try for yourself to look up archives of this very forum when myself and others were making these claims in 2003.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

The entire point of all this hubbub was to generate public support for war with Iraq by equating Iraq with al Qaeda and, specifically, creating an image of a connection between Iraq and the September 11th attacks. If you believe that connection to be true, you can stop reading here.

 

The language and tone in the majority of all public speeches by the President and the Vice President were measured and designed to create associations that didn't exist. We should know that Iraq was not responsible for the September 11th attacks, but the White House did an excellent job of convincing a large portion of the country that it was without explicitly saying "Saddam Hussein engineered a terrorist attack." The equation with al Qaeda and the attacks also was fodder for the "imminent threat" rhetoric and helped make "weapons of mass destruction" into one of the most commonly used phrases in the country. As all the information about those not actually existing came out, the rhetoric dialed down, and the administration has now backed off most of its original claims, but it doesn't need to support them anymore--it successfully created associations that linger on, and it's reformed its message into a humanitarian one of creating democracy rather than quashing a largely invented--or at least artfully portrayed--threat.

 

To return to the central point of the thread, I suppose, the media just didn't do a good job investigating any of this and gave the White House a generally free pass on its spin for far too long. Which is nothing new, for any administration, but I find it a particularly egregious oversight considering the fact that this was--and continues to be--such a huge undertaking for the country.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

The media is so liberally biased that there was entire gaps in coverage of fraud. And I don't just mean some third-page story about a recount, I mean about how Bush won with 6,000 votes in New Mexico after about 20,000 votes were chucked with no more excuses than "invalid."

 

The media is so liberally biased that there has been almost no coverage abut Republicans in Congress refusing to proceed with legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have a paper trail.

 

Meanwhile, the stuff that gets pushed around as media bias is ridiculous. The worst one recently was an AP article, quickly pulled, that said a Bush rally crowd booed when Bush gave well-wishes to Clinton during his surgery last year. Again, pulled shortly. People still shouted about how it was a case of the AP, of all sources the actual wire reports, being biased against Bush and/or Republicans in general. "Waaah, they were in the room, didn't they see nobody booed?"

 

Chances are, no, nobody from the AP was in the room. The President only has a few reporters with him at any given time, and the rest of the press pool pretty much has to copy from the notes of competing organizations. Most reporters are kept sheltered from the President. The ones that fly with him know he's on board, but never see him. That's not a fault of this administration, that's just what the being in the White House press pool is like.

[NoCalMike 0]

The entire point of all this hubbub was to generate public support for war with Iraq by equating Iraq with al Qaeda and, specifically, creating an image of a connection between Iraq and the September 11th attacks. If you believe that connection to be true, you can stop reading here.

 

The language and tone in the majority of all public speeches by the President and the Vice President were measured and designed to create associations that didn't exist. We should know that Iraq was not responsible for the September 11th attacks, but the White House did an excellent job of convincing a large portion of the country that it was without explicitly saying "Saddam Hussein engineered a terrorist attack." The equation with al Qaeda and the attacks also was fodder for the "imminent threat" rhetoric and helped make "weapons of mass destruction" into one of the most commonly used phrases in the country. As all the information about those not actually existing came out, the rhetoric dialed down, and the administration has now backed off most of its original claims, but it doesn't need to support them anymore--it successfully created associations that linger on, and it's reformed its message into a humanitarian one of creating democracy rather than quashing a largely invented--or at least artfully portrayed--threat.

 

To return to the central point of the thread, I suppose, the media just didn't do a good job investigating any of this and gave the White House a generally free pass on its spin for far too long. Which is nothing new, for any administration, but I find it a particularly egregious oversight considering the fact that this was--and continues to be--such a huge undertaking for the country.

Thanks, you kind of summed it up for me. Basically McHaggis. We, the american people were given what we all like to refer to as the bait & switch. Led to believe something, and just as the truth is coming out, given a completly different set of reasons/circumstances/scenarios etc.

 

Wasn't there also a poll not to long ago, saying something like 60%+ of the american public though we found WMDs in Iraq!?! I mean I am sorry but if the media is this liberal machine, they are sure as hell doing one shitty-assed job.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I think that poll in question was by some hippie group, and that 60 percent is supposed to be people that get their news from a certain cable news network that provides us with a hearty LOL in 2005. I'm sure one of your commie pals can post a link to this story or something, and speaking of commies tell your buddy that posted that poem to come back -- I miss him...

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

I think that poll in question was by some hippie group, and that 60 percent is supposed to be people that get their news from a certain cable news network that provides us with a hearty LOL in 2005. I'm sure one of your commie pals can post a link to this story or something, and speaking of commies tell your buddy that posted that poem to come back -- I miss him...

Where exactly ARE those WMDs again? Maybe it was a hippie/commie/homeless group that hid them so King George the 2nd couldn't find them? Thats about the same attitude. Good job.