No Media Bias?
Kevin D.
Media Research Center (a conservative research group) concluded a six month study of bias on...
...all campaign stories on the three broadcast network morning programs from January 1 to July 31, 2007. Compared to cable news, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show and NBC’s Today have a much larger combined audience — 13.7 million viewers during the first three months of this year, nine times as many as watch CNN, FNC and MSNBC combined at the same hours.
What they found is, well, unsurprising to everyone with an open mind.
Here's just a sampling of the blatant bias shown in favor of the liberal agenda and Democrats in general:
#1
More than half of all campaign segments (284, or 55%) focused on the Democrats, compared with just 152 (29%) devoted to the Republican candidates. Another 13 percent (66 stories) contained discussions of both parties, while 15 stories (3% of the total) focused on a possible independent candidacy of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
#2 Democrats are spoken of in positive terms while Republicans are spoken of in negative terms.
#3
When it came to airtime, the Democratic advantage was even more pronounced. Interviews with the various Democratic campaigns totaled 275 minutes of coverage, or roughly four and a half hours. In contrast, the Republicans garnered only 104 minutes of morning show airtime (1 hour, 44 minutes), a greater than two-to-one disparity.
#4 Hillary Clinton ranked 1st with on-air face time at nearly 90 minutes. Her nearest Republican rival ranked 5th at 40 minutes. Al Gore, not even an announced candidate, ranked 4th at 48 minutes.
#5
Of the 111 agenda questions posed to Democrats, more than twice as many reflected liberal priorities (77, or 69%) as confronted the candidate with a conservative point (34, or 31%).
Of the 45 agenda questions posed to the GOP candidates, 37 of them (82%) were predicated on liberal ideas, compared to just eight questions (18%) that reflected a conservative agenda.
And on and on. Read the report yourself.
Again, this is nothing surprising to a person with an open mind - liberal or conservative. It's just sickening to think the media doesn't think we notice. Or worse. They actually believe it's not there.
I wonder how the combined audience of the big three news morning shows compares to the combined audience of conservative talk radio in the morning. Without any statistic in front of me, I am going to guess that the audience size is comparable. Further, there is no doubt that talk radio is biased in a particular direction (hint: it would be different than that of the big three TV networks.)
Now, I happen to think those on the left who want the government to mandate equal air time for political candidates are rather silly, but at the same time I don't understand all of this rightwing whining about media bias. We do believe in a free press, right?
Ryan
I'm going to utterly disagree with this but you undercut your own point with your own words.
You say "conservative radio." Conservative radio doesn't claim to be fair or balanced. It says, straight up, it's supporting the conservative agenda.
The MSM doesn't do anything like that. It denies a bias outright. ABC, CBS, NBC all say they're fair when they clearly are not.
That is the issue at hand. Not the bias of conservative talk radio that has never denied it's conservative!
You're deflecting the issue.
'Conservative' doesn't really embody change much does it? So it makes sense to me that liberal viewpoints would get more air time. Or would you rather stand the GOP candidates in a line again and ask them to raise their hand if they believe in the fossil record?
I don't think it is bias, so much as there really isn't much to talk about on the GOP side.
So, you're justifying this media bias because you think the GOP doesn't have anything to say worth hearing? Nice.
But, heck, if ABC, NBC, and CBS would say that much I wouldn't have a problem. At least then they'd be honest.
Ryan
Look at the actual numbers for Fox News. It's damn near 50/50. Do some research please. Or, at least, do a search here on Dean's World. Stories have been done about media bias in the past and talked about here and Fox News comes out near 50/50.
Fair and balanced is a correct label. It just may seem right-leaning because you're not used to conservatives getting equal air time and treatment.
Ryan
Say Fox News didn't exist. Can you do that for a moment?
Do we or do we not still have a problem?
FOX NEWS IS NOT THE PROBLEM NOR THE ISSUE AT HAND!
Geeez, how quick some of you are to ignore the plank in your eye to point out the speck in someone else's.
You're the one stating Fox News is biased. You have to provide the links. It's not my job to do your work for you.
And even if I'm proven wrong (and I know I'm not) it doesn't change the fact that FOX NEWS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC AT HAND!
Any idea how much they got paid for doing this study and how you go about getting the business?
This seems to support the notion of at least a moderate rightward bias of Fox, paralleled by a moderate leftward bias of nightly network news.
Anyway, my point has little, little to do with Fox. It is merely that there are many sources of news that Americans use other than the big 3 networks, and many of them report based on somewhere to the right of left-of-center perspectives.
This point is predicated on an "if." Did you njot notice that? If you look at viewrship numbers netword news trounces cable news viewership.
Most Americans watch network news over cable news.
No "if" to be found there.
ABC, NBC, and CBS gets much more viewship than the dreaded FNC.
So, their bias deserves particular attention.
But, I'll throw you a bone. I'm utterly convinved FNC is biased to the right and a shill for the GOP. They are liars and should be tossed into the sea.
Now, that done, care to address the point of my post?
You know, the one about the networks that get viewership that FNC can only dream about?
I already did, I suggested that viewership of the big three morning shows is balanced, not by viewership of Fox News, but by listenership of talk radio.
Ever wonder why the big three have so many more viewers?
Finally, there is a possibility of a built-in bias in the study. Since the current president is Republican, it is perhaps natural that media outlets would focus more on candidates from the opposing party. If the media has any sort of built in bias in favor of challengers, this must be taken into account.
Actually, the only one that still gets to me is NPR which pretty openly reports from a liberal viewpoint despite the fact that 10%(?) of its budget comes from Federal subsidies. Forcing me to pay for the dissemination NPR's left-leanding viewpoints is pretty sickening.
Give me a break. First, the contest is not the current adminstration and the Demoncratic party, and 2nd, were you alive during the contest precending the 1st Gore/Bush contest?
Given.
I didn't claim that, but merely implied the Republican candidates were associated with the president and therefore considered less of challengers.
Yes, but the linked study did not include this period as a control to rule out the type of potential bias I mentioned.
First, my right-winger friends have developed talk radio, Foxnews, WSJ Editorial page and enough internet sites to counter the bias.
Second, overall, the institutional biases are pretty evenly matched.
For the left: (major media, Universities/academia, unions)
For the right: (Religious infrastructre, military vets and families, business community)
But, I think Kevin D and others are correct that major media, for some reason, clings to this quaint fictionalized notion of "impartiality," when they are not.
I could be wrong on all this,though.
HB
—|PW|—
First, you've got a number of good, professional journalists who at least try for impartiality. I would argue that even if they don't succeed, the effort at it should be encouraged.
Second, I have met a number of individuals who imagine the media moguls (and possibly the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, and the cast of Gilligan's Island) meeting in some darkened room to hash out a vast left-wing conspiracy bent on undermining American values. I would argue that at least some of the bias seen in the media is not a product of intent, but rather of upbringing or of reporters' social interactions.
To illustrate: If you look to, say, the New York Times, you might find a left-wing, upper-crust bias not because everybody is consciously pushing a liberal agenda, but rather because the New York Times newsroom is full of upper-middle-class to upper-class writers, many of whom hold advanced degrees and live in a major metropolitan area.
My own quarrel with journalism is not that it is biased left or right, but that a great number of journalists seem to have forgotten the journalist's former raison d'etre of asking tough, substantive questions of those in power and bringing a jaundiced eye to the workings of power, particularly in Washington.
In DC, this particular institutional bias is rather distastefully on display in the eternal cocktail-party circuit and in the various shindigs (Gridiron Club, Alfalfa Club, etc.) where the press and the politicians hobnob.
Then again, maybe I'm just ticked that I never get invited to those parties.
--|PW|--
1] Consider that "the Right" would trade media with "the Left" at any time, and
2] I'll see your 'conservative talk radio' and raise you NPR.
DanielH, there's a fundamental difference: morning news shows are supposed to be news, not opinion; talk radio is supposed to be opinion, not news. ("News radio" is viewed as a separate category.)
I do think the big three networks &PBS tend to lean left - slightly left - as do most journalists. But Media Research Center's nonrepresentative choice of sample doesn't tell us anything useful.
M. Barrette,
if it makes you feel better, simply take 5% of the liberal stuff on NPR, 5% of the conservative (or alternatively 10% of the centrist stuff), and say that's where your tax cents (doesn't equal enough per capita to be dollars) went. just think, you could have the bbc.
Sorry, I don't see that. Maybe the bias has become so normalised that its harder to make out?
But it's hard for me to see that as a problem.
Because of their bias in favor of a basically modern liberal viewpoint they have spawned all kinds of competition which has only lessened, not increased their influence. Their very determination to continue along a vector of determined support of modern liberalism has only weaned them, and strengthened the competition.
When you behave in such a way as to weaken yourself in the long run and strengthen the competition in the long run it is you that have the real problem. The more consistently dogmatic (and inflexible) they remain in regards to their own bias, the more capable the opposition becomes in the long run.
Is it fair that they proclaim themselves unbiased when they are so obviously biased? - No. Is it good for the competition? - Absolutely. It is good in at least two ways. It forces the opposition by competition, in this case conservatives, to police their own, such as was the case with Foley and Craig (thereby making Conservatives more responsible and responsive to their constituents), and it exposes their own (the MSM) weaknesses to the competition allowing further avenues for gain and ever wider venues of access. Think back if you are old enough the avenues of access to conservative political opinion open to conservatives or Republicans in the era of Kennedy, or Nixon, or even of Reagan, and compare that situation to the present.
Never interfere with any man or any organization bent upon self-limitation. It is very similar to Al Qaeda, philosophically speaking, insisting upon only one way of pursuing religion, life, politics, government, or the future. You can deceive some, and scare many, but eventually by such actions you will always breed more resistance than loyalty.
In my opinion you can't get enough competition from the determined opposition and you can't get enough of the other guy bleeding himself, so as for my opinion on the matter in cases like these, the more they succeed the more they fail. Inopem copia fecit.
So, let them be abundant in their efforts, for the horse that shits often breeds many gadflies.
What gets reported on the news is also a side effect of what stories the candidates campaigns are promoting. Campaigns can generate news by putting out proposals, attacking opponents or leaking negative stories on opponents. Right now I think the Democratic campaigns are more active. There have been a lot more negative stories about Democratic candidates being circulated by the press, the Edwards $400 haircut, Clinton high negatives, the Obama Madrassa story. Many of these stories really look like spin generated by opposition research that is then spoon-fed to the press and they then run with the story. It could be the other Democratic candidates feeding this stuff to the press, or it could be Republican opposition research.
There may be lots of factors that are causing the Republicans to keep a lower news profile at this point in the campaign.
Thank you, pennywit. That's my problem as well.
To illustrate, let me talk about "alternative weeklies." These are free publications in many cities, usually with a leftward lean, that deal with stories that interest the publishers, restaraunt reviews, upcoming music, and a classified section not for the faint of heart. I've lived in four states and picked up the weekly in each one. Spokane Inlander, okay, about the level of a daily paper in terms of writing. Eugene (? I forgot), roughly the same.
The Denver Westword was phenomenal. They had reporters who would go out and expend shoe leather to get their story, and they didn't twist their experiences into a foregone conclusion. Yeah, they were definitely left of where I am. So what? They wrote well, and researched well, and didn't slam down those letters that disagreed with them.
And then, the Sacramento (S)News &Review. I picked it up once. It read like a party-line pamphlet without the intrigue. And the one time they reviewed a play I was in, they ignored one of the principal actors to drool over a walk-on, no lines, shirtless part. Yes, reviewer, you're gay. We get it. Now review the play already!
Good writing and good reporting are essential. Journalism's decline stems from the fact that most of its practitioners are too lazy to even write a good argument in favor of their biases.
That made me laugh.
It's funny 'cause it's true.
I would only add that most journalists nowadays are not very good writers either, because most have never done anything but write.
You can't write much worth reading about in this world if about the only living you've ever done has been onscreen, or in your own imagination, and the only thing you've ever really bled is ink.
An education in journalism might earn you a professional degree, alrighty, but it sure is a mighty poor preparation for living. Or being any kinda real journalist.
After all, it used to be a journalist was a man who had been on a journey. He had sailed into life, and it had marked him. Now the journalist is an opinioneer on the fifth floor of a dry-docked ship sailing nowhere no-time soon.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste entirely on itself.
If you look at the editoral level, you will find a conservative bias. If you look at the media ownership, it is mostly owned by conservative interests.
Take an example from the recent news. Reporters discovered Fred Thompson was working as a lobbyist for a pro-abortion group. Fred Thompson first tried to deny the story, then admitted it was true, but claimed he is still strongly opposed to abortion. Now if Fred Thompson were a Democrat, we would have reporters writing stories about how Fred Thompson is a habitual liar, how this incident show Fred Thompson’s lack of moral character, or how Fred Thompson is simply an opportunist who will change his position on issues to whatever he thinks people want to hear. Where are those stories? The press generally only writes those about Democrats. That is the conservative media bias that has been created by this 30 year campaign of charging the media with a liberal bias.
Dan Rather
Scott Thomas Beauchamp
Tailwind
Jack Ryan (newspaper suing to get divorce records)
Frank Rich &his Mass Supreme Court Wife &Gay Marriage
Where exactly are the untrue &unfair to liberal stories? (Note: it must be both untrue and unfair, ala Dan Rather / Tailwind...)
Take for example this front page Washington Post story on the sale of John Edwards Washington house. The whole story is written to suggest that there was something unethical about this sale, although Edwards sold the house for much less than his initial asking price. The Washington Post has not been able to point to anything about how Edwards sold his house that was unethical or looked unethical. I have sold several houses. I have never met the buyers. I have never investigated the buyers. Does anyone seriously think that Edwards should have investigated the couple that wanted to buy his house and refused to sell to them because they had a history of anti-union activity? This was an absurd story and no one can explain how a story with no news content got on the front page of the Washington Post.
So is anything in the article provably false, ala The National Guard Memos, or is this simply unfair? I mean, I think muchof what has been written about Sen Craig is unfair, but I don't count that as agenda bias, but rather appeals to the prurient.
And if it is agenda bias, what is the bias? Is it for a more conservative candidate than Mr. Edwards, or a more liberal candidate? Granted, if the WP prefers Sen. Clinton, there is quite a discussion to be had as to who is more reliably conservative / liberal among the two...
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.