Is there a "left winged liberal" media bias.......?

[lwien]

(open for discussion)

 

[turk]

...there is no "left" ...in the american model....what the "media" calls "left" is "neo-liberalism...."

 

[Hippie Dickie]

all media has a bias ... that is what the editor is for, to make sure the "news" output reflects the culture and interests of that particular media organization. Right?

 

[turk]

....in the old days....maybe...not anymore...the media is controlled by a tiny group of rich, entitled, white guys...who are NOT interested in any "liberal" ideas...execpt to discredit them...

 

[WatTyler]

^ Like Julian Assange and the wikileaks crowd?

I'd say the wider media, if we are to include the internet, is more open and diverse than ever. The mainstream commercial sources however are a different story.

If there is a left liberal bias in the world it's because that's what people secretly want. I read a fun BBC news article the other day on some research suggesting that over 90% of Americans would actually want to live in a fairer and more equal society (despite the apparent increase of the recent tea party type right wing), but the reason they misrepresent themselves politically is largely relate to labels, image and political manipulation. I can buy that.

feck it, i'll paste the article even if it's a little OT- I guess I just made it on topic- most of us are secretly left wing leaning liberals, Republican or Democrat. It's called being human


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19284017

How Americans view wealth and inequality​

There have been lots of questions and discussions recently about inequality and economists often argue about what is the right level of inequality to have in society.

But Mike Norton, professor at Harvard Business School, and I decided to take a different path and we decided to ask people what inequality they would want.

Now, there are lots of ways to ask this question and we used the philosopher John Rawls.

Rawls said that "a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place". And it's really a beautiful definition.

He called it a veil of ignorance, because if you're very wealthy, you might want the wealthy people to have lots of money and the poor to have very little; and if you are very poor, you might want the poor to have more money and the wealthy to have less.

But in Rawls' definition, you don't know where you'll end up, you have to consider all the different options and therefore you have to think about what is good for society as a whole.

Incomprehension
So, we took the American society and we asked people to imagine it divided into five buckets, the wealthiest 20%, the next 20%, the next, the next and the poorest 20%.

First of all, we asked people: how much wealth do you think is concentrated in each of those buckets?

It turns out people get it very wrong

The reality is that the bottom two buckets together, the bottom 40% of Americans, own 0.3% of the wealth; 0.3%, almost nothing, whereas the top 20% own about 84% of the wealth.

And people don't understand it. They don't understand how much wealth the top have and in particular, they don't understand how little the bottom has.

But then we described to people Rawls' definition, the veil of ignorance, and the idea they could end up anywhere. And we said: What society would you like to create? How much wealth? How would you like to distribute the wealth?

And it turns out people created a society that is much more equal than any society on Earth. It was much more equal than Sweden.


Blind tasting
In fact, when we did this experiment another way and we showed people two distributions of wealth, one based on the wealth distribution in the US and the other based on the wealth distribution that is more equal than Sweden, 92% of Americans picked the improved Swedish distribution.

So this suggests to me that when people take a step away from their own position and their own current state, and when people look at society in general terms, in abstract terms, Americans want a much more equal society.

There is one more interesting thing to this: 93% of Democrats picked the improved Swedish model, compared with 90.5% of Republicans. Different, but not very different.

And all this makes me wonder, how can it be that in our studies people seem to want such equal society but when you look at the political ideology, people don't seem to want that? And I think it is a little bit like blind tasting of wine.

When you taste wine and you know the label and you know the price, you are going to be influenced by that. And when you are tasting wine in a blind way, now you don't have anything to base it on and you have to really use your senses.

I think the same thing happens with thoughts about just societies. When we are in the regular world, we are using our current position, our ideology and the labels that politicians give us, and they obscure reality and obscure what we really want.

But Rawls' definition really lets us strip all this away, lets us focus on what is really important and how people actually want something very different from what we have.

The question, of course, is how do we get people to think about this to a higher degree and how do we get them to act on that for a better future?

 

[turk]

.....please I would love to hear examples of a "left wing" bias.....where? ..NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX....WHERE?

 

[Hippie Dickie]

i just read a comment following an article in Huffington Post that suggested the site be renamed: re-electObama.com. That suggests to me that HuffPost has a left-leaning agenda, in some eyes at least.

Also, i never read/watch FOX so i guess that places me on the left, and everything i say, think or do has a lefty flavor, being the old hippie that i am.

 

[Stu]

MSNBC is the only example I can think of. I watch it sometimes just as I watch Fox News and BBC sometimes. I like to see how news stories are viewed through the lens of different political perspectives.

MSNBC is unapologetic in their liberal "bias", so I don't think they are trying to sneak anything into the koolaid, rather they just offer the left's perspective to current events.

Or I could be completely mistaken.

 

[lwien]

MSNBC is unapologetic in their liberal "bias", so I don't think they are trying to sneak anything into the koolaid, rather they just offer the left's perspective to current events.

Unlike Fox News who label themselves as "Fair and Balanced".

 

[Stu]

Unlike Fox News who label themselves as "Fair and Balanced".

I have always assumed that "Fair and Balanced" is used tongue-in-cheek by Fox News.... the same way that The Daily Show claims to have the "Best Fucking News team on the planet". Nobody actually believes that, do they?

 

[turk]

...attention Obama is NOT ...NOT... "left". .. he is a corporate moderate/apologist..

 

[Hippie Dickie]

uh, yes, of course, i believe everyfuckingthing i see on the tubes. but, really, although i laugh mightily during the show, i am always intensely sad afterward.

 

[max]

I have always assumed that "Fair and Balanced" is used tongue-in-cheek by Fox News

They're serious as a heart attack, though it's a ridiculous claim if you actually watch it. The Daily Show is a short cut to seeing Fox News bias, since they often show a collection of clips to make a point.

MSNBC is unapologetic in their liberal "bias", ...

I haven't seen 'em admit that, but they do seem to act like they're trying to balance out the right lean of Fox.

Most of the media outlets these days, networks and newspapers included, are owned by a handful of corporations or super rich white guys, so if there's a media lean driven by ownership, IMO it's to the right, since the GOP always favors big business.

 

[turk]

...there is no left in the american model/politics....the dems are corporate moderates/apologists....ever since clinton...they get their money from wall street....just like the repubs...there is no "leftist" message...it's neo-liberalism...huffinton post...started by arianna huffington, rich, millionaire..former conservative turned neo-liberal...the noam chomsky's, the howard zinn's couldn't get airtime....and still can't...there is no left in the american model..

 

[pakalolo]

...there is no left in the american model/politics....the dems are corporate moderates/apologists....ever since clinton...they get their money from wall street....just like the repubs...there is no "leftist" message...it's neo-liberalism...huffinton post...started by arianna huffington, rich, millionaire..former conservative turned neo-liberal...the noam chomsky's, the howard zinn's couldn't get airtime....and still can't...there is no left in the american model..

Given that our neo-con Conservative government in Canada is often depicted in American media as socialist, I'd have to agree. I certainly don't accept that Obama is anywhere near left of centre or even centrist. Same with Bill Clinton, who was painted as a liberal by the same people who have turned "liberal" into a slur, but he was at best a conservative centrist.

American reporters and columnists sometimes are left-leaning, but not the publishers and owners. I believe there is definitely a bias in American mainstream media, but it's considerably to the right of centre.

 

[turk]

...the whole conversation has moved to the right....(while at the exact same time the "middle class" has been decimated).....hmmm...unions the last bastion of "left" principles in the American model have been effectively villanized, ,canonized, and discredited...although it was unions that got us...sick leave...vacation leave..equal pay for women and minorities...grievance procedures ...collective bargaining rights.. All of these things were fought for vehemently...at great peril...blood flowed ...
....and now here we stand...hoping the next "millionaire" will save-us...we keep electing the same rich, narcissistic,egocentric, twits and wondering why we get nowhere...

 

[lwien]

Fox is the station that beats this drum loudest, that is, the drum of left wing media bias, and the reason that they do this is so that they can continue to carve out their niche in this very competitive news market and try to separate themselves from everyone else, while at the same time, TRYING to seem legitimate by labeling themselves as fair and balanced.

I don't think you can ever tune in and not hear them complaining about the mainstream media. It's kinda funny, but they constantly, especially on O'Rielly, proclaim that they are the number one news station passing all others in viewership, but yet they complain about the mainstream media, as if they are not a part of it.

 

[max]

there is no left in the american model/politics

The topic isn't about defining liberalism or what's 'left'. If there's a 'right wing', and that's the perception, then the other party is left. Picking at definitions to decide what defines 'liberal' and whether the Dems embody that definition or not, is another topic.

It's kinda funny, but they constantly, especially on O'Rielly, proclaim that they are the number one news station passing all others in viewership, but yet they complain about the mainstream media, as if they are not a part of it.

Then they're a subsidiary of the Republican party.

 

[Stu]

Then they're a subsidiary of the Republican party.

Or vice versa

 

[BigDaddyVapor]

ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper told conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham that he “thought the media helped tip the scales” for Obama. “I didn’t think the coverage in 2008 was especially fair to either Hillary Clinton or John McCain. Sometimes I saw with story selection, magazine covers, photos picked, (the) campaign narrative, that it wasn’t always the fairest coverage.”

***********************************************************************

MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin acknowledged this weekend on the “Today” show that the Beltway press corps is helping Obama drive campaign issues that most voters don’t care about: “I think the press still likes this story a lot. The media is very susceptible to doing what the Obama campaign wants, which is to focus on (Mitt Romney’s tax returns). … Do voters care about it? I don’t think so. … I think it’s mostly something that the press and insiders care about.”

***********************************************************************

Another MSNBC political reporter, Chuck Todd, disclosed that gaffetastic Vice President Joe Biden’s staff was trying to edit the press pool reports to cover for the second-in-command’s lack of rhetorical command. “This is an outrage that they do this,” Todd said. (But they still do it!)

***********************************************************************

Independent political blogger Keith Koffler of whitehousedossier.com reported this week that Team Obama was dictating interview topics to local TV reporters in battleground states, just after holding a kabuki press conference on Monday to capitalize on the Missouri GOP Rep. Todd Akin “legitimate rape”/magical uterus debacle. “In interviews with three local TV stations Monday, two from states critical to Obama’s reelection effort, Obama held forth on the possibility of ‘sequestration’ if he and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, allowing him to make his favorite political point that Republicans are willing to cause grievous harm to the economy and jobs in order to protect the rich from tax increases,” Koffler reported.

“The reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. ‘The president invited me to talk about sequestration,’ NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience. In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at: ‘What do you want individual San Diegans to know about sequestration?’ she asked.”

***********************************************************************

NY Times which ‘fessed up last month to allowing Obama campaign officials to have “veto power” over statements. “We don’t like the practice,” said Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at The New York Times. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.” (And yet, they don't.)

(links and commentary - some edited - courtesy Michelle Malkin)


From the Pew Research Center and 2008 election coverage (as unbiased as it gets. PERIOD)

Among the findings:

• MSNBC stood out for having less negative coverage of Obama than the press generally (14% of stories vs. 29% in the press overall) and for having more negative stories about McCain (73% of its coverage vs. 57% in the press overall).
• On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm (40% of stories vs. 29% overall) and less positive (25% of stories vs. 36% generally). For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive (22% vs. 14% in the press overall) and substantially less negative (40% vs. 57% in the press overall). Yet even here, his negative stories outweighed positive ones by almost 2 to 1.
• CNN fell distinctly in the middle of the three cable channels when it came to tone. In general, the tone of its coverage was closer than any other cable news channel to the press overall, though also somewhat more negative than the media overall.
• The distinct tone of MSNBC--more positive toward Democrats and more negative toward Republicans--was not reflected in the coverage of its broadcast sibling, NBC News. Even though it has correspondents appear on their cable shows and even anchor some MSNBC programs, the broadcast channel showed no such ideological tilt. Indeed, NBC's coverage of Palin was the most positive of any TV organization studied, including Fox News.

• At night, the newscasts of the three traditional broadcast networks stood out for being more neutral -- and also less negative -- than most other news outlets. The morning shows of the networks, by contrast, more closely resembled the media generally in tone. That might surprise some who imagined those morning programs were somehow easier on political figures. Overall, 44% of the morning show stories were clearly negative, compared with 34% on the nightly news and 42% in the press overall.

Also, in regards to Fox, there is a HUGE difference between opinion shows, such as O'Reilly (populist), Hannity (right-leaning populist), Greta (who is FAR from conservative, she is a left-leaning moderate) and actual newscasts. The "Faux News" moniker is dishonest and purely an attempt at "Dismiss, Deflect, Belittle, Ignore".

 

[turk]

...I stand by my statements there is no "left" in the american model....the rich have two parties...just different sides of the same coin... Open the door in that room....everyone is a millionaire...anyone believing any of these two parties give a damn about you....good luck...I'm out....baskin robbins gives you choices in your flavor of ice cream...we have reduced every issue, every topic in the country to two acceptable solutions...democrat/republ...tha't's it...million of yers of human "evolution" reduced to two acceptable responses....it's groundhog day...

 

[aesthyrian]

.....please I would love to hear examples of a "left wing" bias.....where? ..NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX....WHERE?

Current TV, Free Speech TV and maybe even RT.

All huge media giants, I know... the difference is that they don't lie to support their idea's unlike many other media outlets that claim to be fair and balanced. I guess you don't make money telling the truth.

and seriously.. MSNBC is Liberal? Then how come every morning I wake up they have three hours of a former republican congressman spewing bullshit? MSNBC is just boring, but not Liberal. They made Cenk Uygur of the young turks either go to a weekend slot with less coverage but more pay to shut him up, or just quit, and quit he did. He is a Liberal, and he was not allowed to play at MSNBC. And MSNBC is the station where you heard a MSNBC payed analyst call Obama a dick on national TV. That's pretty Liberal, eh?

and sorry, but FOX has no liberals, they fired Alan Colmes years ago when they decided Hannity needed more whining time. A station where Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are on they payroll(or in the case of Newt, was) is not liberal. Show me the former democratic politicians that are on MSNBC. Please?

And I agree with BDV, "Faux News" is unfair, they are totally not news of any sort. This is not an insult at anyone, the truth just hurts sometimes. I mean, seriously they told us that Egypt was in the middle east and that Iraq was actually where Egypt is. So I guess I am wrong, if Egypt moved from Africa to the middle east, then that is news. Too bad it didn't happen.

I'm sorry, but no one is stupid enough to do that on accident.

 

[lwien]

I'm sorry, but no one is stupid enough to do that on accident.

They just................misspoke.

 

[Stu]

Sarah Palin was cross-training in the graphics department that day.

 

[Hippie Dickie]

i think Egypt has had their eye on the futile crescent for quite some time ... quid pro quo, perhaps?