NationStates Jolt Archive

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.
Edit: YAY mine
Depends on your scale ... compared to world standards horribly right leaning.

Edit: Talking about US media

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

The media is biased towards whatever will get people to watch, and thus generate more advertising revenue.

The media is owned, mostly, by right-wing folk. However, most journalists and editors are left-wing.

A right-wing bias, of course.

I say it has a "pro keeping us stupid" bias.

A right-wing bias.US media? Right wing bias.

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

Media has a sensationalist bias, they'll do anything to get you to tune in, it's yellow journalism at it's finest. Tabloids for the new century.

What country are we referring to? The media is the USA is pretty right-wing, and up here in Canada, the CBC is mostly centrist while the other private media giants are to the right. Can't say I know what the rest of the world is like, although I suspect most first-world countries are similar.

Media has a sensationalist bias, they'll do anything to get you to tune in, it's yellow journalism at it's finest. Tabloids for the new century.

Agreed.

And, still on topic, generally journalists tend to be more liberal/left-wing because for whatever reason these are the sort of people attracted to the job. But I don't believe this means the media is biased to the left, as the vast majority of journalists know how to write a fair article. It is the outlets and organisations with a specific agenda that you have to watch out for.

What country are we referring to? The media is the USA is pretty right-wing, and up here in Canada, the CBC is mostly centrist while the other private media giants are to the right. Can't say I know what the rest of the world is like, although I suspect most first-world countries are similar.

can you guys give me an blaring example of how our media is right-wing, I would like to use this in a classroom and I need evident to support this.

can you guys give me an blaring example of how our media is right-wing, I would like to use this in a classroom and I need evident to support this.
I don't think the media is that right-wing, unless you look at Fox News or its ilk. I think most media corporations have their own interests at heart, and so are less likely to report news that depicts corporations like themselves unfavorably. But it's hard to say that not reporting certain news is either liberal or conservative.

What country are we referring to? The media is the USA is pretty right-wing, and up here in Canada, the CBC is mostly centrist while the other private media giants are to the right. Can't say I know what the rest of the world is like, although I suspect most first-world countries are similar.

I don't think the media is that right-wing, unless you look at Fox News or its ilk. I think most media corporations have their own interests at heart, and so are less likely to report news that depicts corporations like themselves unfavorably. But it's hard to say that not reporting certain news is either liberal or conservative.

People are accusing the media as being liberal but I mean how do you distinguish the whole liberal factor with conservative?

How the heck do you find Fox News to be right-winged....?

Oreilly= Sure, his opinion is right-winged, but he gives both sides a chance in stories.

Hannity and Colmes (Sp?)= Come on. Hannity is right, Colmes is left. How much more balanced do you want it?

The book Bias refers to the US media for future posters.

And... most people here are wrong. The American mass media has a very left-wing slant (left in American politics). Or, at least in the way it's delivered it's to the left. The coverage of the Vietnam war comes to mind.

Or, just watch the daily election '08 coverage. It's always, to the extent of: Clinton is travelling to such-and-such city today with a huge crowd expected. John Edwards spent $500 dollars on his haircut and subsequent manicure. Barack Obama has proven that he really is black enough. Senator McCain is out of the race. Now, on to other news...

Or any other political coverage. It's always "the Democrats are suffering another setback. What are they going to do about it this time? The Democrats are ahead in the polls. Here is political analyst...

You get the idea. I'm surprised the American populace who watch the news even know what the Republican party is called... I'm willing to bet most can't name more than 3 potential Republican candidates for '08, but we all knew the names of the 8 Dem. candidates back in the '04 election (my God, the coverage they got...).

The one exception being Fox News, and I know how everyone here feels about that one...

What country are we referring to? US. -Land of the free, Home of the Lawsuit-

..this thread was created because the OP is reading this book:

http://www.conservativebookservice.com/products/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=C5866

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

I get my news from here.

"The book Bias refers to the US media for future posters.

And... most people here are wrong. The American mass media has a very left-wing slant (left in American politics). Or, at least in the way it's delivered it's to the left. The coverage of the Vietnam war comes to mind.

Or, just watch the daily election '08 coverage. It's always, to the extent of: Clinton is travelling to such-and-such city today with a huge crowd expected. John Edwards spent $500 dollars on his haircut and subsequent manicure. Barack Obama has proven that he really is black enough. Senator McCain is out of the race. Now, on to other news...

Or any other political coverage. It's always "the Democrats are suffering another setback. What are they going to do about it this time? The Democrats are ahead in the polls. Here is political analyst...

You get the idea. I'm surprised the American populace who watch the news even know what the Republican party is called... I'm willing to bet most can't name more than 3 potential Republican candidates for '08, but we all knew the names of the 8 Dem. candidates back in the '04 election (my God, the coverage they got...).

The one exception being Fox News, and I know how everyone here feels about that one..."


That's a valid point too.

I get my news from here.

well that answers the question of which way it leans for you. Left, if no one got it.

"The book Bias refers to the US media for future posters.

And... most people here are wrong. The American mass media has a very left-wing slant (left in American politics). Or, at least in the way it's delivered it's to the left. The coverage of the Vietnam war comes to mind.

Or, just watch the daily election '08 coverage. It's always, to the extent of: Clinton is travelling to such-and-such city today with a huge crowd expected. John Edwards spent $500 dollars on his haircut and subsequent manicure. Barack Obama has proven that he really is black enough. Senator McCain is out of the race. Now, on to other news...

Or any other political coverage. It's always "the Democrats are suffering another setback. What are they going to do about it this time? The Democrats are ahead in the polls. Here is political analyst...

You get the idea. I'm surprised the American populace who watch the news even know what the Republican party is called... I'm willing to bet most can't name more than 3 potential Republican candidates for '08, but we all knew the names of the 8 Dem. candidates back in the '04 election (my God, the coverage they got...).

The one exception being Fox News, and I know how everyone here feels about that one..."


That's a valid point too.

If you click "quote" on the post you are quoting, it will quote automatically, like it does here. Or type in [!QUOTE]Whatever you want to quote[/QUOTE], without the exclamation point (I used it so the forum wouldn't make what I wrote a quote).

If you click "quote" on the post you are quoting, it will quote automatically, like it does here. Or type in [!QUOTE]Whatever you want to quote, without the exclamation point (I used it so the forum wouldn't make what I wrote a quote).[/QUOTE]


Yeah I know it was an accident.

And... most people here are wrong. The American mass media has a very left-wing slant (left in American politics). Or, at least in the way it's delivered it's to the left. The coverage of the Vietnam war comes to mind.

An example from over thirty years ago is somewhat less than persuasive.

, without the exclamation point (I used it so the forum wouldn't make what I wrote a quote).

Why didn't you just do this?

Neat, huh?

Neat, huh?
Curse you and your black magic.

That's a valid point too.

Not really. It was unsupported claims and a hypothetical about the next election that didn't take into consideration the nature of newsworthiness.

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

It's nonsense. I just read the excerpt on barnes and noble. The guy sites sources for his friends opinions. He's full of it.

Take a look at media matters and see if you can explain how there is a left-wing bias.

Explain how firing Donahue for being anti-war makes msnbc the most liberal network on TV.

And you can't judge bias in terms of how left or right they are compared to someone else. You can only judge it by looking at how much editorializing and/or honesty there is in coverage.

Remember the Dean Scream that was repeated over and over on every news outlet in the country? Never happened. He was shouting over an audience that was even louder than he was, but he had a unidirectional mike. Any news outlets point that out? No. Right-wing bias.

Mitt Romney saying that his sons campaigning for him was a sacrifice tantamount to serving in the military in Iraq? How much airplay did that get? Outside of the Daily Show I don't think I saw it anywhere. Right Wing Bias.

Bill Clinton laying the smackdown on the FOX interviewer? Why did every media personality describe it as Clinton "loosing control." He didn't loose control. He called a talking head on his bullshit, but he never lost his temper. Right Wing Bias.

There is no Liberal Bias in the media. There is a corporate bias, which is a brand of conservative bias.

"The book Bias refers to the US media for future posters.

And... most people here are wrong. The American mass media has a very left-wing slant (left in American politics). Or, at least in the way it's delivered it's to the left. The coverage of the Vietnam war comes to mind.

Do any come to mind from the last two decades?

Or, just watch the daily election '08 coverage. It's always, to the extent of: Clinton is travelling to such-and-such city today with a huge crowd expected. John Edwards spent $500 dollars on his haircut and subsequent manicure. Barack Obama has proven that he really is black enough. Senator McCain is out of the race. Now, on to other news...

Are you really that dense? That's an anti-democratic slant. They're always dismissing democrats for bullshit trivialities making them look unimportant. Mitt Romney gets a lot of coverage, but the Republicans get a lot of coverage in terms of the President. And if you cared to look at the race before Bush became president, he was covered everywhere he went, but almost none of Al Gore's appearances got coverage.

Or any other political coverage. It's always "the Democrats are suffering another setback. What are they going to do about it this time? The Democrats are ahead in the polls. Here is political analyst...

Again, they're always trashing the Democrats.

You get the idea.

You however seem not to.

I'm surprised the American populace who watch the news even know what the Republican party is called...

But they don't know what the Democratic party is called. The news keeps calling it the Democrat party.

I'm willing to bet most can't name more than 3 potential Republican candidates for '08, but we all knew the names of the 8 Dem. candidates back in the '04 election (my God, the coverage they got...).

Again, they're all over the news. Off the top of my head, the ones I've seen on TV or heard on the radio today: Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee.

You really seem to have no clue what's going on.

you guys are all making valid points, I just hope my teacher doesn't brainwash us about being objective? and it sounds contradicting to her preaching that news needs to be objective when she's giving us a book that seems subjective.

Wait, did your (I assume) high school teacher give you this book to read?

you guys are all making valid points, I just hope my teacher doesn't brainwash us about being objective? and it sounds contradicting to her preaching that news needs to be objective when she's giving us a book that seems subjective.

unfortuantely we have to read the book.

can you guys give me an blaring example of how our media is right-wing, I would like to use this in a classroom and I need evident to support this.

I don't feel like digging up a dozen articles from different time frames, but you can look this up if you like. Look back to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. When did you ever hear the media put the hard questions to Bush? Why did they just swallow his garbage and regurgitate on air? Even nowadays, they still refuse to ask hard questions about why things are such a mess, why nobody spoke up; instead they just jump on the nearest mainstream bandwagon.

Of course I don't watch much American news. I remember one extremely vile episode of Larry King Live (on the evil liberal CNN, no less) where Larry King invited some pundits and commentators to debate that American guy caught in Afghanistan (he was a member of the Taliban). Now perhaps these people didn't know the purpose of a debate, because it seemed more like a contest to see who could rant at and revile this John Walker Lind fellow (I think that was his name), and call him a traitor.

There are indeed plenty of examples of right-wing bias; I have got to go to a tute but just do a google search for "right wing bias" and you'll get good results.

I don't feel like digging up a dozen articles from different time frames, but you can look this up if you like. Look back to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. When did you ever hear the media put the hard questions to Bush? Why did they just swallow his garbage and regurgitate on air? Even nowadays, they still refuse to ask hard questions about why things are such a mess, why nobody spoke up; instead they just jump on the nearest mainstream bandwagon.

Of course I don't watch much American news. I remember one extremely vile episode of Larry King Live (on the evil liberal CNN, no less) where Larry King invited some pundits and commentators to debate that American guy caught in Afghanistan (he was a member of the Taliban). Now perhaps these people didn't know the purpose of a debate, because it seemed more like a contest to see who could rant at and revile this John Walker Lind fellow (I think that was his name), and call him a traitor.

To be fair CNN International is actually pretty decent most of the time.

The media is biased towards whatever will get people to watch, and thus generate more advertising revenue.

QFT

[/Thread]

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

"The media" involves thousands of publications, broadcasts and reports. It involves hundreds of thousands of people, with hundreds of thousands of different opinions and views.

I've heard a lot about "liberal bias", mostly from American posters here. But I find everytime it's brought up it's used to explain why intelligent and educated people might not agree with a conservative view... it's a nice way of not addressing the issue, but rather slandering the person with a different opinion.

do you think the media has a leftist bias or rightest i'm reading this book by Bernard Goldberg Bias, and he's been pointing out liberals control the media. What's your feeling on this? i'm ambivalent.

"The Media" is owned and controlled by a secret and seditious conspiracy consisting of the opposite of whoever happens to be in office at whatever particular moment.

Thus...


Goldberg, who has authored several books, is currently a commentator for [b]Fox News...

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Goldberg; emphasis mine )

...a right-wing nut (or "Fox News") sees the evil liberals behind everything.

Now, read this thread and note the responses of the various left-wing nuts

Q.E.D.

The media is owned by the rich, so it will be biased towards them, this is evident mostly in the massive stock market and business news devoted to the news, which has no bearing on the majority of people.

In the UK, I'd say the BBC is quite left-wing really, though it tries to be centrist, certainly during elections each (major) party get equal commentary. I couldn't say much about ITV and 4 as I don't often watch them (though I don't watch BBC much either, just have its RSS feed).

Reality has a left-wing bias, it's true.

The bias always seems to be the opposite to that of whomever is saying it is biased.

www.zeitgeistmovie.com

The media is owned, mostly, by right-wing folk. However, most journalists and editors are left-wing.

But in the end its all BS anyway; I tend to watch four different news channels, and read many different sources for news.

Sure, I see bias in ALL the channels, be they Fox, CNN, BBC or SkyNews, all of them have their bias; the key is to identify the bias.

Also, it is important to RECOGNISE the difference between news and opinion pieces; that is where people come unstuck with Fox, confusing opinion pieces by people on the channel to news being reported.

The American media as a whole tends towards Statist views. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS tend to be more "liberal," in the sense that they believe in slightly greater social freedom and economic authoritarianism, whereas FOX promotes both social and economic authoritarianism.

All mainstream American media supports the Bush doctrine on irradicating terrorism, and although the liberal stations superficially suggest withdrawal from Iraq, it seems that there is a constant push of the "not yet" message even by them.

This is troublesome, as there is no American television outlet for reasonable journalism. Your best bet is to get your news from blogs or online internet, although I like to get a broad spectrum of news to see what the enemy--I mean the government--is postulating.

The American media as a whole tends towards Statist views. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS tend to be more "liberal," in the sense that they believe in slightly greater social freedom and economic authoritarianism, whereas FOX promotes both social and economic authoritarianism.

All mainstream American media supports the Bush doctrine on irradicating terrorism, and although the liberal stations superficially suggest withdrawal from Iraq, it seems that there is a constant push of the "not yet" message even by them.

This is troublesome, as there is no American television outlet for reasonable journalism. Your best bet is to get your news from blogs or online internet, although I like to get a broad spectrum of news to see what the enemy--I mean the government--is postulating.

Its not just a US thing.

If it isn't poorly researched news its a focus on trivial crap such as what Paris Hilton or some other tramp did on the weekend.

The days of hard news and documentries are gone thanks to societies promotion of mediocrity and pop-culture as the dejure of achievements one should aspire to rather than academic achievements.

US media? Right wing bias.

Hardly.

Unless, of course, you consider the American mainstream to be right wing.

I would argue that there is actually no bias in any particular direction, rather that the media itself is too diverse and divided to actually have an orientation one way or another, individual news sources (Fox News being an extreme example) may have certain built in biases, but the media as a whole does not.

Media has a sensationalist bias, they'll do anything to get you to tune in, it's yellow journalism at it's finest. Tabloids for the new century.

QFT

Click Stand;13026704']well that answers the question of which way it leans for you. Left, if no one got it.

*nods*

In general, it seems that the media leans to the opposite direction of the person talking.

Some of you guys gave examples of liberal bias. Others gave examples of conservative bias. I say that the media doesn't go one way consistently (well, FOX leans to the right more often), but goes varying ways depending on the opinion of the commentator, the opinion of the source (this is probably very important, especially in factual pieces), and whichever angle is more sensationalist.

For instance, take the BBC. BBC is often claimed to be anti-Israel. Is this a conspiracy at the BBC to attack Israel? Or is it that they get a lot of their information from Al-Jazeera, which gets its information from Arabs, thus producing a pro-Arab bias? See, I remember one story where the BBC did not get its info from someone else. They were reporting on a suicide bombing, and they had a BBC reporter on the scene. The reporter just talked about what had happened, but the images of the bombed-out restaurant did not reflect well on the Palestinians.

Also, if the media attempts to be unbiased (presenting an unbiased image is important), they will often include a second opinion, which may be seen as their opinion. For instance, if there are massive protests in favor of withdrawing from Iraq, they may include, say, a statement by General Petraeus that we need to stick around. People will say that the media supports staying the course.

My conclusion? The media is not biased in any particular direction.