Obama vs Fox News; does the US media have a left wing bias?

I was fairly surprised when I saw a story about the soldiers as I couldn't believe I'd not heard about it through a US channel yet.

 

Yeah, but I don't remember anyone in the MSM remembering what Gonzales said about the Geneva Convention, or Bush's signing statements on torture, and putting two and two together. Instead, they focused on what really amounts to sadomasochistic pornography.

Either way, you're missing the larger pattern of bias. The media don't really care about if Hispanic gay male-to-female transexuals can have abortions (if that makes any sense). They more care about the survival of the class system in America. (What class system? That's how it survives.)

Oh, I thought of another interesting case of media bias: Kennewick man. If you actually read the transcripts, you have the Indians on the side of evolution (In fact, the hot new thing in evolution: Punctuated equilibrium! Small, isolated populations change more quickly than large populations.) and the scientists on the side of Coon-style polygenesis, with "racial essence". And once you translate it from Anthropometer to English, you don't have caucasoid features at all:

The lack of head flattening from cradle board use, minimal arthritis in weight-bearing bones, and the unusually light wear on his teeth distinguish the behavior and diet of Kennewick Man from that of more recent peoples in the region.

Translation: Lamarckian traits.

The skull is dolichocranic (cranial index 73.8) rather than brachycranic

The standard terms are "dolichocephalic" and "brachycephalic". These would've been wonderful measures, a century ago, before Franz Boas determined the cephalic index was plastic in a study of immigrant families. Oh, and trends in the cephalic index by ethnicity, while not always correlating to race, feature dolichocephaly as more a negroid trait. Finally, a lot of Indians are dolichocephalic.

the face narrow and prognathous rather than broad and flat

Prognathous means "jutting jaw", a standard measure favored by racists. The prognathous jaw was a sign of inferiority. Since it was a sign of inferiority among people intent on proving white superiority (in the circular reasoning popular in the 19th century), I don't need to tell you the ethnic trend.

a long, broad nose that projects markedly from the face

The exact stereotype of what all Indians look like!

Dental characteristics fit Turner's (1983) Sundadont pattern, indicating possible relationship to south Asian peoples.

Six traits. Notice the reductionism that all the traits not only cluster, but have a perfect correlation.

The media, for their part, portrayed this new version of human history with their inimitable élan. Humans were now in the Americas for less than 9000 years. (Clovis? Never heard of 'em.) Despite this younger age, humans still wiped out the mammoths. And these early inhabitants were still portrayed as what I imagine Neandertals with Down syndrome would look like in all the art of the day.

 

Another case, back in 1994, most of us think of the New York Times as liberal. But that doesn't explain the way they treated The Bell Curve.

New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan, when discussing the book, clarified that "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief." Take it up with the dictionary, Andrew. (Of course, since Sullivan also says how "liberating" AIDS is, I generally think he's lost his mind.) Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen adds "Their findings, though, have been accepted by most others in their field, and it would be wrong--both intellectually and politically--to suppress them."

On television, the pundits, predictably, assumed that The Bell Curve was well-researched. It is long. Ted Koppel even said "You've written a long book. I assume a great deal of work and research went into it. But the problem is your book has become a political football."

What was some of this grand research? Well, we can start with J. Phillippe Rushton, who developed a matrix of genital size, sexual behavior, and intelligence. Then we have Richard Lynn, who argued stuff around "brain size and intelligence", and delivers this gem: "Who can doubt that the Caucasoids and the Mongoloids are the only two races that have made any significant contributions to civilization?" Jon Entine, who argued that black men were better athletes, and...less intelligent.

Then something clearly drawing from all variety of racist myth becomes fact in the public mind.

 

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I don't think any further commentary is necessary for this. Just thought it was funny.

 

As Gawker's comment seems to be about the article, not about its removal, I find that ironic given that Gawker did the same sort of thing when Giffords was shot. They both presented something, and then acted as though there was no actual link. Maybe a slight benefit if my memory serves and the FoxNews thing put that note at the start of the article rather than at the end as Gawker did. But it's the same junk, and Gawker to complain one iota about it highlights them as a biased and hypocritical outlet.

Do abhor it when any outlet decides that a valid response to an article that gets criticism is "delete it and act like it didn't happen" as that is a thoroughly dishonest practice.

 

What in God's name are you on about?

 

You may want to read what you posted. Your post mentions Gawker as being one of the sites complaining about the FoxNews article. My point was that any criticism here from Gawker was blatantly hypocritical and biased, as they seem to have established that THEY have no problem with linking deaths and politics without any evidence other than vaguely circumstantial connections.

 

I get all that. Your example was vague, however, as if you assume us all to remember every article Gawker has ever posted. Since you insist on being so vague, I will guess from the mention of "Giffords" and your general predictability that Gawker may have speculated at some point after the Tucson assassination attempt that all the reference by the right wing of this country to liberals being traitors and the frequent implication that they should be shot led to someone going out and, ya know, shooting a liberal (again). You are comparing this to an attempt to imply that Obama's presence caused the suicide of a young man.

Further, you are comparing avowedly liberal media blog Gawker to a news outlet that bills itself as "Fair and Balanced". You then charge Gawker with being "biased", as if this were relevant to an avowedly liberal blog, making me question outright your competence in choosing media outlets. Just for a laugh, kindly name a couple news outlets you feel are "unbiased".

But before you do that, I would like you to find a mirror in your house. Stand in front of it and look yourself straight in the eye and say "I have made a reasonable comparison here today".

 

[image=http://i.imgur.com/YeGBU.jpg]

"Obama Bin Laden (D-Afghanistan)"

 

Fox redefining the bottom of the barrel every day.

I tell people not to judge others too harshly but with stuff like this it's hard not to dismiss anyone who believes in fox news as too dumb to be trusted with fundamental liberties. Want to sabotage America? Give fox news watchers the ability to vote.

 

Well, as a general rule, it's important for the media to, you know, tell the truth. Of course, we don't require that any more in our media. This is why we can have things like "This mountain of evidence says vaccines don't cause autism, but this doctor says otherwise."

 

That is a completely understandable error.

 

/cynicism

 

Not when it's part of a pattern.

 

Except it's a local Fox station, not Faux News proper.

 

You may have a point here. Still funny.

 

MSNBC briefly made the same mistake, which they corrected and chalked up as the ticker editor as being used to typing in "Obama," so it wasn't contained to a single news organization. What's kind of funny is a reply in the blog comments section:

"I can't believe anyone would accidentally confuse the two.

One of them believes America is Satan and needs to be punished for all it's past deeds, that Christians are a dangerous enemy and that the only way to atone is for us to bow to our betters in the Middle-East.

The other one is dead."

I'm quite sure whoever wrote that joke isn't a typical MSNBC viewer.

 

Watch those typos. They can cause you to value your 610,000-yen stock at one yen. Or send your probe to Venus...somewhere other than Venus. Or get you executed. Or...There's actually a copy of the Bible out there called the Wicked Bible. It's "wicked" because of one missing word. One word? That shouldn't be so bad. It's in Exodus 20:

12. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
13. Thou ?halt not kill.
14. Thou ?halt commit adultery.
15. Thou ?halt not ?teal.

Wait, wait, go back one.

 

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans


It's funny reading something like this and thinking back to watching it happen as it happened. After 9/11 Fox News was my channel. I watched it all the time. Then during the 2004 election run up they took a HUGE right turn.

 

"Brainwash" and "propaganda" are such loaded words.

A more accurate title would have been "14 ways Fox News uses to cater to segments of the population in order to make money".

 

But brainwash and propaganda are appropriate. They are directly impacting how their viewers think and perceive the world around them, as well as creating automatic thought processes and information filters. That's brainwashing.

And because they explicitly are selling an idea (covertly *and* overtly, as evidenced by Jon Stewart's interview), they are engaging in ideological broadcasting, which is propaganda.

 

You realize that TruthOut uses several of those same techniques in their own site, right?

Also, almost every single one of them is used by other news organizations (such as MSNBC).

If you are going to claim that Fox brainwashes people with propaganda, would you make the same claim about MSNBC? If not, and they tend to use most of the same techniques, aren't you merely putting out your own propaganda?

Kimball Kinnison

 

I definitely make the claim that MSNBC does this. In fact, I tell me students not to listen to the talking heads on either MSNBC or FoxNEWS for precisely these reasons.

 

It depends on the shows you watch on Fox some news anchors are right winged some are left winged, and some actually take the time to interview both sides. I've heard that Shepard Smith tends to be more left wing, Fox and Friends right wing, and Bill O'Reily kinda reports both sides. I actually love Fox especially the shows I just listed except Shepard Smith.