Media Bias (and war reporting)...Fox News, the BBC, and more!

<< By the way, Bill O'Reilly is a registered Republican, there are public records to prove it. I know he is liberal on some things, but the facts are the facts. >>

I'm a Republican too. So what? What facts? What does it mean?

I'm Republican, that doesn't mean I'm loyal to who is in office or in any other position because they may be Republican.

It doesn't even mean I'm loyal to the party. We're all our own person.

 

Thanks for the kind words, DS1977 ...

I have found it is easier to be balanced and to have a better sense of perspective the further I am removed from being involved in the political process. (I am still a Republican (registered and RNC member), but I have been fairly disgusted by both parties at times the last ten years or so. I have done almost no volunteer work for campaigns since graduating from college and have tapered off my contributions to the party in the last year.)

Both Fox and CNN have agendas. Fox seems fairer to conservatives who hate what they perceive to be the liberal agenda and bias of CNN and the networks, while some liberals cringe at Fox and favor CNN or other news networks for the same but opposite reasons. In the grand scheme of things, no news reporting service is going to be completely objective or fair because of the inherent bias of the people involved. And no matter what, people will be unhappy with the news reporting. But people generally perceive someone who shares their beliefs as fair and balanced. I loved Chris Matthews during the Lewinsky mess, but found him less watchable later. Also, O'Reilly was at his best to me during the Florida recount, but I can only take so much of him now.

I don't know if it's fair or appropriate to analogize war and politics to sports, but the discussion here reminds me of what I do sometimes when my favorite teams (University of Texas) are being covered by the national media. The national reporters do a decent job, but because they don't cover Texas on a regular basis, they may not be as knowledgeable and might make comments that seem to favor the other side or downplay my team's strengths and traditions. In a close game, those comments are annoying make it seem like they are against us. So I turn down the TV sound and put on the UT network radio coverage, which naturally will favor my side and give the story from more of a burnt orange perspective. The national media outlets aren't necessarily biased with an agenda against Texas, but they aren't as comforting (and thus not as accurate, at least at the moment) to me as a source which is more familiar with my team and which I know wants my side to win.

I imagine that Fox will go after whichever Democrat is in the White House once W leaves, whether in 2005 or 2009 ... They did a nice job on Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal ...

 

son of the tear:
the reason i said that is b/c someone earlier had mentioend that O'Reilly is an independent. This is incorrect. I was correcting him.

And i never said that when Bush's cousiin called Florida for him that it changed votes. Read what i wrote. I said the perception was that Bush had won the election and if Gore fought the premature results, he was seen as a spoiler by the media and the public.

And some of you say you remember Florida being called for Gore first?Show me proof and i will believe you, but i have sources that show Bush was given Florida first.

 

"And some of you say you remember Florida being called for Gore first?Show me proof and i will believe you, but i have sources that show Bush was given Florida first."

Without wasting time to look it up, I can assure you that Florida was called for Gore sometime between 7 and 10 PM EST. I remember it being noteworthy, because the panhandle of Florida is in a different time zone, and their polls were still open when the networks called it.

Someone else got a link?

 

Here you go, Red

 

I stand corrected, thank you.

However...it does not change the fact that Fox wrongly called the election for Bush. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a non-partisan group by every standard, said: "That call-wrong, unnecessary, misguided, follish- has helped to create a sense taht this election went to Bush, was pulled back and he is waiting to be restored."

Here is a quote from John Ellis, Bush's cousin that should scare the hell out of you: "I am loyal to my cousin and I put that loyalty ahead of my loyalty to anyone else".

Fair and Balanced?

 

Good post Sellars.

What I want to address fits better in the 'Elections' thread, so please go there for my comments.

 

CNN says it went 'too far' in framing student's question

The story is from CNN, so their use of 3rd person is a bit bizarre...still, good to see them acknowledge the issue, though shirking it off on a single person (and claiming that was the only question 'planted' certainly do not seem credible).

...CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said the cable network regrets the producer's actions. She would not identify the employee.

"In an attempt to encourage a lighthearted moment in this debate, a CNN producer working with Ms. Trustman clearly went too far," she said. All of the other questions from the audience originated from the person asking them, she said.

 

I live in Britain

A week ago my wife and myself got Satellite TV installed and so for the first time I'm able to judge the American news networks to see what they have to offer. CNN and CBS are pretty good from what I can see so far. They are anchored by well-spoken, intelligent-sounding people.

Then we watched Fox News

and we couldn't stop. At first we thought this channel was a comedy programme. But it wasn't. It was unfortunately the bitter truth. Never in my 24 years as an academic did I think it would be possible for such rubbish to gain such a elevated status. A bunch of uneducated, shrill idiots host the most right-wing rubbish ever to be released onto a mass audience. To listen to Bill O'Reilly is like listening to Goebbels. This man calls himself a journalist? In Europe he'd be laughed out of the house. Why is everybody shouting at each other on that channel? How come these anchormen don't actually report news but only their own personal agenda? How come they'r allowed to report about subject matters they know NOTHING WHATSOEVER about (O'Reilly informed us for example that "every man in France must have a mistress or society looks down on him" or that "Europeans want to see every American soldier killed, that's what they take pleasure in"). I really have a hard time understanding how anybody with more than two braincells can possibly find this channel informative or intelligent. Maybe I'm missing something here and maybe some of the FoxNews disciples here can explain this. In the meantime I will continue to enjoy the channel for a good laugh.

 

Bill O'Reilly is to cable news as the editorial page is to the front page of a newspaper.

He does not consider himself a journalist.

 

Formerly's opinion is full of personal attacks and other juvenile tactics. Mere pettiness, therefore the opinion can be safely dismissed.

 

I love Fox News and Msnbc. CNN is okey,but NPR,and the BBC sucks, because they are Anti-Israel. The BBC is is even worst, its Anti-Semtic. It made shows calling it the Kosher concpricy,Israelis and Jews as the New Nazis of the twenty-first centery,Israel is using a dirty bomb on Palestinian people,Israel is going to kill Crist again, and Israel is an Anti-Semtic state. The BBC just sucks.

 

Insightful. What sucks now?

 

kind of ironic, eh fID...

 

Of course. The media is bias in their own ways, some may not be overtly bias, some are. And what's with crying anti-semite whenever someone disagrees? You are aware that the BBC is as much a tv channel as it is a news station, right? I believe that's how it is.

 

i don't thin b_s crying anti-semitism is indicative of anything, except that it indicates that he made a post.

 

Ouch.


Okay, to contribute, let me just say that one reason why I think Foxnews is not fair and balanced has to do with their reporting. Not only do they report the news, they report how other media outlets report the news, most of the time ridiculing them.

 

150,000 people (including me) will be storming our nation's capital tommorrow to demand an end to abortion in our country. Millions will join us in marches and prayer vigils in cities across the globe. This has happened since 1974.

The media (except C-SPAN and EWTN) rarely if ever covers this event from our perspective. If two people out of 150,000 run across a barricade the BOOM we're a bunch of radical idiots violently protesting for no reason.

But if NARAL or NOW has a candlelight vigil with 50 people outside the Supreme Court building the very same day, then the media brings all their cameras to them, interviews them, and talks about how courageous they are. These are the same people who spit at us, threw bottles at us, and scremed in our faces, just a few hours before.

The media is biased towards the pro-"choice" or liberal side in every way it can be. I say let the news be proportional. 150,000 storm Washington-near the front of the paper/headlines. 50 light candles-middle of the paper/headlines if in it at all.

Why did the anti-war protestors get so much more coverage than we do? They protest for three months total, we march for 30 years continually. It just doesn't add up. What makes their cause better than ours? And since when is it the media's job to decide which cause is more "important" to America. The media should report the news proportionally or not report it at all. Save opinions for the op-ed section.

 

The media is biased towards the pro-"choice" or liberal side in every way it can be.

Try again. The [news]media is biased toward the almighty dollar (profit).

For some reason, more people are interested in Pro-choice rallies than anti-abortion rallies... unless of course an anti-abortionist kills a doctor.

 

Why did the anti-war protestors get so much more coverage than we do? They protest for three months total, we march for 30 years continually. It just doesn't add up. What makes their cause better than ours?

People, not cells, have a greater chance of dying in a war than in an abortion. Yeah, that may have something to do with it.

 

For truth in journalism
Pat Buchanan
January 21, 2004

In 2002, Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto, the managing editor for business at the network, contributed $1,000 to a fund-raising dinner for President Bush.

So reveals Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post.

Informed of Cavuto's contribution, John Moody, Fox News vice president, lamented, "I wish he hadn't." Moody has circulated a new network policy discouraging political contributions. "I hope our people will follow the advice I've given to them voluntarily. The potential perception is that they favor one candidate over another."

Kurtz lists dozens of contributions from media heavyweights to candidates, with most of the money going to Democrats or to the 2000 campaign of John McCain. Surprise, surprise.

But what is wrong with Neal Cavuto contributing $1,000 of his own money to re-elect a president he believes has been good for his country? By putting his political convictions out in the open for all to see, Cavuto's contribution seems to me open and honest. Anyone who has watched the Cavuto show on Fox is not going to be shocked that George W. Bush is his man.

What of Moody's fear, "The potential perception is that they favor one candidate over another"? But in Cavuto's case, and the other cases cited by Kurtz, the perception is reality. The media folks who made those contributions wanted those candidates to win. And if the perception is reality, why should not people know the truth about the leanings, loyalties and allegiances of the men and women who cover and comment on politics?

Moody seems to prefer the viewers of Fox News to remain in the dark about where Fox's anchors, reporters and commentators stand. But why? Well, he understandably fears that, otherwise, viewers may suspect that Fox's journalists are slanting the news or tilting the commentary. But cannot the people, informed where a journalist stands, make that judgment for themselves?

The truth is that journalists, who are among the best informed and most ideologically committed of Americans, do favor and disfavor causes and candidates. Why should the public not know of these preferences, prejudices and allegiances? Is public ignorance better than public knowledge?

For generations, our media elite has fed the people the party line that journalists are objective and neutral observers who call it as they see it, concerned only with fairness, truth and accuracy, and who are ever on guard to keep their opinions our of their copy. The media have a vested interest in perpetuating this myth.

But it is not the truth. In many cases, it is wholesale consumer fraud. Almost everyone in journalism, and much of the public, knows it.

When this writer served in the Reagan White House, the big battle was over aid to the Contras, the Nicaraguan guerrillas who were seeking to oust the Sandinista regime aligned with Moscow.

When a close vote in the House went against us, and our aid package went down, the White House press corps erupted in hoots and cheers. Did the American people not have a right to know the anti-Contra bias of the White House press corps? Would it not have been better for democracy if people knew the truth about the beliefs of the men and women covering a president who believed in the Contra cause?

In 2000, there were reports that CNN executives on election night had to tell CNN staffers in the newsroom to stop cheering when the network awarded another state to Al Gore, because the cheering was going out over the air. Folks might get the mistaken impression that CNN was in the Clinton-Gore camp.

Years back, a survey was taken among the Washington press corps, asking them to name the candidate they had voted for. The returns that came back were astonishing. McGovern and Mondale, both of whom lost 49 states, had crushed Nixon and Reagan among the media elite by four- and five-to-one. Only African-Americans had voted as solidly liberal and Democratic.

This shredded any pretense that the Washington media elite wa

 

It can trace its roots back to the dynasty of Walter Cronkite.

I barely remember Cronkite on the air as an anchorman, in the early 80's, when he was older.

But he defined what it was to be an objective newscaster.

If Cronkite reported it, the public knew it was true, because "media spin" was not accepted as standard procedure.

In fact, at the height of his popularity, Cronkite probably influenced the country more than any politican ever could.

To this day, the phrase, "the war isn't over until Cronkite says it is.." is still a relatively common expression. (refering to his coverage of the Tet Offensive in 1968.)

Because he realized one thing...

That the free flow of information was vital to support a healthy democracy, and unbiased reporting was the key to this flow.

He was simply the messenger, and it wasn't his place to decide either way for the audience.

Now, news is linked with entertainment, and for the most part, people look to the outlets to tell them how to think, rather than finding out for themselves.

So I guess, I think yes, newscasters should keep their personal bias out of news reporting.

 

BTW, O'Reilly is an independent folks, in case you didn't know that.

So he said, be he was registered Republican until that was made public. Only then did he officially change. But his on-air attitudes are as right-wing as you can get.

We Distort. You Comply.

 

I'm sorry, did I just see a quoted report on truth in journalism by Pat Buchanan???

 

Where both the TV media and Newspapers are failing is through the utter lack of seperation between news and opinion. On TV too many journalists and reporters now believe they are there to give their opinions ahead of the facts and newspapers are equally guilty of mixing news and opinion. A good example of how Newspapers should behave is the British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph. It's leader article and opinion columns remain totally seperated from it's news stories, which are mostly devoid of opinions. You would never be able to tell that it was a conservative paper from reading it's news section alone. Perhaps partly because of this it's news reporting remains amongst the most accurate in the business. It's an example which should be followed but sadly I doubt that it will be.