Mainstream media Bias

I do not call myself a libertarian, but I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. So if I was a voter in the US, I will be disappointed if the media was promoting one candidate over the other. Anyway, I look at the US media and I am sure the media is trying to convince me that between Clinton and Trump, one is better than the other. Although, the media may be bias in the candidate that I preferred, I still do see the bias which is uncomfortable. Sometimes I find it very difficult to distinguish the views of the news person from the views of political operatives sitting next to him or her. The mainstream news media in Canada has similar bias as in the USA.
To me an unbiased media should be like accounting, it should just report what is there and then let stakeholders make their own decisions. When accounting rules are promulgated with a bias it also ends up with serious consequences. So is the media, biases in the media is unhealthy for democracy.

 

Starting in the early 1980s, there was a shift in the mainstream media from reporting the news to creating the news (there is a difference). Today, major media outlets are unabashedly biased and openly opinionated. It is vastly different from what it used to be.

News communications continues to rapidly evolve because old traditional outlets are now competing with new non-traditional outlets e.g. internet websites (private, public and corporate), chat websites, Facebook, twitter, iPhone, etc. It will be interesting to see if traditional print media is capable of staying in business (as it is currently operated) in the next decade or two.

 

Long ago and far away...

It came to me that being socially liberal and fiscally conservative did not equal being libertarian. Why? Because, by and large, conservatives and liberals will use the power of the state to have their way. Libertarians will seek to omit the state.

Unbiased news media? Well, in grade school, in the 1950s, in a quite liberal (for that era) section of NYC, a teacher schooled us on that. Or me, anyway. She would tell us it was important to read newspapers to be informed of all the stuff you should be informed of. She was clearly liberal and much favored the New York Times. But she stressed that nothing written is truly objective because all that's written is written by people with personal bias. With or without bylines, all is written by someone.

 

That is why I do not pay attention to the mainstream media anymore! I hope my local bias newspaper dies!

 

"I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them... These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our funtionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief... This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit." --Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224

But that's just part of his opinion. He said just about all that can be said of the press, good and bad: Jefferson on Politics & Government: Freedom of the Press

BTW, I have no idea what that website is about.

 

Journalism is dead in this country. The MSM has devolved into little more than the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party.

 

The biggest problem seems to have been when news outlets shifted to a 24 hour format. Instead of writing enough news for one (or sometimes two) daily newspaper or a few brief spots in television the networks basically want all news all the time.

My father-in-law turns on CNN when he wakes up and let's it play throughout the day while he works around the house. Overall, they repeat the same things every few minutes. But miraculously they find a new bit of breaking news like clockwork just to keep you interested.

Even relatively mundane events cannot be reported without some sort of bias (liberal or conservative). If you're unsure of a paper's position a sure fire way to tell is look at how they report on violence in the Middle East. If there is a protest in Israel where two Israeli soldiers are wounded and five Palestinians are killed what you'll see is this...

Conservative outlets will report that two Israeli soldiers were injured in a protest (that also saw five Palestinians killed)

Liberal outlets will report that five Palestinians were killed and will only make casual reference, if any, to the Israeli soldiers.

I've found the most balanced reporting, believe it or not, to be Al Jazeera. I'm certain that their owner has an opinion on Israel but it doesn't seem to trickle down into the reporting of Al Jazeera English.

 

One of the things we see routinely in election years is newspapers endorsing specific candidates. This has been going on forever, literally. What is different is the television/cable news. It has more pervasive influence, more intrusive influence. In another thread I mentioned that I watch MSNBC. They are wildly liberal. Sometimes they even embarrass me, and I'm a very liberal person. I think the counterpoint is found more in the world of conservative talk radio. LOTS of people listen to this all day long and some of it pretty wild too. With the newspaper industry being in something of a coma, the thing I miss the most is the local investigative reporting. It just doesn't happen the way it used to because there's no money to support it.

 

That's an excellent observation. King Solomon said it best:

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, 'Look! This is something new?' It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)

 

And the MSM is?

 

In Bruce's example it's every other network besides Fox News. Which the scoffers on the left will tell you is biased towards the right.


ABC, CBS, NBC (MSNBC), CNN, NPR. Biased towards the left, along with HuffPo and others.
Fox, Breitbart, and whatever your most hated right wing blog is...are biased towards the right.


Best advice? Ignore them all.

 

I forgot to add Wikipedia to the biased list as well.


If you ever want to see what's in the mind of politically oriented people who are actually in control, read the edit conversations between the nerds who edit Wiki articles on anything controversial. It's a hoot.


They're furiously working over Machado's wiki as we speak. Comedy Gold.

 

When it comes to the old traditional newspapers and news magazines, readership is declining and so is advertising revenue along with it. They find that sending reporters and photographers around the world to discover what's actually happening at news events is far more expensive than hiring pundits to tell readers what it all supposedly means. So there's far more "analysis" these days than actual reporting.

The 24 hour cable news channels are having the same effect. Most of the time they aren't covering breaking news (even if they flash those 'Breaking News!' banners all the time to make channel-hopping people look at the screen). So the news channels have to fill most of their time with something, and that's opinion tailored to keep their audience watching.

Some of the print magazines have been very open about how as their readership shrinks and they have less money and fewer resources, they are aiming more explicitly at providing congenial opinion to what they believe (or their editors hope) is their core audience. That means that what news magazines turn into opinion magazines aimed at pleasing smaller and increasingly homogeneous sub-groups.

I think that a lot of it is cultural too. Here in the US, much of the mainstream media comes out of New York City and large urban centers like that. It's a fairly tight community, where everyone in town knows everyone else in the industry, they go to the same parties, eat at the same restaurants and drink at the same bars. So there's conventional opinion and they naturally tend to agree with each other much of the time. I'm sure that there's lots of social pressure. You would probably put your journalistic career in jeopardy at many of those media employers by coming-out as a Donald Trump supporter. People in the mainstream media seem to me to be writing for their peers as much as for the general public. It's all very self-reinforcing.

 

Well, Walter Duranty didn't work out so well. Thank goodness for this fellow: Gareth Jones: The Welsh Investigative Journalist (1905-35)

Jones had an interesting if tragically short career. He encountered some of the most prominent, if often terrible, people of his era.

 

Fox News is biased. MSNBC and other stations are biased. It is what it is. I mostly watch CNN because it's the most balanced of the three main cable news stations even with its slight liberal bent. However, I try to watch the other two for different viewpoints of a major news story. I believe most people just stick to one channel or website that doesn't challenge their ideological beliefs.

On the subject of newspaper endorsements, this has been going on for a very long time. Several conservative newspapers that haven't endorsed a Democrat in 70 to over a hundred years have endorsed Clinton. A few have endorsed a third party candidate for the first time.

 

Jesus Christ. CNN is "the most balanced"? Even with its "slight liberal bent"? Slight. It's a slight liberal bent. Slight.


You sound like my retired uncle who watches Fox news all day. Dopey. Except I'm sure you're much smarter and more critical than he is. If you resist the temptation to not forward stupid chain emails that confirm your already ridiculously held beliefs with multiple exclamation points and caps to everyone on your contact list, then you're 20 IQ points ahead of my uncle.


But goddamn...CNN.

 

Hopefully you will find what you're looking for -- and hopefully, it will not be an unpleasant surprise.

 

I know exactly what you mean. Which is to say that you hope what happens to me is, the exact opposite of what you've said here. Classy.


So, thanks...I guess. Love the condescending faux concern tone. Helps a lot.