I fail to see the relevance of the above quotation.

I'm not disputing the accuracy of the quotation, but since you didn't provide a link or page numbers to the 1980s Ladies Home Journal article, I would guess you got it from this or some similar source.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/journalists/dan-rather/

I think I'd tempted not to provide a source under those circumstances myself.

I daresay I could if I cared to, but I decline on the grounds that it isn't important enough to my thesis, which is that although some big media companies are liberal and some conservative, there is no media as a whole anymore to characterize one way or the other. If you understood me to be arguing that the media is more liberal than not, you missed my point. Exactly which such companies are liberal and which conservative changes nothing in regard to what I was actually saying, and my examples were certainly not meant to be a comprehensive list but only a few examples of each side, which I chose because I thought they were ones we could all agree on. Plug in different ones if you like, makes no difference to me.

I'll ready concede that Reader's Digest is on the conservative side, as is WSJ's editorial page. I don't see any conservative bias in the WSJ news pages however. USA Today is one I don't read and I'm not familiar enough with it to be able to make an informed comment on it.

I wasn't going to respond in this thread anymore, but it's a slow day at work, and many of the outright falsehoods have been bothering me.
You cite another great example to prove conservative media bias, yet reference a site that couldn't possibly be any more partisan than it already is. I guess the bar is lowered now, and I can start quoting from Free Republic. Your memory of bias in the Clinton v. Bush military service story is night and day compared to mine, but that's not really the point.
So, the media ran 10's of thousands of stories on Gore? 10's of thousands? Lets look at that number again......10's of thousands. Care to verify that by way of an objective source? The source that you reference is quite obviously confused when they say that there were only 49 stories about Bush. There are 63 on their own front page alone.



Your point is not only not affirmed, but you're working against you're own case. YOU don't include local newscasts as MSM:

If you are going to disallow local newscasts for fellow posters, you can't use them yourself and retain any credibility. Our good friend Nemov was also on his honeymoon, and more than likely wasn't watching much news anyway. You didn't mention my post in that thread (#124) where I mentioned that she was interviewed on Hardball the previous night by Chris Matthews.......

You tried to use the great Sheehan crusade as some sort of proof of media bias. You emphatically stated:

Yet when presented with transcripts of primetime interviews on MSNBC, they are seemingly casually disregarded. Oh, that's right, you claimed:

Quite possibly, you may be the only person in the western world to hold this view, but you're entitled to it.
However Sheehan herself blows your theory when she stated on the 15th:

Link

WaPo

E&P

Now the icing on the cake is this reply to Izdaari:

You can make this statement in light of the obvious factually impaired assertions previously noted, AND when nearly every post (if not every) is liberally sprinkled with the term 'rightys'? AND use awolbush.com as a reference source.

I am not claiming in this thread that the MSM is overtly liberal, you are claiming that it is overtly conservative. Therefore the burden of proof is on you.
You made what I thought were some good points and observations on media ownership, but I think that just confirmed in most people's minds what we already knew or believed. The MSM is corporate through and through. I don't think you will find anyone on AD that will disagree that the MSM is not serving the best interests of the American people. Where I think that agreement diverges, is most of us here (in my estimation) attribute this to the bottom line, ie. the almighty dollar. The dollar isn't liberal or conservative, more dollars begets the want of more dollars, and so on.
Puff pieces, sensationalism and celebrity gossip are now the hallmarks of the MSM. There's been no real disagreement on that fact. But to actually prove that there is a nefarious conservative slant to news reporting or story selection, is going to take much more than you have brought to the table.

Instead of cherry picking items, that any of us could do likewise, or simply labeling something, like USA Today as partisan, why don't you try to prove that fact? Corporate ownership isn't going to prove a news bias, only the news that is reported and story selection may begin to prove that.

A little objectivity can go a long way.........

Is the media biased?

If so, is it liberal or conservative?

If yes, prove it.

I am just gonna take these all at once.

One thing I have noticed is that many feel there is a pro-corporation media bias out there. Though I tend to agree that media is much less likely to run a negative story about a corporation then they once were, I feel this is more likely because of the network legal departments trying in insulate them from legal action as well as the network marking departments seeking to protect their potential advertising revenue sources. As a result, where networks once ran with the anti-corporation stories and asked questions later, they now seem to insist on having their ducks in a row before they report any negative stories about companies in America.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. Most networks have consumer reporters who's job it is to setup stings, and do ambush interviews on owners of companies who have been caught doing bad business. However, they tend to limit these investigations to small business operations.

The handling of corporations in the media is quite different then the handling of politics. A network that is seen by most to be liberally biased is as likely to squash a story about a multi-national company as a network seem as biased to the right. It is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of liability and revenue.

When these networks do get their ducks in a row in regard to corporate misdeeds, they are quick to run with them. This is also because of a corporate bias, their own. They know that average Americans love these stories, which means these stories will lead to higher ratings, which means higher revenues. With evidence to back up the story the legal liability is almost nil. Though the company they are reporting about might choose to never advertise with them again, the resulting higher ratings means higher revenues from all advertisers, which will usually make up the difference and then some.

A corporate bias in the news does not really mean that station is biased to the right politically IMHO.

For example, I grew up in the New York viewing area. Local news coverage of ABC, CBS, and NBC was blatantly biased to the left in the 70s and 80s. Also, this was a time when running anti-corporate stories without backing them up (or worse, making them up as was the case with the side-impact "demonstration" - explosion of a GM truck), was the norm. As the climate changed, making it less and less likely that the media would run an anti-corporate story without fully backing it up, the left lean in political coverage on these local broadcasts never changed.

Now, another point to consider is whether this bias, be it to the right or left in media political coverage is intentional. I don't think it is. I read the book Bias. In it the author blamed the problem at CBS not on some vast left-wing conspiracy, but on the fact that most in the newsroom personally leaned to the left personally. As a result, their view point and how they looked at events was subject to their personal views. The bias was not intentional, it was human nature.

These days bias in coverage has become irrelevant. With so many different sources of news out there, we can choose to learn about stories for outlets that lean both ways. For example, if you want to learn about a story regarding possible corporate wrong doing, you could read both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal coverage of these stories. What is the same in both stories is the truth, it is up to you to determine which side of the rest of the story makes better sense to you. You can do the same by watching coverage of an event on CNN and then Fox news.

When I was a kid, the bias was a real issue because those out there on the right, simply did not have an outlet for their views (until right-wing talk radio was born). Now, in the new millennium, the only people that don't have an outlet for their views are those that make no attempt to find one.

In the end, the one true bias (if you can call it that) in almost all new media is caution to avoid lawsuits, and possible profit losses when reporting on the activities of corporate America. When it comes to political bias, there are so many different voices, angles, and media outlets out there that the all encompassing term "Media", in regards to "the media is __________" (fill in the blank) no longer applies IMHO.

since I see moderators are fine with you going off in a tangent like this, I will still only respond completely if you start a new thread. Please PM me of the thread so we can debate.

You will hear me with theories like ( by the way it is my theory, never heard it before, and you will say it is wrong; and since it isn’t out there it can not be right; well, all the forgery theories supposedly came from blogs in the first place) the person who provided the document may have scanned them and taken them home that way because removing an original document may carry a penalty.

Did you know I can scan a page with off the shelf software and preserve non text (signatures) and with OCR it would do exactly what you are talking about. Then copy it and fax it and you have a document like that one. I will concede I may be a little more computer savvy than the average after all I have invented many computer products and been involved in computer and electronic products for 20 years as an engineer. Yes I have designed products to do pattern recognition, not for scanners.

And as you know or should know another paper I think USA today said they had received the same documents, actually more pages from a completely different source. Also are you aware it appears FOX had those exact same documents many months before.

So post what you know since you seem to want to go into that subject, I also enjoy a challenge. I have never debated anyone on this subject in detail so I look forward to it.

Dontreadonme. My source is fine, it was backing up what I heard many years ago. What you miss is time frame relevance. When Bush ran against gore that is how many times that was sourced. So now you want to use a search engine today or look at his web page today not 5 years ago, after what just went on the Kerry election. I explained it once and it is obvious to me, maybe someone else can explain it to you.

He didn’t hear about it at all which was my point when I posted the first week. Again I did a web search and so did all of you and the best anyone could find is 2-3 listings of it in the MSM, and even on small affiliates only a hand ful at that time. Because of the new liberal media AAR who made this issue an issue and made it national after a week we now have an issue. If AAR had not been out there it would have died the way the righty owned and controlled media tried. Now it is on not only local all over the place but all the right wing owned MSM. Again time has chaned from 10 days ago when I posted it.

And what channel do I get MSNBC and what is their market share. And did they do a fair interview with her like Fox does? (that is satire fox stating they are fair and balanced is an out right lie that the rightys for some reason believe, just like the rightys believe the media is liberal) That is why I did not even comment on it... Or were they there as a right wing owned media to attack her. Let see MSN-NBC what does that stand for., liberal ownership. (satire again) Not… NBC is GE a defense contractor/medical/chemical/financial company(all of the mentioned really hate liberals)

And again when I posted it over a week ago it wasn’t a big thing… , it wasn’t when I posted it wasn’t…. do you understand the time did change. Just like time changed from the time she met with Bush the first time and now, she has found out and publicly stated the president has lied, that the downing street memos have not been debunked and we found no WMD and the evidence now public shows he knew that. Just like the gore vs. bush 10,000 to 40 right now the search you will not be able to reproduce that data, time has changed. Something you seem to either not be able to understand or are intellectually dodging. Missing the same principle, three in one post is truly amazing.

I use the devil itself I use Fox for a source sometimes also. What is the point.

Also, I clearly list I am very liberal, no grey area, I am not hiding anything, read it....

I parody what the rightys have been doing for 20 years, liberuuls. Feminazi and so on. But to tell you the truth it is so much easy to type that than the long word republican and more accurate not all people to the right of the left are republicans.

You pick on my source which to date I have never heard Bush say he was not AWOL or a deserter. Not once.

You just don’t like hearing outspoken liberals is the issue, the only place you would hear them is AAR, or Carville Begalla. These same points are now being aired... I know you hate that these oppinions are being made now on AAR by your statement "I wasn't going to respond in this thread anymore, but it's a slow day at work, and many of the outright falsehoods have been bothering me." Your bold statement was not backed up, showed me not one demonstration of proving your bold statement. If you noticed the link for the specific statement went to the UAW.org website. How do you feel about the UAW.

Yes, the media is liberal. What scares me is that for a media outlet to be conservative is a mark of Cain in the public eye, but to be liberal is perfectly okay. As for proof, have you read the Boston Globe recently, specifically, any story about Mitt Romney? "Adviser [sic] Says Romney Lied About Abortion." If you were to read the article, yes, he did say that, as an accusation Romney's opponents held against him. "Congress Backs Stem-Cell Research Over Romney's Veto." The bill was over whether research involving cloning new embryos should be given government funding - after a bill to fund research involving discarded embryos was passed with Romney's blessing. And pick up an issue of the Cape Cod Times. I will almost guarantee you that the front page story is about Provincetown, undebatedly the most liberal town on the Cape. The media is liberal; I don't know why, but it is.

I'm actually not totally sure about that second headline, but it was something to that effect. I'm pretty sure the first one is verbatim.

No........when you make a claim of 10's of thousands of news stories about Gore claiming to invent the internet, all of us here at AD expect you to be able to back it up with at least an iota of proof. You have called for people to back up claims, do you expect us to simply take your word?


Well, now I'm thoroughly confused. You are saying that the media is conservative because they didn't all jump on the Sheehan story from day one in the manner that AAR did. Saying that the story would have died without AAR is speculative and bears no relevance here. So now that the country is worn out on Sheehan coverage from the MSM, how can you still claim that they are conservative? I've never seen a debate with so many moving goal posts before.


Here may be the problem on your end of the debate. You wish to claim absolutes using only a cherry picked set of data. You can't make rational generalizations about the bias of the MSM if you only watch FOX and listen to AAR. To make broad assertions, you at least must be familiar with the subject at large. You can speak ad naseum about MSNBC's corporate ownership, but if you don't consider them to be MSM in one post and then imply that you don't watch MSNBC, even after moving the goal posts, how can you be qualified to comment on their bias???



So again we are to take your word for this? Do you see how outlandish a gore vs. bush 10,000 to 40 claim might seem to someone who is not even trying to claim such a bias exists, as you are? Your principle doesn't carry any weight outside of your own mind, if it can't be proven to others. Basic science.


It's bad manners to tell somebody what they like or don't like. If I didn't like hearing liberal opinions, I wouldn't be here at AD. It may surprise you that many of my opinions are considered liberal. And you may have noticed, that I'm not trying to prove that the media is overtly liberal. So your entire statement isn't relevant to the debate, nor is UAW.
If you want to prove that the MSM is conservative, then prove it. Don't give us your opinion as fact or try and change the rules mid game.

See to me there are some things that are obvious and do not need foundation, I just do not know where you are in your knowledge. Pardon me for assuming you on the AD are more informed than the average Joe. If I have to explain the world is not flat and prove it on every point it is just not very productive. As you have seen I have backed up what I say, when you ask. So since you are now considering this point to be important and not common knowledge I will back it up. For me to debate you here which part are you questioning, that gore never said “invent” or the it has been repeated over 10,000 times by the right? for reference on a google search of the terms “gore invent internet” we get 73,400 times, the reason I only said 10,000 is because that was the number I remember being mentioned a year or so ago. Also my belief is some of them are now showing Gore did not say that. Then if I search trying to eliminate “filter” the ones where he never said that "invent internet gore "never claimed " " trying to remove many of the ones to his side to come out with 8,000 of that nature. With a net gain of 60,000 plus.
I guess I scored then, because you added no facts/evidence to my specific points. I guess you are missing not understanding the points, there is one outlet now that are keeping things and hammering the right now. The point was the Bush v gore one where Clinton record was attacked over 13,000 times for his military service when he ran against Bush 1, yet in the gore v Bush 2 it was roughly 50 or so they brought up the issue at all. If AAR or just one liberal media would have been out there back then they would have hammered the Bush AWOL/desertion issue. 50 times in the media is not hammering it. But that right wing owned and controlled media even with the 50 that came up would not pick it up. Yet now we can see how major of an issue it is after this last election, because of the only real liberal voice AAR. Right now Bush AWOL comes up with 653,000. Just like the Sheehan one the as I stated initially the right wing major media was not picking up on her, though AAR forced it, I also show that the right wing media did not take Bush to talk during the Gore election cycle. It would have been big then also. But we did not have AAR to push it. Similar to Bushs lack of interest/performance in his education, these also were not brought up by the major media. I certainly did not know a professor of his had mentioned Bush was bottom 10%. And that Bush bragged about using his family (daddy) to his professor to get out or into special circumstances. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503181
Tsurumi—now a professor of international business at Baruch College in the City University of New York—said he remembers the future president as scoring in the bottom 10 percent of students in the class.
Thirty years after teaching the class, Tsurumi said the twenty-something Bush’s statements and behavior—“always very shallow”—still stand out in his mind.
“Whenever [Bush] just bumped into me, he had some flippant statement to make,” said Tsurumi when reached at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. “The comments he made were revealing of his prejudice.”
….
Tsurumi said that the younger Bush boasted that his father’s political string-pulling had gotten him to the top of the waiting list for the Texas National Guard instead of serving in Vietnam. When other students were frantically scrambling for summer jobs, Tsurumi said, Bush explained that he was planning instead for a visit to his father in Beijing, where the senior Bush was serving at the time as the special U.S. envoy to China.

If the media was so liberal it would have brought comments like this to the public front and center. Believe me if I owned the media this would have been headlines for many issues.… I don’t know how many of you had seen his statements about Bush.

Boy this one must have gone without a connection to you, MSNBC is owned by GE who also owns NBC. NBC is mainstream media without question? That is the connection. But also relate to the concern by the Armed Forces School paper I posted and no one has questioned. As I have posted before as an Engineer I tend not to connect the dots just give the data, as we engineers work with data and are have to connect the dots without explanation, but it seems our two styles are opposite. Doesn’t mean any are better just different, this allows me to make a living in my area and you in your area. Inventing also uses my same technique.

Can you qualify your statement of “basic science”. What is your qualification and expertise. People have paid me some serious money to use my “basic science” abilities, so I would consider myself a bit more qualified than the average joe. And again it was my word that I heard it before plus a link (that you did not like the source, yet they linked it to another page to the UAW). What is interesting I really do not have a heard time with liberals understanding my statements I have found on debate boards it seems to be people from the far right that seem to not like what I have to say and have a very difficult time of understanding it. Hmm is it co-incidence or not?

My comment was directed in reference at your statement "I wasn't going to respond in this thread anymore, but it's a slow day at work, and many of the outright falsehoods have been bothering me." Now is that bad manners? I think it is just aggressive posting of stating what you do not like. After all you also said “it is bothering you”. You showed no conclusive evidence to prove outright falsehoods or me wrong. If anything there seemed to me to be a mis-understanding of you understanding what the data was at a certain point in time and what it means. That we can not go back in time and do a google search 5 years ago that would give us the same results.

I am waiting for some facts, examples where there are outright falsehoods, that you stated definitively, that I am wrong looking at it from the timeframe context that I think I have explained to you. When someone makes such loud statements accusations of “falsehoods” it shows there are some strong opinions on your part and that they do not come close to agreement and stating what they do not like. I think I heard you very clearly. Somehow here you are also saying you are also liberal in some of your views? Not here, or I missed it.

UAW, is certainly relevant, they were the link from the AWOLbush website to the fact that at one point in time there were 13,000 articles about Clinton service record in the public domain vs. the 50 of Bush during his first election cycle. You attacked the source for being biased so I looked and they linked that statement to where it came from, which was the UAW website. So since you were blowing off their site as not credible I was asking you is UAW is credible enough for your standards.

And to quote you,




objectivity in the media could also go a long way, some people confuse an objective reporter as a liberal. And that is what I think is the essence of the confusion some people also have with the media bias, This also would be a good thread.

Evidently you may not be conceptually familiar with the fact that what you believe to be true isn't either true at all, or true for everybody in the manner that the sky is blue. Trying to prove conservative bias by saying there were 10's of thousands of stories of Gore, and not proving it again....and again, but repeating your assertion that you proved it is circular. Everybody has there biases, and different opinions on media bias, but you have to understand that everybody doesn't automatically agree with you, simply because you say so. And if you are going to rely on Google hits as reference, your argument continues to fall flat.

So how does this explain why you stated that MSNBC was not MSM? Again, in order to prove something to be fact, you must use sources (a source for that matter) that is universally viewed as non-partisan and objective. If you constantly rely on partisan or subjective references, the data will be skewed in your favor, but proves nothing. I could, if I were contending that the media was liberal, come up with reams of evidence proving that to be fact, in the eyes of conservatives. But what does that prove?

Your point is what exactly? When you preach to the choir, they sing alongside you. Do you not think that many conservatives here at AD and other boards have a difficult time debating with liberals?

You may consider my posts to be aggressive, I do not. I am simply asking you to prove your assertion, which you continue to fail to do, yet continue to say that you are. You state that there are some things that are obvious and do not need foundation, but that is only true for you. In a debate you have to accept that everyone doesn't agree with you, that is why we ask for proof, evidence or references.


I and others given you facts and transcripts, you have simply disregarded them. Not rebutted as is normal in a debate, but ignored them, or tried to change the premise of the issue.
As for issues I may be considered liberal on, by all means don't just take my word for it, all member posts are searchable from the date we joined AD. Remember, I am not making 'loud' statements that the media is liberal, I am making loud statements that you have not proven the media to be conservative.
You believe the MSM to be conservative, and I can respect your opinion. Just please remember that what you believe is not a universal truism, just as what I believe is not. I believe the MSM to be driven not by political idealogy, but by profit alone, and as evidenced by the poll at the top, most AD'er's agree with me.