RE: Media Bias

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 10:15:01 MST

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    Brendan writes

    > I find it hard to believe that the liberal media myth hasn't been
    > thoroughly deposed in a forum like the extropians list. It's certainly
    > true that most _employees_ of the media are liberal-leaning, but the
    > corporations are owned, and the editorial decisions overseen and enforced,
    > by conservative media conglomerates. ABC: Disney. CNN: AOL/Time Warner.
    > FOX: News Corp. CBS: Viacom. Liberally-biased? Come on, now.

    Well, yes, it would be logical for the media to be biased
    in whatever direction that their ownership is.

    Unless the ownership is enlightened enough to allow the
    reporters a free hand. The ownership is *primarily*
    interested in making money, not in "educating" people,
    a point that must be kept in mind.

    > The editorial agenda of all these media outlets is set by senior
    > editorial and executive staff who report to Murdoch, Turner, and the other
    > aggressively conservative individuals in control of the media apparati.
    > The editorial staff themselves are, themselves, heavily conservatively
    > biased.

    Have you really read the editorials of the major newspapers
    in the U.S.? (You may be right about the lesser newspapers.)
    But that's not what we are talking about. I thought we were
    talking about the slant of the *news* articles, not the editorial
    pages.

    > I can't believe the liberal media fallacy stands up to the brains
    > around here.

    I think that the most important thing that we've learned here
    in the past year (I hope) is that it's definitely not a question
    of brains. Ideological differences run much deeper than that,
    and it appalls me that people keep crying or thinking "stupid!"
    when they read partisan opinions that differ from their own
    partisan opinions. :-) Why can't you see that we ALL have
    ideological blinders?

    > The ones who make up the famed "liberal media," the working
    > stiffs in the trenches, covering the current stories, do exactly what
    > every other working stiff in the world does--make their bosses happy.

    Yes, and as I said, they make their bosses happy by doing their
    jobs in an effective way, which means looking good on television,
    or hiring competent employees to run their paper---and in the
    case of liberal papers, to get higher status from other journalists.
    See Ron H's remarks about the liberal ideologues that run the
    journalism schools.

    But what you and I are debating, given our separate ideological
    blinders, is who happens to be more blind in this case. If it's
    not you, and you say that the newspapers are conservatively
    biased, then since I admit that the radio media are conservatively
    biases, then you must not find much difference between them. This
    is surely easily seen by all to be contrary to fact.

    Lee



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