From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 16:59:26 MDT
gts writes
> Personally I agree with those who think CNN is biased to the left,
not to mention ABC, CBS, and several others
> but I think it is not nearly as biased as FOX is biased to the right. In my
> opinion FOX has been accused rightly of becoming the unofficial "Mouthpiece
> for the White House."
Yes, that's right.
> I note also from the long discussion we had here about six or eight weeks
> ago that bias in the news media is very much in the eye of the beholder.
> People tend not to notice bias in the news when the bias agrees with their
> political world-view.
I'm unsure what proportion of people on this list suffer that affliction.
That it is widespread, there can be no doubt, and this really baffles me.
When I was twelve, my little liberal friend and I had absolutely no
difficulty identifying which of our (American) teachers were left, and
which were right. Except one. We waited until the last day of 9th
grade, just before leaving that junior high school forever, to ask
Mr. Price if he was liberal or conservative. Even though there were
a few telling phrases, we had never been able to pin it down.
"I am a liberal Republican," he said with a big grin. He could probably
see how amused we were by that response.
Look, the question is very simple. Anyone who has the slightest interest
in politics can tell before too many sentences are spoken just what the
political leanings of the speaker are. Therefore, for thirty years or
more, what caused American media (both print and television) to so manifestly
lean leftward?
You see, speaking in an unbiased manner isn't hard at all. I'm even
better at it than Mr. Price when I'm lecturing to children, and there
is just no way they can determine my politics. But that's because I'm
not on a MISSION like some people. The acid test is simple: after
listening to Peter Jennings or Dan Rather for a few weeks, can you or
can you not tell how they'd vote? (Hint: google for "Dan Rather necklaced".)
Two things are refreshing about Fox News (and at least one or two
newscasters on MSNBC): they're not only providing balance to ABC,
CBS, NBC, and CNN, but they're quite open about it. What I hate is
people pretending they're objective, when they're not.
> Cable news networks are not obliged by law to serve the public interest,
> which is one reason we see extreme advocacy journalism on cable like that
> which comes from FOX.
Well, we know how to fix that, don't we? How about a "Fairness
Doctrine" which would require stations to carry as much left-biased
reporting as right-biased (but, of course, not necessarily the
converse).
> I have a theory about why the non-cable news media tends to be biased to the
> left: the majority of American news consumers are biased to the left...
No, there are two basic factors: (1) journalism schools indoctrinate
their students like nobody's business---conservative students are made
to feel quite out of it and uncomfortable, and perhaps don't even make
it through unless they're careful (2) the kind of people who go into
journalism often do so to "change the world" with the kind of typical
idealism so manifest among the young. Conservatives tend to follow
other paths.
Lee
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