From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 20:33:17 MDT
gts writes
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> We disagree here (I think we covered this once before). Yes FOX is
> blatantly right-wing, but it advertises itself as unbiased.
I wonder how they would respond; perhaps by saying that Hannity
is balanced by Colmes. But if so, who balances O'Reilly? Unless
someone can name another show on Fox hosted by someone as left-
leaning as O'Reilly is right, then I must agree with you.
> The FOX slogan, repeated many times each day, is something like
> "News Without the Spin," but in fact they offer more spin than
> any network I've ever seen in all my life.
I don't really know what they mean by "News without the Spin".
A spinster is someone who interprets the news in a particular
direction, adding "spin". So if they mean that they don't have
an excess of conservatives interpreting the news and adding a
rightward spin, then they're not telling the truth. But if
they mean merely that while reporting the news itself, it comes
without any inherent bias (that is, listening one cannot tell if
it's coming from a conservative or (American) liberal), then that's
a separate claim. I couldn't swear that the *news* portion is
unbiased; it probably is biased.
> Cavuto and Hannity are like rabid junior Newt Gingrichs.
Why are you descending to that in this particular conversation?
> The entire network is a joke,
Why---some impulse that you cannot control? Have you seen me
in this discussion, or do you expect to see me in this discussion,
take pot shots at the left?
> unless one goes in with one's eyes wide open and with full
> knowledge that one is about to get a thorough soaking in GOP politics.
>
> There is nothing wrong with advocacy journalism but FOX should be honest
> about it. In fact if I were a senior executive at FOX, I would give serious
> consideration to the idea of advertising the network for exactly what it is:
> a conservative republican oriented news network. The strategy would probably
> increase market share as conservative news consumers are starved for
> something exactly like FOX. The conservative slant is the reason FOX has
> been so successful: FOX fills a unique and important market niche.
Yes.
>
> >> 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"
>
> Nah. I want less regulation, not more.
;-) It's as if neither you nor Ron understood my sarcasm here.
> > 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.
>
> You're ignoring the fierce competition between ABC, NBC and CBS for Neilson
> ratings and advertising dollars. I've worked in consumer market research and
> I can tell you that if the American people did not like liberal TV
> journalists then their contracts would not be renewed; they would be fired
> and replaced by conservatives at the first opportunity.
Sorry, I don't swallow a bit of this. There was no way, for example,
that CBS could have gotten rid of Cronkite and the huge network of
left-biased reporters around him. Have you read Bernard Goldberg's
book "BIAS"?
> However the majority of American people (not the majority of voters)
> have a liberal mindset, so the non-cable news media also has a liberal
> mindset. A huge fraction of Americans, something like 50%, are
> politically apathetic non-voters.
Yes.
> They tend to be liberal-minded people of low socioeconomic status.
Why do you think these apathetic people liberal? I think them
to be almost completely non-ideological.
> However those liberal-minded non-voters watch the evening news, and
> so along with politically active liberals they represent the majority of
> news consumers and so control the non-cable market for news. It's just free
> enterprise at work (ironically).
We disagree; that's all I guess.
Lee
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