I'm not sure how far this goes in disproving the notion of a liberal bias in the media, but I sure agree that it seems wrong not to identify her position as an Administration official.
I've been meaning to ask something. Does the unfoggedtariat agree with the increasingly common notion that there's a clear and pervasive republican bias in the US mainstream media? Esp. as opposed to an pro-government bias, an anti-boring person bias, or whatever, which could produce an incidental pro-GOP bias for a brief time.
On partisan political issues (rather than broader culture-war issues), and defining 'media' as the TV networks and national papers, yes.
I'm hedging because there is something to the 'liberal media' claim on cultural issues -- outside of Fox, a story on abortion/gun-control/evolution in the schools is going to be written from the assumption that the liberal side of the question is more normal than the conservative side. I'm good with that, because the liberal side of those issues is more normal than the conservative side, but someone looking for 'balance' on those sorts of issues is going to gripe.
On straightforward electoral politics type issues, they all swing right.
It's not a Republican bias (for the most part, Fox News aside) so much as that there's an unfortunate tendency for most media outlets to try and stick to the center of any issue regardless of the relative merits of each side. The problem here (beyond the obvious one, that they're doing stenography rather than journalism) is the shifting perception of where the political center is. "Conservative" has become redefined as moderate/centrist, and what was moderate is now described as liberal. This is despite there not being any such shift in people's actual political leanings overall.
Speaking as someone who follows the evolution/creationism debate, the 'normal' side of that in the media is the 'just teach the controversy' position, which is a very conservative position. Conservative in the sense of people who watch Fox News.
People who cast doubt on evolution in the media are treated as if there is some scientific respectability about that position, instead of being hooted at as the wackmobiles they are.
Gun control I grant you is treated in a liberal way.
Yeah, scientific issues are given terrible coverage for the most part. I suspect much of this is due to widespread misunderstanding of words like "theory".
12: Well, they're treated with more respect than they deserve, but less respect than those who want to teach evolution. This is right, in my view, but it's not perfectly impartial.
Coverage of scientific issues in this country would be much improved, I feel, by forcing journalism students to take a couple of higher level science classes.
6: As far as print, and presumably tv, but I don't watch US television, I think that's basically wrong. Or you could say it's true as as it goes, but misleading.
The incoherent ideology of "balance" is an just an excuse, a rationalisation, sometimes unconscious, sometimes conscious, for giving the story the desired spin. "Balance", and skillful gaming of the rules by the GOP, can't account for such an persistent bias in one direction, and the incoherent perversion of objectivity could only have been brought about because it was convenient. Irresponsibility and stupidity and nothing else would reveal itself as fickleness and mostly random biases.
Expecting journalists to understand much of anything is asking a lot. Sure they understand this sort of thing perfectly well, because it's what they do too, in their own way.
I'd say the current bias in the Post is more towards Broderism than Republicanism. Unwillingness to recognize the pervasive bad faith from the Republican side, or to countenance the consequent Democratic anger. One could say that declining to hoot with laughter at the President's policies is 'objectively pro-Republican' but I think that's a little simplistic.
This is also in today's Post. I think it illustrates the point made in 6 well -- the Senator welcomed to America a person of color who was born and grew up here. A liberal paper would make more hay with this kind of thing, and our Republican paper -- well, if you want to see whether or how the Moonies covered this, you'll have to go look yourself, because I'm not going to click on their page.
I see 1) a economically center right, socially liberal attitude 2) stupidity and ignorance, manipulation, 3) even beyond that a partisan political tilt towards the GOP and GOP talking points.
Ok, this seems like a case where we just need to define what will constitute an answer. The plural of anecdote, as we know, is not data. So it isn't too likely that anyone who believes in systematic press bias is going to be convinced by a) an egregious example of bad practice (as in this post), or b) vehement certainty (as in comments 3, e.g.).
I personally suspect that most press bias derives from structural, not ideological sources. There are ways that the press is likely to behave (favoring he said/she said analysis, a focus on outlier cases, etc.) which seem intrinsically unideological, but may in fact have partisan effects in a given case (for example, a "he said/she said" approach to a factual issue will help Republicans when the facts do not favor them.)
Nonetheless, it would surprise me if 60%+ of news professionals on the agenda setting newspapers (WSJ, NYT, WP, etc) were not registered democrats. Likewise, I suspect an analysis of charitable giving from news professionals would find substantially higher donations to causes identified as political left of center than to those right of center. It is, of course, another matter entirely whether these demographics result in conscious or unconscious bias.
Questions for the thread:
1. Is this perception of press demographics accepted, or contested?
2. Has anyone taken a look at academic efforts to isolate bias? Here's one interesing attempt. Are people aware of others?
See, this makes me depressed. "Isn't relevant" is just way, way too strong. Are you telling me that party affiliation tells us *nothing at all* about left-right orientation? And surely it should be relevant on partisan bias terms.
24 -- I'll accept the demographic, but then I don't care how the sportswriters vote, or the people who cover real estate, etc. And if someone is an actual Democrat but spends her/his time trying very hard to ensure that no one can accuse him/her of bias -- by accepting a he said/she said formulation where it's totally unjustified to do so -- then the partisan affiliation of the reporter is meaningless.
Pinpointing why the media works the way it does is trickier.
Other owners aren't like Murdoch; politics isn't that high on their agenda. But I think they are rightwing, that they occasionally haphazardly bring pressure, thir own, or pressure to react on rightwingers working the ref.
I would say editors, middle management is generally right wing.
Remember, "journalists" are completely irrelvant. Most of them write for the Podunk Tribune-Review, for Teen Vogue, for flyfishing magazines. The Gang of 500 is all that matters. They include editors nd reporters.
In The Note, and The National Jornal's columns and blogs, and op-eds by ex-journo deans like Broder and Cohen they more openly show we're they're coming from.
How about endorsements? I'd be willing to bet money that the Oregonian, for whom I freelance and where I was on staff, is populated mostly, if not overwhelmingly, by registered Democrats. In 2000, the paper endorsed Bush. That's just one example -- feel free to speculate about how newspaper companies' power structure overrides the putative bias of their employees.
I'm happy to be accused of vehement certainty, BTW. I'd hate to seem indecisive.
Well, sure, but I guess my impression is that the same skew exists for political reporters. Again, no hard data here. And I would welcome anyone who has some -- I am really just interested in whether other people's impressions match mine. I get the impression, also, that editors are usually drawn from the ranks of journalists, so I would not expect these demographics to be that different. Owners, of course, may be another matter entirely.
But setting aside how the demographics do in fact come out, I find a bit puzzling the reluctance to associate the predominance of one party affiliation with the liklihood of bias. Sure, it's anything but an absolute guide. Reporters, can, and do, report in unbiased fashion on matters of partisan interest. Nonetheless, my general sense of human psychology is that we favor our own causes, are subject to confirmation bias, and that peer groups can have positive feed-back effects on both.
I'm sure most journalists lean center-left on most issues (especially social issues, as has been noted). But the ideological leanings of individual reporters doesn't necessarily translate into actual bias in reporting. Even if we stipulate that 60% of reporters covering the 2000 campaign were liberals, it certainly was not the case that 60% of campaign pieces published in 2000 favored Al Gore.
There are other biases at work, more fundamental to the way the press does business, that affect how actual reporting leans, which include:
- a "he said/she said" conception of objectivity
- pervasive sensationalism
- a preference for personality over substance
- a preference for narratives over facts
- ignorance of science and economics
- class sympathy towards fellow professionals
Most if not all of these traits favor Republicans and Republican initiatives in the current environment, especially in campaign reporting and national security, where bombastic smear artists and militant fearmongers are likely to suck up all the oxygen.
Endorsements is a good test! Here are some initial data on that score. More
One danger of this approach is that it obscures the sseparation of editorial and news divisions. This has, I think, substantial institutional reality in most papers.
I think baa's largely correct in #24: it's structural bias. David Halberstam wrote a book about the media called The Powers that Be, and he convinced me that the major media doesn't just report the consensus opinion, but acts as a sort of market maker for consensus opinion. In the past, there was a pretty uniform and dominant class that helped make the market. I don't think that's been true for a while. There are something like two classes of markets for consensus opinion: the older class, of which we're all largely a part, and the newer class, made up of conservatives who have built a whole structure to support their opinions over the last thirty-odd years. The newer class is in power right now, and it's the people in power to whom reporters turn to get and form the consensus opinion. That's why news reports seem odd, more than biased: they're reporting against the backdrop of a structure to which I have very little exposure.
I wonder how much is dictation from management, how much is ideology from the Gang of 500, how much is a weird basically unpolitical mentality of liberals being icky, GOp being winners, etc, how much is skillful manipulation by the noise machine.
There's a fair amount of instances and specific important incidents where bias is clear, but I'm willing to say I'm not 100% sure about the sum total of alll news stories. It's a good working theory.
How about the bias that Democrats of any profession have towards attacking each other? Not to mention the pervasive journalistic bias for the "counter-intuitive" that gets so annoying...
s jones. Again, I agree with the basic point: partisan affiliation is not equivalent to bias. I am just looking for some (any!) quantitative hooks on which to base conclusions. I tend to agree that journalists display (usually) ignorance of economics. But a) that's just me, b) I can't quantify it, c) I can't relate it to partisan bias in any uncontroversial way. It just won't advance the debate to say that the press favors my side because my side is right and the press is a bunch of dopes.
baa, I'm hurt that you've forgotten my argument that the press has a conservative bias because reporters are liberals.
(As an aside, is the news business a nifty (unusual?) example of a "product" becoming much worse as a result of increased competition?)
I guess I don't find questions of bias very helpful; I don't know what people are thinking, and I can't explain why they write what they do. Mainly, I'd like reporters to know more about what they cover and to write more plainly about their own sense of a situation. This was a good example.
41: My own pet theory is that there are a couple of overlays here. In the past, elite market opinion was formed and confirmed in the East. But the 90s were dominated by the New Democrats, and you could get the vast majority of relevant policy opinions of the New Democrats by looking to the DLC and TNR. It turns out that in today's world, on the important issues of the day, there are very small differences between the TNR/DLC group and the new Republican power based in the South. The former moved to right, the latter to the left. (Hendrik Hertzberg has a nice essay alluding to this collected in Politics.) If you had to characterize TNR's foreign policy, it wouldn't be very different from the Weekly Standard's foreign policy (or that was true until recently). Similarly, the DLC skews towards the Republican base on a whole series of issues--the focus on enforcing public morality, for example. Brooks's "National Greatness" article in 1997 was sort of an admission that the two sides had come to terms. And that was basically fine: it largely worked. GWB and Iraq blew that agreement apart, at least as regards Dems that the DLC/TNR group had converted during the 90s. But the people on Dem side that rose to power in 90s are still in place, and those are the people that reporters go to for the Dem sense of the national consensus.
Hey, any theory that suggests modern liberalism is beset by self-defeating weenie-ism has something to recommend it. But again, it just does not fit with my general sense of human psychology. People think they are right, and this warps their ability to react to contrary data in important and predictable ways. I think this tendency is even more powerful than the vaunted empathy-increasing power of liberal ideology (or indeed, the all-men are brothers ideology of Christianity). Again, these discussions about representation are just imperfect proxies for data on actual bias. You know what would be a *great* research topic for some aspiring political scientist? Looking at press bias *solely* through the lense of sports coverage. My prediction: enormous hometown bias, and strong availibility bias, and all situated in a swamp of misinformation, laziness, and innumeracy.
I find a bit puzzling the reluctance to associate the predominance of one party affiliation with the liklihood of bias
Because who they are isn't evidence of bias. Any evidence will be found in their *product*, not in their demographics. This is the same problem that popped up in the Galloway thread. What was at issue wasn't whether GG is a good guy or a scoundrel, only whether his argument is sound. But we spent an awful lot of the thread discussing the former, which doesn't shed any light on whether his points were valid.
Then again, deliberately confusing the message with messenger is GOP SOP.
No, it isn't an *evidence* of bias, but it's a plausible reason to have suspicions. Really, you would look at a magazine where the staff was 90% GOP and have no concerns about it's likelihood to be partisan? You would look at a magazine that was 90% pro-life and conclude there's no prima facie reason to be concerned about bias on abortion coverage? This just seems really weird to me, honestly. Do you think the Boston Globe is unbiased in its coverage of the New York Yankees too?
It's a plausible reason to have suspicions, sure. But if a team of referees were all from California, yet all the calls went against the Lakers, you wouldn't accuse them of bias.
Hey, we are just facing a paucity of data here. The key, I agree, is having an objective methodology for what the "calls going against you" amounts to. When the only votes for a player in the MVP voting come from his hometown writer, I do indeed suspect bias. So, I imagine, do you. We can do this because we have a comparative sample, and further, because we have statistics (in some sports) to define objective irrationality. That's why things like the study I linked seem useful. I would love if these discussions of bias actually yielded some light and not just heat. To Everybody thinks the refs are screwing them. The question is how to find out when they are right.
Calatheory: newspapers exist to sell more newspapers. This means taking the conservative line on some issues, and the liberal line on others, and on the rest just writing shitty enough articles (the entire NYT style section) to get people talking. So we get a press core that doesn't question the administration but reports more Lebanese casualties than Israeli. Either way, kick 'em to the curb and let the tequila-fueled philosophers run amok. Every article will begin: Here is why you are all on crack.
but reports more Lebanese casualties than Israeli.
At the risk of derailing this into a painful and bloody Israel discussion, are you suggesting there were actually more Israeli casualties than Lebanese casualties? Because as far as I can tell even the IDF isn't making that claim.
52: Why would it be objectionable that the NYT report more Lebanese casualties than Israeli casualties, then? Am I missing something very obvious here?
LEBANESE KILL 10 ISRAELIS nearly as often as it is ISRAELI OFFENSIVE KILLS 50 IN QANA.
That is, it seems that in headlines, at least, the emphasis has been on Lebanese causalties, enough so that at least one of our token conservatives noted that the reporting wasn't covering the Israeli spin on it. It's not so much spin as it is emphasis: talk about the Lebanese causalties, but vaguely support the Israeli offensive. And then, I imagine, go out for cocktails because reportering is hard.
I don't mean much by this other than the fact that both the right and the left complain about the biased press corps, and both are full of shit.
both the right and the left complain about the biased press corps, and both are full of shit.
Disagree entirely. Anyone who doesn't think the press slacked off in the wake of 9/11, or failed to ask a number of fairly obvious questions prior to the invasion of Iraq and during the occupation of the same, is certifiable. And that same press pretty clearly labelled (and continues to label) anyone who wanted those answers as "left."
54: Both left and right do complain about press bias, but I don't see how this instance alone demonstrates that "both are full of shit." It seems pretty evident to me that the press is predisposed to reporting and credence to certain kinds of stories (arguments for war, intimations of scandal, fear- and panic-mongering, etc.), and subscribes to any number of cultural biases that favor different parties at different times. I'd argue these factors have favored the GOP for some time now, and that coverage of, say, the 2000 election, or the runup to the Iraq War, demonstrated some pretty pervasive bias from much of the mainstream media. I don't think you have to be full of shit to believe an argument of the sort I'm making.
I still don't get the headlines thing, though. If there are more "Dead Lebanese" headlines, and there are in fact more dead Lebanese, is it not possible that the headline is simply reflecting reality?
It's a matter of emphasis. You don't have to put casualty numbers in a headline.
What Cala's saying is that yes, there's something to the "liberal media" claims, because on some (mainly social) issues the media does tend to implicitly assume liberal norms in its coverage, but that on other issues it assumes conservative norms, so the conservative critique isn't universally accurate. Both sides are therefore "right" in a sense, but they're both kind of missing the big picture. This analysis leaves the extent of each type of coverage unaddressed.
Number of headlines surely doesn't correspond to the number of dead, no? I think you're taking my observation as a complaint; it's not. There are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis, but a biased Israeli account would certainly emphasis the Israeli offensive over civilian causalties. To claim that the press is decidedly pro-administration seems wrong, as does claiming that it's pro-left.
And that same press pretty clearly labelled (and continues to label) anyone who wanted those answers as "left."
Except when it endorsed Ned Lamont. I really think describing media bias in terms of partisan politics misses the point: our press corps is in the business of selling papers with the minimal amount of effort. Thus, no WMD questions and Style articles based on the reporter's college roommate, but endorsing gay marriage. Sometimes the media hit left, sometimes right, but claiming a systematic oppressive bias just signifies memorization of talking points to me. (grew up in a conservative household complaining about the media. they full of shit, too.)
Sometimes the media hit left, sometimes right, but claiming a systematic oppressive bias just signifies memorization of talking points to me.
This sounds suspiciously like the media description of "balance." I don't think anyone says that the media is uniformly conservative or liberal. In fact, the major charge made by the "left" is that the media didn't challenge the Administration or its spinners and that it didn't challenge the DLC or its spinners. The problem is that those two groups agreed on the major issue of the day. You can more or less run down the line of major issues and find the same pattern: the relevant questions are not asked. It may be simple supplication to power, but I really can't imagine looking at the last five years of media coverage of the GWB (particularly the three and half after 9/11) and thinking that the media was somehow scattershot in its bias. On a bet, the received wisdom will eventually be that the media fucked up and was cowed after 9/11. In fact, I believe some in the media have begun to admit as much.
I don't think anyone says that the media is uniformly conservative or liberal.
Ooh, you need to listen to Limbaugh for an hour and then purge your brain with the wonderful tequila. On your larger points, I agree. Our press corps needs to be meaner.
Delurking to note a couple of things written here that adopt the media's skewed definitions of certain terms and by doing so cede argumentative ground to conservatives.
First, this woman is not "in the clear ethically." Not violating "ethics" guidelines is in no way equivalent to behaving ethically, and by appearing under false pretenses she is in fact doing something wrong.
Second, a person could be "perfectly impartial" as well as right in according more respect to those who want evolution taught than those who don't, just as a perfectly impartial person would give more respect to those who believe the earth is round and orbits the sun, or that the Holocaust occurred, or that Santa Claus doesn't exist, than to those who would argue against them.
Number of headlines surely doesn't correspond to the number of dead, no?
To a certain extent there's bound to be a correspondence, though. You aren't going to have all 1000 Lebanese fatalities on one day and then all 200 Israeli fatalities the next; these deaths came in bit by bit over time, and there were more instances of lots of Lebanese getting killed than there were instances of lots of Israelis getting killed. So of course there were going to be more headlines about Lebanese casualties than there would be about Israeli casualties, because there were more "dead Lebanese" incidents to report on.
Agree with Apo: read one of the millions of articles by Bob Somerby at http://www.dailyhowler.com Gore was indeed Gored.
Most TV and many newspaper reporters are lazy, fatuous, rich, and conniving. All they want to do is to finish the job as easily and benignly as possible (he said-she said) and get back to Martha's Vineyard.
I, for one, welcome our new Vineyard-partying overlords.
I'd like to argue with baa's assumption (implicit assumption? it seems to be what you're saying.) that anecdote trading can't possibly establish net bias in one direction or the other.
The offhanded listing of pro-Republican bias events above hit certainly one, and probably two, that swung a presidential election (Liar-Gore and SwiftBoat) and another with huge political effects (Whitewater, and silly Clinton scandals generally). I can't think of anything similarly concrete where Republicans can stand up and say "The press screwed us!" with anything like a similar magnitude of effect. (The Dan Rather-Memogate thing was a one-off event, loudly and successfully debunked instantly. Nothing like the same size thing.)
Now we've all argued about whether the Republican-bias events named above happened, or reflect actual inaccuracy or other wrongdoing by the press. Assuming (as I do, I've talked about all of them enough to satisfy me for a lifetime) that they were real, and real malfeasance by the press, there's nothing concrete of even remotely similiar magnitude on the other side.
it would surprise me if 60%+ of news professionals on the agenda setting newspapers (WSJ, NYT, WP, etc) were not registered democrats.
Why? Other than the fact that these journalists live in cities that historically turn out for Democrats. And why so high a percentage? At the WSJ? An assumption that educated, urban, influence-craving, stock-option-worrying journalists must vote Republican is at least as credible as the assumption that educated, urban, peace-marching, latte-swilling journalists must all vote Democratic.
I really do think anecdote trading is hopeless. Is your contention, LB, that the presence of the "Gore exagerates" meme conclusively shows press bias towards Bush in 2000? That seems nuts, frankly And I don't see how aggregating the press coverage that most aggrieves you or me is going to move us further. We simply aren't going to agree on the "correct" level of coverage of Whitewater, or flytrap, or Quayle misspelling potato, or Bush calling Ken Lay "Kennie Boy." I'm not even sure how one would go about quanitfying this. And the fact that an election is close doesn't speak directly to press bias. It's unlikely press bias could have mattered in 1984, but that doesn't mean the press wasn't biased for Mondale or against him.
And the fact that an election is close doesn't speak directly to press bias. It's unlikely press bias could have mattered in 1984, but that doesn't mean the press wasn't biased for Mondale or against him.
But if an election is close, press bias will swing it toward one or the other candidate. One such candidate was Bush in 2000.
71: Yeah. I'm not going to try to argue with you about that, because we've probably both had the arguments enough times to satisfy us for a lifetime. But if you don't recognize that the Liar-Gore meme reflected astonishing malfeasance by the press and swung the 2000 election, we're too far apart to talk about this usefully.
I guess it shows the press striving for balance and bending over backwards to favor the Democrats, that they would call Gore a "liar" to deflect attention away from his baby-killing...
Further on 71: One way of quantifying it is extensive reporting on things that turn out to have been checkably false all along. A lot of Whitewater and other Clinton scandals fall into this category. All of the Gore-Liar stuff falls into this category. The Swift Boat accusations fall into this category.
I don't know what you mean by 'flytrap' but I can't think of a big story that was damaging to Republicans and lasted months that turned out to be pure fantasy.
In the next act, we can watch the national press corps(e) fall to its knees and offer John McCain fellatios throughout the entire campaign season. I can't think of any Democratic candidate at any level who would receive the same treatment.
Yeah. It's possible that the Swift Boat thing swung the election against Kerry, but there's no way to tell. It's obviously true that the Gore-Liar thing swung the election against Gore -- the swing is small enough that anything with any perceptible effect at all swung it against Gore.
I'm not sure how far this goes in disproving the notion of a liberal bias in the media, but I sure agree that it seems wrong not to identify her position as an Administration official.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:12 PM
Valerie Plame's job isn't kept secret, but Karen Czarnecki's is? Brilliant.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:14 PM
Idealist, bless your heart, the media's alleged liberal bias is a crock of shit.
Posted by jmcq | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:17 PM
I've been meaning to ask something. Does the unfoggedtariat agree with the increasingly common notion that there's a clear and pervasive republican bias in the US mainstream media? Esp. as opposed to an pro-government bias, an anti-boring person bias, or whatever, which could produce an incidental pro-GOP bias for a brief time.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:19 PM
On partisan political issues (rather than broader culture-war issues), and defining 'media' as the TV networks and national papers, yes.
I'm hedging because there is something to the 'liberal media' claim on cultural issues -- outside of Fox, a story on abortion/gun-control/evolution in the schools is going to be written from the assumption that the liberal side of the question is more normal than the conservative side. I'm good with that, because the liberal side of those issues is more normal than the conservative side, but someone looking for 'balance' on those sorts of issues is going to gripe.
On straightforward electoral politics type issues, they all swing right.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:29 PM
It's not a Republican bias (for the most part, Fox News aside) so much as that there's an unfortunate tendency for most media outlets to try and stick to the center of any issue regardless of the relative merits of each side. The problem here (beyond the obvious one, that they're doing stenography rather than journalism) is the shifting perception of where the political center is. "Conservative" has become redefined as moderate/centrist, and what was moderate is now described as liberal. This is despite there not being any such shift in people's actual political leanings overall.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:33 PM
On straightforward electoral politics type issues, they all swing right.
If you put the pivot point between the Democratic Party on the right and the Green Party, Socialist Party, etc. on the left, I suppose they do.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:34 PM
a clear and pervasive republican bias in the US mainstream media
See: Whitewater coverage.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:34 PM
See also Swiftboat coverage.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:36 PM
And Phase II of the Intelligence investigation coverage.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:38 PM
Vince Foster.
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:39 PM
Speaking as someone who follows the evolution/creationism debate, the 'normal' side of that in the media is the 'just teach the controversy' position, which is a very conservative position. Conservative in the sense of people who watch Fox News.
People who cast doubt on evolution in the media are treated as if there is some scientific respectability about that position, instead of being hooted at as the wackmobiles they are.
Gun control I grant you is treated in a liberal way.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:40 PM
7: Can you back that up?
Posted by jmcq | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:42 PM
Hell, go read the 12 million Bob Somerby articles on the media's portrayal of Al Gore during the 2000 election.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:43 PM
Yeah, scientific issues are given terrible coverage for the most part. I suspect much of this is due to widespread misunderstanding of words like "theory".
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:46 PM
12: Well, they're treated with more respect than they deserve, but less respect than those who want to teach evolution. This is right, in my view, but it's not perfectly impartial.
For a nice Republican bias event in the last week or so, remember Rumsfeld denying that he'd ever painted a rosy picture of likely outcomes in Iraq? Clinton called him on it, and gave a list of examples. It was reported as 'he-said/she-said' without noting that she had evidence demonstrating that she was right.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:46 PM
'It's just a theory!'
Coverage of scientific issues in this country would be much improved, I feel, by forcing journalism students to take a couple of higher level science classes.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:50 PM
6: As far as print, and presumably tv, but I don't watch US television, I think that's basically wrong. Or you could say it's true as as it goes, but misleading.
The incoherent ideology of "balance" is an just an excuse, a rationalisation, sometimes unconscious, sometimes conscious, for giving the story the desired spin. "Balance", and skillful gaming of the rules by the GOP, can't account for such an persistent bias in one direction, and the incoherent perversion of objectivity could only have been brought about because it was convenient. Irresponsibility and stupidity and nothing else would reveal itself as fickleness and mostly random biases.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:56 PM
Expecting journalists to understand much of anything is asking a lot. Sure they understand this sort of thing perfectly well, because it's what they do too, in their own way.
I'd say the current bias in the Post is more towards Broderism than Republicanism. Unwillingness to recognize the pervasive bad faith from the Republican side, or to countenance the consequent Democratic anger. One could say that declining to hoot with laughter at the President's policies is 'objectively pro-Republican' but I think that's a little simplistic.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 3:58 PM
This is also in today's Post. I think it illustrates the point made in 6 well -- the Senator welcomed to America a person of color who was born and grew up here. A liberal paper would make more hay with this kind of thing, and our Republican paper -- well, if you want to see whether or how the Moonies covered this, you'll have to go look yourself, because I'm not going to click on their page.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:04 PM
I see 1) a economically center right, socially liberal attitude 2) stupidity and ignorance, manipulation, 3) even beyond that a partisan political tilt towards the GOP and GOP talking points.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:06 PM
On that, Atrios is saying that 'macaca' is a conventional slur for someone of North African descent. Has anyone ever heard that used? It's new to me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:07 PM
economically center right, socially liberal attitude
Hence the "liberal media" stuff.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:14 PM
Ok, this seems like a case where we just need to define what will constitute an answer. The plural of anecdote, as we know, is not data. So it isn't too likely that anyone who believes in systematic press bias is going to be convinced by a) an egregious example of bad practice (as in this post), or b) vehement certainty (as in comments 3, e.g.).
I personally suspect that most press bias derives from structural, not ideological sources. There are ways that the press is likely to behave (favoring he said/she said analysis, a focus on outlier cases, etc.) which seem intrinsically unideological, but may in fact have partisan effects in a given case (for example, a "he said/she said" approach to a factual issue will help Republicans when the facts do not favor them.)
Nonetheless, it would surprise me if 60%+ of news professionals on the agenda setting newspapers (WSJ, NYT, WP, etc) were not registered democrats. Likewise, I suspect an analysis of charitable giving from news professionals would find substantially higher donations to causes identified as political left of center than to those right of center. It is, of course, another matter entirely whether these demographics result in conscious or unconscious bias.
Questions for the thread:
1. Is this perception of press demographics accepted, or contested?
2. Has anyone taken a look at academic efforts to isolate bias? Here's one interesing attempt. Are people aware of others?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:17 PM
Registered democrat isn't very relevant. Weisberg votes democrat, maybe even Kaus. And management is more relevant.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:19 PM
See, this makes me depressed. "Isn't relevant" is just way, way too strong. Are you telling me that party affiliation tells us *nothing at all* about left-right orientation? And surely it should be relevant on partisan bias terms.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:24 PM
24 -- I'll accept the demographic, but then I don't care how the sportswriters vote, or the people who cover real estate, etc. And if someone is an actual Democrat but spends her/his time trying very hard to ensure that no one can accuse him/her of bias -- by accepting a he said/she said formulation where it's totally unjustified to do so -- then the partisan affiliation of the reporter is meaningless.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:27 PM
Worse than meaningless.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:27 PM
Sorry, just re-read and saw the claim was "isn't very relevant." Still I think mistaken, but maybe not depressingly so.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:28 PM
Baa, I'd say there's a difference between 'isn't very relevant' and 'isn't relevant'.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:29 PM
Pinpointing why the media works the way it does is trickier.
Other owners aren't like Murdoch; politics isn't that high on their agenda. But I think they are rightwing, that they occasionally haphazardly bring pressure, thir own, or pressure to react on rightwingers working the ref.
I would say editors, middle management is generally right wing.
Remember, "journalists" are completely irrelvant. Most of them write for the Podunk Tribune-Review, for Teen Vogue, for flyfishing magazines. The Gang of 500 is all that matters. They include editors nd reporters.
In The Note, and The National Jornal's columns and blogs, and op-eds by ex-journo deans like Broder and Cohen they more openly show we're they're coming from.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:36 PM
How about endorsements? I'd be willing to bet money that the Oregonian, for whom I freelance and where I was on staff, is populated mostly, if not overwhelmingly, by registered Democrats. In 2000, the paper endorsed Bush. That's just one example -- feel free to speculate about how newspaper companies' power structure overrides the putative bias of their employees.
I'm happy to be accused of vehement certainty, BTW. I'd hate to seem indecisive.
Posted by jmcq | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:37 PM
>I don't care how the sportswriters vote
Well, sure, but I guess my impression is that the same skew exists for political reporters. Again, no hard data here. And I would welcome anyone who has some -- I am really just interested in whether other people's impressions match mine. I get the impression, also, that editors are usually drawn from the ranks of journalists, so I would not expect these demographics to be that different. Owners, of course, may be another matter entirely.
But setting aside how the demographics do in fact come out, I find a bit puzzling the reluctance to associate the predominance of one party affiliation with the liklihood of bias. Sure, it's anything but an absolute guide. Reporters, can, and do, report in unbiased fashion on matters of partisan interest. Nonetheless, my general sense of human psychology is that we favor our own causes, are subject to confirmation bias, and that peer groups can have positive feed-back effects on both.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:40 PM
Partly pwned by 27.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:40 PM
I'm sure most journalists lean center-left on most issues (especially social issues, as has been noted). But the ideological leanings of individual reporters doesn't necessarily translate into actual bias in reporting. Even if we stipulate that 60% of reporters covering the 2000 campaign were liberals, it certainly was not the case that 60% of campaign pieces published in 2000 favored Al Gore.
There are other biases at work, more fundamental to the way the press does business, that affect how actual reporting leans, which include:
- a "he said/she said" conception of objectivity
- pervasive sensationalism
- a preference for personality over substance
- a preference for narratives over facts
- ignorance of science and economics
- class sympathy towards fellow professionals
Most if not all of these traits favor Republicans and Republican initiatives in the current environment, especially in campaign reporting and national security, where bombastic smear artists and militant fearmongers are likely to suck up all the oxygen.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:41 PM
Endorsements is a good test! Here are some initial data on that score. More
One danger of this approach is that it obscures the sseparation of editorial and news divisions. This has, I think, substantial institutional reality in most papers.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:49 PM
I think baa's largely correct in #24: it's structural bias. David Halberstam wrote a book about the media called The Powers that Be, and he convinced me that the major media doesn't just report the consensus opinion, but acts as a sort of market maker for consensus opinion. In the past, there was a pretty uniform and dominant class that helped make the market. I don't think that's been true for a while. There are something like two classes of markets for consensus opinion: the older class, of which we're all largely a part, and the newer class, made up of conservatives who have built a whole structure to support their opinions over the last thirty-odd years. The newer class is in power right now, and it's the people in power to whom reporters turn to get and form the consensus opinion. That's why news reports seem odd, more than biased: they're reporting against the backdrop of a structure to which I have very little exposure.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:50 PM
I wonder how much is dictation from management, how much is ideology from the Gang of 500, how much is a weird basically unpolitical mentality of liberals being icky, GOp being winners, etc, how much is skillful manipulation by the noise machine.
There's a fair amount of instances and specific important incidents where bias is clear, but I'm willing to say I'm not 100% sure about the sum total of alll news stories. It's a good working theory.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:51 PM
How about the bias that Democrats of any profession have towards attacking each other? Not to mention the pervasive journalistic bias for the "counter-intuitive" that gets so annoying...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:52 PM
s jones. Again, I agree with the basic point: partisan affiliation is not equivalent to bias. I am just looking for some (any!) quantitative hooks on which to base conclusions. I tend to agree that journalists display (usually) ignorance of economics. But a) that's just me, b) I can't quantify it, c) I can't relate it to partisan bias in any uncontroversial way. It just won't advance the debate to say that the press favors my side because my side is right and the press is a bunch of dopes.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:54 PM
"The newer class is in power right now, and it's the people in power to whom reporters turn to get and form the consensus opinion."
Was there a dem bias in the 90s, then? Maybe after 19994 there wouldn't have been, but generally exec branch should be better than congress.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 4:58 PM
baa, I'm hurt that you've forgotten my argument that the press has a conservative bias because reporters are liberals.
(As an aside, is the news business a nifty (unusual?) example of a "product" becoming much worse as a result of increased competition?)
I guess I don't find questions of bias very helpful; I don't know what people are thinking, and I can't explain why they write what they do. Mainly, I'd like reporters to know more about what they cover and to write more plainly about their own sense of a situation. This was a good example.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:05 PM
I agree with ogged's post in the first link. Except that he forgot to mention "reflexive counter-intuitiveness."
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:12 PM
41: My own pet theory is that there are a couple of overlays here. In the past, elite market opinion was formed and confirmed in the East. But the 90s were dominated by the New Democrats, and you could get the vast majority of relevant policy opinions of the New Democrats by looking to the DLC and TNR. It turns out that in today's world, on the important issues of the day, there are very small differences between the TNR/DLC group and the new Republican power based in the South. The former moved to right, the latter to the left. (Hendrik Hertzberg has a nice essay alluding to this collected in Politics.) If you had to characterize TNR's foreign policy, it wouldn't be very different from the Weekly Standard's foreign policy (or that was true until recently). Similarly, the DLC skews towards the Republican base on a whole series of issues--the focus on enforcing public morality, for example. Brooks's "National Greatness" article in 1997 was sort of an admission that the two sides had come to terms. And that was basically fine: it largely worked. GWB and Iraq blew that agreement apart, at least as regards Dems that the DLC/TNR group had converted during the 90s. But the people on Dem side that rose to power in 90s are still in place, and those are the people that reporters go to for the Dem sense of the national consensus.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:13 PM
Hey, any theory that suggests modern liberalism is beset by self-defeating weenie-ism has something to recommend it. But again, it just does not fit with my general sense of human psychology. People think they are right, and this warps their ability to react to contrary data in important and predictable ways. I think this tendency is even more powerful than the vaunted empathy-increasing power of liberal ideology (or indeed, the all-men are brothers ideology of Christianity). Again, these discussions about representation are just imperfect proxies for data on actual bias. You know what would be a *great* research topic for some aspiring political scientist? Looking at press bias *solely* through the lense of sports coverage. My prediction: enormous hometown bias, and strong availibility bias, and all situated in a swamp of misinformation, laziness, and innumeracy.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:22 PM
I find a bit puzzling the reluctance to associate the predominance of one party affiliation with the liklihood of bias
Because who they are isn't evidence of bias. Any evidence will be found in their *product*, not in their demographics. This is the same problem that popped up in the Galloway thread. What was at issue wasn't whether GG is a good guy or a scoundrel, only whether his argument is sound. But we spent an awful lot of the thread discussing the former, which doesn't shed any light on whether his points were valid.
Then again, deliberately confusing the message with messenger is GOP SOP.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:26 PM
No, it isn't an *evidence* of bias, but it's a plausible reason to have suspicions. Really, you would look at a magazine where the staff was 90% GOP and have no concerns about it's likelihood to be partisan? You would look at a magazine that was 90% pro-life and conclude there's no prima facie reason to be concerned about bias on abortion coverage? This just seems really weird to me, honestly. Do you think the Boston Globe is unbiased in its coverage of the New York Yankees too?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:37 PM
It's a plausible reason to have suspicions, sure. But if a team of referees were all from California, yet all the calls went against the Lakers, you wouldn't accuse them of bias.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:40 PM
Hey, we are just facing a paucity of data here. The key, I agree, is having an objective methodology for what the "calls going against you" amounts to. When the only votes for a player in the MVP voting come from his hometown writer, I do indeed suspect bias. So, I imagine, do you. We can do this because we have a comparative sample, and further, because we have statistics (in some sports) to define objective irrationality. That's why things like the study I linked seem useful. I would love if these discussions of bias actually yielded some light and not just heat. To Everybody thinks the refs are screwing them. The question is how to find out when they are right.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 5:47 PM
Calatheory: newspapers exist to sell more newspapers. This means taking the conservative line on some issues, and the liberal line on others, and on the rest just writing shitty enough articles (the entire NYT style section) to get people talking. So we get a press core that doesn't question the administration but reports more Lebanese casualties than Israeli. Either way, kick 'em to the curb and let the tequila-fueled philosophers run amok. Every article will begin: Here is why you are all on crack.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 7:01 PM
but reports more Lebanese casualties than Israeli.
At the risk of derailing this into a painful and bloody Israel discussion, are you suggesting there were actually more Israeli casualties than Lebanese casualties? Because as far as I can tell even the IDF isn't making that claim.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 7:16 PM
>are you suggesting there were actually more Israeli casualties than Lebanese casualties?
I'm not Cala, I'm not even a callow imitation Cala, but I can tell you: that's not the claim.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 7:19 PM
52: Why would it be objectionable that the NYT report more Lebanese casualties than Israeli casualties, then? Am I missing something very obvious here?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 7:21 PM
I am saying that the headlines aren't:
LEBANESE KILL 10 ISRAELIS nearly as often as it is ISRAELI OFFENSIVE KILLS 50 IN QANA.
That is, it seems that in headlines, at least, the emphasis has been on Lebanese causalties, enough so that at least one of our token conservatives noted that the reporting wasn't covering the Israeli spin on it. It's not so much spin as it is emphasis: talk about the Lebanese causalties, but vaguely support the Israeli offensive. And then, I imagine, go out for cocktails because reportering is hard.
I don't mean much by this other than the fact that both the right and the left complain about the biased press corps, and both are full of shit.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 7:50 PM
both the right and the left complain about the biased press corps, and both are full of shit.
Disagree entirely. Anyone who doesn't think the press slacked off in the wake of 9/11, or failed to ask a number of fairly obvious questions prior to the invasion of Iraq and during the occupation of the same, is certifiable. And that same press pretty clearly labelled (and continues to label) anyone who wanted those answers as "left."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:03 PM
54: Both left and right do complain about press bias, but I don't see how this instance alone demonstrates that "both are full of shit." It seems pretty evident to me that the press is predisposed to reporting and credence to certain kinds of stories (arguments for war, intimations of scandal, fear- and panic-mongering, etc.), and subscribes to any number of cultural biases that favor different parties at different times. I'd argue these factors have favored the GOP for some time now, and that coverage of, say, the 2000 election, or the runup to the Iraq War, demonstrated some pretty pervasive bias from much of the mainstream media. I don't think you have to be full of shit to believe an argument of the sort I'm making.
I still don't get the headlines thing, though. If there are more "Dead Lebanese" headlines, and there are in fact more dead Lebanese, is it not possible that the headline is simply reflecting reality?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:12 PM
It's a matter of emphasis. You don't have to put casualty numbers in a headline.
What Cala's saying is that yes, there's something to the "liberal media" claims, because on some (mainly social) issues the media does tend to implicitly assume liberal norms in its coverage, but that on other issues it assumes conservative norms, so the conservative critique isn't universally accurate. Both sides are therefore "right" in a sense, but they're both kind of missing the big picture. This analysis leaves the extent of each type of coverage unaddressed.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:21 PM
Number of headlines surely doesn't correspond to the number of dead, no? I think you're taking my observation as a complaint; it's not. There are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis, but a biased Israeli account would certainly emphasis the Israeli offensive over civilian causalties. To claim that the press is decidedly pro-administration seems wrong, as does claiming that it's pro-left.
And that same press pretty clearly labelled (and continues to label) anyone who wanted those answers as "left."
Except when it endorsed Ned Lamont. I really think describing media bias in terms of partisan politics misses the point: our press corps is in the business of selling papers with the minimal amount of effort. Thus, no WMD questions and Style articles based on the reporter's college roommate, but endorsing gay marriage. Sometimes the media hit left, sometimes right, but claiming a systematic oppressive bias just signifies memorization of talking points to me. (grew up in a conservative household complaining about the media. they full of shit, too.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:25 PM
Sometimes the media hit left, sometimes right, but claiming a systematic oppressive bias just signifies memorization of talking points to me.
This sounds suspiciously like the media description of "balance." I don't think anyone says that the media is uniformly conservative or liberal. In fact, the major charge made by the "left" is that the media didn't challenge the Administration or its spinners and that it didn't challenge the DLC or its spinners. The problem is that those two groups agreed on the major issue of the day. You can more or less run down the line of major issues and find the same pattern: the relevant questions are not asked. It may be simple supplication to power, but I really can't imagine looking at the last five years of media coverage of the GWB (particularly the three and half after 9/11) and thinking that the media was somehow scattershot in its bias. On a bet, the received wisdom will eventually be that the media fucked up and was cowed after 9/11. In fact, I believe some in the media have begun to admit as much.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:34 PM
I don't think anyone says that the media is uniformly conservative or liberal.
Ooh, you need to listen to Limbaugh for an hour and then purge your brain with the wonderful tequila. On your larger points, I agree. Our press corps needs to be meaner.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:40 PM
Delurking to note a couple of things written here that adopt the media's skewed definitions of certain terms and by doing so cede argumentative ground to conservatives.
First, this woman is not "in the clear ethically." Not violating "ethics" guidelines is in no way equivalent to behaving ethically, and by appearing under false pretenses she is in fact doing something wrong.
Second, a person could be "perfectly impartial" as well as right in according more respect to those who want evolution taught than those who don't, just as a perfectly impartial person would give more respect to those who believe the earth is round and orbits the sun, or that the Holocaust occurred, or that Santa Claus doesn't exist, than to those who would argue against them.
Posted by magpie | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:42 PM
Number of headlines surely doesn't correspond to the number of dead, no?
To a certain extent there's bound to be a correspondence, though. You aren't going to have all 1000 Lebanese fatalities on one day and then all 200 Israeli fatalities the next; these deaths came in bit by bit over time, and there were more instances of lots of Lebanese getting killed than there were instances of lots of Israelis getting killed. So of course there were going to be more headlines about Lebanese casualties than there would be about Israeli casualties, because there were more "dead Lebanese" incidents to report on.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 8:53 PM
Bah... media bias.
Agree with Apo: read one of the millions of articles by Bob Somerby at http://www.dailyhowler.com Gore was indeed Gored.
Most TV and many newspaper reporters are lazy, fatuous, rich, and conniving. All they want to do is to finish the job as easily and benignly as possible (he said-she said) and get back to Martha's Vineyard.
I, for one, welcome our new Vineyard-partying overlords.
Posted by Willy Voet | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 9:18 PM
In my country there is problem.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 10:03 PM
Don't look at me.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 10:20 PM
You're the one with the well-thumbed Reportocols of the Elders.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 10:24 PM
Everybody sing!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-14-06 10:50 PM
I'd like to argue with baa's assumption (implicit assumption? it seems to be what you're saying.) that anecdote trading can't possibly establish net bias in one direction or the other.
The offhanded listing of pro-Republican bias events above hit certainly one, and probably two, that swung a presidential election (Liar-Gore and SwiftBoat) and another with huge political effects (Whitewater, and silly Clinton scandals generally). I can't think of anything similarly concrete where Republicans can stand up and say "The press screwed us!" with anything like a similar magnitude of effect. (The Dan Rather-Memogate thing was a one-off event, loudly and successfully debunked instantly. Nothing like the same size thing.)
Now we've all argued about whether the Republican-bias events named above happened, or reflect actual inaccuracy or other wrongdoing by the press. Assuming (as I do, I've talked about all of them enough to satisfy me for a lifetime) that they were real, and real malfeasance by the press, there's nothing concrete of even remotely similiar magnitude on the other side.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 7:59 AM
it would surprise me if 60%+ of news professionals on the agenda setting newspapers (WSJ, NYT, WP, etc) were not registered democrats.
Why? Other than the fact that these journalists live in cities that historically turn out for Democrats. And why so high a percentage? At the WSJ? An assumption that educated, urban, influence-craving, stock-option-worrying journalists must vote Republican is at least as credible as the assumption that educated, urban, peace-marching, latte-swilling journalists must all vote Democratic.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 8:50 AM
No, I think you have to admit that the WSJ's reporters are likely to be Democrats. They've proven themselves to be competent for a long time.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 8:57 AM
I really do think anecdote trading is hopeless. Is your contention, LB, that the presence of the "Gore exagerates" meme conclusively shows press bias towards Bush in 2000? That seems nuts, frankly And I don't see how aggregating the press coverage that most aggrieves you or me is going to move us further. We simply aren't going to agree on the "correct" level of coverage of Whitewater, or flytrap, or Quayle misspelling potato, or Bush calling Ken Lay "Kennie Boy." I'm not even sure how one would go about quanitfying this. And the fact that an election is close doesn't speak directly to press bias. It's unlikely press bias could have mattered in 1984, but that doesn't mean the press wasn't biased for Mondale or against him.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:25 AM
And the fact that an election is close doesn't speak directly to press bias. It's unlikely press bias could have mattered in 1984, but that doesn't mean the press wasn't biased for Mondale or against him.
But if an election is close, press bias will swing it toward one or the other candidate. One such candidate was Bush in 2000.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:41 AM
71: Yeah. I'm not going to try to argue with you about that, because we've probably both had the arguments enough times to satisfy us for a lifetime. But if you don't recognize that the Liar-Gore meme reflected astonishing malfeasance by the press and swung the 2000 election, we're too far apart to talk about this usefully.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:42 AM
Well "liar" is probably a bit strong... "baby-killer", maybe.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:47 AM
I guess it shows the press striving for balance and bending over backwards to favor the Democrats, that they would call Gore a "liar" to deflect attention away from his baby-killing...
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:50 AM
Further on 71: One way of quantifying it is extensive reporting on things that turn out to have been checkably false all along. A lot of Whitewater and other Clinton scandals fall into this category. All of the Gore-Liar stuff falls into this category. The Swift Boat accusations fall into this category.
I don't know what you mean by 'flytrap' but I can't think of a big story that was damaging to Republicans and lasted months that turned out to be pure fantasy.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 9:51 AM
I can't think of a big story that was damaging to Republicans and lasted months that turned out to be pure fantasy.
The Iraq war, one hopes.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 10:00 AM
In the next act, we can watch the national press corps(e) fall to its knees and offer John McCain fellatios throughout the entire campaign season. I can't think of any Democratic candidate at any level who would receive the same treatment.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 10:31 AM
"offer fellatios"???
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 11:39 AM
Yeah, what would it be scholars, "fellatae?"
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 11:44 AM
One of my earlier comments here was pointing out that fellatio was a mass, rather than a count, noun. No one listens.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 11:44 AM
It was intentional, people. Sheesh.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 11:46 AM
fellatio was a mass... noun
Wow what kinda Church were you raised in, 's what I want to know.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 11:48 AM
re 73. I do think the Gore exagerrates mem was a very bad showing by the press. I'm am not sure I think it's astonishing...
(and, as basically *anything* swung the vote in 2000, I guess I'l ackowledge that too...). Comity!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 12:38 PM
basically *anything* swung the vote in 2000
This is true.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 12:42 PM
Yeah. It's possible that the Swift Boat thing swung the election against Kerry, but there's no way to tell. It's obviously true that the Gore-Liar thing swung the election against Gore -- the swing is small enough that anything with any perceptible effect at all swung it against Gore.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 12:45 PM
84: As long as you're feeling agreeable, baa, admit that you drink the blood of Democratic children at your black Federalist masses.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 12:47 PM
87: admit that you drink the blood of Democratic children at your black Federalist masses.
I don't know any black federalists.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 1:47 PM
Booker T.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 1:51 PM
That's king Booker to you.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 2:07 PM
Sure, baa, "Some of my best friends are black federalists."
j/k
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 2:10 PM
It's so hard to find virgin democrats these days.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 2:11 PM
It's all the moral relativism.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-15-06 2:30 PM