Media bias.

[angledge]

Noam Chomsky is a professor at MIT and a progressive political commentator. In his book Interventions, he said:

"...the opinion pages of daily newspapers are yet another corner of the corporate media universe where right-wing voices dominate, and the general debate extends from the far-right to the center, occasional exceptions notwithstanding."

David Kuo was the second-in-command at the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. In his book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, he said:

"The mainstream media takes a lot of flack, some deserved, for being liberally biased. But that's nothing compared to its antireligious bias. Most reporters continue to think that evangelical Christians are from another planet and most couldn't name one as a friend or acquaintance. A few years ago, a New York Times reporter commented on President George W. Bush's use of the phrase 'people should take the log out of their own eye before taking the speck out of their neighbor's eye.' He said it was an odd version of the pot calling the kettle black. It was a reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, arguably the most famous speech in history."

[Poll #1141600]

Where do you get your news?

Comments

[ataralas.livejournal.com]

First, let me define what I think of as media bias: bias is media reporting that preferentially speaks from the perspective of one group over another group, such that the "out" group does not get to speak for themselves, but rather they are spoken about.

So yes, the media is biased, but I tend not to think of it in terms of a liberal-conservative bias. To me, the most prominent media biases are 1) power, 2) class, 3) race, and 4) geography.

Which is to say, I think the media, by and large, have more favorable coverage for powerful, white, rich, (sub)urbanites. The media does not often speak from the perspective of the poor, POC, LBGT folk, people living in rural areas, Muslims, etc. This, of course, gets slightly modified by where the paper/tv station/whatever is located; for example, one would expect a Texas paper to be biased in favor of Texans and against Easterners, whereas I think the media as a whole tend to be biased towards Easterners.

I think that a good proportion of this bias is subconscious; after all, most reporters are at least two of the four categories I listed, and often all four, and I think it takes a long time to learn to throw off those perspectives and embrace the notion of letting others speak to their condition.

As for my news sources, I get most of my news from The New York Times, supplemented by Slate, the BBC, the Economist, and various smaller sources that are usually related to feminist or LBGT news. And I cop to watching CNN and MSNBC for election returns.

And as for that quote from David Kuo, I find it a bit disingenuous. What if the reporter was Jewish? It's the NYT, it's reasonably likely! And while I and most (but not all) of the Christians I know would be able to place the analogy, I wouldn't expect, for example, omster to be able to place it, though she's pretty well read, so she might. And Chomsky is so far to the left that Ralph Nader looks like a neo-con from there, so I'm not surprised at his opinion either.

Which underscores my final point: bias has to be read from a point of view. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't really think of the media as biased, because I, a white, upper-middle class Easterner, had the media speaking from my point of view. Fluff articles in Sunday Styles talking about parental stress in pre-school admissions? Totally reasonable to me, because I knew people who stressed out over this—ignoring, of course the fact that millions of Americans are stressed out over preschool because they can't afford it, because there is no quality preschool in their area, because the hours of the preschool don't match their work hours, etc, etc.

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of this comment. Mainstream media is biased towards whomever pays the bills, and these days it's advertisers, the more powerful PACs and whomever else can throw money or bad publicity their way.

When you put up this question, I thought about something that was asked of Jon Stewart once. Someone asked him if he'd be making fun of a presidency that wasn't a Bush-ite one and he said [and I paraphrase], "Sure! If they screw up, we sure as hell are going to point it out because funny is funny, no matter where it comes from." He also said that even though making fun of the Bush administration is awesome for joke fodder, he'd rather not do it because it means that the administration of the country is a joke and that's not funny at all.

And this may also be sad and indicative of the generational gap, but I get most of my news from whatever people in my LJ or other bloggish groups are upset and/or talking about. I don't look for news stories on my own, but I think I'm relatively informed because people I trust are very relatively informed and since their interests dovetail mine a lot, I know I'm covered for the most part.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I listen to NPR approximately an hour and a half a day (my morning and evening commute); I find it to be about the only unbiased source of information widely available.

Televised news leans heavily to the right, as do most of the major newspapers; to offset that, I frequently read Salon.com, which is unabashedly center-left.

Other regular news/punditry I consume is Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" (left, Bush-critical) and Rude Pundit (center-left, anti-asshole)

About NPR.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Do you listen to Marketplace? When I have a car for work, I listen to NPR nonstop, so I often catch this show. I swear they have taken a SHARP turn to the left in the last year, especially with their series on Sustainability. Your thoughts?

[love2loveher.livejournal.com]

I think that the media is biased toward drama. Seriously. For the most part (I assume we are not talking about Fox News, which I agree with most of the thinking world is biased to the right) they want people to watch - they want people to care, so if news is dramatic they are going to cover it. If there is a dramatic angle, they are going to want to find it and go in that direction.

If one particular sector is more dramatic than the other, they will get the press.

[kielbasa-007.livejournal.com]

Fox is right leaning (at least the national news coverage not what you get for local news)

CBS (60 minutes in particular) is left leaning.

They lean to cater to an audience. Capitalism, not truism.

[omster.livejournal.com]

hey! a shout out to me. *blushes a little.*

first things first: i remember reading that part of the David Kuo book and totally not getting the reference. so good call on that.
now, i read the NY Times, Washington Post, and BBC news websites every day, along with Slate, The Root (Slate's blog on black issues). this is supplemented with The Nation, In These Times (basically a midwest version of The Nation), and a bunch of feminist- and race-issues blogs (Feministing, Racialicious, etc.), and CNN and MSNBC on election nights.

so, obviously, the media to which i subject myself is for the most part either liberal-leaning (NY Times, Washington Post, Slate) or left-leaning (The Nation, In These Times, the other blogs), and i think it's important to distinguish between the two. the two groups tend to have a certain amount of overlap - when they cover the same issues, they often have similar viewpoints - but i notice the difference mostly in what they choose to cover. see a's comment above for examples of what the liberal media covers that the lefty media doesn't; a counterexample would be the cover stories from In These Times last week , which involved Indian land trust and a counterterrorism training program for the FDNY.

there's a lot of very conservative media out there that i just don't watch/read/listen to, very consciously. fox news and all its associated outlets tend to make me want to throw things at my television, which is not a good plan since i'm rather fond of my television. ditto for conservative talk radio and the New York Post (my local conservative newspaper.)

[thereject.livejournal.com]

Actually, media seems to be pretty balanced on the whole in my opinion. You have lefties, righties, and all shades in between. For every Fox News you have a New York Times, for every History Channel you have a Spike TV, etc. etc.

I try not to pay too much attention to Noam. He makes far too many generalizations and unfounded assertions to take seriously.

[marasca.livejournal.com]

I said "other" for the direction of the bias because I think it depends on the paper/venue. Fox and The Washington Times are strongly right leaning, while, say, Alternet and Salon.com are by nature left leaning, and I don't think any of them are ahsamed to admit it. I tend to think that the New York Times, Washington Post, local news stations, etc try to be balanced and often succeed. But then maybe that's because I'd side with John Stewart - Reality has a well known liberal bias. Funny how many times people have mentioned him... Maybe I just don't see the bias because I share their point of view. AP and Reuters consistantly feel even-handed to me.

For news, I pull up news.google.com about once a day (used to be more often). Since the stories it shows are the ones most commonly reported, I figure it gives me a broad overview of of the most important things going on, and lets me skip over little articles that will only be refuted later. I stay away from columnists. I also have Google feed me British news about the U.K. and international stuff. Always funny when something about the U.S. comes up there that U.S. papers aren't reporting on...

Re: About NPR.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I only catch marketplace if I put in a longer than usual session at the gym (they recently pushed it back to 1830 from 1800 to give us an extra half hour of ATC); I haven't noticed any particular slant to the show - the sustainability coverage could be spun either way - "sustainable business practice is good for the world... but it's also good for the bottom line and shareholders."

Honestly, if I had a quibble about MP, it would be the reticence to ask hard questions or shine a bright light on the recent bailouts (you'll notice that particular word is never mentioned) in the wake of the sub-prime securities mess