Comments on: To live and die by the news…

By: Top posts in October | Martyholman.com

Top posts in October | Martyholman.com — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:16:16 +0000

[...] 5. Happy Columbus Day 4. This week @ Catalyst 3. Eating Online 2. Emotions 1. To live and die by the news [...]

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:00:44 +0000

I think you’d find that I’m a reasonable man, Jeff.

By: jeff

jeff — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:29:06 +0000

I’m 100% with you Katie. You put some of my thoughts much more succintly.

And wow, Clay. I’m not sure that we’ve ever agreed before. What an interesting feeling.

The other thought I’ll throw out: The media is market driven. People have fortunes tied up into it. I think that expecting most of these people to sacrfice market share to advance their idealogy is a bit niave. We might see individual reporters who are an exception to this rule. But they still exist within the culture created and funded by the guys whose money is on the line based on whether or not they create advertising revenue.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:52:26 +0000

I have a couple things to add here:

1. We need more information on what counts as a negative story.
2. We need to know the political leaning of the source.
3. I like this resource as a nonpartisan group: http://factcheck.org/

By: Eric Mill

Eric Mill — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:22:56 +0000

I’m just going to go out on my own limb here and say that Fox News is targeted towards conservatives. Maybe that’s because other networks are liberal because of a higher rate of liberal commentators and reporters, and they see an ignored segment of the population — but it’s obvious. I’m not even commenting on whether that’s a good thing or bad thing, just that it’s a network that wants to give conservatives a “home” for news, where they don’t have to feel skeptical of everything they hear.

I get pretty beat up by my fellow liberals when I suggest that CNN has its own bias, so I’m not saying this defensiveness is unique to the right.

But CNN, ABC, whatever, they don’t produce headlines like “Terrorist Fist Pump” or “Obama’s Baby Mama”. Those kinds of things, though the brainchild of individual reporters, don’t make it to air. That’s low, that’s tabloid. Fox News has a different culture, and in my opinion, an inferior one for news.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:34:54 +0000

I have two things to quotes to offer to this discussion:

“There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
- Mark Twain

“Fox News is the sleazy porn of news shows.”
- Ian Ferguson

By: Clay

Clay — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:51:39 +0000

I’ll chime in with something here that I’m sure will get me tons of hate mail. Foxnews is the ONLY “fair and balanced” news anywhere. Period. Now before you get out your pitchforks allow me to explain. I completely agree with Jeff’s comments above. EVERYONE has a bias of some sort. It’s called your worldview. As a human being, journalist or not, you simply are not capable of looking at something and perceiving it in a given way outside of your worldview. How you perceive it impacts the subtleties of how you relay that information to other human beings (sometimes called reporting). The reason that Foxnews is the only fair and balanced news is that they are the ONLY news network that admits that bias up front and attempts to deal with it in the only two reasonable ways possible. They either tell you what you’re getting up front (Bill O’Reily, Neil Cavuto, etc.) or they have people present from both sides with admitted biases discussing the issue at hand (Hannity and Colmes, etc). Does anyone here honestly believe that Chris “Obama sends a shiver up my leg” Matthews isn’t a liberal and in the tank for Obama? But is that admitted and dealt with or hidden and allowed to influence the coverage? Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, the list goes on. WE know they’re liberals. THEY know they’re liberals. But we all play this game like somehow that magically doesn’t matter because of their “journalistic integrity”. As a hard core conservative, I have no problem listening to a liberal news source as long as their honest about their worldview up front. And I think a lot of liberals feel the same about conservatives news (just listen to the number of liberals that call in to Limbaugh or Beck or Hannity). I think what we’re ALL sick of is the disingenuous piety and condescension by those who lack the willingness to first admit their own bias.

By: Marty Holman

Marty Holman — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:09:37 +0000

Good points all. Jeff, I’m fascinated by your “subtle” comment. I think you’re correct, and believe that is the issue at hand. We talked the other day about SNL (which I have been a big fan of in the past) and the recent debates.
It was subtle to have McCain make fun of himself the whole time and to not make any jokes whatsoever about Obama, and I think it does make an impact, as you were saying.
All I can do about it is watch what I want to watch and turn off what I don’t.
I would like someone to respond to this though: Before Fox (and we all saw the numbers above), no liberals complained about media bias against them.
And now, Fox News appears and walaa, “they are clearly biased” says every liberal. Could it be this easy? That everyone of the major media outlets in our culture has a liberal slant except for Fox News?

By: Darren

Darren — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:08:04 +0000

That’s weird, I don’t remember attacking Fox news. I remember looking at statistics that show Fox giving equal coverage time to two candidates and other news stations not doing that and saying ‘maybe their is more negative things about McCain going on which would show Fox’s conservative leanings (not giving them more coverage) more so than illustrating the liberal leanings of other channels.’

What I was saying was that the stats clearly DO NOT speak for themselves because it only talks about the reporting. It doesn’t talk about the subject matter being reported. That is the entire point of what I was saying, in that that chart says their is a differnece between Fox and the others, but maybe Fox is the biased one and the others are impartial IF McCain is objectively doing negative things.

“Equal doesn’t always mean balanced or fair”
This is the story of the man who worked an entire day and earned a piece of silver versus the guy that came in the last hour to pick grapes and the owner gave him a single piece of silver also. They earned equal amounts, but arguments could be made as to what was ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’. Of course you could say it is fair cause the vineyard owner can do whatever the crap he wants to, that doesn’t make up for the fact that both workers are making a different wage.

Fox News gives both candidates equal air time in a negative light. You could say that is fair. But if one is actually being more negative than maybe treating them as equal isn’t balanced after all.

And as for Obama and his ex crazy pastor, I can’t believe that isn’t a bigger deal to people. I mean that was a long time ago back when I was at Finders, but I couldn’t believe that having your former pastor hate on America or whatever he was doing wasn’t a deathblow. The media pretty much let it slide. Biased? Yes.

And I watched news all the time up until 2 weeks ago including the debates and the SNL commentary.

SO THERE!!

Also, I already know how you’re voting Marty, cause you told me. You’re voting to live different in ’08.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:57:30 +0000

It’s interesting dilemna, the question of how far we’re willing to go on the question of “balanced doesn’t always mean balanced and fair.”
The whole idea of an unbiased media is rooted in a modern paradigm where facts are meaningful divorced from context; the possibility of an unbiased media is rooted in the belief that we have access to brute facts about the universe.
If it turns out that the post modernists are correct, that we don’t have truth is necessarily interpreted, than I think that the whole way we do journalism will transform.

I spent a couple minutes poking around the links for the source. I saw that the study was referenced but didn’t see a discussion of the studies methedology or who did and funded the study.
I’m interested in who determined what counts as a negative story and how they counted it.
A thing I’ve begun to notice on both sides is that the hardest to quantify can be the most persuasive: not just expressions but also subtle tweaks of words. For example if I said “McCain says that…” It has a very different effect than me saying “Mccain’s claim is…” In the first, I’ve given the listener no reason to doubt him, in the second I have.
This sword most definitely cuts in two directions. It’s human nature not to notice when it’s working for you. So I’m sure there’s plenty of legitimate subtle manipulations against McCain. However, one I do notice that drives me crazy is the use of Obama’s full name.
I honestly don’t even know what John Mccain’s middle name is. Yet blogs and radio commentators particularly frequently refer to him as “Barack Hussien Obama”… subtley drawing our minds to the connections between the candidate and his namesake, the former dictator of Iraq. I’ve actually even seem his referred to as “BO” in places which is just about the most childish school yard prank I can think of.
Again, I know that this stuff goes on in both directions. I think it’s these subtle things, though, that would be so hard to measure, that have the greatest influence on people.