toldailytopic: Why do you suppose most major media outlets are so overwhelming libera

[Nathon Detroit]

The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for August 6th, 2012 10:40 AM

toldailytopic: Why do you suppose most major media outlets are so overwhelming liberal in their reporting?

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[PureX]

Why do you suppose most major media outlets are so overwhelming liberal in their reporting?

They aren't. It only appears that way to people who spend their time watching, listening to, and believing in media information that is skewed so far to the right that it makes all other medial appear to be skewed to the left.

If you subscribe to right slanted media, you may believe, for example, that all "liberals" hate guns and want to ban them. So when you see ANY report on the main stream media about ANYONE wanting to ban guns, you automatically assume this is a promotion of "liberal" politics.

But in the real world, there are lots of conservatives that support gun control, and most 'liberals" do not in support banning guns. And the same is true for issues such as abortion, taxes, school vouchers, and many others.

But you would never know this if all you pay attention to is the extreme right media, because they paint everything but themselves as the extreme left. But it's not. Mostly, it's just the middle. Most news outlets are trying so hard to be 'middle of the road' that they're banal.

 

[Alate_One]

Reality has a liberal bias (if your perspective is hard enough right).

 

[HisServant]

College.

 

[Town Heretic]

toldailytopic: Why do you suppose most major media outlets are so overwhelming liberal in their reporting?

I don't know that they are, but why should that matter to a conservative if most people get their news from the right wing grist mill that is the Fox News Channel?

 

[The Barbarian]

Reality has a liberal bias (if your perspective is hard enough right).

And we have a winner.

Works the other way, too.

 

[bybee]

toldailytopic: Why do you suppose most major media outlets are so overwhelming liberal in their reporting?

I don't know that they are, but why should that matter to a conservative if most people get their news from the right wing grist mill that is the Fox News Channel?

I would submit that we are forced to tune in to Fox News because there is, in fact, a long standing bias against conservative thought in all the other news purveyors.

 

[woopah]

I would submit that we are forced to tune in to Fox News because there is, in fact, a long standing bias against conservative thought in all the other news purveyors.

but with the internet you have access to all kinds of reporting, nobody needs to rely on fox news. it blows my mind what that network gets away with. I'm sure there must be newspapers or news networks that aren't solely dedicated to one party surely.

 

[annabenedetti]

but with the internet you have access to all kinds of reporting, nobody needs to rely on fox news. it blows my mind what that network gets away with. I'm sure there must be newspapers or news networks that aren't solely dedicated to one party surely.

You watch Fox News? Enough to know what they get away with?

 

[Nathon Detroit]

I don't know that they are

How many times have I warned you about posting on TOL when you are drunk?

No but seriously... you can't be serious? (how's that for a sentence?)

The mainstream media is unapologetically liberal. It's not that as if that's even a big revelation as everyone with half a brain knows it's true. The questions is... why is it so?

 

[annabenedetti]

How about the upcoming cover of Newsweek?


The Wimp Factor: Is he just too insecure to be president?

So who is the author Newsweek chose to give this assignment? Meet special correspondent Michael Tomasky who's also the editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Check out its Mission Statement: The mission of Democracy is to build a vibrant and vital progressivism for the twenty-first century that builds on the movement’s proud history, is true to its central values, and is relevant to present times. [...] [W]e seek breakthrough thinking on the concepts and approaches that respond to the central transformations of our time: the breakdown of the ladder of upward mobility; the promise and problems of an information-based, globalized economy; new national security threats which cross old boundaries and defy old assumptions from jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation to climate change, pandemics, and poverty; and a society where people work and live in new and different ways. [...] Our ambitions are large – as is the scale of the work before us – but we have no doubt that ideas can change the course of our nation. Now is the time to fashion a new progressivism for the twenty-first century, and we welcome all who are willing to join in this conversation. ​ More can be learned about this "journal of ideas" from an editors' message to readers in 2006: Conservative ideas have dominated our national discourse for most of a generation. No more. The world and this nation are changing too fast to allow for ideologues who will take us backward. But neither do they allow for those timid souls who are satisfied with, or cowed into, protecting an ever-smaller inheritance from being whittled away. Instead, we need to rejuvenate progressivism and send it back on the march with bold ambition to change America and the world for the better. ​ So, an editor of a publication that believes conservatives are "ideologues who will take us backward" was given the job of writing a Newsweek cover story about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. ​

​

​

 

[This Charming Manc]

There are just a bunch of people so far to the right they loose any perspective on what is right wing left wing or centrist.

There are many here.

 

[annabenedetti]

There are just a bunch of people so far to the right they loose any perspective on what is right wing left wing or centrist.

There are many here.

So do you think the reverse is true? Are there a bunch of people so far to the left they lose any perspective on what is right, left or centrist?

 

[This Charming Manc]

Yes, but I can only think of one of them who comes here.

Generally here we move from extreme right wing libertarians and social conservatives (but not fascists) through the moderate and centre right to centrists and people on the centre left.

We also have a sprinkling of nut jobs along the way, who I would hate to pin on any political persuasion.

So do you think the reverse is true? Are there a bunch of people so far to the left they lose any perspective on what is right, left or centrist?

 

[woopah]

You watch Fox News? Enough to know what they get away with?

there's a lot of comedic material in fox news. I cant get the actual network here in Britain but there's quite a few funny clips from the network that get posted on Facebook or get shown to me by people. That's not to say that other news channels aren't as bad if not worse than Fox news but it is obviously not a network that can be trusted.

For example, why do they bother claiming they are 'fair and balanced'? They're basically a republican mouth piece. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. It amazes me they still claim that with a straight face

 

[bybee]

there's a lot of comedic material in fox news. I cant get the actual network here in Britain but there's quite a few funny clips from the network that get posted on Facebook or get shown to me by people. That's not to say that other news channels aren't as bad if not worse than Fox news but it is obviously not a network that can be trusted.

For example, why do they bother claiming they are 'fair and balanced'? They're basically a republican mouth piece. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. It amazes me they still claim that with a straight face

There are all kinds of "straight faces" in the media.

 

[annabenedetti]

there's a lot of comedic material in fox news. I cant get the actual network here in Britain but there's quite a few funny clips from the network that get posted on Facebook or get shown to me by people. That's not to say that other news channels aren't as bad if not worse than Fox news but it is obviously not a network that can be trusted.

For example, why do they bother claiming they are 'fair and balanced'? They're basically a republican mouth piece. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. It amazes me they still claim that with a straight face

So you base your opinion not on regular viewership but on funny clips that get posted on facebook.

Okay, thanks, that's what I wanted to find out. :e4e:

 

[Town Heretic]

How many times have I warned you about posting on TOL when you are drunk?

You sir...are a very, very ugly woman! :cheers:

No but seriously... you can't be serious? (how's that for a sentence?)

I liked it, but then, we've already established the question of my condition.

The mainstream media is unapologetically liberal.

I should have been more specific. The media is becoming a roiling and imponderable mass of outlets these days. So unless we're narrowing the consideration to the major networks, CNN and Fox, I'm not sure what the count is...CNN is all over the place. The major network affiliates skew left, to my mind and Fox is darn near a conservative think tank (though the left will doubtlessly find that description oxymoronic---who really listens to them anyway? They don't even listen to each other)...where was I?

:think:

It's not that as if that's even a big revelation as everyone with half a brain knows it's true. The questions is... why is it so?

I think there's a tendency in the old guard media to romanticize the underdog role, to see itself as a guardian of the people against an abuse by the powerful. And the powerful tend to be and have always tended to be the establishment. And the establishment is always conservative, for good and ill.

These days I see more encroachment by corporate citizens, more infortainment and less meat, less serious stabs at guardianship--needed or not, misplaced in its zeal or no--and, in the case of Fox, more of a shepherding (no, the other one).

lain:

There. Now who's buying? That's always the question....either way. :e4e:

 

[PureX]

So do you think the reverse is true? Are there a bunch of people so far to the left they lose any perspective on what is right, left or centrist?

There are a few. Not nearly as many as have accumulated on the far right, however, because the far right makes a LOT of media noise, whereas the far left media is almost unheard of (remember Air America?).

Most of the media outlets are now owned by 5 very large media conglomerates. And they are so 'main-stream' they're nearly invisible. Try counting how many radio stations on your FM dial are playing basically the same 30 year old music, and then note that every one of them are getting their "news" from exactly the same sources. And that's usually right off the wire services.

Also, keep in mind that what is being defined as "right" and "left" now days is becoming more and more the difference between corporate sponsored propaganda and anyone who would dare speak against the corporate propaganda. PBS TV routinely airs discussion and documentary programs that speak against corporate behavior and propaganda, and so is labeled "liberal" when in fact it's news programs are not liberally biased at all. But they are a singular voice against the increasing abuse of corporate money and power, so they get mis-labeled by their opposition.

Public radio, however, I think does have a liberal bias. Yet even that's more a cultural bias than anything else. It's news is actually much better (more comprehensive, and less biased) than on almost any corporate radio station.

 

[annabenedetti]

There are a few. Not nearly as many as have accumulated on the far right, however, because the far right makes a LOT of media noise, whereas the far left media is almost unheard of (remember Air America?).

Almost unheard of?! Media isn't just radio. Talk radio is dominated by conservatives, yes. But why? Because the print and TV media was so predominantly liberal in the years before the internet. The internet has evened the playing field. You've got Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Democrat Underground, etc. etc. as counter to a similar number of conservative sites.