For all the talk I hear about the major media outlets being unbiased, I'm incredibly more likely to hear about someone blowing up in Iraq than to hear about rebuilding efforts. Maybe it's the media's natural gravitation to bad news. Maybe it's a liberal bias. Either way, kudos to The Wall Street Journal for publishing this piece. It's nice to hear, in the words of Paul Harvey, "the rest of the story" for a change.
Note: This piece is pretty long, but it's thorough and the source material is linked.
CatYourAss makes and interesting point.
The media, in general, would have us believe that only their channel is unbiased. The truth is they are all biased, our agreement to their statement is dependant on whether or not our bias matches theirs.
Side note:
Has anyone else noticed that nearly everything in the news is bad, tragic, or threatening? "Do you drink water?, well a recent study shows that drinking water could kill you! That story next.. [cut to commercial]" Then we see commercial's for skin care, beautification products, health products, and the latest and greatest water filtration device. It seems like they try to scare the hell out of us, then force feed us products that will make us feel better about ourselves and life in general. "Scare them and they will consume". I don't watch TV anymore, I'd rather live in the dark and get my news from slashdot
Here's a theory: The media's tendency to report bad news contributes (if it isn't the cause) to a liberal bias. Currently, the Democratic party is the opposition party. Therefore, when the current administration messes up, it's good news for Democrats. That makes bad news (beheadings, bombings, assassinations, torture, poor administration of funds in Iraq) good news when looked at from the perspective of Democrats' ability to gain political control. In essence, if your only wish is to elect Democrats (or to get Bush out of office), you're rooting against the U.S. in just about everything from the economy to the war on terror to the war in Iraq. Since the media tends to report bad news, it tends to help political prospects of Democrats.
On a side note, while the nuclear weapon discovery story is interesting, its source is a local paper in Iraq. I would rather wait until we get some confirmation from a more established source (or from Iraqi, U.N., or U.S. authorities) before we presume the story to be true.
Joined: Thu 02-06-2003 12:57AM Posts: 124 Location: Way the hell away from Rolla
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It is refreahing to read that article of good news in Iraq, but I think all the bad news in the media isn't entirely politically motivated. The fact is that bad news sells, they get higher ratings when they report bad news and lower ratings when they report good news. This is and always has been how the press works in any given situation. I'm not saying that the media has no political motivation to report bad news; I just think there are other motivations behind it as well.
This -- http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-05-30-1.html -- is a good column by Orson Scott Card (yes, the one who wrote Ender's Game) on media bias. Some of the column is a defence of FoxNews, but a lot of it shows specific ways that the media has bias in "impartial" coverage. His examples are specific and from only one issue from one paper, but look at the things he points out and look for them in coverage by Reuters, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, CNN, and network news.
Here -- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1164838/posts -- is an article about a study done that attempted to find an objective measure of media bias. The study itself is here -- http://www.yale.edu/isps/seminars/ameri ... eclose.pdf . In case you hate clicking blue words and reading, the study found that the Drudge Report and FoxNews Special Report were much more centrist than the rest of the major media outlets, including the network news stations. The reasons for the bias (read: whether it's on purpose or not) are harder to define and quantify, but I think the media as a whole is significantly more liberal than the average American. And it doesn't take a study for you to see how liberal or conservative a paper or news station is; just look at the opinions sections and talk shows and figure it out on your own.
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