I've often made the case that it's a false equivalency to equate certain 'liberal' news sources with certain 'right-wing' news sources. It's something that's an easy, lazy claim to make - 'two sides of the same coin, equally bad'. The question is, how accurate a claim is it? Not much at all, is my position generally.
It's not an easy issue to discuss, because these sources consist of thousands and thousand of bite-sized stories and segments that it's next to imppossible to discuss without simply making blanket assertions. How do you compare 10,000 samples from one to 10,000 samples of another in a post? That would be a long post even for one of my informational posts.
Some groups try. They have teams of people analyze massive amounts of coverage and create some sort of measuring system and report the results. But most people simply throw out the results they don't like with a claim that the study was biased, no need to discuss it further.
One approach I have taken is to challenge someone on this using a 'random daily sample'.
The way it works is, plan on the next day you will report all the main stories each source reports, and analyze those more carefully for 'bias' and other flaws to compare them.
You might get, say, 15 stories from each giving a good snapshot - it's not 'conclusive' but helps show differences. IMO, those tests have always supported my position.
Earlier today, Charles made a comment about Democratic Underground. The comment isn't important - it was a generic attack without basis - but it raised a question about them.
Now, I haven't looked at DU in over a year, to dismiss any 'substance' to that part of it. My recollection is that they use user submissions, which can be of highly varying quality.
In other words there will be some good stuff and some terrible crap - it might have its good uses, but needs a big grain of salt.
But I wondered, how good or bad is it again? So I checked it tonight. It would be suitable for a 'random sampling' of stories it's reporting, to get a sense of the quality.
Is it accurate to use it as the symbol of out of control liberal low quality reporting?
Doing the random check, it looks like it has two main things - a series of user written threads, and a series of links to other sources (e.g., Huffington Post, NY Times, Wash. Post).
User threads appear to have three categories, 'trending now, 'greatest threads', and 'left column'. I'm not sure exactly what this means but I'd guess it's reporting recent thread, threads that have had the highest user ratings, and columns from some sort of established users/writers.
Let's take a sample by looking at each of the main stories.
I tend to dismiss the user items as very unreliable, so looking at the links:
"Ammunition shortage hits Minn. police departments"
This one doesn't seem to have much significance - one department low on ammo.
"Weiners Wife Didnt Disclose Consulting Work She Did While Serving in State Dept"
This is a NY Times piece that appears pretty straightforward - reporting that one of Hillary Clinton's top aides as Secretary of State was Anthony Weiner's wife (I didn't know that), and she had outside work with firms such as a business consulting firm run by a former Bill Clinton aide for firms such as Coca-Cola. The newsy part is that his run for mayor exposed these activities that were not reported previously on financical disclosure forms.
Seems like a credible start of a story that, contrary to the stereotype of DU as some sort of mindless and dishonest left-wing proapganda site, is critical of Democrats.
I hadn't seen the story anywhere else.
"IRS stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation"
Washington Post story that reports that the IRS approved Obama's group in only 34 days while taking up to several months and sometimes over a year for some right-wing groups.
I've seen similar reporting, but this adds some details. Another story negative for Obama.
"Senate group hopes bipartisan support will help immigration bill"
Kind of a non-story about efforts to get Sen. Hatch's (R) vote for the immigration bill.
"New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis"
Non-partisan historical story about newly released info showing that a NATO training exercise about a nuclear alert led to actual high alert on both sides of the cold war.
"Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims"
CBS report, this one was new for me. I knew that the White House e-mails had been mis-reported by NBC Friday making them look worse for the White House than had been reported, and that by Monday the White House had responded by releasing the actual e-mails, showing that presidential politics didn't play a role and the reported e-mail was not accurate - I saw a claim ABC had wrongly reported a 'summary' as exact quotes.
This story changes that. Republicans reportedly received the actual e-mails months ago, and the inaccurate versions were released by Republicans Friday.
This suggests that Republicans themselves altered the e-mail to make them look worse for the White House than they were.
If there's any consistency about 'scandal' here, the target should move to Republicans for this to investigate how they came to falsify the documents and release them.
That's legitimate 'liberal' reporting, linking a CBS report about what appears to be a real 'Republican scandal'.
"Video shows Islamist rebels executing 11 Syrian soldiers"
Non-controversial story about an event in the Syrian conflict.
"Boise man arrested as part of federal terrorism investigation "
Non-controversial story about man teaching others to make pipe bombs.
"Another Obama Scandal? Nope GOP Rep Claims Responsibility For AP Surveillance"
Report about a Republican Congressman's saying that the Justice Department's investigation that viewed AP phone records was pretty much what his party demanded.
Think back a year ago. We had the attorney general and other Department of Justice employees, and we grilled them over national security leaks. And here they are doing what we asked them to do, investigate the leak.
Seems like valid reporting of something that makes this less of an 'Obama scandal'.
OK, enough samples. They go on in the same vein - seem like appropriate stories.
Finally on the right there are links to various video clips of 'liberal' interest - samples are "China protests against chemical plant", a piece on tar sands oil, a piece discussing Obama's attacking the 2009 shield law bill, a piece about the AP leak investigation asking "How far will Obama go to crack down on leaks" (he has set records for leak prosecutions), a piece by Pulitzer-Prize winning writer David Cay Johnston on the topic of "David Cay Johnston: Is Obama Administration Worse Than Bush on Press Freedoms?"
Again - not that looks terribly inappropriate there.
Here is the front page of users' "greatest threads":
"Greatest Threads
Watching a 'scandal' evaporate before our very eyes 127 recs : By ProSense
Co-chairmen of independent Benghazi review blow the whistle on Darrell Issa 119 recs : By kpete
Rep Cohen D-TN confronts AG Holder on Don Siegelman's case 116 recs : By laserhaas
Remember that time Occupy was examined by The Government & No One Gave A Shit? 105 recs : By kpete
Oh shite Martin Bashir went there 104 recs : By malaise"
The second thread is about the authors of the Benghazi investigation saying Darrell Issa lied when he said they refused to testify before his committee.
I saw a Sunday news show where Issa and Pickering were side by side, Issa made that charge and Pickering said it was false, he'd always wanted to testify and was told that a majority of the committee had opposed his appearing. This fits with Republicans denying requests of Democrats for militar officials to testify why they did not send assistance.
The third thread - it's a coincidence it's about Don Siegelman, which I started a thread on today, I had not seen DU at the time.
It looks like a minor story that a Congressman raised the issue to Eric Holder at a hearing.
The fourth is about the hypocrisy of Bush using the IRS for partisan attacks and that not getting any concern.
The fifth is about Eric Holder's criticisms of Darrell Issa - their hearing conflict.
OK, this was a long and tedious review.
But I think it's useful to put a bit of facts and reality up against the assumptions and caricatures that some have.
I do not consider DU a 'credible source' on its face - the user threads are way too volatile for that. I expect there will sometimes be embarrasing threads there.
But it seems like a pretty harmless and useful collection of stories of interest to liberals - including in these samples what seems like almost as many critical of Democrats as in favor.
It does not appear comparable to the right-wing sites, again debunking the false equivalency. We could make it a comparison, but the other side has been done, point made.
If anyone wants to argue for DU being a lot worse generally - with better evidence than some anecdotes of bad user threads occassionally - or provide any evidence based argument supporting the equivalency of left and right media, feel free. It's been asked for many times and never provided. People with that position - and this is not referring to Charles - seem quick to make attacks and claims about it, but have no interest in actual evidence and discussion.
As tedious as this sort of review is, it seems helpful as one of the only ways to help get to a more accurate answer from all the opinions.
It's not an easy issue to discuss, because these sources consist of thousands and thousand of bite-sized stories and segments that it's next to imppossible to discuss without simply making blanket assertions. How do you compare 10,000 samples from one to 10,000 samples of another in a post? That would be a long post even for one of my informational posts.
Some groups try. They have teams of people analyze massive amounts of coverage and create some sort of measuring system and report the results. But most people simply throw out the results they don't like with a claim that the study was biased, no need to discuss it further.
One approach I have taken is to challenge someone on this using a 'random daily sample'.
The way it works is, plan on the next day you will report all the main stories each source reports, and analyze those more carefully for 'bias' and other flaws to compare them.
You might get, say, 15 stories from each giving a good snapshot - it's not 'conclusive' but helps show differences. IMO, those tests have always supported my position.
Earlier today, Charles made a comment about Democratic Underground. The comment isn't important - it was a generic attack without basis - but it raised a question about them.
Now, I haven't looked at DU in over a year, to dismiss any 'substance' to that part of it. My recollection is that they use user submissions, which can be of highly varying quality.
In other words there will be some good stuff and some terrible crap - it might have its good uses, but needs a big grain of salt.
But I wondered, how good or bad is it again? So I checked it tonight. It would be suitable for a 'random sampling' of stories it's reporting, to get a sense of the quality.
Is it accurate to use it as the symbol of out of control liberal low quality reporting?
Doing the random check, it looks like it has two main things - a series of user written threads, and a series of links to other sources (e.g., Huffington Post, NY Times, Wash. Post).
User threads appear to have three categories, 'trending now, 'greatest threads', and 'left column'. I'm not sure exactly what this means but I'd guess it's reporting recent thread, threads that have had the highest user ratings, and columns from some sort of established users/writers.
Let's take a sample by looking at each of the main stories.
I tend to dismiss the user items as very unreliable, so looking at the links:
"Ammunition shortage hits Minn. police departments"
This one doesn't seem to have much significance - one department low on ammo.
"Weiners Wife Didnt Disclose Consulting Work She Did While Serving in State Dept"
This is a NY Times piece that appears pretty straightforward - reporting that one of Hillary Clinton's top aides as Secretary of State was Anthony Weiner's wife (I didn't know that), and she had outside work with firms such as a business consulting firm run by a former Bill Clinton aide for firms such as Coca-Cola. The newsy part is that his run for mayor exposed these activities that were not reported previously on financical disclosure forms.
Seems like a credible start of a story that, contrary to the stereotype of DU as some sort of mindless and dishonest left-wing proapganda site, is critical of Democrats.
I hadn't seen the story anywhere else.
"IRS stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation"
Washington Post story that reports that the IRS approved Obama's group in only 34 days while taking up to several months and sometimes over a year for some right-wing groups.
I've seen similar reporting, but this adds some details. Another story negative for Obama.
"Senate group hopes bipartisan support will help immigration bill"
Kind of a non-story about efforts to get Sen. Hatch's (R) vote for the immigration bill.
"New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis"
Non-partisan historical story about newly released info showing that a NATO training exercise about a nuclear alert led to actual high alert on both sides of the cold war.
"Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims"
CBS report, this one was new for me. I knew that the White House e-mails had been mis-reported by NBC Friday making them look worse for the White House than had been reported, and that by Monday the White House had responded by releasing the actual e-mails, showing that presidential politics didn't play a role and the reported e-mail was not accurate - I saw a claim ABC had wrongly reported a 'summary' as exact quotes.
This story changes that. Republicans reportedly received the actual e-mails months ago, and the inaccurate versions were released by Republicans Friday.
This suggests that Republicans themselves altered the e-mail to make them look worse for the White House than they were.
If there's any consistency about 'scandal' here, the target should move to Republicans for this to investigate how they came to falsify the documents and release them.
That's legitimate 'liberal' reporting, linking a CBS report about what appears to be a real 'Republican scandal'.
"Video shows Islamist rebels executing 11 Syrian soldiers"
Non-controversial story about an event in the Syrian conflict.
"Boise man arrested as part of federal terrorism investigation "
Non-controversial story about man teaching others to make pipe bombs.
"Another Obama Scandal? Nope GOP Rep Claims Responsibility For AP Surveillance"
Report about a Republican Congressman's saying that the Justice Department's investigation that viewed AP phone records was pretty much what his party demanded.
Think back a year ago. We had the attorney general and other Department of Justice employees, and we grilled them over national security leaks. And here they are doing what we asked them to do, investigate the leak.
Seems like valid reporting of something that makes this less of an 'Obama scandal'.
OK, enough samples. They go on in the same vein - seem like appropriate stories.
Finally on the right there are links to various video clips of 'liberal' interest - samples are "China protests against chemical plant", a piece on tar sands oil, a piece discussing Obama's attacking the 2009 shield law bill, a piece about the AP leak investigation asking "How far will Obama go to crack down on leaks" (he has set records for leak prosecutions), a piece by Pulitzer-Prize winning writer David Cay Johnston on the topic of "David Cay Johnston: Is Obama Administration Worse Than Bush on Press Freedoms?"
Again - not that looks terribly inappropriate there.
Here is the front page of users' "greatest threads":
"Greatest Threads
Watching a 'scandal' evaporate before our very eyes 127 recs : By ProSense
Co-chairmen of independent Benghazi review blow the whistle on Darrell Issa 119 recs : By kpete
Rep Cohen D-TN confronts AG Holder on Don Siegelman's case 116 recs : By laserhaas
Remember that time Occupy was examined by The Government & No One Gave A Shit? 105 recs : By kpete
Oh shite Martin Bashir went there 104 recs : By malaise"
The second thread is about the authors of the Benghazi investigation saying Darrell Issa lied when he said they refused to testify before his committee.
I saw a Sunday news show where Issa and Pickering were side by side, Issa made that charge and Pickering said it was false, he'd always wanted to testify and was told that a majority of the committee had opposed his appearing. This fits with Republicans denying requests of Democrats for militar officials to testify why they did not send assistance.
The third thread - it's a coincidence it's about Don Siegelman, which I started a thread on today, I had not seen DU at the time.
It looks like a minor story that a Congressman raised the issue to Eric Holder at a hearing.
The fourth is about the hypocrisy of Bush using the IRS for partisan attacks and that not getting any concern.
The fifth is about Eric Holder's criticisms of Darrell Issa - their hearing conflict.
OK, this was a long and tedious review.
But I think it's useful to put a bit of facts and reality up against the assumptions and caricatures that some have.
I do not consider DU a 'credible source' on its face - the user threads are way too volatile for that. I expect there will sometimes be embarrasing threads there.
But it seems like a pretty harmless and useful collection of stories of interest to liberals - including in these samples what seems like almost as many critical of Democrats as in favor.
It does not appear comparable to the right-wing sites, again debunking the false equivalency. We could make it a comparison, but the other side has been done, point made.
If anyone wants to argue for DU being a lot worse generally - with better evidence than some anecdotes of bad user threads occassionally - or provide any evidence based argument supporting the equivalency of left and right media, feel free. It's been asked for many times and never provided. People with that position - and this is not referring to Charles - seem quick to make attacks and claims about it, but have no interest in actual evidence and discussion.
As tedious as this sort of review is, it seems helpful as one of the only ways to help get to a more accurate answer from all the opinions.
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