Interesting view of what happened to the Fox Presidential debate

[imported_Equinox]

Keep in mind that they have files that are a foot thick on just about every reporter that asks them questions, know the strategies that the reporters use to try to dig out information, and have entire legions that specifically do nothing but figure out the best way to "send a message".

Is that really what our forefathers intended? I honestly don't think so. That is why a lot of us have become to distrustful of politician's and corporations - the spin goes so deep, it isn't clear what *anyone* said 5 minutes after they said it, even though you heard it yourself. It doesn't even matter, either, because you will have 12 different people analyze what is said, explaining what they *think* was said, and it turns out that they are part of the PR camp making sure that what you heard is what they wanted you to hear, even though that might not be what is *was* actually said.

It has always been this way to some degree, but it has gotten to the point where it is *too* much. If you need to sanitize and market your statements that way, there is something wrong. Good ideas don't need to be marketed that badly, and sometimes the ugly truth ... is ugly.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
I think the more interesting point is that folks like ProfJohn are the ones who fuel this kind of partisan cat fighting over silly issues like this. He's way more interested in scoring political points than in real debate or real issues

Rain, don?t you find it ironic that you are making a comment like that in a thread that is about Democrats AVOIDING a chance to engage in a real debate?

By avoiding a debate on Fox they are pandering to the FAR left crowd who go around posting crap like ?Murdoch has PUBLICALLY admitted that his network is a shill for the administration?

In the long run such a strategy could back fire on them. FOX is by far the most watched of the news networks and therefore the Democrats are walking away from the largest audience they will ever get pre-general election. Fox news is the fourth highest ranked CABLE channel, only USA. TNT and TBS get higher overall ratings than FOX.
So the Democrats are walking away from the largest audience available in order to appear on? ?

 

[Mxylplyx]

Originally posted by: wetech

Originally posted by: Mxylplyx

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Shivetya

It would seem that the Democratic activists are going to do to their party what the Republican activists have been doing to theirs.

Taking it to such an extreme that the mainstream voters are left out.

Its not about getting the message across, its about who controls the message and what the message is.

Either play by their rules or you cannot play, worse you will be villified.

Politics like this should show Americas why we need alternative parties but I am afraid this will never happen as too many are apathetic to politics or are so jaded they can never consider the other side as having a positive influence.

Yes, you can thank your fellow Republicans for creating this mess of a bed we are all lying in. At least you are admitting the error of your ways.

Dave, I could easily write a script that would replace you in about 5 minutes. You have the same canned response for everything.

Actually, it only took about 3 minutes to write:

Sub Dave_Speak(PosterName As String)
Dim Response As String
Dim i As Integer

Randomize
i = Int((4 * Rnd + 1))
Select Case i
Case 1
Response = PosterName & " you're a shill. How much are you being paid?"
Case 2
Response = PosterName & " you're an apologist."
Case 3
Response = "Just like your Republican heros."
Case 4
Response = "Drive for FIVE!!!!!"
End Select
MsgBox (Response)
End Sub

bwahahahaha. EXCELLENT!!

 

[BMW540I6speed]

EXman said:

As well it should be since you have the other dinosaurs and most all print media... plus many many of the cable outlets as well. At least they aren't trying too fool you like the libbo press's Real news.
Gimmie a break niave libby.

Laughable...

Some folks feel the need to strike a "reasonable" pose and say stuff like, "well, the media has a liberal bias" or "it had one at some time". It always makes me wonder when that might have been.

Was it during WWI, when they went along with the total censorship of anti-war views? Or the post-WWI Red Scare, which the media was instrumental in promoting, and which vanished almost overnight when it vanished from the pages of the papers?

Was it during the Great Depression, when the Literary Digest predicted FDR's defeat in the 1936 elections? (They were right, he lost, Maine and Vermont.) Was it during the McCarthy Era, when they printed McCarthy's wild accusations, and never asked to see the "list of names" he waved above his head, which later turned out to have been a blank sheet of paper?

Was it during the Civil Rights Movement, when a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. never made the New York Times front page? Was it any time since second wave feminism first appeared, when feminism has been repeatedly reported dead every four or five years or so? Was it during the 15-year long "global warming debate" when not one peer reviewed article was published on the "skeptics" side of the debate?

When, exactly, was this period of liberal media bias, when the majority of American papers have endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in every election since the Great Depression, except for 1964?

Yes, indeed, there is an incredible complexity of causes at work influencing the media. But the end result is overhwelmingly biased in one direction only, while reality itself is biased just the other way.

Maybe I have Forgotten Examples of Media Stampedes Favoring Liberalism?

Yes, there are lots of arguments that I know and respect (though I do not find them sufficiently explanatory) that the major news media have neither a liberal nor a right wing bias, but a ______ bias. (Insert phrase - scandal, flashy storry, gossipy...)

But, if there's no systematic pattern of the news media favoring the politics of the general elite & right wing (you know, the opposite at least of old-fashioned definitions of 'the left'), let's see those counter-examples.

Let's see those huge, major examples of the news media coverage which following their not-conservative but ______ bias demonstrated in huge coverage errors or wrong analysis & punditry which ended up backing a liberal or leftist perspective.

Where are they?

Surely if there are not-conservative problems of ______ bias, there should be equal numbers of troubling coverage which favored liberal or leftist principles as they have conservative principles.

Maybe I just forgot them.

Maybe there are lots of examples where the news media overwhelmingly followed an unjustified story line and all ended up opposing some proposed US hawkish foreign policy, and I forgot it.

Or where they all stampeded together using hacked up data and statistics to endorse greater equity in tax or assistance policies for poor and working folk.

Or where the news media all mindlessly repeated union talking points unsupported by facts to oppose some proposed international trade agreement.

I could just have a bad memory.

I know that there are some people who interpret this solely as a question of favoring Republicans or Democrats, but that's certainly not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for evidence of when these giant news media mistakes we're complaining about happened to favor actual liberal or leftist causes.

A random error falls in different directions with equal probability.

All my life I've watched the major news media overwhelmingly side with the strong, the wealthy, the hawkish (especially in foreign policy), with occasional and admirable examples where the good journalists in their midst were actually highlighted.

Or so I think. Maybe I forget all the examples where those stampeding herd media mentalities favored the weak, the ordinary working folks, the doves...

I read the press from other countries. There are conservative papers, there are socialist party papers, there are anti-government papers, there are pro-government papers; the readers and population understand this.

The readers seem pretty clear that the different sources have different perspectives & emphases, and few people miss the fact that there can be both great and awful journalism in any of those. But then, in other countries the idea that news media might have noticeable (though non-simplistic) differences in outlook based on their owners & controllers is not seen as some sort of failure of sophisticated analysis.

Maybe I'm delving into semantics here, but isn't the entire notion of a liberal bias in the media about the clearest example of an oxymoron there is? I mean, bias and liberal mean the exact opposite thing! At times, a case might be made for a left wing bias, or a bias towards the Democratic Party's point of view, but a liberal bias is impossible.

For that matter, just thinking of the definition of "liberal," it seems like liberal is what the media should be striving for: Broad-minded, lacking in prejudice or bias, listening to all views, etc.

But, lets go for the obvious, you know the pantie sniffing, the blue dress, the dead Foster, the ten year investigation that found nothing, the frenzy into Iraq, ignoring Abramoff, and, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

 

[Fern]

When, exactly, was this period of liberal media bias, when the majority of American papers have endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in every election since the Great Depression, except for 1964?

NYT Endores Kerry

NYT Endorses Michael Dukakis

Endorses Clinton

I could go on & on etc

Maybe I have Forgotten Examples of Media Stampedes Favoring Liberalism?

Yes, you have. The media (outside of the South perhaps) championed civil rights back in the day ('60s etc)

They champion other liberal issues today: Abortion & Gay Rights etc.

Maybe I forget all the examples where those stampeding herd media mentalities favored the weak, the ordinary working folks, the doves...

Yes, you've forgotten. The media has done much for poorer people, highlighting unequal income distribution, pro-welfare, pro-education.

Google media bias, or look up Bernard Goldberg.

You'll find surveys that demonstrate the vast majority of jounalist think of themselves as and/or are registered as Democrats.

You ever heard of Dan Rather? etc.

Fern

 

[BMW540I6speed]

Fern said:

NYT Endores Kerry

NYT Endorses Michael Dukakis

Endorses Clinton

I could go on & on etc

You linked to "one" news source "three" times when I said "majority". Going, "go on & on" will not "prove" a "liberal" bias of the press, its an absurd accusation

Yes, you have. The media (outside of the South perhaps) championed civil rights back in the day ('60s etc)

They champion other liberal issues today: Abortion & Gay Rights etc.

"championed" is quite opined, when used to describe issues that are not just "liberal" ones. In particular the two you just mentioned. Abortion & gay rights are also so called "championed" by some conservitives, libertarians & independents alike.

You'll find surveys that demonstrate the vast majority of jounalist think of themselves as and/or are registered as Democrats.

You ever heard of Dan Rather? etc.

What they are registered as and what they write are not comparable when corporate bosses are just trying to make their stockholders happy...bring in the bucks.They do exactly what they are paid to do, serve the interests of the shareholders and their sponsors. This is part pf the problem.

Dan Rather is a liberal?. Or is he just "labled" as such because he reported on "sketchy" thruthiness. You can say this about most modern day journalists.

Maybe he wasn't "towing" the party line...instant "libby" label and destruction of character.

Another item to have added is that for most journalists, the pay is crap. There are far too many graduates looking for journalism jobs, taking internships and lousy pay in small time publications, acting as stringers and free-lancers, precariously employed from time-to-time, notorious for free-loading among friends and former classmates.

Contrast this with the Washington correspondent ? a six figure salary, a contract, a chance of membership of the punditocracy, an occasional State Dinner, cocktail parties, paid appearances on TV round tables, etc., etc., able to buy their own drink (if rarely required to.)

The economic and lifestyle gap is yawning, huge, between the people who were assigned to Washington bureaus and their compatriots in journalism.

Screw-up enough and all of this could be taken away.

Play ball? and you could be David Gergen; but don?t and you could be Dan Rather ? career ruined to save CBS.

The whole ?careerist? environment in Federal Washington and for that matter New York and LA ? where what matters is not to be a loser, to find coattails to ride to being a winner (and like Condi Rice, stab the mentor in the back at the right strategic moment to ingratiate oneself with another.)

In that environment principles are for losers, professionalism feigned as convincingly as possible, but always compromised to personal success. It's consistently astonishing to find how someone known to be intelligent, with a good analytical mind, comes to DC, finds a sponsor, and suddenly starts hawking that sponsors Koolaid.

Too many U.S. celebrity news stars are intellectual lightweights who got where they are because they have nice hair, nice legs, the right parents and the right connections, etc.

The impact of the growth of the media conglomerate, with interests in everything from newspapers, to movie production, cable TV, radio, TV, satellites, etc., etc. Take a hard look at some of these companies NBC Universal (GE+ Vivendi), CBS (until 2005 part of Viacom), AOL TimeWarner, Disney-ABC. The New York Times group owns TV and radio stations part of a few cable channels and the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Park; the Washington Post owns TV, cable and even the Kaplan company.

Finally, we have News International (aka Fox), which owns Sky Broadcasting, the London Times and the Sun tabloid, etc. etc. etc. and then ClearChannel Broadcasting.

In practical terms this is a big problem ? first, most of the major news operations are owned by organisations for which they are a minor part of their revenues ? some have news operations only because they are required to radio and TV.

Second, all of these conglomerates are massively vulnerable to regulatory displeasure in areas that often have nothing to do with News. Cable, TV and radio, and especially satellite broadcasting are heavily regulated, by the FCC, but also by antitrust rules effecting mergers, as well as rules relating to ownership of TV+radio+newspapers in single markets.

One final point :

It is hard to ignore the malign influence of Fox. But both journalists at Fox and the Republicans should look to Murdoch (Fox?s owner) personal history.

There is little to show that he is religious or even very right-wing.

There is plenty of evidence of cynical careerism: in the mid-1990s his newspapers in the UK turned savagely on the Conservatives, just about when it became clear that they were heading out of office. Fervent anti-Communism and an enthusiasm for human rights vanished when Sky wanted to get into China. Blair and Labour?s collective asses were kissed raw by 1997, oh and the UK?s version of Bill O?Reilly was quietly fired. Scandal after scandal was then uncovered by the UK Press, including the Murdoch papers (but also the Guardian):

1) Minister Tim Yeo resigns after 1994 tabloid exposé that he had an illegitimate child with a by Conservative councillor;

2) David Ashby (a PPS) caught in bed with another man;

3) Chief Whip revealed to be having a gay affair with a 20 years old student

4) The Earl of Caithness, a minister, resigns after it comes out that his wife committed suicide of his affairs;

5) Ministers Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith and two PPS forced to resign in 1994 in the cash for questions affair;

6) Jonathan Aitken resigns in 1995 over corruption allegations (including pimping to Saudi Princes) making a speech which in retrospect was hilarious:

?If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. 70% of Americans are ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.

Let's see what happens now, that the Bushies are on their way out . . .

 

[BMW540I6speed]

Some more thought's on this:

The failure of the press amounts to Watergate in reverse - that is, instead of the press exposing and revealing presidential wrongdoing, we find that the press shielded, protected, aided and abetted presidential wrongdoing, with predictably rotten consequences for the country.

Certainly the Bush League cynically and mendaciously manipulated everyone in their quest for an endless war as a way to force a consensus on the country (War on Terror, by jingo!), but without the press as the enabler, I don't think the Bushies could have gotten as far as they did. It's a disgrace to the profession.

And maybe that's what happens when journalism becomes an industry - too much money is being made to take risks.

Just as advertisers on network television enjoy a dictatorship of the dollar - they don't like a show, they pull (or threaten to pull) advertising dollars, and the networks march in step.

Similarly, perhaps the mainstream media have become too lucrative an industry to risk challenging coverage of events, worried that they would continue to lose audience if they had a go at the president and his cabal, who were milking 9/11 for political purposes.

That's why they, among other things, ramrodded huge tax cuts through a prostrate Congress while running us to war; there's no justification for tax cuts AND war at the same time except getting while the getting's good.

Many of the few media critics of the war, from early on, had no corporate owner and is aggressively independent.

I think we need to add "economic" to the list of reasons why the mainstream press blew it.

The media industry is about delivering audience to advertisers, not about informing the public, which is really a kind of side benefit ,sort of the way a good television show may have some value, but it's invariably secondary to its ability to deliver audience to advertisers - that's how great shows get cancelled after one season; the goodness of the show is immaterial against the ability to deliver audience to advertisers.

Long ago, corporate media realized it could deliver investor profits without doing the hard work that hard news actually is, and it's run with that ball for decades; 9/11 exposed the weaknesses of this approach.

My hope is that as fewer and fewer people continue to deliver themselves to mainstream media, dwindling their profits further, and it'll force a change in the industry, drive out the fake journalists just chasing hefty paychecks to follow Britney's tribulations, Blowhard pundit talk shows who want to show a "fuzzy" balance and leave it to people who are actually committed to delivering news.

We were lucky that the Internet existed, because without it, who knows how much worse it could have been; the Net at least let everybody outside the mainstream compare notes and sample news widely, which revealed the very real weaknesses of corporate media.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: BMW540I6speed
Fern said:

NYT Endores Kerry

NYT Endorses Michael Dukakis

Endorses Clinton

I could go on & on etc

You linked to "one" news source "three" times when I said "majority". Going, "go on & on" will not "prove" a "liberal" bias of the press, its an absurd accusation

The New York Times owns 15 different newspapers around the USA. IIRC, it's one the most widely circulated newpaper in the USA. It's not just "one". Other similarly large newpapers, such as The LA Times

Most newspapers have endorsed Democratic political candidates. Every election you'll see the tally (papers for & against), I'll bet this year will be no different, Dems get more newspaper endorsements etc, particularly in large media markets.


Anhoo, here's The Boston Globe endorsing Kerry

Oh, here's what I was looking for Linky

Endorsement total:

Kerry 222 newspapers, circulation 21.3 million

Bush 192 newspapers, circulation 14.5 million

EDIT: Hard to tell, but I think Gore had a few less than GWB in the previous election. Bill Clinton had more though in the earlier elections.

Fern

 

[BMW540I6speed]

It's interesting how urban myth's are propagated...

You can cite all these "statistics" of endorsements and then equate the fallacy that..

Democrat = "liberal" = "liberal media outlet"

But, "innuendo as fact" = "intellectual dishonesty"

It used to be common to label journalists as "hacks". When the press was "yellow," it was justified. But what's happened since the rise of the right is the tactic of calling journalists liberally biased - to achieve political ends. These accusations are intended to hound journalists into second-guessing their role, hobbling their efforts, and undermining public confidence in this essential civic role. And it has worked.

Journalists today are less aggressive, cowed by their corporate owners and frightened to speak truth to power.

Why haven't journalists disputed this false accusation of bias? Because the "code" of journalists is to stay above it all, to let their stories speak for themselves.

What they failed to see was the long-term strategy executed by conservative foundations, pundits, party operatives and candidates. And now, we find that Americans dutifully believe the media are "biased"

As for liberals, they failed to fight back furiously enough. Unlike conservatives, they considered themselves above the political fray, capable of reasoned judgment. They even acknowledged that their opponents occasionally had a point.

These new "Movement Conservative's" gave no quarter, acknowledged no points, never paused in the attack. They assumed the American people would dismiss the crazier assertions - but instead, they began to believe them...

Liberals are mentally ill? Michael Savage says so and a few million Americans agree. Liberals are traitors and Joe McCarthy a hero? Ann Coulter sells a lot of books making this case. The National Park Service is the "world's largest grass cutting service" and ripe for elimination? Ari Fleischer thinks so.

And it's no wonder that these fantasies are believed. The dominant talk stations in my area airs 16 hours of venom and vituperation every day. Listeners can treat themselves to Glenn Beck (9-noon); Limbaugh (12-3); a local host (3-5); Sean Hannity (6-9) and Michael Savage (9-12). It's a day-long hate fest where the facts never stand in the way of character assasination, homophobia and the deification of the dollar over all other values.

Because aggressive reporting results in those kind of attacks, journalists have chosen the safer path - of cowardice.

We should remember that, unfortunately, blind patriotism, timidity and friendship with people in high places has been a hallmark of mainstream American journalism.

The circle-jerk relationship between the established media and the power elites will not end any time soon, but neither will the problems they exacerbate.

Propaganda will not make climate change go away from being politically "held hostage"

Propaganda will not make the rest of the planet love everything "America" does.

Propaganda will not solve the budget, immigration, terror, race, economic inequality, pollution, or personal freedom problems. At some point, bullsh!t will have to give way to truth.

Let's hope it is before the country is severely damaged.

 

[imported_Infidel]

Well, that takes care of that now doesn't it?