NPR's Ron Schiller ousted after another sting by O'Keefe

[Bowfinger]

So in your world, until someone proves in some study that gravity exists it doesn't? Believe it or not you CAN come to your own conclusions.

Yes, and people who draw their own conclusions based on ego and preconceptions determined the Earth is flat. Intelligent people try to base conclusions on data, not feelings.

 

[wuliheron]

NPR/PBS claim that they only receive 2% of their funding from the taxpayers. If it is really only 2% it seems to me that the smart thing for them to do would be to voluntarily find 2% to cut from their budgets and give up that 2%. It would be a public relations coup for them and free them from having to lower themselves to deal with all those "ignorant taxpayers" they are forced to contend with each time their funding comes up for review in congress.

Perhaps you should tell the wino on the street that the smart thing to do is not to beg because some people don't like it. Yeah, I know, just tell him that if he stops begging he can depend on people to be not only nicer, but give him even more money.

You think it will work?

 

[comptr6]

I'm glad America has this hero on our side, we need people like him if we are going to weather this storm. His work lead to the fall of the liberal front group ACORN getting defunded, and as soon as there were calls to defund Planned Parenthood and NPR there he was again front and center with more evidence of criminal liberal plots.

 

[werepossum]

Right, because there is no negative coverage of Democrats and no positive coverage of Republicans. Taking your Kool Aid intravenously now, I take it?

I think the problem with nutters is they are so immersed in their faith they cannot do even semi-objective self analysis. When they see a negative story about the left, they don't see it as bias. They just nod their heads and say, "Damn right." or "It's about time they got one right." When they see a negative story about the right, however, they wind up the outrage and start shrieking, "See! BIAS! BIAS! BIAS! Damn librul media durr."

One reasonably scientific study of media bias I read tends to support this. It found Fox to be right-biased, MSNBC left-biased, network coverage reasonably unbiased, and CNN relatively unbiased but more negative overall. I think that why the right sees CNN as so liberal, because it has been quite critical of both parties. They ignore the negativity towards the left, obsess about the negativity towards the right, and conclude in their partisan haze that CNN is the problem.

I'm thinking in particular of the Pew Journalism study that measured only the stories about both parties' candidates and rated each study as positive or negative for the candidate. They did not try to determine if the story was fair, merely whether it was positive or negative. They found that Fox News was tilted about 6% toward Obama - about right, since Obama won the election, and by about that same amount. Other networks were increasingly weighted toward Obama, with MSNBC having an almost 200% advantage for Obama. These same rough ratios are visible in everyday coverage, and have been for a couple decades at the least. (I'd say back to the Vietnam era if not to Tailgunner Joe.)

These are facts. There are two possible explanations. The simplest is to conclude that the media is systematically biased toward the left, a fact that is born out in their self-identification of party, voting, and donations. (The very idea that a D.C. media voting more heavily for the Green Party than the GOP is NOT biased is pretty amazing.) Rupert Murdoch, although personally he's a liberal by US standards, made a fortune recognizing this fact both in the UK and in the USA.

The second possible explanation is to accept the media's own naval-gazing and assert that there is no bias. This requires assuming that EVERY Democrat candidate is better than EVERY Republican candidate. Kudos to those with the stones to argue this point; you've got moxie, if nothing else.

 

[LumbergTech]

Yes, and people who draw their own conclusions based on ego and preconceptions determined the Earth is flat. Intelligent people try to base conclusions on data, not feelings.

that is true, although often the data is not available for proper analysis

 

[her209]

And your conclusions should be based upon evidence. Try it sometime.

Here's proof that Wikipedia has a liberal bias
http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia

HERP DERP

 

[Patranus]

The fact that you're worried that people might become humanized is pretty fantastic though, you guys are really outdoing yourselves in the 'shitty person' category in this thread.

Why would I want to humanize criminals.

The fact that liberal media makes an active effort to humanize the illegals shows their bias.

 

[Bowfinger]

I'm thinking in particular of the Pew Journalism study that measured only the stories about both parties' candidates and rated each study as positive or negative for the candidate. They did not try to determine if the story was fair, merely whether it was positive or negative. They found that Fox News was tilted about 6% toward Obama - about right, since Obama won the election, and by about that same amount. Other networks were increasingly weighted toward Obama, with MSNBC having an almost 200% advantage for Obama. These same rough ratios are visible in everyday coverage, and have been for a couple decades at the least. (I'd say back to the Vietnam era if not to Tailgunner Joe.)

These are facts. There are two possible explanations. The simplest is to conclude that the media is systematically biased toward the left, a fact that is born out in their self-identification of party, voting, and donations. (The very idea that a D.C. media voting more heavily for the Green Party than the GOP is NOT biased is pretty amazing.) Rupert Murdoch, although personally he's a liberal by US standards, made a fortune recognizing this fact both in the UK and in the USA.

The second possible explanation is to accept the media's own naval-gazing and assert that there is no bias. This requires assuming that EVERY Democrat candidate is better than EVERY Republican candidate. Kudos to those with the stones to argue this point; you've got moxie, if nothing else.

Fallacious reasoning. First, I think almost everyone acknowledges MSNBC is left-biased, just as Fox is right-biased. I specifically mentioned this in my first post.

Second, having more negative stories about one candidate than another might show bias, but it might also simply show a reality where there were more negative things associated with the candidate. Correlation with election results is a false attempt to connect two largely unrelated events. Election results are driven by a host of factors, with preexisting partisan bias being the primary driver for the majority of Americans. (In other words, most Americans vote based almost entirely on party affiliation, regardless of candidate merits or media coverage.)

A somewhat more meaningful study would be to compare media negativity with the voting patterns of independents -- the swing voters in national elections. It's really independents who are most likely to be influenced by media coverage. Unfortunately, even that is inaccurate since mainstream news is only one of many sources of influence. Others include candidate qualifications, personal considerations, other news sources, and advertising, not a trivial factor at all.

Finally, I'd challenge you to back up your extremely broad generalizations with links to actual data. You start with data about one specific election, then magically jump to "EVERY Democrat candidate is better than EVERY Republican candidate." I'm afraid I'm skeptical that this is supported by the study you claim to cite.

 

[Bowfinger]

that is true, although often the data is not available for proper analysis

Agreed, which is when intelligent people temper their conclusions with the recognition they're not well-founded. In this case we have nutter dogma proclaiming a highly liberal mainstream media is just as indisputable as gravity. They flatly refuse to acknowledge how their own biases invariably color their perceptions.

 

[fskimospy]

I'm thinking in particular of the Pew Journalism study that measured only the stories about both parties' candidates and rated each study as positive or negative for the candidate. They did not try to determine if the story was fair, merely whether it was positive or negative. They found that Fox News was tilted about 6% toward Obama - about right, since Obama won the election, and by about that same amount. Other networks were increasingly weighted toward Obama, with MSNBC having an almost 200% advantage for Obama. These same rough ratios are visible in everyday coverage, and have been for a couple decades at the least. (I'd say back to the Vietnam era if not to Tailgunner Joe.)

These are facts. There are two possible explanations. The simplest is to conclude that the media is systematically biased toward the left, a fact that is born out in their self-identification of party, voting, and donations. (The very idea that a D.C. media voting more heavily for the Green Party than the GOP is NOT biased is pretty amazing.) Rupert Murdoch, although personally he's a liberal by US standards, made a fortune recognizing this fact both in the UK and in the USA.

The second possible explanation is to accept the media's own naval-gazing and assert that there is no bias. This requires assuming that EVERY Democrat candidate is better than EVERY Republican candidate. Kudos to those with the stones to argue this point; you've got moxie, if nothing else.

Why on earth should the number of positive or negative stories about a candidate in any way relate to their share of the popular vote? What you're advocating for is exactly the problem with American media today, they think coverage should treat both sides equally regardless of what reality says. That's just insanity. Not to mention that a large percentage of the stories in that election that Pew considered 'positive' for Obama were ones that said he was winning in the polls. The polls are reported nearly every day, and they are a simple statement of fact.

Also, your idea that the media always treats the democratic candidate more favorably is directly contradicted by meta analysis of media presidential coverage. For example in this study:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02866.x/abstract they carefully analyzed media coverage over a number of elections and found basically no bias. The abstract mentions a small television bias, but if you read the whole journal article you see that it is very tiny indeed, and it's certainly NOTHING like what you allege. (I'm guessing you don't have journal access, so you will have to take my word for it. I'm telling the truth though.)

 

[fskimospy]

Why would I want to humanize criminals.

The fact that liberal media makes an active effort to humanize the illegals shows their bias.

Yes, humanizing humans is evidence of librul bias.

 

[her209]

Yes, humanizing humans is evidence of librul bias.

See, when other news outlets say "suicide bomber" they're humanizing the bomber. Fox News uses "homicide bomber" instead.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I usually suspect bias when I hear someone use the term "teabaggers"...but hey, I'm probably not acknowledging how my own biases color my perceptions.

 

[Thump553]

Yes, you can tell bias.

The legal term is illegal alien. Any other term used is an attempt to make the illegal sound more like a person and less like a criminal which creates a bias.

There is no official legal term "illegal alien" it's just another label. Selecting which labels to use in a discussion is a time honored debating technique and the "righties" always insist on using their derogatory terms and sneering at everything else as PC. It's a basic debating technique, the same as defining the issue.

Fact is this country was populated and founded by "illegal aliens"-just ask any Native American their opinion about that.

 

[GTaudiophile]

1. I believe NPR and PBS should receive more public funding, not less. along with more funding for science and the arts.
2. I don't have too much problem with individual bias in a journalist, as long as they are professional that should not affect their coverage and analysis. That's why the firing of Juan Williams was so offensive to me, that was clearly a case of applying an anti-Fox, anti-conservative bias.
3. I don't see why an NPR executive had such a meeting at all, let alone discuss his personal bias in such a meeting.
4. I'm a liberal, but I don't want any liberal bias in NPR or PBS. I consider a good benchmark the Newshour, formerly the MacNeil/Lehrer newshour.
5. Since I'm typing..I also think NPR needs to rebalance it's coverage towards US national news, away from world coverage and particularly Middle East/Israel coverage.

If Israel wants a New York station that covers Israeli issues, let them start their own. That should not be the role of NPR.

I actually agree with most of what you're saying. I find #3 to be especially puzzling.

I just believe that "news" in any form should fall into one of two categories: 1) The reporting of facts. (XYZ happened on this day at this time.) Part of this is reporting the weather or stock market activity, etc.

2) Opinion-based journalism. (XYZ happened for this reason and will have this impact.) As long as this type of journalism is preceded by, "The following is strictly the opinion of so and so" then I really don't care what kind of bias is involved. Just quit trying to push opinion as the honest truth. A lot of people in America cannot determine which is which and of course this is the audience that FOX, MSNBC, NPR, etc. are trying to convince to their own profit and advantage.

Your typical nightly new show could easily be split 30/70 between these two types of reporting as long as section 2 is preceded by a short warning.

 

[Thump553]

I usually suspect bias when I hear someone use the term "teabaggers"...but hey, I'm probably not acknowledging how my own biases color my perceptions.

I'll own up to displaying my implied opinon/bias whenever I use the term teabagger, wackjob, flake or wacko. You hear the same terms or worse constantly on Faux but I've never heard the term teabagger used on NPR.

 

[her209]

I usually suspect bias when I hear someone use the term "teabaggers"...but hey, I'm probably not acknowledging how my own biases color my perceptions.

What else would you call them?

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I'll own up to displaying my implied opinon/bias whenever I use the term teabagger, wackjob, flake or wacko. You hear the same terms or worse constantly on Faux but I've never heard the term teabagger used on NPR.

Learn To Speak Tea Bag
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120344047

"The cartoon is a perfect caricature of what NPR looks like to conservatives: liberals snidely imagining conservatives to be monosyllabic clods who can't make an argument beyond name-calling," said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center. "Conservatism is 'satirized' into a form of political retardation."

Don't get me wrong...despite this I personally like NPR. But they will occasionally slant a story or use a loaded term that I consider to be clear bias.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

What else would you call them?

Looks like you have a lot in common with these folks...it appears that the highly derogatory meaning of the word is lost on you as well.

 

[Bowfinger]

I usually suspect bias when I hear someone use the term "teabaggers"...but hey, I'm probably not acknowledging how my own biases color my perceptions.

I wasn't aware the mainstream media (outside of possibly MSNBC) use the term teabaggers. Can you cite examples, or are you just making stuff up?

 

[her209]

Looks like you have a lot in common with these folks...it appears that the highly derogatory meaning of the word is lost on you as well.

Sorry, I don't stupidly hang tea bags off of my hat and refer to myself as tea baggers before being what "tea bagging" meant in sexual terms.

 

[JSt0rm]

While the right move was made by removing this guy and distancing npr from him. There is a big difference between the fund raising arm talking off the cuff at dinner and a news reporter not balancing their story. I find npr to be extremely balanced in the reporting.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I wasn't aware the mainstream media (outside of possibly MSNBC) use the term teabaggers. Can you cite examples, or are you just making stuff up?

Learn To Speak Tea Bag
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=120344047

 

[Bowfinger]

Learn To Speak Tea Bag
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=120344047

So you are seriously suggesting one op-ed, a seemingly humorous look at a phrase being widely used by the public, somehow constitutes the MSM using the phrase? Really? That's so transparently beyond lame I can only pity you. Try harder.

"Interested in learning more about the origins of the 'tea bag' movement? Jay Nordlinger of The National Review breaks down where the term came from, what it means, and why it's been embraced — and rejected — by conservatives and liberals alike."

 

[Tom]

Yes, you can tell bias.

The legal term is illegal alien. Any other term used is an attempt to make the illegal sound more like a person and less like a criminal which creates a bias.

1. a person isn't a criminal until convicted.

Your misuse of the term illegal, assuming someone is a criminal without a hearing, is an example why it's a loaded term, not as accurate as less charged descriptions.