The coalescing opinion on the more liberal side of the blogosphere (among the few willing to talk about it at least) seems to be that the CBS problem in appropriately dealing with almost certainly fraudulant documents while reporting was caused mostly by a competitive rush to publish a sensational story instead of political bias. See for example here, here, and the comments on ObsidianWings.
That seems to me much less encouraging than a political bias explanation. The fact that they were willing to pretty much abandon journalistic standards despite repeated warnings and were willing to play the deny–deny game even after the fraud was revealed is bad enough if they were doing it out of political bias. It makes it very difficult to trust CBS on stories which they see as anti-Republican.
But the current liberal explanation is far more damning. If CBS (and by the LaTimes "there but for the grace of God we go" comment perhaps the whole media) is willing to abandon journalistic standards for sensational stories, one would have to be mistrustful of their reporting on any sensational issue.
That calls into question their alleged objectivity far more often than mere political bias. I’m ok with that because I think journalists are often non-objective. But for those who defend the media from allegations of bias, it seems a more damaging position to media credibility than mine.
Sebastian, just a thought. Why don’t you take one of the most shameless pieces of dishonesty in 2004 – the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”, so called – and try to show why, if the media has a “liberal bias”, without exception the reaction from the mainstream media was to treat that farrago of lies and slanders “evenhandedly” – to pretend that it was just another version of events, and the SBVfL really were a group of apolitical veterans, rather than a Bush/Cheney campaign group.
Then you can try to explain why, if the media has a liberal bias, there has been minimal publicity given to the fact that there were never any WMD in Iraq – that the exaggerated claims made by Bush & Co to launch the war in Iraq were completely untrue, and seem to have been sourced to Ahmed Chalabi.
Your essays on “the media has a liberal bias” doubtless convince you and all the others who are already persuaded. If you want to persuade those of us who are perfectly aware that the US media does not have a liberal bias, you need to deal with those incidents that show the open conservative bias in the media – the kindness to Bush’s lies, if nothing else.
Jes, I think rather than suggesting that the media has a liberal bias, Sebastian is suggesting that the argument that CBS did this merely for impact rather than out of any deeply held beliefs is infintely more damning, which I guess represents a suggestion that we simply accept the liberal bias explanation, so we are actually helping our cause (or at least not harming it as much).
This might work if the left had somehow been touting how good the media is/was and has been championing the media’s ability to get to the bottom of the story dashed. If this is the case, I’d like to ask Seb to link or cite where he thinks left-thinking people are trumpeting the media’s investigative ability. My own feeling is that there is no reason to think that the media (especially the corporate media, which I think shares no small blame in cheapening the political discourse) should be on any kind of a pedestal (other than the basic freedom of the press sorts of things) but I may be out of step with the rest of vast left so any pointers to get me back in synch would be appreciated…
Whoops,
This might work if the left had somehow been touting how good the media is/was and has been championing the media’s ability to get to the bottom of the story dashed.
and had seen its attempts at championing the media’s ability…dashed
I had it right the first time and went back and changed it, grrrrr…
LJ, it’s entirely possible I misunderstood Sebastian: he has, in the past, been a proponent/defender of the contention that the media has a liberal bias, and I was undoubtedly allowing that to color my perception of what he was saying.
Once upon a time, when there were two, then three major networks, they had a monopoly on the news. What they did with that monopoly can be debated ad nauseum, but there was little doubt that the nation sat down in the evening from a hard days work and got their first glimpse of the worlds events from their beloved anchormen. Soon after cable news caught their footing, selling the news for ratings sake relied more and more on sensationalism, controversy and even shock. As cable grew and the internet developed the struggle has become desperate. As with other aspects of free enterprise, there has to be fallout. The talk that CBS News might not exist in a few years should not be surprising, given the likelihood that 60 Minutes Wednesday won’t be renewed. Hopefully, now that communication technology has given citizens the capability to respond to what they hear almost immediately, this will become the answer to Sebastian’s objectivity question. There’s nothing that causes a human being to find the line and toe it than the awareness that someone’s listening, watching and responding. I see good things ahead.
I see good things ahead.
i don’t.
i see Rush TV, the Savage Channel, the Gore Network, Franken Broadcast Company . 24/7 political spin – with enough degrees of partisanship and redness-of-meat to please everyone. people will eat it up, rely on it, and when challenged about its accuracy, they’ll shrug and call it “entertainment”.
Who cares if bias or sensationalism is worse in journalism? Both reduce our ability to know what is really going on, which in turn makes democracy difficult to impossible. “News” organizations that have an ideological bias before accurate reporting (Fox, Air America) are in their own way just as bad as “news” organizations that have a bias towards sensationalism (NY Post, all local TV news, CNN?) over accurate reporting.
I’m now forced to lump CBS in with FOX: whether through bias towards sensationalism (CBS) or a bias that is ideological (FOX), I can’t really believe what either of them tell me. Arguing about whether CBS is biased or sensationalistic seems akin to arguing about which fox ate the chickens: the fox is gone, the chickens are dead: what’s the point?
You might not have read much of what the left thinks about the media, Sebastian, because if you had you’d know that much of the left is at least as critical of the mainstream press as the right. That’s a theme found in virtually every political book written by a certain MIT linguist who will go unmentioned here (to prevent thread drift), but it isn’t limited to him. Eric Alterman has his own book on the subject, there’s a leftwing media watchdog group called FAIR, and moving over to the centrist Democrats, The Daily Howler is dedicated to the proposition that most political reporting in this country is done by incompetent intellectually lazy hacks who make too much money to care about ordinary people. Speaking for myself, I agree with all of the above.
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Pew Survey Finds Moderates, Liberals Dominate News Outlets
Aya Kawano
By E&P Staff
Published: May 23, 2004 4:00 PM EST
NEW YORK Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew’s latest study released today.
While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as “moderate,” a far higher number are “liberal” than in the general population.
At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets: 23% liberal, 12% conservative. At Web sites: 27% call themselves liberals, 13% conservatives.
The Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that members of the media were four times as likely to identify themselves as “liberal” than as “conservative:”
“Similarly, the survey found that members of the media were more than seven times more likely to identify themselves as “Democrat” than as “Republican:”
And the bosses who hire and fire the reporters and control the papers tend to be Republican more often than not. Your point?
Just saying that someone’s a liberal, or a Democrat, doesn’t automatically mean that their reporting is biased. There’s a quote, which I don’t remember exactly, but goes something along the lines of “When in doubt, assume incompetence before malevolence.”
“And the bosses who hire and fire the reporters and control the papers tend to be Republican more often than not. Your point?”
I don’t think that is true. Most of the editors of newspapers are Democrats.
Liberal Japonicus, you write
I’m not suggesting that the liberal bias explanation is the only remaining explanation. It is just far better for the media that the current fad. There are other options. Perhaps Mapes had a psychotic fixation on bringing down the President and was willing to violate the alleged principles of journalism to do so. How she convinced so many other people to go along is an interesting question if that explanation is true. This particular post is not a full-throated expose of media bias. I’m just suggesting that the current liberal explanation is much worse for the media than the political bias explanation.
Donald Johnson, you write: “You might not have read much of what the left thinks about the media, Sebastian, because if you had you’d know that much of the left is at least as critical of the mainstream press as the right.”
I read at least as much on the left as I do from the right. The weighting is probably 60-40. I’m well aware of the fact that some on the left have the idea that the media has a right wing bias. Recently they appeal to the existance of FoxNews as proof (ignoring the fact that even now CBS, NBC and ABC have much larger audiences). My typical critique of such (points may vary depending on the specific argument) is that they are complaining about bias against very extreme left-wing views (Chomskyesque tirades against capitalism, extreme income redistribution, extreme animal rights views, etc.) while the media is biased against far less extreme right-wing views (on late-term abortions for instance). Also leftists who believe that the media is dominated by the right-wing typically complain that the media isn’t attacking the right-wing enough (considering how evil the right-wing is I suppose). I find that a rather less convincing argument than many.
But I don’t have time today for a full-fledged explanation of what I see as media bias. Suffice to say that a sensationalism explanation is far more damning in general than a political explanation in this particular case. The poltical explanation is somewhat limited in the scope of damage it does. The sensationalism explanation doesn’t leave much left standing.
smlook, do please try to preview before doing cut ‘n’ paste like that.
My typical critique of such (points may vary depending on the specific argument) is that they are complaining about bias against very extreme left-wing views (Chomskyesque tirades against capitalism, extreme income redistribution, extreme animal rights views, etc.) while the media is biased against far less extreme right-wing views (on late-term abortions for instance).
To pick my particular hobby-horse, want to examine the march to war again?
The real problem is that TV news, generally, sucks. Almost all of it, except for maybe PBS’ Frontline and Jim Lehrer, and Nightline.
And Jon Stewart. Because if I’m going to watch crappy and superficial reporting, I’d at least rather watch something that’s not pretending to be anything other than what it is, and get some laughs out of it.
You are assuming that we have a vested interest in defending CBS. We don’t. At least, I don’t. CBS does a lousy job in general and an incredibly lousy job in this case. As does most TV news, and newspapers too when it comes to political coverage. You see the press as the Republicans’ enemy–I see them as an unwitting, but essential ally–not because of any conservative bias except in a few, blatantly obvious cases, but they do a bad job in a very predictable way, and the GOP has learned to exploit it. In fact they have become dependent on exploiting it.
Very few liberals are arguing that the parts of the media routinely accused of liberal bias do a good job. We only argue that the parts of the media that are not generally accused of liberal bias are much, much, worse.
If the problem is liberal bias, Fox News, talk radio, the NY Post are part of the solution. If the problem is lousy journalism, sensationalism, lack of standards and all the rest, they are just the opposite.
If the problem is liberal bias, the solution is for CBS to cover the President less critically, to do fewer investigative reports because they might get burned, that sort of thing. If the problem is sensationalism, the solution is quite different.
What I’m afraid of is not that CBS loses viewers, but that they lose viewers to sources that do a worse job, or they make their coverage worse to keep viewers.
I’ve tried to explain this a lot of times, but very few conservatives seem to get it, or to address it.
Sebastian: I agree with you that the ‘incompetence’ explanation is worse than the ‘bias’ explanation. I also think that it is, unfortunately, true. And I also think it explains why thoughtful people on both sides see bias: there are all these moments when one thinks, how could anyone with a shred of professional competence report this story like that? Surely they must be biassed — when the truth is, no professional competence.
(Or rather, to be fair: lots of competence at some things, but none at such matters as: being informed about what you cover, making an attempt to figure out what its most important aspect is, presenting different views fairly, noting when someone is just plain lying, where this is to be construed strictly (e.g., not just any mistake in emphasis counts; only flat-out contradiction of established facts.)
I don’t think the only two choices are personal bias (reporters slanting a story towards the position they personally prefer) or incompetence. There’s also cowardice–the mainstream press doesn’t want to be perceived as anti-American, so it is reluctant to criticize the government’s case for going to war. That’s probably why the coverage of the WMD issue was so bad in the months leading up to the invasion. I think this fear of being called unpatriotic is the biggest factor causing bad coverage of American foreign policy. You have to be perceived as rooting for the home team, even if the home team is lying or wrong.
Which is not to deny that incompetence and personal bias aren’t also factors.
“If the problem is liberal bias, the solution is for CBS to cover the President less critically, to do fewer investigative reports because they might get burned, that sort of thing.”
I don’t think the solution has anything to do with covering the President more or less critically. You can be critical without being biased. The problem is that when a journalist’s goal is to take down someone she sees as her political opponent by using the power she has available to her through the well-cultivated illusion of objective reporting, if she is willing to ignore completely obvious questions about source credibility, she is not being an ‘objective’ journalist. I’m not wholly sure we need objective journalists if we have good fact-level reporting. By that I mean that you can express your point of view as a journalist if you are willing to also communicate the facts. The problem is that you aren’t a useful journalist at all if you can’t be bothered with the fact-level stuff.
I don’t object to liberal bias in reporting. I object to liberal bias clothed in objectivity.
Slart,
Sorry, I have had problems with typepad both today and last night.
Seb, the problem here isn’t the doctrine of objectivity, it’s that it’s being used in some cases poorly. Objectivity IS about facts, and in a more important sense. I can very easily make an article with every single fact true and have it paint an incredibly false picture. The idea of somehow fitting these facts into a context that paints a true picture is what objective reporting is all about, and it’s an incredibly important objective. It’s also completely impossible to do perfectly, but we should be looking at how our media can do it better and even have epistemological discussions on what it means to present a “true” picture, but not to pretend we’ll be better off if no one aims for it. We won’t.
Here’s a thought experiment: yesterday Ted Kennedy referred to Barack Obama as “Osama bin … Osama … Obama.” If Bush or a prominent Republican legislator had done the exact same thing, does anyone here really believe it wouldn’t be front-page news, instead of being buried at the very end of a long story about Kennedy’s windy speech?
“But the current liberal explanation is far more damning. If CBS (and by the LaTimes “there but for the grace of God we go” comment perhaps the whole media) is willing to abandon journalistic standards for sensational stories, one would have to be mistrustful of their reporting on any sensational issue. ”
Uh. . yes. And any non-sensational issue.
Tomsyl, that’s a very good example of exactly the sort of triviality that shouldn’t matter to anyone. They didn’t make a big deal of it in this case because Kennedy and Obama are on the same side and clearly Kennedy wasn’t trying to link Obama with Osama. If Bush had done it, people might have wondered if he was taking a cheap shot–Republicans have been known to do this kind of thing, you know, linking Democratic politicians to terrorists.
But anyway, the press loves to focus on trivialities sometimes–Dean’s campaign pretty much ended because of the scream, which seemed like a pretty trivial thing to me. That scream should only have mattered if you really believed it showed Dean was mentally unstable. I’d question the seriousness of anyone who thought it did.
If you want to discuss political bias on a nontrivial basis, read the Daily Howler and then give us some similar examples where the mainstream press distorts the news in favor of the Democrats. It probably happens–I just don’t think it happens as often as bias in favor of the Republicans.
You can be critical without being biased.
Does the GOP know you’ve gone off the reservation?
Tomsyl, that’s a very good example of exactly the sort of triviality that shouldn’t matter to anyone.
Why not? If news coverage of the same statement differs based on the political affiliation of the speaker, how can you not admit that a political bias exists?
BTW, who are the specific newsies that allegedly spouted the White House party line in the “rush to war”? I’m genuinely curious.
“Does the GOP know you’ve gone off the reservation?”
I sent them a memo three days ago. I suspect they knew a while ago though. Why else haven’t I been hired to a high paying shill job? 😉
BTW, who are the specific newsies that allegedly spouted the White House party line in the “rush to war”?
The one who comes in for the most abuse is the NY Times’ Judith Miller.
Two points. First, I remember reading sometime back that the television news programs had increased the amount of money paid to the talking heads, while reducing the amount paid to and the number of actual people to do the background work. This could account for a lot of incompetence, simply because the guys getting the money are just reading script. The folks doing the hard work of producing that script are getting paid too little and are overworked.
Second, I watched the Edwards/Cheney debate, and at the end of it the reporters were asking questions of the political plants. One reporter asked the Democratic spokesperson what she thought about Cheney’s comment that Edwards was never present. The spokesperson responded with a spiel about how nasty Cheney was, and how it showed up in his demeanor throughout the entire debate. Now, I voted for Kerry, but even I could see how transparently this person was diverting the question. The reporter accepted the answer and went on to another question. Yes, I suppose this could be considered bias, but I truly think it is more likely to be incompetence.
None of this would explain Rather and company’s insistence that the report was correct, even in the face of some of their own evidence. Some people have trouble admitting that they have made a mistake, no? But the fact that they ignored some evidence really looks more like rush for sensationalism than bias to me (even though I readily admit that I think Rather was/is biased). Actually, I have often wondered if the papers were a Karl Rove plant, for it certainly did end all the questions about Bush’s National Guard service! 😉 But maybe that is giving him a bit too much credit.
JW, your Cheney example is apt. IIRC, Cheney said something to the effect that he presided over the Senate and had never met Edwards before the debate. The obvious point was Edward’s abysmal attendance record (though Kerry beat his absenteeism by a country mile). Instead, the next day the papers were full of articles pointing out that Cheney in fact had met Edwards before, that Cheney was only at the Senate on Tuesdays (Could that be because he is not a Senator? Hmmm.), &c. As far as I can remember, the issue of Edward’s Senate attendance record was never addressed by the press. Bias? I think so, but I also could see it as a blind pursuit of a sensational “Cheney Lies!” headlines instead of the more mundane story of how often Edwards missed Senate roll calls.
Katherine wrote
I agree with you that the ‘incompetence’ explanation is worse than the ‘bias’ explanation
If Seb agrees with this, wouldn’t he agree that it is to CBS’s greater credit that they addressed it in such a way? This sounds vaguely like the ‘advice’ that folks like to proffered about ‘if the dems would only have this think, I would vote for them’. All due respect, but it’s really hard to take this as anything other than rhetorical jiu-jitsu.
tomsyl
As far as I can remember, the issue of Edward’s Senate attendance record was never addressed by the press.
This would have required that the press understand and explain clearly to their readers the institutional traditions of the Senate and how attendance is not a simple linear metric where less is good and more is bad. Unless you wanted it to be simply something that tars one side to the benefit of the other rather than actually considering what it means.
“If Seb agrees with this, wouldn’t he agree that it is to CBS’s greater credit that they addressed it in such a way? This sounds vaguely like the ‘advice’ that folks like to proffered about ‘if the dems would only have this think, I would vote for them’. All due respect, but it’s really hard to take this as anything other than rhetorical jiu-jitsu.”
I think you are misinterpreting. I actually believe the explanation is liberal bias. If it were really general professional incompetence it would be a great start to react as they ultimately have. Though the silly denial about being unsure about the fakeness of the documents doesn’t help too much. Surely if we can say that it is uncertain that the documents are fraudulent we could say even more so that we can’t really be sure that there Saddam didn’t have WMD when we invaded. I mean just because all the evidence points toward that, and there are huge amounts of evidence, doesn’t mean we know to a metaphysical certainty.
I actually believe the explanation is liberal bias. If it were really general professional incompetence it would be a great start to react as they ultimately have.
Then your argument is merely to undercut those on the other side (note that you refer to the ‘coalescing opinion on the more liberal side of the blogosphere’) Rather than take issue with specific points (such as the rush towards news an entertainment, the profit motivation, etc.) you seek to nullify any of those points by suggesting that your opinion is less ‘damning’. Jiu jitsu is, broadly speaking, creating a situation where you nullify strengths of your opponent. I (and I think a number of other commentators here) believe there is a very strong case to decry the packaging of news (which is exactly the case that Chomsky and Herman make in _Manufacturing Consent_) You now seek to have us discuss the fraudulence of the documents (thus moving us to a discussion where the event occurred in some timeless space where everyone had ample time to consider all the issues, which is definitely not the case here) That’s more jiu-jitsu. You may not think it is, but that’s how it comes across to me.
I’ve also (in the other thread) stated what I thought brought this about. I think that CBS (and a lot of the other major news media) felt like they had really gotten suckered with the scandal whose name will not be invoked for fears to derailing this thread. Just like an NBA ref, they couldn’t go back in time and uncall the foul. So they were looking to call a foul on the Bush camp, a foul that was not with the way they conducted themselves, but something that had an independent provenance. Damning? Yes. Human nature? Oh yeah, that too.
From the Pew Survey that smlook was wrestling with above (and note that this is for 23 May, so one can question whether it really applies), it reports
Journalists at national news organizations generally take a dimmer view of state of the profession than do local journalists. But both groups express considerably more concern over the deleterious impact of bottom-line pressures than they did in polls taken by the Center in 1995 and 1999. Further, both print and broadcast journalists voice high levels of concern about this problem, as do majorities working at nearly all levels of news organizations.
So, you are arguing that it would be better for journalists to admit to liberal bias rather than to acknowledge what they feel are real problems in their profession. If someone else does that, they are generally accused of being hypocritical, right?
Damnation. /
Truly sorry about that. A five year old with questions about the precise relationship of Tigger to the entire Pooh ouvre distracted me. I hope this does the trick.
I’m attempting to address the arguments of my opponents. If that strikes you as Jiu jitsu I can’t really help it. It isn’t in bad faith. I’m asking people to accept the full value of their argument. If the argument is that the news media has serious flaws which makes trusting them generally unlikely, fine. If the argument is that there was little or no political bias, it was mostly sensationalism, but you don’t want to call into question the serious critique that would be, I’m not ok with it. I’m clarifying. I try to do that because there is little worse than having a long argument with someone only to find out they don’t believe some really basic underpinning of the argument. See the Is there a Problem post from more than a year ago on my own site for examples.
My problem with “Manufacturing Consent” is that the world Chomsky wants portrayed is even further from reality than the one portrayed by the media.
Liberal j — I was referring to missed votes, not merely execrable attendance. Both Kerry and Edwards had terrible voting records (Kerry had missed more than 90% of all votes in the last session, many of them on important bills, IIRC). And didn’t Kerry complain bitterly when he breezed into town (literally — he had managed to find time for windsurfing on the West Coast) for a day to cast a vote on armed forces appropriations, only to have the vote delayed a day or two?
I still hold to the naive belief that the people of Mass and SC sent K&E to Congress to cast informed votes on bills that mattered to their constituents, and that failure to do so was a dereliction of duty that was relevant to their fitness for office. And as to the importance of attendance at sessions, didn’t Ted Kennedy manage to attend more than 95% of the time, despite his fondness for a wee dram of the spirits?
I still hold to the naive belief that the people of Mass and SC sent K&E to Congress to cast informed votes on bills that mattered to their constituents, and that failure to do so was a dereliction of duty that was relevant to their fitness for office.
Did they have a vote-matching deal going with any Republican senators? (I don’t know the answer.) If they did, would that change your opinion?
Did they have a vote-matching deal going with any Republican senators? (I don’t know the answer.) If they did, would that change your opinion?
I don’t understand “vote-matching deal” so please explain.
Seb
I’m attempting to address the arguments of my opponents. If that strikes you as Jiu jitsu I can’t really help it. It isn’t in bad faith. I’m asking people to accept the full value of their argument. If the argument is that the news media has serious flaws which makes trusting them generally unlikely, fine. If the argument is that there was little or no political bias, it was mostly sensationalism, but you don’t want to call into question the serious critique that would be, I’m not ok with it.
If you are attempting to address the arguments of your opponents, it would help to say who they are and quote them, not simply assign them to one side of the blogosphere. You seem to think that the belief in the absence of liberal bias means that the media is objective. I can’t speak for others (though several have pointed out the same thing), I can only say that’s not what I think. You also wrote (in the post you cited)
If you want to discuss means, you ought to be sure that you have similar ends in mind.
So what is your ‘end’? If I wanted to be inflammatory, I could suggest that it is to cripple sources of liberal bias in the news media so that what you feel is the correct viewpoint can have an open field or to get us to agree with you because you argue that a belief that news media is tilted towards sensationalism is worse than what you are suggesting, so it would be better if you are right, or something as prosaic as getting us to say you are right and not concede any points. I really don’t know what your end is here. But you’ve had blogbudsman make the same point as Katherine and me, so it would bear some reflection if we agree on that point.
As for your problems with Manufacturing Consent, (which was co-authored by Chomsky btw), it seems to identify the damning critique that you argue is worse than just saying it was liberal bias. link
Presenting a theory its authors call the “propaganda model”, the book argues that since mass media news outlets are now run by large corporations, they are under the same competitive pressures as other corporations. According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably biases the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.
I dunno, that part sounds pretty accurate to me, and is supported by the Pew Survey that I quoted as well. But how you think this makes your argument for liberal bias more likely, I really don’t see.
tomsyl
Liberal j — I was referring to missed votes, not merely execrable attendance. Both Kerry and Edwards had terrible voting records (Kerry had missed more than 90% of all votes in the last session, many of them on important bills, IIRC)
As I said, this story could be only told correctly if the news media would also point out the vote manuvering. For instance, Frist rescheduling votes when Kerry was there, like the vote on Veteran’s Health and the attacks when a measure is going to pass with an overwhelming majority, so a vote is simply symbolic. This would also require pointing out that being in the Senate is not simply voting, but creating a consensus, investigating, writing and researching. I recommend Mark Schmitt’s archive for information about this. I like to think of myself as a little less naive than to think that if the Senators simply show up for votes, this means all is right with the world.
Sebastian: My problem with “Manufacturing Consent” is that the world Chomsky wants portrayed is even further from reality than the one portrayed by the media
Now, Sebastian, if you think you can show how Chomsky is wrong, the challenge is still open on the Friday Chomsky Bash Open Thread.
“If you are attempting to address the arguments of your opponents, it would help to say who they are and quote them, not simply assign them to one side of the blogosphere.”
Did you follow the links I provided? Have you read the comments on the topic on this board? Honestly, it isn’t as if I just made it up. Have you somehow failed to notice that argument made repeatedly in the previous thread on the CBS memos?
“But you’ve had blogbudsman make the same point as Katherine and me, so it would bear some reflection if we agree on that point.”
I fail to see what your point has to do with the points of either of them.
“You seem to think that the belief in the absence of liberal bias means that the media is objective.”
No. This is a clear misreading of my post. I suggest that explaining the CBS memo scandal with a sensationalism explanation implies that the media is not objective. That would pretty much be the exact opposite of how you are interpreting my post. Many people are invested in the concept of a pretty-much objective main-stream media. Kevin Drum (to whom I linked) is one of those. I suggest that it is difficult to be invested in the concept of a pretty-much objective main-stream media and also use the sensationalism excuse. You apparently don’t believe in an objective main-stream media. Great. That would mean that you aren’t implicated in the argument. Which makes your responses rather difficult to address.
Then you throw in a quote from Manufacturing Consent. Did you even see my objection to Chomsky? Or did you just see his name and gloss over the rest. Let me repeat: “My problem with “Manufacturing Consent” is that the world Chomsky wants portrayed is even further from reality than the one portrayed by the media.”
Your quote does nothing to address my concern. It merely suggests that there are non-political pressures. Which I have A) conceeded and B) has nothing to do with the world that Chomsky wants portrayed–which is to say has nothing to do with my objection to the book. I certainly don’t think that Chomsky is wrong about absolutely everything that drops from his mouth. That would take almost super-human abilities. There are probably whole sentences in the book that I could completely agree with.
If I ever have lots of time and am feeling more masocistic I might try to thoroughly deconstruct a Chomsky ‘argument’. But for now, I’ll leave it to others. The link is quite amusing and shows how Chomsky engages in manufacturing fear. But yes, I have read him. And yes, I find him almost wholly unconvincing. The best description I have ever heard of his argumentation is that he is like a man who goes onto a white beach. He sifts through the sand, picking out individual black grains until he has a handful. Then: “You see, of course, the sand is black! As such….” He does it better than almost anyone in the world. But that doesn’t make him useful or correct on such topics. His basic critique of capitalism, for instance, shows that he is a linguist with very little understanding of economics. He is also capable of breathtaking double-standards. He compares capitalist societies to a theoretical ideal world while turning genocide from other societies into nothing more than another critique of capitalism.
I don’t understand “vote-matching deal” so please explain.
It’s an arrangement in which you find someone who’s going to vote the opposite way as you, and both agree to abstain from the vote. Since your votes would have canceled each other out anyway, the effect is the same as if you’d both voted, but you don’t have to actually show up for the vote.
Josh, thanks for the explamnation. Somehow I just don’t see an obliging Republican Seenator willing to vote-match with Kerry or Edwards to give them more free time to campaign against Pres. Bush. Anyone suggesting that’s what they were doing when they were AWOL from Congress has the burden of proof.
I agree with Sebastian, and also with Katherine and Hilzoy.
And that’s all I have to say on the matter. This comments thread is slightly weird now.
Again, the time zone difference makes this difficult. Yes, I read the links and perhaps I am responding to what I think is the implication that the entire liberal side of the blogosphere is represented by those three links. Again, I’m sure I’m being overly sensitive about this, but the argument that Kevin Drum thinks this therefore this is indicative really sticks in my craw. This is not because I think he is a hopeless hack. I don’t, I’d much rather be identified with his views than Rush, or Instapundit, or the folks at the Corner, but it’s just that I don’t like having my views, which I (obviously) think of as informed by some study of what is happening, to be lumped in with others.
And I can’t speak for others, but I don’t find Chomsky ‘wholly’ unpersuasive. As I’ve said before, I think he uses a number of rhetorical tricks. But his main problem is not ‘manufacturing fear’, I think, but his non-understanding of the physical and emotional reasons why people long for things, a non-understanding that I think is really there, not something that is put on. In Manufacturing Consent, there is a scene where he talks about the absolute lack of value in sports. The film shows Chomsky speaking on the huge stadium screen while some SF 49ers are doing warmups. I interpret this to be the filmmakers saying that as a logical argument, yes, this is fine, but as a practical and emotional matter, well, it’s a bit strange.
At any rate, Chomsky is very clear that he is _not_ a political expert, that everyone must examine the totality of the facts and come to their own conclusion. So attacking Chomsky as a thinker really misses the point. Yes, this is also rhetorical jiu-jitsu, and that’s why I haven’t demanded that anyone ‘explicate’ chomsky. He was right about Nixon, he was wrong about Pol Pot, he was right about Vietnam, he was very wrong about Faurisson, he has claimed that he is right about everything. As they say here in Japan, case by case.
I don’t think that he is right about the mechanisms of control for the press, because if the press can set itself up in opposition to the government (as was done in the hyping of Whitewater) the press assures itself of a continuing profit. However, I believe has happened and that this has backfired on the press, because the administration now asserts that much of the mainstream media is wrong. (cue plaintive cries of why isn’t the good news in Iraq getting out).
At any rate, this post is already off the page, I think, so if you are feeling masochistic enough to continue this, I suggest we tackle the concept of media in light Manufacturing Consent in another post.
Neiwert has a good post on this.
Sebastian: The link is quite amusing and shows how Chomsky engages in manufacturing fear.
Actually, it shows that Chomsky’s opponents are compelled to use soundbite quotes without giving context when they want to argue against him.
If I ever have lots of time and am feeling more masocistic I might try to thoroughly deconstruct a Chomsky ‘argument’.
If you could do it (and my “if” is because I’ve never seen anyone on the right do it) that would certainly be worthwhile, simply because Chomsky’s opponents never do. As in the blogpost you linked to, they take soundbite-type quotes, set up straw men, make unsourced claims – and then use that to say “Chomsky was wrong”.
(FWIW, here’s what Chomsky actually said about Pol Pot, and here’s one example of how the false meme that Chomsky supported Pol Pot got going.
Wasn’t there a post up for those interested for whatever reason in debating Chomsky?
Jesus, no wonder people have trouble debating Chomsky. He is practically babbling in that link you provide. He goes on and on seemingly randomly and then sums up with “But these are ideological footballs.” But even this exhibits his classic game. Estimates on US damage always get overplayed, estimates on damage from other people always get underplayed. The West is his devil, and he sees it behind every tree.
In his first five years in office, John Edwards had an attendance rating of 95.4%, being present at 1,551 out of 1,626 roll-call votes. During the first eight months of 2004 (since I could only find figures from the first part of September,) Edwards’ attendance was 252 out of 321, which would be about 79%. He even canceled at least one campaign appearance in order to be present for a vote.
The “dismal attendance” smear was, like so much of what Cheney said about Edwards, just another lie.
Estimates on US damage always get overplayed, estimates on damage from other people always get underplayed. The West is his devil, and he sees it behind every tree.
As I said, Chomsky has his problems, but if you look at the New York Times Magazine interview with Chomsky, you might be a little surprised. I really think he believes his last line, just as I am sure you believe that he hates the West.
I noted before that one of Chomsky’s problems is that he cannot admit that he is wrong and his position on Cambodia is a prime example of this. For what I think is a balanced view of the controversy, see here
But what we were talking about (I thought) is Chomsky’s discussion of the problems of the news media. Here is the 1st half of thescript of Manufacturing Consent. Given that I’ve already questioned his attitude toward sports (section 5), you are free to choose your points that you want to take issue with. Frankly, his discussion of East Timor in the next section explains a lot about Indonesia’s actions in the wake of the tsunami to kick out aid workers and foreign military out of Acheh. Now, if you want to argue with Jes about Chomsky and Cambodia, that’s fine, but claiming that Chomsky’s stance on Cambodia undermines everything he says, well, I don’t think so, so I’d argue that you have to show that Chomsky is wrong in the particular case.
Also, at the risk of being incredibly rude, (but more out of the fear that Jes is going to weigh in even more strongly) I’d suggest that if you are only now claiming (after any number of iterations of this Chomsky discussions) that Chomsky is babbling, I can’t credit that you have read him, as anyone who has read him would have been able to note that right off the bat. His writing style is often impenetrable, and it is written to give him an out, infuriating, but good rhetorical jiu-jitsu. As I said when Chomsky first came up, I understand why many on the right find him so upsetting, especially when they get their idea of wht he says based on googled snippets. Again, my sincere apologies for making such an observation, I’ve really wondered if I should make it, but I really don’t want to have to refute a bunch of half-digested Chomsky quotes or see them taken by others as indicative.
liberal japonicus: I can’t credit that you have read him
Which is precisely what I was complaining about most strongly on the Chomsky thread…. 😉
For the record, I haven’t read any more Chomsky than necessary to determine to my satisfaction that he’s intellectually dishonest hence it’s not worth my time filtering the self-serving Orwellian rhetoric from the good points. I assume that the good points will be extracted by people like Jes and disseminated. Arguing about him seems like not playing the ball to me – except for doing so in the designated thread. Ditto arguing about SH‘s degree of acquaintance with his writing.
rilkefan
I agree, and I think one of those good points is _Manufacturing Consent_. (the link gets you to excerpts) If you haven’t read it, please do. I think the facts presented there are very appropriate to this discussion. The fact that it was published over 15 years ago is rather astonishing, especially when I look over the media landscape of today.
lj, first text I get to:
“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”
Seems entirely tendentious to me. The media may have the inculcating effect described, but it’s not their “function”, whatever that means. The “In a world” bit begs the question, and “systematic propaganda” also seems prejudged – “systematic” esp. strikes me as silly. Maybe I’ll plow forward and get some facts instead of attitude, but it’s against my inclination.
Seems entirely tendentious to me. The media may have the inculcating effect described, but it’s not their “function”, whatever that means.
well, since “tendentious” just means it tends towards a strong viewpoint, well, yeah, I agree, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some truth there. And the notion of ‘systematic propaganda’ is explicated in 2 paragraphs down
They [the filters which operate on the news] fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.
You object to Herman and Chomsky suggesting that the media’s function is to ‘inculcate’. I’m not sure why that is so hard to believe. I mean, what would you say is the media’s “function”? It is certainly not attempting to be an arbiter of the truth when it permits stories that are prima facia wrong to be listed as ‘unproven’. It certainly does not seem to acknowledge any moral strictures on its work, or we would not have the outing of a CIA agent treated as a secret. “…the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news “objectively” and on the basis of professional news values.”
I think this is a clear glimpse of Chomsky’s anarchist ideals, that for him virtually all social inculcation is problematic. I don’t agree, but I think that we should be much more aware of the degree of social inculcation that goes on. Schools are in some ways nothing more than inculcation factories, time schedules, public disapproval, dress codes, choices of front page photos are all versions of social inculcation.
This sounds far too much like a lecture, and I’m sure you’ve considered all these things, but if you parse every single sentence, I think you are going to miss the forest from the trees.
An interesting point to discuss would be whether blogs function to undermine the model set out or if they reinforce it. As the Chinese historian said of the utility of the French Revolution, too soon to tell…
I would say that the media doesn’t have a function – that the media is composed of people with diverse backgrounds and goals and interests and jobs and social positions who are evaluated by and reacted to and exploited by different strata in society in diverse ways, and that the sentence quoted above is written as it is in an effort to pretend otherwise in order to support a tendentious (in the sense of “biased” or “prejudiced”) agenda. The paragraph strikes me as another paranoid “ism” attempting to rhetorically bludgeon the reader into accepting a simplistic all-explanatory world view. And if I can’t safely “parse every single sentence”, I’m going to go find something better written, preferably in iambic pentameter.
Ok, no worries. I do think that the media has a purpose (especially when they are granted certain rights) and therefore can be said to have a ‘function’ in modern society. Saying that the press are just people, which seems to suggest that we have to evaluate them on a case by case basis, lets them off the hook too much. While the paragraph might strike you as one of those ‘paranoid isms’, the point you raise in response reminds me of Thatcher saying that there is no such thing as society.
I’ve acknowledged your point about rhetoric, but I still think there are some valuable points to be taken away. So just to finish up, I’ll try to list the things that happened in this election that relate to the Manu-Consent thesis
Judith Miller’s reporting
use of off the record sources
philosophy of embedding
strictures on photography and reporting
reduced and misleading information flow from Pentagon and other government sources (civilian casualties, US casualties, Pat Tillman’s death)
Swift Boat vets
Sinclair network
I also think that it places discussions like this in a different light
Another model of accountability and self-criticism is the ombudsman, or reader representative, inside a news organization. The ombudsman is usually a staff member who is given a certain amount of freedom to pursue inquiries and complaints from consumers. The more freedom granted the ombudsman, the better, of course. Some newspapers, like The Washington Post and The Seattle Times, have tried to assure the independence of ombudsmen by employing them on non-renewable contracts. Despite the examples set by some leading news organizations — The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe and CBS News, for example — media companies have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the idea of establishing news ombudsmen. There are more than 1,500 daily newspapers in the United States. However, fewer than 40 have news ombudsmen.
-snip-
It is difficult to understand why the concept has not been embraced by the news business. Some newsroom editors and managers say that the editing and checking of accuracy is always done with the consumer in mind and therefore more formal efforts at accountability are unnecessary. But anyone who has ever set foot in a working newsroom knows that readers and viewers are rarely seen or heard there.
none of this should be taken as questioning your preference for iambic pentameter though…
“But anyone who has ever set foot in a working newsroom knows that readers and viewers are rarely seen or heard there.”
Where’s felixrayman when I need to categorize a false argument?
So does inculcation, and M-C more broadly, apply to Sy Hersh, and Katherine, and Brad DeLong and Mark Kleiman? To James Fallows? If not, then the section I cited above loses me. Anyway…
Where’s felixrayman when I need to categorize a false argument?
You could argue that’s an overgeneralization, I suppose, but I don’t think you want to assert it’s a false argument as much as a false statement. Not sure whether it’s true or false myself, though; I tend to buy it, but YMMV.
Err, I didn’t say that, I cited it as the kind of dialogue that becomes easier to understand when you accept some of the premises of M-C. Brad Delong asks ‘why oh why can’t we have a better press corps’, so he obviously agrees that there’s something wrong in the Fourth Estate. I mean, you can say that they are all losers and if we had the right people, things would be fine (sort of a ‘I had the perfect game plan, but the players didn’t execute’ kind of argument), or you can try to figure out what is systemic that makes them have the difficulties that we see. I also believe that Katherine is precisely correct when she writes
I see [the press] as an unwitting, but essential ally–not because of any conservative bias except in a few, blatantly obvious cases, but they do a bad job in a very predictable way, and the GOP has learned to exploit it. In fact they have become dependent on exploiting it.
I don’t want to say this is exactly the same, but this point seems to parallel the point made in M-C.
Not meaning to be snarky, but what else can we make of this this?
(yes, it’s via Atrios, but Katie Couric? At least those asserting liberal bias can rest easy)
Prodigal said: Edwards’ attendance was 252 out of 321, which would be about 79%. He even canceled at least one campaign appearance in order to be present for a vote.
How big of him — he only missed 69 votes. A mere bag of tuiles. And what a sterling example for us — next week I’ll announce at work that I’ll only be there Monday through Thursday, and will be taking every Friday off till November.
I’ts easy enough to tally the key votes Edwards missed. But I admit that he pales in comparison to Kerry’s absenteeism. (of course, Kerry himself falls short of Hall Of Famer Dick Gebhardt.)
Tomsyl: And what a sterling example for us — next week I’ll announce at work that I’ll only be there Monday through Thursday, and will be taking every Friday off till November.
Oh, why waste your time taking Edwards as your example? Why not take Dick Cheney as your example? Then you only have to show up for work twice in four years.
Or insist, like George W. Bush, that your vacation days should amount to over 27% of your time at work.
Katherine used to work as a reporter, and in my view her series on rendition was sufficiently widely disseminated to make her part of the media. DeLong publishes in the media – see this month’s Atlantic. Etc.
Note that I agree that the media suck in many ways – but an argument that reaches my viewpoint by a way of assumptions and sweeping generalizations and browbeating is to my mind worse than useless.
My point re the foot-in-newsroom comment was that civilians and the media come into contact in other ways. Not a lot of non-physicists set foot in my lab…
I try (though sometimes fail to make perfectly clear) to distinguish between the mainstream media and ‘the media’.
I actually really dislike the term “mainstream media”. More often than not, it’s a denial of responsibility–a vague term to allow you to b*tch about the media without admitting that you’re part of it.
There are meaningful distinctions between me and DeLong and CBS or the NY Times, but here’s what they are:
–we’re not paid to do this.
–we have, relatively speaking, a teeny, tiny number of readers.
But Instapundit has a lot more readers than I did working for my second rate little community newspaper, and I bet lots of blogs make more in ad revenues than I did in salary. (not hard to do.) And then you have someone like Limbaugh, who’s got millions and millions of listeners and has probably made more $ off his show than any daily newspaper reporter in the country.
(Linguistic puzzle: why is it cool to be outside of the “mainstream media” but uncool to be “outside the mainstream” of American politics?)
“(Linguistic puzzle: why is it cool to be outside of the “mainstream media” but uncool to be “outside the mainstream” of American politics?)”
Simple, yet still possibly correct, answer: because the media are widely regarded as bad, while the bulk of Americans (whose political views presumably define “mainstream”) is widely regarded as good.
oh. Feeling slightly Emily Litellaish now.
“More often than not, it’s a denial of responsibility–a vague term to allow you to b*tch about the media without admitting that you’re part of it.”
I think it is a matter of viewership or readership. CBS, NBC, and ABC still have (by far) the largest veiwership. Most major TV stations lift stories right from the NYT. The liberal influence of those 4 entities far outweighs any conservative voice in terms of reach. The ratio has been declining since the 1980s, but the statement remains true.
“There are meaningful distinctions between me and DeLong and CBS or the NY Times, but here’s what they are:
–we’re not paid to do this.
–we have, relatively speaking, a teeny, tiny number of readers.”
Literally true, but surely your work here has come to the attention of (or could be referenced by) prominent people who are more likely to hire you to a position in say the Clark administration.
Sebastian–most people watch local TV news. As for the networks versus cable–I thought that the networks get higher ratings than any single show on cable, but since the networks do news (or “news”) for about half an hour a day and cable chanels do it for 24 hours, the cable channels have more influence overall. Do you have cites to contradict this?
I don’t watch network news so I don’t know what they lift from the NY Times. I suspect it’s actually the wires that are more influential, unless TV news is really content to run almost a day behind newspapers. If you’re talking about actual circulation rather than perceived influence, Rush Limbaugh has more listeners than the NY Times has subscribers. (20 million weekly listeners v. a little over 1 million subscribers.) So does Michael Savage. (6 million or so listeners). That doesn’t include online readers, I don’t think, but that’s quite a deficit.
Sebastian, I’d be interested in seeing something like the following exercise: take a random day’s issue of the NYT, go through as many sections as you feel are likely to be tainted with Liberal, and list the examples of bias that you come up with. Then we can discuss to what extent the examples truly reveal bias and see what percentage of news in the paper is infected. We could also have someone on the left do the same and compare numbers. Obviously one day’s paper isn’t a representative sample, but if we come to a consensus that this randomly selected issue clearly tilts to one side, then I for one would be more willing to give some credence to your accusations.
I’d also be interested in why you say that the networks life stories from the NYTimes, and (if so) whether they take the topic, in which case any supposed bias would not be preserved, or also the language. Personally, I find the idea that the major news networks have any systematic bias bizarre. (Tending to trivialize doesn’t count, for these purposes, as a bias.)
(those are daily #s for the NY Times. Sunday circ is higher, about 1.6 million.
Anyway, the NY Times isn’t even the best example. There are plenty of other newspapers with websites that are much less widely read, with a fraction of the NY Times’ circulation let alone Limbaugh’s or Savage’s or O’Reilly’s ratings, that are still considered part of the “mainstream media.”
The Boston Globe has 700,000ish readers. The San Francisco Chronicle has 540,000 on Sunday. The L.A. Daily News has 200,000. The Baltimore Sun has 450,000ish, the Seattle Times has 460,000ish.
etc. etc. And those are Sunday numbers. Weekday numbers are 1/2 to 2/3 of that in most places.)
So I go off to read other stuff, and what do I find at the LA Times but this:
“Last week, CBS News was officially chastised by former Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard Thornburgh for shoddy reporting followed by “rigid and blind” stonewalling on George W. Bush’s Air National Guard record, and several executives and producers were defenestrated accordingly.”
Defenestrated? If this is common practice at CBS, I guess I won’t be walking on the sidewalks below their offices anytime soon.
Why does one always hear about defenestrations, and never about fenestrations? Clearly, somewhere, sometime, someone must’ve been thrown in the window.
Alas:
“Main Entry: fen·es·tra·tion
Pronunciation: “fe-n&-‘strA-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : the arrangement, proportioning, and design of windows and doors in a building
2 : an opening in a surface (as a wall or membrane)
3 : the operation of cutting an opening in the bony labyrinth between the inner ear and tympanum to replace natural fenestrae that are not functional”
I am very upset with you, Andrew, for making me realize that one of my very favorite words in the language, defenestrate, is actually pretty similar to some of my least favorite “words” in the language, detrain and deplane. Defenestrate is transitive, and deplane and detrain are not, but even so.
“Sebastian–most people watch local TV news. As for the networks versus cable–I thought that the networks get higher ratings than any single show on cable, but since the networks do news (or “news”) for about half an hour a day and cable chanels do it for 24 hours, the cable channels have more influence overall. Do you have cites to contradict this?”
Are you counting MSNBC and CNN as conservative outlets? If we are counting major cable stations plus the other major outlets we have CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, MSNBC as liberal. I would call CNN liberal but we might call it unclassifiable psuedo-center. And finally we would have FoxNews as conservative.
” I suspect it’s actually the wires that are more influential, unless TV news is really content to run almost a day behind newspapers.”
I over-simplified, but not in a way that hurts my case when you hit the particulars. For huge unexpected events TV news typically relies on the wires. These are not the type of things that typically involve the kind of bias that we are talking about. Political stories tend to originate in newspapers in the morning and get picked up for the evening news that day if huge or the next day if merely big. A very large number of newspapers run stories straight from the NYT service.
But even with wire reports there can be an interesting bias. The Christian family which was murdered where the police suspect an chatroom with Islamists holds they key is not widely reported in the outlets I identify as liberal. But if there was a Muslim family where the police suspected a religiously Christian murderer, we would practically be at a March on Washington phase by now, even though there is not an arrested suspect as of yet. Some things fit the liberal storyline, others do not.
I think CNN and MSNBC are conservatively biased, yes. I think only CBS can really be called liberal. Moreover, I think it is beyond stupid to label everything “liberal” or “conservative” as if that told the whole story. I think CBS and the NY Times could fairly be called liberal, and yet I also think their reporting has helped Bush more than Kerry and much more than Clinton or Gore.
I have repeated my overall take on press bias so many times, including in this thread, with so little engagement from conservatives that sometimes I feel like I am talking to a brick wall.
My apologies, Katherine. I trust you will remain kempt and plussed in the face of this revelation.
If we are counting major cable stations plus the other major outlets we have CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, MSNBC as liberal.
MSNBC as liberal? Are you kidding me?
“I have repeated my overall take on press bias so many times, including in this thread, with so little engagement from conservatives that sometimes I feel like I am talking to a brick wall.”
I think you need a little empathy for opponents. How do you think I feel talking to you with assertions suggesting that only CBS and the NYT count as liberal news sources? 😉
As for MSNBC, let us see shall we. Alterman, Quindlen, Kuntzman, Reynolds, Clift, Olbermann are their major columists. Exactly one is rightish and four are clearly left. Chris Matthews, just because he hated Clinton doesn’t make him a non-Democrat non-liberal. But those are the opinion guys.
The news is conservative leaning? How so? Because they report terrorism and that helps Bush?
CNN is right-wing? Umm, if you say so. Weren’t they the ones who mouthpieced Saddam’s propaganda to maintain access? They are at best not as liberal-cheerleading as CBS, but calling them pro-conservative is a bit over the top.
I’m really not seeing the relevance, unless you’ve dug up Hussein’s Democratic Party membership card or something.
“The Christian family which was murdered where the police suspect an chatroom with Islamists holds they key is not widely reported in the outlets I identify as liberal. But if there was a Muslim family where the police suspected a religiously Christian murderer, we would practically be at a March on Washington phase by now, even though there is not an arrested suspect as of yet. ”
Wow.
Have you read what I have written on this site at all about extraordinary rendition, about the mass detentions of immigrants and the abuses at the Brooklyn MDC? Have you noticed any marches on Washington over all that? (Hint: No. There were a few tiny little pickets inside Sunset Park I think, nothing that would ever had made much news.) Has the President been asked about extraordinary rendition or the Arar case directly, ever, by any of the army of liberal reporters out to get him? (Hint: No.) What about his press secretary? (Hint: No.) Were either the president or his press secretary ever asked about the confirmed abuse at the Brooklyn MDC? (Not as far as I can tell.) Was it an issue at all during the presidential campaign? (Hint: no.)
Have there been anti-Muslim murders and mosque firebombings since 9/11? (Hint: yes.) Has there been a March on Washington after that was confirmed? (Hint: no, I don’t believe so.)
Has the liberal NY Times reported on the possible religious motivation in the New Jersey murders? (Hint: yes.) Have they done so even though the police “would not discuss motives” for the murders? (Hint: yes.) Have they done so even though one of the victim’s brother “said he objected to the speculation over whether the murder was a hate crime” (Hint: yes.) Are prosecutors now saying that while they’re not ruling out a religious motivation, there are also signs of robbery? (Hint: yes.)
Has the Associated Press reported on the possible religious motive? (Hint: yes. Has the story been picked up by all sorts of liberal and “liberal” media outlets? Also yes. What about the local affiliate of that liberal ABC News?
” How do you think I feel talking to you with assertions suggesting that only CBS and the NYT count as liberal news sources? ;)”
There’s a difference between disagreeing with someone, and completely failing to ever, acknowledge, engage, or respond to their arguments.
“As for MSNBC, let us see shall we. Alterman, Quindlen, Kuntzman, Reynolds, Clift, Olbermann are their major columists. Exactly one is rightish and four are clearly left. Chris Matthews, just because he hated Clinton doesn’t make him a non-Democrat non-liberal. But those are the opinion guys.”
Dude. The TV station, not the WEBSITE. For one thing, the website carries Newsweek stuff–hence Quindlen, Clift, and Kuntzman–but Newsweek is actually a Washington Post company. They have some content sharing deal, but they are NOT MSNBC.
I’m talking about the TV station.
Olbermann is liberal. Matthews may be personally liberal but is a pretty nonpartisan screamer on TV, and as with most pundit shows, conservatives are way way overrepresented among his guests. Scarborough is really conservative. The Abrams report is schlock trial coverage. Don Imus is conservative. Lester Holt is probably not personally conservative but uses that prototypical cable news style that gives huge advantages to conservative.
As for CNN. Inside Politics is conservatively biased as far as I’m concerned, yes. Crossfire is balanced but is a worthless shouting match, good riddance. Lou Dobbs is conservatively biased, though the issue he’s most biased on is immigration and outsourcing and he is protectionist. Wolf Blitzer is conservatively biased. Christiane Amanpour is liberal but she’s almost never on. Aaron Brown seems middle of the roadish.
All of this so completely misses the point that it’s almost worthless.
OT, but still: Roger L. Simon tells us that “this is not a time to defenestrate the Royal Family”. — What is it with everyone suddenly thinking of throwing people out of windows?
And MSNBC is reportedly going to hire Tucker Carlson, who is conservatively biased.
As to the point you’re not getting:
here it is.
“CBS does a lousy job in general and an incredibly lousy job in this case. As does most TV news, and newspapers too when it comes to political coverage. You see the press as the Republicans’ enemy–I see them as an unwitting, but essential ally–not because of any conservative bias except in a few, blatantly obvious cases, but they do a bad job in a very predictable way, and the GOP has learned to exploit it. In fact they have become dependent on exploiting it.
Very few liberals are arguing that the parts of the media routinely accused of liberal bias do a good job. We only argue that the parts of the media that are not generally accused of liberal bias are much, much, worse.
If the problem is liberal bias, Fox News, talk radio, the NY Post are part of the solution. If the problem is lousy journalism, sensationalism, lack of standards and all the rest, they are just the opposite.
If the problem is liberal bias, the solution is for CBS to cover the President less critically, to do fewer investigative reports because they might get burned, that sort of thing. If the problem is sensationalism, the solution is quite different.
What I’m afraid of is not that CBS loses viewers, but that they lose viewers to sources that do a worse job, or they make their coverage worse to keep viewers.”
“Separate bias from this question–
will your view of the world be:
1) factually accurate &
2) reasonably complete
if you rely only on this news source?
The BBC, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, NOW with Bill Moyers–they are all liberal by U.S. standards, especially the BBC and the New Yorker. The Economist, the London Times, the Wall Street Journal–those are conservative. The News Hour and the Christian Science Monitor seem pretty much down the middle to me. But all of them are as accurate, as reliable, as any news source out there, including news sources where it would be harder to identify a bias.
Whereas if you rely on the Daily Mirror, the NY Post, the Washington Times, Fox News, the Nation, CNN, MSNBC–you will not have an accurate view. Let alone if you rely on talk radio.
Bias matters, but quality, factual accuracy, judgment, basic standards of journalism–these matter more. Not everything is relative. Seymour Hersh is a better reporter than Geraldo or Oliver North. Michael Kelly was a better reporter than Robert Fisk is. Christiane Amanpour is a better reporter than Paula Zahn. If you took a poll of the entire Middle East, many more people would agree with Al Jazeera’s views than Ha’retz’s. It would be a landslide. But there is no question, no question at all, that Ha’aretz is a better, more reliable news source that gives a more accurate picture of what is happening in the world.
What worries me about Fox and the NY Post and talk radio is not that they’re conservative. It’s that they’re more interested in pushing their agenda than finding the truth. The BBC, the NY Times, the New Yorker, certainly Dan Rather at times–they’re all fallible, they’re all capable of subordinating the truth to their political agenda. But at those places it’s the exception. At Fox, and on talk radio, it’s the rule. And a large % of the population trusts no other news source–considers Fox less biased than a C-Span camera feed. That’s why they worry me.”
“Journalists and organizations should not be judged solely on how often they make factual errors, how badly they err, or how quickly they correct their errors. They should also be judged on whether they are covering important stories, how well they are covering them, and how many important stories they break.
You know how doctors feel about how malpractice law suits lead to the practice of “defensive medicine”? What concerns me about the constant attacks on the “liberal media” is that they are leading to the practice of “defensive journalism.”
It’s safer to write a he-said she-said story than to try to evaluate the truth of those statements. It’s safer to write a horse race story than an issues-based story. It’s safer to abandon political coverage altogether in favor of the celebrity trial of the moment. It’s safer to have pundits scream at each other than do investigative reporting. It’s safer to be a pundit or a talk show host or an opinion writer than a reporter–if people criticize you for errors or bias you can just say “I don’t claim to be objective” or “this is commentary, not a news show.”
And most critics of the “MSM” and “liberal media” do not hold themselves to anywhere close to the same standards as the “MSM” and “liberal media.” for example…
I recognize that this is their day job, they get paid and we don’t, etc. etc. But I do wish more bloggers (to say nothing of right-of-center newspapers, TV networks and radio who don’t even have our “I don’t get paid and have another full time job” excuse) would at least try to “be the change they wish to see in the media.” The signal-to-noise ratio is high enough as it is.”
(I see you did respond to one of these over the weekend. My apologies–I’d left town. But you simply denied the existence of the problem, so….)
As for specific examples of how even the “liberal media” distorts things in a way that, on net, harms Democrats and helps Republicans–yes you read that right–Read campaigndesk.org every day, and look at the archives too. But here’s the very short summary:
1) “he said she said journalism.” They report as if the parties’ positions are both equally valid matters of opinion, even when this is empirically, verifiably, false. They report as if the two parties are taking equally extreme positions, and waging equally dirty campaigns, and making comparable factual errors–no matter what.
2) “Pee wee soccer journalism.” They decide what stories to cover mainly based on these criteria:
a) how many people are talking about this?
b) how loudly are they yelling?
Those are the two biggest problems, though there are many other related ones, like over-covering stories that fit a “storyline” about a candidate’s personality, and over-covering intra-party disputes.
defenstrate, it was there all the time.
hilzoy–don’t ask me, I only know the word from Czech history classes.
“There’s a difference between disagreeing with someone, and completely failing to ever, acknowledge, engage, or respond to their arguments.”
Yup. There sure is. But I think we might disagree about which one of us does that.
I honestly can’t talk about the current state of TV news. I gave up on it probably at about the same time you began watching it. It is theoretically possible that there has been dramatic changes since then. But knowing institutions the way I do, I seriously doubt it. You also aren’t convinced that there is serious liberal bias in universities, bias which I have personally experienced every bit as much as I was chased down the street by five gay-bashers. I could tell the second story and most people on this board would think it said something serious, the first set of stories is considered mere anecdotes. I don’t know what to say. Perhaps my view has been colored by a large number of unlikely coincidences that look like liberal bias to me. But I really don’t think so.
I engage your view just fine. I come to different conclusions. I have more experience of news in the 1980s and most probably less in the 2000s. But in my view you hang far too much weight on the anti-Clinton stories as providing balance to a full 50 years of liberal slanting in the media. In my view you hang far too much weight on the conservative counter-weights which have only just come into power. In my view you nearly ignore social commentary slanting–like the reports of homelessness that appear in Republican administrations but not under Democratic administrations despite having the same or worse problems. In my view, it is odd for you on the one hand to suggest that journalism is rarely colored by the fact that journalists are nearly all Democrats while on the other hand you admit that their principles don’t guard well against even mere sensationalism.
Your argument is that conservatives play the media game well. Of course they do. We learn to play the game because the media never just gives us anything. Democrats have become lazy with the media because they have had an entire generation coddling from a media which generally agrees with them. By the time Clinton came to power, conservatives had finally created a fairly strongish parallel media, and had learned to play the mainstream media’s weakness against itself. Democrats had 50 years of not needing to overtly flex their media muscles and couldn’t respond well. That doesn’t prove that the media isn’t biased and generally sympathetic to Democrats. It proves that the media is 100% identical to the Democratic party, which we all knew. It proves that this not 100% identical to the Democratic party institution could be leveraged against Democrats under certain abnormal circumstances. Democrats haven’t remembered how to flex their media muscles because they haven’t had to until recently. The bad results Democrats have had recently don’t deny media-bias. It just suggests that the effectiveness of the bias is finally breaking down.
You argue that the lack of effectiveness disproves the bias. I argue that the lack of effectiveness is typical of large-scale dinosaur institutions late in their lives.
We argue past each other. That doesn’t irk me as much because I’m a conservative who grew up in the Silicon Valley of California and thus I am used to having my arguments responded to with “he seems like such nice person normally”.
To readers, Katherine and I just cross-posted. My 7:16 is in response to her 6:35.
I’ll respond to the rest of it after I eat dinner, but as for this:
“he said she said journalism.” They report as if the parties’ positions are both equally valid matters of opinion, even when this is empirically, verifiably, false. They report as if the two parties are taking equally extreme positions, and waging equally dirty campaigns, and making comparable factual errors–no matter what.”
I would like to note for example, abortion reporting. This doesn’t happen in that area at all. I would like to note for example stem-cell research reporting, where opponents of such research are portrayed as freaks who don’t care about Alzheimer’s patients.
I would also like to note a facet of this style which you do not mention: reporting two sides with one reasonable person on the liberal side, and a fire-breathing crazy as the ‘representative’ on the conservative side. This almost always happens in abortion reporting, and happens quite often in other social reporting areas (such as welfare reform, homelessness, etc). You may recognize its counterpart when it cuts against liberals–very recently the press did that with pro-Iraq war people and super-pacifists.
Okay, but here’s WHY we’re talking past each other. I don’t care very much if the “mainstream press” is liberal or conservative. I care if it is doing a competent job.
It’s not. Close to four years ago I left journalism and decided to go to law school because I was disgusted with the way the press worked, and I feel better about my career now. And not the do-gooder public interest law career I hope to have personally, either–the profession as a whole. Most lawyers do a decent job for the people who they’re supposed to be working for. Most journalists do not.
That was 2000-1. It’s only gotten worse since then. It’s been getting worse my whole life, and I fully expect it to continue.
I think part of the reason the press is getting worse is the constant kvetching about the liberal media. This leads to:
–the “he said she said” method of reporting, that advantages dishonesty and extremism
–the six-year-olds-playing-soccer approach to determining what stories are newsworthy
–favoring horse race coverage and personality coverage over substantive coverage of the issues or investigative reporting
–favoring opinion shows over news shows on TV
–favoring non-political coverage over political coverage
The Canadian press is much better than ours, as is the English, as is the Israeli, as is, as far as I can tell, the Australian and South African. In several of those countries, there’s no First Amendment, and truth is not an absolute defense in libel cases. It’s a shame to our country.
And for all that, I’m stuck defending them, because the non-“mainstream”, non-“liberal” press is consistently–almost without exception–worse.
As for vote-matching deals: Consider what would happen to a Republican Senator running for President in 2008 if it became known among the Democratic Senate caucus that they had refused (especially consistently refused) a vote-matching deal with Kerry or Edwards in 2004…
Since I think plenty of Republicans want to run for President in 2008 (and would probably want to strike some vote-matching deals at that time) I doubt Kerry or Edwards had any trouble striking a vote-matching deal on any vote where it would have made a difference.
” would like to note for example, abortion reporting. This doesn’t happen in that area at all. I would like to note for example stem-cell research reporting, where opponents of such research are portrayed as freaks who don’t care about Alzheimer’s patients.
I would also like to note a facet of this style which you do not mention: reporting two sides with one reasonable person on the liberal side, and a fire-breathing crazy as the ‘representative’ on the conservative side.”
As far as the former, I’ve been googling through some “liberal media” sources on abortion and stem cell research, and I don’t see anything so far except the NY Times & some others seem to generally refer to “abortion rights” when “legal abortion” is more neutral. I’m not sure what direction this cuts in, though–“rights” has a positive connotation generally but maybe not in this case, and it doesn’t seem like that big a deal given that the S. Ct. has said that abortion is a right.
And it doesn’t jibe with what I’ve seen in general about abortion. On stem cell research, the press writes sympathetically of research groups and scientists but your characterization of how news reporters portray opponents seems flatly false to me. And I actually think stem cell research reporting consistently fails to get across a key factual point that helps supporters, which is that the embryos being discussed would remain frozen or be discarded anyway.
I do think they are generally sympathetic to gay rights and to evolution supporters, and unsympathetic to creationists and anti-gay rights people. But I don’t think there’s any more defensible way to write about that issue. Sometimes looking at things objectively helps one side and harms the other, but there you are.
Your second point may well be correct, but I think it is harmful to liberals, not helpful. The press may interview loons to represent conservative viewpoints, but they generally don’t treat them as loons and politely refrain from mentioning the loony things they’ve said. They are defined as the right end of the spectrum of acceptable opinion, while a very moderate liberal is defined as the left end.
I also don’t think they’re really all that unrepresentative, as you often find senators and congressmen and members of the administration inviting them to testify at hearings, speaking to their conventions, or talking just like them.
I’m sure you could come up with some counter examples, but as I’ve done some serious looking into the media portrayal of say, the FRC, you’d have to come up with a fair number to convince me you’re accurately describing the rule and not just picking a few exceptions.
In any case all of this was orthagonal to my main point, which was specifically about politicians and political parties more than advocacy groups.
Sebastian: I honestly can’t talk about the current state of TV news. I gave up on it probably at about the same time you began watching it. It is theoretically possible that there has been dramatic changes since then. But knowing institutions the way I do, I seriously doubt it.
If you stopped in approximately October 2001 then yes, there have been dramatic changes since then. Katherine also omitted Michael Savage from MSNBC’s roster; the offense he was fired for was indistinguishable compared to his usual hogwash but hey, whatever works.
Katherine: Matthews may be personally liberal but is a pretty nonpartisan screamer on TV, and as with most pundit shows, conservatives are way way overrepresented among his guests.
I used to like Chris Matthews back in the day. Then he went, as one of my friends says, keeeeerazy.* Then I watched him for three solid hours during which he didn’t have a single liberal or progressive voice and only one or two centrists, which was the nail in the coffin for me.
* One of my other friends and I had a running (gag) question: if you only had one bullet, which media personality would the world be best off without? He vacillated around, picking Candi Crowley and a few others; I held the line at Chris Matthews. Two weeks later, he sent me an email: he’d apparently just watched an ep of Hardball and he apologized unreservedly for the error of his ways.
“In any case all of this was orthagonal to my main point, which was specifically about politicians and political parties more than advocacy groups.”
The media bias goes beyond mere reporting on political parties and figures. Way beyond.
But I also adressed why Republicans are presently better at gaming the media. Do you find that unpersuasive?
“One of my other friends and I had a running (gag) question: if you only had one bullet, which media personality would the world be best off without?”
Ooooooh.
I’m peace loving, so let’s say not bullet, but irrevocable one way ticket into retirement.
But: Matthews isn’t even in the top ten. Not even the top twenty. At some level he seems to realize that he’s being a stupid hack.
Do I go for the most objectionable (Michael Savage)? The one I find most personally annoying (David Brooks or Glenn Reynolds)? The most overrated (Tim Russert)? The one who has probably done the most overall harm (Rush Limbaugh)? The smarmiest (Howard Kurtz–I’m thinking specifically of his implication that Dean pulled strings to recover his brother’s body from Laos, but it could be a general achievement award)?
But then again, how could I overlook the opportunity to exile D**chebag of Liberty Robert Novak? But Novak probably only assisted in a felony, at worst, whereas Oliver North definitely committed one. But is obstructing justice really a worse crime than being Geraldo?
So many choices….
“But I also adressed why Republicans are presently better at gaming the media. Do you find that unpersuasive?”
Yes.
In general, I think the GOP has an absurd, appalling persecution complex, from which you are not totally immune. I see a lot of blanket generalization about the media supported by precious little evidence, and the few examples cited tend to break down upon closer inspection.
See the 6:21 post for a further example of this.
also: most of the flaws I am referring to are, once again, NOT flaws that the press had all along, but flaws that the press has developed in direct response to conservative complaints about media bias. Which your party then exploits shamelessly.
I wish the Democrats would smarten up about media strategy, but the way to best exploit the press’ flaws is to lie. And if the Dems start to rely on deceiving the public as the Republican leadership does, I’m leaving the party.
I think a reframing is in order. I’m not interested in whether or why the “mainstream media” is liberal. I’m interested in why the conservative media sucks so bad, and why only the “liberal media” follows basic standards of journalism in this country.
The most overrated (Tim Russert)?
Must be that blue collar heritage.
Since the MSM lost its monopoly, the times they are changing for the good. And we certainly don’t feel persecuted but we do realish the MSM’s decline.
This is the % of Republicans who “believe all or most from” a given news source from a recent Pew poll:
Fox News: 29%
CNN: 26%
C-Span: 23%
Wall St. Journal: 23%
ABC News: 17%
NBC News: 16%
Daily Paper: 16%
NPR: 15%
CBS News: 15%
NY Times: 14%
MSNBC: 14%
Lehrer NewsHour: 12%
That is disturbing to me. Not only is Fox–the least reliable of the above IMO–#1, but 3 of the 5 news sources I consider most reliable (NY Times, the NewsHour and NPR–the other 2 are C-Span and the Wall Street Journal) are in the bottom 5 of this poll. It’s close to backwards.
I suppose I should be glad talk radio isn’t included in the sample.
But you want to know something more disturbing?
In the same poll, asked which party controlled the House of Representatives, 56% said Republicans, 8% said the Democrats, and 36% said they didn’t know.
Asked the name of the terrorist organization that attacked the United States on September 11″, 66% said Al Qaeda, 5% mentioned Osama or bin Laden, 5% gave another, incorrect response, and 24% said they didn’t know.
Asked the results of Martha Stewart’s recent trial, 79% correctly answered that she was found guilty.
Timmy, do you still think the times are changing for the good?
So many choices….
The key, as I understand the game, is you want to eliminate the one linchpin that’s holding the rotten edifice together, the one scum(douche?)bag without whom the genuine creeps and cretins will be revealed for what they are. Remove a Novak or a Limbaugh and someone will slither out to replace him; remove a Matthews or a Russert and the discourse will, hopefully, quieten down enough for reasonable people to hear what the Douchebags are saying and correct their course.
Or maybe we just like saying nasty things about cable TV hosts 😉
Timmy, do you still think the times are changing for the good?
Absolutely! Two questions, first how often do you watch Fox? Second and related how do you know it is unreliable. I see a lot of blanket generalization about Fox supported by precious little evidence, and the few examples cited tend to break down upon closer inspection.
Katherine, I await your reply or your analysis, whatever.
Katherine, don’t forget Uncle Walt thought we lost Tet, what a wanker.
“and why only the “liberal media” follows basic standards of journalism in this country.”
Hmm, I thought a part of your argument was that journalists do not follow the basic standards of journalism.
Well thanks for at least acknowledging:
Frankly I think you are in the position of being the white person who says that discrimination against blacks isn’t a big deal in the modern era. You are a liberal, you aren’t assualted by the bias which is prevalent every day. I am both conservative and gay and I will tell you right now that the anti-conservative bias in many areas of California is every bit as prevalent as anti-gay bias with exactly the same characteristics. But you won’t believe me. Which I accept.
Jes, I’m sure above all else you want to be fair to the President. From your cite on Bush’s vacation time:
Although to be fair, much of this time is classified as a “working vacation.”
As to Cheney, I was under the impression he had another job. Unlike Edwards, unless you call spending hundreds of millions of OPM running an ineffectual campaign a “job.” /snark.
Katherine, assuming for a moment that the Pew poll itself lacks a liberal slant, why do you think the NYT ranks so low? Could its vitriolic anti-Bush editorial page be a significant factor? After all, it’s not a great intuitive leap to conclude that a paper that publishes the rantings of Bush-haters like Dowd and Krugman might slant the news accordingly.
I should say that from my own perspective I would rank the WaPo, NYT, CNN and certainly apolitical C-Span far above Fox in terms of accuracy and neutrality. My preference is for European news via the CBC cable feed (Canadian news itself sucks, though — very provincial and boringly, predictably anti-American) or Japanese news for detail about what’s going on outside our borders. And to be fair to the Canadians, they’ve done very good, detailed reports on places like Ivory Coast, Turkey, Afghanistan, &c.
Sebastian: You are a liberal, you aren’t assualted by the bias which is prevalent every day.
The problem is, that while you claim you see bias prevalant every day, all you appear able to come up with as evidence of bias is … stories critical of the Bush administration.
“The problem is, that while you claim you see bias prevalant every day, all you appear able to come up with as evidence of bias is … stories critical of the Bush administration.”
Nope. I have given examples regarding my university experience. I have given examples regarding abortion. I have given examples regarding welfare. I have given examples regarding homelessness. The most recent examples are critical of the Bush administration but my experience predates the Bush administration.
Sebastian: This thread fell fallow a long time ago, but I thought I’d put this here rather than pollute a new thread. You were asking about cable news bias? Here’s an example…
Cable commenters on the inauguration.