Viewed from that perspective, it all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Let me chime in with some filling details. Part of why the press "likes" government is that, well, the "thought" taught in journalism classes, and followed pretty much by rote is that "present both sides".
Many situations have more than 2 sides. But to the press, they just need to find 2. Guess what? In almost every case, one of them is... easily found by grabbing the Government phone directory. Even if the press story seems to be slanted against the government - it's usually easy to get someone to say something that's usable either for or against.
The concept of having 20 or 30 "sides" to an argument gives writers headaches. How to sum up and present the narrative?
I did not anticipate a general reluctance and the outright refusal of some journalists to explain their activities. Most of the journalists would not return calls when they were contacted and asked to participate in the study. Callbacks did not help. Neither did assurances of anonymity help to reverse the refusals. The non-response rate, thus defined, is almost 95 percent.
Amazing how that works. Or how the NYT (for an excellent example) can clam up when it comes to it's own internal cooked books.... (or how it "acquired" that property in the middle of NYC...)
The very people who insist that scrutiny is needed for everything - except their own activities.
I haven't finished the entire article yet--I'm at this line:
Does any of this sound familiar? "Central planning," anyone?
The arguments leading to this point are clear and well-done. The elite media is very friendly towards control by those who are of the elite, symbol-manipulating classes.
It is not absolutely necessary that the impulse to Administrative Control Bias springs from a socialistic/communistic mindset. However, it is a mindset that is attracted to such solutions.
Your article flowed pretty rapidly on towards its end.
The comparison with the ancient Gnostics is apt. The Gnostic teachers claimed to have possession of a special gnosis (Greek for knowledge) that gave them the spiritual/philosophical high ground. The gnosis held the secret to making sense of the world, and gave the key to the good afterlife. (That's what people cared about at the time...)
The reluctance of the press to be interviewed, to answer anonymous questions, and to let anyone report on the process of reporting gives credence to the belief that the elite media think of themselves as the priests of the Administratively Managed Age.
The comparison with the ancient Gnostics is apt. The Gnostic teachers claimed to have possession of a special gnosis (Greek for knowledge) that gave them the spiritual/philosophical high ground. The gnosis held the secret to making sense of the world, and gave the key to the good afterlife.
Yes. I understand it comes from the ability to "ask yourself the right questions" whereupon the answers just magically come to you.
I just don't understand what gets taught in journalism schools.
I tend to agree with Stossel's own assessment of having taken no journalism courses as helping him. What else could one need except for a broad vocabulary, a keen, thinking mind and an ability to reason, coupled with some elementary philosophy and a logic course, at most.
>>Second, they seemed hypersensitive to what ends the survey might be directed, and did not like the fact that they were not being told everything up front. In the words of one journalist, "Where are you going with all of this? I need to know before I can continue."
This strikes me as incredibly telling and illuminating.
An acolyte of the media simply cannot participate in a search for some sort of objective information without having the means of guiding the conclusions to some desired outcome.
"The New Reformation is coming about because the populace is sick and tired of op-eds written as straight news. We're tired of being fed bullshit and being told it's steak. More and more of us are aware we're being lied to ..."
... and one big reason for that increasing awareness is the availability to us of information, of the source documents that a historian craves, via the internet. It can be accessed via our fingertips, it is cross-referenced and indexed, and it is searchable. It can be found, understood, discussed, and disseminated at a speed that leaves the Old Media still groping for its morning coffee. The New Reformation is happening because the Old Media is not the only source for information that is easily accessible, and because the sources we now have easy and fast access to include original sources that we can trust.
As a simple example, consider a presidential candidate's blitherings about how the Second Amendment is just fine with him, how gun owners are fine people, and so on and so on. Why, ain't nuthin' to worry 'bout! But the record of that same candidate, what he did with the authority he had as an elected public servant in state and national gubmint, is available to everyone with only a few moments tapping of the keys. Facts are stubborn things, and the internet makes them available to all.
The other big reason for that increasing awareness is the hammer blows it has landed through the simple use of logical and rational thinking. It became a juggernaut, in my opinion, with this post by Charles Johnson at LGF. No further explanation is necessary, and the Old Media is still reeling from it.
This helps explain why I haven't been more interested in journalism as a career.
As an AF Intel officer I was (I thought) in the same business as journalists: The collection, analysis and dissemination of information. Of distilling a firehose stream of information down to the essentials needed to make decsisions.
We could not afford biased or agenda driven interpretations and presentations(although it has and apparently still does happen much too often) and worked against letting our inside beliefs taint the system, mostly by using every possible source of info, vetting for credibility (but not ignoring it) and using "red teams" to evaluate alternative explainations for the same set of information. (i.e. getting all "20 or 30 sides")
I had always felt that was what journalists were supposed to do, and failed at so miserably time after time. Hence my contempt as a professional towards others that fall short of standards.
This article implies that I was judging them too harshly by the wrong criteria. Journalists are not professional information gatherers (as I was), they are Clerics. So no wonder they often do not seem to even try to live up the standards we set ourselves in the Intel community. They're in a different profession all toghether.
Also explains why I was never interested in pursuing journalism as a career. I'm not intersted in being a cleric for any religion, secular or theocratic.
Did the study by Prof. Patrick include any mention of the elite press and its opinion about homeschooling?
The requisite nationwide organization is the Home School Legal Defense Association.
I would suspect that a stastical analysis would put homeschoolers between the HSLDA and the NRA in the list you quoted. But the sample size is likely to be small.
Did the study by Prof. Patrick include any mention of the elite press and its opinion about homeschooling?
It did not. I got the impression that the journalism-as-clergy and "administrative control bias" findings grew organically out of the original study. Further examination of other interest groups would reinforce or counter the hypothesis.
From what I've seen, homeschooling would absolutely reinforce Professor Patrick's hypothesis.
...one big reason for that increasing awareness is the availability to us of information, of the source documents that a historian craves, via the internet.
DJ: absolutely. It's the modern equivalent of printing the Bible in modern languages on Gutenberg's press. Without the technology available to spread the information to the masses, Luther's 95 Theses would have vanished into the myths of history, because the Church would have retained the ability to control the flow (and interpretation) of information.
They've lost that ability, and they're still struggling with the fact.
Now they're ALL being asked if they practice either journalism or objectivity - and they don't like it.
That explains so much. I had always wondered how it was that both liberals and conservatives could see media bias towards the other side, and I had always assumed it was because those liberals who saw the bias were so far left they could not longer see the center. But this makes far, far more sense.
I've got to come clean: I am technically in the industry of journalism. I am not a journalist, however; rather, I'm the production manager/layout editor for a small university newspaper.
I don't tend to read the entirety of the stories before I place them in the issue, but I have noticed a pattern: people who are new at journalistic writing tend to report more straight fact, where as people who have been doing it for a while, particularly editors, tend to adhere to the same institutionalized bias described by this article. There are exceptions, but not often.
Good article, and at first blush, I think it explains much, but not all, of the biases we see in the daily news. That fact, as noted, that both the left and the right see bias going for the other side, I always took as a statement of the difference the two sides placed on different values. Even so, I have always wondered why someone needed a degree in something that any highschool graduate should know, with a little on the job training. And, I have always wondered why journalists refer to what they write as a "story" as opposed to a "case", or some other word connoting an activity that partakes more of reality, and less of just making stuff up. If nothing else, now I know.
I shall have to re-read this post, and digest it some more, and test it against actual news "stories" that I read. Please keep bringing these things to the forefront with your readers.
I will take one exception; "journalists see themselves as the clergy in the Church of State".
They do not SEE themselves this way (though of course they BEHAVE as such). That would require a self-honesty and humility utterly at odds with their 'professional' self-view. Thus the personal hostility (nearly violence) to any inquiry that would make them face up. One of the worst things you can do to a person, especially a person with weak self-assurance, is make them confront their own self-delusions on a topic in which their pyschological core is heavily invested. Does Markadelphia's reaction to neo neo-con make more sense in that light?
The case for the bias being more about administrative control than Right/Left bias is compelling, particularly given the Left's natural affinity for administrative control.
After mulling it over a bit, I see a missing data set that's needed to complete the picture.
We see the press reacting AGAINST anti-administrative forces such as the NRA and ACLU.
We see the press acting FOR administrative control causes of the Left.
What are examples of the press acting FOR the administrative control causes of the Right?
What are examples of the press acting FOR the administrative control causes of the Right?
As much as it pains me to say it, Markadelphia and the Left are correct about the media's nearly unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq based entirely on information coming out of the White House. (Hey, even a stopped clock...) There was very little to no critical examination of that information from the "elite media."
I think the realization afterward of what they'd done led in large part to their excesses in the opposite direction after the invasion began, and the Plame affair is a flashing neon example.
I think the Bush administration played the media like a banjo from the inauguration day onward, and the media hates them for it.
>>The War on Drugs? Have you ever seen negative coverage on NIDA?
Ayep.
I've seen a fair number of articles on how the inner cities have been depopulated of black males, and other effects of the WoD. Granted, they aren't presented in the terms of overall failure in the way you'll find them talked about on gun boards and libertarian boards, but they are there, to the extent that it offends the agenda of the Left.
You'll also find that articles critical of the Rights anti-terror administrative control programs are a dime a dozen. You name it: extraordinary rendition, coercive interrogation, surveillance, etc etc etc.
Markadelphia and the Left are correct about the media's nearly unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq based entirely on information coming out of the White House.
Maybe you were reading/watching another press than I was. Granted, I tend to not pay a lot of attention anymore - but all the coverage I saw was massively negative.
Remember the "quagmire" meme that perpetuated everything up to and after the Afghanistan invasion - ending only when the Iraq situations started to come to a head. For 18 months, Bush went to the UN, presented evidence, made pleas... and I certainly remember the constant drumbeat of a "Rush To War" that was persistent in the coverage.
Steyn summed this up brilliantly. We had a "6 week quagmire" in Afghanistan, and a 18-month "Rush to War" in Iraq.
(I'm still waiting on that brutal Afghan winter the press kept harping about.) The press's meme was this was "unilateral action", despite the commitment of 40 nation's combat forces. Again, not something you'd expect if they were swallowing the White House line completely, as the WH touted the Coalition constantly, and was utterly ignored by those in the press.
In the meantime, we had Eason Jordan admitting that they were soft-shoeing the news from inside Iraq.
I was raging at the media I was reading back then because every story was replete with mis-reporting of the situation. Fiskings abounded on the internet of the coverage, as for instance, Bush would give a long speech detailing a number of issues. The press coverage would be "Bush doesn't prove immediate threat".
I'd be very interested in what you're considering as "unanimous support" - I certainly can't remember any examples of it. They certainly weren't pointing out the violations of the ceasefire (any of which were actionable with force per the cease fire). They weren't overmuch stressing the threat Iraq posed.
Now, after the invasion, there was a lot of incredulous reporting of various nerve agents, that turned out to - kind of - not be.
Without getting into a huge rant, those discoveries of "insecticide" (which were roundly laughed at in the press), proved that there was a huge nerve gas industry in Iraq. (It's trivial to take those "insecticides" and turn them into nerve gas...) Or the complete burying of the story when the IED was found with binary Sarin. (Giving a lie to the narrative that Saddam had no WMD facilities.) A unmarked artillery shell, stolen from an armory, set up as a roadside IED detonated when EOD tried to disarm it. Had it been a live shell, they'd be dead. Instead, it was a binary sarin shell. "Insurgents" wouldn't have set that up as a roadside IED had they known what they had. (Again: an unmarked artillery shell. There's a lot of meaning in that discovery. The press did none of it.)
I've always figured the reporting of the potential WMDs was the press's "If it bleeds, it leads" concept. I notice that when real, proven WMD was found, they were incredibly reluctant to follow up.
The press reported, as they were pretty much required to, what the President was making as a case for war. I can agree with you that far.
But they by no means supported the war, in fact, I can't recall any major media outlet who had any sort of support for it.
The press's meme was this was "unilateral action", despite the commitment of 40 nation's combat forces.
Absolutely. More of the "administrative bias" idea - if there's a multinational consensus, then it must be a good idea. But the "40 nations" didn't include Russia and/or France, so it couldn't be "legitimate." To be legitimate, the coalition required at least one nation that hated us.
Go figgure.
But much of the evidence presented by the White House was NOT vetted.
Note, I've stated from way back that I thought the invasion of Iraq was going to happen regardless of 9/11, and it needed to happen. 9/11 simply accelerated the timetable. The administration HAD to manipulate the media, which they perceived (correctly) as hostile because they were "the wrong people in charge."
There were a lot of op-eds on both sides. What there wasn't was any analytical work to speak of, and that was the way the administration wanted it.
Granted, they aren't presented in the terms of overall failure in the way you'll find them talked about on gun boards and libertarian boards, but they are there, to the extent that it offends the agenda of the Left.
The WoD is predominately a rightwing campaign. I specifically mentioned NIDA and the lack of negative coverage they get. That is not about offending the Left, but toadying to a 'cause' of the Right. Even Paul is only against the federalization of the WoD.
Now, the odd thing is the tiny minority on the Right who have swung against the WoD, e.g. Buckley and Friedman.
>>Absolutely, Geek. But that's because the wrong people are in charge.
Yeah, which is sort of my point:
We seem to universally agree that the press is biased.
One hypothesis is that the press is biased Left.
Another (less credible) hypothesis is that the press is biased Right.
A third, and reasonably compelling hypothesis is that the press is biased neither left nor right but actually biased towards administrative control, which favors the Left as a second order of consequence.
HOWEVER, since we can demonstrate that the press is biased -against- the administrative controls of the Right, this brings the third hypothesis into question, and tends to support the plain old biased to the Left hypothesis.
In other words, I'm wondering if Prof. Patrick is making more out of the NRA/ACLU effect than is warranted, and basing his theory on an anomaly in the data that may be explainable in other terms.
I am curious as to how these studies factored in ownership of media. Corporations, through their news outlets, want to make money. If Monica Lewinsky sells, that gets 24-7 coverage. If a Bush fuck up sells, that gets the coverage. The media claims that whenever they put a story up about say...Anna Nicole Smith...ratings go up. But how do we really know this? They want to make money. Period.
There is no doubt that the media and their corporate masters are trying to control they way we think. Each side of the political spectrum bemoans any critical comment about themselves as "liberal" or "conservative" not just simply critical thinking. And, yes, the blogsphere does scare them and it makes me very happy, regardless of the political slant.
"But they by no means supported the war, in fact, I can't recall any major media outlet who had any sort of support for it."
Someone posted this on my blog a while back and it really rings true to me:
"Whiny, bitching, cry-baby conservatives love to prattle on and on about the "liberal media." To be fair, except for FOX News (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, Steve Doocy, E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume), Clear Channel, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Newsmax, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, The New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLOS13, Fox 45, WTTO21, WB49, KGAN, WICD, WICS, WCHS, WVAH, WTAT, WSTR, WSYX, WTTE, WKEF, WRGT, KDSM, WSMH, WXLV, WURN, KVWB, KFBT, WDKY, WMSN, WVTV, WEAR, WZTV, KOTH, WYZZ, WPGH, WGME, WLFL, WRLH, WUHF, KABB, WGGB, WSYT, WTTA), David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, PAX, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, they're right."
I can't find it now - I was thinking it was Radley Balko - but someone who's a big drug legalizer was reporting at the Democratic Convention in 2004, when Kerry was accepting the nomination, and someone next to him was excited and said "Yes! We're Back!"
It was one of Clinton's Drug Warriors - who didn't think anybody around would be at all disapproving of the efforts against drugs.
It increases government control, gives the government more lists, forbidden items... I don't know any Leftists who are against the WoD.
Now, I know a lot who don't like the implications of the WoD and insist that somehow it's unfair that most of the imprisoned are black males... but that's more a function of the typical lack of planning that tends to go with result-oriented leftist planning.
If there was a strong left/right divide in the WoD, I'd expect to see strong differences in local/state laws - yet the laws are largely identical across the nation.
HOWEVER, since we can demonstrate that the press is biased -against- the administrative controls of the Right
Beg your pardon?
As it happens, the administrative control bias DOES explain why the FAR left sees a right-wing bias. Administrative control is NOT revolutionary, which is the standard by which the far left measures things. Consider how much communists hated socialists - because the socialists refused to accept the necessity of revolution, and believed more in incremental and/or mixed systems.
lol - surely you aren't trying to say that Clinton was a creature of the Left? His most famous policies he stole from the Right - that's why the Right hated him so virulently. Clinton dragged the Dems toward the center and the left hated him for it.
If there was a strong left/right divide in the WoD, I'd expect to see strong differences in local/state laws - yet the laws are largely identical across the nation.
Where are most of the medical marijuana laws - blue states or red?
surely you aren't trying to say that Clinton was a creature of the Left?
A very fair point. But Clinton was a chimera. His beliefs were very left, his policies less so, since he couldn't take a dump without getting a poll. "Charmin or Cottonelle?"
Looking at his cabinet and appointments, they were not exactly right-wing. Far from it. They were much more mainstream left.
Where are most of the medical marijuana laws - blue states or red?
That's a good point I hadn't considered. (Remember, they swap Red/Blue every 4 years for the election, so last times Blue States should now be Red. :) )
But, on considering it, other than California, all the rest are in decently Republican states, aren't they? (Montana, Oregon come to mind, IIRC, and they're much more about federalism, and not (Leftist) Democratic strongholds.)
Ok, other than marijuana,- is there any serious difference in say, meth or crack?
Well, to a certain extent you can get an odd coalition of "progressive" and social-conservative elements. They both agree that drugs are bad, m'kay, but they have different motives. So, you can blame the left (or at least some parts of it) for supporting the WoD - but at it's [dark] heart, the WoD is a rightwing show. And whereas the Right doesn't usually get concerned about 4th Amdt (let alone 9th Amdt or the federalization of law enforcement) issues, or the death of innocents in raids [collateral damage don't ya know], the left (and libertarians) see these as problems.
Anyway, all this proves is the applicability of the administrative control bias to not just the agenda of the left.
Excellent post Kevin! One of our problems today is our inability to seperate the micro from the macro. As you can remember in Platos Republic, when Socrates was trying to explain what a just man was, he used the 'just' city to try to explain the 'just' man. What he ended up with in the description was a totalitarian nightmare. This seems to be a problem today... our inability to make these distinctions.
One more thought I had for this thread. Kevin, you have to admit that conservatives have been very effective at framing any criticism in the media as political. Whether justified or not, there are many, many people who believe that they media is liberal and, thus, everything they say is a lie...even if it isn't.
This is how much I trust the media. I live in Tucson, Arizona. If I turn on the TV in the morning, June 1st, and they tell me that it is going to be clear and hot, I don't believe them until I go outside and check for myself!
Whether justified or not, there are many, many people who believe that they media is liberal and, thus, everything they say is a lie...even if it isn't.
Markadelphia:
1) The media is overwhelmingly liberal - by self-admission and by any objective standard of measurement.
2) MOST of what they say is erroneous, incorrect, incomplete, flawed, folded, spindled, & mutilated.
3) Item 2 is not the result of Item 1.
4) Much of the bias in media, however, is.
People see the bias. Fewer notice the extent of the errors, omissions, and other flaws. But the bias? That they notice.
I've been reading some of the articles by a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann.
Some of what he does is take an intriguing premise and push it far past the bounds of common sense; but he has one really unifying idea which is useful, to wit:
"Society" is made up, entirely and exclusively, of the collection of acts of communication between people.
This naturally gives mass media a critical position. Indeed, Luhmann thought that the mass media had the effect of tightening information cycles to such a degree that it made effective decision-making or political consensus impossible.
He then writes:
“It is not so much the supposed uniformity of opinions but the shrinkage of time horizons that restricts the range of possibilities in other functional subsystems, and a plea for political control of mass communications is not only a plea for more consensus but also a plea for retaining an open, encouraging future.”
Generalizing some, the unrestricted flow of information is dangerous and must be controlled, or else humanity will stop marching toward its glorious future.
If #1 in your list is true, what do you say to my list of conservative media above? Clear Channel is a great example of this. They might have the "liberal" evening news in Booneville, MO but the only radio they have is conservative,thanks to Clear Channel. And that's true of a large swath of this country, especially the rural parts.
"MOST of what they say is erroneous, incorrect, incomplete, flawed, folded, spindled, & mutilated."
How, then, does the "liberal" media tells this story? These are facts, Kevin, and if the media is relaying these facts of the study is that a liberal bias?
Oh, and DJ, if you are still reading this far down...I believe you challenged me a while back to show exactly how Bush administration officials lied and what lies they told. Well, clink on this link and check out all 935 of them!
The most interesting part I found about this report is that the lies came much quicker at key political moments...
If #1 in your list is true, what do you say to my list of conservative media above? Clear Channel is a great example of this. They might have the "liberal" evening news in Booneville, MO but the only radio they have is conservative,thanks to Clear Channel. And that's true of a large swath of this country, especially the rural parts.
Mark, you really don't get it, do you?
Booneville gets PBS, too. And Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report. Their local paper probably follows the lead of the New York Times just like most local papers.
If you'll look at the election map from 2004, you'll notice that the rural areas ARE CONSERVATIVE. It's the MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS that are "liberal." So which is cause, and which effect? ClearChannel carrying mostly "conservative" radio is a fairly recent phenomenon, as is FOX News. Roger Ailes didn't create his audience, he serves it. The major media outlets abandoned it - note the falling circulations of most print media - especially the "elite" media as defined in this piece.
How, then, does the "liberal" media tells this story?
Mark, ask yourself how the Catholic Church reacted to allegations of priests abusing women and children. There's your answer.
These are facts, Kevin, and if the media is relaying these facts of the study is that a liberal bias?
Isn't this a story about the failure of the media to do its job? I expect it to vanish from the face of the earth quite rapidly.
It's not a question of the media's liberal bias. It's a matter of questioning the media's authority. That is NOT ALLOWED.
Oh, and the silence of the media on this topic will, doubtlessly, be blamed on said media's "right-wing bias." "See? See?!?"
(Sadly, the original article has been moved/disappeared. But that comment's stuck with me for a long time. FOX News kicks CNN's ass in terns of viewers - now. But it's still dwarfed by NBC, CBS, ABC (and lesser, but still) PBS. ~5 millionish versus, what, 25? 30? Million?)
"Booneville gets PBS, too. And Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report. Their local paper probably follows the lead of the New York Times just like most local papers.
If you'll look at the election map from 2004, you'll notice that the rural areas ARE CONSERVATIVE. It's the MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS that are "liberal.""
Kevin, I hunt deer every year just south of Boonville and have for about 20 years. I was there just last month. The friends I hunt with live in Boonville. They are solidly conservative, as is the whole area.
They are as modern as next week. They are all successful entrepeneurs, just middle class people with strong work ethics. They get television via satellite from Dish Network, and via antennae from Columbia, St. Louis, and Kansas City. They have internet access vis DSL, same as I do. They have the same access to the modern world that St. Louis and Kansas City does.
Go to http://www.clearchannel.com/ and search for radio stations in Missouri. In the whole state, it comes up with six in St. Louis and five in Springfield, both of which are big cities about 120 miles away, one to the east and one to the south.
Yup, out there in the sticks, they're just drowning in conservative propaganda from ClearChannel, so much so that they can't think for themselves. Terrible, ain't it?
Yes, I do see and I agree with you to a certain point. And I dislike the media for the reasons you say, not because they are right wing. You really should check out that Moyers thing on buying the war. The media is the target, not Bush Co, and says many of the same things you are saying.
Oh, and The Kingdom is out on DVD...you have to see it! I am really interested to know what you think of the ending.
Found via Little Green Footballs, this is priceless. It's so short, and so full of, well, stuff, that I'll just insert it all for posterity:
The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."
Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.
What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie.
Sarraj is a psychiatrist, but his co-author, Sara Roy, bills herself in her bio as a "political economist." Her research, the bio reports, is "primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip." You would think someone with this claim to expertise would know better than to copy some impossible pseudo-statistic on the consumption of the most basic foodstuff in Gaza. Indeed, in a piece she wrote a decade ago, she herself put Gaza's daily consumption of flour at 275 tons. Did she even read her own op-ed before she sent it off to Boston's leading paper? If she did, what we have here is a textbook example of the difference between a "political economist" and an economist.
As the saying goes, you can't make this stuff up.
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Nicely done.
Viewed from that perspective, it all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Let me chime in with some filling details. Part of why the press "likes" government is that, well, the "thought" taught in journalism classes, and followed pretty much by rote is that "present both sides".
Many situations have more than 2 sides. But to the press, they just need to find 2. Guess what? In almost every case, one of them is... easily found by grabbing the Government phone directory. Even if the press story seems to be slanted against the government - it's usually easy to get someone to say something that's usable either for or against.
The concept of having 20 or 30 "sides" to an argument gives writers headaches. How to sum up and present the narrative?
I did not anticipate a general reluctance and the outright refusal of some journalists to explain their activities. Most of the journalists would not return calls when they were contacted and asked to participate in the study. Callbacks did not help. Neither did assurances of anonymity help to reverse the refusals. The non-response rate, thus defined, is almost 95 percent.
Amazing how that works. Or how the NYT (for an excellent example) can clam up when it comes to it's own internal cooked books.... (or how it "acquired" that property in the middle of NYC...)
The very people who insist that scrutiny is needed for everything - except their own activities.
I haven't finished the entire article yet--I'm at this line:
Does any of this sound familiar? "Central planning," anyone?
The arguments leading to this point are clear and well-done. The elite media is very friendly towards control by those who are of the elite, symbol-manipulating classes.
It is not absolutely necessary that the impulse to Administrative Control Bias springs from a socialistic/communistic mindset. However, it is a mindset that is attracted to such solutions.
Carrying on with the reading...
Your article flowed pretty rapidly on towards its end.
The comparison with the ancient Gnostics is apt. The Gnostic teachers claimed to have possession of a special gnosis (Greek for knowledge) that gave them the spiritual/philosophical high ground. The gnosis held the secret to making sense of the world, and gave the key to the good afterlife. (That's what people cared about at the time...)
The reluctance of the press to be interviewed, to answer anonymous questions, and to let anyone report on the process of reporting gives credence to the belief that the elite media think of themselves as the priests of the Administratively Managed Age.
The comparison with the ancient Gnostics is apt. The Gnostic teachers claimed to have possession of a special gnosis (Greek for knowledge) that gave them the spiritual/philosophical high ground. The gnosis held the secret to making sense of the world, and gave the key to the good afterlife.
Yes. I understand it comes from the ability to "ask yourself the right questions" whereupon the answers just magically come to you.
I just don't understand what gets taught in journalism schools.
I tend to agree with Stossel's own assessment of having taken no journalism courses as helping him. What else could one need except for a broad vocabulary, a keen, thinking mind and an ability to reason, coupled with some elementary philosophy and a logic course, at most.
Clergy of the Church of State, indeed.
>>Second, they seemed hypersensitive to what ends the survey might be directed, and did not like the fact that they were not being told everything up front. In the words of one journalist, "Where are you going with all of this? I need to know before I can continue."
This strikes me as incredibly telling and illuminating.
An acolyte of the media simply cannot participate in a search for some sort of objective information without having the means of guiding the conclusions to some desired outcome.
"The New Reformation is coming about because the populace is sick and tired of op-eds written as straight news. We're tired of being fed bullshit and being told it's steak. More and more of us are aware we're being lied to ..."
... and one big reason for that increasing awareness is the availability to us of information, of the source documents that a historian craves, via the internet. It can be accessed via our fingertips, it is cross-referenced and indexed, and it is searchable. It can be found, understood, discussed, and disseminated at a speed that leaves the Old Media still groping for its morning coffee. The New Reformation is happening because the Old Media is not the only source for information that is easily accessible, and because the sources we now have easy and fast access to include original sources that we can trust.
As a simple example, consider a presidential candidate's blitherings about how the Second Amendment is just fine with him, how gun owners are fine people, and so on and so on. Why, ain't nuthin' to worry 'bout! But the record of that same candidate, what he did with the authority he had as an elected public servant in state and national gubmint, is available to everyone with only a few moments tapping of the keys. Facts are stubborn things, and the internet makes them available to all.
The other big reason for that increasing awareness is the hammer blows it has landed through the simple use of logical and rational thinking. It became a juggernaut, in my opinion, with this post by Charles Johnson at LGF. No further explanation is necessary, and the Old Media is still reeling from it.
Very well done.
This helps explain why I haven't been more interested in journalism as a career.
As an AF Intel officer I was (I thought) in the same business as journalists: The collection, analysis and dissemination of information. Of distilling a firehose stream of information down to the essentials needed to make decsisions.
We could not afford biased or agenda driven interpretations and presentations(although it has and apparently still does happen much too often) and worked against letting our inside beliefs taint the system, mostly by using every possible source of info, vetting for credibility (but not ignoring it) and using "red teams" to evaluate alternative explainations for the same set of information. (i.e. getting all "20 or 30 sides")
I had always felt that was what journalists were supposed to do, and failed at so miserably time after time. Hence my contempt as a professional towards others that fall short of standards.
This article implies that I was judging them too harshly by the wrong criteria. Journalists are not professional information gatherers (as I was), they are Clerics. So no wonder they often do not seem to even try to live up the standards we set ourselves in the Intel community. They're in a different profession all toghether.
Also explains why I was never interested in pursuing journalism as a career. I'm not intersted in being a cleric for any religion, secular or theocratic.
Random thought:
Did the study by Prof. Patrick include any mention of the elite press and its opinion about homeschooling?
The requisite nationwide organization is the Home School Legal Defense Association.
I would suspect that a stastical analysis would put homeschoolers between the HSLDA and the NRA in the list you quoted. But the sample size is likely to be small.
Did the study by Prof. Patrick include any mention of the elite press and its opinion about homeschooling?
It did not. I got the impression that the journalism-as-clergy and "administrative control bias" findings grew organically out of the original study. Further examination of other interest groups would reinforce or counter the hypothesis.
From what I've seen, homeschooling would absolutely reinforce Professor Patrick's hypothesis.
...one big reason for that increasing awareness is the availability to us of information, of the source documents that a historian craves, via the internet.
DJ: absolutely. It's the modern equivalent of printing the Bible in modern languages on Gutenberg's press. Without the technology available to spread the information to the masses, Luther's 95 Theses would have vanished into the myths of history, because the Church would have retained the ability to control the flow (and interpretation) of information.
They've lost that ability, and they're still struggling with the fact.
Now they're ALL being asked if they practice either journalism or objectivity - and they don't like it.
Wow. Much easier to understand now why the MSM treats bloggers as heretics and apostates.
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone...
That explains so much. I had always wondered how it was that both liberals and conservatives could see media bias towards the other side, and I had always assumed it was because those liberals who saw the bias were so far left they could not longer see the center. But this makes far, far more sense.
I've got to come clean: I am technically in the industry of journalism. I am not a journalist, however; rather, I'm the production manager/layout editor for a small university newspaper.
I don't tend to read the entirety of the stories before I place them in the issue, but I have noticed a pattern: people who are new at journalistic writing tend to report more straight fact, where as people who have been doing it for a while, particularly editors, tend to adhere to the same institutionalized bias described by this article. There are exceptions, but not often.
Very interesting.
Kevin,
Good article, and at first blush, I think it explains much, but not all, of the biases we see in the daily news. That fact, as noted, that both the left and the right see bias going for the other side, I always took as a statement of the difference the two sides placed on different values. Even so, I have always wondered why someone needed a degree in something that any highschool graduate should know, with a little on the job training. And, I have always wondered why journalists refer to what they write as a "story" as opposed to a "case", or some other word connoting an activity that partakes more of reality, and less of just making stuff up. If nothing else, now I know.
I shall have to re-read this post, and digest it some more, and test it against actual news "stories" that I read. Please keep bringing these things to the forefront with your readers.
Regards,
PolyKahr
Great article.
I will take one exception; "journalists see themselves as the clergy in the Church of State".
They do not SEE themselves this way (though of course they BEHAVE as such). That would require a self-honesty and humility utterly at odds with their 'professional' self-view. Thus the personal hostility (nearly violence) to any inquiry that would make them face up. One of the worst things you can do to a person, especially a person with weak self-assurance, is make them confront their own self-delusions on a topic in which their pyschological core is heavily invested. Does Markadelphia's reaction to neo neo-con make more sense in that light?
The case for the bias being more about administrative control than Right/Left bias is compelling, particularly given the Left's natural affinity for administrative control.
After mulling it over a bit, I see a missing data set that's needed to complete the picture.
We see the press reacting AGAINST anti-administrative forces such as the NRA and ACLU.
We see the press acting FOR administrative control causes of the Left.
What are examples of the press acting FOR the administrative control causes of the Right?
{crickets}
What are examples of the press acting FOR the administrative control causes of the Right?
The War on Drugs? Have you ever seen negative coverage on NIDA?
What are examples of the press acting FOR the administrative control causes of the Right?
As much as it pains me to say it, Markadelphia and the Left are correct about the media's nearly unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq based entirely on information coming out of the White House. (Hey, even a stopped clock...) There was very little to no critical examination of that information from the "elite media."
I think the realization afterward of what they'd done led in large part to their excesses in the opposite direction after the invasion began, and the Plame affair is a flashing neon example.
I think the Bush administration played the media like a banjo from the inauguration day onward, and the media hates them for it.
>>The War on Drugs? Have you ever seen negative coverage on NIDA?
Ayep.
I've seen a fair number of articles on how the inner cities have been depopulated of black males, and other effects of the WoD. Granted, they aren't presented in the terms of overall failure in the way you'll find them talked about on gun boards and libertarian boards, but they are there, to the extent that it offends the agenda of the Left.
You'll also find that articles critical of the Rights anti-terror administrative control programs are a dime a dozen. You name it: extraordinary rendition, coercive interrogation, surveillance, etc etc etc.
Absolutely, Geek. But that's because the wrong people are in charge.
Kevin:
Markadelphia and the Left are correct about the media's nearly unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq based entirely on information coming out of the White House.
Maybe you were reading/watching another press than I was. Granted, I tend to not pay a lot of attention anymore - but all the coverage I saw was massively negative.
Remember the "quagmire" meme that perpetuated everything up to and after the Afghanistan invasion - ending only when the Iraq situations started to come to a head. For 18 months, Bush went to the UN, presented evidence, made pleas... and I certainly remember the constant drumbeat of a "Rush To War" that was persistent in the coverage.
Steyn summed this up brilliantly. We had a "6 week quagmire" in Afghanistan, and a 18-month "Rush to War" in Iraq.
(I'm still waiting on that brutal Afghan winter the press kept harping about.) The press's meme was this was "unilateral action", despite the commitment of 40 nation's combat forces. Again, not something you'd expect if they were swallowing the White House line completely, as the WH touted the Coalition constantly, and was utterly ignored by those in the press.
In the meantime, we had Eason Jordan admitting that they were soft-shoeing the news from inside Iraq.
I was raging at the media I was reading back then because every story was replete with mis-reporting of the situation. Fiskings abounded on the internet of the coverage, as for instance, Bush would give a long speech detailing a number of issues. The press coverage would be "Bush doesn't prove immediate threat".
I'd be very interested in what you're considering as "unanimous support" - I certainly can't remember any examples of it. They certainly weren't pointing out the violations of the ceasefire (any of which were actionable with force per the cease fire). They weren't overmuch stressing the threat Iraq posed.
Now, after the invasion, there was a lot of incredulous reporting of various nerve agents, that turned out to - kind of - not be.
Without getting into a huge rant, those discoveries of "insecticide" (which were roundly laughed at in the press), proved that there was a huge nerve gas industry in Iraq. (It's trivial to take those "insecticides" and turn them into nerve gas...) Or the complete burying of the story when the IED was found with binary Sarin. (Giving a lie to the narrative that Saddam had no WMD facilities.) A unmarked artillery shell, stolen from an armory, set up as a roadside IED detonated when EOD tried to disarm it. Had it been a live shell, they'd be dead. Instead, it was a binary sarin shell. "Insurgents" wouldn't have set that up as a roadside IED had they known what they had. (Again: an unmarked artillery shell. There's a lot of meaning in that discovery. The press did none of it.)
I've always figured the reporting of the potential WMDs was the press's "If it bleeds, it leads" concept. I notice that when real, proven WMD was found, they were incredibly reluctant to follow up.
The press reported, as they were pretty much required to, what the President was making as a case for war. I can agree with you that far.
But they by no means supported the war, in fact, I can't recall any major media outlet who had any sort of support for it.
The press's meme was this was "unilateral action", despite the commitment of 40 nation's combat forces.
Absolutely. More of the "administrative bias" idea - if there's a multinational consensus, then it must be a good idea. But the "40 nations" didn't include Russia and/or France, so it couldn't be "legitimate." To be legitimate, the coalition required at least one nation that hated us.
Go figgure.
But much of the evidence presented by the White House was NOT vetted.
Note, I've stated from way back that I thought the invasion of Iraq was going to happen regardless of 9/11, and it needed to happen. 9/11 simply accelerated the timetable. The administration HAD to manipulate the media, which they perceived (correctly) as hostile because they were "the wrong people in charge."
There were a lot of op-eds on both sides. What there wasn't was any analytical work to speak of, and that was the way the administration wanted it.
Granted, they aren't presented in the terms of overall failure in the way you'll find them talked about on gun boards and libertarian boards, but they are there, to the extent that it offends the agenda of the Left.
The WoD is predominately a rightwing campaign. I specifically mentioned NIDA and the lack of negative coverage they get. That is not about offending the Left, but toadying to a 'cause' of the Right. Even Paul is only against the federalization of the WoD.
Now, the odd thing is the tiny minority on the Right who have swung against the WoD, e.g. Buckley and Friedman.
>>Absolutely, Geek. But that's because the wrong people are in charge.
Yeah, which is sort of my point:
We seem to universally agree that the press is biased.
One hypothesis is that the press is biased Left.
Another (less credible) hypothesis is that the press is biased Right.
A third, and reasonably compelling hypothesis is that the press is biased neither left nor right but actually biased towards administrative control, which favors the Left as a second order of consequence.
HOWEVER, since we can demonstrate that the press is biased -against- the administrative controls of the Right, this brings the third hypothesis into question, and tends to support the plain old biased to the Left hypothesis.
In other words, I'm wondering if Prof. Patrick is making more out of the NRA/ACLU effect than is warranted, and basing his theory on an anomaly in the data that may be explainable in other terms.
First of all, nicely written piece, Kevin.
I am curious as to how these studies factored in ownership of media. Corporations, through their news outlets, want to make money. If Monica Lewinsky sells, that gets 24-7 coverage. If a Bush fuck up sells, that gets the coverage. The media claims that whenever they put a story up about say...Anna Nicole Smith...ratings go up. But how do we really know this? They want to make money. Period.
There is no doubt that the media and their corporate masters are trying to control they way we think. Each side of the political spectrum bemoans any critical comment about themselves as "liberal" or "conservative" not just simply critical thinking. And, yes, the blogsphere does scare them and it makes me very happy, regardless of the political slant.
"But they by no means supported the war, in fact, I can't recall any major media outlet who had any sort of support for it."
Someone posted this on my blog a while back and it really rings true to me:
"Whiny, bitching, cry-baby conservatives love to prattle on and on about the "liberal media." To be fair, except for FOX News (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, Steve Doocy, E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume), Clear Channel, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Newsmax, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, The New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLOS13, Fox 45, WTTO21, WB49, KGAN, WICD, WICS, WCHS, WVAH, WTAT, WSTR, WSYX, WTTE, WKEF, WRGT, KDSM, WSMH, WXLV, WURN, KVWB, KFBT, WDKY, WMSN, WVTV, WEAR, WZTV, KOTH, WYZZ, WPGH, WGME, WLFL, WRLH, WUHF, KABB, WGGB, WSYT, WTTA), David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, PAX, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, they're right."
Juris:
The WoD is predominately a rightwing campaign.
Maybe, but not by much.
I can't find it now - I was thinking it was Radley Balko - but someone who's a big drug legalizer was reporting at the Democratic Convention in 2004, when Kerry was accepting the nomination, and someone next to him was excited and said "Yes! We're Back!"
It was one of Clinton's Drug Warriors - who didn't think anybody around would be at all disapproving of the efforts against drugs.
It increases government control, gives the government more lists, forbidden items... I don't know any Leftists who are against the WoD.
Now, I know a lot who don't like the implications of the WoD and insist that somehow it's unfair that most of the imprisoned are black males... but that's more a function of the typical lack of planning that tends to go with result-oriented leftist planning.
If there was a strong left/right divide in the WoD, I'd expect to see strong differences in local/state laws - yet the laws are largely identical across the nation.
HOWEVER, since we can demonstrate that the press is biased -against- the administrative controls of the Right
Beg your pardon?
As it happens, the administrative control bias DOES explain why the FAR left sees a right-wing bias. Administrative control is NOT revolutionary, which is the standard by which the far left measures things. Consider how much communists hated socialists - because the socialists refused to accept the necessity of revolution, and believed more in incremental and/or mixed systems.
It was one of Clinton's Drug Warriors
lol - surely you aren't trying to say that Clinton was a creature of the Left? His most famous policies he stole from the Right - that's why the Right hated him so virulently. Clinton dragged the Dems toward the center and the left hated him for it.
If there was a strong left/right divide in the WoD, I'd expect to see strong differences in local/state laws - yet the laws are largely identical across the nation.
Where are most of the medical marijuana laws - blue states or red?
Juris:
surely you aren't trying to say that Clinton was a creature of the Left?
A very fair point. But Clinton was a chimera. His beliefs were very left, his policies less so, since he couldn't take a dump without getting a poll. "Charmin or Cottonelle?"
Looking at his cabinet and appointments, they were not exactly right-wing. Far from it. They were much more mainstream left.
Where are most of the medical marijuana laws - blue states or red?
That's a good point I hadn't considered. (Remember, they swap Red/Blue every 4 years for the election, so last times Blue States should now be Red. :) )
But, on considering it, other than California, all the rest are in decently Republican states, aren't they? (Montana, Oregon come to mind, IIRC, and they're much more about federalism, and not (Leftist) Democratic strongholds.)
Ok, other than marijuana,- is there any serious difference in say, meth or crack?
Well, to a certain extent you can get an odd coalition of "progressive" and social-conservative elements. They both agree that drugs are bad, m'kay, but they have different motives. So, you can blame the left (or at least some parts of it) for supporting the WoD - but at it's [dark] heart, the WoD is a rightwing show. And whereas the Right doesn't usually get concerned about 4th Amdt (let alone 9th Amdt or the federalization of law enforcement) issues, or the death of innocents in raids [collateral damage don't ya know], the left (and libertarians) see these as problems.
Anyway, all this proves is the applicability of the administrative control bias to not just the agenda of the left.
Excellent post Kevin! One of our problems today is our inability to seperate the micro from the macro. As you can remember in Platos Republic, when Socrates was trying to explain what a just man was, he used the 'just' city to try to explain the 'just' man. What he ended up with in the description was a totalitarian nightmare. This seems to be a problem today... our inability to make these distinctions.
Example of micro vs. macro: It takes a village to raise a child. Modern day liberals are hopelessly confused in this area.
One more thought I had for this thread. Kevin, you have to admit that conservatives have been very effective at framing any criticism in the media as political. Whether justified or not, there are many, many people who believe that they media is liberal and, thus, everything they say is a lie...even if it isn't.
This is how much I trust the media. I live in Tucson, Arizona. If I turn on the TV in the morning, June 1st, and they tell me that it is going to be clear and hot, I don't believe them until I go outside and check for myself!
Whether justified or not, there are many, many people who believe that they media is liberal and, thus, everything they say is a lie...even if it isn't.
Markadelphia:
1) The media is overwhelmingly liberal - by self-admission and by any objective standard of measurement.
2) MOST of what they say is erroneous, incorrect, incomplete, flawed, folded, spindled, & mutilated.
3) Item 2 is not the result of Item 1.
4) Much of the bias in media, however, is.
People see the bias. Fewer notice the extent of the errors, omissions, and other flaws. But the bias? That they notice.
I've been reading some of the articles by a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann.
Some of what he does is take an intriguing premise and push it far past the bounds of common sense; but he has one really unifying idea which is useful, to wit:
"Society" is made up, entirely and exclusively, of the collection of acts of communication between people.
This naturally gives mass media a critical position. Indeed, Luhmann thought that the mass media had the effect of tightening information cycles to such a degree that it made effective decision-making or political consensus impossible.
He then writes:
“It is not so much the supposed uniformity of opinions but the shrinkage of time horizons that restricts the range of possibilities in other functional subsystems, and a plea for political control of mass communications is not only a plea for more consensus but also a plea for retaining an open, encouraging future.”
Generalizing some, the unrestricted flow of information is dangerous and must be controlled, or else humanity will stop marching toward its glorious future.
Sound familiar?
Kevin
If #1 in your list is true, what do you say to my list of conservative media above? Clear Channel is a great example of this. They might have the "liberal" evening news in Booneville, MO but the only radio they have is conservative,thanks to Clear Channel. And that's true of a large swath of this country, especially the rural parts.
"MOST of what they say is erroneous, incorrect, incomplete, flawed, folded, spindled, & mutilated."
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=home&context=overview&id=945
How, then, does the "liberal" media tells this story? These are facts, Kevin, and if the media is relaying these facts of the study is that a liberal bias?
Oh, and DJ, if you are still reading this far down...I believe you challenged me a while back to show exactly how Bush administration officials lied and what lies they told. Well, clink on this link and check out all 935 of them!
The most interesting part I found about this report is that the lies came much quicker at key political moments...
If #1 in your list is true, what do you say to my list of conservative media above? Clear Channel is a great example of this. They might have the "liberal" evening news in Booneville, MO but the only radio they have is conservative,thanks to Clear Channel. And that's true of a large swath of this country, especially the rural parts.
Mark, you really don't get it, do you?
Booneville gets PBS, too. And Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report. Their local paper probably follows the lead of the New York Times just like most local papers.
If you'll look at the election map from 2004, you'll notice that the rural areas ARE CONSERVATIVE. It's the MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS that are "liberal." So which is cause, and which effect? ClearChannel carrying mostly "conservative" radio is a fairly recent phenomenon, as is FOX News. Roger Ailes didn't create his audience, he serves it. The major media outlets abandoned it - note the falling circulations of most print media - especially the "elite" media as defined in this piece.
How, then, does the "liberal" media tells this story?
Mark, ask yourself how the Catholic Church reacted to allegations of priests abusing women and children. There's your answer.
These are facts, Kevin, and if the media is relaying these facts of the study is that a liberal bias?
Isn't this a story about the failure of the media to do its job? I expect it to vanish from the face of the earth quite rapidly.
It's not a question of the media's liberal bias. It's a matter of questioning the media's authority. That is NOT ALLOWED.
Oh, and the silence of the media on this topic will, doubtlessly, be blamed on said media's "right-wing bias." "See? See?!?"
Oldie but a very goodie:
(Sadly, the original article has been moved/disappeared. But that comment's stuck with me for a long time. FOX News kicks CNN's ass in terns of viewers - now. But it's still dwarfed by NBC, CBS, ABC (and lesser, but still) PBS. ~5 millionish versus, what, 25? 30? Million?)(Nevermind the man behind the curtain!)
"Booneville gets PBS, too. And Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report. Their local paper probably follows the lead of the New York Times just like most local papers.
If you'll look at the election map from 2004, you'll notice that the rural areas ARE CONSERVATIVE. It's the MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS that are "liberal.""
Kevin, I hunt deer every year just south of Boonville and have for about 20 years. I was there just last month. The friends I hunt with live in Boonville. They are solidly conservative, as is the whole area.
They are as modern as next week. They are all successful entrepeneurs, just middle class people with strong work ethics. They get television via satellite from Dish Network, and via antennae from Columbia, St. Louis, and Kansas City. They have internet access vis DSL, same as I do. They have the same access to the modern world that St. Louis and Kansas City does.
You mean they're not all brainwashed by ClearChannel's conservative lineup?
Whodathunkit?
That depends on what you mean by "thinking."
Go to http://www.clearchannel.com/ and search for radio stations in Missouri. In the whole state, it comes up with six in St. Louis and five in Springfield, both of which are big cities about 120 miles away, one to the east and one to the south.
Yup, out there in the sticks, they're just drowning in conservative propaganda from ClearChannel, so much so that they can't think for themselves. Terrible, ain't it?
[...] Media Bias [...]
(Being self-referental? - Ed.)
Edited By Siteowner
"See? See?!?"
Yes, I do see and I agree with you to a certain point. And I dislike the media for the reasons you say, not because they are right wing. You really should check out that Moyers thing on buying the war. The media is the target, not Bush Co, and says many of the same things you are saying.
Oh, and The Kingdom is out on DVD...you have to see it! I am really interested to know what you think of the ending.
Carville and Begala banned from CNN due to Obama campaign complaints.
that they will not be doing any more political analysis on the network until the Democratic primary has reached a conclusion.
Found via Little Green Footballs, this is priceless. It's so short, and so full of, well, stuff, that I'll just insert it all for posterity:
The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."
Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.
What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie.
Sarraj is a psychiatrist, but his co-author, Sara Roy, bills herself in her bio as a "political economist." Her research, the bio reports, is "primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip." You would think someone with this claim to expertise would know better than to copy some impossible pseudo-statistic on the consumption of the most basic foodstuff in Gaza. Indeed, in a piece she wrote a decade ago, she herself put Gaza's daily consumption of flour at 275 tons. Did she even read her own op-ed before she sent it off to Boston's leading paper? If she did, what we have here is a textbook example of the difference between a "political economist" and an economist.
As the saying goes, you can't make this stuff up.
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