Dan's career ended...when it began back with the JFK assassination. To this day, he still can't face any of the facts that have come to light in regards to the various investigations. His only conviction in life is his own vanity.
As far as the whole "media is liberal" argument goes, once again I must point out the following quote...
"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 would also throw in CNN's Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and the extremely large conservative blogsphere.
Problem is Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Savage and others are not, and do not claim to be, NEWS reporters or Anchors. They are political pundits and by definition are biased. People tune in because they discuss topics with political slant and the pundits do nothing to hide what that slant is.
A reporter is supposed to report the news in an unbiased manner.
You do see the difference don't you?
How many people out there still think the US military lost the Tet Offensive based on Walter Cronkite's intentionally erroneous reporting...
Yes, they do. And somewhere around 60 million people in this country get their news from them. In fact, I will hear Rush say something on the radio and the next day, it will be on here discussed as fact. Do honestly think that Fox News does not consider itself to be the media?
Just because Rush Limbaugh is influential does not mean that he is broadcasting news. He's no more a newscaster than Janeane Garofalo was on Air America, he just happens to be more popular.
Now Dan Rather, he was supposed to be an unbiased news reporter for CBS. After the flap with the "Fake but accurate" documents, he proved to be a partisan hack.
I think it's important to recognize the difference between the two.
Didn't we also have a comment thread that covered this identical question before?
THIS post is on the overwhelming, obvious bias against the war in Iraq - as Sen. Lieberman put it today in his speech, "As I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there’s a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq."
Someone on Democratic Underground told him that independent, critical thinkers noted the ownership structure of certain news media, and from this the Rightist slant of the news could be definitely determined and relied upon.
Of course, ownership and editorial control are two very separate things. I recall when the Philadelphia papers changed ownership maybe 10 years back, there was great angsting and handwringing from those papers editorial boards that the evil capitalists might "abuse" their owner's privileges to impose some sort of editorial vision upon them. Implicit, in all this, of course, was "labor unrest" amongst the unionized employees. The new ownership was confronted with 3 choices: abort their purchase, buy the papers and break the unions (a self destructive proposition), or accept that the purchase came with negotiated labor contracts that included guarantees of editorial independence.
Of course, Markadelphia and other proponents of the ownership as evidence of Rightist bias (or lack of Leftist bias, as it is sometimes formulated) fall into some blatant fallacy of reasoning, because their proposition does NOT logically follow their predicate argument.
I own a tractor. I want my tractor to function. Therefore, it functions. (Actually, no, it's in pieces in the garage)
Furthermore, the assertion entirely ignores that whenever DIRECT MEASUREMENT of the items in question are made, fairly solid evidence of Leftist bias is almost always detected.
Here's another study, separate from the Harvard study, just for shits-n-grins. This one's from UCLA:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm
Finally, Markadelphia, after cherry picking data (and what else could the exhaustive list of "conservative" media be, if not cherry picked?) utterly fails to deal with the fact that most of the markets he's mentioned are fairly limited, and therefore, so is that media's ability to set and influence the agenda.
Most of the entities he mentioned are talk radio and local TV stations which, compared to national network TV have minuscule reach in terms of viewer/listener ship.
If anything, prior to the proliferation of the Internet, "conservative" talk radio was able to get a start simply because radio was dying off as a media, and was no longer jealously guarded by the Left.
Mastiff, I take into context the hard data. But look closer at how the story was done and what is defined as "liberal." Some here would define liberal as being...say....a story about multi cultural education and its benefits. How exactly is that liberal?
The media is owned by corporations. These corporations want to sell things and make money. That is what the news is geared for these days. When it was popular, the Iraq War was sold as a just war. The media did that. This is a fact. After that, it wasn't popular, so it was sold as being wrong. Now, no one cares so they talk about Paris Hilton and weird polygamy cults in Texas. They are marketing product. Juris is correct...they care about quarterly profit, not pushing a liberal bias. If you want liberal bias , turn on Air America. That is liberally biased.
Let's also remember that the media used to go along like little puppies with the government....until Vietnam and Watergate. LBJ and Nixon were criminals who broke the law, did horrible things, and were caught doing it. Since that time, the media has called other presidents on their bullshit as well...pretty much every one since. If you call that "liberal"...well...I guess it's a definition with which I am not familiar.
Juris is correct...they care about quarterly profit, not pushing a liberal bias.
Thank you Markadelphia. You do realize that also means the media are not pushing a conservative bias. For that you need to also go to specific sources, e.g. Rush.
No, they didn't, and that's been hashed, shown, pointed out to you, crammed up your ass sideways, described in 2nd grade vocabulary, and you keep repeating this.
They didn't push the war, they did their absolute damnest to derail Bush - at whatever expense didn't matter, just that Bush was embarrassed and stymied.
Well, it also depends on what you consider conservative.
Good GAWD! I wish I could catch trout as easily as I get you to rise to the bait.
By the way, Markadelphia, you do realize that if the media DID tilt to the right - that would imply they were trying to reach the broadest audience possible; more conservatives then liberals. Oops!
Now, stop squirming or I'll never get the hook out.
Unix, I don't know what world you were living in but EVERY network had Iraq War sets, military experts, and hoo ras all around. Remember shock and awe? Every anchor and commentator was loving it and all protesters were "haters" of America.
I have to admit that I believed it all and thought it was a great idea. I supported the war from 2002-2003. Then the facts came out and things didn't look at that rosy. After that, it was bullshit lie after bullshit lie and I just couldn't go along with it.
Oh, I know. You don't have any. But just like those "I'm a gun owner, but I hate the NRA" op-eds, you don't actually have substantiative fact.
All those "talking heads" on the national networks were slanted massively to sap support for anything Bush did. Which had you actually been watching them, you'd know.
But as usual, you'll blather.
So forget the prior and answer me this:
How many networks asked Scott Ritter why his opinion in 2002 was diametrically opposed to his opinion in his book, written in 1998?
That's all I'd like to know - because Ritter featured prominently every single week. Without anybody asking "Woah, woah, that's not what you just said" - right?
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/04/too-long-to-be-qotd-too-good-to-pass-up.html (25 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
TAG!
Sorry, I have to try this again...
TAG!
"As I told him, he just described the end of Dan Rather's career!"
Dan was hungrier than most. He still denies the existence of the predators.
Dan's career ended...when it began back with the JFK assassination. To this day, he still can't face any of the facts that have come to light in regards to the various investigations. His only conviction in life is his own vanity.
As far as the whole "media is liberal" argument goes, once again I must point out the following quote...
"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 would also throw in CNN's Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and the extremely large conservative blogsphere.
Do we have to pull out the spreadsheets? Or the academic research by Harvard professors?
Seriously?
Okay.
Well, they're very nice but how do you take all the above data into account?
Oops. The above was me
Problem is Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Savage and others are not, and do not claim to be, NEWS reporters or Anchors. They are political pundits and by definition are biased. People tune in because they discuss topics with political slant and the pundits do nothing to hide what that slant is.
A reporter is supposed to report the news in an unbiased manner.
You do see the difference don't you?
How many people out there still think the US military lost the Tet Offensive based on Walter Cronkite's intentionally erroneous reporting...
"do not claim to be, NEWS reporters or Anchors."
Yes, they do. And somewhere around 60 million people in this country get their news from them. In fact, I will hear Rush say something on the radio and the next day, it will be on here discussed as fact. Do honestly think that Fox News does not consider itself to be the media?
How many people get their news from ABCNNBCBS? The New York Times? Are you honestly suggesting that these outlets are not biased to the Left?
Kevin,
Most people don't read anymore so that leaves out the New York Times. So that leaves the TV stations. Let's start with this..
Who owns...
NBC?
CBS?
ABC?
No need for interpretation. Just the facts. We can get to the evaluation part later.
Just because Rush Limbaugh is influential does not mean that he is broadcasting news. He's no more a newscaster than Janeane Garofalo was on Air America, he just happens to be more popular.
Now Dan Rather, he was supposed to be an unbiased news reporter for CBS. After the flap with the "Fake but accurate" documents, he proved to be a partisan hack.
I think it's important to recognize the difference between the two.
Mark,
I notice that your response to hard data, as opposed to unrepresentative individuals, was to ignore it entirely.
Could you at least pretend to take the objective data under consideration? Please?
I'd hate to think that my thirty seconds of Googling and link-pasting were for nothing.
"I'd hate to think that my thirty seconds of Googling and link-pasting were for nothing."
Dreamer.
Mark whines
Who owns...
NBC?
CBS?
ABC?
GE, Viacom and Disney as I recall.
The ONLY thing any of them care about is are you making your quarterly profit.
Who owns...
NBC?
CBS?
ABC?
Ah, yes, the "evil (and therefore right-wing) corporations own the media, therefore the media must be right-wing" argument.
Didn't I discuss this entire topic in detail previously? "Administrative control bias" ring any bells? I wrote of it long before you appeared on this scene, too.
Didn't we also have a comment thread that covered this identical question before?
THIS post is on the overwhelming, obvious bias against the war in Iraq - as Sen. Lieberman put it today in his speech, "As I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there’s a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq."
Most especially in the (corporate-owned) media.
This is classic Markadelphia.
Someone on Democratic Underground told him that independent, critical thinkers noted the ownership structure of certain news media, and from this the Rightist slant of the news could be definitely determined and relied upon.
Of course, ownership and editorial control are two very separate things. I recall when the Philadelphia papers changed ownership maybe 10 years back, there was great angsting and handwringing from those papers editorial boards that the evil capitalists might "abuse" their owner's privileges to impose some sort of editorial vision upon them. Implicit, in all this, of course, was "labor unrest" amongst the unionized employees. The new ownership was confronted with 3 choices: abort their purchase, buy the papers and break the unions (a self destructive proposition), or accept that the purchase came with negotiated labor contracts that included guarantees of editorial independence.
Of course, Markadelphia and other proponents of the ownership as evidence of Rightist bias (or lack of Leftist bias, as it is sometimes formulated) fall into some blatant fallacy of reasoning, because their proposition does NOT logically follow their predicate argument.
I own a tractor. I want my tractor to function. Therefore, it functions. (Actually, no, it's in pieces in the garage)
Furthermore, the assertion entirely ignores that whenever DIRECT MEASUREMENT of the items in question are made, fairly solid evidence of Leftist bias is almost always detected.
Here's another study, separate from the Harvard study, just for shits-n-grins. This one's from UCLA:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm
Finally, Markadelphia, after cherry picking data (and what else could the exhaustive list of "conservative" media be, if not cherry picked?) utterly fails to deal with the fact that most of the markets he's mentioned are fairly limited, and therefore, so is that media's ability to set and influence the agenda.
Most of the entities he mentioned are talk radio and local TV stations which, compared to national network TV have minuscule reach in terms of viewer/listener ship.
If anything, prior to the proliferation of the Internet, "conservative" talk radio was able to get a start simply because radio was dying off as a media, and was no longer jealously guarded by the Left.
"... cherry picking data ..."
Mmmm ... data ....
Lessee now. Is data factses, or is data opinionses?
Mastiff, I take into context the hard data. But look closer at how the story was done and what is defined as "liberal." Some here would define liberal as being...say....a story about multi cultural education and its benefits. How exactly is that liberal?
The media is owned by corporations. These corporations want to sell things and make money. That is what the news is geared for these days. When it was popular, the Iraq War was sold as a just war. The media did that. This is a fact. After that, it wasn't popular, so it was sold as being wrong. Now, no one cares so they talk about Paris Hilton and weird polygamy cults in Texas. They are marketing product. Juris is correct...they care about quarterly profit, not pushing a liberal bias. If you want liberal bias , turn on Air America. That is liberally biased.
Let's also remember that the media used to go along like little puppies with the government....until Vietnam and Watergate. LBJ and Nixon were criminals who broke the law, did horrible things, and were caught doing it. Since that time, the media has called other presidents on their bullshit as well...pretty much every one since. If you call that "liberal"...well...I guess it's a definition with which I am not familiar.
Juris is correct...they care about quarterly profit, not pushing a liberal bias.
Thank you Markadelphia. You do realize that also means the media are not pushing a conservative bias. For that you need to also go to specific sources, e.g. Rush.
Well, it also depends on what you consider conservative. They pushed the war and help Bush sell it. Was that conservative?
They also use fear to get ratings and some of those stories bend towards tapping into the inner fear of the conservative.
They pushed the war and help Bush sell it.
No, they didn't, and that's been hashed, shown, pointed out to you, crammed up your ass sideways, described in 2nd grade vocabulary, and you keep repeating this.
They didn't push the war, they did their absolute damnest to derail Bush - at whatever expense didn't matter, just that Bush was embarrassed and stymied.
Google "Rush to War".
So now we're 5 years past the 3-week "quagmire", and the brutal Afghan winter is still looming.. sometime.
And Bush spent 18 months "rushing" to war.
But the media was "pushing" the war.
Gotcha.
Well, it also depends on what you consider conservative.
Good GAWD! I wish I could catch trout as easily as I get you to rise to the bait.
By the way, Markadelphia, you do realize that if the media DID tilt to the right - that would imply they were trying to reach the broadest audience possible; more conservatives then liberals. Oops!
Now, stop squirming or I'll never get the hook out.
Unix, I don't know what world you were living in but EVERY network had Iraq War sets, military experts, and hoo ras all around. Remember shock and awe? Every anchor and commentator was loving it and all protesters were "haters" of America.
I have to admit that I believed it all and thought it was a great idea. I supported the war from 2002-2003. Then the facts came out and things didn't look at that rosy. After that, it was bullshit lie after bullshit lie and I just couldn't go along with it.
I have to admit that I believed it all
Believed what???
"It?"
Then the facts came out
Like, what exactly?
Oh, I know. You don't have any. But just like those "I'm a gun owner, but I hate the NRA" op-eds, you don't actually have substantiative fact.
All those "talking heads" on the national networks were slanted massively to sap support for anything Bush did. Which had you actually been watching them, you'd know.
But as usual, you'll blather.
So forget the prior and answer me this:
How many networks asked Scott Ritter why his opinion in 2002 was diametrically opposed to his opinion in his book, written in 1998?
That's all I'd like to know - because Ritter featured prominently every single week. Without anybody asking "Woah, woah, that's not what you just said" - right?
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>