How is the American media "Liberal"?

[overgrowthegovt]

You hear it all the time, about the "liberal media" and their bias. I'm a Canadian, but from what I've seen of the American media, it's outrageously conservative, particularly Fox. I mean, really, media outlets that have a consistent underlying support for the righteous of the informal American Empire, that glorify Israel while villifying the freedom fighters, that pay attention to every brainwashed young man who died in Iraq as though he somehow was killed for something that mattered, that villifies weed, that considered Reagan's death some kind of tragedy...how can it be called liberal?

I concede that it is does indeed seem to favour the Democratic ideology more than the Republican one...the issue is probably more about the fact that the Democrats are much too conservative for me.

overgrowthegovt Reviewed by overgrowthegovt on 02-11-2009. How is the American media "Liberal"? You hear it all the time, about the "liberal media" and their bias. I'm a Canadian, but from what I've seen of the American media, it's outrageously conservative, particularly Fox. I mean, really, media outlets that have a consistent underlying support for the righteous of the informal American Empire, that glorify Israel while villifying the freedom fighters, that pay attention to every brainwashed young man who died in Iraq as though he somehow was killed for something that mattered, that Rating: 5

[RamblerGambler]

Is there any doubt that FOX "news" is the media arm of the Republican party?

In purporting to "take a look back" at how the economic recovery plan "grew, and grew, and grew," Fox News' Jon Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods -- all of which came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release. A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the Republican press release.

Media Matters - Fox passes off GOP press release as its own research -- typo and all

[overgrowthegovt]

Is there any doubt that FOX "news" is the media arm of the Republican party?
Media Matters - Fox passes off GOP press release as its own research -- typo and all

Now, imagine a media somehow separate from politics or corporations, both of whose evil interests have no place sculpting public opinion. That would be very nice. Let's bring back JOURNALISM, not P.R.

[hedgehog]

I didn't write this but I love it...

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals.



I was informed of this fact by Rush Limbaugh. And Thomas Sowell. And Ann Coulter. And Rich Lowry. And Bill O'Reilly. And William Safire. And Robert Novak. And William F. Buckley, Jr. And George Will.



And John Gibson. And Michelle Malkin. And David Brooks. And Tony Snow. And Tony Blankely. And Fred Barnes. And Britt Hume. And Larry Kudlow. And Sean Hannity. And David Horowitz. And William Kristol. And Hugh Hewitt.



And Oliver North. And Joe Scarborough. And Pat Buchanan. And John McLaughlin. And Cal Thomas. And Joe Klein. And James Kilpatrick. And Tucker Carlson. And Deroy Murdock. And Michael Savage. And Charles Krauthammer. And Stephen Moore. And Alan Keyes.



And Gary Bauer. And Mort Kondracke. And Andrew Sullivan. And Nicholas von Hoffman. And Neil Cavuto. And Matt Drudge. And Mike Rosen. And Dave Kopel. And John Caldara.



The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. For instance, did you know there is an ultra-leftist professor at the University of Colorado named Ward Churchill who wrote an essay three years ago in which he called victims of Sept. 11 "little Eichmanns"? Bet you never heard of him, as the liberal media elite likes to put the kibosh on embarrassing stories like this.



The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. Look at how they all gave Bill Clinton a pass on the whole Monica Lewsinsky affair. Remember? It was never in the news. We never heard any of the salacious details. The work of his presidency never came to a virtual halt while he defended himself.



The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. They have so poisoned the electorate that no Republicans can get elected. Republicans don't control the presidency. Republicans don't control both houses of Congress. Republicans don't control 28 of 50 governorships.



Last year, a lot was made of a report released by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The report found that 34 percent of national journalists identified themselves as liberal, 54 percent identified themselves as moderate and 7 percent identified themselves as conservative. Twenty-three percent of local journalists identified themselves as liberal, 61 percent identified themselves as moderate and 12 percent identified themselves as conservative.



These figures can be interpreted in a number of ways. First of all, if you actually read the whole report, you'd come across commentary that specifically warned against drawing any easy, across-the-board conclusions: "We would be reluctant to infer too much here. The survey includes just four questions probing journalists' political attitudes, yet the answers to these questions suggest journalists have in mind something other than a classic big government liberalism and something more along the lines of libertarianism."



But pretend you're doing a story on the Pew report, and the nuanced comments above are not sufficiently dramatic for your medium. You need to reduce things into some digestible sound bites. If you wanted to sound the alarm bells on the right, you could say that national journalists were nearly five times as likely to identify themselves as liberal than as conservative. This would be literally true but perhaps a little misleading, as the same poll results tell us that 61 percent of national journalists identified themselves as moderate or conservative.



If you're John Gibson of Fox News, you just make up your own statistics and claim that "80-some percent of reporters are self-described liberals." If you're Rush Limbaugh, you offer up the same lie a day later and specifically cite the poll that proves you wrong: "most of them (journalists) are liberals. Eighty percent of them will admit it in the latest press poll ... ."



Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the media in America really are predominantly recalcitrant leftists. Say you're a conservative media mogul named Rupert and you have the wherewithal to do something about it. Here are three paths you might take:



1. You could announce your belief that the reporting of news is always subjective and therefore biased, so you are going to start a news network that comes at things from your own perspective in order to balance out what you perceive to be the bias of the left.



2. You could set up your own news network that actually is fair and balanced.



3. You could set up your own news network that's consistently and demonstrably partisan, but call yourself fair and balanced.



Guess which one he chose.

[MaryJaneMonkey]

The american media is full of shit!!!
They are the ones responsible for programming the sheep of america to believe bullshit and to turn everyone away from their true roots...the constitution and the bill of rights.

The Associated Press should all be shot. Well, what can you do when all 5 major media outlets get make up their own stories. Watch al-jazeera and maybe realnews.com

FOX sucks, should be shot on site.

[MaryJaneMonkey]

Oh, one last thing. I happen to be one of those Iraq bastards that was on the front lines doing the devils bidding, and now since the VA has no clue, and they love to hook u on prescription drugs I say FUCK THE U.S.

Can i move to canada please???

[killerweed420]

Doesn't really matter whether its liberal or conservative. There's just very little ethics in the media anymore. Its just about ad revenue. They report anything if it gets there ad revenue up.

[overgrowthegovt]

Oh, one last thing. I happen to be one of those Iraq bastards that was on the front lines doing the devils bidding, and now since the VA has no clue, and they love to hook u on prescription drugs I say FUCK THE U.S.

Can i move to canada please???

We'd be happy to have you, man. My deepest sympathies for what your country did to you. Not that Canada's exponentially better...all the Afghanistan bullshit.

[FeedmeWeed]

Doesn't really matter whether its liberal or conservative. There's just very little ethics in the media anymore. Its just about ad revenue. They report anything if it gets there ad revenue up.

Amen, anytime someone says "the media has a liberal bias!" or "the damn republicans own all the media!" I say BS.

they have a bias towards MONEY, the one universal truth among all business', and lets face it the news companies are business', thats why they call them companies.

Reporters report on things that draw attention, which gets ratings, which gets money. Its a simple formula that every news corporation follows

[Kai as a kite]

Yup. And to expand on that, if a market exists, obviously there are a lot of consumers (or in this case, viewers). Our country was founded on phrases such as the "free market", "power by the people", "equality" and so on, regardless of their truth value. If you consider how close this past election was when it should have been such a landslide, you start to see the "other" side of America that comprises a large part of the population. I imagine very few people here lean that way. Basically, If I'm a tree hugging liberal, I'm going to watch CNN, MSNBC, or read the New York Times. If I'm a gun totin' conservative, I'll get my news and entertainment from FOX and listen to Rush Limbaugh do his thing. There exists a demand for both sides in this country, so that's how it'll be.

I'm sure everyone remembers the six months leading up to this past election, in which the media had a heyday with stories portraying Obama as some kind of sketchy, unexperienced Muslim. William Ayers, fist bump with Michelle, his middle name.... the list goes on. But Saturday Night Live had their fun with Sarah Palin, so I guess it all evens out.

I just came back from living in Japan for six months, and watching the election and everything happen politically from across the world was kind of weird. I was amused by the difference in their media coverage compared to ours. Then again, they have their similarities. Micheal Phelps has been dominating coverage for the past few days, just like a few months ago when a Russian sumo wrestler in Japan was busted with bud, and got into trouble.