Newsbusters has an illustrative piece on media bias and how the "mainstream" media colors the perceptions of the public toward the facts of a story.
Sometimes journalists show their liberal colors in bold and easy-to-identify ways. Other times, they do so subtly, leaving out a key fact or by a word choice that evokes certain emotions in the reader.
Newsbusters points out that when Democrat Dan Sutton's scandal arose, AP reporter Chet Brokaw somehow "forgot" to include Sutton's Democratic Party affiliation. Yet when covering Republican Ted Klaudt's scandal, he didn't miss the fact that Klaudt is a Republican.
Does this sort of coverage--which is definitely not isolated to Brokaw--have anything to do with popular perceptions (especially as we saw last year) of "scandal ridden Republicans?"
Also notice how the "mainstream" media weeps and wails (under the veil of caring about the troops) over the number of U.S. military who have been killed in Iraq, while providing no perspective such as how many were lost in ONE DAY at Normandy, or in ONE DAY on 911?
Or remember the full-court press when Bill Clinton was being impeached for perjury? There was little or no discussion of the elements of the offense (beyond quibbling over what the definition of "is" was), but we had plenty of polls thrown in our faces on a daily basis about how the American people so loved their reprobate leader and didn't want him thrown out (was there any of this same coloring of perceptions with HOW the poll questions were asked?).
Or how about the Valerie Plame so-called spy scandal? Was there any serious discussion of whether a crime was actually committed? Was there any mention of the fact that this woman, widely known in Washington social circles to be a CIA employee, was listed on a list of Who's Who? Was the distinction made in the "mainstream" press that she was an employee of the CIA, but not a covert agent as defined by the law? The only thing that was important was: can we nail the Bush administration for anything? Once again the facts of the story bit the dust, via what was NOT reported, in favor of an agenda.
Discussions of how many conservative versus liberal columnists there are out there are realatively meaningless. What counts is the NEWS. Are we getting straight, unbiased, uncolored news coverage? Or are we getting something colored by the reporter's bias, and thus coloring our perception of the objective facts?
The fact that most liberal journalists are totally oblivious to their own bias (or at least indicate that they are) should tell us something.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Coloring the News
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