About a month ago William Tate provided the Nth proof of media bias in Investors Business Daily.
Liberal apologists like to point to any cockamamie statistic they can unearth which actually isn't stacked heavily to the Left to "prove" media bias is a myth. But the number of conservative versus liberal talking heads you have on a news analysis show means very little.
People understand that talking-head and news analysis shows are about 80% opinion and 20% objective reporting.
Where the bias really lives--and where it is most dangerous--is on the "news" pages. Whether it be the front page of the newspaper, the top-of-the-hour radio news, the network nightly news, or the "headline news," the avenue which attempts to pass itself off as "objective news" is the area most full of bias.
And it is the most dangerous place for the bias because a large number of people are lulled into accepting at face value that this is "news," that this is "objective journalism." So when creeps (or more often stampedes) in, people are deceived.
They aren't just getting the facts so that they may evaluate those facts and come to a reasonable conclusion. They are getting some facts, colored and flavored with the bias of the reporter or anchor.
When news people sneer at one side of the ideological divide while smiling at the other, or when news people accept the claims of one side without question while giving the other side the fifth degree, or when news people hammer one side while ignoring the other...consumers of "news" get a dose of something they didn't ask for and that wasn't mentioned "on the label." It's like buying a bottle of water, only to find that it contains lemon flavoring...or a healthy dose of LSD.
But getting back to the IBD piece, while journalists typically profess objectivity, not only does their news coverage illustrate the untruth of that contention, so do their behind-the-scenes allegiances.
As you can see from the "money trail," news outlets give money overwhelmingly to Democrats. By a 15:1 ratio.
Even the much-maligned Fox News gave far more to Democrats than Republicans. At least they, unlike the rest of the herd, manage to maintain a reasonable standard of objective reporting. Of course, to the liberal apologists, anything truly objective must be biased toward the Right; they've gotten so used to cover-fire from the "mainstream" media that the absence of that cover-fire surely must indicate bias to the Right.
In and of these numbers themselves, they prove nothing. Theoretically it should be possible for a journalist to hold a particular ideological bias, yet commit himself or herself to reporting the facts and only the facts. In fact, there are a few journalists out there who, frankly, do such a good job of reporting factually that I have no idea whether they are liberal or conservative.
But when you look at these numbers in light of the "product" we receive from the "mainstream" media, the bias only becomes more clear.
But people are seeing through the pretense of objectivity with increasing numbers. But not nearly quickly enough, as the media awe over Barack Obama illustrates. Too many who worship Obama as some kind of messiah get their daily delusion fed with fresh doses of dogma from the "mainstream" media who refuse to report on Obama's dreadful lack of experience...and the dangerous radicalism of what experience he does have.
The best evidence of media bias always remains the slanted reporting: hyping Republican scandals while ignoring Democrat ones, identifying plenty of evil conservatives out to take away your birthday but never a liberal to be found, the adulation for liberal politicians and causes contrasted to the skepticism and fear of conservative ones, and of course the scowls and sneers over anything conservative.
If the media wants to be in the tank for the liberals, they should at least have the honesty to come right out and admit it. At least then there would be no delusions that what we were getting was liberal propaganda.
As it stands, it's false adverting of a product at best, and ultimately subversive deception that undermines the American people's ability to make an informed decision.
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Saturday, August 23, 2008
The 'Mainstream' Media Gives 15:1 to Dems
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