Some Explanation, Please!
Posted by Daren Jaques on July 17, 2008
I don’t know if very many ultra-right wing nuts read this blog - perhaps they do, and I am hoping for some explanation from that very demographic. As any routine reader can discern I get my news and commentary from three very distinctive sources - The New York Times, NPR, and The Atlantic magazine. Two of those three are regularly subjected to polemical fulminations from the right wing (NY Times and NPR) and the third is regarded with little affection (The Atlantic).
I guess I’d to know what exactly your problem is with these news sources? David Brooks and Bill Kristol both write for the Times, and the Atlantic has (arguably) even less conservative “conservatives” in Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat. Why such vitriol for The Times? To be sure, who has written more ascerbically about the Clintons than Maureen Dowd?
I know that the editorial page leans HARD left, but that is such a small part of the journalism from the Times. I rarely read editorials that aren’t Op-Eds. True, NPR rammed a six month long series on “climate change” down my throat every morning, but again, it was only one segment among very good news coverage. What’s the big prob with NPR, yo?
Call me thin skinned over the Obama New Yorker cover — it seems to me that hard conservatives seem to want journalism that never questions conservative dogma or conservative leaders. Are you so thin skinned that you can’t handle an inquiry into whether any evidence actually exists that off-shore drilling will benefit the U.S.? Maybe that’s not your problem, but please, enlighten me as to what is!
To conclude, I can think of several countries that has media that doesn’t question its leaders, and those heads of state wear military uniforms.
July 17, 2008 at 11:11 am
For many years I was the Station Manager of a CBS affiliated television station, and we had a full news department, as most TV stations in mid to large markets do.
We had some instances of bias among our reports that came across (in my opinion) over the air. It’s really unavoidable. It’s a business fraught with liberals, and they simply tend to think that most people think the way they do, so things get dumbed down (as is recommended by most news consultants, except they call it “easy to understand”)
Now, for us, those instances were rare. The New York Times employs many, many time more reporters than we ever did. I’m not so sure that the seeming “bias” to come from that paper is any greater as a percentage than anywhere else — it’s just that the sheer number of instances seems greater because they’re such a big organization.
One of the biggest problems is that the general population has a hell of a hard time discerning between a “journalist” and an “opinion columnist.”
I get email all the time taking issue with my opinion, followed by something like “what kind of journalist are you?” or “…and you call yourself a journalist!” Uh, no I don’t.
A lot of people read opinion editorials and think it’s “news”… this happens to the Times, and it happens to everybody else in the news and opinion business. This adds to the “news bias” criticisms.
July 17, 2008 at 11:12 am
Oh, and I only read the Atlantic Monthly because they run PJ O’Rourke’s articles. Otherwise I have no idea what’s in there.
July 17, 2008 at 11:12 am
How did a friggin’ emoticon get on my comment? I hate those things!
Okay, I’ll stop comment-hogging now.
July 17, 2008 at 7:19 pm
People like their opinions. They want people to agree with them. Reading news is hard; learning history is hard. People prefer nodding in agreement. People don’t read the news; they don’t study history; they study Nostalgia.
By and large, the NYTimes isn’t more egregious than any piece of journalism; it’s more prestigious and gets more attention; its errors are not more egregious–just larger in scope.
Journalists are not movers and shakers; they report on movers and shakers. They get facts wrong; they misreport and imply false motives. They act on incomplete information. They are outsiders.
I understand why businessmen often dislike the media. I remember playing sports in high school. My team got some media attention, and I always wondered why the reporter couldn’t describe things the way I saw it.
I once helped a firm represent an agribusiness trying to build an ethanol plant. The reporter covering that story was quite even-handed. However, he treated our side and our opponent’s side as equivalent, when they weren’t. That business spent buckets of money hiring engineers and other experts to examine the impact on the community and environment. The opponents had typical unproven NIMBY complaints. It happens.
July 18, 2008 at 7:27 am
I make fun of the NY Times because the editorial staff represents the whole paper. When they endorse a position or a candidate they aren’t doing it as Jane or John Doe, they are doing it as the NY Times. When David Brooks and Bill Kristol write a position they are representing David Brooks and Bill Kristol.
However I believe Jaques’ question cuts both ways. Why do liberals believe Fox News is so conservative? I believe part of the reason is that those running Fox News aren’t as liberal as those at other news channels so it seems more conservative than it really is. In fact, wasn’t it Fox News that tried to stop the whole Jesse Jackson ordeal? If a similar outburst had been made by Karl Rove on Olberman’s show it would have been the lead story.
And Jaques, what’s your take on the Des Moines Register? I have no doubt that the daily reporters do their job with little or no bias, but I seriously question the whole editorial staff. However Iowa liberals believe David Yepsen is a right wing neo-con. Yepsen? Maybe the business editorial writer David Elbert, but Yepsen?
July 18, 2008 at 10:12 am
One thing that is pretty obvious sometimes… is the difference in coverage when a Democrat gets in trouble and when a Republican does.
If a Democrat gets in trouble, it is usually 4 or 5 paragraphs down before it mentions party.. (If at all.)
If a Republican gets in trouble, the word Republican is in the headline.
July 18, 2008 at 1:00 pm
In my opinion FOX News is just as conservative as the NY Times is liberal - probably more so. Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, (formerly) Tony Snow, Brit Hume, John Gibson - all of these men are unashamedly conservative. The times at least has Brooks and Kristol. Fox news has Alan Colmes as the token liberal… yikes. Not to mention that the Times’ big libs are doing opinion pieces mostly.
Dorf, I agree that the news’ treatment of Republicans who get in trouble is unequal - “Republican” is usually in the headline, but in some ways Rs deserve the harsher treatment b/c many of the ones so treated were sanctimonious cross-wavers while in office. TV and print loves a big hippocrite.
Lastly, Jordan, the Register is very different from the Times. First and foremost, most of the news in the Register blows, and secondly, where are the Brookses and Kristols? Yepsen probably is the most conservative staff member, and that is by virtue of the fact that he is the only one who showers daily.
July 18, 2008 at 1:46 pm
“Yepsen probably is the most conservative staff member, and that is by virtue of the fact that he is the only one who showers daily.”
Holy crap, thanks for the laugh!
But back to Fox News, the people you listed are not news reporters. Do you think the network as a whole slants the news?
July 18, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Well, I disagree that Gibson, Hume (and formerly Snow) aren’t reporters. I think those three are. I’ll concede that O’Reilly and Hannity are clearly editorialists.
As for the slanting of the news - yes, I think it is, but not that significantly. The perennial so called “War on Christmas” series panders just as much to the right as NPR’s six month climate change series pandered to the left. Not to get all postmodern here, but all information is biased in some way, but my hope is that news reporters do their best to remove bias as best they can. They simply cannot remove it all though. Fox is as fair and balanced as Augustus Gloop and Stuart Little on a teeter-totter. I think the hard news of Fox is more biased than the hard news at the Times, and I give them equal marks for biased editorializing.
July 18, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I don’t see Fox News pro-right wing.. I kinda see them as pro-America.. know what I mean? Not propaganda, but they tend to “slant” in the way that gives America the benefit of the doubt.
Some other stations will run hardcore with an “anti-America” story with very little facts to support it.
That’s kinda how I see it, though seriously I way maybe an hour a week COMBINED of all news stations. All I care about anymore is technology stuff, and the news stations don’t know jack about tech.
July 18, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I am with Dorf, I must be such a neo-con that I don’t see the Fox bias. The weird thing is I actually watch trying to see it. I must be more conservatively corrupt than I originally thought. I am officially putting myself on a hefty diet of Keith Olbermann and Anderson360. On second thought, just Anderson360.
July 28, 2008 at 12:15 am
I actually tend to agree that Fox News and NYT OpEd are on the same level of bias toward their respective poles of the political field. What I find hypocritical about Fox News is the fact that they blur the lines intentionally between OpEd and actual news. Watch O’reilly’s show and tell me at what points in the show he is reporting on a news story and at what point he is purely shouting his opinion? At least the NYT has an OpEd section of the newspaper. Sure there may be bias in other parts of the newspaper, but I see no such distinction in Fox News reporting. Its all just a muddled mess of as much red, white, and blue as they can throw at you. We’re not that naive to think they actually think they are “Fair and Balanced” still are we? At this point I just chuckle to myself whenever they show that. What is fair and balanced about Hannity and Colmes?
July 28, 2008 at 7:14 am
Once again Jim you chose two examples of shows that aren’t straight news reporting. What you find hypocritical about Fox News, I find funny that you would expect unbiased news reporting while watching O’Reily or Hannity and Colmes.
July 28, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Cocooning is a strong part of human nature. People gravitate toward those who agree with them. It flows from tribalism, I suppose.
Conversely, people reject that with which they disagree. Change, difference, strangeness are not popular. We associate the familiar with survival because we have survived all that we are familiar with (ironically, change and strangeness are at the heart of evolution, the most powerful survival tool).
These are base instincts; they do not appeal to our highest ideals. Which is why, so often, people who reject various media cannot articulate a rationale for their hate.
July 29, 2008 at 9:38 am
Jeeze, EW, there you go again with that crazy “Evolution” stuff.
July 29, 2008 at 7:03 pm
True, sir, I do wax rhapsodic with eloquent obfuscation.
July 30, 2008 at 8:45 am
Eschew circumlocution, lad.