No More Liberal Bias!
Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll, in a staff memo leaked to the L.A. Observed weblog, has declared war on his paper?s liberal bias:
I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage. We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times.
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Carroll could have built a case against shoddy journalism without deploying the “L” word. In fact, I’d say that demonstrates his bias.
Liberals aren’t the only ones who play loose with the facts and utilize selective reporting. Uber de-bunker of liberal myth Johnny Stossel does it regularly. In this case he pointed to an anti- anti-global warming petition signed by “scientists” like this guy.
I think what the good editor meant was the paper should quit running editorials criticizing the president. They have some columnists there that have been very critical of Bush’s policies. The good editor is now president of the Pulitzer Prize board and now doesn’t need the heat the GOP can generate.
Here’s a sin of omission from Nightline. They referred to Marla Ruzicka as a “a lone peace activist” and unaffiliated with a big relief agency. That’s more or less true, however, mentioning that she was the controversial source for a NYT article, and that she’s a big fan of Fidel and a present or former member of the far-left Global Exchange (Susan Medea Benjamin et al) might be something Nightline’s viewers might want to know.
Is it liberal bias, or just extremely sloppy reporting? I think the former.
Sven,
The article you link criticizes the anti-anti petition, but makes no mention o the identity of individuals on the anti petition. Since the Organization of Concerned Scientists that put it out is made up more of “concerned citizens” than scientists (who I guess aren’t citizens?), one wonders why the article didn’t attempt to better reveal their identities and question their qualifications as it did Mr. Bybee. Oh yes, it was a petition, my grandma takes those to church on Sunday to get signatures, they indicate bulk of opinion on the subject and haven’t anything to do with quality of argument.
James Merritt,
Well, in the 19th century, reportage and editorial pages were openly partisan (notice many papers had terms like Democrat, Whig, or Republican as part of their titles), a lot of this changed with the advent of the Pulitzer prize (given that Pulitzer was openly partisan, this is a bit ironic) and wire services, both of which tried to steer American journalism toward “objectivity” and “professionalism.” All Murdoch did with Fox News is simply re-tread ideas that have been around since the penny press; that they still sell well speaks partly to the social evolution (or lack thereof, depending on how you view such things) of our society. Which is why I don’t think of Murdoch as being innovative; he’s simply a good imitator.
Stossel has been shown to play fast & loose with the facts when it serves his ideological purposes.
If Rupert News had the word Republican in its tagline, Gary, I could respect them on the grounds you cite. But they use the term “Fair and Balanced” with a straight face, which undermines the idea that they’re an honest partisan press.
joe,
Well, if people watch Fox, they watch Fox. In twenty years, some other media organization will have shit that smells sweet like Fox does right now, and the beat will go on. Furthermore, Fox News still only pulls at its peak a million or so homes into its viewership; hell, the NBC Nightly News has 20-30 times the amount of viewership.
Gary, I’m well aware of the open bias of pre-20th century “yellow press,” although I can’t say that 20th century journalistic pretensions of professionalism or objectivity have been all that successful or worthwhile, Pulitzer, AP/UPI, and the major networks to the contrary. Fox News isn’t the only organization that has employed the words “fair and balanced” to describe its own reportage, though they are probably the most visible ones at the moment to make the claim — they won’t be the last, or the last to do so disingenuously. In my comments, I wasn’t referring to Fox specifically, and wasn’t holding them up as any kind of journalistic innovators, either. On the other hand, if they talk the talk, they had better walk the walk: I disliking (modern) liberal attitudes and approaches myself, I am nevertheless displeased with Fox’s nakedly anti-liberal bias, which it then labels as “fair and balanced.” Call such coverage anti-liberal, or anti-Democrat, pro-GOP or pro-conservative, and I’ll respect you for your honesty and tune you in regularly to see the world from that point of view, applying an appropriate truth-filter. Call it “fair and balanced,” however, and you’ll make me wonder what other lies you are telling or mistakes you are making. “Fair and balanced” has to prove itself, and so far, I have found few who could meet the challenge.
Someone is going to have to explain to me what “liberal bias” is.
BTW, that link is broken.
“Then again, most of America is not all that sympathetic to the 100% pure Libertarian way of thinking.”
In fact, “most of Amerika” believes in taking that cash out of your bank account (taxes.)
“Most of Amerika” believes in robbing you at gun point (agression.)
“Most of Amerika” believes in having YOU go to work, while they go to the beach, or sit at desk pretending to be busy (Slavery.)
Etc., etc.
Ain’t that right.
WE SEE WHAT WE WISH TO SEE.
So do “reporters.”
So do news editors.
And so do YOU.
You seek Truth? Don’t go looking for it in newspapers or on TV, OK?
Links all fixed, thanks!
liberal bias = non-fox news…
fox news = “fair and balanced”
seriously, i’ve been looking for “breast cancer & abortion” and haven’t found anything that doesn’t break out into the ostensibly pro or contra camps.
this link is to a 2/5/2003 comment:
ithacajournal.com/news/stories/20030205/opinion/920030.html
abortioncancer.com/
is a site that disputes the danish study that denies any link (and the bjorn lumborg controversy suggests that the danes do break with the canon of liberal thinking once in a while)
abortionbreastcancer.com/
is another link that discusses the connection between abortion and breast cancer
is this another “correlation vs causation” trap? could this be yet another proxy battle over abortion? is this solid medical science? or is this another “global warming” scenario where scientists on both sides feverently “prove” their cases?
i firmly believe that the government shouldn’t be in the bedroom or the hospital ward. whether the link between a gun in the house and the odds of someone being murdered in the same house (something professed by anti gun people), or this, we’re simply seeing the paternalistic state colliding with the maternalistic state.
either way, does it make sense to get all balled up in anger over this study? isn’t this simply good practices, similiar to informing the patient about dry sockets after wisdom teeth, or the risks of hip replacement or transplants?
how do those here who is in favor of abortion rights as they now stand feel about this study and the blog entry? and how many who favor restrictions to/ elimination of abortion rights feel about this too?
cheers,
drf
croesus is a dingbat if he can’t admit that some papers have a political agenda!
Wisdom teeth removal causes dry sockets. Correlation and causation are both extremely clear. Neither exists clearly for abortion and breast cancer.
hey joe,
correlation is not necessarily causation. that error is made very consistently. so, it’s not clear. the point is that there is a risk of the dry sockets (i.e., not everybody gets it who has their wisdom teeth out. granted, there is a causation there: you get drysockets IFF (if and only if) you get yer wisdom teeth out. true)
but there was a fun study showing the correlation between women getting their drivers licenses and women getting lung cancer. there was a remarkable R-squared for that. so there was correlation, but no causation.
many global warming arguments rest on that fallacy, too.
and from how it seems, there may be correlation between abortion and breast cancer, otherwise this discussion wouldn’t be happening.
i do doubt the connection (as i feel this is a proxy anti-abortion battle, however, i’d like more info on this…
cheers,
drf
If *I* had the time, I’d build a robot that could report on issues absolutely perfectly unbiasedly.
My only fear is that on its first assignment it might blow up!!
I used to consider myself a liberal Democrat. Back then, I thought I saw liberal bias in the media and it disturbed me.
Then my thinking started to become more libertarian. I now think the news is (for the most part) rather balanced. Sure, a lot of reporting is not very sympathetic to the 100% pure ideologically Libertarian position, but I’ve never understood why complete ideological purity is a prerequisite (in the eyes of some) for favoring smaller government.
Then again, most of America is not all that sympathetic to the 100% pure Libertarian way of thinking. So the press isn’t all that out of step with the general public.
Anyway, I see very little partisan bias in the news. I used to see it back when I favored one of the two major parties. Now that I don’t like either major party I see that reporting makes both sides look pretty bad. Maybe I only notice stories that I agree with, and I agree with stories that make the Dems and GOP look bad.
hey fyodor,
instead of blowing up, it would make you eat the red pill, take over the skynet, make terminsators, relegate you to the matrix, and cause sigourney weaver to have yet another heroine roll fighting off the slimy lizard with an underbite.
phew. 🙂
drf
I have always actually preferred a clear and honest bias in the news, as long as there were enough alternatives that I could balance my news intake so as to mitigate the effects of bias and perhaps squeeze some real facts out of all that “coverage.”
What I can’t stand is reporting that claims to be “fair and balanced,” “trustworthy,” “authoritative,” etc., yet is anything but! Such posturing only makes life harder on the poor reader, who has to go to the trouble of determining the nature and level of actual bias in the channel, entirely for himself. I’ll admit that this is probably the natural state of affairs: to expect news sources to actually BE unbiased, or alternatively, to be open, honest, and accurate about their biases, is extreme and unrealistic in either case…
What I am more concerned about, these days, is the bias that comes from having fewer and fewer actual sources of news. Who is out there doing the legwork, and how many of them are out in the field, actually using (or BEING) primary sources? How many of the thousands of news providers out there — especially the chattering pundits — rely on pre-fab articles supplied by wire services, press agents, or government? How many distinct voices are we really hearing?
Caveat lector.
joe: Jim Lehrer is just one show on one channel and you are using “broadly” in a very very broad and left-biased sense. So what about ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN???? PBS is boring as shit and just a mouthpiece for the left party line. Fox is at least entertaining and has guests from every spectrum. The spirited debates are fun — hell o’reily rips the hell out of libertarians (including editors of this site)! But he still lets them on his show.
Its just a matter of taste, you don’t like it – change the channel! oooh but what would you have to bitch about then — without the evil corporate chimpy channel to whine about! no blame the corporations for free republic, talkradio and fox news, because the public is tooo stoopid to choose for themselves what to listen too! it couldn’t be market forces…its the evil corporations!
what the hell are you talking about 5-0?
(he obviously fell out of an asshole tree and hit every branch on the way down)
Like the time when NRO’s Jay Nordlinger was attacked from the left just this past weekend on Fox? There’s criticism and then there’s carichatures.
hey cinquo!
what you’re saying confirms what thoreau excellently noted above. and you also highlight why more and different news sources are important for gathering information. but equating fox’s style with “fair and balanced” is, as with all news outlets, a huge stretch.
for example: cnn has had bill schneider, from AEI on board, people from CATO speak all the time, and much of this is pre-fox. considering how outside of the mainstream jesse jackson is, that’s pretty ballsy of cnn to have him on. but it sure does make for lousy tv. and it’s really boring to hear about the keynsian, demand side tax cuts we’re getting are “trickle-down, supply side” that only benefit the rich.
the NY times has stuff that incorrectly bashes pharma companies daily. and don’t even ask them about guns…
the news hour on PBS has differing points of view and most discussions aren’t that acrimonious “yes/no” krap that we see on every other tv news program. you might enjoy some of the segments (while others make you gag), 🙂
then there’s the orielley factor. the symbol of fox news (for better or worse)
his style — aggressively ignoring what the guests say (the drugs story last night) or how he suggests that lancome is a french product — that is the beef many have with him. and that could be unfairly projected onto the rest of the network (akin to Jim Rome’s style and projecting that to espn)
then, there are certain ostensibly political terms that fox uses that resonates with a particular market niche: “homicide bombers” instead of “suicide bombers” and as such, this points to a standard of terminology that resonates mainly in a particular segment (former trots-turned-conservative-pro-big-government-fiercely-pro-israel-with-some-old-Liberal-tendencies).
cheers!
drf
“Carroll could have built a case against shoddy journalism without deploying the ‘L’ word. In fact, I’d say that demonstrates his bias.”
Not so. The memo was directed to the section editors of the L.A. Times, not to journalists in general, and certainly not to John Stossel. General media bias may be all over the map, but the L.A. Times’s specific bias is anything but that.
When did anyone mention the government taking anything over, Cinqo? Are the actual arguments being made too hard for you?
Studies have consistently shown that Jim Lehrer has twice as many “conservatives” broadly defined as “liberals” as guests. Some have used this to demonstrate a conservative bias, but they’re ignoring how those guests are treated. Everyone on PBS is allowed to speak for a long time, questions are fair, and a “two sides to every story” ethic dominates. Compare to Faux, where liberals (and anyone else who doesn’t tow the corporate master’s line) are insulted, ignored, and shouted over, and only the weakest, most apologetic Democrats (I’m talking about you, Alan) are actually allowed to get a word is edgewise.
Thanks for supporting Mel’s civil rights to make a movie of his choice.
If the secular media would not put their prejudicial, racists’ anti-Christian words into the mouth of the secular world, the secularists would be lost (literally) for words!
Thanks for supporting Mel’s civil rights to make a movie of his choice.
If the secular media would not put their prejudicial, racists’ anti-Christian words into the mouth of the secular world, the secularists would be lost (literally) for words!