Duh
Apparently, the news flying through blogland this weekend was this study by a UCLA political scientist, which says, shockingly, there’s a bit of a leftward slant to the media. Even though there is such a slant, it’s merely a lean to the left.
My take on the media is pretty simple. I don’t find them to generally sway left or right per se. My impression is that, first, they’re motivated by selling ads and that means getting your attention. Hence, stories like Can Your Dog Spontaneously Catch Fire? News at 11. Secondly, I find they are generally pro-establishment but this gets back to the first point. See, if they’re not, they can lose access and that means they can’t sell ad spots. The third point is that I think media bias is issue specific and not necessarily left or right leaning. In very general (yet issue specific) terms, I find their slant breaks down like this:
Death penalty: Slant against
Abortion: Slant for
Guns: Heavily slanted against but probably because they’re ignorant
Crime: Tough on crime (including drug war stuff)
Establishment: for it
Pork: For it
Taxes: Split down the middle
War in Iraq: Against
Israel: Sympathetic to the palestinians
And on and on. But that’s just one guy’s opinion.
December 19th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
With the exception of one of the issues you mentioned, I agree with your overall take on the matter, as it’s what I’ve said for a long time: there is no liberal or conservative bias, although the media does tend to slant in different directions on different issues. First an foremost, it’s a CORPORATE media, not a liberal or a conservative one.
December 19th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
What would you say their slant is on third party issues?
December 19th, 2005 at 10:53 pm
Heh. To ignore them.
December 20th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
Your list is accurate in my view with the possible exception of the Iraq war. They are only against it NOW that the public is having cold feet. They are taking no responsibility for supporting the post 9-11 establishment’s case for war or their predictions on how easy it would be.
Frankly, I think the MS is back to the standards of the early to mid 19th century – highly partisan and sensational. Maybe it goes in cycles. I’m just tired of all of their self-righteous whining about blogs. I don’t fault folks for compromising their principles to keep getting a paycheck. I do it all of the time. Just don’t pretend to be a part of some exalted tribe of truth speakers. You journalists are in the entertainment business, you ARE corporate whores, and very few of you seem to do much research – at least not in any sense that lawyers and graduate students would recognize. Hell, the TV journalists don’t even seem to bother using Google.
December 20th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
On the Iraq war, lobbygow hits it on the head. On the abortion issue, I think it’s a bit more complicated than Uncle thinks. The columnists may or may not slant in favor of abortion, in their zeal to appear “neutral,” they’ve swung too far and disproportionately allowed the pro-life groups to define the terms of the debate; hence the widespread media acceptance of incendiary terms like “partial-birth abortion,” etc.
I’ll also disagree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That one’s more of a back-and-forth deal based in large part on the fact that both sides of the conflict are complete assholes, and that the media can’t really just come out and say that, so they fumble about trying to report dispassionately on a subject that simply cannot be dispassionately reported. Of course, it doesn’t help that when one side or the other starts to gain a little sympathy, they promptly squander it. Public opinion of the Palestinians improving? Palestinian blows himself up in a cafe full of innocent civilians. Isreal on the rise? Mortar attacks on a Palestinian neighborhood, killing several children. And on and on and on…
Probably the biggest media problem we have, though, is that we don’t really have an independent media any more. It’s a sad state of affairs when government-funded PBS and NPR are the closer to independent media than private media enterprises, all of which are beholden to large corporate interests (both in terms of ownership and in terms of ad revenue).
December 20th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
And you forgot: PIDs, heavily slanted against.