Kinda-sorta waking up to media bias
Two quick media items, both oddly relating to Keith Olbermann and my quixotic quest to transcend partisanship.
The first is this article from the Huffington Post suggesting what we all already knew - Olbermann is no Edward R. Murrow. His trite partisanship is no better than Bill O’Reilly’s, and he’s equally vindictive (a "World’s Worst Person" segment? Really?) while claiming the moral high ground.
The author is angry with Olbermann for hatin’ on Hillary (and his melodramatic special comment was quite funny in parts). What’s sad is that infighting is the only catalyst for us to recognize favoritism. Come November, liberals will be rallying around Olbermann while conservatives do the same for O’Reilly, both groups following their leader as the sole source of accurate political judgment.
Need further proof that we can’t separate the cant from the facts? Look no further than today’s AP headline, ironically about "polarities" in politics. How about polarities in reporting? Do assertions like "feel-good, way-cool" make for objective, let alone accurate, reporting? And how about this line?
And when the campaign moves beyond Democrats, the party of diversity,
and into the general election, it’s questionable how much room is left
for such progress.
Don’t get me started. The need for this awakening to media anti-news is all the more apparent when you understand the echo chamber that exists today. Take this short entertaining tale from Glenn Beck, whom I had never seen until this clip:
First, editorials on Headline News? Second, Beck is wrong to single out liberals here - both sides are equally guilty and equally self-righteous about the other group’s biases. I feel like conservatives are usually more explicit in their bias, since their major outlets are talk-shows and opinion pieces (while most mainstream press only tacitly leans left), but neither side likes to be forthcoming. I welcome counter-arguments on this claim, though.
The point is this: America needs discourse more than it needs lower taxes or universal healthcare. Bias can be a part of discourse, so long as we call it what it is.
6 Comments
I’ve got to admit, I just don’t buy into this whole thing. Sure, I think it’s true, there are shows that are biased, some more than others. And there are networks that, on the whole, are more biased than others. MSNBC and Fox the clear worst here, with FOX taking the obvious cake for the Pravda award, IMO.
But for the most part, with those two cases aside, I think it’s amazing how much very supposed “liberal” outfits will carry the water of conservatives, from this story to that one, unquestioningly importing the talking points of the right. The water is very muddied, and with those two more obvious propaganda outfits aside, it’s not clear to me that there’s institutional bias. It also seems to me that the media love blood, left or right it doesn’t matter.
For me, it’s more a question of the need for journalists to actually know facts and ask questions. To investigate instead of just repeat. And that goes for both sides.
Grr. CP, I had a huge reply planned out, but I’ll just make a new post in a few days (after I turn in my remaining finals essays).
You ask good questions, and bias is a notoriously difficult thing to “prove,” but I’ll do my best.
No problem. Just to throw it out there — I think bias patrolling is done well by Media Matters (on the side of the left) and News Busters (on the right).
What’s amusing is to read MM talk about, say, the bias of the NYT and use examples from a specific day. Then flip to NB and read about the bias of the NYT, with examples from the same day.
I was reading something today that was complaining about the media bias in favor of McCain. The claim was that no matter how many gaffes McCain blurts out (on foreign policy, e economics, and so on) the press gives him a pass, suggesting that he’s having a “senior moment” and that his foreign policy cred and economic policy cred is above reproach.
Still, the piece argued, how many gaffes do you get before that cred comes into question? The piece wondered if Clinton — who no doubt has a lot of cred in these areas, would be given a pass by the press on this sort of thing (the assumption was no).
Just something can made me think of your post, given my suggestion that many on the left suggest that the press is pretty biased in the other direction too.
Interesting short piece:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725955,00.html
Have you shut comments down on your site?