[jeffkrol]

Fox Viewers Are Most Misinformed | FrumForum

Most striking, Ailes hired Glenn Beck away from CNN and set him loose on the White House. During his contract negotiations, Beck recounted, Ailes confided that Fox News was dedicating itself to impeding the Obama administration. “I see this as the Alamo,” Ailes declared. Leading the charge were the ragtag members of the Tea Party uprising, which Fox News propelled into a nationwide movement. In the buildup to the initial protests on April 15th, 2009, the network went so far as to actually co-brand the rallies as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.” Veteran journalists were taken aback. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a news network throw its weight behind a protest like we are seeing in the past few weeks,” said Howard Kurtz, the then-media critic for The Washington Post. The following August, when the Tea Party launched its town-hall protests against health care reform, Fox & Friends urged viewers to confront their congressmen face to face. “Are you gonna call?” Gretchen Carlson demanded on-air, “or are you gonna go to one of these receptions where they’re actually there?” The onscreen Chyron instructed viewers: HOLD CONGRESS ACCOUNTABLE! NOW IS THE TIME TO SPEAK YOUR MIND.

Fox News also hyped Sarah Palin’s lies about “death panels” and took the smear a step further, airing a report claiming that the Department of Veterans Affairs was using a “death book” to encourage soldiers to “hurry up and die.” (Missing from the report was any indication that the end-of-life counseling materials in question had been promoted by the Bush administration.) At the height of the health care debate, more than two-thirds of Fox News viewers were convinced Obama*care would lead to a “government takeover,” provide health care to illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and let the government decide when to pull the plug on grandma. As always, the Chairman’s enforcer made sure that producers down in the Fox News basement were toeing the party line. In October 2009, as Congress weighed adding a public option to the health care law, Sammon let everyone know how Ailes expected them to cover the story. “Let’s not slip back into calling it the ‘public option,’” he warned in an e-mail. “Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance’ … when*ever possible.” Sammon neglected to mention that the phrase he was pushing had been carefully crafted by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s largest lobbying organization, which had determined that the wording was “the most negative language to use when describing a ‘public plan.’”

Soooooo why is that even on the Frum Forum????

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 06-21-2011 at 03:38 PM.

[shooz]

Unabashedly political and fairly unbalanced?

[GeneV]

So, we're back to this same old hackneyed statistic about whom "journalists" allegedly picked for president. This really has nothing to do with "liberal bias."

First, "journalists" include everything from food writers to sports columnists. I've seen credible estimates that about 70% of the writing these old studies include has nothing remotely to do with politics. Political writers are not all liberals. Second, it assumes that just because one voted for a particular presidential candidate (from a slate that is usually not that extreme), that one is some kind of ideologue who can't write a sentence which is not dripping with heavy bias. This is also nonsense.

It is also interesting that folks who preach a "bias" because, after researching and getting to know the candidates, journalists allegedly favor one party over another, see no bias in a legal system where courts, after hearing evidence, convict certain races and economic classes of crimes in higher numbers.

Bias is best judged first from the writing, not the writer.

[Nesster]

Gene, right on there!

On some issues, on both extremes (yes, from the farther reaches of the left there's a huge bias in the media: the 'important' stories aren't covered, and the ones that are exclude a truly progressive view point), there is mainstream ignorance (in both senses). Currently, what used to be the kook right wing has a mainstream megaphone. In fact, policies that originally were conservative Republican proposals are now seen as socialistic Democrat failures by the very Republicans that championed them in the first place.

There's also the matter that not all policy proposals are actually popular or practical, and the viewers/readers understand this. E.g. school vouchers, old age health insurance vouchers etc. Thus there's little demand or need to keep bringing these things up - and the same goes for some extreme left proposals as well.

Around facts or factoids: those opinion shapers who are doing the bidding of big business (or big labor, big government) obviously spin their data, and ignore contrary data. But they also can stonewall and outright falsify data. Recall some years back the behavior of the tobacco industry and their lobby. Outright denial and falsification of facts. The media who would quote the tobacco lobby as part of 'fair and balanced' was doing what with facts?

Today, a report critical of the tobacco lobby 'facts' is seen as having outright liberal bias. Per Fox and other right wing loudmouths, "Fair and Balanced" would have the reporter doing the opposite: for every Surgeon General pronouncement, they would have to dispute the facts based on what the Tobacco Lobby was putting out. The resulting truthiness corrodes our understanding that there are true facts that are not subject to opinion. It introduces a moral relativism from the right: we get to choose our truth, truth is political.