Bias, a CBS Insider Exposes How the Medi a Distort

“I love when titl gets done watching all the Sunday morning talking head shows and gets all puffed up wanting to flex is armchair QB muscles. LOL!”

“
It's simply a parody of what SOME knuckleheads would post if circumstances were reversed.

You know... The Big #&%!$ing Media Conspiracy Against Those POOR Powerless Put-upon Republican Power Elites! ---- ROF a Ton! � You know... the guys who tried to steal everything that wasn't nailed down, 1994-2006.

You didn't happen to hear Chuck Hegel on Face The Nation did you? � He was talking Yet Again about putting the good of the Nation before Party affiliation.... something you guys should take to heart and quit defending crooks just because they wear a flag pin on their lapels.

When the law finally catches up to them (despite the Bush Justice Dept. running interference) they cry about media bias.... � Boo frickin' hoo.

And I know there are some suckers who will say Hegel isn't a True Republican (because he doesn't toe that Party Line).... but yaknow.... that really says much more about Those people.

I just hope he doesn't wind up as just another mouthpiece for resource extractors or defense contractors. � I really don't think he will ---- but you never know.

Heck, I used to think Herbert Walker Bush was at least a HALFWAY standup guy.... � Now I learn he travels the world as a shill for the Moonies. � JEEZ!

”

“You didn't happen to hear Chuck Hegel on Face The Nation did you? �

No, but then again, I am a thinker.

He was talking Yet Again about putting the good of the Nation before Party affiliation....

Yeah, as long as it's everyone right of Obama caving in to the leftists.

something you guys should take to heart and quit defending crooks just because they wear a flag pin on their lapels.

You guys? Who's you guys? And when did I defend crooks?”

“All votes on all ballots are for crooks- you must not vote.”

“Silly tilty.”

“FOX News Officially Busted

Bill O’Reilly & Sean Hannity: Ventriloquist dummies? Primetime propagandists?

Someone say it ain't so!”

“


The Falafel Factor

”

“Yeah, HUGE surprise...not.

Here's another great example of the media campaigning for BHO...

On Leno, Chris Matthews said:

"I hope for one thing when people go to vote: that they look at Barack’s background, that they look at the age of the two candidates, that they look at their abilities and really open up their hearts and say “what’s really good for my kids,” who don’t have any color awareness.
Kids don’t think about race.
Think like your kids for once.
Think the way they think.
It would be great if the older people in the country, the 70 year olds, the 80 year olds who are suspicious of change to say, “you know, why don’t I think the way my kids are thinking and think about the future.”
Whatever they decide, just open up your heart to this prospect of something different.
That’s what I hope we do."”

“Kleety and webtv have cracked the case. Meanwhile he is blind to Obama's campaign managers, Curic, Gibson, and Williams.”

“So you see comments made on a late night talk show and those made on a "News" channel as equivalent?

Outstanding!”

“Yeah but he has Kieth "I Heart Bloggers" Olberman on his side so he wins.”

“Of course they are not equivalent. Cable does not get near the viewers that the networks do.”

“Just don't let o'Really anywhere near you with a falafel.”

“


*sob* "The media loves Obama".

It's natural for them to favor a candidate with a pulse.”

“Here's another great example of the media campaigning for BHO...

On Leno, Chris Matthews said:
Nigal

Uh..............Matthews was on Leno's show and was off duty when he said that stuff.”

“Off duty? You mean like a cop?”

“Wonder if Matthews leg was all tingly.”

“Oh come on bacpac, give ol’ kleety, tilt, marko, and viola a break. They’re broken records:

Fox News… Fox News… Fox News….

It’s all people like them have, and they’re only fooling themselves.


The New York Times, The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, …

You’ll never hear leftists mention any consistent stances by any major news outlet other than Fox News because Fox (according to the only scientific analysis I've found)is the only major outlet that stands right of center. And unless leftists control every single outlet for information they feel life is unfair. It really pisses them off that Fox News has such high viewership.

Fox News is all you’ll hear from those bleating sheep unless they’re trying to convince people that talk radio is the same thing as legitimate journalism. That’s another one of their favorite Red Herring arguments.

So give the leftists a break. They only make fools of themselves. That’s their favorite pastime.”

“In arclite's world, being fed talking points by the White House means "standing right of center".

There is no reasoning with people who refuse to think.”

“...There is no reasoning with people who refuse to think...

Hey, V finally got something right.”

“Edna Phillips, Violink's third grade teacher was the last person who tried to reason with him.”

“In my personal experience of media bias discussions, it is always obvious where someone who is dogmatically left stands in their beliefs.

There is no scientific inquiry, there has been no research done, a dogmatic leftist holds beliefs based on personal feelings that never bring into doubt the goodness of their personal motivations. Or they will holds beliefs based on feelings dispensed by people who hold their same leftist belief. Both these stances come from the same dogmatic belief that the leftist is always justified by feelings of good intentions.

I have personal experience in discussing the many books and studies I’ve read on media bias. Dogmatic leftists dismiss such scientific research, relying purely on their own feelings to guide them. Only once did a leftist try to defend his position on media bias with something other than opinion. I was told that What Liberal Media by Eric Alterman would explain everything for me. I read it. When I questioned the positions taken in this book, by asking specific questions about specific ideas, referencing specific pages within the book, it turned out that this particular leftist hadn’t ebven bothered to read the book he was using as evidence.

This kind of stupidity may play within the leftist community but it is a detriment to a democratic community. To take actions based on nothing more than feelings is absurd. To never question our own ignorance is absurd. To ignore scientific inquiry is absurd. I cannot imagine living a life based on such stupidity. But leftists seem to live this way as a matter of course.
last edited: 8/04/08 11:25:41 AM”

“wow. arclite just set a world record for most uses of the word "leftist".”

“the many books and studies I’ve read on media bias - arclite

What are some good - scientific, peer reviewed - works on this?”

“Mutt, please go back and review my many sources in previous media bias threads. It gets tiresome repeating them all because I don't have them all on my bookshelf, I don't remember everything I've studied, and I've discussed this here so many times. More than once I've gone to the trouble of listing a number of wonderful sources only to hear people give excuses as to why they don't need to read them.

If that's not as helpful as it could be remember that I'm not a teacher but I always recommend continuing personal education. Discovering new ideas is much more satisfying when we do our own research. And there's been a lot of research on this subject.


“An adult who ceases after youth to unlearn and relearn his facts and to reconsider his opinions…is a menace to a democratic community.”

Edward Thorndike


“That this contempt prior to examination, is an intellectual vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free. I know not, indeed, whether men of the greatest faculties of mind, are not the most subject to it. Such men feel themselves seated upon an eminence. Looking down from their height upon the follies of mankind, they behold contending tenets wasting their idle strength upon one another, with the common disdain of the absurdity of them all. This habit of thought, however comfortable to the mind which entertains it, or however natural to great parts, is extremely dangerous; and more apt, than almost any other disposition, to produce hasty and contemptuous, and, by consequence, erroneous judgments, both of persons and opinions.”

William Paley (1743-1805)”

“ I've discussed this here so many times. - arclite

LOL - I love the put-upon forum-weary facade. Very believable - and original. Anyway, I see you did give some citations earlier in this thread. Cool.

And there's been a lot of research on this subject. - arclite

Obviously; that's why I was asking you what you found to be definitive.”

“Actually, Mutt, I started a Media Bias thread long before this one by Ice Tea. There may be more information for you there. Believe me, I am weary of citing my sources ad infinitum. But you’re cool and I don’t mean to seem like I’m brushing you off.


I’ve gone past my initial phase of evidence gathering and have put it to the test for myself for years now. I have watched news programs and read many newspapers that confirm what I have been told to look for. I've seen these things repeatedly and in-your-face obviously.


Two books I do have on my shelf may help:

Journalistic Fraud- how the New York Times distorts the news and why it can no longer be trusted.
by Bob Kohn

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense
by Suzette Haden Elgin


It’s interesting that these two books, on very different subjects, have a cross-disciplinary tie-in.

Bob Kohn is an attorney from L.A. who loved reading the NYT until he started to examine it critically. His approach is a rhetorical breakdown of writing techniques such as: Distorting the Lead, Distorting the Headline, Distorting the Facts, Distorting with Opinion, Distorting with Loaded Language, Distorting with Placement. In fact these are some of the chapters in his book.

Kohn reprints headlines and articles from the NYT to make his point and then he breaks them down rhetorically to show patterns of bias.

Elgin is an applied psycholinguist (that’s a mouthful) and associate professor of linguistics at San Diego State University. In her book, she has broken down patterns of verbal attack people use in their everyday interactions. Her categories are almost similar to logic syllogisms; If you…, Don’t you…, Even you…, are some of the titles of her chapters. She shows how people often innocently use these patterned phrases in verbal attacks.

The cross-disciplinary tie-ins between these two unrelated books are fascinating. Kohn’s rhetorical analysis of how stories get slanted, by wording, and placement of words within the story, are sometimes identical to Elgin’s patterns of verbal attack. The phraseology that Kohn points out in NYT articles is often the same type of verbal attack pattern that Elgin has categorized in her research.




There has also been much circumstantial evidence on the subject.

Nixon resigned before it was proven that he ordered Watergate. How convenient. Dan Rather resigned before his reputation went totally down the toilet. How convenient.

In the book Bias, Bernard Goldberg specifically mentioned Dan Rather’s bias many times. In fact he took special care to single out Rather. Years later, a producer is fired while Dan Rather resigns (and the media find all sorts of excuses to come to his defense). An important story, during an election year, was falsified, bringing into question Dan Rather’s “zeal” for getting the story out.

Maybe some people still believe that Dan Rather was a beacon of impartiality. I look to the evidence Goldberg presented and how Rather finally got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Coincidence? I think not! Unless you are willing to ignore the many people (Goldberg being just one) who talked about Dan Rather’s bias for years. What impartial journalist would brush over the “facts” on a story that could possibly derail a presidential campaign?




I will never advocate that people need to believe as I do (or they’re idiots, or Nazis, or …). But I will always stand by my belief that if people don’t educate themselves to the available information they’re idiots.”

“wow. arclite just set a world record for most uses of the word "leftist".�
crash bang
2:40:35 PM
8/04/08



Pffft--XL could have done that in his sleep.”

“Thanks Arclite. When I get a chance, I'm also going to head over to the university library and dive into the professional literature as well.”

“What a bore.

Hey arc - did you check out kleetn's link: http://www.webtvhub.com/fox-news-officially-busted-video-bill-oreilly-sean-hannity-are-ventriloquist-dummies/#more-3394 ?

Former Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admits that Fox News received it's "news" directly from the White House and you have absolutely nothing to say about that?

Who's a broken record?”

“I heard McClellan's retraction. He said he got confused, because Chris Mathews was talking so fast. McClellan admitted he never sent anything to O'Reilly after saying that he did.

Don't pin your hopes on this liar.”

“Liars like liars, bacpac.”

“LA Times Refuses to Release Tape of Obama Praising Controversial Activist

Video of farewell party for alleged PLO worker shows Obama toasting 'friend and dinner companion' with questionable past.


Tuesday, October 28, 2008


Rashid Khalidi, a professor and activist tied to the PLO, was feted by Barack Obama at a farewell dinner for the Palestinian activist.

The Los Angeles Times is refusing to release a videotape that it says shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who was an alleged mouthpiece for the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was a designated terrorist group in the 1970s and '80s.

According an LA Times article written by Peter Wallsten in April, Obama was a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Rashid Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO.

Click here to read the original LA Times story: 'Palestinians See a Friend in Barack Obama.'

In the article -- based on the videotape obtained by the Times -- Wallsten said Obama addressed an audience during a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi, who was Obama's colleague at the University of Chicago, before his departure for Columbia University in New York. Obama said his many talks with Khalidi and his wife Mona stood as "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

Khalidi is currently the Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia. A pro-Palestinian activist, he has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in the New York Times and Washington Times.

The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.

The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

In recent months Obama has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy."

But on the tape, according to the Times, Obama said in his toast that he hoped his relationship with Khalidi would continue even after the professor left Chicago. "It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table ... [but around] this entire world."

A number of Web sites have accused the Times of purposely suppressing the tape of the event -- which former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn reportedly attended.

Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.

"This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd -- we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said.

The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on October 19.”

“Why McCain is getting hosed in the press
By JOHN F. HARRIS & JIM VANDEHEI | 10/28/08

Politico political editor Charles Mahtesian was e-mailing the other day with a Republican lobbyist who signed off with a plea that sounded more like a taunt: “Keep it balanced.”

A reader e-mailed us with the same sentiment in different language. “Are you f***ing joking! Your bias has stooped to an all-time low. Wait, it will probably get worse as election day nears.” Those asterisks, by the way, are hers, not ours.

And get a load of this one, from someone in Rochester, N.Y., who did not like our analysis of the final presidential debate. “You guys are awfully tough on McCain. There may be some legitimacy to the claim of press bias. Mom.”

We were all set to dismiss Harris’ mother as a crank. Same for VandeHei’s: a conservative dismayed by what she sees as kid-glove treatment of Barack Obama. Then along came a study — funded by the prestigious Pew Research Center, no less — suggesting at first blush, at least, that they may be on to something.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.

What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

You call that balanced?
Story Behind the Story

Why news gets covered the way it does

Politico’s top editors draw on their experience at the nation's largest news organizations to pull back the curtain on coverage decisions and the media mindset.

OK let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.

And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.

So what?

Before answering the question, indulge us in noting that the subject of ideological bias in the news media is a drag. The people who care about it typically come at the issue with scalding biases of their own. Any statement journalists make on the subject can and will be used against them. So the incentive is to make bland and guarded statements. Even honest ones, meanwhile, will tend to strike partisans as evasive or self-delusional.

Here goes anyway.

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

Politico was not included in the Pew study. But our researcher Alex Burns pulled out his highlighter pen and did his own study of Politico's October stories last week: 110 stories advanced a narrative that was more favorable to Obama than McCain. Sixty-nine did the opposite.”

“

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com”

“State run media.....fascism”

“Tom Brokaw, who interviewed President Obama for NBCNEWS on June 5 is... appointed to President's Commission on White House Fellowships...”

“I got an email from Michael Steele using this "issue" to raise money for the RNC. Who woulda thunk?”

“That's right Flocks Noose is no longer the last word.It's no longer the Ganda Branda.
last edited: 6/18/09 6:22:01 AM”

“Oh Please VILE, you guys took the Willie Horton thing to raise money...then it was discoverd the John (COWARD) Kerry actually started the story.”

“"you guys"? What the #&%!$ are you talking about slappy?”

“Vile baby... so inspite of your continued bashing of the RNC...I assume like the "media" you claim to be "NEUTRAL"?

or are you just Hypocritical?”

“OH crap this has happened before...(the last "Celeb Prez".....

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/06/17/abc-isnt-first-nbc-hosted-prime-time-clinton-health-care-special-1994

ABC's "Prescription for America" special plugging the Obama health-nationalization plan is not the first time a network has taken on such a task. NBC did the same thing for Hillary-care in the summer of 1994, but with a twist: its two-hour special was commercial-free, paid for by the liberal Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. From the July 1994 edition of our newsletter MediaWatch:”

“KXLTT the new Ganda Branda. Right down the middle like a double yellow line.”

“

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/”

“NYT/CBS Stock Pro-Obamacare Poll With Obama Voters

By Noel Sheppard
June 21, 2009 - 13:22 ET


Realizing that Barack Obama's healthcare initiative has hit some roadblocks in Congress, the good folks at CBS News and the New York Times figured they'd help it along by creating a new poll on the subject that WAY oversampled people who voted for Obama.

Although the then junior senator from Illinois received 53 percent of the votes last November, NYT/CBS surveyed almost twice as many Obama voters as McCain voters.

Before we get to the hilarious inner-workings of this truly disgraceful deception, here's how the Times reported its rigged findings Saturday

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Actually, as Bruce Kesler cleverly discovered, what the poll really found was that most Obama voters support substantial changes to healthcare and are willing to pay higher taxes for a government run system:

[A]ccording to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama.

As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll's data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.

What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.

As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.

And you wonder why the survey found so much support for Obamacare?

Honestly, stuff like this should be illegal and any news organization found doing it should be significantly fined.

In any industry you could name, such deception of the public would meet with very serious consequences.

Why are so-called news outlets allowed to get away with such obvious deceit with total impunity?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.”

“No one admits to having voted for McCain, How can you have a fair poll, those numbers are right where the population says they are now.Your party is gone.”