Beyond bias
My “More on Native Coverage“ post reported statistics from the Missoulian archives to show what groups get coverage – and what groups don’t (e.g., taxpayers)– from this typical Montana paper.
Moving from the general to the anecdotal: Section A of today’s Missoulian contains three stories on the so-called ”stimulus” plan –
Page A-1: ”Stimulus Provision to help Indian Country” In this front-page article, reporter Jodi Rave interviews a lobbyist for the plan who used to work for Senator Baucus, a tribal chairman, and the executive director of the American Congress of American Indians.
No critics or criticism were mentioned.
Page A-2 (prominent): Mortgage firms gain in Obama Plan (I’ve linked to the Google version since I can’t find it on the Missoulian website). This AP story interviewed two “consumer advocates,” a former Clinton administration official, and someone from a left-of-center think tank “who has worked with Obama’s team on housing issues.” Against those four are (very) short clips from a Heritage Foundation critic.
Page A-2 (AP, in “Briefs” section): “GOP governors consider refusing stimulus money” (from Yahoo for the same reason). The lead sentence is: ”A handful of Republican governors are considering turning down some money from the federal stimulus package, a move opponents say puts conservative ideology ahead of the needs of constituents struggling with record foreclosures and soaring unemployment.”
Wow!
This is not just, as many conservatives call it, “media bias.”
It is beyond bias. It shows an utter lack of connection to those who are dubious about the Obama plan, which right now probably includes most of the American people. It also shows a real ignorance of basic economics (the contending points of view, if not the merits.)
And it’s a fundamental, reflexive values thing: It probably just never occurred to the authors of the first and third stories that there could be responsible and interesting viewpoints on the other side. The authors of the second story did seek one opposing view (out of five), but the reporters gave it little ink.
As any reflective person does, I often ask myself whether my impressions of the mainstream media are just some sort of psychological illusion. But when you see statistics like those in my “Native coverage” post and stories like today’s day after day — you finally do have to admt: ”No, it’s very, very real.”
Can’t criticize Rob.
These are “Award Winning” journalists.
Journalists tend to follow power. Nothing new going on there. That’s where the stories are, and access to power is the key to success in the field. They were all over invading Iraq, and when Iran’s number comes up, they’ll be all over that. That they don’t cover your particular brand of reasoning? On the TV, where most people get their news, conservatives are all over the place. You’re not being shorted. And you own the radio. (“It’s a very silly place.”)
Look at it this way – journalists have to cover everything under the sun, and consequently don’t get too deep into anything. I have often expressed frustration at the shallow knowledge of tax matters in the newspapers. They are much more inclined to get a quote form both sides, and leave it at that (Krugman: “Shape fo earth: views differ”). But to attribute this to some malevolent (though unconscious) conspiracy is nothing more than an exhibition of your tendency to feel victimized, even snubbed, by the ordinary flow of events from which you are excluded by your out-of-mainstream views.
Your focus on Native American coverage is weird – that’s an odd thing to resent. DO you think white people are being shorted?
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/spanamer/yellow.htm
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Yellow journalism, in short, is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion.
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I don’t think the type of masquerade mask worn my journalists today due much for boosting sales, but clearly the biased opinion seems to have certain goals. Bias is not only revealed in what and how a story is shaped, but also what is selectively left out… Rob’s point.
Please excuse my typos.
“..what is selectively left out…” is where we differ. Rob is saying that things are left out because these things are outside the frame of reference of the journalists, and this is bias, in his view. They are just too shallow. You’re saying it’s deliberate omission.
I know two journalists who frequent this place, and neither of them are shallow. Neither of them deliberately distort the news. Both of them cover a wide range of issues, and so often lack the depth of specialists. So they seek out the views of the specialists on both sides of an issue. But they don’t come down on either side.
That’s just the nature of the beast. That’s my point.
You can’t do anything with journalists. They’re a class of mediocre minds that have been relegated to the borderland between the ignorant masses and the intelligent elite. On the one hand they smugly enjoy their position of power over the little people, but on the other hand they’re filled with smoldering rage toward their superiors.
Perfect analogy there, Mark.
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Analogy?
Mart T, you assert, “You’re saying it’s deliberate omission.” For some, sure. That would be the activist journalists whose opinions belong on the editorial pages. But there are those who have blind spots who can’t see the other sides to an issues and, therefore, don’t explore it.
Take this example of balanced discussion on the Stimulus as it appears in the Economist: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13108724
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Toxic tantrums, contingent chaos
The fiscal stimulus plan has some obvious flaws. Too much of the boost to demand is backloaded to 2010 and beyond. The compromise bill is larded with spending determined more by Democrat lawmakers’ pet projects than by the efficiency with which the economy will be boosted. And it contains “Buy American” clauses that, even in their watered-down version, send the wrong signal to trading partners.
For all those shortcomings, the stimulus plan gets one big thing right. Given the pace at which demand is slumping, a big, and sustained, fiscal boost is vital for America’s economy. This package, albeit imperfectly, administers it.
That makes the inadequacy of the financial rescue all the more regrettable. Fiscal stimulus, indispensable as it is, cannot create a lasting economic recovery in a country with a broken financial system. The lesson of big banking busts, such as Japan’s in the 1990s, is that debt-laden balance-sheets must be restructured and troubled banks fixed before real recoveries can take off. History also suggests that countries which address their banking crises quickly and creatively (as Sweden did in the early 1990s) do better than those that dither. This is expensive and painful, but cautious, penny-pinching governments end up paying more than those that tread boldly.
By any recent historical standards America’s banking bust is big (see article). The scale of troubled loans and the estimates of likely losses—which are now routinely put at over $2 trillion—suggest many of the country’s biggest banks may be insolvent. Their balance-sheets are clogged by hundreds of billions of dollars of “toxic” assets—the illiquid, complex and hard-to-price detritus of the mortgage bust, as well as growing numbers of non-housing loans that are souring thanks to the failing economy. Worse, banks’ balance-sheets are only one component of the credit bust. Most of the tightness of credit is owing to the collapse of “securitisation”, the packaging and selling of bundles of debts from credit cards to mortgages.
Fixing this mess will require guts, imagination and a lot of taxpayers’ money. Mr Geithner claims he knows this. “We believe that the policy response has to be comprehensive and forceful,” he declared in his speech, adding that “there is more risk and greater cost in gradualism than aggressive action.”
But his deeds did not live up to his words. His to-do list was dispiritingly inadequate on some of the thorniest problems, such as nationalising insolvent banks, dealing with toxic assets and failing mortgages. Mr Geithner promised to “stress-test” the big banks to see if they were adequately capitalised and offer “contingent” capital if they were not. But he offered few details about the terms of public-cash infusions or whether they would, eventually, imply government control. His plan for a “public-private investment fund” to buy toxic assets was vague and its logic—that a nudge from government, in the form of cheap financing, would enliven a moribund market—was heroic. Banks’ balance-sheets are clogged with toxic junk precisely because they are unwilling to sell the stuff at prices hedge funds and other private investors are willing to pay. Vagueness, in turn, led to incoherence. How can you stress-test banks if you do not know how their troubled assets will be dealt with and at what price? Amid these shortcomings were some good ideas, such as a fivefold expansion of a $200 billion fledgling Fed facility to boost securitisation. But for nervous investors and worried politicians, desperate for details and prices, the “plan” was a grave disappointment.
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Where in the US press do we see, in the same media presentation, this sort of balanced analysis? Remember when the journalists for newspapers that endorsed McCain were kicked off the Obama plane? There are a variety of pressures and causes that lead to the reporting distortions.
Sure.
Rob, Craig, Swede says journalism is shallow
Mark says journalism is not shallow (buddies are beyond reproach).
Your shallow opinion says, “non issue”.
I was going to comment, but I’m having a fit of smoldering rage against my superiors, which comes over me every day at about this time. I’ll try to get back to you.
Craig – I’m not getting this. The Economist is editorializing. They are not to be taken lightly, but that is not journalism. Opinions on the stimulus package, and the behavior of the parties, are everywhere. For straight journalism, go to many outlets, get many views, sort and analyze. Some you like, some you don’t.
I’m not waiting Ed.
Note to journalists, editors, newspaper owners: Keep on doing what your doing.
That is, keep giving us one sided reporting. Keep showing us Bush haters and Obama lovers. Keep bragging about the stimulus and how its going to help. Keep berating conservatives and applauding liberals and their ideas. Keep ignoring failed policies and the social repercussions of said policies.
But never ask us why………why we refuse to buy your papers.
I don’t mind the media being biased, as long as they stay bought. We all are short of time anyway. If I see the sophomores opining one way that makes forming my own opinion a little easier.
MSNBC is a liberal network. I’ll give you that – they seem to be mining a niche. Air America is liberal.
But I ask you one more time how it is that these supposedly liberal forces happen to be owned by the most staunchly conservative forces in the land – corporate America is no more liberal than you, Swede. Why do they behave this way?
That’s not rhetorical. I would like a sensible answer. Because I think if you can’t come up with one, I’m going to conclude that your perceptions are wrong.
Mark T, you write: “…how it is that these supposedly liberal forces happen to be owned by the most staunchly conservative forces in the land – corporate America is no more liberal than you, Swede. ”
That has to be one of the oddest flat earth comments you have ever made. Tell us about the conservative credentials of tycoons like Armand Hammer, George Soros, Warren E Buffett, Jeffrey R. Immelt, and Peter Lewis to name five. This ought to be interesting.
How many of those are media moguls again? Context, Craig. It matters. To which I reply:
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and Rupert Murdoch.
Wulfgar, I took Mark T to mean corporate America in general. In the media, of the people I listed above Jeffery Immelt certainly is left of center, and 3 other names quickly come to mind: Janet L. Robinson, president and CEO of The New York Times Company, Don Graham, CEO and chairman of the Washington Post, and Eddy Hartenstein, Los Angeles Times CEO.
The mainstream media (big paper, wire services, TV networks) have mostly tilted left as long as I can remember, but it seems to me that they are more overt now. At least in the better newspapers, there used to be a real attempt to divide the news and editorial pages. That’s no longer true. Writers like Jodi Rave and Michael Moore frequently write what amount to editorials on the news pages. The New York Times, I gather, also has become more overt about allowing its editorial slant to dominate its news pages. (Please correct me on that if I’m wrong.)
I’m wondering if what is happening here is that we are moving toward the British newspaper model, in which papers like the Guardian and the Telegraph (and the Economist, which is a magazine, but calls itself a “newspaper”) spread their editorial points of view throughout the entire issue. All three of those papers are filled with top-notch writing (and sometimes top-notch reporting) but you can’t assume that anything in them represents even an attempt to be balanced.
If we really are headed toward the British model, I wonder if it is the product of another development within the last 20 years — the national availability of overtly, sometimes stridently, conservative news sources, such as talk radio, World Net Daily, and the Wash Times — and Fox News (which while more mixed than it usually gets credit for, certainly leans right).
The growth of these conservative media may well have freed up the “old media” to “self-proclaim” — probably with a sense of relief, and certainly with a sense that now that conservative media are readily available, they no longer have the public trust obligation of attempted objectivity they once had.
Rob, I’m guessing that what you really are thinking is that our MSM friends are relieved of the obligation to seek the truth because there are others who are doing this onerous task for them. But isn’t part of the reason for the luxury of the 1st Amendment the seeking after truth?
ROb – you are a little different than most here in that you are unaware that you are dealing with your own perceptions and presuming to be objective. Of course it all appears liberal to you.
Those of us on the other side can point to real events and real coverage, and objectively say that it was slanted towards government power, then owned by the neocons. Starting in November of 2002, objective coverage of the impending invasion of Iraq was totally tilted towards the government view. Phil D was taken down, the generals were brought in, and it became a jingoist chop shop.
I ask again, and am yet to receive an answer – how is it that NBC, supposedly “liberal”, is owned by GE, a defense contractor. You must answer this question. Otherwise, you ar missing something important.
Mark T, you are a little different than most here in that you are unaware that you are dealing with your own perceptions and presuming to be objective. Of course it all appears conservative to you.
It may surprise you, but I will agree with you on one point. The press was not agressive enough in the runup to the war. That’s simply something that happens in these situations; it has nothing to do with the press being controlled by “neocons.” There is simply a tendency for people, including the press, to get behind the country, in a time of war. I know it is hard for people to remember, but even most Democrats were behind the war. Even folks like Gore and the Clintons, for example, hard been arguing that Hussein had WMDs.
That said, your suggestion that press coverage is slanted in a conservation direction is laughable. Sure, one can isolated examples of whwere that might be true, but overall the opposite is the case, as many studies have found. Also, many studies have shown that the people who do the reporting self identify as liberals or Democrats.
For example:
This new Pew study found 4 times as many journalists identify themselves as liberals than as conservatives — far out of whack to the ratio in the general population. http://www.stateofthemedia.com/2008/
You seem to suggest that NBC is supposedly conservative because it is owned by GE, a defense contractor. What evidence do you have that GE is directing editorial decisions? Please provide evidence.
Even if you could provide evidence, how do we know defense contractors are conservatives? In MT, the businesses that do this kind of work are big backers of Dems like Baucus, Tester, Schweiter, etc.
Wall Street provided huge amounts of money to the Obama campaign. In fact, I haven’t see any seen any final numbers, but I’ve read stories that suggested corporate America gave more money to Obama than to McCain. (In fact, some of the most notorious business people, Madoff and now Stanford, were BIG Democratic givers and fundraisers)
I should also note that there have been stories that have noted that when media people give money to campaigns, they give overwhelmingly to Democrats. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/</ulr?
I don’t want to disparage all journalists with these remarks. I see journalists like Ed Kemmick who try to be fair. My sense is that he leans to the left in his personal beliefs, but he works hard to represent both sides in his stories, and thats great. That is all one can ask. There are many others who are very good in that way.
But there are others who don’t make the effort. I have been critical of Jodi Rave. I don’t see that she makes much effort to provide readers with a balanced perspective on things. I wish her editors would demand more from her.
There are other reporters who could do a better job in that regard too, and editors should be demanding more.