Media Bias

[ArmChair General]

Look at Ron Paul. He had the audacity to tell the truth, that the true motivation for the 911 attacks was the fact that we have occupied Saudi Arabia and have meddled in middle east affairs for decades by bombing and putting in dictators etc. He didnt say that was an excuse but presented it as an observed fact with plausable cause and effect.
As soon as he told the truth in this matter he was immediatly accused of being too screwball left wing for the repiglicon party. Had he continued the Bush lie; that they attacked the US because we are rich and free, he would have remained a neocon in good standing.
Once again the observed and reported truth has a liberal slant.

Thats a pretty damn good point. Hell, Bill Maher was fired from ABC for saying the same thing just after the attacks.

 

[qalam]

A liberal is nothing more than a conservative with a conscience.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

A liberal is nothing more than a conservative with a conscience.

A conservative is nothing more than a liberal with a brain.

Do you see how stupid that was?

 

[USMC the Almighty]

Example : Bush claims there are WMDS. Cheney claims there are WMDS.
The liberals maintain that no such weapons existed.
The facts come out that no such weapons existed.
The press reports the facts as they are.
The facts support the liberal contention.
The press gets blamed for supporting the liberal view and leaning left
Ergo; the truth has a liberal slant.
To support the neocon line one must say there were WMDs
That would be a lie.
Enter Fox news.

First of all -- WMDs did exist. We know this because he used them on three separate occasions. We believed (and still believe) that Saddam had nuclear weapons.

There were plenty of good reasons for believing they existed. Every major intelligence organization believed he did. Both Bill and Hillary are on record stating that Saddam had dangerous WMDs that had to be removed, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin etc... all these liberals who went along with the President's assertion. So to say that "liberals maintain that no such weapons existed" is just blatantly false.

Saddam's supreme Air Force commander still maintains that Saddam moved them into Syria when a U.S. intervention seemed imminent.

I could go on and on noting example, after example all day long.

And I could do the same. For instance, when Zarqawi was killed I went to every major news organizations online website. Only Fox and CBS had the Zarqawi killing as their "big time" news stories. Want to know what NY Times, CNN, and ABC all had as their "big time" stories? The previous months alleged Haditha "massacre".

Quite telling....

 

[USMC the Almighty]

Ya all miss the point. The Media outlets play to their viewers. In other words, they tell them what they want to hear. If their is a liberal 'bias' its only because there are actually more liberal minded people in this country.

That's why Fox News blows CNN, ABC and all the other news outlets out of the water in terms of ratings. It's not even close. Fox was something like 3rd or 4th and CNN was like 33rd, right behind the Chinese movie channel.

 

[lipmonkey]

A liberal is nothing more than a conservative with a conscience.

That might make for a good signature qalam.

I'm not aware of any media outlet that don't show any bias from time to time, but to the well informed reader it's easy to recognize and ignore it. IMO.

 

[jeeperscreepers]

I'm not aware of any media outlet that don't show any bias from time to time, but to the well informed reader it's easy to recognize and ignore it. IMO.

True... It is easy to recognize for those who stay informed. The sad thing is that too many people eat up the garbage they hear on these biased news outlets because they either don't
think for themselves, or don't take the time to find out for themselves what the truth of the matter is, without biased.

 

[Freethinker]

First of all -- WMDs did exist. We know this because he used them on three separate occasions. We believed (and still believe) that Saddam had nuclear weapons.

There were plenty of good reasons for believing they existed. Every major intelligence organization believed he did. Both Bill and Hillary are on record stating that Saddam had dangerous WMDs that had to be removed, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin etc... all these liberals who went along with the President's assertion. So to say that "liberals maintain that no such weapons existed" is just blatantly false.

Saddam's supreme Air Force commander still maintains that Saddam moved them into Syria when a U.S. intervention seemed imminent.



And I could do the same. For instance, when Zarqawi was killed I went to every major news organizations online website. Only Fox and CBS had the Zarqawi killing as their "big time" news stories. Want to know what NY Times, CNN, and ABC all had as their "big time" stories? The previous months alleged Haditha "massacre".

Quite telling....

Oh yeah ...all those nuclear explosions that made the taking of Bagdad so difficult all that chemical warfare that warented the enviro suits and gas masks they all wore ( sarcasim) You tell lies about life and death. Ergo : you must be A REPIGLICON! Amazing how I knew that isn't it??

 

[lipmonkey]

Hello jeeperscreepers. Welcome aboard.

You made a good point that they can't seem to think for themselves.IMO. We see a lot of that with the war on terror. People are so scared they will believe anything the government or the media tells them if they think it will make them safe.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

Oh yeah ...all those nuclear explosions that made the taking of Bagdad so difficult all that chemical warfare that warented the enviro suits and gas masks they all wore ( sarcasim)

Just ask the Kurds or the Iranians.

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. He has WMD stockpiles from the Iran Iraq War. We've found these stockpiles. This is not up for debate. What is up for debate is whether or not he had nuclear capabilities.

You tell lies about life and death. Ergo : you must be A REPIGLICON! Amazing how I knew that isn't it??

I'm not quite sure was a "repiglicon" is, so I'll just leave it at that. By the way -- did your 4th grade teacher just give you the word "ergo" on a vocab test?

 

[ArmChair General]

That's why Fox News blows CNN, ABC and all the other news outlets out of the water in terms of ratings. It's not even close. Fox was something like 3rd or 4th and CNN was like 33rd, right behind the Chinese movie channel.

Well besides the fact that FOX's ratings have been steadily dropping for a long time now....

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2005

The Ratings Mirage
Why Fox has higher ratings--when CNN has more viewers

By Steve Rendall

Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC) and CNN is often misleading--and almost always over-hyped.

"Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News," declared one typical headline (Chicago Tribune , 3/24/03). "Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN ," reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News , 2/3/04) in a column comparing the rivalry to a party primary: "Fox News Channel is winning the Nielsen caucuses." Last summer (8/17/03), the New York Times Magazine declared, looking back at the period of the Iraq invasion, "Fox was--and still is--trouncing CNN in the ratings."

After exposure to countless similar stories published since January 2002, when Fox was reported to have surpassed CNN in the Nielsen ratings, one might naturally conclude that Fox has more viewers than CNN .

But it's not true. On any given day, more people typically tune to CNN than to Fox .

So what are the media reports talking about? With few exceptions, stories about the media business report a single number for ratings (often expressed two different ways--as "points" or "share"). This number is often presented as if it were the result of a popularity contest or a democratic vote. But it is actually the average number of viewers watching a station or a show in a typical minute, based on Nielsen Media Research's monitoring of thousands of households.

The average is arrived at by counting viewers every minute. Heavy viewers--those who tune in to a station and linger there--have a greater impact, as they can be counted multiple times as they watch throughout the day.

When an outlet reports that CNN is trailing Fox , they are almost invariably using this average tally, which Fox has been winning for the past two years. For the year 2003, Nielsen's average daily ratings show Fox beating CNN 1.02 million viewers to 665,000.

But there is another important number collected by Nielsen (though only made available to the firm's clients) that tells another story. This is the "cume," the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. Unlike the average ratings number the media usually report, this number gives the same weight to the light viewer, who tunes in for a brief time, as it does to the heavy viewer.

How can CNN have more total viewers when Fox has such a commanding lead in average viewers? Conventional industry wisdom is that CNN viewers tune in briefly to catch up on news and headlines, while Fox viewers watch longer for the opinion and personality-driven programming. Because the smaller total number of Fox viewers are watching more hours, they show up in the ratings as a higher average number of viewers.

CNN regularly claims a cume about 20 percent higher than Fox 's (Deseret Morning News , 1/12/04). For instance, in April 2003, during the height of the fighting in Iraq, CNN 's cume was significantly higher than Fox 's: 105 million viewers tuned into CNN compared to 86 million for Fox (Cablefax , 4/30/03). But in the same period, the ratings reported by most media outlets had Fox in the lead, with an average of 3.5 million viewers to CNN 's 2.2 million.

Even among Fox 's core audience of conservatives, CNN has an edge in total viewership. A study by the ad agency Carat USA (Hollywood Reporter , 8/13/03) found that 37 percent of viewers calling themselves "very conservative" watch CNN in the course of a week, while only 32 percent tune to Fox .


***

See, its all BS USMC, FOX news plays to its demographic. They are heavily biased because the people that tune in to watch FOX are conservatives who don't want to hear opinions that disagree with theirs.

 

[ArmChair General]

An ad executive interviewed in Media Week last year (2/10/03) suggested that snob appeal was part of CNN 's edge in the race for ad dollars: "There are two kinds of news advertisers. If you're talking cold remedies, you're buying eyeballs. Others are looking for an environment, an image. They're looking to reach decision-makers and influencers who watch news. If you're an image-oriented product--a BMW, Mercedes, Lexus--it's not even a question, you go with CNN . There's no comparison in the quality of the journalism--CNN is light years ahead in objectivity and reporting--and I don't think Fox 's 'New York Post on TV' approach appeals to the most desirable consumers."

Fox vs. everyone else

Fox News Channel , then, is so far neither the choice of most people who watch cable news, nor the more successful business model. But the perception that Fox is "trouncing" CNN --based largely on the fact that the number Nielsen releases to the public emphasizes heavy viewers--is of great use to Fox , which trumpets these ratings as a vindication of its partisan, "fair & balanced" approach to the news. Reacting to a guest's charge that Fox had a right-wing bias, Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the successful Fox & Friends morning show (2/25/03), boasted: "Then what does that say about the country when they made us No. 1?"

But even in the limited sense of average hourly watchers, Fox is only No. 1 among 24-hour cable news channels. Fox , like CNN , now reaches about 4 of every 5 television households, so comparisons with broadcast news shows are increasingly valid. And among all television news sources, Fox 's performance is nothing to brag about.

The O'Reilly Factor is the best-rated show on Fox , with about 2 million viewers a night (Daily Variety , 12/5/03). CBS Evening News , the least-watched broadcast network evening news show, routinely gets four or five times as big an audience, and that's seen as a ratings disaster. Fox 's flagship news show, Special Report with Brit Hume , gets a million viewers on a good night-a few thousand more than the local newscast of New York City's WNBC (Hollywood Reporter , 10/1/03; Nielsen).

Fox likes to position itself as the alternative to all the other news that's on TV. As Fox News president Roger Ailes likes to claim (New York Times , 6/24/01), "If we look conservative, it's because the other guys are so far to the left." If it's true that news can be put into two categories--Fox and everything else--then when Special Report airs, everything else beats Fox by at least 30 to one.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

Well besides the fact that FOX's ratings have been steadily dropping for a long time now....

This source doesn't say anything about Fox's ratings dropping. All it says is that Fox's viewers watch for longer periods of time.

See, its all BS USMC, FOX news plays to its demographic. They are heavily biased because the people that tune in to watch FOX are conservatives who don't want to hear opinions that disagree with theirs.

That's not true according to the source you just cited above:

"Even among Fox 's core audience of conservatives, CNN has an edge in total viewership. A study by the ad agency Carat USA (Hollywood Reporter , 8/13/03) found that 37 percent of viewers calling themselves "very conservative" watch CNN in the course of a week, while only 32 percent tune to Fox"

You should probably consider reading the article before pasting it into a discussion.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

As Fox News president Roger Ailes likes to claim (New York Times , 6/24/01), "If we look conservative, it's because the other guys are so far to the left."

He's right.

 

[9sublime]

I could just say we look left wing because everyone else is so far on the right. Its not clever or accurate, its just a generalisation. Every 'liberal' has a different view to the next, just as each conservative is not the same.