posted
So ... it is evident that OSC leans to the right. But in a recent blog post, he states that the Daily Show is leftist. I'd heard these same comments regarding NPR.
Am I out of the loop? Comedy Central and NPR seem (to me) to be the only centrist / moderate news sources in the United States. Most of the servicemembers and contractors I know consider them (along with BBC and Al Jazeera) to be the only reliable sources of information for Americans.
What's the objective take on it? If these guys are leftist ... is Fox News supposed to be the middle ground?
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Even if Stewart and co had no individual personal bias — and oh, does he admit heartily to his own personal leanings — the writers and newshounds and professional scholars who work for TDS and Stewart and company, the wonks who closely monitor the news that they're going to write up and present, have candidly talked about how it's impossible in our current political environment to equally skewer the left and the right. Not that the right wing didn't try (do we dare recall the Half Hour News Hour?) As far as contemporary politics have been concerned it would be about impossible to not have the show seem like it has a decidedly anti-rightist emphasis. Not when the right wing does what it does today.
Even from an impartial standpoint (and, trust me, I know mine is not impartial) the right wing in America is filled with unmatchable absurdity. Absolutely unmatchable. The end of GWB's administration did tamp that a bit, but there is no left wing analogue that, in sum, is so absolutely present or astounding as things like the dire comedy of the Republican primary debates (see: Herman Cain), there's no left wing equivalent to a widely printed Ann Coulter article saying that Soccer's popularity in america is the product of moral decay and/or filthy immigrants gaining cultural power in america, no analogue to Sarah Palin, or the Tea Party and its absolutely bizarre racist underpinnings, no Minutemen, no Cliven Bundy, no "series of tubes" from a senior politician who held power over the internet just to keep as much legislative jockeying power as possible, nothing like the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina, nothing like Fox News (even as MSNBC is really striving to hurl itself down that road), nothing like Dick Cheney trying to foist all blame in Iraq on Obama, nothing like the Birthers, like Glenn Beck, like the absolute mindblowing insanity of the CPAC, or Breitbart, or his filthy little once protege or Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut, or Michelle Malkin continuing to literally defend racial internment, of Ted Haggard, of the literally peppered-with-scripture reports used to guide the Decider in terms of managing the war, no Sensenbrennerish or Inhoefeish blatant, unavoidable, undeniable anti-Science ruling an entire party, no Clarence Thomas' sole dissenting vote on extralegality in places like Guantanamo, no astounding homophobia, no rampant policy of republican states to deny their own citizens health care from obamacare and let them die rather than do anything that won't actively harm obamacare as much as they possibly can, no rampant support of racist anti-immigration, nothing like how the southern republican state governments didn't even bother to let two hours pass from the gutting of the voting rights act to immediately throw in new voting ID laws purely designed to disenfranchise liberal voting demographics,
You know what, I could literally just keep typing and I would eventually make this post literally fill a 1680x1050 monitor. I'll move straight to the core point:
You can find stuff that liberals are doing which are also hilariously laughable. God, it's easy. They tend to find a lot of it and pick it to death — but you just can't, you just can't match up with the fodder and material that the american right wing just hurls at the daily show. It would be like expecting any other major politician in Australia to match up with Tony Abbott in terms of sheer, sick satire value.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:is Fox News supposed to be the middle ground?
Yes. Some people truly believe this. Like, they don't just argue that Fox News 'counterbalances' the otherwise monolithically 'left wing news media,' but they honestly believe that Fox News represents unbiased, nonpartisan, most accurate and most objectively neutral news.
It is an excruciatingly easy task to present the argument as to why this is astonishingly incorrect, but yes. This is a common conservative delusion.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
As a scientist, I see politics as strange, to say the least.
From a social perspective, I believe that modern media and the internet have created a number of public delusions. But they don't only affect one party.
People used to rely on experts. If your doctor gave you advice, you took it. You would readily acknowledge that your lawyer knew more about law than you. Politicians and economists were obviously the experts in their fields....
Now, it seems that everyone is an "expert". Not only that, they expect to be heard, they expect to have a say in public policy. They belittle the opinions of other armchair "experts" when their opinions clash. Because of Google or some idiotic Facebook meme. And screw the experts anyway, right?
The experts say global warming is real. They say that immunizations are needed. And some idiots that are trying to make money or become famous are causing it.
I wonder if Fox News is perpetuating all of it. That's a conspiracy theory for you.
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: You can find stuff that liberals are doing which are also hilariously laughable. God, it's easy. They tend to find a lot of it and pick it to death — but you just can't, you just can't match up with the fodder and material that the american right wing just hurls at the daily show. It would be like expecting any other major politician in Australia to match up with Tony Abbott in terms of sheer, sick satire value.
This right here. I tend to lean a bit conservative on a lot of issues (but not the ridiculous social and evangelical ones) but even I am pretty embarrassed to be associated with the constant stream of insanity coming from republicans these days. Sure I could find some insane liberal soundbites if I was running such a show but that would only fill about five minutes. What do I do to fill the rest of the half hour or hour of programming? Just turn on Fox, a hundred things will come up.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Some people truly believe this. Like, they don't just argue that Fox News 'counterbalances' the otherwise monolithically 'left wing news media,' but they honestly believe that Fox News represents unbiased, nonpartisan, most accurate and most objectively neutral news.
Let's be specific here as well. Our "host" does this.
quote:However, independent evaluators repeatedly come up with the same answers, when they compare all the broadcast news media. MSNBC is so far to the Left that if you watch them, you'll be living in a complete Leftist bubble. But the other major networks aren't far behind.
Fox News, however, hovers right around the middle of the spectrum, covering stories that favor or disfavor either side, without any significant pattern of bias.
Note that I'm talking about the news, not the prime time commentators. In prime time, Sean Hannity is definitely of the Right, and Bill O'Reilly leans more toward the libertarian slot, which overlaps on various issues with both Left and Right.
Even the more impartial commentators tend to lean to the Right, but perhaps that's because the American "intellectual" elite are so far to the Left that taking a thoughtful, moderate position sounds right-wing by comparison.
quote:Even the more impartial commentators tend to lean to the Right, but perhaps that's because the American "intellectual" elite are so far to the Left that taking a thoughtful, moderate position sounds right-wing by comparison.
So I guess he truly believes and self-describes himself as a moderate. What do you think, out of literally all the World Watch comments he has ever made, were the three or four arguments he's made which would be the absolute hardest to credibly assert are "moderate?" And, for this experiment, let's ignore the arguments he made about homosexuals.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I used to watch TDS every night (though I haven't for 8 months now), and I can say I've seen quite a few times Stewart has mercilessly mocked the left, or leftist politicians. this bit on Code Pink, for example. The problem is, as Sam described, there are simply fewer absolutely ridiculous things the left does, so it's difficult to try and "balance" the news that way. And even in the above example, Code Pink is a pretty fringe organization, with nowhere near the political influence of, say, the Tea Party movement.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
i watched a code pink girl get bunted in the teeth with a police baton. mainly because she bunted her teeth into the police baton, which was stationary. then she rolled around on the ground yelling a whole bunch about brutality. i think she was hoping that the police officer in question would get a red card.
that was years ago. has code pink even really done much recently or did they fall off the planet or what?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
It is amazing to watch Wallace at the midpoint there attempt to make his case, through clips, about liberal media bias that requires that he intentionally or unintentionally ignore that you can take any specific example he's pointing out and find it in absolutely copious and standardized egregiousness in practically any given running day of Fox News. It is astounding.
It led right down to where Stewart got a bit of a free throw — no, actually, I'm going to instead call it a slam dunk with extreme sangfroid which Wallace had to immediately, immediately detour from.
quote:STEWART: I think you're right. I think we should have more full context and more of the types of things that you're talking about.
But I don't understand how that's purely a liberal or conservative bias. That's, like I said, sensationalist and somewhat lazy.
But I don't understand how that's partisan. The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.
WALLACE: I don't think --
STEWART: -- not because I have an ideological agenda.
WALLACE: I don't think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us. I think our viewers think, finally, they're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.
STEWART: Right.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: And in -- no, no, no. One more example.
STEWART: Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.
WALLACE: Can we talk about your network? Can we talk about Comedy Central?
It's precisely at that moment Wallace has to not talk about Fox News. There was good reason and good tactical sense on his part for that. There was some back and forth about the credible validity of that statement by Stewart but we know now that the data is and was pretty reliable on that front and that Stewart was correct: Fox News viewers are the most consistently misinformed of any group among any of the major media players, and that Fox through its reporting plays a hand in intensifying misinformation or creating it whole cloth.
Yes. The Fox News' crowd does buy into the liberal media narrative and does hold up Fox News as the 'other side of the story' — but when its side of the story is tested against objective facts, it's the furthest away by far. Unless you want to go to the real fringe areas, I guess, like Breitbart or Alex Jones.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
just amusing, tbh. i almost feel as if this has happened before.
edit:
quote:Levine went on to comment further on the issue of irony, addling via Facebook: “It's not the irony of that Fox news thing that bothers me so much. It's the typesetting.”
quote:I just love that they apparently missed that subtext and just put it up there thinking: well yeah, this is great! Let's guard against the foreign hordes, for God and Country! And what this tells me is that people who want to satirize the right? We have a lot more work to do, because apparently the most exaggerated over-the-top version of them that we can come up with, they accept gladly?
posted
This is generally the same sort of delusion that resulting in the mass right wing freak out over Obama's re-election.
Here's a recent example I think, Unemployment is allegedly down to 6.1% but the real rate is 12.Something%, however during the Bush Administration they only ever reported the above 6.1%; now that Obama's in office do they finally decide to report the Real rate!
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
You know, you can argue forever about where "the middle" truly lies in politics. By US standards, I suppose The Daily Show is left of center. By broader international standards, not so much.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: Here's a recent example I think, Unemployment is allegedly down to 6.1% but the real rate is 12.Something%, however during the Bush Administration they only ever reported the above 6.1%; now that Obama's in office do they finally decide to report the Real rate!
There is a documented trend that whenever the employment numbers went down under Obama, fox would lead with a headline inducing skepticism, a la this: http://i.imgur.com/yCjQFnn.jpg
... and bring in people to do the 'some people say' and primarily direct discussion in the vein of talking about how the numbers must have been fudged. The quite literally delusional Jack Welch was brought in to talk about his tweets saying that the agency's numbers were literally unbelievable and had to have been fudged, and Stuart Varney vigorously agreed with Donald Trump on air along a bunch of other guests that the numbers weren't real.
As Mark Howard put it: None of them could explain why an independent agency of career economists, without a single Obama appointee, would fudge the numbers for a president to whom they owed nothing.
Very strangely, the consistency of this trend ends precisely along one line: pre-Obama election versus post-Obama election.
quote:Fox conflated two different statistics to distort Obama's jobs record -- the official unemployment rate from January 2009 (7.1 percent) and a separate measure of unemployment for 2012 (14.7 percent), which includes part-time workers, discouraged workers, and other categories that don't fall into the official rate. This alternative measure of unemployment was 14.2 percent in January 2009 -- 0.5 percentage points lower than it is today.
Oh hey plummeting unemployment rates I guess it's good news
quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I know consider them (along with BBC and Al Jazeera) to be the only reliable sources of information for Americans.
It should also be noted that Al Jazeera has pretty much proven by now that it also operates on a startlingly biased methodology that goes right down to the chief executive level.
Of course, sometimes groups like the tea party or palin fanatics make it extremely easy to ply their trade (seriously, ugh) but it's important to recognize what their trade is.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Herblay: I know consider them (along with BBC and Al Jazeera) to be the only reliable sources of information for Americans.
It should also be noted that Al Jazeera has pretty much proven by now that it also operates on a startlingly biased methodology that goes right down to the chief executive level.
Of course, sometimes groups like the tea party or palin fanatics make it extremely easy to ply their trade (seriously, ugh) but it's important to recognize what their trade is.
To what are they biased?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well for one, they hardly have any news about movies and hollywood or non-updates on sensational news, like Casey Anthony or Jodie Arias...
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Al Jazeera has been criticized for being state media owned by the government of Qatar.[12][13][14][15][16][17] In 2010, United States Department of State internal communications, released by WikiLeaks as part of the 2010 diplomatic cables leak, claim that the Qatar government manipulates Al Jazeera coverage to suit political interests.[18][19][20][21][22][23]
Al Jazeera's Shia Beirut correspondent Ali Hashem resigned from Al Jazeera after leaked e-mails shows his discontent over the outlet's "unprofessional" and biased coverage of the Syrian civil war in light of the Bahraini uprising, which was not given the prominence of the Syrian conflict on the network,[24][25] one side of the conflict which was partly funded by the state of Qatar, who also fund Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera's long-time Berlin correspondent Aktham Suliman left in late 2012 "It wasn't just because the broadcaster seemed less interested in reports from Europe. Rather, Suliman had the feeling that he was no longer being allowed to work as an independent journalist. "Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change," he says, "a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster." "Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports -- not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar," he says. "In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.""[2] [26] He writes, "The news channel Al Jazeera was committed to the truth. Now it is bent. It's about politics, not journalism. For the reporter that means: time to go. [...] The decline 2004-2011 was insidious, subliminal and very slow, but with a disastrous end."[27]
Al Jazeera has suffered the exodus of numerous prominent staff members. Reporters and anchors, particularly in cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have left Al-Jazeera, despite what are seen as luxurious working conditions in centrally located offices. And despite the fact that the network is investing an estimated $500 million (€375 million) in the US, so as to reach even more viewers on the world's largest television market—one in which its biggest competitor, CNN, is at home.[2][28][29] Among the largest walk-offs, was that of 22 members of Al Jazeera's Egyptian bureau. The group announced their resignation on July 8, 2013, citing bias coverage of the ongoing Egyptian power redistribution in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.[30][31][32][33][34][35]
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: To what are they biased?
It is essentially state-run Qatar media. It is super biased exactly in the ways you would expect.
I've been reading AJE for a couple years, and watching AJA since it first went on the air, and I haven't seen anything but solid reporting.
I know it's basically funded from the personal pocket of Qatar's rulers, but they have solid coverage so far as I can tell. I don't know if the overlords of the news who run AJ are different from the ones who run AJE and AJA, but I'll take AJA, bias and all, over ANY domestic major cable news media outlet any day of the week.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I tried watching it for a while and the showcasing and framing devices they used started to show. Like, it wasn't nearly as blatant a anti-US sentiment/rhetoric as, say, Russia Today, but there you go.
quote: I'll take AJA, bias and all, over ANY domestic major cable news media outlet any day of the week.
well yeah, but then again I would also take staring concertedly at a corn dog over watching domestic cable news networks. AJ isn't exactly clearing a high bar there.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
They spend a lot of time talking about the problems in America, which I suppose could be construed as anti American rhetoric, but these are issues that are desperately in need of some sunlight.
America has a ton of problems, but we spend most of our time ignoring them. Has the needle really moved so far that even talking about our problems is considered anti American rhetoric?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:is Fox News supposed to be the middle ground?
Yes. Some people truly believe this. Like, they don't just argue that Fox News 'counterbalances' the otherwise monolithically 'left wing news media,' but they honestly believe that Fox News represents unbiased, nonpartisan, most accurate and most objectively neutral news.
It is an excruciatingly easy task to present the argument as to why this is astonishingly incorrect, but yes. This is a common conservative delusion.
Do you know what network is completely unbiased?
None of them exist anymore. CNN used to be the best news channel when it had a 2-3 hour loop of news it presented each day. Once they and every other cable news channel introduced commentators and talk shows, all of that went out the window. There's nothing the public loves more than people arguing about politics it seems.
We don't have any Walter Cronkites anymore.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I love John Oliver, but I'd vehemently disagree that he is even the same species as a Walter Cronkite.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:is Fox News supposed to be the middle ground?
Yes. Some people truly believe this. Like, they don't just argue that Fox News 'counterbalances' the otherwise monolithically 'left wing news media,' but they honestly believe that Fox News represents unbiased, nonpartisan, most accurate and most objectively neutral news.
It is an excruciatingly easy task to present the argument as to why this is astonishingly incorrect, but yes. This is a common conservative delusion.
Do you know what network is completely unbiased?
None of them exist anymore. CNN used to be the best news channel when it had a 2-3 hour loop of news it presented each day. Once they and every other cable news channel introduced commentators and talk shows, all of that went out the window. There's nothing the public loves more than people arguing about politics it seems.
We don't have any Walter Cronkites anymore.
What's your point? Is any of this supposed to make Fox News look better, or indemnify it for its blatant, engineered partisanship and long-running and proven history as the most misleading news network in America?
If you say anything even remotely like an equivalence argument imma bonk you on the head
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think I read somewhere that Walter Cronkite is the reason we don't have any Walter Cronkites anymore. I probably need sources to back this up but I don't have any right now. I had heard (it's been years now) that it started when Walter publicly denounced the Vietnam War rather than just continuing to report on it. Other reporters then found that if someone as amazing as Walter Cronkite could let his opinion show, then so could they. I don't know if that's really true, but that's what I've heard. What do you think?
Posts: 258 | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
You can't have a walter cronkite anymore in part because there's no media monoculture anymore. television became diffuse, the major networks became a smaller and smaller part of the media experience in sum, and then in the wake of the internet even the whole medium has become much less relevant. no one individual can hold the same ethos or presence anymore.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Also, I think the 24 hour news cycle has destroyed the ability of any news organization to say anything of substance. All we get is fear mongering, and headlines designed to disturb at the expense of facts.
With anchors talking about nonsense, you can't build credibility.
Which interestingly enough makes John Oliver's program the perfect vehicle for him to actually become some sort of Cronkite.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: but you just can't, you just can't match up with the fodder and material that the american right wing just hurls at the daily show. It would be like expecting any other major politician in Australia to match up with Tony Abbott in terms of sheer, sick satire value.
TO WIT, this just happened
quote:Sarah Palin is now calling for President Barack Obama's impeachment.
In a column published on Breitbart.com Tuesday, Palin accused the president of "purposeful dereliction of duty," likening Obama's treatment of the United States to that of an abusive spouse.
"Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president," Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, wrote. "His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.'"
quote:is Fox News supposed to be the middle ground?
Yes. Some people truly believe this. Like, they don't just argue that Fox News 'counterbalances' the otherwise monolithically 'left wing news media,' but they honestly believe that Fox News represents unbiased, nonpartisan, most accurate and most objectively neutral news.
It is an excruciatingly easy task to present the argument as to why this is astonishingly incorrect, but yes. This is a common conservative delusion.
Do you know what network is completely unbiased?
None of them exist anymore. CNN used to be the best news channel when it had a 2-3 hour loop of news it presented each day. Once they and every other cable news channel introduced commentators and talk shows, all of that went out the window. There's nothing the public loves more than people arguing about politics it seems.
We don't have any Walter Cronkites anymore.
What's your point? Is any of this supposed to make Fox News look better, or indemnify it for its blatant, engineered partisanship and long-running and proven history as the most misleading news network in America?
If you say anything even remotely like an equivalence argument imma bonk you on the head
That's funny, I read through my post about 30 times, and I didn't mention Fox News once. My post is valid, and is pertinent to the topic and discussion.
If you say anything even remotely like I am trying to defend Fox News or any other network, imma bonk YOU on the head.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:That's funny, I read through my post about 30 times, and I didn't mention Fox News once.
No, but you are responding to a post which is entirely about that
a. some people go further than just thinking fox news counterbalances the left wing media, but believe that fox news represents the most objective and unbiased news, and b. this is obviously false
if you aren't saying "what network is completely unbiased?" in response to that, what was your point?
posted
You misunderstand. He recognizes that you are saying that an unbiased network doesn't exist, and believes you are doing this to essentially shrug off Fox's egregious, harmful practices as equivalent to everything else out there (as opposed to much, much worse than normal.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I still think AJA is pretty solid.
They spend a lot of time talking about the problems in America, which I suppose could be construed as anti American rhetoric, but these are issues that are desperately in need of some sunlight.
America has a ton of problems, but we spend most of our time ignoring them. Has the needle really moved so far that even talking about our problems is considered anti American rhetoric?
Lyrhawn,
I would say rather 'a media outlet run by the Foreign Ministry of Qatar can do American journalism with more integrity and excellence than the American private sector, largely, has been able to'.
I think this has all the virtues of being true while maintaining the necessary really scathing elements of the criticism, but without the idea that Qatar is a saint.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Did I miss some context or something? I thought Lyrhawn referred to AJA as the "best" and as "solid," but where did this idea of being a saint come from?
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, I too could be convinced that AJA is the "best" cable news channel overall, but, then again, corn dog.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
