Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[The Minsky Moment]

It's an odd debate.  The big cable news networks are big businesses that chase ratings and advertising $$.  CNN broadcast countless of hours of Trump events unedited in 2015/6 - not because they were some right-wing mouthpiece for the Trump wing but because it got ratings.  The Trump rallies made for better TV than Jeb Bush rallies or coverage of bills on Capitol Hill so CNN aired them. As for Fox News, if Murdoch believed he could increase revenues by tacking left and going full NeverTrump. does anyone doubt he'd do that in a heatbeat?   If C-SPAN got better ratings than the cable news giants, programming would change across the board at the cable news outlets, and fast. 

News journalists tend to have certain backgrounds and viewpoints, on average.  They tend to be college educated, with strengths more in humanities than the sciences.  They tend to be more urban than average. They tend to favor the First Amendment (in America).  They are employed professionals who make a decent living and most have little direct experience with poverty; at the same time, they are used to seeing contemporaries and college friends in careers that may be more lucrative. They deal very regularly and intimately with major institutions like Congress, the Courts, the Fed, large corporations and foundations - which inclines them to a certain degree of both empathy with but also skepticism of such institutions. They face very tight and short-term deadlines and pressures to find stories that stand out in a crowded field.  They work in a field with undefined but fairly well-understood hierarchies of prestige and have a professional ethic in which it is understood that higher prestige professionals are expected to comport themselves in particular ways (eg including suppression of manifestations of overt political views).

All these tendencies can result in cognitive biases or particular points of view.  Some of them do indeed skew in a "liberal" direction, but others do not, and the precise ways that biases or skews can manifest is a lot more complex than the simple model of a monolithic liberal press bias.

[Barrister]

It's an odd debate.  The big cable news networks are big businesses that chase ratings and advertising $$.  CNN broadcast countless of hours of Trump events unedited in 2015/6 - not because they were some right-wing mouthpiece for the Trump wing but because it got ratings.  The Trump rallies made for better TV than Jeb Bush rallies or coverage of bills on Capitol Hill so CNN aired them. As for Fox News, if Murdoch believed he could increase revenues by tacking left and going full NeverTrump. does anyone doubt he'd do that in a heatbeat?   If C-SPAN got better ratings than the cable news giants, programming would change across the board at the cable news outlets, and fast. 

News journalists tend to have certain backgrounds and viewpoints, on average.  They tend to be college educated, with strengths more in humanities than the sciences.  They tend to be more urban than average. They tend to favor the First Amendment (in America).  They are employed professionals who make a decent living and most have little direct experience with poverty; at the same time, they are used to seeing contemporaries and college friends in careers that may be more lucrative. They deal very regularly and intimately with major institutions like Congress, the Courts, the Fed, large corporations and foundations - which inclines them to a certain degree of both empathy with but also skepticism of such institutions. They face very tight and short-term deadlines and pressures to find stories that stand out in a crowded field.  They work in a field with undefined but fairly well-understood hierarchies of prestige and have a professional ethic in which it is understood that higher prestige professionals are expected to comport themselves in particular ways (eg including suppression of manifestations of overt political views).

All these tendencies can result in cognitive biases or particular points of view.  Some of them do indeed skew in a "liberal" direction, but others do not, and the precise ways that biases or skews can manifest is a lot more complex than the simple model of a monolithic liberal press bias.

This is what I've been trying to say.  Who has been arguing for a "monolithic liberal press bias".

Large national media outlets hire well educated people, often from a fairly limited number of schools, and work in large urban cities.  All of which tends to skew to a certain kind of liberal bias.  But there's nothing monolithic about it, and certainly not organized or conspiratorial.

[crazy canuck]

More code - what is the "certain kind of liberal bias" you are talking about?

[The Minsky Moment]

The careerist angle cannot be underestimated.
Tucker Carlson used to be a genial dorky guy in a bow tie talking about supply side economics; now he is a creepy edgelord pushing anti-vaxxing and racist talking points.  Who is the real Tucker Carlson?  None of them of course.  Both "Tucker Carlsons" are characters designed for TV.  The old character was dropped when its ratings fell, the new character has been developed further as its ratings have gone up, much as would be done on a sitcom or drama series. It holds for print media as well - certain writers play to a certain persona.  That always has to be kept in mind.

[Barrister]

More code - what is the "certain kind of liberal bias" you are talking about?

As in not radical leftist let's seize the means of production kind of liberal.  The kinds of people who are proud to identify as progressives despite being top income earners.

[DGuller]

My take is that the mainstream media has for a long time had two main biases:  bias towards sensationalism, and bias towards perceived victims of social justice issues.  There is a lot of intersection between the two, and more often than not these biases tend to fall on the left side of the debate by default.  If you assume that police shootings are an act of police brutality until proven otherwise, then you're in practice biased to the left.

Since the Trump times, there may also be a third kind of bias:  fear of unintentionally helping the right wing talking points.  Sometimes presenting an issue in a nuanced way opens you up towards being taken out of context, and right wingers sure like taking things out of context to support their insanity.  Unfortunately, if you filter your reporting to guard against it, you also filter out balanced reporting.

[PDH]

It's like watching a college football game.  Unless the announcers are the two from your school, outrageous homers who are shocked at every call against your team, they are biased against everything good, right and true (which is of course, good old University of My Allegiance).

[crazy canuck]

More code - what is the "certain kind of liberal bias" you are talking about?

As in not radical leftist let's seize the means of production kind of liberal.  The kinds of people who are proud to identify as progressives despite being top income earners.

There are liberals who are Marxists?  Please stop butchering the language BB 

Why use the word "despite" there.  Is there some income cut off at which someone needs to turn their brain off and subscribe to modern day conservative ideology?

All that aside, does one need to not identify as a progressive in order to report fairly?  Or do you really just want a right wing homer?

[Admiral Yi]

My take is that the mainstream media has for a long time had two main biases:  bias towards sensationalism, and bias towards perceived victims of social justice issues.  There is a lot of intersection between the two, and more often than not these biases tend to fall on the left side of the debate by default.  If you assume that police shootings are an act of police brutality until proven otherwise, then you're in practice biased to the left.

Yes.  The need for a villain, plus a preference for certain favored groups.

[Berkut]

To me it looks like this: right wing media isn't "main stream" because it is so obviously partisan and - often - brazenly dishonest. So there's no expectation that right wing media is supposed to be anything other than propaganda, and attempts at holding it to any sort of standard is cast as an attack on free speech.

Any media that's not explicitly right wing is considered "main stream" and anytime there is a lack of support for right wing bias it's decried as evidence of unfair "liberal bias". No matter how much "main stream" media provides space for right wing voices, no matter how much they attempt to show "both sides", it is always insufficient and proof of "liberal bias".

There are obviously partisan left-wing media sources.  Jacobin, rabble.ca, Daily Kos, Mother Jones, etc.

You can have partisan news sources - nothing wrong with that.  Where the criticism comes from is these large national media companies that claim to not have any inherent political bias, but many perceive them to have such a bias.

What is interesting is that you stick to this claim (tempered now by arguing that "many perceive them, rather then yourself), despite being provided with actual objective, measured evidence that it is simply not true.

You refuse to even speak to that evidence, and just continue on the argument as if it was not presented at all.

https://adfontesmedia.com/

[Barrister]

To me it looks like this: right wing media isn't "main stream" because it is so obviously partisan and - often - brazenly dishonest. So there's no expectation that right wing media is supposed to be anything other than propaganda, and attempts at holding it to any sort of standard is cast as an attack on free speech.

Any media that's not explicitly right wing is considered "main stream" and anytime there is a lack of support for right wing bias it's decried as evidence of unfair "liberal bias". No matter how much "main stream" media provides space for right wing voices, no matter how much they attempt to show "both sides", it is always insufficient and proof of "liberal bias".

There are obviously partisan left-wing media sources.  Jacobin, rabble.ca, Daily Kos, Mother Jones, etc.

You can have partisan news sources - nothing wrong with that.  Where the criticism comes from is these large national media companies that claim to not have any inherent political bias, but many perceive them to have such a bias.

What is interesting is that you stick to this claim (tempered now by arguing that "many perceive them, rather then yourself), despite being provided with actual objective, measured evidence that it is simply not true.

You refuse to even speak to that evidence, and just continue on the argument as if it was not presented at all.

https://adfontesmedia.com/

If you look at the top of your chart, there's a line in the middle.  It's the political middle.  There's also a green line for the most news value.  Lets just look above that line.

To the right side of that political middle line is the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, The Dispatch (big fan), and a couple outlets I don't recognize.

On the left side... NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, AP, Reuters, Forbes, New York Times, the Guardian, CNN (web), the Economist, the Hill, Vox, Vice, Politico, the Hill, and a pile more I don't recognize.

You sure this proves there's no bias in the mainstream media?


It also loses points for saying The Bulwark skews left.  Another outlet I'm a fan of, but just because they're anti-Trump does not make them left wing.

[The Larch]

If news agencies that basically just report stuff matter-of-factly and the friggin' Economist are considered as left-leaning, that already gives you a pretty clear picture of how fucked up the media landscape is becoming.

[viper37]

We can't do anything about what people "perceive" especially when they are told to perceive it.

Would you seriously try to make us believe the New York Times and CNN have zero bias in their choice of news, their choice of titles and how they present the information and opinion of their respective media?  That all of this exist in the minds of conservatives of all horizons?

[Valmy]

I don't think anybody on earth has zero bias. The only question is the extent they are making an honest effort to overcome their bias.

[viper37]

I don't think anybody on earth has zero bias. The only question is the extent they are making an honest effort to overcome their bias.

Well, for OAN, Fox News and that other pro-Trump network, the answer would be 0.

But the NYT opinion columns and editorials don't really make any kind of effort to show their far left bias anymore.  The Washington Post seems to have move further left in that last few years too, but overall, it still remains balanced, unlike the NYT that actively seek to expel anyone not "pure" enough.

There are also fringe medias/web sites on the left&far left, quite the equivalent of Fox News.

You'll need to take into account that we ain't talking stricly about US medias here.  French newspaper are notoriously biased to the left, except for Le Figaro.  It's even worst for Quebec.  Traditional right-wing written medias seems to have taken a turn for the woke, lately.