Media Bias
A recent poll by Zogby, showed that a majority of Americans think the media has political bias. Moreover, a majority of those who thought there was a bias, felt it was towards the liberal side.
The thing about this poll is that it is only proof of peoples' opinions about media bias, rather than proof of actual media bias, and if you think about those opinions they are essentially meaningless. In the U.S. there are three main terrestrial TV news sources - ABC, NBC & CBS. There are at least five other national cable news sources - CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC America & PBS - not to mention hundreds of local TV stations, local and national radio sources, and the print media. The point is that a person can have an informed opinion about whether one or two news sources appear biased, but there is no way he or she can speak for 'the media' as a whole.
So if nobody can reliably have enough data to make that kind of judgement accurately, we should ask where the opinion comes from, and at this point, much becomes clear. People's opinions about the media are rooted in the same place as their opinions about world events, the government, and so on: they come from the media.
How many times do you see some rabble-rousing populist like Bill O'Reilly, or Michael Savage play the down-trodden martyr? They're fighting the forces of liberal censorship, speaking out where the 'liberal media' would keep them quiet. They manufacture this idea of a politically-correct thought police that tells them they can't hold opinions, or can't say them out loud, etc, etc. You see it almost daily, and it's one of their tactics. Put bluntly, the conservative media perpetuates a myth of liberal-media bias because it allows them to present themselves as a force for good, fighting unfair media control. After all, what good is God unless there is a devil?
The thing about this poll is that it is only proof of peoples' opinions about media bias, rather than proof of actual media bias, and if you think about those opinions they are essentially meaningless. In the U.S. there are three main terrestrial TV news sources - ABC, NBC & CBS. There are at least five other national cable news sources - CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC America & PBS - not to mention hundreds of local TV stations, local and national radio sources, and the print media. The point is that a person can have an informed opinion about whether one or two news sources appear biased, but there is no way he or she can speak for 'the media' as a whole.
So if nobody can reliably have enough data to make that kind of judgement accurately, we should ask where the opinion comes from, and at this point, much becomes clear. People's opinions about the media are rooted in the same place as their opinions about world events, the government, and so on: they come from the media.
How many times do you see some rabble-rousing populist like Bill O'Reilly, or Michael Savage play the down-trodden martyr? They're fighting the forces of liberal censorship, speaking out where the 'liberal media' would keep them quiet. They manufacture this idea of a politically-correct thought police that tells them they can't hold opinions, or can't say them out loud, etc, etc. You see it almost daily, and it's one of their tactics. Put bluntly, the conservative media perpetuates a myth of liberal-media bias because it allows them to present themselves as a force for good, fighting unfair media control. After all, what good is God unless there is a devil?
posted by Sparx at 13:16
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