Feb 2, 2014

Huffington, FOX and Bias. I will edit later.

Over these last few years, I have used Huffington Post as one of my primary news sources, along with NPR (business/economics and news), The Economist (subscribed), FOX Business (not news or commentary), EconTalk for economics, Drudge Report, MSNBC, Forbes, Slate, Salon, Time, and many others.
What I have noticed is that Huffington Post will seem to portray anyone on the "left" in a much better light that anyone close to being on the "right" side of politics.
Bill Maher can get away with joking about mass shootings at a country music awards but if a conservative would say anything close to this, Huffington Post would....be...all....over....it.
Face it. Arianna Huffington is a known converted liberal and it makes sense that her pride and joy is a byproduct of herself.
Every time someone from the GOP says something remotely close to be being stupid, the Huffpost is all over it. When it comes to a Democratic politician, however, it's often ignored or portrayed in a different way.
Don't believe me? Then maybe if you're a liberal and wonder why I make this accusation, you should start seeing some of this.

If Liberals dislike FOX news so much for being biased, then why don't they even flinch when Huffington Post makes biased news reports? 

People make the claim that Drudge is center-right. Yeah, I can see why. There's a difference though: Matt Drudge and crew only select website and links to news stories on their webpage. Very different from actual "writing" a story or being a "journalist." Instead the Drudge folks pick out several different stories from several different sources. Usually it's because they think something should be more on the headlines that behind them. Especially when it comes to a Democrat or Liberal making a mistake. For that, I thank his crew for doing this. He was made famous from the Lewinski-Clinton debacle. I don't think people should really care about Clinton's personal life, to be honest. For this instance, Drudge was sick of people not reporting enough naughty things that Democrats were guilty of. Typically, the focus was towards the GOP.

The main problem of Conservative bias, however, lies in Conservative talk radio. This is prevalent throughout America but with one major exception: most people do not....do not...listen to talk radio.
I hear Noam Chomsky makes this claim quite often of media bias, which he might agree with me in that it works both ways. However, I know he believes that it works in the "right's" favor more than anything else. It's usually because of the talk radio. Chomsky's arch enemy. However, for being such a bright and intelligent person, it escapes me how he doesn't realize that most people don't use talk radio as a source. Pod casting, more so, when it comes to educational and political shows, maybe.

Here's an example of bias from Huffington Post. Here, the author portrays conservative bias in a negative light without mentioning hardly anything about liberal bias. However, the author makes the claim that "The supposedly liberal media are out to thwart Chris Christie's presidential bid, according to conservative critics. Please." Now that's cute. I wonder if this author is aware that he's just as guilty?

The author mentions a conservative sites that's a watchdog of liberal sites, The Media Research Center. Yeah, and they do a pretty good job about showing videos of liberals in tight situations with their own bias. It's an excellent site if you want to see this. If you're a liberal (that's probably you) then it make you pull your hair out. However, if you really want to be objective and realize how some liberals get their information from biased sources, you might realize something. If you're a conservative, I hope you don't point and laugh at them because I think treating people this is immature. What the author does not mention are the liberal sites that point out conservative bias. This one for liberals, Media Matters, is pretty decent as well. Just as the conservative MRC, this one is biased as well. They're meant to be.
What I notice is that Media Matters will focus on the little things like "FOX didn't say this important thing" or "FOX hides offensive comments from Hannity" from the small stuff. What they seem to focus on is the one this I despise from right or left wing sources: commentary. They don't bash much of the conservative news because they really can't. It's not based off of opinion.... so....the usually leave that alone.

With all due respect to Media Matters and their focus on conservative bias, they hardly touch the actual news. Hannity is not the news, people. The Media Research Center will not only attack commentary from Maher-types but liberal news outlets as well. Something Media Matters does less of.

Regardless, of what you think of this blog, Americans beleive the "media" in general skews more to the left than the right....even with FOX in the picture. Gallup Polls are known to be fairly accurate. Then why doesn't' Huffington Post or MSNBC report this excellent poll data?

Trend: Americans' Perceptions of Media Bias
  From Gallup. What is interesting is that Huffington Post did not report this, according to my search on their website.

 And here are some of other examples of liberal bias in the news the last few years. Some really good ones in there. Go figure, Krugman makes the top three of most biased people in the news.....

You think I'm being unfair? Well, yes. Life is. So are people who claim to solidly be objective or bash a "side" of politics.
Here are some examples of conservative bias. This one is about the election.
And FOX. You betcha!

Where I typically draw the line not in favor of liberals is the awful and distorted misrepresentation of several people in the media that, after that last few years of researching this, wrongfully accused of bias and hate speech. Andrew Breitbart is certainly one of them. The Sherrod case is an excellent examples. He was accused of being a whole bunch of things but those who accused him, didn't even read his actual article. It was about the NAACP audience applauding for Sherrods comments about being slightly racist towards a white farmer. Andrew focused on the audiences applause and remarks about Sherrod's comments. Sherrod herself was telling a story about her transformation about why eeeeeveryone should not be so divided. The crown had no clue she was telling a true story about her being biased towards white people and how she overcame this. Andrew Brietbart knew this and even mentioned her humanity with her transformation. He cared more about the NAACP crowd that is supposed to be...well....no racist....or at least they're not supposed to cheer it on, anyways. Well they did. Proof. Breitbart's focused, as was mentioned his original post, was about the crowd applauding her somewhat racist comments. He didn't edit the video, either. You see, this is how it all starts...
This is where I started to realize about bias in media culture. In general.

Breitbart was blamed for something that wasn't even remotely true. Even after his death, many liberals made harsh comments towards him and his family. Still, to this day, people bring this up without actually having a rational discussion about what he really said and how it was taken out of context.

4 comments:

  1. As you rightly pointed out, commentary is not news. It's just opinion. But opinion dressed up as news is a dangerous thing. Some of us don't watch any of the talking head networks, and when we read for news we only read for the who/what/where/when/why/how parts. I know that when I read a piece on CNN, I skip the off the collar remarks of the author and zoom in on the numbers or pertinent information.

    My main beef with the news media, however, isn't that there is bias--I can ignore a bias all day long. It's that only SIX companies own and control about 90% of media outlets in America. GE, Viacom, Disney, NewsCorp, Time-Warner, and CBS. That's it. 90% of the information that the majority of Americans see, hear, and read every day is controlled by this small group of parent companies. To me that's a dangerous precedent. Fewer alternatives mean an increased chance of some agenda being at work.

    To me, it almost makes more sense to look at who's writing the check instead of who the author is. Perhaps some people are biased, but it doesn't mean that they can't be right. Like most things in life, I personally believe that if you want to find the true source of bias or the person with the agenda, follow the money trail.

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  2. Don't you suppose that all news is dressed up opinions? I don't watch fox but I often hear them mock fox with "faux" or "unfair and unbalanced." However, fox apparently has mixed news journalists and commentary as well. Huffington Post? Hardly. They also tout no partisan politics.
    Now on to funding...
    Do you supposed that you just proposed an often-mentioned fallacy, of some sort?
    News Corp may fund various news outlets (liberal or conservative or whatever) but you never really mentioned what is so bad about that? Just because someone is paid by someone doesn't make them adhere to their values or beliefs. If that were true, then all of NewsCorp news outlets paid by them would have fixed views, wouldn't they?

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  3. Well, first I guess I'd clarify that in my opinion, none of those organizations represent "news" in any sense of the word. The news to me is what local news and perhaps something like the ABC world news is: "Today this happened. These people were involved. Next story." There's no opinion, no commentary (unless it's a human interest story of something like that)--just the basic facts of a given event.

    With regard to payment, obviously people and organizations need funding. Which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, I feel like when there's only ONE single funder, the possibility of exercising only one agenda increases exponentially. If you only have one source of funding, you're kind of at the mercy of that source. Hopefully that source has some sense of objectivity and responsibility, but if they don't, what's the alternative? There is no other alternative when media is increasingly funded by fewer and fewer people.

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  4. Yeah, it does depend on what/who is reporting.

    Also, there is no such thing as one single source of funding. We know the owner of newscorp and the wealth he has. What I notice in this fallacy is that it doesn't show clear evidence that this soul corporation controls what's in the news. If this were true, James Carville, Alan Colmes (the past) and Jaun Williams would never be touting off their liberal views on FOX news. I know there are more as well. They also represent some of the best views that the :ahem" "Left" has to offer. If not the best views they can offer.

    So, by using your logic, Murdoch's love child of everything he owns should be at his mercy. This is where I disagree with that speculation. Could it be true? Don't know.

    Also, about News Corp: the public can invest in it..... it involves news as well as entertainment. They wouldn't have allowed family guy to constantly make fun of conservatives if they had an agenda, I think. I know the FCC tried to cancel Family Guy several times but hey, it make FOX money so they kept it. Despite them stabbing fun at people who might own the stocks....

    I disagree that media is being funded by few and fewer people.
    More so, people are becoming active in their communities, reporting stories in their local news that ends up making it in the headlines. You also have a plenty of citizen journalist as a result of this.

    You also have a lot of independent websites and networks sprouting up everywhere.

    The WSJ may be co-owned with News Corp but it doesn't mean the journalists are objective because of who the owner is....

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