Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site loral.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!simard From: simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Liberal media bias Message-ID: <558@loral.UUCP> Date: Sun, 21-Oct-84 00:01:45 EDT Article-I.D.: loral.558 Posted: Sun Oct 21 00:01:45 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 04:12:49 EDT References: <160@rlgvax.UUCP> <> Reply-To: simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard) Distribution: net Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego, CA Lines: 109 Summary: In article <> orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) writes: >1)Ferraro's finances have just been in the news again >2)Edwin Meese's finances have not been in the news since the > release of the independent counsel's report > >Are the New York Times and the Washington Post, two of the most respected >newspapers in the country, liberal? Yes, but then another member of >journalism's elite, the Wall Street Journal, is just as unabashedly >conservative. But how many people actually read these organs of >journalism's elite? More people read the Wall Street Journal than >the New York Times, in fact the top 3 national newspapers are: >1)USA Today > liberal bastion???? >2)Wall Street Journal > any comment necessary? >3)Daily News > > >The highest circulation is something on the order of several million. >How much influence then in terms of what people actually read do >these prestigious liberal papers have? Most people read their local >paper--not the New York Times or Washington Post. And of >those papers 75% endorse Republicans--despite the fact Democrats outnumber >Republicans by a substantial margin. >I find the "liberal bias of the media" to be a very dubious proposition. >Tim Sevener >whuxl!orb [] This reminds me very much of the four blind men who came across an elephant. Each, being unable to observe what it was they had encountered, formed comically erroneous conclusions based on the little information he could obtain from the small part of the elephant he was actually touching. Certainly, one can pick up a copy of a conservative paper such as the Wall Street Journal or numerous local papers, or a liberal one such as the NY Times or Washinton Post, and find shadings of bias in the reporting. The fact is, there are thousands of publications, all different. What bothers me more is the liberalism of the electronic media. There are really a very few nationwide sources of radio and television news reporting, and the accent there is decidedly liberal. The reason that this concerns me is that television news in particular tends to reach the sector of the population least willing to supplant the news so obtained with deeper knowledge derived from the written press. The persons who tune in the even- ing news paying slight attention as if it were little more than audible wallpaper develop little enough awareness of current events due to the abbreviation of the stories to fit time requirements, but also are open to the slant an intentionally or unintentionally subliminal messages in them. Particularly, visual effects, juxtapositions and other implicit cues regis- ter more when the observer is not fully conscious of the telecast, and the more so when that is the chief or perhaps only news source. For example, when unemployment took a very dramatic and encouraging decline in the summer of '83, falling a full percentage point, CBS duly and laconically noted the fact, then devoted the entire first 10 minutes of the evening news - one-third of the total - to a pair of stories about two areas where unemployment was still high. It was as if Mt. Saint Helens had erupted, and CBS spent a third of the newscast interviewing persons who lived near an extinct volcano, logging minutes of "nothing's changed here" stories. In other words, they didn't report the story; they reported every- thing that WASN'T the story. When conservative author George Gilder and a liberal from the Brookings Institution whose name I can't recall were interviewed by Diane Sawyer on the morning news, Gilder was repeatedly cut off and interrupted in mid- sentence, by both Sawyer and the other participant. He, on the other hand, was allowed to pause, drift and ramble unimpeded. Gilder was visibly frus- trated at the end of the brief segment. In the early months of the recession, reporters (yup, CBS again) filed stories night after night from inside steel mills, auto plants, and other heavy "smokestack" industries, where unemployment was especially severe. Interviews with families suddenly without income were taped with maximum emotional appeal (I am not questioning these). However, two observations: no mention was ever made of the shift from old, heavy industry to high-tech lighter manufacturing, and with the same story airing night after night, unbiased approaches would have been to report on various sectors, in various geographical areas, showing a spectrum of economic activity, rather than merely the worst case. Second observation: since it was a nightly event to see the steelworker Joneses in Pittsburgh tearful and fretting when things were going sour, is it not equally appropriate to interview the same or different families when they return to work? When I read that GM or someone, or perhaps a new indus- try is (re)hiring umpteen thousand workers, I fail to see the corresponding interview-in-the-home. Is CBS afraid that someone might find out that the current policies are working? All of the above are derived from my own personal observation. I have read studies that reveal far more of this same selective reporting and com- position of stories to support a particular viewpoint (so much for the "right-to-know"). CBS seems the winner of the most-biased slot by a fairly close decision. (Not-quite-a-postscript: Ever notice how (usually) a conservative spokesman or economist will be interviewed only side-by-side with someone else on the other side of the issue (fine, so far), but liberal types, particularly celebrities, are given a forum to themselves? (not so fine) ) -- [ I am not a stranger, but a friend you haven't met yet ] Ray Simard Loral Instrumentation, San Diego {ucbvax, ittvax!dcdwest}!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!simard