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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
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