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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: To tim sevener re media bias
Message-ID: <503@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Mar-85 08:59:53 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxl.503
Posted: Mon Mar  4 08:59:53 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Mar-85 03:13:41 EST
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> From Jim Matthews: 
> 	You have presented your endorsements=bias argument before, but it
> doesn't wash.  Any survey of the country's vast number of newspapers will
> find that they generally reflect the citizens they serve -- i.e. they vote
> Republican in presidential elections.  Look at the Eastern news elite, 
> however, and you find un-alloyed leftism that doesn't just give endorsements,
> but even twists news.  In the seventies, when 3 million died at the hand
> of socialists in Cambodia, the New York Times ran ten times as many articles
> about the human's rights situation in Chile.  And while the election 
> endorsement of some small-town paper doesn't reach anyone but it's readers,
> the news stories from the Times, the Post, and the Globe are relayed from
> coast to coast.  And let's not forget our friends at the networks -- Dan
> Rather, whose opposition to the administration is a matter of public record,
> and the rest.  The surveys done after the 1972 election found that over
> 80% of this group were for McGovern, while only this misguided(sic) state would
> vote for him.

1)Do newspaper endorsements *reflect* the citizens they serve or *shape the
  opinions* of the citizens they serve? In fact surveys for several decades
  have found that newspapers endorse Republicans 70% of the time, even at
  periods when the majority of voters were Democrats and voted for Democrats.
  
2)In fact the election endorsements of small-town newspapers *are* what
  people read. The *circulation* of the papers endorsing Reagan in the last
  election represented the majority of actual circulation.  Actually the
  New York Times and Washington Post do not have the widest circulation of
  major newspapers.  Also, while the New York Times and Post/LA Times news
  services are distributed to many local papers around the country, that
  doesn't mean that they get carried.  Editors choose to carry those items
  they are likely to agree with or think have some local angle.  I have
  seen William Buckley's column in every local paper I have read.  I have
  never seen the same circulation for any liberal columnist.
 
3)National level reporters are generally liberal - that is undoubtedly true.
  However what gets covered, which stories get published and how those
  stories are presented is determined by editors and publishers.  These
  generally represent conservative interests.  Why do you think Jesse Helms
  wants to be "Dan Rather's boss"? Because he realizes that it is who *owns*
  the media that is the most important and most controlling.

4)Your remarks about the New York Times coverage of Chile vs Cambodia is
  interesting but I would like to see some documentation.  I have seen
  plenty of reports in the Times about the political trials in Yugoslavia,
  the situation in Afghanistan,etc.  These events are generally covered
  by the New York Times.  But do you think a small-town newspaper, while it
  carries Reagan's inflammatory remarks about the "totalitarian government"
  in Nicaragua, ever carries similar reports about the former dictator
  of Guatemala? Or any reports on Chile? Or any international news
  of substance whatsoever that didn't come out of some American official's
  mouth?  In my experience they do not cover these topics *at all*!
 
      "The Truth shall set you free...."
          tim sevener   whuxl!orb