In the intro. to this week's Good News from Iraq Arthur Chrenkoff quotes Bret Stephens' "Media in the Quagmire" - which points out the big, big developing stories that the mainstream media missed over the last 30 years: the collapse of the Soviet empire (and, I would add, the nature of that empire), the rise of Osama bin Laden, the declining US crime rate, the economic eclipse of Japan and Germany, the outbreak of democratic enthusiasm in the Arab world, etc.
This prompted some thinking about our media, and why that is. Personally, I think Stephens is being very charitable when he says:
"The problem is that journalists have a difficult time distinguishing significant facts - facts with consequences - from insignificant ones. That, in turn, comes from not thinking very hard about just which stories are most worth telling."
I have a less flattering explanation. But let's run through a few recent items around the blogosphere first.
- Stephens isn't alone. John J. Miller quotes an unlikely source from the past:
"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman," said the late Susan Sontag in 1982. "Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"
There is no question who would have been better informed, and yes, Susan, they were. The New Statesman isn't exactly mainstream media, but you could just as easily have substituted The New York Times, or CBS News, or any other big-time MSM source and received the same answer. Why was that? And speaking of those MSM sources...
- Roger L. Simon offers a suitably merciless takedown of an interview with Washington Post Managing Editor Phillip Bennett, who exemplifies left-liberal pablum in his every opinion, then claims not to have an ideology. Bernard Goldberg's points about the media bubble, made live and in colour.
- Oxblog picks up on a public admission from Mike Allen of the Washington Post. The whole dissection is worth reading, and this money-line sums it all up: "When a majority-liberal press corps consistently hints at what it believes to be true, readers get the point."
- The Pew Surveys are the most commonly-cited measure of the political leanings of reporters vs. the American population at large. Here's a 2004 report on that divergence. Eye-opening - and read the other sections, too.
- This is not a recent phenomenon, either. These graphs represent (linked) surveys from 1980 to 2004, and show ratios from 4:1 to 12:1 liberal:conservative.
- Why does this matter? Read this real-life exchange with a reporter by Spoons of "The Spoons Experience": "The point is, is that sometimes there just isn't evidence to back up policy from the GOP but there almost always is for a liberal position..." What a perfect encapsulation.
Somehow, we're supposed to assume that the problem in all of these cases Stephens cites was a widespread and consistent failure among journalists to "think deeply" about their stories.
There's a simpler explanation.
All of the problems Stephens mentions can also stem from turning one specific ideology into conventional wisdom within the trade, thus blinding its adherents to inconvenient facts that don't fit. With Pew surveys and other instruments regularly finding wild imbalances in political leanings within the journalism "profession," Stephens' descriptions are what one would EXPECT to find.
Stephens adds:
"It is, of course, impossible to anticipate events, in Harold Macmillan's sense of the word. But none of the examples listed here belong in that category. Norman Podhoretz predicted the peace process would lead to war. Charles Wolf saw the hollowness of Japan Inc. Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. And George W. Bush understood, and said, that a free Iraq would serve as a beacon of liberty for the oppressed Arab world."
Yes, and so did many others. Stephens is assuming that the mainstream media paid much attention to those sources. All of the people Stephens cites were proved right, but none had their views widely disseminated in the mainstream media until the evidence in favour was absolutely overwhelming. Indeed, the media could invariably be found on the other side until the bitter end.
Their common denominator is dead simple. NONE of the people Stephens cited fit within the mainstream of American or European left-liberal thought. Therefore, they were outside the opinion bubble. Therefore, they didn't get covered much - or were covered in a hostile way.
When failure to connect the dots happens in a particular pattern, over and over again, one can reasonably ask why.
"As for the media, it shouldn't be too difficult to do better. Look for the countervailing data. Broaden your list of sources. Beware of exoticising your subject. If you think that Israelis and Palestinians operate from no higher motive than revenge, you're on the wrong track. Above all, never forget the obvious: that the law of supply and demand operates in Japan, too; that the Soviet Union was a state governed by fear; that Iraqis aren't barracking for their killers; that, if given the chance, people will choose to be free."
Again, NONE of these "obvious" things are obvious to leftists and liberals. Indeed, they contradict some of its core assumptions. Which is why they aren't obvious to the punditocracy and the chattering classes of the "mainstream media" - and never will be, until the media's composition changes.
Which, given that the law of supply and demand operates everywhere, is something that will happen in time... and of course, I guarantee that media pundit idiots will be out there expressing surprise.
"All of the problems Stephens mentions can also stem from turning one specific ideology into conventional wisdom within the trade, thus blinding its adherents to inconvenient facts that don't fit."
This is called Ocam's Razor (the simplest explanation is usually the one closest to the truth), and given the LLL philosophy of the current schools of journalism, I'd say that it's probably the one that fits best. Salient facts, not supporting the political slant of the TSM (Terrorist Supporting Media) are routinely ommitted, and events that don't play out the way the TSM wants, fabricates "events" and reports them as facts. A good example of this is the AP (Associated Phables) story about one of Bush's campaign speeches where Bush wished Bill Clinton well before his impending heart surgery. The crowd actually cheered the President's good wishes, but the AP reported that the crowd "boo'd", trying to make the audience of Republicans seem mean spirited. But with Neilson rating dropping like a brick, the TSM is well on its way to becoming irrelevant.
Joe,
Are you sure your Canadian???
Joe Katzman,
How old are you because you claim things that are simply not true. It could be that you were to young to remember the truth or maybe you are really wearing thick ideologic glasses.
The MSM didn't write about the USSR in the way you claim. Everybody who followed the news a little bit knew that life in the USSR was not good and that if you spoke freely you ended up behind bars or in a mental institution. Sacharov and others were big news items. Just as the fact that the USSR was our likely enemy in WWIII.
The collapse of the USSR was a shock. Not that it happened but that it happened so quick and so soon. I can still remember that some people taught that it was just an illussion so that we would let our guard down.
You can compare it with North Korea which still survives even though it is 14 years ago that the communist block collapsed. And the situation of North Korea is much worse than that of the USSR. I hope that North Korea will loose its yuk this year just as i hoped it would follow the others in the last 14 years but i don't expect it to happen any time soon.
a- Joe is correct about MSM coverage in some respects: that the level of tyranny under Stalin was never admitted, and that its weakness was underestimated. (Underestimated by a lot of folks outside the media as well.) I agree with you that Saxarov, Solzhenitsen and even Pasternak (going back a bit further) were news, but Soviet bashing was still considered bad form after about '66.
Like you, I suspect, I go back way before that and remember that nuclear war with Russia at some point seemed certain. This generated a lot of silliness like bomb drills (get under the desk) in school, and some good post-armageddon science fiction.
Stalin died in 56 IIRC and the tyranny was so bad that i don't think we in the free world can imagine how bad it was and it was just after WWII in which they were our, very important, allies. In the later years we knew but it wasn't as if we could do anything grand about in. The situation could only be improved by small diplomatic steps and bashing simply doesn't work in those situations
and that its weakness was underestimated.
True but at that time the right claimed that the MSM was underestimated the danger. Besides i don't see how journalists could have made significant different estimate than the CIA as that was their main source of information. It is like claiming that the MSM didn't do their job because they believed the goverments lies about Iraqi's WMD. But those were atleast so bold that you could say that Iraq making the bomb was most likely a lie.
You can also wonder about their weakness. They were not as strong as we tought but it was still obvious we would loose if we started a war against them. (I don't think that you can win a nuclear war)
Stalin died in '53. '56 was the date of Xrushchev's famous speech on the "cult of personality"
You learn something every day.
a - No, you could not say Iraq making the bomb was a lie, because as the NY Times recently reported, it was the truth, because the Iraqis went out of their way to hide that they were trying to build a bomb - the looting of Iraq's weapons plants was systematic and designed to eliminate evidence that Iraq was building a bomb.
As for the MSM, the simple fact is Katzman is correct - they have not only not done their job and consistently not done so over many decades, but they continue to refuse to do their job, on almost any serious issue out there.
When the left wear the badge of shame they deserve, when they share the badge of infamy with the nazi's , (even as the nazis was one of them) when planks out of the communist manifesto are on equal par with plans out of Mien Kamph ...
Then we will have made progress.
Two words: Walter Duranty.
"To Duranty, Stalin ("the greatest living statesman") represented progress and the chance of a better future for the once benighted masses. In one typical passage he gushed that, "Stalin and his associates have carried with them the strongest and most intelligent elements of the Russian people, and have created a national unity and enthusiasm which the Tsarist Empire never knew. They have learnt by their own errors and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and the nation has followed them." It was, he wrote, "a heroic chapter in the life of humanity."
http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/stuttaford051501.shtml
This guy was a star reporter for the NYT and won a Pulitzer prize. He flat out lied about the genocide in Ukraine that killed 7 million people, worse he called those trying to stop it bold faced liars.
So dont tell me their werent Soviet apologists and propagandists in the MSM, even at the highest levels. Someday you'll find the same has been happening in Cuba.
Sorry, but Iraq building the bomb was just ridicules. You need lots of money and energy for it and the Americans could bomb you at any time without repercussions. It just don't make any sense.
Sorry, but Iraq building the bomb was just ridicules. You need lots of money and energy for it . . .
Yeah, where would Iraq get energy and money?
Patrick
Oscar, we get all your channels up here, and I can buy a New York Times or Wall St. Journal on the way to work. Plus, I pay attention to this stuff, so I've had a good long look on which to base my agreement with Mr. Stephens.
And yes, a, I was there and paying attention for all of the events discussed above.
This link in the blog post neatly expands on the point re: the USSR. While John Barron covered the KGB in depth, Sterling Seagrave covered Soviet uses of chemical weapons (banned by treaty) in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan, others covered the gulags, disturbing reports continued to come out of Cuba, Nicaragua, and other Central American countries (not just El Salvador, Guatemala, et. al) and 'Team B' exploded the prevailing CIA view of the USSR, what were the mainstream press like? I remember well. They were consistently and reliably dismissive, or hostile to those bringing up these points, or they simply avoided the subject.
The prevailing mindset was utterly and predictably liberal consensus, focused on managing the status quo, emphasizing fatuous idiocies like "the Russians are people too" (duh, but that doesn't mean jack in a totalitarian system), celebrating paper treaties that were routinely violated as ends in and of themselves, and as interested in negative stories about the U.S. and its allies as it was uninterested in such stories about the Soviets and their client states.
They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing, and they continue to misunderstand the world and miss the story.
This does not exclude consideration of the institutional and operational biases of the press, or their tendency to repeat pre-packaged items from giovernments and interest groups as news without attribution, or lack of meaningful experience of understanding many reporters in the subjects they cover. But it does compound every one of the above faults, and creates outcomes like these via a media bubble and a culture of impunity.
#10
When was that written because if it was before WWII than i don't want to know. They wrote the same pieces about the man of the year, Hitler. The USSR was also at that moment in time not our mortal enemy and that leads to a press that is much more friendly.
Claims that the MSM was friendly to the USSR are completely bonkers. They didn't want to start WWIII like some hawks wanted but that about it.
"Sorry, but Iraq building the bomb was just ridicules. You need lots of money and energy for it and the Americans could bomb you at any time without repercussions. It just don't make any sense."
I think you just proved NK doesnt have a bomb and Iran isnt building one. Congrats, you oughta right for the NYT.
Ohh no, "Uncle Joe" already had the blood of more murdered millions on his hands than Hitler would get credit for.
While at the same time the state dept was choko full of soviet spies and fellow travelers
And FDR himself was a leftist, he knew a kindred spirit when he saw one.
The media soft pedaled the most evlil state to ever exist that murdered 62 million of ots own people the same way thry soft pedal Castro today.
"Congrats, you oughta right for the NYT."
I, on the other hand, should be sent back to the second grade for reindoctrination.
#12
A lot more money than sanction busting and energy use shows up very bright on satelite photo's which makes it hard to hide.
Mark and I guess India and Pakistan also made use of their "vast energy reserves"
But this dont come out nowhere, its part of the current leftist dysfuctional mythos they pollute their thinking with.
They use the same argument about nuke power in general, pushing a fable that it requires more energy to create the fuel than the reactor delivers.
Such is the kind of leftist crapthink garbage you end up with when any information that refutes the leftist propaganda they live on as "knowlege" is automatically rejected.
It also explains his take on the leftist media.
Part of it is perspective, to the Red Kihmers of cambodia, where even the family unit was outlawed and a mother showing love for her child would get both of them shot on the spot, stalin would "appear" to be somewhat "right wing" or stalin might call Hitler "right wing"
Never mind that all 3 are 900 miles to the left of normal people not yet moonbat indoctrinatairs of the leftist religion.
His problem is perspective, he can watch something patently offensive to us straights, and see nothing wrong with it.
#16
Who cares how much blood somebody has on his hands. Stalin was at that moment in time simply not a treat to the USA so why should the US care. You also have to realise that the US has fought the Red Russians 20 years before that and lost so i doubt that they were wanting to try it again.
LMAO!
Add Libya to the sack of facts to beat a with :-)
Pretty much defines the left.
mass graves of kids in Iraq has no effect on them, or the 174 Million they murdered overall
only their glorius egalitarian utopia internationale matters, anything outside of that, is a distraction, or at best, a political calculation.
Good grief.
Joe - I was referring to your much-too-righty-to-be-Canadian comments. I know you guys up there have all the comforts of American culture, including millionaire athletes acting like children......
Raymond, anybody who followed India and pakistan could have told you that they were making atom bombs. It wasn't exactly a secret. India even did a "purely" scientific experiment in IIRC 74.
What i'm claiming is that nuclear processing plant needs lots of electricity and that that makes them difficult to hide, especially if, like Iraq, you don't have much industry left working.
Joe,
Team B, aren't those the ones who overestimated the USSR military capabilities by a gigantic margin. How can you also claim that the quick collapse of the USSR was so obvious.
The prevailing mindset was utterly and predictably liberal consensus, focused on managing the status quo,
Isn't that the strategy that won the cold war?
emphasizing fatuous idiocies like "the Russians are people too" (duh, but that doesn't mean jack in a totalitarian system),
A very good way of preventing your side in starting a war is humanizing the enemy. And it also humanised us in the eye of the emeny because the communist block had leaky cultural borders.
celebrating paper treaties that were routinely violated as ends in and of themselves,
You mean by the USSR or USA as both were not known for keeping their words. I think i can even say that the USA is known for not keeping its word
and as interested in negative stories about the U.S. and its allies as it was uninterested in such stories about the Soviets and their client states.
Strange that local stories are more interesting than foreign stories, who would have thought.
I do find it strange if the MSM was so positive about the USSR that almost everybody thought that life their was worse than here.
Making heavy water needs lots of electricity. the nazi bomb makers was using a hydroelectric dam in finland.
And we was pretty good at preventing the heavy water shipments from getting back to germany.
But the rest is pure fallacy, you know, you need to get out of that leftist groupthink bubble or whatever it is that told you that duturium is the only available moderator.
The Pak nukes dont use it, the Russian layer cake design does, you really really need to ween yourself off that leftist garbage.
Humanising the mass murderers of 62 Million people, yup thats one of the things we have against the left, their refusal to see evil (because it points back at them)
As for efforts of the left to soften the most evil regime to inhabit the earth (measured in bodies) thats ohh so Walter Durranty
Softening the brutal nature of leftist crimes against humanity help spread more unhumanity
and it has zip none notta effect on their desire to destroy us,
What stopped them was their perception that victory was not possible. and for no other reason.
The final nail seemed to be Gulf War I
I still remember the Russian Generals commenting,, slackjawed and agast, as they watched us drop bombs down small vent shafts.
It showed them their deep bunkers could be taken out, and the soviet dream of victory over the west evaporated.
In spite of the media, not because of them, they loved the USSR, and when we saw them falling down in hyperventing sexual swoon at the feet of Gorbachov, Gorgasms, is what rush called them.
Bzzzt Sorry, your rewrite of history isnt working.
#22
So the left is the old right. Does make sense when you see who the Neo-con are
Raymond, the USSR only became our mortal enemy in 48 or so, Stalin died in 53 and with it the mass murders. So what have those deaths to do with what the policy should have been in the 70's. I was also not talking about the leadership of the USSR but about humanizing the average grunt.
ps. You really believe that the Sovjet generals didn't know American capabilities. Do you think that they didn't have spies?
#27
It is the uranium seperation that need so much energy. Calutrons and gaseous diffusion need massive amount of electricity. Gas centrifussions are very hard to build and still need a lot of energy. So you need a lot of energy to make a bomb
RE: a's understanding of the Soviet Union... to be kind, let's just say that it has more than a few gaps. He doesn't seem to be following the relevant links, either. But he does display pretty much the understanding one would come away with if the mainstream media was your only source on the subject. In that sense, his comments are both useful and illustrative.
Oscar, my city has a major league baseball team and an NBA team, so yeah we have the spoiled athletes - as well TBS, WGN et. al. to watch them on. I must say, however, that hockey players as a class tend to be great people. Despite the strike, I'm actually with the players on this one.
Joe, how old are you. A general indication is enough. I really want to know because you view of how the USSR was depicted in the MSM is just not the same with what i remember.
My understanding of the Sovjet Union: Did bad things inside its borders unlike most states that do their bad things only outside their borders. Also our eternal enemy (until China was developed or so). They collapsed and did that very fast to everybody's big surprise. If you want to claim that your were not surprised that it happened so be it.
Didn't want to read those links because what my point is that the collapse of the sovjet union was surprising to everybody and that claims that it was a MSM conspiracy and that all right thinking people so it coming from miles away are just laughable. Nobody but one liberal saw it coming. Also your claim that the average people had no idea how bad the USSR was because of the MSM is not compatible with the thruth. We did know that they had breadlines, couldn't speak their mind, that there where KGB everywere and that they would flee to the West if the got half a change. In short that the USSR was a bad place.
ps. Your links come down to MSM are more liberal than average which isn't exactly surprising news. What is surpising is that they tow the line on Iraq but the very anti goverment French communist did that in Algeria too so it isn't that surprising.
Reagan intentionally spent the USSR into collapse. He and a lot of his advisors "saw it coming" when the MSM most certainly did not. The CIA overestimated some elements of the Soviet military system and missed a lot of the economic weakness there -- but Reagan was quite sure their system would implode if pushed to compete with the Strategic Defense Initiative and other actions.
He was right.
a - the tyranny was so bad that i don't think we in the free world can imagine how bad it was
Those of us who had relatives there knew - and know.
In the later years we knew but it wasn't as if we could do anything grand about in. The situation could only be improved by small diplomatic steps and bashing simply doesn't work in those situations
WWII was exhausting. We first needed to get Western Europe back on its feet before dealing with the Soviets and their satellites. But I would scarcely call the Strategic Air Command bombers, the U2 overflights, the arms race or manned spaceflight "small diplomatic steps", even though they also weren't "bashing".
The military was the stick to make sure that the fight option wasn't open for the enemy.
But claims that the USSR couldn't afford it are in my book not enough to explain why they collapsed. They had a lot of nukes so i don't see how a war could have been fought and just stealing the previous generation of weapon is often good enough. And they had the money to afford that. You could also look at North Korea which 14 years later has still not collapsed.
a: I really want to know because you view of how the USSR was depicted in the MSM is just not the same with what i remember.
Apparently you regard Human Events as the MSM. That was the view of my grandfather, who refused to read anything else because if it wasn't in Human Events it was all lies.
A memorable event from my childhood was the death of Mao. An adult female relative of mine went into an absolute foot-hopping rage over Mao's obituary in Newsweek.
Anyone familiar with the moral idiocy of the time could have written that obit: Mao was a "great leader" who "brought China into the 20th Century", etc. No mention of tens of millions of dead Chinese, of course.
The answer is follow the money. If a story didn't bring readers or viewers, as television began to tell more of the story, no reporter was going to follow a story as it could not bring attention to the writer/publisher/advertiser. Further more a story that required detailed explantion and often lacked a picture credit wasn't followed. As to the USSR when Cancer Ward or other of Solzyenitsyn's(sic?) work was published was there ever even a movie offer?
Follow the money when you have questions about what Americans know and will pay attention to.
#38
Not me, Joe.
Glen
Yup China also had its well wishers here in the states, and we didnt learn of the 27 Million that starved to death in the "great leap forward" from the MSM, we didnt learn of the some 35-50 Million exterminated by everything from torture to summary execution from the MSM.
Any negative news was covered in the best light possible or ignored, and then inbetween they would revert to the leftist dogma that socialism is the way to go, that communist democrats good, freedom and republicans bad.
We have a 70+ year history of US and Euro-socialist running interference for the leftist crimes agaist humanity, the greatest holocausts of all time.
And now.. all of a sudden we are supposed to buy the line that the left really didnt fight our every attempt to defend ourselves thruout the entire history, and that they was really with us the whole time.
Do they really think we will glug that garbage ?
Who knows, they just might adopt it as the new fake reality in their baggage of leftist mythos.
Look how a slips in that line from another dimension, 2-3 times "we have lost the war in iraq" as if mouthing the words make it true.
But thats no different behavior than we have seen for decades.
Some might call it troll bait, but actually he is in the middle of creating a new mirage in his fake reality. see how it works ?
Kinda makes the rest make sense ... dont it.
Hey, dount laugh .. those Moonies of Emanuael Kant and his follow on marxist deconstructionaist postmodern rejection-aries of objective reality indoctrinate just that, that reality is only a mental construction, its an invention, not a discovery.
Once you wrap your brain around that, it makes the other-worldly quality, as if they are talking about some other universe behind the portal they just stepped thru, ... ... well at least you understand the roots of their dysfunction.
Some might think im being funny, or stretching it too far, ahh cantraire, ive watered it down a bit.
Bizarre and alien is the postmodern world, ill leave it at that. google around on the commentary around the Sokal Hoax if you want a further peek into where this nonsense comes from.
Did the CIA know of the 27 million death? Had they lots of pictures with starving people? So you want to be angry at the MSM for things they couldn't have reported anyway. The MSM didn't report the holocaust either, and we were at war with the nazi's then, so why don't you vent your anger on that.
Yes they did.
They also knew that the veitmin mass murdered their own people by 5% death quota, and kept it hidden from america, they knew of Kerries colaberation with the Veitcong and the POWs death on the hands of John Kerry, they Knew that John Kerry waxed adulation allover the "George Washington" of Veitnam. they Knew the Swift Vets was telling the truth, I still remember Ted Kopple and his transparent devotion to the script of the Communist Veitnamese slave and his communist minder able to shoot him in the head the instant the camera turned off, and that they would not put that information in the report even if it happend.
And advocating the communist version even when it was refuted by Kerries own Book, as oneal pointed out.
Utterly bizarre that was, offensive to rational thought.
But the leftist media pro communist mass murder Koppel who never misses a chance to take the anti american pro commuinst position, held up the gunpoint testamony as important information that should have the greater weight.
I could go on and on.
Please do go on. It is always funny when you write dumb things like "they Knew the Swift Vets was telling the truth". Kerry was back then a nobody so why would they keep the records that showed if he was lying. The CIA may have a much better idea than me if he is telling the truth but know is unlikely.
Perhaps his paris trips to visut the perps of crimes against humanity while still un uniform had something to do with it.
As well as the navy version of court marshal for officers, that is why he wont sign form 180, the record will show he used congressional influence and a democrat controld congress to get a honorable discharge(years late, they didnt do date fixing) and his medals re-issued.
And the swift vets and the POWs have proven their case.
Thats apart from his glorification of a perp of crimes against humanity. and the slime he threw on our troops.
The left have always been on the far side of good and evil when evil is involved, and Kerry added no deviation from that record.
It's impossible to understand media bias without understanding the nature of the media business - You, the reader/viewer, are not the customer. The advertising buyers are the customer, and your attention is the product. The media do what is necessary to get you to watch, which is one reason that bleeding-heart or celebrity stories are so popular - they suck people in so that they'll keep watching through the ads. That's why the MSM was focused on OJ Simpson instead of the Rwanda genocide: OJ brought in eyeballs on the set, whereas foreigners getting slaughtered makes people change the channel to watch something less depressing.
This is also the reason that talk radio is full of blowhards - they are entertaining. Detailed analysis of complex subjects, with full attention to detail and evaluation of the credibility of the various sources is boring to most people - so they flip over to the shock jocks or the bloviating simpletons. The best of the blowhards manage to pull off the illusion of analysis while keeping the reality of entertainment, so that the listener is both entertained and comes away with a sense of superiority over those idiotarian liberals/conservatives (pick one as appropriate).
Most media bias is better explained by market forces than by ideology. Oversimplified poorly researched stories are cheaper to produce and deliver just as many eyeballs to the advertizer as well researched and carefully evaluated stories. The preponderance of liberals in the ranks of journalists just means that it's easier to sucker a liberal into doing the scutwork of journalism than it is to get a conservative to do it.
Andrew is correct, insofar as there are institutional and commercial biases in the media, and they do need to be understood in any good analysis.
I will point out that this fact does not remove political biases, and that consustent political biases can aggravate many of the institutional and commercial biases that are already keeping the media from delivering a quality product.
I'll also add that when audience number start dropping like a stone (while more representative rivals prosper) and the political biases that are visible underneath are NOT fixed (CNN, CBS, LA Times, other examples possible), one can reasonably downgrade the importance of commercial biases as a driver of behaviour, and place more focus on the ideological factors.
No, you could not say Iraq making the bomb was a lie, because as the NY Times recently reported, it was the truth, because the Iraqis went out of their way to hide that they were trying to build a bomb - the looting of Iraq's weapons plants was systematic and designed to eliminate evidence that Iraq was building a bomb
Significant different estimate than the CIA as that was their main source of information. It is like claiming that the MSM didn't do their job because they believed the goverments lies about Iraqi's WMD. But those were atleast so bold that you could say that Iraq making the bomb was most likely a lie.
You can also wonder about their weakness. They were not as strong as we tought but it was still obvious we would loose if we started a war against them.
Hi, i'm not sure if i am on the correct site but i am looking for references to a poem called Biko the Greatness, with regard to the phrase "the winds of change" used in the poem. originally this was said by Harold Macmillan with regard to Apartheid. Can anyone help?
Thanks, Jo