Why do you guys think the country is so divided?

[lastchance]

I could argue that your laissez-faire economic theory is damaging and wrong, but I have no clue how to argue that.

Instead, I will argue about how much people are thinking about this stuff. You really think people are thinking about it that deeply like we are? I really doubt people know that much about basic economic theory, (I certainly don't).

The Republicans have to be masters to be able to get the poor not to realize they will gain more directly from higher taxes, and more government benefits overall than lower taxes and less government benefits.

Again, I also feel that economics matter more when you are poor, so maybe the Dems just don't care about the money enough. Maybe they're in a position to be more principled.

Another related part of the overall arching theory I have formed about modern politics that the Democrat ideology today come from the hippie protestors of the 60's, the Republicans come from Nixon.

[MMMMMM]

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The Republicans have to be masters to be able to get the poor not to realize they will gain more directly from higher taxes, and more government benefits overall than lower taxes and less government benefits.

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I really don't think so. I think freedom means a lot to some people--even poor people--and higher taxes make you less free. A lot of people--even poor people--don't WANT government benefits--they just want to be free and to be left the hell alone.

[Bubbagump]

Dude, I totally missed that you posted your paper here on friday!

I read it and thought it was good. It seems like it reflected a good mix of the opinions that were posted here while still managing to keep an unbiased point of view which I think is important with a topic like this. It's too bad that you didn't get more feedback before the paper was due. John Feeney made some great points in his posts.

Bubbagump

[ThaSaltCracka]

I probably should have made more noise about it, thanks for the review though man, I feel much better now after turning it in. Someone in my class is supposed to peer edit it, but that didn't happen because all my group members are morons.

[nicky g]

"dont you think the fact that Between Labor Day and Election Day, Bush's coverage was 64 percent negative, with only 36 percent of news stories painting him in a positive light. Kerry, on the other hand, garnered 58 percent positive?? "

According to whom?

[John Feeney]

I don't know who did the study you mention. There's nothing to be said about it without looking at the methodology and what they said in the original study. The latter often paints a different picture from a brief report in the media. For instance, Kerry did quite well in the debates, perhaps understandably leading to more positive comments about him in the media during the time frame you mention. So how about the coverage before Labor day?

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the simple fact is that no reasonable person can deny a liberal media bias at least in the print media if not boradcast as well.

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Your evidence?

Lots of scientifically rigorous studies say otherwise. The one I mentioned is in a respected, peer reviewed journal. Its meta-analysis of 58 prior studies turned up no significant bias. No reasonable person can ignore that as well as other studies with similar findings. If there were this obvious liberal bias many complain of, the studies would indicate it overwhelmingly.

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the print media virtually ignored the swift boat vets and most didnt even send reporters to their first press conference, hence the ad campaign.


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Perhaps many in the media could see that that group was not credible to begin with. That they've since been largely discredited makes the media's decision look pretty wise.

BTW, they virtually ignored Ralph Nader too. Hah! Conservative bias! [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[MMMMMM]

As I've posted before, I don't think that study (if it is the one I am thinking of) was a very good evaluation of journalists' leanings because it was based on a series of arbitrarily selected questions and on reporters' own views of themselves. I'm referring to the survey questions in the study you posted before.

I think journalists' voting records show their leanings more clearly than does such a survey, and in the thread where we discussed this, I posted a link showing voting records. Journalists' votes were overwhelmingly liberal (and their party affiliation is overwhelmingly Democrat, too, if I recall). So while their own views may or may not seep over into bias in reportage, their votes and affiliation seemed to generally contradict the conclusions of that survey/study. Voting records and party selection are relatively hard evidence compared to that survey, IMO.

Further, all you have to do is listen to Rather, Cronkite, Jennings, Brokaw, Amanpour, Blitzer, CNN, NPR to detect a liberal bias in their reportage. These folks are clearly liberal and it comes through in their reporting.

In my opinion NOTHING of a reporter's/anchor's own views should EVER come through in reporting; the place for that is the opinion page or talk show. And yes it irks me greatly when reporters display bias or favoritism, on the conservative side as well as the liberal. A good reporter should be like a good poker dealer at a casino: when he is working, you can't tell who he hopes wins the pot or the election.

[John Feeney]

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As I've posted before, I don't think that study (if it is the one I am thinking of) was a very good evaluation of journalists' leanings because it was based on a series of arbitrarily selected questions and on reporters' own views of themselves. I'm referring to the survey questions in the study you posted before.


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M, that's not the study I'm talking about. (That is another one, though, which can be thrown into the mix when looking at the weight of the evidence. Almost any study has its weaknesses.) That was just a single study. I'm talking about this study, a meta-analysis of many other studies. When a meta-analysis is done well, it can tell us a lot because it takes the results of many prior studies and combines them statistically to produce one kind of "super study," aimed at revealing what research as a whole has been saying about a topic.

Unfortunatley only the abstract is available for free online. But I went to my local college library and made a copy of the study. It's rather long and dense, and I have to admit that without really spending a lot of time with it, some of its statistical methods are a little beyond me. But it does appear to be a pretty solid study, and did of course make it into what I think is a major peer reviewed journal in its field. (not positive, since I don't know the field, but all signs suggest that)

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Further, all you have to do is listen to Rather, Cronkite, Jennings, Brokaw, Amanpour, Blitzer, CNN, NPR to detect a liberal bias in their reportage. These folks are clearly liberal and it comes through in their reporting.


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Here's a quote from the above mentioned article:

"The genesis of the perception of bias lies in one of two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, mechanisms. It might be a matter of selective perception (Bauer, 1964), an example of two people observing the same message or event, but interpreting it differently (Hastorf & Cantril, 1954) Or it could be an example of instance confirmation, of people with various positions finding in the competing message environment specific examples of messages that offend them and then arguing that these messages are representative of the whole."

In other words, perceived media bias is a very subjective thing. Some see the media as having a conservative bias, some see it as liberal. These perceptions are often not reliable.

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In my opinion NOTHING of a reporter's/anchor's own views should EVER come through in reporting; the place for that is the opinion page or talk show.

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I agree. But this leads to the observation that today the conservative side has the talk show area pretty well sewn up, with a lot of folks seemingly listening to shows that are anything but as serious their major source of "news" and analyis. And those shows are part of the media. So any talk of media bias that leaves them out of the equation is in error, IMO. There's a huge imbalance there.

[Bubbagump]

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In my opinion NOTHING of a reporter's/anchor's own views should EVER come through in reporting; the place for that is the opinion page or talk show.


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I agree. But this leads to the observation that today the conservative side has the talk show area pretty well sewn up, with a lot of folks seemingly listening to shows that are anything but as serious their major source of "news" and analyis. And those shows are part of the media. So any talk of media bias that leaves them out of the equation is in error, IMO. There's a huge imbalance there.


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John, you have brought up some valid points in your posts on this thread, but here you are comparing apples and oranges. Talk show hosts are NOT journalists. There is no way you can compare the likes of Jennings and Rather to the Limbaughs and Savages of AM talk radio. Yes some people use Rush Limbaugh as a source of news and sometimes their only source and that is sad. But there is no way IMO you can hold Rush Limbaugh to the same standards that we must hold our legitimate media outlets to.

Bubbagump

[John Feeney]

I'm not holding Limbaugh to the same standards, and I'm not saying he's a journalist. I'm saying that everything that comes out of a person's radio, TV, newspaper, etc. is "the media," and that there is simply a huge current imbalance in what people hear from the talk show side of the media. I'm saying that without equal weight from the left, people are today exposed to a disproportionate amount of vitriolic right wing rhetoric, and that it's had a big impact. And I'm saying that any talk of "media bias" must include that. Sure journalists must strive to keep their biases to themselves. There any bias is in simply letting them out. With regard to the talk show issue, the bias is in the imbalance.