Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, July 17th, 2008 - 38 comments
Categories: Media, national, slippery -
Tags: ACC
Francesca Mold on National’s ACC announcment: ‘What’s interesting is the way they’ve put this out under the radar, perhaps showing how sensitive they are to how voters might react. And they’ve done that with a number of policies recently. Although, I have to say, it’s not hurting them in the polls’
a) It won’t hurt the Nats in the polls because no-one knows it’s happening (that’s why they’re doing it), but no polls have been released covering the three weeks National has been engaging in this process. So, we can’t yet say that it’s not hurting them.
b) National judges that a few people thinking they are sneaky will cost them fewer votes than people generally being aware of the policies. The intent is to keep voters uninformed. That’s anti-democratic – it can either be enabled or thwarted.
c) The fourth estate has a vital role – informing the voters on the policies and competence of politicians. In particular, the fourth estate exposes information politicians would rather keep hidden. If a party is trying to bury policy, journos should dig it up.
Facebook
Twitter
Scoopit!
Pardon me, but I’m kind of puzzled to find people speaking so authoritatively about the perceived bias of FOX news at the same time as they appear to be completely ignorant of University studies that confront this claim. I would expect that anyone informed on the issue would be aware of the study. That you don’t know of it, and apparently can’t even find it on the internet (without my help) suggests to me that it is you guys who are making the uninformed assertions, not me.
Furthermore, I’m puzzled by lprent’s assertion that I shouldn’t argue with him, when this discussion has only really extended this far because of the fact that he wanted to assert his own opinions on FOX news. I would have thought that a discussion could be carried out with those who wanted to participate, Lprent or anyone.
Funny thing is, while other possibly poorly educated contributors swear at me and use common vulgarities in lieu of argument, (even the so called moderator has called me a “boorish loudmouth”), and I’m the one being threatened. Yet all I’m doing is politely using logic and reason to argue my case. ..and even if you’re correct about opinion, since when has the expression of opinion been classified as “trolling”? Almost ninety nine percent of the posts here would be trolling under that criterion.
I have heard that this site is run by totalitarian Stalinist thugs. Looks like what I heard might have been quite correct, but then again, perhaps this is your big chance to show these allegations are completely unfair.
In their 2004 study, “A Measure of Media Bias,’ professors Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri examined several news sources, including the three network’s news shows, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Drudge Report, CNN’s “NewsNight’ with Aaron Brown, and Fox News’ “Special Report.’
Using meticulous qualitative analysis geared to estimated ratings from the respected Americans for Democratic Action, the researchers determined that the measured media outlets are liberally biased. The study found that Fox News’ “Special Report, “while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts.’ Other analyses of Fox have arrived at similar conclusions. Fox News can justly be reckoned conservative only because so many competitors are playing deep in left field. By the way, the study itself can be found here-
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm
Supporting commentary
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20050420/ai_n14591615
Another study
http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/20786_americans_slam_news_media_on_believability.cfm
I guess that should get me off the trolling hook. Well, it would if that was the real reason you wanted to ban me.
[lprent: It does - assertions with some kind of backing. You make the assertions - you provide the links. That is the rule around here. I removed the removethis so the commentators can have a peek at them.
Later: I see that the removethis was from akismet getting wound up about links again - but only three! Mind you there were over 50 in the spam trap this morning, mostly links to other sites. Looks like something is getting around Recaptcha again. Time to have a look at the protection again.]
“National is purposefully keeping the people uninformed about their policies. Ergo, National is being undemocratic.”
The election is still months off, the poll won’t be until 3-4 montsh off so they still have plenty of time.
Much better red,
Unfortunately I have heard of that study and find it to be problematic in many respects.
It isn’t really a qualitative analysis of the media reports, it is a quantitative analysis of who gets cited in the reports. The authors then apply a rather dodgy method to arrive at some qualitative conclusions. Conclusions that certainly raise eyebrows.
While the WSJ’s editorial page has a well known bias it’s news pages are widely respected as being fair. Yet this study finds them to be very liberal. The studies strange methodology also arrived at the conclusion the the UCLA is a mildly conservative lobby group, the NRA comes in as only mildly conservative, and the Center for Responsive Politics, (a group that simply maintains a database of political donations) comes in as definably liberal.
Essentially what they do in place of a qualitative analysis of the media, is count how many times lobby groups are cited. They then count how many times politicians cite lobby groups and apply a rating to the lobby group based on a third parties rating of the politician.
It is worth noting that the third parties ratings, which are the thing that is doing all the work, are a guide for voters to let them know how liberal or conservative a politician votes. So they are using it well outside of it’s stated purpose. Even assuming that doesn’t matter their method has some glaring problems.
For example, say a story cites a lobby group like the RAND corporation saying that the war in Iraq has stretched the military and is having serious effects on recruitment. The news organization balances this story by getting the Secretary of defense, the top GOP senator and Karl Rove on to dispute the report and lambast the Rand corporation as a bunch of sniveling ivory tower leftists who are out of touch yada bleggidty blah.
According to this study such a story would have a liberal bias, because the have given the RAND corp a rating of 60, based on the number of times RAND is cited by politicians determined to be liberal by the third party group they base their ratings on. The fact that Karl Rove and all are in the story is missed from the analysis because they are not a lobby group , the only thing that counts is the RAND citation. It is worth noting here that RAND is generally considered to be an objective, non partisan defense industry think tank.
More criticism of this study can be found here and here.
The second one is to a left wing commentator, but his points should not be dismissed out of hand because of that, after all the authors of your report have a long history of association with conservative lobby groups like the Heritage foundation and AEI.
The other study you link to is just a poll, is it not?