Man, after reading your post, I'm about up to my neck in stereotypes. Conservative this and conservative that. Any chance you'll post your survey results to back any of that up?
Man, after reading your post, I'm about up to my neck in stereotypes. Conservative this and conservative that. Any chance you'll post your survey results to back any of that up?If, after listening to people like Rush Limbaugh for years on end, conservatives are convinced that the media is against them, this presents a great economic opportunity for a company like Fox to create a conservative biased news outlet to capitalize on that perception. It doesn't, however, make that perception reality. It also doesn't mean that the market could support multiple versions of FoxNews, which is precisely why the rest of the media isn't what conservatives say it is.
So far as the rest of the media, it makes absolutely no sense for them to present news which appeals mainly to people at one end of the ideological spectrum. They would all be competing against each other for those readers and viewers. These are publicly traded corporations. They aren't going to present ideologically biased news unless it benefits their bottom line. If you look at news media carefully, it is plainly obvious that it is presented in a sensationalist manner, in order to attract the most possible attention from the most possible viewers and readers. This is the only economic model which makes sense.
Yet conservatives have this notion that the news media isn't really trying to attract the maximum number of readers and viewers but instead is trying to propagate an ideology. This in spite of the fact that they are accountable all the way up the corporate food chain solely based on their bottom line performance. Their job security and salaries entirely depend on it but conservatives are saying that this isn't their priority.
These are profit driven corporations with accountability to shareholders. If conservatives want to make a serious argument, they can start by explaining how operating with a left bias is what makes the most sense for the media from a financial standpoint.
Man, after reading your post, I'm about up to my neck in stereotypes. Conservative this and conservative that. Any chance you'll post your survey results to back any of that up?
Perhaps you are correct when looking at the extremes of the ideological spectrum; however, for most of us, this is not true. Most people want coverage and story selection that aligns with their own particular bias.So far as the rest of the media, it makes absolutely no sense for them to present news which appeals mainly to people at one end of the ideological spectrum.
Conventional wisdom holds that publishers impose their views on newsrooms. Not so, say Gentzkow and Shapiro. What actually happens is both more innocent and more insidious. Papers with more Republican readers tend to provide more conservative stories and language; papers in more liberal areas lean left in their coverage and story selection. (The study involved 1,000 phrases reviewed in 429 newspapers, representing about 70 percent of the nation's circulation. To gauge the politics of newspaper readers, ZIP code-level data on voting patterns and circulation were matched.)
This is how the media resemble ice cream, Gentzkow said in an interview. Just as ice cream makers give customers the flavors they want, newspapers give their readers the stories and slant they want. It's a market phenomenon. Ice cream makers strive to maximize ice cream consumption and profits. Papers try to maximize readership and profits. Newspapers are commercial enterprises that respond to economic signals and incentives. Editors, producers and reporters sense what appeals to their readers and try to satisfy these tastes.
Perhaps you are correct when looking at the extremes of the ideological spectrum; however, for most of us, this is not true. Most people want coverage and story selection that aligns with their own particular bias.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20140424/COLUMN68/140429951
The reality of capitalism pretty much is the ultimate research, no? I mean if the market didn't see a problem/need for counter-balancing the MSM then Fox News would have been a instant loser - no? It's ok, just ignore reality.
I think what the academic studies which parse through media content for evidence of bias are finding is that national media displays little if any bias, while the biases in various local media pretty much balance toward neutrality by cancelling each other out. Hence, no media bias on the whole, which doesn't mean that one particular publication has no bias.
Just carry on as you were.To back up what point specifically? The repeated reference to "conservatives" in my post is a repeated reference to belief among conservatives that the media has a left bias. I don't really see that as controversial - the fact that conservatives see it that way.
So far as I can see, pretty close to 100% of conservatives believe the media has a left bias. I honestly have yet to see an exception. Are you challenging this? If not, then what point do you feel needs backing by survey data?
I don't disagree with what you quoted. However, I should have been clearer that I'm talking about media organizations who distribute nationally, such as CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and to an extent, the NYT.
Local newspapers in liberal areas probably do display a left bias because that is their market. So, for example, the SF Chronicle, which is the most circulated paper in the Bay Area where I live, I believe does display some liberal bias. Similarly, no doubt a paper like the Dallas Morning News has a right leaning bias, though I can't verify that for sure as I haven't really read it. It just wouldn't surprise me.
Like I said, the media does whatever it does to make money, period. If in a given case that means having a left or right bias, then that is what they'll do. It just doesn't make any sense for national media to have such a bias, unless you're FoxNews and you're the only one competing for a large bloc of viewers who have convinced themselves that the rest of the media is against them.
I think what the academic studies which parse through media content for evidence of bias are finding is that national media displays little if any bias, while the biases in various local media pretty much balance toward neutrality by cancelling each other out. Hence, no media bias on the whole, which doesn't mean that one particular publication has no bias.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Structure_of_Political_Media_Coverage_files/quoting_patterns.pdfConclusion
Although we expected to find that most media lean left, we were astounded by the degree. A norm among journalists is to present “both sides of the issue.” Consequently, while we expected members of Congress to cite primarily think tanks that are on the same side of the ideological spectrum as they are, we expected journalists to practice a much more balanced citation practice, even if the journalist’s own ideology opposed the think tanks that he or she is sometimes citing. This was not always the case. Most of the mainstream media outlets that we examined (ie all those besides Drudge Report and Fox News’ Special Report) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than they were to the median member of the House.
CONCLUSION
We propose an unsupervised framework for uncovering and characterizing
media bias starting from quoting patterns. We apply this
framework to a dataset of matched news articles and presidential
speech transcripts, which we make publicly available together with
an online visualization that can facilitate further exploration.
There is systematic bias in the quoting patterns of different types
of news sources. We find that the bias goes beyond simple newsworthiness
and space limitation effects, and we objectively quantify
this by showing our model to be predictive of quoting activity,
without making any a priori assumptions regarding the dimension
of bias and without requiring labeling of the news domains.
When comparing the unsupervised model with self-declared political
slants, we find that an important dimension of bias is roughly
aligned with an ideology spectrum ranging from conservative, passing
through liberal, to the international media outlets.
By selectively choosing to report certain types of quotes by the
same speaker, the media has the power to portray different personae
of the speaker. Thus, an audience only following one type of media
may witness a presidential persona that is different from the
one portrayed by other types of media or from what the president
tries to project. By conducting a linguistic analysis on the latent
dimensions revealed by our framework, we find that differences go
beyond topic selection, and that mainstream conservative outlets
portray a persona that is characterized by negativism, both in terms
of negative sentiment and in use of lexical negation.
Yes, this is what they say. It's also why anecdotal evidence is kind of useless. Most (or all?) publications are biased in one way or the other, but in the aggregate there's little reason to believe systemic bias exists.
I'm personally not convinced that there is no main stream media bias on the whole.
http://www.journalism.org/2007/10/29/the-invisible-primaryinvisible-no-longer/
Only because every time reality approaches, Eskimospy starts screaming "bad touch!"reality is missing a touch from you.
The media is the media. Fox leans right, the rest lean left to varying degrees. To attempt to claim the rest aren't partisan or don't push an ideology is naive.
What passes for network journalism has lost money for decades, pretty much since it became politicized during the sixties. There has been a constant struggle between profit-driven network execs trying to make the news not so biased as to insult half its customer base and news execs determined to present the news as they see it - from a far left progressive point of view - ever since. Are you really going to argue that a network news anchor releasing the "first of a series" of network "news" articles attacking a Republican President with "evidence" whose unbelievability was ludicrously apparent was somehow an accident? How about shooting Nixon with a harsh sharp focus and Kennedy with a much more flattering soft focus? Simply sensationalism?If, after listening to people like Rush Limbaugh for years on end, conservatives are convinced that the media is against them, this presents a great economic opportunity for a company like Fox to create a conservative biased news outlet to capitalize on that perception. It doesn't, however, make that perception reality. It also doesn't mean that the market could support multiple versions of FoxNews, which is precisely why the rest of the media isn't what conservatives say it is.
So far as the rest of the media, it makes absolutely no sense for them to present news which appeals mainly to people at one end of the ideological spectrum. They would all be competing against each other for those readers and viewers. These are publicly traded corporations. They aren't going to present ideologically biased news unless it benefits their bottom line. If you look at news media carefully, it is plainly obvious that it is presented in a sensationalist manner, in order to attract the most possible attention from the most possible viewers and readers. This is the only economic model which makes sense.
Yet conservatives have this notion that the news media isn't really trying to attract the maximum number of readers and viewers but instead is trying to propagate an ideology. This in spite of the fact that they are accountable all the way up the corporate food chain solely based on their bottom line performance. Their job security and salaries entirely depend on it but conservatives are saying that this isn't their priority.
These are profit driven corporations with accountability to shareholders. If conservatives want to make a serious argument, they can start by explaining how operating with a left bias is what makes the most sense for the media from a financial standpoint.
Only because every time reality approaches, Eskimospy starts screaming "bad touch!"
What passes for network journalism has lost money for decades, pretty much since it became politicized during the sixties. There has been a constant struggle between profit-driven network execs trying to make the news not so biased as to insult half its customer base and news execs determined to present the news as they see it - from a far left progressive point of view - ever since. Are you really going to argue that a network news anchor releasing the "first of a series" of network "news" articles attacking a Republican President with "evidence" whose unbelievability was ludicrously apparent was somehow an accident? How about shooting Nixon with a harsh sharp focus and Kennedy with a much more flattering soft focus? Simply sensationalism?
There's a reason that liberal Rupert Murdoch has made a fortune with blatantly right news agencies, and that reason is not the overwhelming nonpartisan nature of his competitors. If it were, then MSNBC would have approximately the same viewership as Fox News. The problem for them is that even though they have dropped any pretense of being objective, their reportage is functionally no different from ABC/CBS/CNN.
If 'bias' is their selling point then logically a market with exactly zero bias would also have that 'right wing bias' hole in it.
Well that's pretty obviously untrue. (hellooooo negative externalities)
Regardless, that means you believe numerous publicly traded companies willingly forewent market share for years by being liberally biased. Classic market failure. Sounds like you're due for a rethink, no?