Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

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I just want to preface this article to say that I'm voting for Obama, not McCain... so let's not make a republican/democrat pissing fest here (good luck with that). I just thought it was a very interesting read...



Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE
Oct. 24, 2008 —


The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.


Reporting Bias
For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.



The Presidential Campaign
But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?



Joe the Plumber
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.



Bad Editors
Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country &

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.


Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
 
I don't know enough about the intricacies of reportage in America to tell for sure, but I smell a bad whiff about this piece. God knows the 'mainstream media' in all its forms has been abrogating its duties to inform for years now - but not in the way this reporter thinks.

To be honest, he comes off as kind of clueless.

I mean, bias, ok? If he wants media that praises Israel, ignores Palestine, praises McCain and disembowels Obama - all he has to do is tune into Fox. There's your bias, mate. Problem solved. Blah.
 
Everyone who is politically aware thinks the media is biased toward their political opponents. It's the way it probably will always be.
 
It really sounds more like he's writing with a pro-McCain angle than a pro-unbiased angle. For instance, look at the verbage he uses when he adds in the descriptor "potential first lady" for Cindy McCain; we all know who Cindy McCain is. He writes about needing to interview Obama's high school drug dealer because we all know about Cindy McCain's addiction problem-----yet we all already know about Obama's youthful abuse, and none of us have seen an interview with the pharmacist who sold Cindy McCain her drugs. :shrug:

I'm not going to argue that there hasn't been any bias at all. But I will say that any good reporter has every right to have been critical of John McCain for 1). the way he's run his campaign despite promising to be 'honorable;' 2). his ridiculous choice of a running mate, in direct opposition to the inexperience angle he'd been running against Obama/the obvious grab for Hillary voters/the lack of vetting; 3). the fact that his campaign went bankrupt; 4). his sideshow with regard to the economic crisis, flying into Washington, and the debate; 5). the mere fact that the man has had no platform whatsoever until this 'anti-tax' charade that emerged last week.

John McCain's given the press a hell of a lot to question him on even before you get to partisan political philosophies. :shrug:
 
Stop listening to what the liberal media is telling you, Utoo. You clearly aren't an independent thinker!
 
From today's Hollywood Reporter.

Both sides of aisle rip MSNBC
Keith Olbermann also criticized at media luncheon

By Paul Bond

Oct 27, 2008, 08:26 PM ET


In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election.

The cable news channel is "completely out of control," said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat.

She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann was criticized by many who attended Monday's luncheon sponsored by the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was dubbed "Hollywood, America and Election '08."

Bloodworth-Thomason and others seemed especially critical of the way MSNBC -- and other media -- has attacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while demeaning her supporters.

"We should stop the demonizing," she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. "It diminishes us," she said of her fellow Democrats.

Bloodworth-Thomason even suggested a defense of Palin and her supporters should be written into TV programming, just as she went out of her way to portray Southern women as smart in her hit TV show "Designing Women."

Attendee Michael Reagan, the radio talk-show host and son of President Ronald Reagan, said he no longer will appear as a guest on MSNBC because "I actually get death threats."

"I'll stop sending them," joked Larry Gelbart, the writer, producer and director best known for the "M*A*S*H" television series and such movie screenplays as "Tootsie" and "Oh, God!"

Pollster Frank Luntz, a regular guest on the Fox News, joked that MSNBC is "the only network with more letters in its name than viewers."

On a more serious note, Luntz said it's a problem that the electorate chooses to watch news programs not for information but to confirm already-held beliefs, and that applies to viewers of CNN and Fox News as well.

Luntz predicted a Barack Obama victory and said that one of the many reasons the Democrats have been more effective with their message is because, while Republicans dominate talk radio, Democrats have begun to dominate the Internet.

"I'd rather have the Internet," he said.

Obama also gets credit because he's a better communicator than past Democrats, Luntz said, comparing the previous Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, to one of those trees that threw apples at Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz."

Actress Patricia Heaton noted that Hollywood workers too often just assume everyone they work with is a like-minded liberal. When those around her belittle John McCain or Palin, she politely reminds them that she's a Republican.

"That's what you have to do in our town," she said.

Actor Beau Bridges lamented that there is "too much entertainment" in elections nowadays. "Just put 'em in a room -- like we are now -- and let 'em talk about the issues," he said.

Some of the most spirited debate came from the panel's moderator, outspoken conservative Lionel Chetwynd. The writer, director and producer passionately defended the Iraq War and Palin, whom he called "the ideal Jeffersonian political figure."

Chetwynd's performance prompted Gelbart to joke that Chetwynd was the most "immoderate moderator" he had ever seen.

"It's a liberal organization," Chetwynd said of the Caucus. "But I'm trying."
 
MSNBC is so strange to me. It's half a news channel, and apparently half a "life behind bars" channel.

Seriously, all they seem to air at night are shows about people in jail. :huh:
 
Here's another complaint over the state of journalism:

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( ]Snipurl / Snurl / Snipr - Snippetty snip snip with your looong URLs! ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.
 
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

As someone who is getting her Master's degree in journalism, I do feel a sense of bias in the mainstream media. What I quoted above are examples. Why can't Joe is Plumber ask Obama something that concerns him? Isn't this a free country, with freedom of speech as our first amendment? And the story about Acorn allegedly doing fake registrations, that should be a major story, not something to shrug off as a right wing conspiracy.

Yes, I do agree that it is difficult to be platonically objective in the journalism field, but as Malone said, it is something to aspire to. I do think the media - particularly television because that is what I am aiming for - has been biased towards Obama. Some of you may say, if I want to see a pro-McCain station, turn on FOX. Well, I don't watch FOX because I feel they don't do news seriously; its all entertainment for them, even the election. MSNBC is what Card would describe as the mouth piece of the Democratic party. CNN is as fair and balanced as can be, with Lou Dobbs and Wolf Blitzer - that's being balanced IMO.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I just feel the media has been biased this election year, and that is not what journalists are supposed to do. Sometimes I feel all journalists should take an oath similar to the Hippocrate's Oath for doctors. This way, all journalists would be held responsible for their profession.

And for the record, I am not voting for a president this year. I feel no matter who gets in, America is headed for a lot of trouble, and neither Obama or McCain could save us. Sounds pessimistic, but that's how I see it.
 
As someone who is getting her Master's degree in journalism, I do feel a sense of bias in the mainstream media. What I quoted above are examples. Why can't Joe is Plumber ask Obama something that concerns him? Isn't this a free country, with freedom of speech as our first amendment? And the story about Acorn allegedly doing fake registrations, that should be a major story, not something to shrug off as a right wing conspiracy.




Joe the Plumber did ask Obama a question, and Obama answered.

it's the McCain campaign that chose to take that exchange and spin it as evidence that Obama is a socialist.

simply because ACORN gets a registration from "Mickey Mouse" doesn't mean that MM is going to show up and vote on that day.

here's a money quote from a good article in Politico:


OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.

And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.

So what?

Before answering the question, indulge us in noting that the subject of ideological bias in the news media is a drag. The people who care about it typically come at the issue with scalding biases of their own. Any statement journalists make on the subject can and will be used against them. So the incentive is to make bland and guarded statements. Even honest ones, meanwhile, will tend to strike partisans as evasive or self-delusional.

Here goes anyway.

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.
 
As someone who is getting her Master's degree in journalism, I do feel a sense of bias in the mainstream media. What I quoted above are examples. Why can't Joe is Plumber ask Obama something that concerns him? Isn't this a free country, with freedom of speech as our first amendment? And the story about Acorn allegedly doing fake registrations, that should be a major story, not something to shrug off as a right wing conspiracy.

There are a few problems with that argument. First, Joe the Plumber didn't ask a question that concerned him---the subject matter of his question had nothing at all to do with his situation; he asked about a talking point, not personal experience. Second, the media did let him ask his question in peace. When he was made into an icon during the debate by one of the candidates, the media turned to get more information on him in the same way they dig for info on any single person in the spotlight. Perhaps they had a little more desire to find out the truth about this guy as it seems rather odd that any plumber could make over $250,000 a year.

As for ACORN, it really shouldn't be a major story. Yes, individuals who were hired by the company committed a crime. But in the big picture, it doesn't amount to anything that warrants daily media attention. It's not as if their actions actually affected votes. It would indeed warrant daily, thorough media attention if their actions in some way prevented or swayed voting.

And for the record, I am not voting for a president this year. I feel no matter who gets in, America is headed for a lot of trouble, and neither Obama or McCain could save us. Sounds pessimistic, but that's how I see it.

:sigh: To each his/her own. But I do hope you know that you have no right whatsoever to complain about a single thing over the next four years.
 
:sigh: To each his/her own. But I do hope you know that you have no right whatsoever to complain about a single thing over the next four years.

There's more than the economy at stake here. Whoever takes over is inheriting probably the biggest pile of shit any oitgoing President has ever left his successor and won't get re-elected in 4 years' time. However things like SCOTUS nominees, America's standing in the world, getting troops home, etc CAN all be influenced by this President, and those are reason enough to warrant voting.
 
:sigh: To each his/her own. But I do hope you know that you have no right whatsoever to complain about a single thing over the next four years.

Even if I did vote, it wouldn't count much as people say it would. I live in NY which is gung-ho for Obama. If I voted for McCain, he'll never win New York. If I voted for Obama, that will just be a drop in the ocean.

And yes, I do have the right to complain if I am unhappy with something. As I said, I am not satisfied with either candidate, so no matter who gets in, I'll be complaining about them. Voting is not the ticket for freedom of speech.

And don't worry, electoral votes show Obama is going to win the election. You have nothing to fear.
 
Cable news isn't really journalism, it's as simple as that.
It's E! doing politics.

So it's actually not surprising that MSNBC would counter program FOX.
At least MSNBC doesn't claim to be "Fair and Balanced"
And CNN is like the review of Spinal Tap's 11th album "Shark Sandwich"
I will spare you my diatribe on Wolf Blitzer and Co.
 
And the story about Acorn allegedly doing fake registrations, that should be a major story, not something to shrug off as a right wing conspiracy.

I do agree that the fact that some volunteers for such organizations go as far as to corrupting votes in any way should be honestly discussed in the media.
However, I do not agree when it gets dishonestly discussed, as in this candidate has ties to this organization, so he is responsible for that and has to repudiate it.

I will spare you my diatribe on Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Blitzer is so monotonous I can't listen to him. It doesn't matter if he asks someone, makes a statement or just introduces another issue, he speaks all the same.


That's my diatribe. :wink:
 
:sigh: To each his/her own. But I do hope you know that you have no right whatsoever to complain about a single thing over the next four years.

Is it better to vote based on a leaflet handed out by some whacky church organization saying Obama is a terrorist or to sit at home and protest the fact that our country is being sent down the gutter by corporate and special interests?

Seems to me, you'd rather afford 'rights' to those who would mindlessly pull a ballot lever.

I know that's not what you mean.
But what you're implying is tedious.

What good is a contrarian vote in a mass majority red or blue state?
Just to say you did? You could always lie. What's the point?

I have more respect for people who actively participate in the political process and then shun it in protest than those who go to the voting booth based on all the wrong reasons.

I'll be voting for Obama in a state where he will certainly lose.
I do it because of the basic principles you allude to but I don't expect others to follow suit. I vote because it's a right that I appreciate. Just like a protest vote. Somebody sacrificed more than I could ever give so that I could choose for myself to do either.

Cue the Lee Greenwood!!
 
Wolf Blitzer is so monotonous I can't listen to him. It doesn't matter if he asks someone, makes a statement or just introduces another issue, he speaks all the same.


That's my diatribe. :wink:

I hate it when he reads the graphics on the screen. (Like poll numbers)

He will literally sit there and read the entire graphic as if the graphic serves no purpose at all, pausing all along the way in between "uh..." and yes, totally monotone.

That's a 'teaser' of my anti-CNN diatribe.
 
Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power.

Meanwhile, Joe the Plumber held a press conference to announce who he is endorsing and is even on a "Joe the Plumber" tour.

toledoblade.com -- 'Joe the Plumber' calls John McCain 'a real American'
 
"This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans."
Which party dominated Congress in the late 1990s?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase loans from lenders; they don't lend money themselves. When subprime lending was at its peak in '04-'06, more than 80% of subprime loans were issued by private institutions. Greenspan's decision to cut interest rates after the '01-'02 recession fueled the bubble, unregulated private lenders made and repackaged tons of junk loans into mortgage-backed securities, then sold them to investors. There was no assignee liability. And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were competing against Citigroup, Merrill Lynch et al., they too took stupid risks to protect their market share. Trying to pin a SNAFU this complex all on Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd is hilarious. And as for who got contributions from who and took advice from who and when, that's all been dissected and counterdissected and debunked and counterdebunked ad nauseum in the press, as well as by nonpartisan organizations like FactCheck. I can't say what the TV news coverage has been like because I don't watch TV, but you'd have to have not been reading the papers to believe that the predictable blame games from both sides were "buried."
 
I honestly don't believe Plumber Joe was scrutinized because he asked Obama a question. I think he was scrutinized because McCain decided to make him a superstar by mentioning him every other sentence.

:shrug:
 
If someone who chooses not to vote can tell me that there is not even one single issue that they believe is important and that they believe will be better served by one candidate over the other, then I have no problem with that person not voting.

Obviously it's not a great thing to vote based on feelings or false information. And it's okay if you can honestly say that you have a hard time deciding because you like and dislike various portions of each platform equally. But if it's just because one thinks that "both candidates suck," then I'd say that that person hasn't really tried to engage him- or herself in the election or the issues.
 
If someone who chooses not to vote can tell me that there is not even one single issue that they believe is important and that they believe will be better served by one candidate over the other, then I have no problem with that person not voting.

Obviously it's not a great thing to vote based on feelings or false information. And it's okay if you can honestly say that you have a hard time deciding because you like and dislike various portions of each platform equally. But if it's just because one thinks that "both candidates suck," then I'd say that that person hasn't really tried to engage him- or herself in the election or the issues.

I don't believe both candidates suck. I believe both equally bring something valuable to the White House. But I am undecided because I really feel the US won't be saved from any turmoil the future will bring. Both McCain and Obama say they will save us from economic problems, but I doubt it. I have paid attention to the election closely, and have come away dissatisfied with both candidates. Maybe I've set my standards too high, I don't know. But no one can force me to vote for a president this year.

ETA: And I do have to admit that living in a state that will guaranteed vote for Obama, that also makes me less motivated to vote, for reasons I explained earlier.
 
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