🚀 go-pugleaf

Joe Buck (jbuck@synopsys.com) wrote:
>: I doubt your last sentence -- have you seen how low the ratings for
>: network newscasts are these days and compared them to newspaper
>: subscription rates?

dlow@ppg01.sc.hp.com (Danny Low) writes:
>Newspaper subscription rates also apply to the Washington Post,
>New York Times, San Jose Mercury News and other papers that are
>liberal as well as to the conservative newspapers. So how many
>people watch the 3 liberal network news broadcasts as opposed to
>ONLY the conservative newspapers? 

You conveniently deleted the point I was replying to, in which you
asserted that more people saw one network newscast than read all the
conservative newspapers in the country.

But while the NYT and Wash. Post were once liberal papers, it would be
hard to argue that they still are.  Both are more likely to endorse
Democrats, but Democrat != liberal.  The NYT's Central America coverage
throughout the early 80s was rabidly pro-contra, for example.  While
the Washington Post tends to support the permanent government (i.e.
the Congress, bureaucrats, and better-connected lobbyists), they tend to
editorialize *against* any *changes* in a more progressive direction.
Example: on health care, the liberal position is to be in favor of a
Canadian-style single-payer system.  Clinton-style tinkering is a kind of
middle-of-the-road approach, which you would expect since Clinton
represents the conservative wing of the Democratic party (Hillary is
a liberal, but Bill isn't -- he spent his whole career trying to move the
Democrats to the right).  The NYT and the WP tend to be to the right of
Clinton on this (yes, they'll say, we need health care reform, but ol'
Bill should be realistic and settle for a bill that doesn't do anything
but will pass so everyone can declare victory and go home).

Papers like the NYT and the Washington Post who are strongly in favor of
the status quo plus occasional fine-tuning are middle-of-the-road in any
reasonable society.  They seem liberal to some (conservatives like Danny)
since the left has almost no voice in this country.  If you think the TV
networks are leftists, read Mother Jones (which isn't all that leftist
by world standards).

>Rush Limbaugh is the natural reaction of people to being fed nothing
>but liberal views. Notice that Limbaugh show is carried INDEPENDENT
>of the networks.

You conveniently ignored my points about George Will (ABC paid
commentator) or Henry Kissinger (ABC paid consultant who has had more air
time than any other guest).  This is network air time.  If you're willing
to count CNN as a network (and you should) you've got Evans and Novak,
arch-conservatives like Pat Buchanan up against moderate hawkish
neoliberals from the New Republic.

>TV show. Liberals have 60 Minutes which pretends to be objective
>when it actually only presents liberal viewpoints on the show.
>That was illustrated in its story of forced school bussing. Mike
>Wallace openly rationalized the hypocrisy of the bill's sponsors
>who sent their children to private schools to avoid having their
>children bussed.

For years Diane Sawyer, who worked for Richard Nixon up until the final
days and was deeply loyal to him, was on that show.  You give a single
example of bias on a show that's been on for 20 years.

>People who study the media have published papers on the political
>bias of the news reporters. This is NOT just Nixon and Reagan
>saying the news media is liberal.

The second sentence doesn't follow from the first.  *Reporters* are more
liberal than the country as a whole.  Their *bosses*, who have the final
say, are more conservative.

>The only people who say the news media is not liberal are non-news
>media liberals. The news reporters are at least honest enough to
>admit their bias.

And they overcompensate for it to "prove" their unbiasedness.  Clinton has
received *very* rough press in his first year compared to Reagan.  Sure,
sometimes he deserved it, but he's been hammered plenty.

> A simple search in the library magazine references
>will find plenty of articles in publications such as the Wilson Quarterly
>on the liberal bias of the media.

You're confusing the politics of individual reporters with the politics of
the product.  A reporter can't directly put his or her own views into a
story. He or she can slant a story by choosing which sources to quote.
Furthermore, the editor (generally more conservative) often assigns the
slant of a story up front.


-- 
-- Joe Buck 	<jbuck@synopsys.com>
Posting from but not speaking for Synopsys, Inc.
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