LOL....you reference that blog as objective!!!
Here is their mission statement:
"Introduction and mission statement
The mission of this blog is to keep an eye on the media, in order to expose and answer liberal biases, agendas and fallacious reporting. The title is in answer to Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?".
Q: Alterman's book never defines the word "liberal". Can you?
A: No doubt there are as many definitions of "liberal" as there are people who call themselves liberals. This blog will use "liberal" to describe a worldview that sees society as a struggle between inherently "underprivileged" and inherently "overprivileged" classes. Along with the central belief in the class struggle, there is a conviction that the primary role of government is to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots and to transfer perceived privileges from the perceived haves to the perceived have-nots. These core beliefs call for domestic policies that prefer government micromanagement to private enterprise and favor high taxes, escalating social welfare benefits, environmental regulation with scant regard to economic impact, racial preferences and mandatory "universal" systems of education, pensions and healthcare, while also limiting consumer choice in nearly every sphere of economic activity. Differences in outcomes between groups are reflexively attributed to racism, classism and/or sexism. Liberals are suspicious of the police, criminal justice and penal systems, mainly on the belief that poor people and minorities are disproportionately harmed by them. Immigrants are assumed to be underprivileged and therefore deserving of special protection, while "undocumented workers" are assumed to be both as legitimate as lawful immigrants yet also requiring of extra-special protections.
In national security and foreign affairs, the liberal attitude is to level American "privilege" relative to the "underprivileged" governments abroad and to forswear American power, appease our foes and delegate sovereignty to unelected transnational bodies. This entails an unnatural reverence for the United Nations and the European Union, reflexive criticism of Israel and quick sympathy for terrorists and tyrants (as long as they oppose the United States). Consistent with the impulse against national self-defense is the discomfort with individual self-defense and the hostility toward gun ownership by law-abiding citizens.
On social issues, "Liberal" connotes laissez-faire attitudes in most realms of private behavior, such as abortion rights, sexual conduct, assisted suicide and drug use (with the exception of tobacco). Liberals tend to be more secular than religious and are typically hostile to religion in public life, but would be reluctant to criticize any religious practices of non-Christian people of color.
Liberals also tend to support the expansion of federal and judicial authority and restraints on plebiscite, legislative and state authority, along with certain restrictions on political speech and campaign contributions -- but only to the extent that tipping the scales in one direction or another helps to ensure that liberal policies would prevail. Liberals favor Democrats over Republicans in nearly every case, even to the point of excusing away decidedly illiberal behavior when committed by a Democrat.
Q: Your definition of liberal sounds like a caricature. You don't think real liberals believe all of that, do you?
Of course, not every self-described liberal embraces every "liberal" position, nor does every media organization, journalist or news report always manifest liberal bias. Similarly, not all self-described non-liberals reject every "liberal" position. Indeed, the contributors to this blog support a variety of liberal positions and some lean distinctly liberal (or libertarian) on a number of social issues. The purpose of this blog is not to attack every liberal position, but to expose consistent trends of liberal bias in the media. Because even those who support a particular "liberal" goal or another should also recognize that a persistent bias in reporting does not serve the public very well.
Does the mainstream media lean consistently liberal? While it's difficult to put a number on such a tendency, experience as a media consumer says: "why, yes!". Although non-liberal voices are also certainly represented in the media, the overall message seems to be "liberal", in both news and opinion in most daily newspapers and most broadcast programs. Does this liberal bias influence public opinion, public policy and electoral outcomes? It's hard to imagine how it couldn't.
Q: So what is this blog going to do about it?
We aim to serve as a counterweight, as modest as it may be, to the liberal excesses of the mainstream media; to call attention to and to answer habitual biases and agenda journalism, and to help raise underreported issues and correct factual errors.
Q: I thought blogs already did this. Why start a new blog?
Yes, the blogosphere does answer liberal media bias, among other things. But the most widely read blogs focus on the national media and the leading daily newspapers, and barely scratch the surface of regional media. Although the national dailies help set the national agenda, most people get their news from regional media. While the top blogs occasionally point to exceptional items from the regional media, a lot of regional media is underlooked.
Q: Aren't there are a lot of good local blogs that cover regional media?
Absolutely. The founding contributors all write their own blogs that cover their respective hometown media. We also believe that we can have even more of an impact if we also share a platform for the purpose of answering biases that appear across both national and regional media. We also aim to promote and encourage existing local media blogs (our own as well as others) and to inspire new ones.
-- with thanks to Patterico for a number of great comments and suggestions for the varieties of liberal biases, and with special thanks to Eric Alterman for inspiring the idea and the name. And in case you missed it, some of the zanier claims from Alterman's book were debunked here, here and here.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 02, 2004 09:19 PM
Categories: General
thatliberalmedia.com |
