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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (15454)	3/29/2006 5:45:07 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

The USA Today link hardly says anything about liberal bias as a cause of anything. In fact, steps back from precisely that argument. Just declining trust in American institutions. It gives the Jayson Blair story with one hand, then takes it back with another. It gives the declining trust argument with one hand, then gives it back with another. It's not evidence for any explanation. Pretty standard USA Today. Checking the rest of the evidence, there's the usual stuff. The National Review says that liberal bias in the media. Now there's a surprise!! And some blog called the TimesWatch whose mission in life is to find fault with the Times says the Times is at fault. --------------------- USA TODAY Trust in media keeps on slipping By Peter Johnson, USA TODAY Public confidence in the media, already low, continues to slip. Only 36%, among the lowest in years, believe news organizations get the facts straight, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. Trust in the media has dropped from 54% in mid-1989 — about the time of the fall of communism — to a low of 32% in December 2000, during the post-election confusion over George W. Bush and Al Gore. Low marks for the media reflect a larger societal trend today, says Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University journalism professor: "I think you'll find almost all institutions declining in popular repute." A fairly steady flow of journalism scandals from the early '80s to today — from Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke making up a story about a young heroin addict to New York Times reporter Jayson Blair's resignation May 1 after it was found that he plagiarized and fabricated stories — probably adds to the erosion of faith in the media. "This is a cynical time," Gitlin says. "People don't need a lot of reason to become disabused of institutions." That lack of confidence, however, may not be tied directly to Blair, the poll suggests. The public seems generally uninterested in his saga, which tarnished the reputation of one of the world's pre-eminent publications and prompted a painful re-examination of the newspaper's practices. About two out of three people polled said they are not following the story. Nonetheless, coverage has been so intense that it could easily damage broader opinions of the media, says Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. "You don't have to follow this story a lot to be troubled by it a lot," Felling says. "The media can be knocked down a peg during a 10-second exchange between a bartender and a customer." That lack of confidence is at odds with the opinions of people who actually have been in the news. Of 262 adults who said they had been part of a story covered by the media, the perception was far more favorable: 78% found the coverage had been accurate. "It's easier to hate a category than an individual," says Felling, who compares the lack of confidence to people saying they basically distrust politicians, "but then say their representative is doing a great job." The poll also gives the press higher marks for correcting mistakes once discovered: 63% said newspapers are willing to print corrections when their stories contain errors. The Times published a four-page dissection of Blair's stories on May 11, detailing errors in 36 of his stories. The survey of 1,014 adults May 19-21 has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Find this article at: usatoday.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (15454)	3/29/2006 6:45:11 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 541957

I read all five of your links. The first three don't appear to address the issue of liberal bias. The second two are not at all helpful. They are simply right wing sources accusing the NYT of liberal bias. I would guess their problem is not that NYT has a liberal bias, but that it doesn't have a right wing bias. I think that the decline in readership and lack of trust in the media has more to do with the internet and the changing interests of the younger demographic. If there is any study attempting to demonstrate a link between bias and declining readership I haven't seen it. If the media are doing their job it is only natural that the supporters of party in power will hurl accusations of bias. It is the duty of the media to question the actions and look for attempts at dissembling or obfuscation by the party in power. I read somewhere that the only real news is what those in power don't want you to know.

To: carranza2 who wrote (15454)	3/30/2006 2:38:10 AM
From: RMF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541957

Isn't RADIO part of mass media??? Can you turn on a radio in ANY part of this country and NOT be bombarded with right-wing conservative gibberish??????????????? You talk about Dan Rather, but from what I've read, Rush Limbaugh has more listeners than Dan Rather EVER did. Limbaugh makes 5X as much as Rather ever did also. If FOX NEWS can conspicuously lean to the RIGHT, then how the hell can you or anybody else say CBS NEWS or any other network news outlet can't lean ANY way they want. You can talk about a "liberal slant" and I think that also allows me to talk about an "intelligent slant". If there had been computers in 1933, you can bet there would have been a barrage of complaints about ANY newspaper or commentator that hadn't gone with the government line.