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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (215143)	1/27/2007 7:23:31 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Here's the thing. If you cannot comprehend the concept of bias, then there's no point. ROTFLOL. I also understand the concept of manufactured bias. And what we have in this particular case is an instance of manufactured bias. The facts in evidence. The news media pulls and prints stories from AP. I hope that's not a shock to you. Whether it's WP, NYT, or Fox news, they all pulling stories off AP. I don't expect the WP, the NYT, or Fox news has staff sitting in South Dakota. Fox might be inclined to use some stories written by their network affiliates. Fox might even have a bias to do that. It's not a good bias or a bad bias, it's a function of the relationship between Fox news and Fox affiliates. I don't lose any sleep over it. We can ask why the particular story is "important" and deserves coverage. Do we think that the American public at large is following the legislature of South Dakota. Hmmm.....I don't think so. I'll bet it has something to do with SEX. Feel free to disagree. The media has no latitude in changing the feeds they receive from AP. Copyright. You either print it or you don't print it. Since SEX is such an important news item, more often than not it will be printed. If it was a story about some blue collar worker groping a babe at the bus stop in Podunk, SD they wouldn't bother. What else is in evidence. AP updates stories. No surprise there. News sources like AP and Reuters compete for getting out stories faster than the other one. The outlets receiving the feeds have a decision to make whether to print the updates or not. I would guess that the magnitude of the change influences whether the outlet prints the update. If the update was ooops, it wasn't Sutton it was some guy named Stinton, they are more likely to make the update. If the change is small to insignificant they flip a coin. Fox News and the Washington Times have a conservative bias and the Washington Post and NYT have a liberal bias. But that doesn't mean that every single story that goes to print demonstrates that bias. The only thing your particular example illustrates is that the media has a bias towards printing stories about sex that they get from AP. Nothing more, nothing less. If you think that the example of Fox news and the Washington Post printing the same story from AP without party affiliation reflects some liberal bias by the WP but not from Fox the only thing that you've proven is your own bias and your inability to go beyond your own bias. jttmab

To: Ilaine who wrote (215143)	1/27/2007 10:32:23 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I believe there was a study done that showed that papers and other media outlets almost exactly mirrored their audience biases. So it's probable that rather than being biased to be biased and drive politics, they are driven by market forces to provide their audiences with what they want. That's hardly a grand conspiracy- which is the only thing I ever comment on. Every outlet everywhere is biased by it's need to have an audience. To say something is biased is, imo, to say nothing more than "it exists". I'm not sure what the point is- except, I guess, to disabuse those folks who honestly believe their source is unbiased. But what can you do with people who really believe that? Not only are they wrong about their source, they probably don't even recognize their own biases.