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Forums - Politics Discussion - The three headed dragon against Obama

Kasz216 said:
Bong Lover said:

Not that this is going anywhere, but the liberal media bias thing is a huge red herring that conservastives would do well to reject as soon as possible. They won't and they will cling onto the liberal media monster to explain away everything under the sun.

In reality, there is no liberal media bias. It's true that more jourtnalists identify as liberals then conservatives, and this is where this ongoing myth always goes to the well. It's based on statments like "Their political views will subconciously slant coverage" to more outright claim of a grand liberal agenda to mislead the public.

Instead of going by this kind of meta information, look up the actual research that is done on the subject and one sees that the coverage is almost completely even. There is nothing in the data of actual coverage that shows any significant liberal bias in US media. It just isn't there.

So where does the myth come from? The liberal bias myth is itself an example of bias, in this case confirmation bias. It's a theory many people want to believe, so they will give much more weight to information that supports the theory then information that denies it. An example of this is on display in the quoted post where an article from the Meda Research Center is presented as some sort of credible proof for a liberal media bias.


Actually... the research that's done on the subject often shows the same thing.  At least when looking at the content, rather then how much content exists.  For example... all the news networks are reporting about Benghazi... which would count under most studies as a "Conservative news story."   Though, is it when the reporters and guests all talk about how it's a non issue?

It's the same thing as stories about women in the Media... the actual numbers are fairly favorable... the content however?  Generally sort of dismissive and riddled with code words.

 

Most media will reach the center... but it's worth noting... that the actual media center is left of the actual center of peoples beliefs.

I mean, a decent example i'd say is gay rights.  I've supported gay rights longer then most people have... and it isn't hard to see that gay rights have gotten MUCH better media coverage over the years then the number of people who supported gay marriage would of suggested.  Why?  The meida is generally supportive of gay rights.   Therefore reports about "Gay's ruining morality" and other such bullshit only existed on fringe rightwing networks.... even when that was what the majority of Americans believed.   While things about people being discriminating against gays was often talked about... even when it was the law of the land... (and the popular law of the land.)

Outside of stories about how it's suddenly way more popular.  I'd argue that gay marriage coverage hasn't changed.  Which, I support gay marriage and seeing more conservative coverage of it would of made me want to bash myself in the head with a brick, but i'm not so myopic to pretend the cause in particular i supported got an advantage as far as how the media treated it.

 

Another example is abortion rights.  Most people are for abortion rights... but also for stricter limits on abortion.  News generally slants towards full choice (as most news reporters do) and a few right wing people go the whole "Pro Life" route.  Nobody argues or reports  for the middle ground most people wants.

Also, as for the Media Research Center.  It was simply a good summary of a bunch of research that does exist.

Just a couple of things:

Research on this type of thing does not simpy say that this topic is conservative and this topic is liberal and tally up the number of articles. They determine what they describe as tone, which is an attempt to establish the slant of the article. That means there will be a number of conservative leaning articles on Benghazi, and a number of liberal leaning articles on Bengazhi.

As for the Media Reserch Center, you should not use any of their material to try to make a point about media bias. It's a hyperconservative orgnization with just one agenda: Prove and counteract liberal bias in media. Their methodology is laughably unscientific and their 'research' is 100% partisan.

Finally. It's possible that the media strive towards a center that is slightly left of the true political center in the US. My point is that this shift is very small if there at all, and certainly this bias gap is much smaller than the bias people themselves have when reading the news. In short, the concept of a liberal media conspiracy is a dead end. There's no real proof for any significant bias and it's extremely dabatable how much impact this bias would have anyway.



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Kasz216 said:
Or to put it another way. The thought that one can be completely free of our subconscious effecting how we perceive and act on stories based on our overt beliefs is more or less the exact opposite of what everything the social sciences tell us about sexism, racism, and why so many many more isms exist and continue to exist through our programming culture.

To deny it's the same mechanic in media is to basically to disavow the very premise that people who are of liberal minds socially should internalize.


This is conjuncture. It is entierly possible that journalists are more aware of their political leanings and overcompensate by actively trying to be nonpartisan. The possible explanation is just as well supported as yours. So I'll say it again, that a majority of journalists lean left does not automatically mean that their reporting will lean left. This is the basic premise of the argument and it is not well documented to be the case.



Bong Lover said:

If you care to look outside the liberal media bias echo chamber you can easily find many studies that shows no real bias, slight conservative bias or slight liberal bias. As one would imagine, when looking at metastudies, the various bias outlets balance each other out and there is virtually no net bias in overall media. This is not to say that there are not liberal leaning and conservative leaning news outlets, but the notion that there is a clear liberal slant in media as a whole is not supported by facts.

Since you obviously will ask again. Here's one exapmple of a study of coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign and who got more positive and negative mention in the news media:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/cr

So, no one had less favorable coverage than Obama, does that mean the media has a conservative bias? No, it only shows that in 2012 Obama got a lot of negative coverage. In reality, media has a much stronger finacial bias than political bias, they will report to fit the 'general mood' of their consumers.

And more bullshit.

Did you even read your own source? It does nothing to support your claim. It addresses a very confined event, the republican primary. To form a fair assessment, you would have to include the democratic primary in such a study to address both ends of the spectrum. This is logic 101.

Start reading:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/04_0614_liberalmedia_bw.pdf

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/media-bias-is-real-finds-ucla-6664.aspx

And here is Jake Tapper admitting the liberal bias:

http://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/jake-tapper-media-helped-tip-the-scales-towards-obama-in-2008/

Devotion to inanity much? I mean learn to read some actual studies, not ones that don't address your point at all.

 



dsgrue3 said:
Bong Lover said:

If you care to look outside the liberal media bias echo chamber you can easily find many studies that shows no real bias, slight conservative bias or slight liberal bias. As one would imagine, when looking at metastudies, the various bias outlets balance each other out and there is virtually no net bias in overall media. This is not to say that there are not liberal leaning and conservative leaning news outlets, but the notion that there is a clear liberal slant in media as a whole is not supported by facts.

Since you obviously will ask again. Here's one exapmple of a study of coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign and who got more positive and negative mention in the news media:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/cr

So, no one had less favorable coverage than Obama, does that mean the media has a conservative bias? No, it only shows that in 2012 Obama got a lot of negative coverage. In reality, media has a much stronger finacial bias than political bias, they will report to fit the 'general mood' of their consumers.

And more bullshit.

Did you even read your own source? It does nothing to support your claim. It addresses a very confined event, the republican primary. To form a fair assessment, you would have to include the democratic primary in such a study to address both ends of the spectrum. This is logic 101.

Start reading:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/04_0614_liberalmedia_bw.pdf

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/media-bias-is-real-finds-ucla-6664.aspx

And here is Jake Tapper admitting the liberal bias:

http://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/jake-tapper-media-helped-tip-the-scales-towards-obama-in-2008/

Devotion to inanity much? I mean learn to read some actual studies, not ones that don't address your point at all.

 

Indeed, there is an UCLA report that shows liberal bias, but the point is, there are many others that show no bias or conservative bias. The UCLA research was conducted by a conservative professor and the metric is set up against a supposed center of the American public and rated against that. The study only covers about 20 different news shows, the researcher admited to go in expectign to find liberal bias and found it. In short, there's no way that research paper can be held as the be all and end all of the discussion. Great, there are many opther reports that show the opposite. Here is another collection of stats from the same election:

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnfull/20120807/CG52261-INFO

What does this prove? Nothing, but we can go on forever exchanging links to studies and reports. The most interesting report on this is a metastudy report that studies the findings in a wide number of reports and concluded that it's impossible to show bias either way. The various outlets cancel eachother out and any bias is negleble to none. Unfortunately I can not find a link to the research paper online.

So where does the idea of liberal bias come from? It's a stated strategy by the Republican party to aggressivly attack the media to try to sway coverage slightly in their favor. At least that is what some quotes are taken to mean. Again, facts show us that more republicans find the news media to be bias than democrats. The myth of a liberal media bias is self sustaining as people want to believe it's true so they look for evidence that supports it and rejects evidence to the contrary. You show an excellent example of it in your post where you vehemently reject the link I posted, and put much more weight on the link that you posted that supports what you want to be true.



Heavenly_King said:

If that is the case, hopefully US people will stop from voting for him.....again.

Aren't you only allowed two terms?



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Bong Lover said:

Indeed, there is an UCLA report that shows liberal bias, but the point is, there are many others that show no bias or conservative bias. The UCLA research was conducted by a conservative professor and the metric is set up against a supposed center of the American public and rated against that. The study only covers about 20 different news shows, the researcher admited to go in expectign to find liberal bias and found it. In short, there's no way that research paper can be held as the be all and end all of the discussion. Great, there are many opther reports that show the opposite. Here is another collection of stats from the same election:

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnfull/20120807/CG52261-INFO

What does this prove? Nothing, but we can go on forever exchanging links to studies and reports. The most interesting report on this is a metastudy report that studies the findings in a wide number of reports and concluded that it's impossible to show bias either way. The various outlets cancel eachother out and any bias is negleble to none. Unfortunately I can not find a link to the research paper online.

So where does the idea of liberal bias come from? It's a stated strategy by the Republican party to aggressivly attack the media to try to sway coverage slightly in their favor. At least that is what some quotes are taken to mean. Again, facts show us that more republicans find the news media to be bias than democrats. The myth of a liberal media bias is self sustaining as people want to believe it's true so they look for evidence that supports it and rejects evidence to the contrary. You show an excellent example of it in your post where you vehemently reject the link I posted, and put much more weight on the link that you posted that supports what you want to be true.

I post actual studies, you post links to op-ed pieces and images.

I think it's pretty clear your argument has no credence.

Futhermore, the image posted analyzes "times quoted" and does not address whether or not this was good or bad, failing to provide any sort of compelling argument at all.

So far you've provided no such sources that back up your claim at all. Score: 3 - 0

Game over.



NintendoPie said:
Heavenly_King said:

If that is the case, hopefully US people will stop from voting for him.....again.

Aren't you only allowed two terms?

I am not acquanted with US politics.



Heavenly_King said:

I am not acquanted with US politics.

I feel like it's either two or four. Either way, I agree with you.



dsgrue3 said:
Bong Lover said:

If you care to look outside the liberal media bias echo chamber you can easily find many studies that shows no real bias, slight conservative bias or slight liberal bias. As one would imagine, when looking at metastudies, the various bias outlets balance each other out and there is virtually no net bias in overall media. This is not to say that there are not liberal leaning and conservative leaning news outlets, but the notion that there is a clear liberal slant in media as a whole is not supported by facts.

Since you obviously will ask again. Here's one exapmple of a study of coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign and who got more positive and negative mention in the news media:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/cr

So, no one had less favorable coverage than Obama, does that mean the media has a conservative bias? No, it only shows that in 2012 Obama got a lot of negative coverage. In reality, media has a much stronger finacial bias than political bias, they will report to fit the 'general mood' of their consumers.

And more bullshit.

Did you even read your own source? It does nothing to support your claim. It addresses a very confined event, the republican primary. To form a fair assessment, you would have to include the democratic primary in such a study to address both ends of the spectrum. This is logic 101.

Start reading:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/04_0614_liberalmedia_bw.pdf

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/media-bias-is-real-finds-ucla-6664.aspx

And here is Jake Tapper admitting the liberal bias:

http://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/jake-tapper-media-helped-tip-the-scales-towards-obama-in-2008/

Devotion to inanity much? I mean learn to read some actual studies, not ones that don't address your point at all.

 

I was going to leave this discussion alone, but now I have to respond.....Research on a liberal bias in the media is mixed, with more research suggesting that there is no systematic liberal bias. The claim has been around for a long time, and researchers have explored this question a lot. Things have changed a lot in the past 10-15 years though (and part of the reason for null finding could be measurment issues). If anything, studies suggests that the news media tends to respond to public opinion, meaning that the media gives more positive coverage to candidates with higher approval ratings among the public. Pew looked at this, and you can see how coverage of Obama becomes more negative after the first debate (where the public thought he had perfromed poorly).

Pew Research

Some other links if you have access:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02866.x/abstract

A meta-analysis from 1948-1996

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-040811-115123

Review of recent literature.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00336.x/full           

This just gives a summary of measurment issues.

http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/120/4/1191.short

This is the article that your link cites. The problem with the study is that ADA scores are not a good measure of ideology because they are determined by roll-call votes, and roll-call votes are not a represntative sample of the votes taking place in Congress. These votes are more highly partisan, so the results tend to overstate the polarization in Congress, meaning it overstates the liberalism of Democrats and the conservatism of Republicans, which would result in an overstatement of media bias. Many congressional scholars are moving away from roll-call votes for this very reason.

 



dsgrue3 said:
Bong Lover said:

Indeed, there is an UCLA report that shows liberal bias, but the point is, there are many others that show no bias or conservative bias. The UCLA research was conducted by a conservative professor and the metric is set up against a supposed center of the American public and rated against that. The study only covers about 20 different news shows, the researcher admited to go in expectign to find liberal bias and found it. In short, there's no way that research paper can be held as the be all and end all of the discussion. Great, there are many opther reports that show the opposite. Here is another collection of stats from the same election:

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnfull/20120807/CG52261-INFO

What does this prove? Nothing, but we can go on forever exchanging links to studies and reports. The most interesting report on this is a metastudy report that studies the findings in a wide number of reports and concluded that it's impossible to show bias either way. The various outlets cancel eachother out and any bias is negleble to none. Unfortunately I can not find a link to the research paper online.

So where does the idea of liberal bias come from? It's a stated strategy by the Republican party to aggressivly attack the media to try to sway coverage slightly in their favor. At least that is what some quotes are taken to mean. Again, facts show us that more republicans find the news media to be bias than democrats. The myth of a liberal media bias is self sustaining as people want to believe it's true so they look for evidence that supports it and rejects evidence to the contrary. You show an excellent example of it in your post where you vehemently reject the link I posted, and put much more weight on the link that you posted that supports what you want to be true.

I post actual studies, you post links to op-ed pieces and images.

I think it's pretty clear your argument has no credence.

Futhermore, the image posted analyzes "times quoted" and does not address whether or not this was good or bad, failing to provide any sort of compelling argument at all.

So far you've provided no such sources that back up your claim at all. Score: 3 - 0

Game over.

You posted one study, the well known UCLA study that shows liberal bias, whitout mentioning any of the critisism that the report was barraged with (by the liberal establishment no doubt). The other link was an article about the same research and then some guys opinion. Again, you are showing confirmation bias in the way you assess the sources that are available to you.

Anyway, here is more research showing that while there is virtually no detecable bias in news media in political reporting, the more bias is discussed in media the more biased people think media is.

http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/~dshah/CR1999a.pdf

So what is the score now?  1 - 1 if we decide we can't include results from PEW which you apparently dismiss (unknow for what reason)?

In reality, the liberal media myth is an example of a lie told often enough that people believe it without even questioning it. I decided to look into it a few years ago when I heard the first claim of liberal bias because it didn't seem to make sense, and sure enough, it doesn't. The liberal media thing is largely a massive case of confirmation bias on display.

It's pretty obvious where the truth of the matter lies when you see the prercentages of Republicans that believe there is a strong liberal bias in the media and compare it to the percentage of liberals who fel there is a strong conservative bias in media. The truth is that polictics is a topic that people feel strongly about, ande as a result the tendencies towards confirmation bias we all have get even stronger. People get super defensive about it, just check out how you feel about this obviously true statement:

If you believe there is significant liberal bias in the media you don't know the facts or you fail to understand them.