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Post by LunarOrbit on Aug 24, 2010 13:28:29 GMT -4
Since it was News Corp and not FOX that did the donation, shouldn't they be the ones that are biased? Or should you also be saying that the Wall Street Journal is biased too since they are owned by News Corp too. Maybe The Wall Street Journal is completely unbiased... but how can we be sure? Does News Corp. keep their hands off their subsidiaries and let them operate independently? From what I have heard about Rupert Murdoch, I doubt it. If News Corp. wanted to protect the integrity of their entire operation they shouldn't have made the donation. The media has a special relationship with the government, and I think donations like that should be prohibited.
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Post by echnaton on Aug 24, 2010 13:29:35 GMT -4
Its human nature to whine about what you don't like. Go figure. There are nor should there be formal "qualifications" for expressing ones opinion on any mater. The only qualification to have a TV or radio program is to attract and hold an audience that draw advertisers to pay the bills.
I don't take political advice form people in the arts and don't take artistic advice from people in politics. Penn is a great actor, so I will enjoy him in the domain of his expertise. Engineer-actors are a separate category, now if I could only get to Salt Lake City when Jay is performing.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Aug 24, 2010 13:32:44 GMT -4
Hey, LO, I get Fox news with Shaw Direct. Really? I thought the CRTC blocked FOX from entering the Canadian market. I use Cogeco, I'll look to see if they offer it as an add-on channel.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 24, 2010 18:50:28 GMT -4
After all, Daily Show viewers are far better educated on the issues. I don't get cable, so I only see bits of pieces of these cable shows that show up on the Internet, but there was this survey: Republicans Better InformedI presume at least part of that is due to Fox.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 24, 2010 19:35:18 GMT -4
"The fact of the matter is — and this has been borne out over time — that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity are among the best informed people out there."
This is directly contradictory of every poll I've ever seen, especially the one about people who get their news from talk radio, except for this one. I also have to say that it's not the best-framed poll I've ever seen. As it pointed out in the comments, who cares who Glenn Beck is? How does that count as being informed about the issues? How many people know who any range of blowhard pundits are?
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Post by LunarOrbit on Aug 24, 2010 20:23:10 GMT -4
I'm not convinced that poll is giving us the full story. It says more Republicans know what "Cap and Trade" is, for example, but do they know what it really is or just the biased version of it that FOX reports? If Glenn Beck talks about it more than Wolf Blitzer, more FOX viewers than CNN viewers will have heard about it, but it will be a twisted version designed to make Obama sound bad.
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Post by echnaton on Aug 24, 2010 21:40:08 GMT -4
Or maybe a version to make cap and trade seem to be what it really is. Not what the Obama tells us to promote his energy rationing scheme.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Aug 24, 2010 23:32:27 GMT -4
What is your explanation for why Fox leads the cable news networks in ratings then? There's no accounting for taste. Why do more people watch the SyFy network than NASA TV? On a related note, I wonder why conservatives do so much better in other media such as radio and maybe book publishing? In radio ratings terms, I believe Rush Limbaugh gets over 20 million listeners, Sean Hannity 14 million, as I remember, and even Mark Levin who is on late night in many markets gets 7 or 8 million, I think. Those are just crazy huge numbers. Conservative authors seem to often own the bestseller list at times, but of course there are many liberal authors (Thomas Friedman and others) that do well here. Informally, the typical explanation I hear is that conservative audiences are stupid. Well, OK, let's go with that for a moment. This country (U.S.) is, roughly, evenly divided between conservatives and liberals. Based on the last election, there are more liberals in fact. So the potential liberal audience is there. Now, factor in the claim that liberal radio hosts are supposedly better educated, more intelligent, and more knowledgable about the issues. Heck, Rush Limbaugh didn't go to college, and I don't think Hannity did either. Compare that to the intellectual giants on the left like Maddow, Garafolo, Franken, and Baldwin. Couple all that with the claim that the liberal listeners are better educated and more intelligent. Why can't liberals compete on the radio and, to my knowledge, in print? Limbaugh jokes that it is because the liberals don't have anything interesting to say. I recognize that is a joke, but I don't have an alternate explanation. For the record, I'm libertarian. I don't think my team does too well anywhere in these matters.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 25, 2010 0:39:08 GMT -4
I think that it's because liberals are more used to listening to more than one perspective. Indeed, it's a complaint a lot of Democrats have about their own party; we're so busy listening to the other person's perspective that we don't really push our own. It's not that we can't; it's that we don't. Personally, I don't listen much to radio at all, and neither do most of my other Democrat friends. We listen to music or audio books. It's also worth noting that there aren't a lot of markets for liberal talk radio. Stations would rather pay for Dr. Laura, though not much longer.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 25, 2010 11:23:57 GMT -4
Ok, well I'll put it into different terms then. Why do more people watch "infotainment" news channels like FOX instead of "boring" news programming like PBS? PBS has news programs? What specifically is so bad about it? The right likes to complain about actors speaking in fields they know nothing about. Beck and O'Reilly aren't just celebrities - they are political commentators who apparently take some effort to be informed on the issues htey write and comment on.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 25, 2010 11:25:57 GMT -4
I'm not convinced that poll is giving us the full story. It says more Republicans know what "Cap and Trade" is, for example, but do they know what it really is or just the biased version of it that FOX reports? If Glenn Beck talks about it more than Wolf Blitzer, more FOX viewers than CNN viewers will have heard about it, but it will be a twisted version designed to make Obama sound bad. Energy rationing schemes like "Cap and Trade" don't have to be twisted to sound bad.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 25, 2010 11:28:20 GMT -4
I think that it's because liberals are more used to listening to more than one perspective. My experience is exactly the opposite. No markets? Isn't that just another way of saying that liberal radio programs tend to fail.
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Post by echnaton on Aug 25, 2010 13:43:20 GMT -4
No markets? Isn't that just another way of saying that liberal radio programs tend to fail. PBS has been the primary provider of liberal talk radio. But they have had to "tone down" after the national priorities shifted from supporting programming to supporting stations who in tern picked their own programs.
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Post by archer17 on Aug 25, 2010 14:27:59 GMT -4
This thread's latest sidebar is kinda silly. So, who is smarter? Democrats or Republicans? Cut me a break! I notice many here blur the distinction between opinion and unassailable fact as though their way of thinking is the only correct way. Anyway, my take-it-or-leave it two cents:
First of all, I don't think FOX, as a whole, is "fair and balanced." They obviously favor the conservative POV as far as their 'talking heads' go. Do they have the right to boast that they are "fair and balanced" with the caveat of "you decide?" Sure. It's a frickin' slogan people. I'm sure there are some conservatives who think FOX's talking heads are "fair and balanced." So what? Those that disagree, disagree. Talk of lawsuits and other expressions of outrage because they claim such a thing strikes me as over the top. I'd love to see such a suit, it would be a circus. I don't know about the rest of y'all but most slogans I've come across are debatable. We have an all-news station here that tells us listeners they provide "all the news, all the time." They fall way short of the "all the news" part of their slogan. Should they be smacked with a suit?
Maybe it's being an independent with no partisan allegiances but, in addition to the obvious examples of media bias that are proffered here and debated I see bias from many of the posters, a primarily liberal one. We have LunarOrbit trashing FOX on more than one occasion only to find out he can't even get that channel! What does he base his opinion on? Jon Stewart!! gillianren obviously thinks the left and right sides of the aisle are from two different planets with, you guessed it, a disparity in academic acumen which favors those that share her POV. Jason is obviously conservative, and while he hasn't posted anything here lately that I disagree with, he does favor one side of the aisle with his bias examples and commentary. There's nothing wrong with that BTW. Being a "conservative" or "liberal" or "Red" or "Blue" is the way it is with many people but when such a person claims a moral or intellectual advantage for their side of the aisle then it starts to get silly - to me anyway. Since when are polls sacrosanct? To some it appears the answer to that depends on what they say.
Anyway, now that I tramped on everyone's toes ;D I'd like to comment on the mosque in N.Y. I see obvious bias in how this is being addressed by some in the media, namely the pro-Obama faction stressing his "courage" in reaffirming religious freedom. What strikes me as odd is why those same media folks don't spend a lot of time to make the necessary distinction as to why a lot of people are really upset. If I decided to build a tavern near where a small town's prom queen was struck by a drunk driver some folks would be upset. Not because they were against building taverns in general, but because of where I was putting mine. Basically my decision would be insensitive. That is what is primarily behind the opposition we are seeing in New York to the proposed mosque. This seems to elude some media folks who concentrate, as they did with their Tea Party coverage, on the bigoted fringe. These same media folks also overlooked or soft-shoed Obama's reluctance to address the "wisdom" of the mosque's proposed location which wasn't very courageous at all. Now that's media bias.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 25, 2010 15:22:05 GMT -4
Oh, dear.
First, I never said there was a difference in academic acumen, just knowledge about the issues. And frankly, even if I had, studies bear me out about it, at least in my field. In the hard sciences, there's balance, or at least something approaching it. In the liberal arts, the higher your educational level, the more likely you are to be liberal. It's simply true. I can't help it if you don't like it.
Second, if a product's slogan were "it cures cancer," do you think that would be acceptable were it demonstrably untrue?
Third, I don't think your comparison is at all valid, and I don't think you're watching the same media coverage I do. It's certainly not as though The Daily Show is only showing Fox's coverage of people's anger. And the fact is, your analogy is wrong, because it paints all Muslims as in favour of terrorism. Everyone drinking alcohol has the same biochemical response which makes a repeat of the prom queen's death probable. I fail to see how putting what is apparently the Islamic equivalent of the YMCA two blocks away from Ground Zero is at all analogous.
Especially given that Muslims other than the terrorists died that day, too. The fall of the Towers didn't care what religion you were.
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