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Pew Research Finds Opinion Dominates MSNBC More Than Fox News
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Jack Mirkinson reports that Pew Research Center's annual "State of the Media" study found that, since 2007, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have all cut back sharply on the amount of actual reporting found on their airwaves. Cheaper, more provocative debate or interview segments have largely filled the void. Pew found that Fox News spent 55 percent of the time on opinion and 45 percent of the time on reporting. Critics of that figure would likely contend that the network's straight news reporting tilts conservative, but it is true that Fox News has more shows that feature reporting packages than MSNBC does. According to Pew MSNBC made the key decision to reprogram itself in prime time as a liberal counterweight to the Fox News Channel's conservative nighttime lineup. The new MSNBC strategy and lineup were accompanied by a substantial cut in interview time and sharply increased airtime devoted to edited packages. The Pew Research examination of programming in December 2012 found MSNBC by far the most opinionated of the three networks, with nearly 90% of MSNBC's primetime coverage coming in the form of opinion or commentary."
[my surprised face]
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
This is as misleading as the studies that "disproved" that organic food is more nutritious. Nobody was making the claim they disproved. The basic claim about Fox News' bias is that every single story is framed in such a way to reinforce a distorted, reactionary worldview.
Fair and balanced! Fair and balanced!
(Repeat until liberal heads start exploding)
[Insert pretentious and semi-clever sig here: ______ ]
This is as misleading as the studies that "disproved" that organic food is more nutritious. Nobody was making the claim they disproved. The basic claim about Fox News' bias is that every single story is framed in such a way to reinforce a distorted, reactionary worldview, even when it's supposedly NOT an opinion piece.
Yeah, take that Pew! If your puny "facts" don't agree with my bias, then you're total assholes and must be dismissed!!
Fuck Pew, they also said bloggers aren't journalists. (Sure, not automatically, but they aren't automatically not, either.) Listening to Pew at this point is like trusting Elsevier.
Hmmm..."not automatically, but they aren't automatically not"...yes, clearly we should "fuck" Pew here and follow this logic.
Sensationalism is what sells ratings. Like we should be shocked that this is now applied to the "news" hour?
After all, at the end of the day it's not about news it's about ratings, and you're competing against MTV. Looking at their "entertainment" lineup, you can see why it is a formidable mental challenge to cull the dumb-masses away from watching Honey Boo Boo with baited breath.
This is it, folks
Journalism has gone comatosed
With so many people calling themselves "journalists" - I think we have the most number of "journalists" in this world right now than any other period of human history - it is ironic that REAL JOURNALISM has gone to the dogs
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If they have to tell you that they are 'fair and balanced' then its likely that they aren't, but also add in everything that tells you that it 'leans forward', or other crap.
The Soviet Unions national newspaper, during the height of the governments paranoid plummet into self destruction, was called 'Pravda' which translates to 'Truth' or 'Justice' in Russian.
When was the last time a 'breaking story' was something uncovered by an investigative reporter, rather than spoon fed to it by pundits or politicians?
"His name was James Damore."
That seems pretty useless if it doesn't also measure how often the purported news is incorrect or biased.
Opinion is always biased.
The current generation doesnt seem to know what journalism used to be, and apparently cannot seem to tell the difference between facts and opinions.
"His name was James Damore."
Before we had a 24 hour news cycle there was still some merit in reviewing coverage of an event or an idea from multiple sources. It was more difficult then, because a good deal of the time Brokaw, Rather, and the morning paper were repeating the same AP/Reuters news report. Today you can get your news du jour on several cable channels, the networks, and at least a thousand places on the interwebs. It is still a good idea to check a story in more than one place before accepting it as accurate.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Opinions are cheap. Reporters cost money.
Increasingly, people only seem to care about being outraged, anyway. Just look at all the blogs out there -- they're basically nothing more than "outrage of the day" articles, cynically designed to appeal to shallow, emotional outbursts. Slashdot is often guilty of this, as well. I'm not sure whether this trend took hold in Old Media or New Media first, but it has totally dominated New Media, and now the Old Media are struggling to stay relevant, by showing they can be just as fluffy and reactionary as the New Media. In some ways, I think this is just a natural progression of trends started in the 1990s. Hell, maybe it started a lot earlier than that, but that's when I remember things getting worse. My parents would probably say it started around 60s or 70s.
Bloviating is cheap and easy, actual reporting is expensive and hard. What more do you need to know?
Bated breath, shortened from abated breath, is what you were looking for unless you meant their breath smells like they've been eating fishing bait.
Nowhere. Ever. Why does anyone ever think that something like this could exist? Because you have free press? That only means that they are allowed to spread different lies than the government.
EVERY kind of reporting is biased. Even just reporting a fact is, because the question is why this fact was reported and not another one. And considering the amount of stuff happening around the globe, even trying to report everything to give a fully unbiased view is a futile task.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Newspapers and other publications were traditionally politically biased, mostly printed by someone to put their own slant on things. Journalism is historically gonzo, it's only recently that this fair and impartial notion has arisen. I guess people like to read things that agree with their ideas.
The basic claim about Fox News' bias is that every single story is framed in such a way to reinforce a distorted, reactionary worldview, even when it's supposedly NOT an opinion piece.
I am a huge fan of the Economist. One day while discussing a political and economic issue, I rather smugly expressed my point of view only to have it dawn on me later that I parroted the Economist's (Schumpeter column - IIRC) opinion on a certain issue. Not that it's necessarily wrong and they do have excellent analysis (they also pepper opinion throughout EVERYTHING in their magazine),but what disturbed me was that I wasn't thinking for myself and I wasn't aware of it.
I was/am no better than the Fox News watching lemming masses and I hate it!
I'm doing what I can to mitigate media opinions - like see the data for myself; try to get the original source; and just consume less.
Of course. But what the OP was talking about is the parts not marked as opinion, but the reporting parts, which should be as objective as possible. What the OP questioned is how much of that reporting is actually biased, and thus not truly reporting (he also questioned how much of it is simply incorrect, which is already a strong hint he wasn't talking about the opinion part).
And yes, it's not really possible to be 100% objective even in reporting, but good reporting goes as close to that as possible. Biased reporting, on the other hand, is worse than marked opinion, because it makes the opinion look like hard facts.
In German public TV they once had a very nice demonstration of this: They purposefully made two oppositely biased "documentations" about the same East-German city (the report was a short time after the German re-unification). Both of them reported only hard facts, yet one of them painted the picture of a declining city which was essentially doomed, while the other one told the story of a booming city with a great future. And both did do it in a quite convincing way.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Pew Research Finds Opinion Dominates MSNBC More Than Fox News
The headline suggests that Fox's news is less opinionated than MSNBC's News.
Pew found that Fox News spent 55 percent of the time on opinion and 45 percent of the time on reporting... with nearly 90% of MSNBC's primetime coverage coming in the form of opinion or commentary.
So we're talking about the type of shows being aired on the channel: "News"* or Opinion, not the slant of the news being presented. It would be more accurate to say "MSNBC Primetime Programming Reformulated to Include Nearly 90% Opinion," but that wouldn't be as provocative and get as many page views.
Fox News has a history of presenting "news" that is so slanted it's the butt of many jokes ("that story is so biased it should be on Fox News... if only it was funny it could be on the Onion"), so I'd argue that Fox's "News" programming counts in the opinion category.
That said, the story is actually about the increased polarization between MSNBC's lineup and Fox's. One would like think that a "news" channel as laughably-biased as Fox would not survive long, because it's not actually providing news. But they're successful because they've found that people want to be told things that seem to reinforce their own perceptions. That keeps them watching. MSNBC is just acknowledging this and reformulating to do the same for the left-leaning audience.
This is a bad thing, even if you're too intelligent to watch either of these channels, because they suck people in and polarize opinions. Then people walk around spreading these polarized opinions by word of mouth like conspiracy theories, and you end up with polarized politicians running the country who have no reason to compromise and get things done because they won't be re-elected if they compromise.
*As a former print journalist, I think all TV "news" is garbage by design. It's Jerry-Springer-esque entertainment disguised as news. It's formulated to tease you with provocative blurbs suggesting they're going to give you some juicy story, after you watch a bunch of other stuff and commercials. When they finally get to the promised story, it typically contains far less information than a print news story would because it takes too much time to do that much talking, and most people would lose interest part-way through.
~laugh~ caught MSNBC in several blatant "opinions", they are plenty guilty of biased, ass.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Yeah, shoot a laser pistol at them. Pew, pew, pew!
At least Fox tries to pretend its unbiased. Whereas Fox has never-ending coverage of why all Democrat policies are bad, MSNBC has never-ending coverage of how all Republicans are evil racists that want to rape all women all the time and kill old people and put blacks back into slavery. MSNBC "personalities", openly, with no hint of irony, call a white republican a racist and a black republican a "house negro" in the same breath. On a nearly daily basis to boot. There is not even the slightest pretense of unbiased coverage with MSNBC, its a straight-up fifth column. It spreads the holy message of the democratic party as though it was gospel, no matter how ridiculous that message might be on a particular day.
I think I'll stick with my BBC News thank you, I like their proper British matter-of-factly way of telling the news and outside looking in approach to US coverage.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Indeed
"Democrats fail to undermine Republican policy with lies" vs. "Flaws in Republican scheme ignored, despite Democrat efforts".
(Feel free to switch the names around).
From what I've seen, both MSNBC and Fox are both pretty much all opinion all the time, to the point of being detrimental rather than useless as sources of news.
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Sorry, but I can't find that claim in the linked report. I only find the statistics that about 1/3 of all bloggers consider what they do jounalism. The report also mention that even those who don't, usually fact-check.
If the report claims this and I just didn't find it, please say where exacty this claim can be found.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The current generation doesn't seem to know what journalism [is supposed] to be
FTFY - It's never actually been that way, sure there are some bright spots in it's history but they are few and far between. It's the fundamental reason why old media find it difficult to deal with the internet, they cannot control the content and their audience can shout back at them with equal volume. Everyone can publish (more or less) whatever they want. The "global village" is a reality in the west but in a way that people under 30 will have trouble understanding, it is a genuine communications "revolution". In a historical sense it started yesterday but it has already "changed everything".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think at some point, MSNBC realized that CNN was trying to stay in the middle between Fox and MSNBC, instead of staying in the middle between Left and Right. They're currently embarked on an effort to see how insanely far left they can go to bring CNN left of center before somebody at CNN realizes whats going on.
No, I'm not being serious.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Only a study can tell apart common knowledge from common prejudice.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Specifically, what it says is that both MSNBC and Fox are more than 50% opinion (well, non-news "analysis", anyway). So, these are primarily "chat" sources rather than news sources.
if you want actual news, according to this, go to CNN.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There are a number of problems at the heart of what's wrong with journalism.
The first is celebrity culture, so there's a persistent undercurrent of self-aggrandizement. They'll latch on to big stories as a way to make a name for themselves, creating a natural inclination to sensationalize. In the mean time they're not really doing anything beyond talking to a camera. The closest thing they do to journalism is interviews. And when that happens if they like the interviewee it's a soft-ball puff piece, when they don't it's nothing but loaded messages to convey a particular message.
The second, bigger problem is that journalists don't see it as their job to inform, they think it's their duty to educate. The distinction is that in the former journalists are merely describing what happened, with the latter they're lulled into pushing agendas. This guarantees bias. This is when journalists approach a story with a hypothesis, find it disproved in research, but because it violates their worldview they get selective with facts and twist them to suit their viewpoint.
Bloggers are amongst the worst. When the topics are apolitical too many of them turn into hangers-on. It's celebrity by association, that they're somehow a crucial component to someone else's success and popularity. When the topics are political, then it's the worst kind of blogger circle-jerk. Some blogger somewhere posts some heavily slanted story which everyone else then reposts as fact adding their own pointless commentary.
The most obnoxious thing here is that simply looking at both sides doesn't translate into balance. Often times you're just getting extremist views with no substantive facts.
What I've noticed is that on opinion shows Fox will get a liberal and conservative to argue the issue and the commentator for Fox and the conservative will gang up on the liberal.
On MSNBC they get a liberal and a hardcore liberal to discuss an issue and they and the commentator engage in a circle jerk for the whole segment.
I think we have the most number of "journalists" in this world right now than any other period of human history - it is ironic that REAL JOURNALISM has gone to the dogs
Yes, it is highly ironic that I have to go to blogs to get news because the mainstream "news" outlets are controlled by corrupt corporate interests.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
His explanation didn't at all involve MSNBC being unbiased. It involved it being exactly as biased as the study claims, but Fox more biased than the study claims, while still not necessarily being as biased as MSNBC.
Possibly. I use neither as news sources (and I definitely lean liberal, but I try to get news from non-ridiculous conservative news sources to have an understanding of why people think differently).
How about a law to require them to put "opinion" in the corner of the screen when they're just spouting crap.
No sig today...
All reporting is biased. Some intentionally, some just because that is how people are. Sometimes things that you would consider important in a story are left out because the reporter, whose world view is different from yours, does not consider them significant. Other times things that you would consider important in a story are left out because the reporter recognizes that they would undermine the narrative he/she is trying to promote with the story.
I avoid news sources I catch doing the latter completely. However, I would prefer news sources to be more honest in their bias. My biggest problem with Fox News is not their "conservative" bias, since they are rather upfront about that. Rather it is several of their other biases that they try to get people to overlook. I cannot give you examples at the moment because it has been several months since I saw the stories and I filed them in my head under "take all Fox News stories with a grain of salt". I do not find it necessary to take their stories about "conservative" issues with a grain of salt because I know where they are coming from and know exactly what information is likely to be missing. These other biases are a result of investments in Fox News and partnerships with Fox News by organizations and individuals who I know to have agendas, but whose agendas I am unfamiliar with the details.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I do not watch Fox News or MSNBC, but what you wrote reflects what I have seen in news stories about things that have happened on their shows.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The problem really lies with what is not reported. Bias by omission. And omitted facts can never be incorrect.
Elephant in the room time: MSNBC is the liberal propaganda arm of the democratic party. MSNBC tries to ignore stories that have any whiff of putting their glorious democrats in a bad light while simultaneously manufacturing outrage over conservatives in the hopes of distracting the public from seing the democrats as they really are.
So spare us the "Fox News is worse" garbage. While the Fox News slant is well known and acknowledged, every other news organization is left-of-center and denies it has any bias whatsoever. If MSNBC can't be relied upon to report all stories, even those that are negative to democrats, then it is a propaganda firm, not a news oranization.
Does MSNBC's 85% opinion consist of both liberal and conservative views? Of course not! The 85% is at least 85% liberal opinion. Does Fox news 55% opinion consist of both liberal and conservative views? Yes it does. Some of the liberals, independents, or non-conservatives that are now, or have been, on Fox are: Bob Beckel, Alan Colmes, Susan Estrich, Mara Liasson, Santita Jackson, Kirsten Powers, Geraldo Rivera, Simon Rosenberg, Bill Schulz, Shepard Smith, Juan Williams. Conservatives on MSNBC? Tucker Carlson, Michael Savage, Joe Scarborough (arguably fiscally conservative, socially liberal RINO). Sounds like MSNBC's reporting is severely un-fair and un-balanced.
What MSNBC does, is put nerdy hipster glasses on all it's hosts. That is supposed to make them more credible, but it is not subtle at all.
I just read this several posts above, except some of the names were changed to different networks, parties, and power-hungry officials.
Can't you write something original? Is it "air dirty laundry of theories" day?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is exactly correct. Yes, MSNBC is biased and broadcasts opinion, but they don't try to pull off rebranding it as news. Their motto is "Lean Forward." Fox claims to be "Fair and Balanced," and has segments called stuff like "No Spin Zone" that are nothing but pure spin.
I personally don't care if a network says, "Here are shows that are sharply left/right," but what I take issue with is when a network presents itself as an unbiased news source and then proceeds to opine one way or another.
I realize I must be careful about the tone I use here, or my comment will be censored, so I'll try to be polite. There were historical figures, especially in the 1930-45 era, in Europe, who used certain propaganda techniques, now wholly discredited, who's character could be compared to the comment above -- made by persons of comparable political persuasion, of the time.
MSNBC is owned and controlled by a political conservative. Only in the context of the above mentioned country and period of Europe, can MSNBC be considered liberal. Hardball, for instance, was an unreserved supporter of the invasion of Iraq.
Fox is owned by a conservative, and run by an extreme right wing political operative. Fox is the equivalent of the information Ministry of the fore mentioned country, and time.
A rose is a rose, and is color of the neck of the author of the comment, to which this is a reply.
Let's just summarize the hundreds of Slashdot posts.
But Fox News is propaganda!
But MSNBC sux!
But Fox News is propaganda!
But MSNBC sux!
Hmmm. Apparently Slashdot has issues with nested blockquotes. Slashdot sux!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"All the news that's fit to tint."
What surprises me is that ANY of their content is considered "reporting". They don't even try to do news.
Fuck Fox and MSNBC they both suck.
The current generation doesnt seem to know what journalism used to be, and apparently cannot seem to tell the difference between facts and opinions.
I don't know about this current generation claim; all of the highly charged opinion masquerading as fact that I hear in discussions or get forwarded to my inbox, all come from people over the age of 65.
Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.
The fact that MSNBC has more opinion shows than FoxNews is not the point. MSNBC doesn't format their programming so their opinion shows appear to be news shows. On the other hand, it is often very difficult to tell if one is watching a news program or a opinion show.
Put differently, nobody mistakes the content of the Today show for the Nightly News on NBC. Nor do people mistake Rachel Madow or the Ed Show on MSNBC for the nightly news. The said cannot be said for much of the programming on FoxNews that intentionaly packages their opinion programs in the format of a news broadcast.
Of course they are free to package their opinion shows however they want, but it can have serious consequences. When these consequences arise because of mistaken identity of the programming, they are quick to claim they are only enterainment shows, not news shows. But, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and they are the ones making it walk and quack, it is hard to see how they can deny culpability. Of course anytime anybody complains, FoxNews just blames either the liberal media or anti-conservatives instead of actually looking at their own actions.
If you want politically unbiased news, at least as much as possible, you pretty much have to ignore the US sources as they are all owned by just a handful of people with their own agendas. It doesn't matter whether it is CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC. Same with the print media.
I forget who said it, but it is true, if you want to control a people, you control the information they receive. Of course that used to be applied to totalitarian governments. Today, it is the Rupert Murdochs of the world.
no, it's extremely useful. All research has to start somewhere. With a groundwork laid, others can expand on the research perhaps focusing on the area you've highlighted.
Just because it isn't all encompassing, doesn't mean it is useless.
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
From what I've seen, both MSNBC and Fox are both pretty much all opinion all the time, to the point of being detrimental rather than useless as sources of news.
Right, but thankfully we don't have to rely on your opinion of what you've seen. This source found that 90% of MSNBC programming is opinion versus 55% of Fox News. So, in fact, MSNBC is pretty much opinion all the time and Fox News is pretty much opinion half the time.
Thank you for saying that before me. I've explained to my students in poli sci 101 that the concept of the news being unbiased and truthful is a late 20th century idea screed by baby boomers who look back on their childhood with painful rose tinted looks to avoid reality. It doesn't help that most news is now concentrated ina a handful of expensive medias and that most bloggers and internet sites are aggrating services (I.e. /.) which is an issue as the idea that this or that new is more truthful is complicated and just breeds issues.
I'm a far-left liberal and I prefer news that agrees with me. I admit it, it's why I watch MSN and frequent other places that make sense. I will say this though MSNBC and CNN work to play stories in a semi-neutral fashion or atleast offer a moderated bias. Fox has no such filter, they go out of their way to lie and create innuendo. But if you know you work through it which is why this false ideal is so frustrating to deal with.
Except that every Fox story is something like "Is Barack Obama the antichrist?" or "Do Democrats want to kill your grandmother?" or "Are liberals spineless cowards?" or "Is global warming actually good for you?"
It may be that they only answer the question with opinion and not facts 55% of the time, but 99% of their headlines are in that form, "asking a question" to make a statement.
Imagine I brought you on a show, and you didn't know what for, and then you found out the discussion of that episode was "Have you stopped beating your wife?" You can answer the question in a non-biased way, but the question was asked in a biased and leading way. MSNBC answers their questions in a biased way, absolutely, but the last time I checked(and admittedly it's been many years since I was a regular viewer), they were still asking real questions.
I turned on MSNBC just a minute ago. The question on the screen said "Can Mark Sanford win over family-values Republicans?" Then I turned on Fox. The question on the screen said "Automatic gun ban fail: Did the press pass on the news?" One of those is a real question, and one of those seems to be trying to put an answer in your head.
Reality is bias as I can only be myself, so can you offer another moment of zen or would you like to quantify that statement with some meaning?
I think we can replace the term 'bias' with 'interest' something that should disclosed. Like say a conservative news commentator has an interest in 'X candidate' because they both served in a think tank together or is being pushed by the corporate agenda. Expose the relationship and let the people validate or invalidate the link.
F for critical reading.
What do you think the purpose of those two sentences was?
The point was that even "news" items can (and often are) presented in an opinionated way.
Basically, MSNBC has 90% opinion programs and 10% opinionated news, Fox has 55% opinion programs and 45% opinionated news; they're both still 100% opinion.
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Here's how opinion should be done on News channels: You invite guests on. The guests are the ones with the opinions, and the host does his best to stay neutral. This is how it's done in countries with decent standards in the TV media.
And when I say guests I mean REAL guests. Fox News has a small army of people that are on the payroll and the talking points email list, that they present as if they were guests. But they're not.
I love conserva-ACs who make it sound like liberalism is awash in this country. The corporate voices promote a fairly conservative corporate view. It's just liberal sounding because fairness and progressive views promote populism which is a fundamental part of democracy (Hence why they are called Democrats..)
Age does not automatically result in reduced ignorance or stupidity or lack of analytical skills. Ignorant stupid people have always and will always exist, regardless of age.
Self awareness - try it!
That would be a bit sparse on information.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
In result, news has turned into circus style entertainment. Tabloids, "people news"?
Also people are slowly start to accept selective reality offered by different media channels. Fox News gives reasoning behind Tea Party/Republican struggle, MSNBC gives more of left angle (although everyone saying they both equal in BS levels need reality check - Fox News quite frequently invents facts form their opinions, I have rarely seen it in left leaning media and they also admit mistakes). In nutshell, it is easier to live in the world where you know you're right (and there's hugely popular tv channel for you to say so).
I see it as notion that people are tired to make sense out of this world. As facts and objective reality clashes more and more with their POV, they retreat to their radical positions.
I think we are "admit you are wrong, and that's the end my friend" society/civilization.
p.s. I get facts from BBC/Reuters/other news agencies, and opinions from Daily Show/Colbert Report (despite being Dem leaning both are heavily critical about them too).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The Democratic message is that <sarcasm>white people have raped the planet can created instituions that instill "structural violence" on non-whites, women and poor little innocent children. All these greedy people care about is making themselves rich and exploiting others. They should and do pay nearly all the tax and everyone else is *entitled* to spend it even if they didn't pay any tax on their own income. All of history is bad white people and Jews enslaving and exploiting non-whites with their mysterious and noble primitive ways</sarcasm> Even on Slashdot you see otherwise intelligent people ignore (or be ignorant of) historical facts and come out with this message. So they support a party that wants to spend an eventual factor of ten times what the US earns on *optional* 'entitlement' programmes. Meanwhile demonize the defence force and point to that as the expense when the unfunded liabilities of entitlements is nearly 100 times larger.
Hardball, for instance, was an unreserved supporter of the invasion of Iraq.
It was? I recall correctly (it has been a decade) Chris Mathews and Tim Russert of Meet the Press were part of the handful of people actually asking difficult questions. I've been watching a lot less of T.V. news/opinion/journalism lately. I just don't get why MSNBC and Fox report on each others crappiness - ratings I guess. I've now just started looking for decent long-form journalism websites to get my news now.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
You could just get a plastic cling printed with "Opinion" and put it in the lower right corner. Or better yet, use one of the plastic clings printed with Mike or Joel and the Bots that occasionally come in MST3K DVDs. I have one on my mirror in the bathroom.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
No, it really isn't. If someone is reading the New York Times or the Washington Times, his political standing is pretty obvious.
Ditto MSNBC vs. Fox News. Or NPR vs. just about anything else on Talk Radio.
The difference is that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge they are biased, or don't realize it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The article is painfully misleading. MSNBC gets put into the opinion category if they are interviewing people. Because they seem to focus a majority of their day on politics on the national level while Fox splits their daily broadcast a bit more evenly but all news skews towards conservative views Pew made a strange judgment call. Which is honestly OK, that's why Pew's research is wonderful but highly bias simply because it is making unquantified calls on such things as interviews and such. Even if the thoughts given in such an interview are truthful or at least honest speculation it moved the bar from "factual" to "opinion" while Fox routinely displays the demagoguery of the right wing.
At this point it's a waste of breath but at least I know why Pew is questionable in their decisions on this particular issue.
I agree in an overall way but in the nuanced sense if I gathered a roundtable of liberals and conservatives and they discussed during traditional news hours the topic of the day instead of reading it from a prompter Pew would call that "opinion." But if Fox makes inaccurate appearing to be factual statements or half-truths as we would call them by using single caster and a desk it gets classified as news. It's more an issue of format than anything else. Fox pretends to be news, MSNBC is more openly a discussion news network.
More subtle? They freely admit that all of their opinion hosts are liberals. Their newscasters during the day freely admit to being liberal. They tend not to blast government for random issues and in general don't act like a conservative. The issue is we're basing bias on the assumption of normal is conservatism when the real normal is more-or-less a center-left ideal of democratic principals based around populism and free access. In other words: MSNBC is more honest in relying on science and economic truths to back up what they say than Fox is about lying through their teeth.
I admit it that's probably closer to the truth but isn't it wonderful when you know on the left the solutions you posit are right? Science and factual evidence back you up and you don't need to demagogue to validate your stance on matters. You never need to wave the bloody flag or threaten one's sexuality. It's a fucking trip on this side.
I would out if you're argument about going to war is based on left or right wing values you'll find the line really doesn't apply. This is where things get complicated. Bush and his supporters posited the whole war as a quest to end Saddam's reign of terror and curtail is WMD construction. Colin Powell went to the United Nations with graphs, charts, and pictures detailing supposedly valid evidence. Now the left is known for being pacifist but by no means is the whole left that way and arguably a small portion is pacifist. Thus we were told falsehoods and cornered. This doesn't defend those on the left in media and news who failed but it puts it in context as the war is a bad example to define two groups on as they don't necessarily differ by definition on the subject.
Yeah, all those leftist anti-vax folks sure have science on their side.
The tragedy of modern American political thought is that we have been conned into to believing that there are two sides to every issue and that one side is right and the other side is wrong. All nuance, compromise, understanding and civility between both political parties has been decimated.
When the parties spin out of control like this, it doesn't bode well.
I can't watch either MSNBC or Fox. They're insipid sniping at each other is beyond tiresome. Get a room and make out. No one cares which of you has a more turgid member.
Do I like CNN? I "can" watch it but I generally choose not to watch any of them because this is the 21st century and I have the interwebs. Why would I waste my time watching cable news when I can snap up twice the information in half the time on a webpage? No talking heads. No commercials you have to wait through. No endlessly repeated stories that must be patiently waited through linearly.
If I don't like a story on a website, I skip it. Bam... next story. I can skip to the section I want and avoid the ones I don't.
There's no competition.
This whole fight over who is better at cable news is just a contest between two dinosaurs that mostly serve people in nursing homes. And that's for fox, msnbc, and cnn. Who watches them? It's all crap.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If you look at my post wasn't really that kind to Fox.
Its really telling that you manage to throw in an ad hominem attack.
Its also very neat how you tiptoe around the Godwinness of your post, without saying it directly.
Yeah, you're the fucking height of political insight and knowledge.
I'm not sure what is so subtle about showing video of "conservatives" making fools of themselves. Fox makes their point via implication and omission, MSNBC makes their point with quotes from sources.
I turned on MSNBC just a minute ago. The question on the screen said "Can Mark Sanford win over family-values Republicans?" Then I turned on Fox. The question on the screen said "Automatic gun ban fail: Did the press pass on the news?" One of those is a real question, and one of those seems to be trying to put an answer in your head.
An outsider's (Australian) perspective: Most media coverage of firearms incidents and legislation is excellent material for studying propaganda efforts. The steadfast refusal of many media outlets to report defensive use of firearms and the outright distortion of facts when it comes to the effectiveness of gun control is so blatant that it defies credibility that it is anything other than deliberate. IMO it is a valid topic to report.
I have seen Australia used as an example of effective gun control by the US pro gun control lobby and as an example of ineffective gun control by the US pro gun lobby. Neither tells the truth and both are selective of the facts they are willing to report. Either side could easily find facts that don't support their agenda but they don't. Here's the reality: for a news service to be useful you need to understand their bias. The stories they choose and how they present them will be influenced by that no matter how objective they try to be. Political news should always be understood as spin, even when it exposes someone else's spin. The news tells you what powerful people want you to believe and stuff they don't care if you know about.
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If you are getting your news from a video source, you've probably already lost.
(As to print sources, you are on your own to figure out which one of those has good information, but at least you are more likely to be looking at news and not entertainment. )
On the other hand, if you are looking for "news as entertainment," and of the big three will fill your needs. Just don't expect good information.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Except that every Fox story is something like "Is Barack Obama the antichrist?" or "Do Democrats want to kill your grandmother?" or "Are liberals spineless cowards?" or "Is global warming actually good for you?"
It may be that they only answer the question with opinion and not facts 55% of the time, but 99% of their headlines are in that form, "asking a question" to make a statement.
That is a testable assertion on the web and video. It looks to me that you get both points wrong in both forms of media.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Fox opinions usually tend to be vicious personal attacks and unsubstantiated innuendoes--and sometimes outright lies. MSNBC opinions are presented in a much more civilized manner, and are less often blatant distortions of the facts.
Doug Jensen
You mean Chris "Obama is Sending a Tingle Up My Leg" Matthews?
Yes that guy. There's no question which side Chris falls on but I was questioning parents post that Hardball was an unreserved supporter of the war under W's term as president. I'm not sure what Obama has to do with this branch of the discussion.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Not true. I'm fairly conservative (not Tea Party). I read WaPost on-line nearly every day (of course, I live just ten miles outside the Beltway, but still), occasionally the NYTimes (less so now that they only let you read ten articles a month w/o paying), and occasionally glance at Slate, which I suspect is far to the left of either. I think I could count the number of times I've been on Fox News' website on one hand with most of my fingers left over. And I listen to NPR some. I once listened to some right-wing commentator on the radio, but the call-ins were just awful. (All talk shows have their occasional weirdos calling in, but this was consistent.)
So no, at least in my case my political standing is not at all obvious from my choice of media.
BTW, I don't see much *news* on any of these sites, way too much fluff. I think VOA on the web has far more news than you can find on the front "page" of any of the above news sites.
Oh, and I used to go to Google News daily, before they messed it up and ignored all user input.
MSNBC is clear that they have opinion shows. Fox shows opinion segments and labels them news. It is right there in the name: Fox News (55% opinion.) The amount of news or opinion is irrelevant. It's the labeling that matters.
I have little respect for nearly all pundits on TV.
You should learn some journalism. Or work in TV. They don't pick pundits by their quality but by their entertainment value and secondly for their idiotic "fairness bias." Go look that term up.
Roger Ailes made Reagan into the pseudo prophet he is today.
Fox is not owned by Roger Ailes; he runs it. sigh...
Chris Matthews doesn't nullify my point at all. That twit is what we've got for "smart" journalism today (generally speaking.) Even if he tries to up his game he can't pull it off - he is corporate controllable; like Howard Beale in the Network, but less entertaining.
DON'T WATCH TV NEWS. it is so poor it should not be allowed to be called news. They filter the news wire (which does the actual work for little money) for things that will get ratings AND what is related to sponsors or corporate partners. I knew a local news editor for TV, he quit and I know why he quit. The collapse has been so gradual Americans no longer have a clue. Hell, studies more show college freshman don't know fact from opinion! Fox only lowered things for TV, it was already unacceptable before them.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Today seems worse than the biased news of the past.
For example, there wasn't one news agency seriously investigating the WMD claims of the Bush administration before the lead up to the Iraq war. And as more and more newspapers go under given the pressure of the Internet, there are fewer and fewer actual investigative journalists left.
I don't have high hopes of the current News agencies actually uncovering any real deep government scandals anymore. Unless the Government wants the story released, or someone pulls a Bradly Manning.