What is wrong with the media?

[gorpwarp]

[snip]...And meritocracy, well that's a fine idea. It would be ideal and affirmative action wouldn't be necessary, if only there weren't so many biases against minorities built in to the system. Reparations for slavery? Ridiculous. We should just agree that we're not gonna f*** black people over any more. Reparations for the Holocaust? Same thing. Just don't f*** over Jewish people. Reparations for the Japanese internment? Ditto. But we can't get rid of all the biases. The problem with affirmative action is that it's difficult to define an equity between the biases and the corrections...[snip]

I just want to clarify. Affirmative action, or whatever you want to call it, is (in my experience so far, or should be if it's not) a privatized measure. The action is in place in the best interests of its host - a school decides that a certain minority student's test scores aren't exactly representative of his actual academic capability because he went to an underfunded city school. They accept him because they think, given his performance in his particular circumstance, he might actually be smarter - and better for our institution - than the kid who went to a $25k a year private school. It's a way of normalizing the population. Replacing this procedure with quotas, however, is BS; quotas are a bastardization of the process (there are many white folks from crappy situations and minorities who are wealthy, but that is not accounted for when it becomes a numbers game).

 

[Nikki]

Haven't been on here for a while, but this pic seems appropriate.lol

 

[Squid]

mmm, love the red x!

 

[VetteMuscle427]

Corrupt links... what does this symbolize?

 

[Nikki]

Hmmmm not quite the affect I wanted, but hey, I'm such a dork. Anywho, it is an image off of a nifty forum at www.freedomofthought.com
If the image doesn't show, it is a stamp with Uncle Sam saying "Work Harder, millions on wellware depend on you". Check out the website, it's neat.

 

[Nikki]

Hi there! Long time no see I was deployed from Dec till march and then just kinda fell off the earth I guess. I got married in November, but he is in the Marines and we can't get stationed together..arggggh I am trying to read all these threads and catch up..

 

[Squid]

just to add fuel to fire.

 

[Cate]

Liberal (?) media

Just a little note on the liberalness (liberality?) of the media:

Liberal media whores: Liberal, no. Whores . . . well, yeah.

 

[petescheu]

squid... that's a nice takeoff of that patch we were talking about in the other forum, pretty funny.

For those than don't agree that the media is totally liberal, check out the following. Even the journalists themselves they admit it, if indirectly. Taken from opinionjournal.com. You can't argue with facts, which is something I think the "angry left" has a difficult time swallowing....

The People vs. the Press

"The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has a new survey of "547 national and local reporters, producers, editors, and executives across the country." It finds, not surprisingly, that journalists are far more liberal than the general public (Pew surveyed the latter separately). The section on "Values and the Press" finds that only 7% of national journalists described themselves as "conservative," compared with 33% of the public. Thirty-four percent of national journalists called themselves "liberal," vs. just 20% of the public. A majority of national journalists (54%) called themselves "moderate," while 41% of the public did.

In some ways, though, journalists are even more liberal when compared with the general public than these numbers would indicate. Pew asked three specific questions to gauge journalists' social views:

Is belief in God necessary to be moral?


Should homosexuality be accepted or discouraged by society?


What's more important: that everyone be free to pursue his goals without government interference, or that the government guarantee no one is in need?
On the first two of these questions, the views of self-described moderate journalists were far to the left of the public's:

Public Cons. journos Mod. journos
Belief in God necessary 58% 26% 12%
Belief in God unnecessary 40% 72% 85%
Accept homosexuality 51% 49% 84%
Discourage homosexuality 42% 40% 8%

Self-described liberal journalists were nearly unanimous on both questions, with only 3% saying belief in God is necessary to be moral and 2% saying homosexuality should be discouraged.

In addition, 55% of national journalists say they think the press is "not critical enough" of President Bush; only 24% of the public agrees. Thirty-four percent of the public thinks the press is "too critical," vs. a mere 8% of the national press. Thirty-five percent of both groups characterize coverage of the president as "fair."

Journalists were also asked, "Can you think of any news organizations that are especially liberal?" Among national journalists, 62% said they couldn't. But 82% said they could think of an organization that is "especially conservative."

Among both national and local journalists, 68% percent of self described conservatives answered "yes" to each question, while among self-described moderates, 70% could think of a conservative organization and just 40% could think of a liberal one. Among liberals the gap was even greater: 79% could think of a conservative organization and only 24% of a liberal one.

All this suggests that journalists not only are considerably more liberal than the general public but also wish their own coverage were more liberal than it is. No wonder public confidence in the press is suffering."

 

[akamifeldman]

Read this:
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf
(cut to the chase by just looking at the graphs)

 

[Squid]

I'll go ahead and slip into something a little more comfortable...

/puts on indestructable fire proof flame suit. attaches optional tin foil skull cap just in a the liberals want to suck out my brains.

it's amazing how biased that pdf was. It screams partisan media.

 

[Cate]

it's amazing how biased that pdf was. It screams partisan media.

Please expound.

 

[Squid]

edit: i should have said screaming liberal. how about at first glance looks slanted.

the gist of what I got (and I'll have to read word for word later) is that the people with misperceptions were those replublicans that did and did not watch fox news (graph page 18), and those that watch/listen to PBS/NPR had the least misperceptions.

The graph on page 20 shows (just by reading gaphs here like feldman said) that people voting for president bush are 28% more wrong than those voting for dem. nomineee. Tell me the graphs aren't skewed to reflect (on first glance) a left slant...

 

[Squid]

also, read the last part. who the hell would sign up to do these surveys 3-4 times a month. jesus tapdancing christ.

 

[Cate]

Well, I've studied consumer research, and their methods are pretty much standard for that kind of surveying. They had a large population, they sampled randomly, and their sample was proportionate to the population in terms of ethnicity, age, income level, etc.

And the results are to be expected, too. Fox being as right-leaning as ABC is left (and no, I'm sorry, Fox isn't centrist, not at all), their news coverage is that much more likely to support Bush's initial justifications for the war in Iraq. I'm not saying that they purposely lied to spin the Bush angle, just that CBS et al, being more left than Fox, were more likely to question the claims of Iraq's involvement with al-Qaeda and WMD. As a result, when it became apparent that Iraq wasn't, to anyone's knowledge, involved in 9/11, and that Bush did not have evidence of WMD, those who had been following Fox became part of the "mistaken" crowd and those who had been following CBS tended to be "less mistaken". If it had so happened that there was an Iraq connection and WMD, then it would have been the CBS folks who were mistaken. But it wasn't. So it isn't. And it makes sense that PBS/NPR would have fewer of the above misconceptions because the viewership tends to be more of the liberal/despised-intellectual type that is more likely to question Bush's justification for war.

Also remember that this survey was done in October of 2003. I'd like to see a comparable survey now to see how perceptions have changed in light of changing news coverage, and I'd definitely like to see a question about perceptions of the war in Iraq considering that, while we haven't entirely addressed Bush's inital justifications for war (9/11, WMD), we have addressed several subsequent justifications (Saddam Hussein, Iraqi freedom).

And I wouldn't mind seeing a similar study on news coverage during the Clinton BJ scandal to see how perceptions/misperceptions stacked up.

And while I'm dreaming, I'd kind of like a pony.