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Old 01-22-2008, 03:30 AM   #47 (permalink)
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Intense1, I included examples of poor journalism by news sources which a good many pre-judge as having a "liberal bias".

The point of my examples is, that it is that there is no such thing that can be pre-judges about the reporting of the white house press corp members who work for the major "on air" networks, or who work for the Washington Post, NY Times, or for the Associated Press.

The notion of a "liberal bias" was drummed into people's perspectives, as in my first example, in the 1992 speech given by Brent Bozell III. His organization labeled the major media as "liberal", and then did "research" that tracked every instance where, in it's determination the media displayed liberal "bias". This "Op" had several effects...income for Bozell's"projects", as he was able to sell his "research" to the media and to aligned political and PR outlets.

The media reacted by moving more in a direction of operating simply as "stenos", writing or filming "he said", "she said" "news pieces", and filing them as "stories"....."reporting".

A segment of the population who were sold on the idea of "liberal media bias", turned away from suspect major news media sources for news, toward sources "filtered" with a conservative, ideological bent, an alternate, but smaller information universe, where it exists today. Brent Bozell developed his own presence in this universe, www.cnsnews.com . Drudge was an early and significant player in this transition.

What seems to be missing in these conservative niche offerings, is what Glenn Greenwald at the salon.com link in my last post, described and supported so well. The NY Times and WaPo both pay "ombudsmen", or "readers' representatives" to serve on their news staffs, and to investigate and respond to criticism of biased and inaccurate reporting. In addition, the two newspapers issue retractions,and actual apologies for failing to "ask questions",for accepting comments as fact from "unidentified senior government or military officials". They question reporters' editors in an effort to challenge them to set a higher journalistic standard for the minimum "proof" they will accept from a reporter before a quote or fact is allowed inclusion in a news piece.

The things that Greenwald described, are not about liberal or conservative reporting, they are designed to make reporting as accurate as possible.

Did you read the critique of the AP article segment, in the lower part of my last post, about the reporting on president Bush's TANG service, in the early 1970's? If you could get past the subject matter, and regard the questions that the AP reporter should have asked, as the critique pointed out, a much more accurate article, or one less equivocal, could have been crafted and distributed, as REAL reporting to AP member newspaper's readers.

This is the problem today. Basic tenets of journalism are not followed. If an article is supported by "the WHITE HOUSE SAID", then it is not reporting. I can go to whitehouse.gov each day, and retrieve that kind of PR, myself.

If we could all try to take an article apart, as the Bush TANG service articleis taken apart, it does not really matter where we seek out our news. All of us using the same criteria would lead us to all abandon the sites that offer more filtered material and opinion, than information obtained by journalists asking challenging questions, and writing with a bias towards the most consistant and plausible sources and explanations that they are sincerely able to obtain.

I picked the examples I used in my last post, because I don't find articles by ombudmen working for other news sources, and I don't find examples of journalists unfairly reporting in major news media outlets, the details of the war, the president, or the growing federal debt, in an unfavorable way.

No one at the NY Times or WaPo is reporting that paying off the national debt and reducing taxes were the two cornerstones of the president's platform in the 2000 campaign, and now he is irresponsible to continue to promote one without the other, or that the war correspondents at the NY Times have long and troubling histories of reporting what government officials tell them is happening in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

If it were not for the NY Times readers representative, and my own knowledges of "national debt", aka "US treasury debt", vs. budget deficits, news sources would have me convinced that we can have permanent tax cuts, added to new tax cuts, fight a long war, and still cut "our deficit" in half, much sooner than architects of the deficit cutting plan, predicted.

If that is the news that you want to let into your world, that may be suitable for you. You and I, though, will have nothing to discuss, because we are not on the same plain, as far as what we "know", and where and how we seek and analyze information.

Last edited by host; 01-22-2008 at 03:35 AM..
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