Conservative Media Bias - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Rekna · 09-18-2009, 09:18 AM

Check out this video from Fox News:

Fox refused to air President Obama’s speech Thursday. Here’s what they covered instead. - Daily Kos TV (beta)

Fox news has made a habbit of not showing mainstream presidential speeches since Obama has taken office. These are the types of speeches that were always shown when Bush was giving them. This is the not first time Fox has done this and likely will not be the last. When Bush was giving the speeches all the stations carried them.

Is the myth of the liberal media bias dead? Is the new bias conservative?

Derwood · 09-18-2009, 09:20 AM

Conservatives will always chant the "liberal media" meme as long as they can score pity points with it, but I don't believe the media has been liberal in some time. This is, however, the first time I can remember when the leading players in political media are all right-wing

roachboy · 09-18-2009, 09:45 AM

well first off faux news is a particular case. it is less an information outlet than a conservative political engine, a relay for conservative memes. rubert murdoch, roger ailes--this isn't rocket science. fox's business model is predicated on the existence of a considerable conservative demographic, and so they've found themselves moving from reflecting the memes-of-the-moment within a wider conservative movement to being a central player in effectively holding that movement together in the afterglow of george w bush et al. i think it's hard to overstate the importance of faux news for the right. and as much as i would like to see faux news erased off the face of the earth, murdoch's pockets are deep enough and his committment to reactionary politics seemingly deep enough that unless some basic seachange happens in what constitutes information (or until the equal time legislation is reinstated, the repeal of which is what opened the space for conservative-land to spread into the mainstream and get its arguments confused with legitimate ones), it'll be a feature in the ever-so-free corporate dominated american media-scape.

i think that the bigger question---of conservative biais in the american press across the board--is a complicated one. it think there is without question such a biais, but some of its features are not specifically conservative (for example narrowness of coverage of international events, the tendency, which has increased over the past 20 years, to simply repeat or rebroadcast pre-packaged infotainment because it's cheap and easy)--are preconditions for conservative arguments appearing to be reasonable. but it'd take some doing to make this case in a compelling way, particularly in a messageboard context, and at the moment i haven't the time to undertake it. maybe later. or not. who can say?

Cimarron29414 · 09-18-2009, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

Check out this video from Fox News:

Fox refused to air President Obama’s speech Thursday. Here’s what they covered instead. - Daily Kos TV (beta)

Fox news has made a habbit of not showing mainstream presidential speeches since Obama has taken office. These are the types of speeches that were always shown when Bush was giving them. This is the not first time Fox has done this and likely will not be the last. When Bush was giving the speeches all the stations carried them.

Is the myth of the liberal media bias dead? Is the new bias conservative?

Obama speaks about 10 times more often than other presidents. He gives the same speech 15 times a week and all are televised somewhere. I wouldn't blame ANY station for skipping one of them and capitalizing on the ratings/advertising of those who don't want to watch YET ANOTHER Obama speech. Other networks have done the same, not just Fox. This is much ado about nothing.

Not to mention and according to all of you: "there is no point in broadcasting it on the mouthbreather network since the viewers are all too obtuse to understand him anyway."

roachboy · 09-18-2009, 10:29 AM

i don't remember anyone saying anything about "the mouthbreather set"---personally i think it's pretty important to assume that most conservatives are reasonable people---that's what lets you start to think about the effects of ideology. if you assume these folk are simply stupid, then there's nothing to look at, nothing to think about because you've answered your own question (what is this about? how is this possible?) up front.

i think populist conservative ideology blinkers peoples' worlds, but it has to do so in a way that is compelling, so which does not feel like that is what is happening. it has to be an explanation of the world for a range of demographics. that this explanation is surreal is, to my mind, kinda interesting. and that an effect of buying it seems to be a blinkering of the world is both interesting and a Problem.

Halx · 09-18-2009, 10:58 AM

Beyond this, there was a story earlier today about how ALL the networks are refusing to run ads around legalizing medicinal marijuana.

Tully Mars · 09-18-2009, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halx

Beyond this, there was a story earlier today about how ALL the networks are refusing to run ads around legalizing medicinal marijuana.

That's bull shit.

Cimarron29414 · 09-18-2009, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i don't remember anyone saying anything about "the mouthbreather set"---personally i think it's pretty important to assume that most conservatives are reasonable people---that's what lets you start to think about the effects of ideology. if you assume these folk are simply stupid, then there's nothing to look at, nothing to think about because you've answered your own question (what is this about? how is this possible?) up front.

i think populist conservative ideology blinkers peoples' worlds, but it has to do so in a way that is compelling, so which does not feel like that is what is happening. it has to be an explanation of the world for a range of demographics. that this explanation is surreal is, to my mind, kinda interesting. and that an effect of buying it seems to be a blinkering of the world is both interesting and a Problem.

I'm still simmering from the ridiculous assessments put forth in the 9-12 Washington March thread. Just venting.

Halx · 09-18-2009, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

That's bull shit.

Here we go: ABC, CBS, Fox Censor Medical Marijuana Ads-but Pharmaceutical Ads are AoK HempNews

Here's one of the ads:

YouTube - 2009 New York MPP Commercial #1 "Joel Peacock"-YouTube

YaWhateva · 09-18-2009, 03:23 PM

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Networks respond to false Fox ad - Blogs from CNN.com

This "fair and balanced" nonsense from Fox is just ridiculous.

robot_parade · 09-18-2009, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Obama speaks about 10 times more often than other presidents. He gives the same speech 15 times a week and all are televised somewhere. I wouldn't blame ANY station for skipping one of them and capitalizing on the ratings/advertising of those who don't want to watch YET ANOTHER Obama speech. Other networks have done the same, not just Fox. This is much ado about nothing.

Not to mention and according to all of you: "there is no point in broadcasting it on the mouthbreather network since the viewers are all too obtuse to understand him anyway."

I think conservative's blatant disregard for the facts is a huge part of the problem, and this is a prime example. There's no way to mistake last Thursday's speech for 'just another speech', no matter what side you're on. This was the president making his case for healthcare, and Fox decided not to show it.

I don't know a good way to find out how many speeches each president has made, but this was clearly a major policy speech, not a town hall thing.

roachboy · 09-19-2009, 07:45 AM

it may well be that we (myself included here) are over-estimating the centrality of nonsense like faux news in generating the one-dimensional infotainment base that is shaping the current ultra-right mobilizations.

this is kinda interesting:

Quote:

Republicans steal Barack Obama's internet campaigning tricks

Erik Telford remembers all too vividly the dark cloud hanging over him on 5 November 2008, the day after Barack Obama was elected president. For the internet strategist at the rightwing campaign group Americans for Prosperity, election night was a double disaster. Not only had Obama won the votes, he had outwitted his Republican opponents in his use of new media tricks such as email recruiting and social networking.

"The left was far ahead of us. The efforts that Obama put into internet campaigning and what he accomplished were extraordinary," Telford says.

That cloud hung over the conservative movement for many weeks. A sense of crisis set in, he recalls, with bloggers, strategists and Republican politicians scrambling in different directions.

"There was a real lack of leadership, a lot of confusion."

But then, almost imperceptibly, something started to happen. Telford noticed Google groups popping up, listserves on which people would send angry emails back and forth. The anger was stimulated by Obama's $800bn stimulus package that was introduced five days into his presidency.

With very little leadership, the Google groups began to co-ordinate their response. People took on the onerous job of poring over the bill's hundreds of pages of small print in search of wasteful spending, following the Wikipedia model of crowd-sourcing.

They began to uncover items that looked suspicious or ridiculous: electric golf carts, snow machines, a crime museum in Las Vegas. They passed the examples on to mainstream media outlets, notably the new face of the right, snake-tongued Glenn Beck of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, who used it as ammunition to attack the young administration. The anger grew. When Americans for Prosperity put up its own petition against the bill on its website, it had 500,000 signatures within days.

"It was a huge wake-up call to all of us," Telford says. "On the right, people had known new media was important but they were still hesitant about it. After the stimulus experience, no one was left in any doubt about its power."

Less than eight months later, the seed planted in those anti-Obama Google groups has burst into flower on the streets of Washington. Tens – or even perhaps hundreds – of thousands of livid demonstrators filled the capital, brandishing banners saying "Don't tread on me!" and "Obamunism" – a reference to the president's perceived socialist or even communist tendencies. "Liar! Liar!"they shouted, echoing the outburst of a Republican congressman to Obama's face last week.

The noise of that startling crowd could be heard rumbling on throughout this week. Democrats rushed to dismiss the display of rightwing force as the work of mavericks and extremists. Jimmy Carter upped the ante by suggesting the vitriol was racist: many people in America, he said, believed a black man should not be president.

For Telford, though, dismissing the eruption as extremist or racist was to miss the point. For him, the 9/12 rally marked the moment at which conservative America finally embraced the new world and recovered its confidence. He believes the movement is now close to catching up with the Democrats in terms of internet savviness; in some ways he contends it has even surpassed them, particularly on Twitter, where much of the heavy lifting behind the so-called "tea parties" against Obama's tax and other policies is being done.

Matt Kibbe, who heads FreedomWorks, a national conservative group that led the push behind last Saturday's rally, goes further. He says that the movement has stolen from Obama the techniques he used to such effect last year and is now redeploying them as a stick with which to beat the president.

When Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, FreedomWorks studied how he did it and then copied him. They set up a ning site, a Facebook-like platform that allows members to talk to each other without having to go through the parent body. The result was explosive.

FreedomWorks now has more than 800,000 members who largely organise and fund themselves; all the group itself does is arrange permits for demonstrations and advise on logistics.

The phenomenon has steadily built in scale and force, starting with the first tea party protest on 27 February, then a nationwide tea party against taxes championed by Fox News on 15 April and on to the summer's town hall meetings and last Saturday's rally against Obama's healthcare reforms.

A plethora of groups have jumped on board, with exotic names such as Tea Party Patriots, Grassfire, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, 60 plus, all loosely working together, with FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity probably the leading partners.

Both groups are proud of their internet-fuelled achievements over the past few months. But there is another, more traditional, layer to their work which they are less prone to brag about — the powerful individuals and corporations that bankroll them.

FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are sister groups who came from the same parent body — a campaign called Citizens for Sound Economy, which split in two in 2004. It was set up by one of America's richest men, David Koch, an oil tycoon who has funded rightwing causes for decades.

FreedomWorks receives funding from the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris, as well as from Richard Scaife, another business tycoon, who for years helped fund dirt-digging investigations into Bill Clinton. Local branches of Americans for Prosperity have also received tobacco money; the group has opposed smoke-free workplace laws and cigarette taxes.

In the environmental area, too, there has been an affinity between the groups and the corporate interests that back them. ExxonMobil was a sponsor of Citizens for Sound Economy, and both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have campaigned vigorously against Obama's plans to reduce CO2 emissions through a cap and trade scheme, working closely with the American Petroleum Institute.

"This is same old, same old," says John Stauber of the Centre for Media and Democracy, which investigates corporate lobbying. "Yes there are some new names and new causes, but these anti-government front groups have been around for a long time."

The question is: what do the newly emboldened rightwing incubators want? Are they merely concerned with specific objectives such as stopping health reform and cap and trade, or is there a larger, more sinister motive?

Liberal critics such as Chris Harris of the monitoring campaign MediaMatters have no doubts. "Legally, groups like FreedomWorks cannot say they are out to unseat Obama. But there's no question that their aim is to topple the president."

FreedomWorks insists that about four-fifths of its $8m budget this year comes from small individual donations. Kibbe interprets that as a sign of genuine pent-up anger towards spendthrift politicians in Washington of both parties, and believes it can be traced back to George Bush's bailout of the banks.

He admits that the self-propelled uprising has allowed some extremists to join the crowd, but says that groups like his are now trying to devise ways to silence the most egregious ones. "When you have thousands of people gathering in one space, you are always going to have a few nutty people show up."

Just how far the movement can go to lift the Republican party out of its doldrums and re-energise it in Congress will become clear next year with the first major electoral test of the Obama presidency: the mid-term elections. According to Peter Brown, a pollster at Quinnipiac University, Republicans tend to turn out in higher numbers in off-year elections, which makes the tea parties highly relevant. "Enthusiasm matters: the more angry people are, the more likely they are to vote. All this activism and demonstrating is not necessarily the end for Obama, but it's certainly not good news."

The historical parallel on everybody's mind is 1994, when Clinton's young presidency was bloodied by Republicans taking over the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. It is perhaps no coincidence that the most popular conservative on Twitter, with almost a million followers, is Newt Gingrich, architect of that same revolution.

All of which makes Kibbe think that those Democrats who try to pigeonhole the tea parties as a crank phenomenon are playing into the anti-Obama movement's hands. "The Democrats who want to marginalise this movement are making a big mistake. They are insulting the people who they should be courting, and every time they do that our numbers seem to double in size."

Republicans steal Barack Obama's internet campaigning tricks | World news | The Guardian

and it is in itself nothing particularly new: the right copped alot of organizational approaches from the left. that's one of the main things that ralph reed brought to the xtian coalition when he became it's media director: he understood the importance of grassroots mobilization. one of the things he did was to turn evangelical churches into little political machines by encouraging them to provide services like rides to election sites for constituents. and they encouraged preachers to use the pulpit as a political space. the argument was "you don't stop being a citizen just because you're a preacher" and with that the separation of church & state was vaporized insofar as the usage of churches as political mobilization tools was concerned at least. folk underestimate ralph reed & how important he was in the refashioning of the contemporary right at the organizational level, and this process is far more powerful than any number of limbaughs.

so too with net-groups, but with all the advantages and disadvantages that net-groups encounter in the process of mobilizing. for example, they narrowcast. at the same time, net mobilization isn't directed to a specific location, so it presupposes 3-space social networks that shape/make specific the reception. net mobilizations are also usually about one-dimensional infotainment, even thinner than the tv meme-circulation system it leans on.

but the infrastructure is interesting.
perhaps this calls for a new, concerted type of counter-action. you know, the sort of political actions that hacker types can do. not that i know any of course. merely doodling in my brain. la la la.

Rekna · 09-19-2009, 07:45 AM

YouTube - CNN's Rick Sanchez Calls FOX News Liars

Derwood · 09-19-2009, 08:39 AM

it's about time someone stood up to Fox News for their bullshit. Sadly, not enough people will have seen this

Rekna · 09-19-2009, 08:57 AM

Here is my view of what has happened.

The mainstream media may lean slightly left but if it does it is very slightly. Fox news is extreme right. Some people look at fox news as honest reporting and think it is middle of the road thus by comparison all the other media is liberally biased....

This of course is ridiculous. As the man in the video said there is a difference between reporting a news story and promoting a news story. Fox news is not a news agency at all and instead is a propaganda agency. Fox news does not report the news it filters the news. Fox should be sued for truth in advertising violations.

KirStang · 09-19-2009, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

YouTube - CNN's Rick Sanchez Calls FOX News Liars

burn

roachboy · 09-19-2009, 09:09 AM

so long as cash rules everything around me, faux news will continue.
if you want it to go away, start putting pressure on advertisers who buy time on that network at all.
an organized advertiser boycott could bring it to its knees.
publicizing the boycott would be tricky, in that the defense would play straight into the dividedness that has long been the faux news mainspring. us/them, our reality/their reality. but it could be done, and if it were done, it would go a long way toward redefining the space of political discourse in the united states.

faux news does not report on reality as conventionally understood. faux news is part of a system that edits reality along certain assumptions. "fair and balanced" are relational terms. "fair & balanced" operate with respect to a set of structuring assumptions. so an entirely reactionary media outlet can call itself "fair & balanced" without exactly lying because they never say with respect to what. they just leave that part out.

personally, i'd love to see faux news go down.

Halx · 09-19-2009, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

YouTube - CNN's Rick Sanchez Calls FOX News Liars

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 05:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robot_parade

I think conservative's blatant disregard for the facts is a huge part of the problem, and this is a prime example. There's no way to mistake last Thursday's speech for 'just another speech', no matter what side you're on. This was the president making his case for healthcare, and Fox decided not to show it.

I don't know a good way to find out how many speeches each president has made, but this was clearly a major policy speech, not a town hall thing.

Everyone knows Obama's policy on healthcare. Yet another speech about it is not going to change people's minds. That speech not being shown on one network isn't going to sway the argument.

BTW, Fox asked to interview Obama this weekend and the administration refused. If it was so important for his message to be on that network, he had his chance and refused.

Halx · 09-21-2009, 07:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Everyone knows Obama's policy on healthcare. Yet another speech about it is not going to change people's minds. That speech not being shown on one network isn't going to sway the argument.

BTW, Fox asked to interview Obama this weekend and the administration refused. If it was so important for his message to be on that network, he had his chance and refused.

I think you're wrong here because we've seen evidence that people do NOT know what the policy is. They are being fed lies by the talking heads and they believe them. Why would a network run a speech that directly conflicts with its own message?

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halx

I think you're wrong here because we've seen evidence that people do NOT know what the policy is. They are being fed lies by the talking heads and they believe them. Why would a network run a speech that directly conflicts with its own message?

In his first 7 months in office, Obama has done 66 T.V. news interviews. During the same time of their presidency, Bush gave 16 and Clinton gave 6. Thus, Obama has given 3 times more interviews than his two predecessors combined. In the same time period, Obama did 36 print interviews - twice as many as his predecessors combined. One more speech, one more interview is not going to change those people's minds. Let me reiterate that he was invited to do an interview on Fox this weekend and declined the request. If he isn't on that network, it's as much because he chooses not to be.

Rekna · 09-21-2009, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

In his first 7 months in office, Obama has done 66 T.V. news interviews. During the same time of their presidency, Bush gave 16 and Clinton gave 6. Thus, Obama has given 3 times more interviews than his two predecessors combined. In the same time period, Obama did 36 print interviews - twice as many as his predecessors combined. One more speech, one more interview is not going to change those people's minds. Let me reiterate that he was invited to do an interview on Fox this weekend and declined the request. If he isn't on that network, it's as much because he chooses not to be.

Funny I didn't know an interview and a speech were the same thing. Also I didn't know being open and transparent and giving the media a chance to express concerns was a bad thing.

It is funny how you are some how trying to state that boycotting the media is a good thing for the people.

The media is there to report the news, not filter the news nor promote the news. Since fox news both promotes stories it likes and filters stories it dislikes i'm going to say fox news is not news at all and instead is just a glorified tabloid.

roachboy · 09-21-2009, 07:55 AM

what surprises me about fox is that everyone does not seem to know that it's a conservative media outlet. it's infotainment is by definition pre=chewed to slot into the political filters that the business model presupposes. so it is manifestly not a "news" outlet. it is an information stream that performs an assimilation operation, one which harmonizes it with the political viewpoints the business model assumes are held by its central demographic. i have no access to information not in the public domain, and i know the model---so it's not hard to find.

what fox's success is testimony to is the resistance to critical interaction with information that's a result of the legion failures of education to teach these skills and demonstrate their importance.
information streams are assimilated wholly into a consumer space, and what is seemingly sought from it is gratification. because "markets are rational"---the circulation of money is the confirmation in this blinkered, stupid system----it is understood as reasonable that infotainment be the norm and that the providing of gratification be the aim. there are any number of gratifications, btw: that of being horrified plays to a kind of voyeurism; the gratification of being paranoid plays to a kind of narcissism (if you are personally under threat, that fact in itself confirms in a backhanded way your Importance in the World---who would bother being a threat to you if you were not Important?); images of chaos and destruction play to an affirmation of distance (you watch it from your living room--it is a form of entertainment) across which the cheap, one-dimensional emoticons of sympathy and pity can flow (providing you the gratification of performing some act of public Largesse by giving o so deeply of your one-dimensional self)
dissonances play back into a consonance of Demand Structures.
disruptions make more desirable the Norm of buying commodities.

in this period of collapse of empire, the centrality of this Norm is the mainspring of wholesale denial.

infotainment is predicated on maintenance of that Norm and the sense of continuity which underpins it.
remember that "news" is an advertising delivery system that trafficks in particular types of "contact" with a "reality" that is always distant, like a movie that you watch.

in this context, fox is merely a particularly obvious, particularly self-referential version of the same basic machinery that is everywhere in the dominant media. from this viewpoint, conservative biais and "liberal" are versions of the same basic machine, which is geared around you as a consumer, you who wants commodities, you who needs to feel safe in order to indulge in the rituals of Purchase.

but that doesn't mean that therefore there's no difference between conservative and other forms of biais. there are differences. self-referentiality, self-confirming arguments are one indicator---more present in populist conservative ideology, slightly less elsewhere.

Light of Icarus · 09-21-2009, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

Check out this video from Fox News:

Fox news has made a habbit of not showing mainstream presidential speeches since Obama has taken office. These are the types of speeches that were always shown when Bush was giving them. This is the not first time Fox has done this and likely will not be the last. When Bush was giving the speeches all the stations carried them.

Is the myth of the liberal media bias dead? Is the new bias conservative?

So do you think that Obama will retaliate in any way against fox news?

Halx · 09-21-2009, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light of Icarus

So do you think that Obama will retaliate in any way against fox news?

This is confusing. What would one do to "retaliate" anyways? Pass a bill that requires news networks to carry speeches?

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

Funny I didn't know an interview and a speech were the same thing. Also I didn't know being open and transparent and giving the media a chance to express concerns was a bad thing.

It is funny how you are some how trying to state that boycotting the media is a good thing for the people.

The media is there to report the news, not filter the news nor promote the news. Since fox news both promotes stories it likes and filters stories it dislikes i'm going to say fox news is not news at all and instead is just a glorified tabloid.

I'm reluctant to even reply to this, but I will give it a shot.

It seems you are trying to argue that broadcasting a pre-written speech delivered before an audience with no questions will somehow better inform the people than hosting a one-on-one interview with the ability to queston, follow-up, and clarify misunderstandings. That is what Fox offered Obama, and Obama rejected it.

To suggest that Fox is the only network that avoids stories or filters news to their consumers is ludicrous. The fact that you are singling out one news agency for this behavior clearly shows your bias. If it upsets you that the media is not "fair", then make the thread about the entire media filtering their news for their viewers. EVERY media outlet is failing the American people. Drop the partisanship.

Light of Icarus · 09-21-2009, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halx

This is confusing. What would one do to "retaliate" anyways? Pass a bill that requires news networks to carry speeches?

It wouldn't have to be a bill, he does have some power as president, even though he's mostly just a figurehead.

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light of Icarus

It wouldn't have to be a bill, he does have some power as president, even though he's mostly just a figurehead.

Perhaps, you might need to brush up on the first amendment.

Leto · 09-21-2009, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

YouTube - CNN's Rick Sanchez Calls FOX News Liars

Haha...

Fox News = Fail

Derwood · 09-21-2009, 09:39 AM

Obama is justified in denying the interview to Fox News; why set himself up to have his interview picked apart, edited, and distorted to feed the network's message?

In other news, an interesting article on how (and why) Glenn Beck is different than the other right-wing TV/Radio hosts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/op...rich.html?_r=2

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

Obama is justified in denying the interview to Fox News; why set himself up to have his interview picked apart, edited, and distorted to feed the network's message?

That really is the worst excuse I've heard in quite a while.

Derwood · 09-21-2009, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

That really is the worst excuse I've heard in quite a while.

That's fine. I don't think it's particularly prudent for the President to feed into (or even recognize) a top-down conservative propaganda network.

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 10:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

That's fine. I don't think it's particularly prudent for the President to feed into (or even recognize) a top-down conservative propaganda network.

So he should only appear on the network on HIS terms, a canned speech to Congress? How Hugo Chavez of you - control the press and you control the country.

Derwood · 09-21-2009, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

So he should only appear on the network on HIS terms, a canned speech to Congress? How Hugo Chavez of you - control the press and you control the country.

it's more about not legitimizing the people you just publicly blasted for spreading lies about your healthcare plan

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

it's more about not legitimizing the people you just publicly blasted for spreading lies about your healthcare plan

Not legitimizing?!?! Like them or not, they are the most watched news organization in the country. I don't think Obama attempting to snub them will keep them illegitimate.

Lest we forget, Fox didn't run the speech because there have been too many speeches in primetime already and they wanted to run their regular programming for the purposes of ratings. It wasn't nefarious - they didn't see anything new coming out of the speech, the text of which was released prior to the speech, so why lose an hour of commericals for the same tired speech? Other networks have done this before and it will become increasingly more common with Obama - because he is overplaying himself.

Light of Icarus · 09-21-2009, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Perhaps, you might need to brush up on the first amendment.

Mayhap you need to remember Bushes reign and how they weighed in on the media.

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light of Icarus

Mayhap you need to remember Bushes reign and how they weighed in on the media.

I didn't vote for Bush either. Hmmm, what a strange dilemma you find yourself in...

Please list for me the networks/newspapers which you find as "Conservative".

Please list for me the networks/newspapers which you find to be "Liberal".

I'd say Obama's message gets a fair distribution.

Light of Icarus · 09-21-2009, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

I didn't vote for Bush either. Hmmm, what a strange dilemma you find yourself in...

Indeed? Considering I wouldn't have voted for bush nor obama... How odd.

Cimarron29414 · 09-21-2009, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Light of Icarus

Indeed? Considering I wouldn't have voted for bush nor obama... How odd.

Most of us have more in common than we think, as soon as we tear down the labels.

Derwood · 09-21-2009, 10:43 AM

who has labeled you in this thread, Cimarron?

09-18-2009, 09:18 AM	#1 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Conservative Media Bias Check out this video from Fox News: Fox refused to air President Obama’s speech Thursday. Here’s what they covered instead. - Daily Kos TV (beta) Fox news has made a habbit of not showing mainstream presidential speeches since Obama has taken office. These are the types of speeches that were always shown when Bush was giving them. This is the not first time Fox has done this and likely will not be the last. When Bush was giving the speeches all the stations carried them. Is the myth of the liberal media bias dead? Is the new bias conservative?

09-18-2009, 09:45 AM	#3 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	well first off faux news is a particular case. it is less an information outlet than a conservative political engine, a relay for conservative memes. rubert murdoch, roger ailes--this isn't rocket science. fox's business model is predicated on the existence of a considerable conservative demographic, and so they've found themselves moving from reflecting the memes-of-the-moment within a wider conservative movement to being a central player in effectively holding that movement together in the afterglow of george w bush et al. i think it's hard to overstate the importance of faux news for the right. and as much as i would like to see faux news erased off the face of the earth, murdoch's pockets are deep enough and his committment to reactionary politics seemingly deep enough that unless some basic seachange happens in what constitutes information (or until the equal time legislation is reinstated, the repeal of which is what opened the space for conservative-land to spread into the mainstream and get its arguments confused with legitimate ones), it'll be a feature in the ever-so-free corporate dominated american media-scape. i think that the bigger question---of conservative biais in the american press across the board--is a complicated one. it think there is without question such a biais, but some of its features are not specifically conservative (for example narrowness of coverage of international events, the tendency, which has increased over the past 20 years, to simply repeat or rebroadcast pre-packaged infotainment because it's cheap and easy)--are preconditions for conservative arguments appearing to be reasonable. but it'd take some doing to make this case in a compelling way, particularly in a messageboard context, and at the moment i haven't the time to undertake it. maybe later. or not. who can say? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-18-2009, 10:29 AM	#5 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i don't remember anyone saying anything about "the mouthbreather set"---personally i think it's pretty important to assume that most conservatives are reasonable people---that's what lets you start to think about the effects of ideology. if you assume these folk are simply stupid, then there's nothing to look at, nothing to think about because you've answered your own question (what is this about? how is this possible?) up front. i think populist conservative ideology blinkers peoples' worlds, but it has to do so in a way that is compelling, so which does not feel like that is what is happening. it has to be an explanation of the world for a range of demographics. that this explanation is surreal is, to my mind, kinda interesting. and that an effect of buying it seems to be a blinkering of the world is both interesting and a Problem. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-18-2009, 10:58 AM	#6 (permalink)
Halx Please touch this. Owner/Admin Location: Manhattan	Beyond this, there was a story earlier today about how ALL the networks are refusing to run ads around legalizing medicinal marijuana. __________________ You have found this post informative. -The Administrator [Don't Feed The Animals]

09-18-2009, 03:23 PM	#10 (permalink)
YaWhateva Friend Location: New Mexico	CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Networks respond to false Fox ad - Blogs from CNN.com This "fair and balanced" nonsense from Fox is just ridiculous. __________________ “If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly "This is my United States of Whateva!"

09-18-2009, 09:20 AM	#2 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	Conservatives will always chant the "liberal media" meme as long as they can score pity points with it, but I don't believe the media has been liberal in some time. This is, however, the first time I can remember when the leading players in political media are all right-wing

09-19-2009, 08:39 AM	#14 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	it's about time someone stood up to Fox News for their bullshit. Sadly, not enough people will have seen this

09-19-2009, 08:57 AM	#15 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Here is my view of what has happened. The mainstream media may lean slightly left but if it does it is very slightly. Fox news is extreme right. Some people look at fox news as honest reporting and think it is middle of the road thus by comparison all the other media is liberally biased.... This of course is ridiculous. As the man in the video said there is a difference between reporting a news story and promoting a news story. Fox news is not a news agency at all and instead is a propaganda agency. Fox news does not report the news it filters the news. Fox should be sued for truth in advertising violations.

09-19-2009, 09:09 AM	#17 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so long as cash rules everything around me, faux news will continue. if you want it to go away, start putting pressure on advertisers who buy time on that network at all. an organized advertiser boycott could bring it to its knees. publicizing the boycott would be tricky, in that the defense would play straight into the dividedness that has long been the faux news mainspring. us/them, our reality/their reality. but it could be done, and if it were done, it would go a long way toward redefining the space of political discourse in the united states. faux news does not report on reality as conventionally understood. faux news is part of a system that edits reality along certain assumptions. "fair and balanced" are relational terms. "fair & balanced" operate with respect to a set of structuring assumptions. so an entirely reactionary media outlet can call itself "fair & balanced" without exactly lying because they never say with respect to what. they just leave that part out. personally, i'd love to see faux news go down. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-21-2009, 07:55 AM	#23 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	what surprises me about fox is that everyone does not seem to know that it's a conservative media outlet. it's infotainment is by definition pre=chewed to slot into the political filters that the business model presupposes. so it is manifestly not a "news" outlet. it is an information stream that performs an assimilation operation, one which harmonizes it with the political viewpoints the business model assumes are held by its central demographic. i have no access to information not in the public domain, and i know the model---so it's not hard to find. what fox's success is testimony to is the resistance to critical interaction with information that's a result of the legion failures of education to teach these skills and demonstrate their importance. information streams are assimilated wholly into a consumer space, and what is seemingly sought from it is gratification. because "markets are rational"---the circulation of money is the confirmation in this blinkered, stupid system----it is understood as reasonable that infotainment be the norm and that the providing of gratification be the aim. there are any number of gratifications, btw: that of being horrified plays to a kind of voyeurism; the gratification of being paranoid plays to a kind of narcissism (if you are personally under threat, that fact in itself confirms in a backhanded way your Importance in the World---who would bother being a threat to you if you were not Important?); images of chaos and destruction play to an affirmation of distance (you watch it from your living room--it is a form of entertainment) across which the cheap, one-dimensional emoticons of sympathy and pity can flow (providing you the gratification of performing some act of public Largesse by giving o so deeply of your one-dimensional self) dissonances play back into a consonance of Demand Structures. disruptions make more desirable the Norm of buying commodities. in this period of collapse of empire, the centrality of this Norm is the mainspring of wholesale denial. infotainment is predicated on maintenance of that Norm and the sense of continuity which underpins it. remember that "news" is an advertising delivery system that trafficks in particular types of "contact" with a "reality" that is always distant, like a movie that you watch. in this context, fox is merely a particularly obvious, particularly self-referential version of the same basic machinery that is everywhere in the dominant media. from this viewpoint, conservative biais and "liberal" are versions of the same basic machine, which is geared around you as a consumer, you who wants commodities, you who needs to feel safe in order to indulge in the rituals of Purchase. but that doesn't mean that therefore there's no difference between conservative and other forms of biais. there are differences. self-referentiality, self-confirming arguments are one indicator---more present in populist conservative ideology, slightly less elsewhere. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-21-2009, 09:39 AM	#30 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	Obama is justified in denying the interview to Fox News; why set himself up to have his interview picked apart, edited, and distorted to feed the network's message? In other news, an interesting article on how (and why) Glenn Beck is different than the other right-wing TV/Radio hosts: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/op...rich.html?_r=2

09-21-2009, 10:43 AM	#40 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	who has labeled you in this thread, Cimarron?