What liberal media?
The right wing and the righties here like to point out that most reporters are Democrats and make other outlandish claims about the people who work in the media to prove that the media is ‘liberal’ or has a ‘liberal bias’ but seldom do they look at the actual content that the stations run to see what the term 'liberal bias' means in terms of the stories that are put on the air to see whether there is a real liberal bias or even real news at all on any of these stations. For instance what kind of bias does 50 or more stories over a two week period about Justine Bieber really represent? Here is a compelling excerpt on just how liberal the media is as reported in the new book by John Nichols and Robert W. McChestney, Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America (2013) that shows just how liberal all those media outlets really are. On the questions of who was paying for the third person ads that flooded so much of the local media during the 2012 election cycle. Most of the stations making millions on these ads couldn't have cared less where the ads or the money for them was coming from and they felt no compunction to inform their views about any of this either. In a look at how the media covers the groups that were buying millions of ad dollars worth of time on their stations, the authors found that most the news coverage at most stations was not directed or concerned with where the money was coming from or whether or not the claims made in the ads were true. In fact, the only real question ever asked is ‘has the check cleared.’ Liberal media bias indeed!
In Milwaukee, during the run-up to the recall election of Governor Scott Walker, there were no stories on any of the seventeen groups buying massive amounts of airtime before the recall election of Governor Scott Walker. But in the same two week period, local news programs aired fifty-three stories about Justin Bieber. In Cleveland, the four networks affiliates did no stories on the Koch-brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, although that group placed five hundred anti-Obama attack ads on the same stations. In Charlotte, between January and August 2012, the three top-spending third-party groups spent $4 million for their ads at the network-affiliated stations. Those stations did zero stories on these three groups.
Another free press study, this time in Denver, compared the amount of coverage local news shows gave to the five biggest-spending third-party groups with the amount of time those groups ran ads on the same stations. The conclusion: or every 1 minute Denver TV news reported on these outside groups and their ads, the same stations ran 162 minutes of the ads from these groups. ‘In other words,’ journalist Edward Wasserman wrote, the finders of political advertising appear to hve purchased not just air time, but immunity from media scrutiny.’ As the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison noted, local TV news has a ‘huge conflict of interest’ when it comes to examining these subjects. ‘Broadcasters have an incentive not to see the system changed.’
Deep into the [2012] campaign, the Pew Research Center determined that only one in four Americans had heard ‘a lot ‘ about outside third parties involved in the 2012 election, and that the balance of Americans had heard little or nothing on the subject. (A mere 2 percent of Americans thought the outside money had a positive effect on the election process.) (156-157)
The right wing and the righties here like to point out that most reporters are Democrats and make other outlandish claims about the people who work in the media to prove that the media is ‘liberal’ or has a ‘liberal bias’ but seldom do they look at the actual content that the stations run to see what the term 'liberal bias' means in terms of the stories that are put on the air to see whether there is a real liberal bias or even real news at all on any of these stations. For instance what kind of bias does 50 or more stories over a two week period about Justine Bieber really represent? Here is a compelling excerpt on just how liberal the media is as reported in the new book by John Nichols and Robert W. McChestney, Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America (2013) that shows just how liberal all those media outlets really are. On the questions of who was paying for the third person ads that flooded so much of the local media during the 2012 election cycle. Most of the stations making millions on these ads couldn't have cared less where the ads or the money for them was coming from and they felt no compunction to inform their views about any of this either. In a look at how the media covers the groups that were buying millions of ad dollars worth of time on their stations, the authors found that most the news coverage at most stations was not directed or concerned with where the money was coming from or whether or not the claims made in the ads were true. In fact, the only real question ever asked is ‘has the check cleared.’ Liberal media bias indeed!
In Milwaukee, during the run-up to the recall election of Governor Scott Walker, there were no stories on any of the seventeen groups buying massive amounts of airtime before the recall election of Governor Scott Walker. But in the same two week period, local news programs aired fifty-three stories about Justin Bieber. In Cleveland, the four networks affiliates did no stories on the Koch-brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, although that group placed five hundred anti-Obama attack ads on the same stations. In Charlotte, between January and August 2012, the three top-spending third-party groups spent $4 million for their ads at the network-affiliated stations. Those stations did zero stories on these three groups.
Another free press study, this time in Denver, compared the amount of coverage local news shows gave to the five biggest-spending third-party groups with the amount of time those groups ran ads on the same stations. The conclusion: or every 1 minute Denver TV news reported on these outside groups and their ads, the same stations ran 162 minutes of the ads from these groups. ‘In other words,’ journalist Edward Wasserman wrote, the finders of political advertising appear to hve purchased not just air time, but immunity from media scrutiny.’ As the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison noted, local TV news has a ‘huge conflict of interest’ when it comes to examining these subjects. ‘Broadcasters have an incentive not to see the system changed.’
Deep into the [2012] campaign, the Pew Research Center determined that only one in four Americans had heard ‘a lot ‘ about outside third parties involved in the 2012 election, and that the balance of Americans had heard little or nothing on the subject. (A mere 2 percent of Americans thought the outside money had a positive effect on the election process.) (156-157)
