John McCain and the Discovery Institute

I have a question. I'm a little frightened about being jumped all over, because I rarely read a newspaper or see a TV, and I won't be able to defend myself. I'm just asking a question. I listen to the radio about 30 min./day, NPR on the way to work, O'Reilly or NPR on the way home, depending on whether O'Reilly is tolerable that day. (I don't have a large selection here in rural TN, unless I want to be bombarded with country music.) So I have zippo personal experience on liberal bias in the media.The right wingers I listened to in the past (and O'Reilly) all say that polls say journalists vote 85% or 90% democrat. One, do you believe that's true, and two, wouldn't that suggest that some sort of liberal bias would be unavoidable?

If that's true, then where's all the liberal bias? Why the flogging of made-up stories about Democrats? Why the double standard that benefits conservatives and Republicans?For instance, reporters commonly question whether or not Bill Clinton's marital proclivities will harm Hillary Clinton's career, or whether or not Hillary would be as successful as she is now if she hadn't married into success. But where's the questioning of Rudy Guliani, who divorced one of his wives at a press conference? Where's the wondering if John McCain would have been successful in politics if he hadn't divorced his first wife to marry into money? (Why is it that John Kerry is the only politician the media have accused of doing that?)Sure, reporters may tend to vote Democratic. But the fact that the media is biased against Democrats can't really be questioned, as far as I can see. And it's worth remembering that editors and media conglomerate owners are really the ones who determine the content of media, and to a large degree, those people are Republicans and conservatives.

Your unorthodox understanding of the CBS issue is certainly interesting, Crash. But what's even more interesting is that your reply focused exclusively on that story.I warned you specifically about the invalidity of trading anecdotes. And then you wasted an entire post doing nothing but that.Your reply ignored the question. I asked you for data to support your assertion. I was very clear about this.You asserted that a press consisting mostly of liberal Democrats is guilty of 'systemic bias' against liberal Democrats.In the absence of any data to support this belief, it appears to be self-contradictory and likely irrational. I'm sure you prefer that your readers think better of your ideas. It would therefore stand to reason that you will seize the opportunity you have to show that the liberal-against-liberal bias you see, strange though it may seem, really exists.Data, please.__Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Right, but I already addressed the anecdote issue with Subbie. Why would I reply again to something I already addressed? Then why don't you try to address the questions Subbie couldn't? Or, like him, are you simply setting an impossible standard of proof? I still don't understand what you think is self-contradictory. At least three legitimate explanations have been provided to you for why a media that employs liberals would be biased against Democrats, and the best part is none of them are even mutually exclusive.It seems like the onus of proof is on you to show how there's anything contradictory here. Plus you have the burden of explaining why a supposedly "liberal media" so unquestioningly accepts the misrepresentations of a conservative administration and his political noise machine. Anyway, wasn't it you who pointed out the sweetheart treatment John McCain gets from the so-called liberal media? Add that to the sweetheart treatment of Rudy Guliani, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney - the entire GOP 2008 roster - and it seems like you've done about half the work in proving my point for me.I think the burden is yours, to explain your self-contradictory position that the media that treats the entire GOP presidential stable so well is somehow "liberal". How does that make any sense?

Because I asked for data. Where is it? I asked you for any data at all. If that sets an impossible standard of proof, so be it.Your unlikely assertion is that liberal journalists are systemically biased against the liberal politicians they personally support. On the face of it this assertion appears to be self-refuting and thus irrational. You have been given the opportunity to present any sort of data to show the idea has merit, but you have produced nothing.I will not bother you with a fifth request for data. It's obvious by now that you have none.Your assertion is only a subjective opinion whose true nature as an opinion you refuse to acknowledge._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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For instance, reporters commonly question whether or not Bill Clinton's marital proclivities will harm Hillary Clinton's career, or whether or not Hillary would be as successful as she is now if she hadn't married into success. But where's the questioning of Rudy Guliani, who divorced one of his wives at a press conference? Where's the wondering if John McCain would have been successful in politics if he hadn't divorced his first wife to marry into money? (Why is it that John Kerry is the only politician the media have accused of doing that?)

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Let's not forget how Newt Gingrich's dodgy marital history.(He's rumored to be considering a run this year) Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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The right wingers I listened to in the past (and O'Reilly) all say that polls say journalists vote 85% or 90% democrat. One, do you believe that's true,

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Nope.The American Journalist | Pew Research Center

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and two, wouldn't that suggest that some sort of liberal bias would be unavoidable?

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The only problem with that theory is that the majority of these journalists' editors are conservative. Same with the owners of the publications they work for.The editors control what leads get followed, what facts are included, and certainly what stories will run in the first place.

That's true for print media, yes. The last data I saw showed that in electronic media (TV, radio, etc.) news execs skewed leftward in about the same proportions as journalists. And these formats reach a larger audience than print media.The picture is increasingly complicated, of course, with the introduction and merging of traditional electronic media with Internet news sources. There are the corporate mergers to consider. Certainly the mainstream media (MSM) have a much smaller market share than they did a generation ago.__

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

What kind of data are you asking for that wouldn't just be an enumeration of examples? How are we going to objectively measure "liberalness" or "conservativeness" or "misrepresentation-ness"? If it's the system that is biased, AO, then the politics of the journalists themselves are irrelevant - the system will bias against liberals, regardless.Your contention that a poll of journalist voting habits somehow disproves that the things Media Matters chronicles even happened is ridiculous. How can I present something when I don't even know what you're asking for? Your request for "data" is insufficiently specific, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that you have no interest in specifying what data you would find sufficient - because no amount of data would be sufficient to you.I'll try yet another time to arrive at some kind of agreement with you, though it's obvious that it will be fruitless. Tell me what kind of data would be necessary to substantiate my position to you.

Thanks for the link. I thought I'd never find something like that. I always wondered where those stats came from. I'm a firm believer that at least 80% of all statistics are made up on the spot, so if the source isn't named I don't believe the stats.

I've been backtracking through this thread looking at Crash & Subbie's conversation. I ran across your post 33, and I read the article. Some notes on the source you mention there.1. When I read it, their opinion came glaring through. 58% to 42% is a "dramatic advantage" when it's conservative to liberal, but 53% to 45% is a "small advantage" when it's liberal. Yes, there's a difference, but that leaves a pretty small distance between "dramatic" and "small." And an increase from 53-45 to 61-39 is "nearly three times as large." Well, okay, 22 is nearly 3 times 8, but that's hardly an accurate portrayal of an increase from 53% to 61%.2. So I looked up the source. They are "A non-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation."3. This really makes me question even their data. You spent a lot of time on the issue of bias in our other thread, and this is an openly biased research group with a clearly stated goal that has nothing to do with accurately producing data.

I have heard a lot of assertions about liberal bias in the media, and I don't think even one of the people making those assertions were talking about movies being full of immorality. I've never even heard anything like this.The issues I've heard addressed are coverage of the president, gun control, abortion, and I'm sure there's others, but those are the main ones.

Isn't this a place where Percy & nator would tell you "the plural of anecdote is not data"?Nator produced a couple of links to people that tried to tabulate total percentages. That kind of data would be useful. "42% of the stories on major news networks during the six months during the election were favorable to Republicans, 32% favorable to Democrats, and 26% covered both sides" would be useful type information. I made those figures up, of course, but that would be data.It'd be nice if the data didn't come from a non-profit organization with the goal of correcting conservative misinformation in the media, but from some reasonably unbiased source.The fact is, if 10% of all news stories were favorable to conservatives, and 85% were favorable to liberals, you'd still have enough examples to regale us from now till Von Danikens aliens come back (Dec. 24, 2011, I believe).

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Nator produced a couple of links to people that tried to tabulate total percentages.

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Yes, scraf did do that, but

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It'd be nice if the data didn't come from a non-profit organization with the goal of correcting conservative misinformation in the media, but from some reasonably unbiased source.

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it didn't really do her much good.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

In my limited experience, McCain does get sweetheart treament from the media. He gets portrayed as more middle of the road than most, and he's well-liked.However, he's probably a bad example, because the right wingers don't like him and consider him to be pretty liberal. I don't hear much of the right wing talk shows any more. I can only listen to them while I travel, but they vilify him. He's a bad guy that they don't want elected.