12 thoughts on “A portrait in bias”

1. Come on John. The general showed remarkably piss poor judgement (sorry Bonnie, but no other word will do). Our military is in the business of defending our country and its inhabitants. That they may have to kill someone in the process is an unfortunate by-product of their business. Stating that you enjoy killing, regardless of who you are killing, makes you sound like a psycho and its antiethical of our Christian-Judeo beliefs. Our soldiers kill because they have to not because they like it. I am sure the general was simply trying to inject soem levity into his presentation but darn it this was a truely mispoken remark. As for the other guy, the chief executive of CNN or what ever, I read about him in the Post so what do you mean MSM isn’t covering it? Bias does make its way into the media. Actually the editorial pages are all about bias. Regualr news stories unfortunately also reflect bias from time to time, but that bias is just as likely to be slanted toward conservative veiwpoints as it is towards liberal viewpoints. Furthermore, what doesn’t get reported also reflects a bias. Americans do not see news that the rest of the world sees and this is based on bias. The new we recieve is reported with an American point of view, which is frequently not the point of view shared by the interantional community. The whole “liberal media” concept is vastly over-hyped. Conservatives dominant talk radio, commentary TV shows and the editorial pages.

2. Killing is not antithetical to Christian beliefs. (Ok-maybe according to Christ it is, but you said Christian-Judeo beliefs.) Christians have been killing people from their first taste of power. Hell, there is a hymn called “Onward Christian Soldier.” I googled it, so I know that it isn’t really about war, but it still uses war imagery and it has been used in that context since I bet.

   But that was an aside. John does have a point. I try to get news from different sources so I can see what people are talking about, but this blog thing is new to me. So, a couple of days ago I see a cartoon on Instapundit, I think, that was talking about Eason Jordan and I had no idea what it was all about until I read John’s post today. And as far as Mattis goes-damn, soldiers kill. That is what they are paid to do-you can’t whitewash that because of delicate sensibilities. You know, we send these people to war, we send them to kill, and then we expect them to be normal. I blame people like you for expecting that, but I blame people like John for creating that need in the first place. When I think about our soldiers I hope they come home safe, and then I hope they come home not f’d up. When I think about Hillary, I always fervently hope she never has to kill anyone. Mattis isn’t a pyscho, he is a soldier-it is what happens. Just be thankful that he didn’t say “It’s fun to kill Muslims.” His words make it clear that he is fighting against injustice.

   I am getting off track again…
   I watch the Today Show (liberal) every morning, I read the Times (liberal), the Weekly Standard (conservative), the National Review (conservative), and the Economist(as conservative as Europeans can be) (and today I got my first issue of Reason (libertarian)). Occasionally I get the Washington Post(LIBERAL). And now that I have discovered blogs (boy is Michael PO’d at you John:)) I can read Instapundit, IMAO, John’s blog, and the Democratic Underground. I am learning lots of new stuff. And, yes there is always a slant. And yes the liberals dominate mainstream media. And the important thing here, is that most people get their news from MSM. If you want to know the weather in the morning you watch a morning show (like Today), you don’t listen to Sean Hannity. If you want to find out what is going on in the Metro region you read the Post, you don’t watch O’Reilly. And, I thought I was the only one who read the editorials anyway.

   What is fun is seeing how each source portrays the same issue differently. I think that is why I don’t tow a party line. I see stuff in different places that makes sense to me and I am (usually) able to view things neutrally because I don’t feel that I have to feel a certain way.

   Anyway, John: baiting Mom is too much fun. Could you blog about something that Mom and I agree on so we can gang up on you?

3. Thanks, Ashley. I don’t know what pleases me most, you agreeing with me (mostly and this time)or that you are becoming addicted to blogs. That’s how I started. So, when will you be starting your own blog? You got the makings of a good one!

   Back on topic, yes almost all blogs have a definite bias. But, unlike the mainstream media, we acknowledge ours up front. So, you can read and decide for yourself, while factoring in our particular slant on things.

   Anyway, the most important thing is that you think for yourself. You don’t accept at face value the BS the MSM feeds you. Proud of you girl!

4. My marriage is entirely too new for a divorce just yet.
   I think if I have something I want to say I will just introduce it randomly on your blog like Mom did.:smile:

5. “Had he and I met
   By some old ancient inn,
   We should have sat us down to wet
   Right many a nipperkin!

   “But ranged as infantry,
   and staring face to face,
   I shot at him and he at me,
   And killed him in his place.

   “I shot him dead because-
   Because he was my foe,
   Just so-my foe of course he was;
   That’s clear enough; although

   “He thought he’d ‘list perhaps,
   Off hand like-just as I-
   Was out of work-had sold his traps-
   No other reason why.

   “Yes; quaint and curious war is!
   You shoot a fellow down
   You’d treat if met where any bar is,
   Or help to half-a-crown.”
   Thomas Hardy

6. Thomas Hardy sums it up nicely. But for the fact that we are at war our enemy wouldn’t be our enemy and we wouldn’t think of killing him or her. And to set the record straight Ashley, killing as in “thou shalt not kill” is against our Christian-Judeo beliefs. And to you John darling, let me remind you that Eason has survived a firestorm of his own creation before, so I wouldn’t herald his demise quite yet.

   The main thrust of your article was the so called bias in the media. I think we all accept that a certain amount of bias exist, but apparently, while liberals admit to bias we claim it swings both ways, whereas libertarians, neocons, and conservatives insist that the bias in MSM is strictly liberal. So I decided to check out the headlines today in a couple of newspapers as well as online news services from TV networks. Here is a sample of those headlines. Where you see a colon indicates a large headline followed by a smaller headline. Try to match the headline to the news service:
   “President Sends ’06 Budget to Congress: Programs are Cut, but War Costs Are Not Included”

   “Deficit Puts Pressure on Bush’s Budget”

   Bush to Propose Billions In Cuts”

   “Bush Offers Budget That Sets Priorities”

   “The Fog of the Budget: How Bush Will Mask the Biggest National Debt in History By Largely Ignoring the Costs of his Own Priorities”

   “Bush Proposes 2.5 Trillion Spending Plan”

   Your choices are The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The L.A. Times, Business Week, ABC News and MSNBC.

   One of the headlines above appeared with this in the main story, “…slashes nondefense spending and the deficit while relying more heavily on taxes from affluent Americans.” There was no explanaiton as to how the budget was relying or in any way tied to taxes from affluent Americans. On the contrary, Bush plans to make his last round of tax cuts permanent which would help affluent Americans. I can only assume that the writer meant that Bush’s failure to address the ATM equates to “relying on taxes from affluent Americans: except that the ATM impacts families earning 65k a year– hardly affluent. Even more amusing is that in the same paper on the editorial page it was written, “the budget deficit will continue to increase”. This remark was accompanied by the deficit numbers for the last couple of years and the projected deficit under this budget.

   When I worked at DOJ I was absolutely amazed by the duplication of programs targeting drugs. Let me clarify that. Within DOJ there exist departments solely devoted to contianing the drug trade, plus there are programs within departments with the same goal. Not of of these programs or departments came up on the chopping block. Faith based initiatives and abstinence only programs will actually grow under Bush’s budget. Go figure. There is a lot of waste in the the government and far to many entitlement programs. I am totally in favor of trimming some sails. Let faith based organizaitons raise their own money through their parishoners. I don’t want to finance them. Abstinence only programs are like flushing money down a toilet; beside parents should be teaching abstinence. And don’t overlook cutting duplicate programs simply because it isn’t PC. Cutting programs that provide assistance for housing, heating and food should be the last items on the chopping block. To do otherwise is simply immoral.

7. OK-I guessed. Well, I really googled-guessing is such a waste of time when cold hard facts are available so quickly:

   1. Washington post-no surprise there
   2. AP, (this is the one you probably found on MSNBC. ABC also carried the story) money quote: “slice aid to farmers and college students”
   3. LA Times, money quote: “will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing.”
   4. Washington Times, money quote: “lean $2.57 trillion budget that slashes nondefense spending and the deficit, while relying more heavily on taxes from affluent Americans.”
   5. Business Week-didn’t want to register but I am guessing by title it is bad
   6. ABC—no money quote, but had an overall negative tone.

   I found each article and read them all except for the Post article and the Business Week article. I pulled a money quote when I found one and then I decided to see how each source was perceived.

   So, I googled media bias and found multiple references to a study called “A Measure of Media Bias.” Here, a quote from the study gives a very simplified version of what they did:

   “As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative. Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one. Our method asks: What is the estimated ADA score of a member of Congress who exhibits the same frequency (2:1) in his or her speeches? This is the score that our method would assign to the New York Times.”

   The ADA, Americas for Democratic Action, is a self-described liberal lobbying group. So, the researchers started with the “liberal score” of Congress members as judged by a liberal group. That’s fair.

   Here is the link to the PDF document that fully documents the study:

   http://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/events/ppe/papers/Tim%20Groseclose%20Media%20Bias%20Paper.pdf

   Here is a run down of the scores available for the outlets you quoted (the higher the score the more liberal):

   I got these from this website, which referenced the study:

   http://www.worldthreats.com/general_information/Liberal%20Bias%20Quantified.htm

   Washington Post – 66.6
   ABC World News Tonight 61.0
   ABC Good Morning America 56.1
   Washington Times 35.4
   Los Angeles Times – 70.0

   There were no stats available for MSNBC or Business Week, so I googled them separately.

   Business Week: I would have thought that Business Week would be a “conservative” publication because it deals with business. However, when I did a search to see what type of bias Business Week appeared to have (if any) what I returned was Amazon, where people rate the product. I went through three pages of reviews and was surprised to see that quite a few people had cancelled their subscriptions because the magazine was becoming too political and that those politics were liberal. It was in those comments that I found these leads:

   1. Bob Kuttner is co-editor of the American Prospect (liberal magazine) and a contributing columnist to Business Week.

   2. And is published by McGraw-Hill, the same company that puts out school textbooks. Here is a choice quote on McGraw-Hill:

   http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i02/02b02001.htm

   “Today, schoolbooks and standardized tests are routinely bowdlerized to make them conform to absurd standards of sensitivity. McGraw-Hill has banned the words “lady,” “tomboy,” “man-made,” and “fisherman” from its textbooks, Ravitch tells us, because they are deemed sexist.”

   Hope THAT makes you think…

   MSNBC: that is up in the air. I searched for bias on their part and found them being ripped from both sides. Odd.

   So, to review, of the six headlines you gave two appeared to have a conservative bias and the other four a negative, I mean liberal bias. Here are the two that appeared conservative to me:
   
   “Bush to Propose Billions In Cuts” – which I took to mean tax cuts (yea!). But that isn’t what it meant. It meant cuts in the amount of money crack whores are allowed to legally steal from me and it was from LA Times.

   “Bush Offers Budget That Sets Priorities” – which has your quote about heavily taxing affluent Americans. This was a pretty balanced article, they even quoted Pelosi pretty early on. No potshots were taken at either side. This article was from the Washington Times.

   So, um, all of this research took awhile, but in the end you proved that the media is even more liberally biased than I thought. I went into this thinking that Business Week, MSNBC, and Washington Times would show at least a slight conservative bias – but the Times was fair, MSNBC went liberal, and although I refused to register to read the Business Week article I sense from the title that it was also liberal.

   I think John owes you on this one:)

8. Mom, your last paragraph is something I can totally get with you on.

   I go back and forth on faith based initiatives. On one hand, they should not be discriminated against just because they are religion-based organizations. On the other hand, I think religious people are crazy and I don’t want them to have my tax dollars because I’m afraid they will use them to push their moral agenda (even though it is expressly forbidden.) Overall, I would have to say “against” just because I don’t think the risk is worth it. However, by making religious groups the focus of social-welfare programs we are setting the stage for government getting out of them. Social-welfare programs had their start in religion and that is where they should stay.

   Abstinence is stupid. Did I ever tell you about the time that I amazed and horrified a co-worker by telling her that I believed that if God didn’t want us to screw (sorry Bonnie, no other word will do. Well, one would, but I have been expressly forbidden to use it here by my Mom…) he wouldn’t have programmed us to hit puberty at such a young age. Or, did I tell you about the time I told my boss that, “if you Baptists wanted to make people feel guilty about something, why did you have to pick sex? You guys have turned a perfectly normal biological necessity into something dirty.” Trying to get myself fired aside, as long as biology exists abstinence will never work. And if Bush is really horrified by the idea of pre-marital sex he ought to use that money to fund promotion of self-esteem in teenagers. Right now, self-esteem is taught by making everyone feel equal-which doesn’t do squat. But, if you instilled the values of individualism and self-determination in kids along with a healthy dose of integrity then maybe kids would be more selective in sexual partners and self-involved enough to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and diseases, not to mention heartache and shame. That is something I would put my money behind.

   Drugs vs. social assistance: Theoretically, I am for the legalization of drugs. I say theoretically because I have no way of determining the impact of legalization. Would it make drugs safer, would it make drug use go down because of the loss of “illicit fun”, or would it make all of us unsafe because of an increased number of addicts? I don’t know. But I do feel that it is a waste of resources to try to “fight” drugs. The “war on drugs” has been going on since I was a child and I don’t think it has made one bit of progress. I do agree with you that this crap needs to get cut out of the budget. It is ridiculous. On the other hand, the social programs you mentioned (assistance for housing, heating and food) also get quite a bit of funding. I know this because of my job. I don’t agree that they should be last on the chopping block. There is much duplication that could be removed. Furthermore, I think that the programs that are getting gov’t grants really need to be looked at to see what, and how, they are accomplishing their goals. I don’t want to give any of my money to anyone for assistance – but if I am forced to, I would like it to go to programs that “teach a man to fish,” if you know what I mean. But, the government is not stringent in making sure that our money is used to that end.

   The only exception I take to your last paragraph is the “moral” comment. If the gov’t cut all entitlement programs and gave that money back to the citizens then the citizens could give that money to charities as they saw fit. For you, it is a moral imperative to take care of those without the basic necessities in life. You could give your money to them. I don’t think it is my moral imperative to give other people my money. And, I think that the government appropriating my money to give to these people is immoral, because it is theft. What keeps coming into my head, although I don’t really know how to introduce it here, is that: when I go in public with you, you do not say “thank you” to waiters, cashiers, or sales clerks. You breeze on by them like they are robots. My moral code tells me to treat them like human beings and acknowledge their presence and the job they are doing. I treat others (usually, I’m not perfect) the way I want to be treated. The golden rule and all. Why can’t you say a simple “thank you” to hard working people but you are willing to throw money at people that may or may not be deserving? I was going to speculate, but I came up blank.

9. Jiminy Cricket John! It is 3 AM and it is a Tuesday night–what are you doing to me???

10. Did you actually read that study? It is deeply flawed. It is based on comparing media outlet’s references to liberal think tanks versus conservative think tanks as compared to the number of times a member of Congress cites a liberal think tank compared to a consrvative think tank. On a scale of 1 to 100 39 was the established meidan based on what members of the House do. No surprise there because the House is controled by Republicans. The ACLU came up as one of the more centrist of establishments, as did the Drudge Report. What is really comes down to is how the think tanks were determined to be liberal or conservative. The Children’s Defense League (I may have that last word wrong-doing ths onthe fly) was labeled as a liberal think tank. Why is that I wonder? Are we to assume that promoting children is a liberal thing? AARP also came out as liberal. The Rand Fondation cmae out s liberal. Excuse me? The two college sutendents who prepared this paper forgot to include a nutcase category which is where Rand firmly belongs.

11. You obviously read it. Read it again, you admitted yourself you were doing this on the fly. They used the ADA numbers for the reps and then think tanks were considered left or right based on the average ADA score of the reps citing them-with 42.2 being the cutoff between the two groups. So they never had to make a determination on ideaology. They also explain why the think tanks might not come up they way they thought they would. Over half of the references to the ACLU were from a republican citing positively their opposition to the campaign finance reform bill. So, over half their score would be based on his score. The researchers also recalculated ACLU without any of his references and they had a score of 70.12 The Children’s Defense Fund was probably cited by a lot of Dems b/c they want gun control and more gov’t support for poor children.

    Well, it is all in there so I suggest you read it closer. The only real issue with the study would be 39 being the mean. But, that has nothing to do with the study. It should be reasonable to expect that our Representatives truly represent their constituents. That isn’t really true-but it also has nothing to do with the study and it is a discussion for another time.

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