It's official, the Press is Liberal.

[Melendwyr]

Here's a wild thought: such a subject wouldn't be considered appropriate material for a national news broadcast, and airing it would have been (correctly) perceived as blatant sensationalism.

Without having *any* political opinion about homosexuality and gay rights, I can still say that if I were a reporter, I wouldn't have covered such behavior, excepting possibly in a newspaper article where I would decry the double standard of decency laws and ask why they weren't enforced in this instance. Actual visual broadcasts would be right out.

Even setting those issues aside, I wouldn't want to give such people the attention they're clearly seeking.

 

[RandFan]

If you can look at coverage of the 2000 election, and still claim the media is “Liberal” I have no idea what to tell you.

Of course your methodology is just as flawed (if not more so) as the study that is the subject of this thread.

 

[Random]

Of course your methodology is just as flawed (if not more so) as the study that is the subject of this thread.

Come up with an objective way of measuring media bias, we will apply it to the 2000 election coverage retroactively, and see what we get. I feel quite confident in my opinion of it.

 

[Lurker]

(...)
If you can look at coverage of the 2000 election, and still claim the media is “Liberal” I have no idea what to tell you.

I agree with you 100%!!!!!

Lurker

 

[Upchurch]

Slight aside and out of curiosity how isn't The ACLU a conservative organisation?

Conservative in the modern sense or the traditional sense?

It isn't conservative in the modern sense in that it pushes seperation of church and state, at the very least. In the more traditional sense of maintaining the status quo, ...uh, hm.

 

[RandFan]

Come up with an objective way of measuring media bias, we will apply it to the 2000 election coverage retroactively, and see what we get. I feel quite confident in my opinion of it.

Feel confident all you want. It's still worthless and without any objective basis. Asking me to come up with an objective basis to prove the opposite won't solve the problem with your assertion.

 

[pgwenthold]

How about this recent example: media outlets are clamoring over themselves to show how Bush got an 8 point jump in recent polls, from a 39 to 47. Wow, look at that improvement, and then they spend their time trying to explain what happened to make his popularity go up so much. This was reported by lots of media, including CNN and Fox.

Of course, there is a question here. The 8 point increase in popularity was in the ABC/Wash Times (I think the Times) poll. CNN and Fox have their own polls, and those showed little to no change from last week (if anything, Fox had an increase in the _disapprove_ with no increase in the approve).

Doesn't CNN believe their own polls? Where was the liberal media pointing out that this was only one poll that showed this, and their own poll showed no improvement? No, they fell all over themselves to show how Bush is gaining popularity.

Of course, I got all this information from the Liberal Smear site. Yeah, it's admittedly a liberal slant, but that doesn't change the fact that news outlets ignored their own polling data in order to report that Bush's popularity increased.

Apparently, they don't care about what their polls tell them, only about a story.

 

[Lurker]

I always laugh how conservative news outlets talk about how polls are meaningless but when a poll is favorable to them they report it.

Lurker

 

[DavidJames]

It's hardly a leap. The event I spoke of happened in the summer of 1992. I have had a lot of time to re-examine the issue in light of subsequent events. All the old network talking heads; Koppel, Rather, Jennings, Brokaw...all quite liberal. From the first moments at the parade that summer of '92 to the memo-gate scandal; I've seen the clear evidence of media-left bias. So please explain to me how Occam offers a more parsimonious explanation...please.

-z

I referred specifically to the event you mentioned, nothing else. Maybe it was the only footage they filmed, that would be the simplest answer.

 

[Darat]

Conservative in the modern sense or the traditional sense?

It isn't conservative in the modern sense in that it pushes separation of church and state, at the very least. In the more traditional sense of maintaining the status quo, ...uh, hm.

That's what I thought it was but I thought I should check.

 

[Kopji]

The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left.

A report that includes perceiving the Drudge Report as "left leaning" can probably conclude anything at all.

 

[Questioninggeller]

When I decided to go I was quite happy to see gay and lesbian people freely participating in an open society. My liberal heart was light and erm.."gay" (but not in that way---"not that there's anything wrong with that")

...
There were the 300-odd San Francisco "leather-men" openly engaged in a circle jerk next to the Washington Monument. There were the drag-queens dressed as nuns carrying signs that said "Ruining it all for everyone" (The gay pride theme of the rally was: "hey we're normal just like you") There were the brutish bare-chested shave-headed overweight lesbians who looked remarkably like General Burkhalter from the old "Hogan's Heros" series. I kept imagining the voice of Burkhalter: (Kleenk!! Come here and look at my huge teeets; Kleenk!) Then there were the regular mainstream partiers who were hanging off hotewl balconies at nearby hotels inviting men to come up. One called to me and said he needed a "husband"...I respectfully declined...

Sounds like you weren't as comfortable as you thought you were with people acting as they want. As for the "circle jerk," A) Why didn't you have the police stop that? B) Did you really expect to see a report on THAT on TV? As for the nude-topped women, would you have been as disgusted if they were good looking straight women who called to you for a husband?

 

[luchog]

But there were things I saw that day that literally opened my eyes to reality. There were the 300-odd San Francisco "leather-men" openly engaged in a circle jerk next to the Washington Monument. There were the drag-queens dressed as nuns carrying signs that said "Ruining it all for everyone" (The gay pride theme of the rally was: "hey we're normal just like you") There were the brutish bare-chested shave-headed overweight lesbians who looked remarkably like General Burkhalter from the old "Hogan's Heros" series. I kept imagining the voice of Burkhalter: (Kleenk!! Come here and look at my huge teeets; Kleenk!) Then there were the regular mainstream partiers who were hanging off hotewl balconies at nearby hotels inviting men to come up. One called to me and said he needed a "husband"...I respectfully declined...

(emphasis added)

So your contention is that this sort of thing wasn't "normal" just like all the mainstream straight folks?

Sorry, but I'm having trouble distinguishing the difference (aside from sexual preferences) between this and Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, Ft. Lauderdale or South Padre Island during Spring Break, or any other major "straight" crowds during a major drunk event. Pick up a few volumes of the Girls Gone Wild videos some time; and keep in mind that they only film and show the commercially attractive people and voluntary activities, not the ugly fat freaks or drunken gang-rapes. The topless silicone-packed bimbos, the frat boys dropping their pants every time a camera is pointed in their direction and screaming "SHOW YOUR TITS!!!" at anything that has the requisite body part, and so on.

In light of the kind of behaviour I generally witness at these sorts of "straight, mainstream" events, I fail to see how this Gay Pride rally is anything but "normal".

 

[Cain]

Slight aside and out of curiosity how isn't The ACLU a conservative organisation?

Well, if the headline claims "Study Proves Liberal Media Bias" are to have any meaning, then we should have generally agreed upon notions of "liberal" and "conservative." For such headline reading, I am not interested in what these terms "really" mean, because they mean what people think they mean. The typical citizen, and the mainstream press, would never ever classify the ACLU as "conservative." The reason why they got the conservative classification in this study, if I recall correctly, is because Tom Delay (evil incarnate) cited the group a bunch of times from the House floor for their stance on campaign finance reform.

 

[peptoabysmal]

It appears that they use the same measuring stick as is used for Supreme Court Justices:

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

...

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

IMO, it's not bad methodology.

Drudge appears to lean left because it draws from the other news services which scored generally liberal, so it means that the results are consistent.

 

[Matabiri]

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

If they're comparing with the "average US voter", I'm not surprised... the "centre" in the US is still considerably right of the "centre" in Europe, say; it's probably quite hard to be right of the average US voter without being, um, Fox.

 

[Random]

It appears that they use the same measuring stick as is used for Supreme Court Justices:

IMO, it's not bad methodology.

Drudge appears to lean left because it draws from the other news services which scored generally liberal, so it means that the results are consistent.

There are a couple of problems with this.

The first is that it assumes that if a lawmaker or media outlet quotes a certain think tank or organization, then it must support that groups conclusions. The republican congressman who says, “Listen to this ridiculous drivel from Greenpeace…”, might not support its views.

The second is that certain topics can skew the results due to their methodology. Virtually any article involving blacks like civil rights, the death of Rosa Parks, school quotas, race discrimination cases, etc, will have some position statement from the NAACP. It is unlikely to contain quotes from Stormwatch or the KKK, and these groups are not on the list of things that these students were looking for anyway.

Of course, you don’t need to look at the methodology in all that much detail to know it’s screwed up. Any study that shows the RAND corporation is more liberal than Amnesty International obviously has serious problems.

Really this just looks like yet another conservative study designed to give right-wing talk show hosts fodder to attack liberals on. Conservative funding, questionable methodology, results that don’t seem to make any sense, but a conclusion that will be trumpeted across the right-wing echo chamber long after the study itself has been thoroughly discredited.

 

[rikzilla]

(emphasis added)

So your contention is that this sort of thing wasn't "normal" just like all the mainstream straight folks?

Sorry, but I'm having trouble distinguishing the difference (aside from sexual preferences) between this and Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, Ft. Lauderdale or South Padre Island during Spring Break, or any other major "straight" crowds during a major drunk event. Pick up a few volumes of the Girls Gone Wild videos some time; and keep in mind that they only film and show the commercially attractive people and voluntary activities, not the ugly fat freaks or drunken gang-rapes. The topless silicone-packed bimbos, the frat boys dropping their pants every time a camera is pointed in their direction and screaming "SHOW YOUR TITS!!!" at anything that has the requisite body part, and so on.

In light of the kind of behaviour I generally witness at these sorts of "straight, mainstream" events, I fail to see how this Gay Pride rally is anything but "normal".

This is surely a good point to make and I agree that it's valid...in a way. The problem that I have with it is that revellers at Spring Break or Mardi Gras are not identifying themselves exclusively as "heterosexual". Indeed I'm sure you'll agree that many "major drunk event" festivities include gay people too.

This event however was billed as a civil rights rally for gay and lesbian people. It was attended by Senators and Congressmen. (albeit of the liberal bent) The theme of the day was to show the nation "normalcy". That's why the "Sisters" all carried signs that read: "Ruining it for everyone!"

This was a nationally reported civil rights rally and protest. It was not a "Gone Wild" video. (But it sure could have been)

Heterosexuals are of course equally able to comit public acts of a lewd and depraved nature...they just usually don't call it political activism and do it in daylight on the National Mall with the networks refraining from covering the nastier bits.

-z

 

[Mycroft]

This is surely a good point to make and I agree that it's valid...in a way. The problem that I have with it is that revellers at Spring Break or Mardi Gras are not identifying themselves exclusively as "heterosexual". Indeed I'm sure you'll agree that many "major drunk event" festivities include gay people too.

The liberal bias here is there is a big story in this depravity that is not being reported.

I'm all for gay rights, but gay rights do not include the right to public sexual acts. I personally would cringe at the damage done to the gay movement caused my a major network making a story of the type of things Rik saw, but I also know these things will never be cleaned up without exposure.

 

[luchog]

This is surely a good point to make and I agree that it's valid...in a way. The problem that I have with it is that revellers at Spring Break or Mardi Gras are not identifying themselves exclusively as "heterosexual". Indeed I'm sure you'll agree that many "major drunk event" festivities include gay people too.

Yes, but the majority of the participants will most definitely identify, loudly and vociferously, as heterosexual; and there are numerous cases of assaults on gays and lesbians.

Heterosexuals are of course equally able to comit public acts of a lewd and depraved nature...they just usually don't call it political activism and do it in daylight on the National Mall with the networks refraining from covering the nastier bits.

Actually, they do. I've seen quite a bit of it around here. Hempfest is a pretty good example; though the police have been cracking down quite a bit, lately; due to the huge crowds.