Left media bias re 911 exposed

[Dave Rogers]

BTW, I've never checked this, but I consider it a slam dunk that one way to identify a left gatekeeper organization is to see if they've covered the topic of left gatekeeping, itself, seriously.

It would be a circular argument if you define left gatekeeper such that it was required, everywhere and always, that a left gatekeeper not investigate left gatekeeping.

I just wanted to see how those two statements looked sitting next to each other.

Dave

 

[1337m4n]

I just wanted to see how those two statements looked sitting next to each other.

They're very cute together. I think they should be a couple.

 

[funk de fino]

They're very cute together. I think they should be a couple.

A double stundie

 

[CptColumbo]

Wow, I didn't know a fraternity group had such power.

Wait til you find out what the Campfire Girls are up to.

 

[CptColumbo]

Yes. The mainstream media is TOTALLY biased against 9-11 deniers. This is a fact.

They are also biased against folks who believe in bigfoot, the loch ness monster, alien abductions, goblins, banshees, leprechauns, the Golem, and El Chupachabra.

But in all seriousness, the truthers really missed their shot. if they had acted polite, tactful, and professional, with the media all over this country, they could have had sooooo many more interviews and even stories.

but, instead, they act like children demanding attention...NOW NOW NOW.

and if they dont get EXACTLY what they want...EXACTLY when they want it...they yell, scream, curse, insult, and moan.

so, not surprisingly, the media long ago decided that these folks cannot be relied upon to act like adults. so they are ignored. as they should be.

Even when they get some media attention they seem to resent any attempt at analysis of their claims. Look at the CIT boys as an example. They get a article in a magazine, then fill up the magazine message board with complaints and threaten legal action, then complain about a lack of coverage by the MSM.

 

[Dave Rogers]

A double stundie

More of a compound stundie, rather than a double one. Metamars started by saying it was a slam dunk to identify a left gatekeeper organisation by their non-investigation of left gatekeeping. Any such argument must be based on the central assumption that non-investigation of left gatekeeping is both a necessary and a sufficient condition of a left gatekeeping organisation, otherwise the identification would be subject either to false positives or false negatives, and hence not a slam dunk.

He then admitted that this would be a circular argument only if non-investigation of left gatekeeping was a necessary condition of a left gatekeeping organisation. This means that the argument is inevitably a circular one, as the condition for it being circular is that it follows its own central assumption. He then seemed to advance a counter-argument on the basis that investigating left gatekeeper organisations is a possible, though unlikely, activity, and hence not a necessary (though possibly a sufficient) condition for non-gatekeeping leftist organisations, clearly a complete non sequitur.

This extraordinary level of confusion seems very perplexing in such an articulate poster.

It seems to me (with apologies for encroachment on Dr. Adequate's chosen speciality) that left gatekeepers are yet another Occam's Razor violation by the truth movement, invoked in this case to explain away the fact that intelligent observers politically opposed to the Bush administration are nevertheless convinced that 9/11 inside job theories are without merit, while retaining the hypothesis that 9/11 inside job theories are at least worthy of consideration. Hence, a question (or perhaps two): Was there such a thing as a left gatekeeper on September 10th 2001? Had the concept even been articulated?

Dave

 

[metamars]

I just wanted to see how those two statements looked sitting next to each other.

Dave

While you were at it, why didn't you include mention of the chart (actually Table 1) from Peter Phillip's paper? You know, the chart I wrote about, where he grades the coverage of 10 left media organizations versus 8 issues?

If you read across Table 1 on page 10, you'll see that the 'winner' is common dreams, with 6 unqualified 'yes' ratings (out of 8 possibilities), but the first runner-up had only 4.

It's obvious that Peter Phillip's approach is not to look at a single issue, and take it as a litmus test, but rather to look at a bunch of them.

What would happen if and when he adds 'seriously investigate the existence of left gatekeeping' as a column to his chart? I believe that he will find that none of the 10 left media that he mentions will get an unqualified yes. If you don't think that's a slam dunk, also, why do you think he didn't mention any such introspective left gatekeeper coverage? Just slipped by him, maybe?

Do tell.

 

[Dave Rogers]

What would happen if and when he adds 'seriously investigate the existence of left gatekeeping' as a column to his chart? I believe that he will find that none of the 10 left media that he mentions will get an unqualified yes. If you don't think that's a slam dunk, also, why do you think he didn't mention any such introspective left gatekeeper coverage? Just slipped by him, maybe?

Do tell.

You're sounding even more confused. I'm not suggesting that left gatekeeper organisations are investigating themselves and nobody's noticing. What I'm saying is that the interpretation of the absence of reporting of left gatekeeping is by no means a slam-dunk.

I'll happily concede that your circular argument is valid, and that the absence of left gatekeeping analysis is consistent with widespread left gatekeeping. However, circular arguments can only demonstrate the internal consistency of a position, not evidence for it. So let's look at a converse position and construct a consistent hypothesis.

Suppose there are no left gatekeepers. Leftist media outlets investigating left gatekeeping will therefore find, either no evidence of left gatekeeping, or poor quality evidence which they interpret as pointing to left gatekeeping. They will therefore either not report anything; report, "We investigated, but found no evidence", which will be dismissed by believers in left gatekeeping as not being the result of serious investigation; or report easily-debunked stories, which will be seized upon by believers in left gatekeeping as obvious attempts at disinformation. The result will therefore be that many, if not all, leftist media outlets are perceived by believers in left gatekeeping as having avoided serious investigation into left gatekeeping.

Since both cases produce identical results, it is impossible to distinguish between them. This is an inevitable result, given that your original argument was circular.

Dave

 

[metamars]

Suppose there are no left gatekeepers.

In light of Phillips' research (which isn't all that deep in this paper, to be sure), I don't consider this a realistic statement. You'd have to make a case for it by arguing that Phillips is totally off base. E.g., if you found out that all of those media he mentions were desperately short of cash, and thus they all had to sacrifice coverage of many significant stories. It just so happens that they included the ones that Phillips focused on, blah, blah.

Even ignoring questions about how accurate his grading was, we nevertheless have to conclude that characterizing a left media organization as of the gatekeeping sort is somewhat fuzzy, and will be judged on a multi-faceted basis.

Had he also investigated the question of which left gatekeeper organizations seriously investigate left gatekeeping, itself, and incorporated that into his Table 1, I don't doubt that none of them would have been graded 'Yes'. The interpretation of such a possibility may not be a "slam dunk" way to identify a left gatekeeping left media organization, in an of itself, were we ignorant of the rest of Table 1; but we are not ignorant of Table 1.

I suppose that I could have used words other than "slam dunk", such as "strongest indicator, by far".

Since both cases produce identical results, it is impossible to distinguish between them. This is an inevitable result, given that your original argument was circular.

Dave

Now do the analysis given that Phillips already presented evidence that left gatekeeping is real.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Now do the analysis given that Phillips already presented evidence that left gatekeeping is real.

Simple - Phillips's analysis is in error. The evidence only stands up if it is assumed that all the stories he references are worth covering. There are other reasons for editorial decisions than conspiracy to defraud, including fear of prosecution, judgement that the story is inadequately proven, or simply more pressing things to talk about. Simply saying that a group of outlets must be suppressing a group of stories they fail to cover is hopelessly over-simplistic.

And again, that's inevitable from the origin of the left gatekeeper concept. The aim is to concoct an explanation for the non-coverage of certain stories that is specifically different from the explanation that those stories were not worth covering. Nothing has actually been done to disprove the default assumption.

Dave

 

[stilicho]

I have a couple of technical issues about the flowchart:

#1] Why does the CIA appear twice?
#2] What is the significance of the "grey box" CIA as opposed to the "stand-alone" CIA?
#3] Are these two different CIAs?
#4] Since no money is going his way, does Chip Berlet work for free?

 

[jaydeehess]

In light of Phillips' research (which isn't all that deep in this paper, to be sure), I don't consider this a realistic statement.

I find it rather telling that you misinterprete Dave's post so badly.

He was comparing the all posible results of the converse aguement to the one made.

Both arguements have the same conclusion reached by true believers of the originlarguement thus revealing that arguement to be circular one.

Basically it illustrates that no matter what a left leaning media outlet does, the rightists will draw conclusions based upon their pre-judgement of that organization.

 

[Skeptic Guy]

I would much rather be the Left Keymaster than the Left Gatekeeper. Has anyone done an analysis on whether Left News Organizations have spoken about the Left Keymaster? Because, if they had, then it would assuredly mean that they are, indeed, a Left Keymaster.

 

[jaydeehess]

I would much rather be the Left Keymaster than the Left Gatekeeper. Has anyone done an analysis on whether Left News Organizations have spoken about the Left Keymaster? Because, if they had, then it would assuredly mean that they are, indeed, a Left Keymaster.

......the same would apply to investigations into left oracles, or the possibility of neo-persons.living in the modern societal matrix.

 

[Thunder]

They would also have helped their cause if they had honestly been "just asking questions."

Instead, from day one, they pretended to know what happened: "9/11 was an inside job!"

That sounds more like a statement than a question. And if you're going to make such a statement then you'd better have evidence.

Yet when asked for the evidence that supports their confident claims, twoofers claim to be "just asking questions" and that a "new investigation" is needed to sort this all out. All of a sudden they don't know what happened, despite what it says on their creepy black t-shirts.

It would be hard to take people like that seriously even if their claims weren't so completely moronic.

and that..is the crux of the matter. stating again and again "we KNOW that 9-11 was an inside job" kinda destroys the claim that we are "just asking questions".

you would think, the truthers would have realized this years ago and either recanted on their inside job mantra...or stopped claiming to just want answers to questions.



..the fact that they want 9-11 "investigated" means that either that they actually DON'T know that 9-11 was an inside job....and they want someone else to do the real research for them...or they dont really care about evidence and just like making wild baseless claims.

 

[Dave Rogers]

One other point on Phillips. He assumes that 9/11 conspiracy theories are not covered, not because the left wing media outlets are actively suppressing them, but because they have been portrayed as worthless by the label "conspiracy theory". He doesn't consider the alternative explanation that these stories actually are worthless. Based on the evidence, for example, Steven Jones's work is somewhere between laughable and depressing in its failure even to attempt serious analysis, and I suspect that the reason left-wing media outlets choose not to cover it is that they are aware of its glaring faults. This is an explanation conspiracy theorists simply will not, and in some cases it seems cannot, consider.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

Now do the analysis given that Phillips already presented evidence that left gatekeeping is real.

One final comment on this.

A quick word search in Phillips's paper reveals no instances of the words "gatekeeper" or "gatekeeping". One has to ask, therefore, how does Metamars draw the inference that Phillips has presented evidence for a phenomenon he does not even discuss. My proposed answer is that Metamars is misrepresenting Phillips's conclusions in order to support a conspiracist agenda which Phillips has not himself supported in the paper.

Consider the following quotes from the paper. From the introduction:

Chomsky (1989) points out that the propaganda model is a structural theory that shows how large or significant interests in society influence decision making by simply being powerful in their own right. He does not claim that government or corporate media owners directly and systematically dictate news coverage perspectives to editors and producers.

And from the conclusions:

Continuing research leaves little doubt that the propaganda model still serves us well as a theoretical understanding of why important news stories fail to appear, contain obvious bias, or lack socio-historical context.

Phillips is presenting the propaganda model, not (as Metamars appears to believe) as a soft form of gatekeeping, but as a fundamentally different model. His own interpretation of his results is that this model is valid for left-wing media outlets. Therefore, he is very specifically not presenting evidence that left gatekeeping is real; his own conclusion is that entrenched attitudes to certain types of story within the sector are responsible, rather than any form of external control. All this is perfectly clear from reading the paper, so I find it hard to come up with any resonable explanation of how Metamars arrives honestly at his contradictory interpretation.

Dave

 

[abenja1]

So Metamars is saying that the leftist media covered up the right wing government with the payoff being a total of in the hundred thousands? Metamars, go back and play with your ball.

 

[jaydeehess]

Check out the "left gatekeeper" link in my sig, which has the following chart:

Gary Null has done investigative reporting on some of these foundations, but I don't have any links saved.

metamars, you have still not given a coherent response to why $100,000 would 'buy' any substantial influence with the International media, as shown in the above chart.

 

[Slayhamlet]

metamars, you have still not given a coherent response to why $100,000 would 'buy' any substantial influence with the International media, as shown in the above chart.

There's nothing in that chart that makes any sense at all. It looks like a lame parody. What's even sadder is that it isn't.