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Media Matters

quixotecoyote said:
Given that Media Matters usually if not always links or quotes the full and complete text of the comments they are criticizing, I think they're one of the more honest partisan commentator sites around.

They do have the popular media problem of sucking at science though, and they put out a study of right wing media bias that didn't hold water methodologically:

Bohlmann, D. Harness, L., & Dudash, E. A. (2007) Topics in Media and Political Bias Through content analysis researched differences in topic selection for Sunday

Dudash, E., Waters, S., & Bourhis, J. (2007, November). Does Media Matter? Investigating Media Bias, Answering Bill O’Reilly, and Challenging Sunday Morning News Programs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, Ill
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Could you find the report so we can see for ourselves? There was a ton of controversy about the political bias of the media. I looked at much of the research. And there was definitely a right wing bias and a talking points campaign echoing the opposite.

MM is not bad at science from what I've seen.
 
Upchurch said:
I finally remembered what corp's coup de grâce on MMFA was:

Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers"

Limbaugh complained that they stopped the transcript something like a minute and a half to two minutes before the "full context" came around. MMFA was so diabolical and dishonest that they presented the entire last portion of the segment again with next segment that Limbaugh said was relevant, thus allowing people to make up their own minds whether it was or not. How dare they?!?

IMHO, MMFA made a pretty compelling argument that Limbaugh was talking about a previous caller and not Jesse MacBeth.
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Here's the MM reply to the charge: FACT CHECK: "Phony Soldiers" and Limbaugh's Revisionist History.
 
At least Brainster chimed in with something half-way informative in showing MMfA's "bias" (as weak as that example was); corp just jumped-ship.
 
skeptigirl said:
Could you find the report so we can see for ourselves? There was a ton of controversy about the political bias of the media. I looked at much of the research. And there was definitely a right wing bias and a talking points campaign echoing the opposite.

MM is not bad at science from what I've seen.
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Here's the study:

http://mediamatters.org/reports/200602140002

I'll try to track down the studies which attempted replication. One of my professors was first author, so she may have a copy.
 
Corplinx and bolboboffin, this is what i found. now the archives of the JREF can be hard to search and I usually find that I have to search through Google and then monkey with the address to get it to show.

So Corplinx, is this the one:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=728534

In fact I tried to find the post that Varwoche took your post from, is it this one:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-27383.html

Nope those are the same!

I think it is this one!
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30259

I entered the JREF search function, went to advanced Google and entered 'corplinx mediamatters' and it worked, which has been a problem in the past, they must have resorted the data base, yay!

This is the search page:
http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&...inx++mediamatters&sitesearch=forums.randi.org
 
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Learning disability perhaps?

I finally gave up on you helping yourself and have decided to assist you. Its a Friday night after all, and I am a boring husband/dad these days.

The 2004 election thread where I documented media matters skewed coverage and deletion of that coverage appears to no longer be on the forum.

There is this thread about the conventions where I document deliberate misinformation from them:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=727295&postcount=8

Note: I only read their misinformation in response to Varwoche whom I respect deeply for his work debunking the "swifties". I was saddened that he pulled an Upchurch on that and said "Their agenda is obvious. Still, is there reason to question the raw data?".

In the Phony Soldiers affair, I clearly showed that Media Matters left one of the most relevant pieces of information out of their Fact Check on the topic. An omission that would lean towards being deliberate since that raw data was elsewhere on the site. However, in their "Fact Check" where they set the record, they omitted the raw data that didn't agree with the story they were setting. I call this "raw data" "context" using the actual definition of context. Upchurch pretends that context narrowly means what immediately precedes or follows a statement to back his position that there is no omission in the "Fact Check".

I only read MMfA's "Fact Check" (lol) because it was presented in a thread I was reading. Again, I am not the conscience of MMfA. Why is it whenever I go there I find this disinformation? Is it a sampling error? Do I happen to only check when they have disinformation presented?

Here is the quote from the aforementioned link:
Fact: Limbaugh did not refer to MacBeth during his September 26 broadcast until 1 minute and 50 seconds after making his "phony soldiers" comment. Indeed, at no point during his September 26 radio show did Limbaugh refer to any soldiers he considered to be fake prior to making his "phony soldiers" comment.
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That is a fact right? Yes it is. It is "raw data". Now, put on your thinking cap and tell me why it is still bogus. Read it again and spot the disclaimer built in.

Fact: Limbaugh did not refer to MacBeth during his September 26 broadcast until 1 minute and 50 seconds after making his "phony soldiers" comment. Indeed, at no point during his September 26 radio show did Limbaugh refer to any soldiers he considered to be fake prior to making his "phony soldiers" comment.
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Wow, they made sure to mention during his September 26 radio show twice in the same fact. Gee, I wonder why that is? Well Timmy the skeptic-in-training, let me tell you why. Because Rush (the sultan of vicodin) Limbaugh had already been talking about MacBeth that week on his show. It was a contemporary topic. Despite Upchurch's laughable denials, it was in context. Furthermore, MMfA _had_ mentioned this elsewhere on their site.

However, on the cumulative "Fact Check", they omitted it in the "Fact" where it was relevant and left enough specific language in the "Fact" that it would still be "true" even though it would lead someone to an ill-informed conclusion. That my friends, is called deception. This is why some of us blanketly dismiss MMfA.

Because they are not an accurate source of information and the seem to pride themselves in presenting "raw data" but misframe it or outright omit relevant facts.

Futhermore, I find the implicit trust some of you yellow dog Democrats on the forum put in MMfA disturbing. If Benny Hinn conned his last sucker on the religion side, and then started selling books on atheism, you would approach it cautiously. Is he for real? Or is he just wanting to cash in on a different market?

David Brock was a right wing hack who wrote "The Real Anita Hill" and wrote the infamous American Spectator report on Bill Clinton's Arkansas affairs that spawned the Paula Jones trial. He is a master opportunist and author of disinformation by his own admission (re: Blinded by the Right). Post Bush, Brock cashes in on the lefties instead of the righties and suddenly he is implicitly trusted because after all, he wrote a book.

Mark: "Are you sure this bridge for sale is legit?"
Con: "Yeah"
Mark: "Yesterday you tried to sell me a swamp. That was just a con"
Con: "Yeah, I was a different person then. This bridge is fa real doh"
Mark: "Sounds good to me because I am a more of a bridge person really"

David Brock reminds me of Ariana Huffington. Another manipulative opportunist who at one time was the laughing stock of California chasing Arnold around to get her face on camera during the recall election. Bush takes office, he has strong negatives, and Huff turns it into cash with her Huffington Post and buys herself respectability riding Bush's unpopularity.

Bolo, why do you think Media Matters is anything more than it appears to be? These fake watch dog sites have been around a long time. Brock was just the first one targeting Bush/Fox that gained popularity.

For a while there was at least Spin-sanity which truly was an accurate documentation of misinformation.

ETA: If you don't like the fact that I blanketly dismiss MMfA, The Washington Times, World Net Daily, and other sources of misinformation, then go cry about it. Its not just you who gets "talk to the hand". I only have so many hours in the day and I am not going to spend them reading sources I have found to be highly inaccurate in the past. I am not interested in reading them daily just to debunk them and post "see, see!"
 
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quixotecoyote said:
Here's the study:

http://mediamatters.org/reports/200602140002

I'll try to track down the studies which attempted replication. One of my professors was first author, so she may have a copy.
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So looking at the study itself, bad science doesn't exactly jump out here. Care to be more specific? If additional studies didn't replicate the results, did they look at the same time period? The news did shift against the Republics somewhat in Bush's last year or so.

The problem with this subject is people use their preconceived bias to choose the outcome measures and that results in different outcomes. One peer reviewed study looked at the political party affiliation of staff members in news rooms. Editors, owners and content were not looked at.

This study cites studies and people who use such indirect measures: A Measure of Media Bias.
Survey research has shown that an almost overwhelming fraction of journalists are liberal. For instance, Elaine Povich (1996) reports that only seven percent of all Washington correspondents voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992, compared to 37 percent of the American public.[2] Lichter, Rothman and Lichter, (1986) and Weaver and Wilhoit (1996) report similar findings for earlier elections. More recently, the New York Times reported that only eight percent of Washington correspondents thought George W. Bush would be a better president than John Kerry.[3] This compares to 51% of all American voters. David Brooks notes that for every journalist who contributed to George W. Bush’s campaign, 93 contributed to Kerry’s.[4]
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The study uses references to political think tanks in order to have an objective measure. But I'm not sure having a Senator's reference to a think tank vs the media's reference is a valid measure. Why not just use the reference to people and think tanks with clear political bias? According to the study Joe Lieberman was supposed to be more liberal than 3/4s of the Senate. What does that say about the validity of this outcome measure?

And they claim to have thrown out only a tiny fraction where the reference to the think tank was to object to or discredit the findings. That suggests they weren't looking at the associated references. For example spending 5 minutes on one think tank's data and a quick, "but so and so disagrees" would each get equal weight.
 
corplinx said:
I only have so many hours in the day and I am not going to spend them reading sources I have found to be highly inaccurate in the past. I am not interested in reading them daily just to debunk them and post "see, see!"
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...and yet, you feel it is not a waste of your time throwing around logical and argumentative fallacies like a true believer to denounce MMFA. This thread alone has been an exercise in ad hom and shifting the burden, not to mention the all cap yelling and holier-than-though attitude.
 
Upchurch said:
...and yet, you feel it is not a waste of your time throwing around logical and argumentative fallacies like a true believer to denounce MMFA. This thread alone has been an exercise in ad hom and shifting the burden, not to mention the all cap yelling and holier-than-though attitude.
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I mention you repeatedly because I think you are too smart not to see what they did on the Fact Check. I know you try to be a non-confrontational and non-judgmental guy. You try not to demagogue. You try to find a reason to not label people as liars to keep your personal discourse high.

The fact check omission of fact is a pretty much a red flag. I get tired of the run around though.

Challenger: "Show me an example of MMfA distortion!"
Me: "Here you go"
Challenger: "What, is that all? Find me more examples!"

As if it is the job of anyone on this forum to go fact check the web sites that certain people hold dear. In Bolo's case, he could have used the "search" function and found 3 cases I've pointed out in the past. Instead he stuck his fingers in his ears and yelled "I CANT HERE U! SHOW ME TEH LINX!".

These are all actions of people who aren't really interested in the truth. If you aren't interested in it, then why would you even be posting in the thread or reading it? To defend MMfA? If you feel the need to defend MMfA, then why? Why does the knee jerk to defend them?

This is tough love and I am sorry you read as ad hom. In particular, I've never had a problem with Upchurch in the past accepting data that conflicts with his views except on this topic. Having been on the receiving end of factual correction from you at least 4-5 times in the past, I think there isn't a mutual stubbornness between us to not accept contradictory data.
 
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Brainster said:
One of the recent stories that Media Matters came up in was the story about how Fox News would consistently misidentify Republicans caught up in scandals (like Mark Sanford) as Democrats. Here's a story that won't make their radar, because it's not what they cover:

Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean), Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega are among those already brought to the FBI building in Newark. Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini has also been arrested.
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Nice of them to let us know the party identification of Van Pelt. What party do you think the other guys belong to?

Yep, all Democrats. Somehow that didn't seem relevant to the story, however.
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There is a logical explanation for only identifying the one Republican. In my state (CA) Mayoral and City Council offices are non-partisan; maybe it's the same in New Jersey. In that case, identifying party affiliation for those offices is not relevant and, in fact, may be misleading. The state level offices are, of course, partisan so identifying party affiliation is appropriate.
 
Brainster said:
One of the recent stories that Media Matters came up in was the story about how Fox News would consistently misidentify Republicans caught up in scandals (like Mark Sanford) as Democrats. Here's a story that won't make their radar, because it's not what they cover:



Nice of them to let us know the party identification of Van Pelt. What party do you think the other guys belong to?

Yep, all Democrats. Somehow that didn't seem relevant to the story, however.
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It's even worse than that! It's biased the other way after the jump! Look:

Assemblyman Van Pelt, 44, is also the mayor of Ocean Township, a post he has held since 1988. He holds degrees from The College of New Jersey (Criminal Justice) and Regent University (Public Policy and Government).




Cammarano, 32, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Hoboken in June. He was elected Hoboken City Councilman-at-Large in 2005. According to his campaign website,Cammarano is an attorney at the law firm of Genova, Burns, & Vernoia, which has offices in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
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corplinx, who held a gun to your head and forced you to post the first word in this thread?

What amazing power I have to align gray and black pixels and force cranky people to confront their own biases, yelling and griping all the way! Perhaps I should apply for the million dollar prize! :rolleyes:
 
boloboffin said:
Perhaps I should apply for the million dollar prize! :rolleyes:
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Sorry to have disemboweled you to point of childish eyerolling. If you had merely used the search function and found the facts yourself, I would not need have posted an essay pointing the glaring examples of distortion which you could have found yourself.
 
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corplinx said:
Sorry to have disemboweled you to point of childish eyerolling. If you had merely used the search function and found the facts yourself, I would not need have posted an essay pointing the glaring examples of distortion which you could have found yourself.
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You didn't "need" to do anything. That's my point, corplinx. Nobody forced you to post anything here, so whining about what you had to do is just plain silly. Do it or don't do it, and then buck up and take responsibility for what you do.

And thank you for finally contributing some actual light to the thread, instead of all the heat which is your trade in stock. Hey, I know, I've got a flamethrower that I keep loaded, so I know from adding heat to a conversation. But thanks.

A search of Media Matters for the month surrounding Election Day 2004 reveals about 10 pages of articles. But the articles between 4:39 pm ET on November 2 (Election Day) to 11:28 am ET November 4 are only one on November 3, 3:47 pm ET - "TOP TEN REASONS WHY MEDIA MATTERED IN THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL RACE:" Even more embarrassing, the page is only a list of links to site searches on major news outlets that no longer work (they've changed to a tag-based organization of the site now).

The message is clear: "judge us on the totality of the work we've done and not just what happened on this day." That message would be clearer if it was still surrounded by the articles that had to be there.

Point to corplinx. Removing articles that make them look bad isn't something I approve of. I've got plenty of stuff I've written on my blog I've had second thoughts about. I probably have my own wing down in AAH. But it's all right there.

Has Media Matters learned? Is this something they do regularly? Well, how would we know? It's hard to prove when something's no longer there unless we've got the screenshots.

However I would argue that this more recent story also makes them look bad: "Beck failed to ask Hagee about controversial statements, instead asked him if Obama might be the Antichrist" Town Hall Magazine explains (pdf - p. 6):

Working with Think Progress, the blog of the liberal Center for American Progress, Media Matters misquoted a Beck interview from March 4, 2008, and suggested Beck was deadly serious when he asked a guest whether then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was the biblical Anti-Christ. In reality, Beck was attempting to dispel this notion. He began his question using a melodramatic tone of voice and waved his fingers furiously to imitate hysterical viewers who expressed an idea the host obviously believed was absurd.

That didn’t matter to the humorless members of the left-wing smear machine. Neither Web site retracted the claims, nor did MSNBC’s Keith
Olbermann, who repeated them the same day, even after Beck’s denials.

"If you could actually see the video, you could see that I’m laughing as I say it, as I ask the question," Beck told listeners on his nationally syndicated radio show later the same week. "The reason this is so unbelievably entertaining is because obviously the truth doesn’t matter, but even more… it is so very predictable."
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Media Matters didn't misquote Beck; they misrepresented him, and on the research pages we've been holding up as better examples of the website. Otherwise, the article's description here is accurate to a point.

What Town Hall doesn't tell you: not only is the full transcript of the segment on the Media Matters website, but the video itself is, too. You can watch the clip and see for yourself that Media Matters is taking the "Beck is serious" bit too far. In fact, Beck actually chides his guest John Hagee for presenting a different side off-camera in a pre-interview questioning than now.

BECK: Yeah, but -- but pastor, I mean, you and I -- I've sat down with you for an hour. I interviewed you for an hour. And I'm -- I'm sorry, but I -- I mean, when I say to you, "Tell me about John McCain," you go pro-life first. I don't think that fits with who I met on my set. You are a guy who believes we are here in the end days. Is John McCain the guy to make sure that -- that, you know, the end days don't happen as you believe we could be seeing now?

HAGEE: The fact is that I believe John McCain brings to the presidency a mature leadership and a leadership that has the strength of character to lead America into the future in a world that's become a very dangerous world.

BECK: Let me ask you, and this is -- 'cause I got -- I get so much email on this, and I think a lot of people do, and I've only got a couple of seconds. Then they say "Glenn, you in the media, you've got to wake up. Barack Obama's making people faint and cry and everything else. And he's drawing people in and -- "

There are people -- and they said this about Bill Clinton -- that actually believe he might be the Antichrist. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?

HAGEE: No chance.
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So all the information necessary for someone to say "MMfA, you're going too far on this one" is right there on MMfA's page. How many people are going to watch the video when the transcript's there? Not that many -- but it's there.

And also, Town Hall does just what they complain about MMfA doing when they gloss over the main point of the MMfA article: Beck shooting Hagee a softball, complete with exaggerated voices and chuckling to communicate this to Hagee, instead of confronting him with some pertinent controversial statements. Media Matters would have done better to have pushed that more, instead of linking to a Beck-called-Hillary-Antichrist-once story at the end. That's what "suggests Beck was deadly serious" with the Hagee question, absent any overt reference to Beck's joking.

So Media Matters threw a curve ball, Town Hall got a piece of it inbound, forced out on second, and the game continues.

But for our purposes, an embarrassing story is still right there, complete with all necessary information to show it. I suggest the hypothesis that Media Matters has learned about deleting what doesn't make them look good.
 
Here's a story I will give Media Matters credit for: Unlike Dobbs, some conservative media think birthers are "nutburgers".

David Horowitz: In a December 8, 2008, column headlined "Obama Derangement Syndrome," Horowitz, editor of the conservative website FrontPage Magazine, blasted "continuing efforts of a fringe group of conservatives to deny Obama his victory and to lay the basis for the claim that he is not a legitimate president" as being "embarrassing and destructive." He added: "The fact that these efforts are being led by Alan Keyes, a demagogue who lost a Senate election to the then-unknown Obama by 42 points, should be a warning in itself."
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They go on to give credit to Michelle Malkin, AllahPundit, Michael Medved, and other conservatives who have blasted the birthers.
 
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