Are you ashamed of the biased presidential coverage?

How has that "bias" towards the better story been shown in hard news stories?

 

Well, I've worked on papers run by conservatives and papers run by liberals. But professionally, they've all been agnostic in the sense that they usually distrust politicians of any kind and will go after any one of them if they can get the goods on them. Newspaper journalists are completely motivated by self-interest, and there is zero upside to making any politician look good. It is not a matter of partisianship but of what's gettable. You work with the facts at hand. But any politician is potential prey.

 

I think some excellent points are being made here. And I also think that the conservative talking heads of course have taken anything and everything they see as favorable to Obama and said, "See, there's that drive-by liberal media bias again." Even though I've read plenty of things that experts find wrong with some of his policy ideas in the same papers where there's supposed to be liberal bias.

The one that drives me nuts -- and I apologize for not checking to see if I already said it on this thread -- is when a Hannity says, "Here's something you'll never see reported in the mainstream media," and of course, I've already seen it reported in the mainstream media. The shady connection talking points -- Ayers, Rezko, Wright, et al -- have been dealt with, and from what I can tell, the electorate has moved on.

But, and this is where I wonder about the fairness -- OK, let's say there's not really an overall liberal bias, and certainly no conspiracy. Let's simply say it's the "media love a good story" inclinations we have.

If more and more favorable coverage are the result on the side of one candidate, it doesn't really matter what the underlying cause is. It's still an issue in something as important as this election.

 

Maybe the good hard unbiased news stories have been lost in the clutter of the Olberman's and Hannity's.

There is so much out there perhaps we are not taking the time to separate real news from opinion.

 

Bingo.

 

See, that's a great point, too. The loud, opinionated people are getting much of the attention, and the solid reporters who are doing their jobs exactly the right way, as they always have, are lost in all the noise.

 

I agree... Hannity, Limbaugh, Olbermann, Matthews, O'Reilly etc. don't do any favors for either side.

 

Ding, ding, ding!!!

For me, "bias" is not treating both sides "fairly". Can't give one side the benefit of the doubt or use different rules and not do the same for the other side.

 

In other words, you don't think people are bright enough to recognize balanced coverage, or biased coverage with objectivity of their own. What bull.

 

Malone is full of himself and his waste product.

He talks about a working journalist in the sticks. For crying out loud, he is a fourth-generation journalist, even though he is embarrassed to admit to being a "journalist".

He talks in a critical way about news organizations sending SWAT teams up to Alaska to find out about Palin. A couple of points on that. First, she was unknown so there was more work to be done. Most journalists knew some of Biden's gaffes, and these were reported but they were old news to a lot of people, especially if you follow politics and not technology.

Did the "liberal media" make up the stories about Palin? Well, when you are a self-proclaimed reformer, don't you think some of the Alaska Republicans whose toes you have stepped on might remember things and talk to reporters about them.

Also, the Republicans presented a whole story about Palin which was a cliche. Any honest observer or reporter would say, "What's Wrong with this Picture?"

Why didn't the major news organizations send out SWAT teams to dig up the dirt on Obama. Well, Michael Malone, if you had been following the campaign, you would know that the Hillary Clinton campaign beat the media to it. Why didn't they do a full scale investigation into Obama's drug use? Because he admitted it. Obama's missing years? Which years, Michael Malone, fourth-generation journalists who has a technology niche and doesn't know much about politics? Newsweek did a story on Obama during college, people talked about his early years.

Is the Obama campaign disciplined and tight-lipped? Yes, but no more so than the Bush White House. If you want to look at free passes, look at how the media rolled over.

The media "invading" Joe the Plumber's privacy seemed to be something which upset you. That wasn't the media, that was John McCain mentioning him more than 10 times in the debate. Joe the Plumber's name wasn't Joe and he wasn't a licensed plumber - surely a fourth-generation journalist such as yourself shouldn't take something at face value and ask how would Obama's tax plan affect Joe the Plumber.

And this is all the reporters doing? There are editors and publishers, and I would think that these people, like you ancestors, would have a heckuva lot more to say about this.

Michael Malone, you don't know jack about politics and your article shows this. But hey, I'm not a fourth-generation journalist, so I guess I won't get on abc.com

 

Oh, many absolutely are not. And, on a side note, very many don't understand the difference between writers who write opinion on purpose and those who don't.

All our columnists write opinion. Not a day goes by where they don't get e-mail complaining that they're not objective. If somebody writes something remotely negative about their school or team or whatever, they're "biased" against them.

And before you label me a media elitist, it's not about being "bright." It's the fact that there are a number of mainstream people who simply don't know the difference, and also, and this is oft repeated: When I was in a town where the Florida and Florida State contingents were pretty much equal, people on both sides swore my paper was 100 percent biased against them.

You pick things up and filter them through your own prisms, and based on people or institutions you support or don't.

One person's "objective analysis" or "objective reporting" is another's "extreme bias against what I support" if the facts or circumstances reported are negative.

 

For the most part, I don't think they are smart enough to spot it. And here's why.

My paper is owned by an arch-conservative. He makes McCain and Palin look like leftists. Our editorial board gets no say on statewide or national elections. The owner sends down word, and it's always in favor of the guy with the R next to his name. Yet despite that, we're constantly referred to as a liberal paper by our readers.

Not giving the Christian school's tennis team as much coverage as a public school's football? Liberal bias. (An actual accusation leveled at us last week.)

So, no, I don't think most people are smart enough nor sophisticated enough to spot real bias in reporting. Instead, they see a liberal columnist on the op/ed page and think that means the story about the city board is slanted by liberal bias. They see Olberman spewing his bile and think NBC's field reporters are in the tank for Obama.

They don't have any hard evidence, other than conservative after conservative screaming "liberal media, liberal media." Hell, show me some editorializing in a straight news story. Show me something. Don't give me the old pornography line about knowing it when you see it. Show me evidence.