9 ms·

At that time, the media was not united in support of one of the political parties. The problem with the linked article is it insinuates political bias is the o

• themitigating 4y ago
  Who is united against what political party? Claiming you're the underdog and fighting against the "mainstream media" is a manipulation tactic. Top 10 Cable News Shows in 2022 RANK NETWORK PROGRAM NAME P2+AA (000) #Tlc 1 FOXN THE FIVE 3419 246 2 FOXN TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT 3031 228 3 FOXN JESSE WATTERS PRIMETIME 2857 200 4 FOXN HANNITY 2811 214 5 FOXN SPECIAL REPORT BRET BAIER 2511 244 6 FOXN THE INGRAHAM ANGLE 2269 215 7 FOXN GUTFELD! 2040 222 8 FOXN OUTNUMBERED 1858 245 9 FOXN AMERICA’S NEWSROOM 1761 496 10 MSNBC ALEX WAGNER/ MADDOW https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/these-are-the-top-rated-cable-news-shows-of-2022/521247/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/these-are-the-top-rated-cabl...
  • thfuran 4y ago
    That looks like a pretty politically lopsided lineup to me.
  • SapporoChris 4y ago
    Why did you restrict yourself to cable news? Do you think your selection could have any biases?
    • PaulHoule 4y ago
      Cable news is that way. My son thinks MSNBC is worse than Fox but I’d say Fox was commercially successful from the very beginning and that liberals were ‘too smart for that shit’ until the Trump administration where MSNBC really had grist for that mill and got much better ratings. CNN has the bias of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ and loved to promote antagonism with Trump because it was great for ratings. I would say though that even non-partisan business news on cable is awful. We will probably still be hearing the non-sensical FAANG acronym for years thanks to the ignorance of Jim Cramer. At least his stock picks are it much worse than a dart, not as bad as Jimmy the Greek’s football picks.
  • Aloha 4y ago
    What's weird about the narrative conservatives put out is.. that the mainstream media is pro democrat, and pro establishment - but if you listen to NPR, or any of the big three, or read NYT, WaPo, or any other large newspaper, the criticism of whatever administration happens to be in power is often blistering. The absolutely breathless coverage about classified documents found in Biden's home, about whatever immigration problem happens to be going on (which often implies on both ideological sides of it that the immigration problem is the presidents fault), the economy, etc - the coverage is all about the same, critical, often overly so. The only real difference is, there isnt some violation of norms or scandal every three weeks with Biden. One of the nice things I can say about Trump, is he had so many scandals, we stopped using the -gate suffix to them.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      I have been trying hard to abstain from closely following news lately, but I would not classify any of the coverage of POTUS or their administration as blistering by NPR, NYT or WaPo. For better or worse, if you are looking for blistering, you go to the other extremes which include likes of Breibart, Fox and OAN and so on. Then at least you will get a healthy dose of very differing perspective and biases, which may help you break out of the news bubble. I shy away from telling people how to live, but I would consider looking at other sources if only for one reason: 'being able to detect bias and correct for it'.
      • Aloha 4y ago
        Oh no, I do read some conservative places, National Review, Washington Times, Fox (web, not TV). I'm moderately good about detecting bias, but I see more 'gotcha' questions from the media interviewing administration officials, there is no answer, nothing that can be done, but they're still expected to answer the questions. I can detect bias in both 'mainstream media', and and right wing sources.
        • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
          I apologize for that. I should not have assumed. I am only aware of the different bubbles, because I seem to belong to several social circles with very much opposed views and I don't know how common it is today ( I am not really joking ) since the weird trend I have been seeing is cutting off 'toxic family members', which effectively means people actively work to maintain their particular bubbles making already bad problem even worse. And since I tend to listen to everyone, everyone seems to think I am in full agreement. The only place I did not see it hit hard is work, but that seems to be the case only because there is still some expectation of 'leaving non-work related stuff outside', but even that seems to be changing. As I am re-reading your posts, I do not think we are disagreeing.
  • remarkEon 4y ago
    People cite this all the time as evidence that conservatives dominate the news in some way, but I don't think it means that. I look at these statistics and it tells me conservatives have one place they go to to watch the news, while liberals either don't watch cable news and/or they split their viewership amongst several outlets.
    • jaywalk 4y ago
      Also, conservatives tend to be older, and older people tend to be the ones who watch cable news. Cable news ratings are meaningless in trying to reflect media bias.
    • themitigating 4y ago
      That could be true but I wasn't claiming they dominate the news only that their "underdog" "we're standing up to the giant mainstream media" isn't justified.
    • naasking 4y ago
      Actually more Democrats watch Tucker Carlson than MSNBC.
      • LarryMullins 4y ago
        Indeed, rage-watching is a factor here.
• akovaski 4y ago
  > There is no diversity in ownership nor opinion now. There is the one party... Is this referring to the "Republicans and Democrats are the same party" trope, or is there a different intended meaning here? You're comment indicates you think there are multiple parties. I'd assume you mean the Republicans and Democrats, but both of those parties are supported by various news outlets. So yeah, I don't think I understand what is trying to be conveyed here.
  • _-david-_ 4y ago
    The poster is likely referring to the fact that 85% (or there about) of journalists are registered in one political party.
  • PaulHoule 4y ago
    My take circa 2000 was the the Democrats and the Republicans had rather converged in their pursuit of "swing voters". I remember editing together a tape from a debate where Bush and Gore tried to outdo each other in bellicosity (support for the military) and then Gore says "IF IT'S A FAILING SCHOOL SHUT IT DOWN!" and I covered the jump cut with a smart bomb hitting a bunker in Iraq. I think people perceived Reagan was successful at solving the problems of the 1970s and I think Clinton basically picked up most of Reagan's approach to governing the same way that Tony Blair followed in the steps of Margaret Thatcher in the UK. The polarization was different back then. I remember George HW Bush getting on TV when Rodney King was beat by the LAPD and saying that he'd watched it on TV with his wife and he was shocked, whereas you'd expect Republicans today to say something like "it served him right". For that matter his son signed into law the expansion of Medicare benefits to include prescription drugs which was a huge new social program. It seemed in the Bush years the public was still not getting a clear choice on many issues, one of the things that alienated people from "the establishment" is how voices opposed to the 2nd Iraq War were excluded from respectable opinion. I would tell anyone who listened that the war would likely turn out the way that it did but nobody in power listened, despite very large protests against the war. With Kerry in 2004 the Democrats did not clearly distinguish themselves from Bush and his policies as Kerry had this strange ambiguous position between being a war hero and an anti-war organizer who would not come to a clear position on Iraq. I think though the next trend started w/ Newt Gingrich in the 1990s who tried to block Clinton at every turn (who maybe helped Clinton paradoxically because he could pursue a basically conservative agenda but have groups like the National Organization of Women support him in his philandering and have environmental groups not complain about him doing nothing because he was under attack from the other side) That kind of negative politics went into high gear in the Obama years and today it seems there is little sign of the swing voter. You certainly couldn't say that Donald Trump didn't clearly distinguish himself from Biden, which was not so clear in the 1992-2004 time frame.
• bediger4000 4y ago
  The lack of diversity in opinion and ownership dates back to the Reagan era, when FCC dropped rules about how many TV stations could be owned, rules about oligopoly ownership in a given market and rules about cross media ownership (papers and TV or radio back then). The slogan then was to let the market decide.
• rnk 4y ago
  The media is not united in support of one party.
  • rnk 4y ago
    If you don't agree, can you define what "one party" means and "the media"? I think the only way you can say this is to claim that both parties are the same and/or all the media is the same. Contrary to this claim of sameness is that one party has top leaders supporting clearly untrue views about insurrections, vote totals, etc. Yes, both parties want to increase taxes and spend money and blame the other party for any problems - but one party tried to overturn an election. Similar things for the media, yes they both share some things about "being mainstream" but that's most focused on object reality - OAN is the other media?
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  ‘Media Bias’ has been a talking point of the right since the John Birch Society in the 1950s. Certainly there are left wing groups like FAIR who have talked about it for years but right-wing groups like AIM are more tropey. I’d say the secret in politics can be found in the work of Mancur Olson who would say a large group like ‘women’ or ‘white people’ cannot really organize on its own behalf because of the free-rider problem. A union has to have a ‘closed shop’ otherwise one could get the benefits of the union without paying dues. A membership organization might get small donations from 1% of that group but those members do not have any say or representation in what the group does. It is like a turbocharged engine which has a huge amount of energy cycling in the shaft, in this case 95% of donations go to overhead and getting more donations and there is no change and little advocacy but it is a great job if you can get it. A special interest like ‘the 100 biggest farmers in California’ can organize much more effectively and the people involved see a much more straight line of getting influence. For a group like that, politics is a business expense and spending $X on greasing politician’s palms makes $20X for the interest it is a great business. (One answer to the problem could be to try to make political spending and bribery more expensive. If it cost $10 to get a $5 tax cut all but the most cantankerous rich people would shut up and pay their taxes) The democrats and republicans pretend to represent great warring general interests and it is a lot of fury signifying nothing. Spamming the agenda with that stuff prevents any real changes but leaves space for special interests to pursue ‘politics as usual’. It’s a bit like pro wrestling.