5 ms·
> All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what the news would be saying. Surely you don’t mean to imply the media treated Biden less favorably than Tru
by slashdev 1y ago
> All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what the news would be saying.
Surely you don’t mean to imply the media treated Biden less favorably than Trump?
- Retric 1y agoAggregate media bias across TV/Radio/Newspapers is interesting because both the direction and scale matters. Of course bias is only part of the story, do an objectively terrible job and you get more negative stories overall. As a concrete example a great deal of left leaning media was very critical of Biden running for reelection and especially waiting that long to pull out. You almost never see that kind of thing from right leaning media outlets. So, yes overall media bias favors Trump not because more outlets favor him but because the ones that do heavily favor him. Far left media is simply a more niche market than far right media. Mother Jones for example is well known but only pulls in ~16 million$ / year and even they where critical of Biden.
- newfriend 1y agoNYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS are not niche. They all ran cover for Biden until the debate made it too obvious. They were not "very critical". They are, however, extremely critical of anything Trump does.
- achandlerwhite 1y agoI wouldn’t say extremely critical of Trump. He brings half of it on himself. Simply reporting what he says and does that makes him look incompetent is not being particularly critical.
- slashdev 1y agoThe media has been extremely critical of Trump. Sometimes deserved, sometimes not. But impossible to deny the bias.
- Retric 1y agoA neutral stance isn’t an uncritical stance. It’s undeserved praise vs undeserved damnation that signifies a non neutral position.
- slashdev 1y agoThe media is far from neutral. Almost all have a major left bias. Fox has a major right bias.
- Retric 1y agoNot when you look at objective metrics of bias such as sentiment analysis or track time spent on positive vs neutral vs negative coverage of various issues. Of course that’s in relation to US political parties, pick a different ‘center’ and you can get any answer you want for how the media is biased overall. Objectively FOX isn’t pure propaganda they do include some coverage critical of R politicians and policies. It’s just far less than say CNN spends on coverage critical of D politicians and policies.
- slashdev 1y agoI can cite multiple studies showing the left bias in the media. I think it's pretty widely held to be true. I'm actually kind of taken aback that anyone would take the other side of that argument.
- Retric 1y agoI’m not arguing about the existence of bias or the numbers of L/R leaning media. There’s simply more left leaning Americans vs the stance of the Republican Party who’s specifically engineered their message to appeal to voters with more political power. Ex: Losing the popular vote when winning the presidential election only happens to Republicans. However, simply counting the number of companies leaning left or right doesn’t tell you much. A local newspaper with 5k readers just doesn’t move the needle. Neither does an outlet that’s 0.1% left or right leaning. So the only accurate measurement is level of lean * number of viewers, and when you do that calculation (as I have) you find the overall media landscape leans Republican.
- Retric 1y agoYou can’t ignore scale of bias here. CNN and Fox don’t come close to canceling each other out because Fox is way to the right and CNN is more subtle. -2 + 4 is not zero. Similarity Fox viewership is 3 million viewers in primetime vs CNN at 1/6th those numbers.
- i80and 1y agoAt least for the 2024 election, I find it difficult to believe one could come to any other conclusion with all the rampant sane-washing that NYT, WaPo, etc. engaged in