Servo wrote: 
 Whatever. Kurt is a good guy regardless of your petty little peanut gallery insults and deserves a little more respect as a regular around here than that. He's not even replying to you. Have a modicum of dignity and self respect for crying out loud. At least for the community at large.

 kurtster wrote: 
That, coming from RP's undisputed #1 GOP talking point parrot.    The irony!  Oh, God the irony!!!

 kurtster wrote:
Analysis of media, not TV shows in particular. Of course I can judge for myself, but I am interested in other viewpoints as well (we are all prone to missing some things, some more than others). Unlike so many, I don't want to waste my life as a couch potato. As pointed out sufficiently, there are other ways of getting information of interest. TV news is generally low on information, high on gimmicks/sound bites. It all depends on what you want.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
You are basing your analysis on hand picked soundbites rather than an entire program or a particular complete segment.

There was an example of editing of a clip with Herman Cain where one word was cleverly edited out to change the entire meaning of his statement.  I brought it up and was chastised  in the process for being too picky.  Yet that one deleted word changed everything.  It was hard to detect.  If not for Fox's revolving logo and the stutter at the edit, it would have gone totally unoticed and taken as 'gospel fact' by the viewer.

Now you can come back and say that everything is handpicked when presented on television, but when a presentation is further edited to suit a point of view, the viewer, that would be you, is potentially being mislead.  How can you be sure that you are not being mislead by opinions and edits about television shows that you are commenting on but have never seen ?

And do you really need the analysis of TV shows ?  Can't you judge for yourself ?

 aflanigan wrote: 
  They do seem to be a problem lately.  Even the "real" NFL officials (not only referees, but umpires, judges etc. as well) aren't making very good calls this season.

 kurtster wrote: 
As you probably know, there are lots of clips, on a daily basis, of both sources in question, that circulate on the internet. So I've seen plenty. I just don't watch TV in the usual sense (or in the large amounts that are fairly common).

My "social media sources", on the one hand, provide some of those clips along with (dis)approving commentary. In that aspect it has nothing to do with being better. Some of them just show how they prefer/dislike one side over the other largely in line with their own ideological bias (on either side). Fairly obvious and ubiquitous on internet sites. Almost everyone, that's politically engaged to some degree, does it.

In addition, others do indeed provide analysis or commentary on those sources, mostly in written articles, which I generally prefer since they do usually tend to be better in the sense that they are able to go into much more detail than TV allows (for a variety of reasons) or for the fact that they do what might be called a meta-analysis. Some of them do this type of media analysis as a job, which can indeed be better, though not always, when having the right background and facts to back it up, than watching it yourself.

Now if you have a lot of these sources, representing a wide ideological spectrum, you might just get a more varied view on the (global) media landscape with all its biases.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
There's your problem.  You comment on something you have never seen, calling it out as wrong, purely on hearsay.

Your social media sources are so much better than getting it first hand ?

Then it is safe to say that you are the perfect filter to present the real truth for the rest of us based upon your objective studies of social media ?

AP's dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation | Glenn Greenwald

As the Iraq War proved, there are few things more irresponsible and dangerous than having a large media outlet trumpet extremely dubious claims from anonymous sources designed to hype the threats posed by some targeted foreign regime. That is exactly what AP is doing here, and given how obvious the sham is, it is inexcusable. AP owes a clear explanation of what happened here.

The real story here is not this inane graph, but the behavior of AP and its "sources". That someone is purposely feeding this influential media outlet obvious hoaxes shows two facts: (1) the evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons program must be very thin if fabrications of this type are needed; and (2) someone from an unnamed country or countries is very eager to scare the public into believing this weapons program exists and is vigorously proceeding, and is willing to use fraud to advance those fear-mongering ends.

Here, in its entirety, is the response sent by AP to all of the objections raised to its story:

"We continue to report this story."

It's hard to decide which is worse: the original story or their "response" to the very serious flaws in their reporting.

Similarly, Jonathan Cook on FB:

Since I first questioned the credibility of an Associated Press story of a "leaked" graph supposedly proving that Iran was working on a nuclear bomb, experts galore have been ridiculing it as a patent hoax.

It is pretty clear, even from the AP report itself, that the story was planted by Israel. What disturbs me most about this article, which was so obviously dubious that even a non-expert like myself could sense it on a first read, was how it ever got past the basic checks big media organisations like AP are supposed to make.

What this indicates (again) is that the corporate media really are just conduits through which our governments are able to shovel whatever disinformation they choose down our throats. That's what happened over Iraq and it's going on now with Iran.

This chimes with an observation my colleagues at Media Lens have made that the corporate media are not just subordinate to powerful elites, they ARE the powerful elites.

Nick Davies illustrates this point in his book Flat Earth News, in a chapter that shows how frequently and easily western security agencies such as the CIA and MI6 are able to plant their own people into their local media organisations.

We are being fed lies, and the perpetrators are so confident that they will get those lies into our media that they barely bother to make their hoaxes plausible. The media, meanwhile, either don't care or are willing participants in the fraud.

 Servo wrote: 

Are you talking about NFL referees?

 RichardPrins wrote:
Sorry but your personal "doubt" and the bandwagon "everybody's doing it" argument is not a substitute for the truth.

MSNBC isn't trying to conceal the fact that it has more centrist to liberal pundits than it has GOP representatives.  At least they make an effort to give all parties a platform.  FOX OTOH just plain lies.  And they lie aggressively for the GOP and against everyone else.  It doesn't require a fact checker to tell the difference.  All you need to do is watch.

 Servo wrote: 
I somehow doubt that this is how they tallied the negative coverage. It probably also included planks, policies, and propositions, as well as lies. Of course, both sides fib as well. Fact checking was a lively business...

There's of course much more to be found on the polarization of some broadcasters (and some historical perspective), e.g.: Fox Vs. MSNBC: The Ideological Battle In Broadcast News

(...) Dr. Lance Strate is professor of communication and media studies and director of the professional studies in new media program at Fordham University in New York City.

IB Times: Critics and detractors of cable's Fox News claim the network has a right-wing bias and serves as a kind of propaganda arm for the Republican Party. But could one not make the same accusations about MSNBC — that it espouses a decidedly left-wing bias?

Strate: Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing media mogul, hired Republican political consultant Roger Ailes to create the Fox News Channel, and it was conceived and planned from the very beginning to present a highly conservative view of the world. MSNBC at first tried to take the non-ideological approach traditional to broadcast news operations but was unable to compete effectively with CNN's long-established reputation and Fox's combination of entertaining format and political focus.

So, in order to distinguish itself from its competition, MSNBC became the mirror image of Fox, trying to do for the left what Fox had done on behalf of the right. 

Thus, the answer is yes, MSNBC has become infected by the bias virus and turned into the counterpart to Fox. (...)

Now I don't watch either, but I do see what's being quoted/shared by people on either side of the "ideological spectrum" on social networks.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Thanks for the link and the chart.  One crucial variable that they didn't take into account was that Romney was in fact lying, and doing it quite blatantly.  Lying is a negative, so therefore the point of most accuracy would rate Romney very negatively because that's what happened.  To perpetuate a myth that some assumption like both candidates deserve equal ranking when it comes to calling bias is just plain propaganda.

As far as the chart goes, I don't see any explanation of what it's measuring, so I must ignore it.

One more important thing to keep in mind is that NBC has a news department that's not at all the MSNBC channel, even when NBC news coverage is on MSNBC.  MSNBC is very open about the programming that's opinion vs. hard news.  The cable channel called "FOX News" is 100% non-journalistic, and yet it tries to pass itself off as bona fide news programming.  That in itself is dishonest.

Study shows increase in negative messages about Muslims in the media

(...) "I found that organizations with negative messages about Muslims captivated the mass media after the Sept. 11 attacks, even though the vast majority of civil society organizations depict Muslims as peaceful, contributing members of American society," said Bail, who also is a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar at the University of Michigan. "As a result, public condemnations of terrorism by Muslims have received little media attention, but organizations spreading negative messages continue to stoke public fears that Muslims are secretly plotting to overthrow the U.S. government."

Bail said the mass media has not only contributed to the spread of negative messages about Islam, but also given fringe organizations the opportunity to raise funds and build social networks within elite conservative circles. "They are now so much a part of the mainstream that they have been able to recast genuinely mainstream Muslim organizations as radicals," he said.

Most importantly, Bail added, "The rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in the American media not only tests foundational principles about religious tolerance, but may also validate foreign extremists who argue that the United States is at war with Islam, since American media messages routinely travel to the Middle East." (...)

 Servo wrote: 
There is some data here w.r.t. the election campaign which I came across recently. One dimension (as noticed by some conservative outlets/bloggers):

 aflanigan wrote: 
Ricks is entitled to his opinion, of course.  However it's important to notice that Ricks' claim that MSNBC is "just like Fox, but not as good at it" isn't backed up by any rational explanation as to why that might be so.  Frankly it makes Ricks look mighty clueless.

Many people of all stripes have noticed that the "FOX News" channel, and Rupert Murdoch's media empire in general works like an arm of the GOP.  It's common knowledge.  There's a lot of corroborating evidence to back up Ricks' claim about FOX, but not about MSNBC.  Just having former GOP boss Michael Steele as a major contributor makes MSNBC a lot closer to "fair and balanced" than FOX has ever attempted to be.

Tom Ricks, demonstrating that he is a bipartisan truth-teller:

Tom Ricks: MSNBC Isn't So Great, Either

AP Presents Shoddy Evidence From Dubious Sources as Proof of Iranian Weapons Program
AP claims a mysterious diagram leaked by "a country critical of Iran's atomic program" suggests Iranian bomb-making

An Associated Press report by a journalist with a reputation for speculative and misleading coverage of Iran’s nuclear program claims that a shoddy Iranian diagram, leaked by “a country critical of Iran’s atomic program” suggests the Islamic Republic is working on a nuclear weapon.

“The diagram was leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon,” reports George Jahn. “The officials provided the diagram only on condition that they and their country not be named.”

Jahn provides anonymity to the leakers of the diagram, who even he admits are biased against Iran, not in order to protect them from punishment but to protect them from being held accountable to public scrutiny.

The diagram is proof of nothing except that Iranian nuclear scientists may be doing nuclear work and possess knowledge of the processes.

(...)

The IAEA and Israeli officials have openly acknowledged in recent weeks that Iran has been diverting significant portions of its enriched uranium for use in medical research for cancer treatment, a process that is irreversible and demonstrates Iran’s credibility in its consistent statements that its enrichment of uranium is not for weapons but for peaceful purposes.

The debate about a nuclear threat from Iran is mostly fabricated. Western leaders don’t much care about weapons proliferation per se: the real concern, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says, is allowing Iran to enter a “zone of immunity” wherein it can deter attack or invasion. The US and Israel, according to this thinking, must be able to bomb Iran without concern for retaliation.

Obama has refused to launch a military strike on Iran’s non-existent weapons program, but he has given in to Israeli pressure to impose economic warfare on Iran. After extremely severe economic sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking sectors, Iranian civilians are being subjected to high unemployment, rampant inflation and food shortages, and even dramatically less access to vital pharmaceuticals and medical treatment. Some estimate the sanctions could end up killing tens of thousands of Iranians.

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative.

Fawning

 kurtster wrote: 
That's right Kurt! I sit and wait for you to show up and then I JUMP out of the bushes! Bwa ha ha!!!!

 Wow !

Gone all day.

Only two minutes.