Ship of fools
I don’t think a reasonable person can deny that the current administration has failed at everything it’s done since the day it began. I’d argue that it began it’s terrible downward spiral on the day that Obama named Joe Biden to be his running mate in the 2008 election. Obama, who has final say over the advice that he gets from his circle of obviously moronic advisers, so ultimately, he’s responsible, and that is probably his greatest failure. he’s appointed tax evaders to his staff who advise him to raise taxes to balance the budget. He implements Joe Biden’s plan in Afghanistan despite the fact that Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of history since he started shooting his mouth off about foreign policy.
Now, he’s looking at making US history’s most infamous anti-war protester the Secretary of Defense. Our status in the United Nations has tumbled terribly, so our ambassador to the UN is now named as the first choice for Secretary of State.
His CIA director involved himself in covert sexual dawdling, while the commander of his military forces actively engaged in combat in a foreign land sends 30,000 emails to a married woman. During those escapades, the chairman of his joint chiefs of staff, instead of complaining that his troops are forced by the Biden policy in Afghanistan to present themselves unarmed to to potential enemy attacks, blames those same troops for blowing their noses in public.
Now, thanks to a compliant media, we know more about the sexual habits of our generals in one week than we’ve learned about the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi consulate two months ago.
They’re still fishing bodies out of the water around New York City, parts of the surrounding communities are still without power as we stand on the cusp of Winter. As Ace of Spades helpfully points out, we don’t even know the name of the FEMA director, the way we had Michael Brown’s name tattooed on our collective consciousness after Katrina.
Businesses are laying off workers by the thousands anticipating the lack of understanding in this administration about how jobs get created in this country.
And still, the media is silent, more excited about the hotels in DC filling up with reservations for the Inauguration Day celebrations – and the off-chance that they might get to see Lebanese boobies.
But on to my main point, that any buffoon can be President as long as they surround themselves with competent people – look at Bill Clinton. but this buffoon can’t even get that right.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media
@41, so what you’re saying is that the only person in the room who has a right to have an opinion is you, even if your personal opinion is biased in one direction and not supported by extensive references?
Frankly, there is no news source on the planet that is not biased in one direction or the other. There is no print rag or online site that does not have a lean, whether it is liberal or conservative. Equating MSNBC, which is decidedly to the left of center, with Fox, which has become somewhat less right of center is incorrect. They are not cut from the same cloth.
NYTimes is left-ish, Wall Street Journal is right-ish. That does not make either of them right or wrong, it just makes them different. Ditto Fox and MSNBC — neither is right nor wrong, just differing in their opinions, which is what this is all about.
Using the term “victimized perception of reality” has no basis in reality. How does disagreement make one a victim? Your statement means that anyone who disagrees with you is nuts because he disagrees with you. Having an opinion and stating it does not mean that someone has a twisted view of the real world.
Opinion is simply self-expression, nothing else. It’s one thing to hold a different viewpoint. It’s an entirely different to state, or even imply, that because someone else’s opinion is different from yours, he’s crazy, which is what “victimized perception of reality” means.
You specifically labeled two media news sources as being cut from the same cloth when they are not. They are as different as goats and porcupines. If you’re going to discuss media outlets, at least do your research first. Anyone here can come up with more than a few moderate conservative media outlets, as well as liberal outlets, without going to a lot of trouble in the process.
What I don’t get, Hondo, is how you can look at that study and come to the conclusion that there is a pro-Obama bias in the media as a whole. We would expect if there was this really significant liberal bias that Obama would be portrayed positively, with few negative stories, rather than the negative stories outnumbering the positive, as is actually the case. The comparison is between a mixed narrative for Obama and a negative narrative for Romney (its easier to go after a white plutocrat than the first black president – not that we should focus so much on personal characteristics over policy). Directly from the article (whose hyperlink when I posted it had -gasp- an extra l on the end that, unfortunately, broke it): “Most of the advantage in coverage for Obama, however, came in September in the form of highly negative coverage for Romney. This was a period when the GOP nominee was losing ground in the polls, he was criticized for his comments about Libya, and a video surfaced in which he effectively dismissed 47% of the American public. All that changed almost overnight after the first debate on October 3. From that day through October 21, the coverage in effect reversed. In all, 20% of stories about Romney were favorable, 30% were unfavorable, and 50% were mixed-a differential of 10 points to the negative. For Obama, 13% of stories were favorable, 36% were unfavorable, and 50% were mixed-a differential of 23 points.” As I said at the first, its about what is selling, and after the first debate the media grabbed on to Mitt-mentum. Would they have done that if they were all in the liberals pockets, except for Fox? I also mentioned that MSNBC was more biased, didn’t I? I understand that 23.67:1 is a much worse ratio than 7.67:1, but that doesn’t exclude Fox’s performance down to a “probably” biased. Pew also supports my assertion that Fox and MSNBC are the same sort of network, as Pew refers to them as “two cable channels that have built themselves around ideological programming.” I… Read more »
SInce it takes a while to write out 350 words, I missed EX-PH2 and Nik comments, but briefly:
Nik, look at the quotes you posted and they accord with what I said, the media is slightly baised left, but its ultimately about the money.
EX-PH2, the victimized perception of reality I referred to is the conspiracy theory that only Fox tells the truth and the mainstream media (a notion your post implicity rejects in identifying a diversity of views among leading news sources) is a far-left monolith lying to the American people on behalf of Democrats. I agree with what you wrote, and for the record, I do think people that beleive in conspiracy theories aren’t all there. Fox and MSNBC are cut from the same cloth because they both sell an exceptionally ideologically doctored version of reality to appeal to their base.
Anon:
Let me spell it out to you in pictures:
In all cases, Obama overall got (1) greater overall stories with positive “spin”, and (2) fewer overall stories with negative “spin”. The only cases that were close to neutral were (1) discussions of issues, and (2) the “blogosphere”. It’s hard to spin facts successfully – though the media tried – which explains (1). Interestingly, (2) is the only category above written by a population that approximates an actual cross-section of the US population.
And, for the record: no, you didn’t initially mention that MSNBC is “more biased”. Specifically: in comment 35 above, you said no such thing. There, you explicitly equated Fox and MSNBC in terms of bias. You only admitted MSNBC to be decidedly more biased later – after you’d been called out for equating the two.
What do you mean “slightly”? From Pew:
In the most recent survey, 40% of journalists described themselves as being on the left side of the political spectrum (31% said they were “a little to the left” and 9% “pretty far to the left”). But that number was down notably, seven percentage points from 1992, when 47% said they leaned leftward.
The percentage of “middle of the roaders” moved up slightly to 33% in 2002 from 30% in 1992. And the number of journalists identifying themselves leaning toward the political right also inched up to 25% from 22% a decade earlier (20% “a little to the right” and 5% “pretty far to the right”).
34% vs 7% is not slightly. It’s dramatically.
@38: I’m afraid the media bias goes back further than the 60’s. Walter Durante won a Pulitzer prize for his NYT articles describing how he gave the perfect blowjob to Stalin and how wonderful it was.
Also: If anyone remembers that CNN admitted to giving favorable coverage to Saddam so they could keep access to him.
Here’s their latest snippet to show their bias: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/11/16/Fraud-CNN-Uses-Video-Footage-Of-Faked-Palestinian-Injuries
Ah. Apparently, I did not make myself clear. My intention is to always be as clear as possible. So, here goes.
A bias toward the liberal or toward the conservative side of the political spectrum is dependent on the sociopolitical environment where the bias originates.
In the USA, where free speech is taken for granted, a news outlet like FoxNews is considered modestly right, or conservative, and at the same time, MSNBC is more oriented to the left, or liberal side of the middle of the road.
To put it in perspective, if FoxNews were in Pakistan, where free speech is not well-received, its output would be considered dangerously left-wing and possibly explosively liberal. MSNBC would be so far to the left that it would be on the receiving end of death threats and lethal attacks, as witness what recently happened to the outspoken teenager Malala. al-Jazeera, the state-approved news outlet, would be considered modestly conservative, very close to the middle of the road. And the jihadist media, of which there are several, would be more slightly conservative.
It is socio-political geography that creates a liberal and/or conservative bias, not the medium itself.
The medium is the message. — Marshall McCluhan
Ex-PH2, I think I’m stilling missing your point. I will tell you what I have understood from your two posts, and maybe you can help me from there.
In your initial post at 51, you take umbrage that I identify people who believe in a far left main stream media as having a victimized perspective, then explain that using that language delegitimizes opposing views. You also point out that there are a variety of viewpoints in the media and some bias is inevitable in all of them.
Your subsequent comment observes that context is everything when it comes to evaluating the perspective of a new source relative to its peers. You also mention that the medium is not to blame for the biases of US news outlets.
I agree with your points in both posts, but I am having a hard time seeing how the discussion of global context clarifies your criticism of the language I used or adds to your point that all news is biased when what was at issue, as I understood it was the degree, rather than the existence, of bias in US news media as a whole, and two networks in particular.
If you’re that dumb, you’re on your own.
EX-PH2, I put aside my pride to get an intelligent friend of mine to look over what you wrote, and it still is only connected in your mind. I can get a third opinion from a buddy of mine that graduated from an Ivy, and maybe he can parse your brilliance. Until then my conclusion is that you didn’t say anything meaningful (in fact, #58 is terribly banal, but I didn’t want to say that when I still thought you would be constructive).
And I don’t care what you and your pseudo-intellectual buddy think.