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Topic: Zogby Poll: Vast Majority Believe Media Is Biased (Read 537 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Zogby Poll: Vast Majority Believe Media Is Biased
« on: 2007-03-17 04:13:26 » |
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[Blunderov] Yes of course the media is "biased towards the left". Another way of saying exactly the same thing is that the media tends to be more intelligent and better educated than the hoi polloi. Before I'm accused of outrageous elitism (not that that would necessarily bother me) I would like to point out that this is why the bedrock position of liberalism is equal access to education.
We want everybody to be just like us
http://newsbusters.org/node/11417
Zogby Poll: Vast Majority Believe Media Is Biased Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 14, 2007 - 16:11. Call it confirming the obvious, but a poll released today by the Zogby organization, conducted in conjunction with the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, reveals that a vast majority of Americans believe that the media is biased. 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides.
Of particular significance: "nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias."
Other findings of interest:
"97% of Republicans surveyed said the media are liberal, two-thirds of political independents feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a conservative bias. Democrats, while much more likely to perceive a conservative bias than other groups, were not nearly as sure the media was against them as were the Republicans. While Republicans were unified in their perception of a left-wing media, just two-thirds of Democrats were certain the media skewed right – and 17% said the bias favored the left." "As the influence of blogs has risen, mainstream news organizations have attempted to get in on the action by creating their own blogs to counter those run by private citizens and those not in the news business. But American voters remain skeptical of major news outlets diving in to the blog pool – 26% speculated that the reason news organizations are placing blogs on their Web sites is that 'blogs give news organizations a chance to promote a political agenda they could not promote in their regular broadcasts, cablecasts, or publications.'” Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net
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Hermit
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Prime example of a practically perfect person
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Re:Zogby Poll: Vast Majority Believe Media Is Biased
« Reply #1 on: 2007-03-18 11:39:58 » |
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Always be skeptical about Zogby - they have their own agenda and it conforms to those held by the right-wing Christians of the USA.
On this score, I suspect that nobody knows what left and right means anymore - particularly in America where "Liberal" has been transformed into a derogatory epithet for which apologies are apparently required, and where there is, to my eyes, only Right and Righter. In my opinion, Nazi Germany and the Soviets in the seventies were more tolerant of the unconventional than America of today, even if only because police control, presence, information management and powers were more constrained than in this multiply failed totalitarian state.
No better markers can be found than in the fact that anyone who criticises America is regarded as deluded or hostile; foreigners treated with suspicion and hostility; information about the massive inequity of wealth and income or about the wealth transfer from the mass to the very wealthy that has undeniably occurred is suppressed or even denied; and even the clear fact that in every way possible, the ordinary American is far worse off than the ordinary European - but believes the opposite - is flushed down the memory hole. Denial extends even to the very remarkable silence surrounding the release, a month ago, of a UN report that the US is the very least desirable place in the industrialized world to raise a child. Refer e.g. UNICEF's Innocenti Report (PDF).
Funny old world, Einstein got there first (as usual). I came to America because I had heard it was a land of freedom and opportunity. I was wrong, but it is too late for me to rectify this in my lifetime.
Kind Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Zogby Poll: Vast Majority Believe Media Is Biased
« Reply #2 on: 2007-03-30 10:48:45 » |
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[Blunderov] Time and again the false argument is trotted out in South Africa that national teams 'should' represent the demographics of the country. In fact, the teams 'should' represent the demographics of that particular sport which is not at all the same thing.
The 'liberal bias' fallacy is similar in it's misdirection.
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/893
Larry Beinhart: Dispatches From The War On Stupidity Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 03/29/2007 - 3:12pm. Guest Contribution A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION by Larry Beinhart
It is now a conventional complaint on the Right that university faculties are dominated by liberals.
It's true.
A Washington Post story reported on a study that said: "72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative ... The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative."
Naturally, Right-wingers claim this is a vast left-wing conspiracy.
There's a more logical conclusion. A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.
From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion of liberals goes up 87%.
Thinking leads to liberalism. Think about it.
The theory of "The Surge" is that by putting a lot of troops in Baghdad, we can stabilize Baghdad and then everything will become hunky-dory.
NPR reported this morning on a military operation in Iraq's Diyala Province.
US troops were removed from Diyala to be part of "The Surge" in Baghdad. The insurgents then moved out of Baghdad and went to Diyala, which is immediately to the northeast.
Now the troops have been taken from "The Surge" to go to Diyala.
Who could ever have predicted that?
The Commander in Chief (who doesn't want other people to micro-manage the war he's already lost)? The Joint Chiefs of Staff? General Petraeus, the new commander? After all, he has two oxymorons in his resume, he's the Army's counter-insurgency expert, and, (according to Washington Post) he "gained fame for his early success in training Iraqi troops."
Apparently not. But Billy Joel could've. "We held the day in the palm of our hand. They ruled the night ... We held the coastline, they held the highlands ... and we would all go down together."
That's from Goodnight, Saigon.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org. Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net.
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