BTW,People like Aaron Brown are still needed in our society.

I still believe there’s a place for “fairness doctrine-” type media, because there are millions (maybe more than we think) of people in the U.S. who can’t figure stuff out on their own, and would be better served by “important stories from Poland”, etc. rather than by reading interview transcripts on websites or referring to media that are “economically viable.”

People like Aaron Brown are still needed in our society. However, there’s nothing to stop blogosphere from taking over - for better or for worse…

Every thing else is like jelly in the donut. The content, its collection, its distribution, its vetting, is it too left, is it too right…all part of a curiously entertaining way to pass your time.

That’s it…cyberworld is the new ‘donut’! Good bye print hello the ‘inter-do-net’

The real issue is not the message…we can some how sort that…its getting comfortable with the fact that the medium is driving so much and how do we adapt. Life force changes are at play. Stuff new societies are build on here.

Do your kids still read the comics on sunday morning? Doubt it very much. The world of IT is their culture and inevitable. However if they do or did, their scope of information would have been limited to the breadth and depth of that paper that day. We know, they know it is much more vast than that today.

The simple fact: too much information….there is now just too much information to comprehend, true, false or fantasy. Can we evolve to manage this? We are coming more and more dependent again on the collection, the editing of this information for us. There is a reason Google is where its at…of course its genious…but it is what the isssue is today. How powerful is it today? Powerful enough to create major international diplomatic rows over the very issue of collection and distribution of information…as in the case with Yahoo and Google in China. You say, ‘well there, it is the ‘message’ that is the concern…yes but it is the extraordinary universal access provided by the new ‘medium’ which is the real driver here. Google has helped us cope with this new medium…better than a brilliant PA, but pray not at forsaking freedom of distribution of information from hidden editorials, or unscrupulous vetting of manipulative institutions.

..and just about the time we seem to get it right, the ‘medium’ will undoubtedly change again and we will need to reinvent again.

The medium of print is over. Coffee culture tells us so…it’s romantic to pick up that paper, croissant and latte in hand, but WiFi is todays world. With dual processor cards, quad processor cards, electronic paper is a blink away. So don’t get caught with your eyes closed. As Dr. Phil says, ‘…love it…’.

And a brief aside to Ashok…I do have faith that the American people are up to it. More scarey to me than a corrupt individual, is a corrupt Institution as they can influence a much larger public…Simply put, Institutions are only as honorable as the people at their helm. At the moment, there are many whom are having trouble with this institution we call the American Government. Travel overseas to almost any country today, and you will find, it is not the American people that the world distrusts, it is their government. The new media gives us better access and more information about our ‘global’ world….which if they’re watching will raise their awareness…can we hope for more than the power of the informed people to make their voice heard to facilitate necessary change?

Thirty years ago news anchorman, Walter Cronkite, would finish up his hourly news broadcast to the nation of America by saying, ‘and that’s the way it is.” Kronkite was the daily voice of gospel news truth, and America was duly…

he rocks

Terms like factual train wreck, bias, accuracy cannot be measured by one Katie question or a dozen Rush opinions. It’s too small a sample. You need to start with an idea of all the questions Katie has asked, come up with a large enough random sample, and then measure for specific factors that add up to a bias. Anything less is not accurate.

Also thanks Ian for the quote from “evil billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch” as he is known on the Simpsons. He answers my original question.

“And when you ask journalists what they think about their readers, the picture grows darker. According to one recent study, the percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999. Perhaps this reflects their personal politics and personal prejudices more than anything else, but it is disturbing. This is a polite way of saying that reporters and editors think their readers are stupid. In any business, such an attitude toward one’s customers would not be healthy. But in the newspaper business, where we rely on people to come back to us each day, it will be disastrous if not addressed.”

While I may disagree that there is a pervasive liberal bias in all media, there is some to be sure … just not in the huge amounts some think. There is also a conservative bias that is getting stronger.

Again, though, that’s why blogs are so important. The biases are out front, not hidden behind cloaks of objectivity, and the reader can get opposing views easily, or even immediately respond to those with whom they disagree.

This leads to greater reader knowledge of a particular subject because the reader is getting each view of an issue.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, as arrogant as some may believe it to be …

1. Bias = lack of accuracy = lower ratings is too simplistic (a point I didn’t make in my first post. That was my mistake.). Bias can sometimes = higher ratings (see: Fox and Rush) without also = accuracy. Other stuff factors into the equation.

2. I didn’t call those who listen to Fox and Rush as “idiots” is because I don’t think they are — they’re just partisans who refuse to acknowledge that fact. If I thought they were idiots, I’d have posted that. Trust me …

3. While many blogs, on an individual basis, show only one side, the blogosphere as a whole, shows ALL sides. That’s why it makes for a better system of media and was my original point.

Is that simple enough for you, or do I need to write it out in crayon on a Big Chief tablet?

I should say that I remember how things were before Fox News, and except for McNeil/Lehrer, it was very hard to get balance of any sort. I had to subscribe to NR in high school to have something which would at least let me see things differently. Time got really liberal when they started dumbing down and adding that section before the actual articles where they did “News in Brief.” They had Calvin Trillin from The Nation guest write, and he was funny, but he did present a particular ideological perspective. Newsweek, of course, got more liberal.

And remember when CNN dominated as the network for news? I think it was very hard then for another side to get a fair hearing.

Now all of this is anecdotal, and my judgement may not be the best. Still, what makes me think there has been and still is liberal media bias is the fact that I really had to search around to find a coherent conservative perspective that was respectable. The anecdotes I’m giving you are from the time I was growing up. I always wonder what would have happened if I were a good student and didn’t dig, and instead did my work in school like I was supposed to. I’m pretty sure I would be a liberal by default, and that’s the wrong reason to be a liberal.

Why don’t you just say that Rush and Fox’s audience is nothing but a bunch of idiots?

I know that is what you think. Why dissemble your feelings under so many words?

Please be upfront and succinct about your own “biases” if that is so key to gaining an audience.

I did not ask you about the “evidence of liberal bias” so you are answering a question of your own imagination.

But then again, incoherent rambling dovetails nicely with your arrogance and vapid tangential pedantry.

The advantage (and the point I failed to get across well … my apologies) is that a reader often goes in knowing about a bias beforehand. Why is that important? Take the following example:

You go to RedState and read about the NSA spying program. You read the piece and then check out their supporting material that says it’s okay.

You can then go to TalkingPointsMemo to see what they have to say about the NSA program. You read their piece and their supporting material that says it isn’t.

You now have both sides of the discussion, have read the research and can make up your own mind. You can even call BS on either site and engage in the discussion yourself.

THAT is what makes blogs so great, IMHO. Instead of having one talking head telling you a story, you are able to get the entire story from both sides and, in the process, able to take part in the discussion. This is why the old guard will (again, IMHO) either have to adapt or go the way of the dodo.

Captious–
Actually, the “myth of liberal bias” is evidenced by a number of factors — the guests they have on their shows (i.e. last night CNN had three Republicans and just one liberal on their SOTU coverage), their unwillingness to do basic research (i.e. Katie Couric not bothering to fact-check about the Abramoff scandal and just repeat Republican talking points) and their coverage of the war (i.e. CBS willingly lists body counts, but doesn’t often do stories on those fighting the war and some of the progress that is actually being made).

The fact that Rush and Fox are doing well has nothing to do with any amount of “accuracy” — they are factual car wrecks that are benefiting from Americans desire to gawk. They also benefit from an audience made of people who are already partisan and, thus, don’t question what they see or hear from those programs.

Rush has been caught distorting facts or just outright lying dozens of times (just check out mediamatters.org). But the dittoheads just agree with everything he says like good little lemmings.

Fox hires talking heads like O’Reilly who don’t tell the truth—instead they stir up or even invent controversy. And, as we all know, controversy sells.

This isn’t to say that there is not a liberal bias in some outlets (CBS perhaps being the worst offender), but trying to hold up Fox and Rush as bastions of truth is laughable.

Mark Sullivan listed Rush and Fox to illustrate that their ratings aren’t falling off a cliff.

Rush and Fox are also battling the same new technology of the internet and the fragmentation of the media audience and yet are achieving different results than their MSM brethren.

Mark, instead of disparaging Rush and Fox as “biased”, could you explain why they are still thriving?

Going back to your original post. While your antecedents aren’t totally clear, you seemed to disbelieve the “myth of liberal bias” and attribute the MSM’s decline to a “lack of accuracy”.

So it begs the question I already asked above. If Fox and Rush are still thriving, could it be because they are in fact accurate and not as “biased” as you claim?

I must be missing all the best blogs. Who, exactly, does this?

Mark,

“lack of accuracy” EQUALS “bias”.

People who basically make stuff up tend to carve it in their own worldview.

Which is why I found it amusing that Mark Sullivan listed Fox and Rush — two of the most biased sources out there.

However, bias is present in everything — it’s human nature to form an opinion on a topic, and damn near impossible to keep it out of something as highly charged as reporting on, say, political issues. The key is to present BOTH sides of a story. Something you don’t see on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, et al.

Take NPR … my guess is that most NPR hosts are liberal (the questions they ask seem to bear that out), but they go out of their way to get speakers from both sides of the fence on almost every topic they cover. In this way, they are able to give a complete profile regardless of any bias they may have. In short, they may have a slight bias, but they are actually the most accurate source of news out there.

When in doubt, always take the other side of the NYT’s predictions.

In practice this could be tough, given how often they contradict themselves, etc.

The Times failed to mention this staggering revelation in their coverage of the report. Why isn’t the traditional media covering the decline? The Times just had a piece last week suggesting women “get in, get in, before it’s too late.”

So the mayor is saying real estate is about to crash and the Times is saying get in before it’s too late. Considering his background in finance, I’d believe the mayor.

Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom rely on “correspondents” for most of their “news” as does Currnet TV, which has some great “user-generated content” as they call it.

And Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is one of the best writers actually covering politics who’s out there calling those he reports on, verifying his sources and vetting his stories.

I’ll agree that the world has a long way to go before CNN or NYT or Reuters of the AP or any of the news-gathering organs loses all their steam, I think the writing is on the wall.

“lack of accuracy” EQUALS “bias”.

People who basically make stuff up tend to carve it in their own worldview.

Almost reminds me of Dan Rather’s “fake, yet accurate” characterization.

Yup, that was the point I’d been trying to make, as well. Without CNN and NBC, what material would Stewart and Colbert have to sneer at? Pictures of Glenn Reynolds’ patio and some MySpace girl’s cat?

the American public finally has an alternative to the leftist bias of the MSM…news reporting that isn’t objective cant be trusted so why bother to watch it….Long live Rush and Fox

I’ll spare everyone the treatise on the myth of a liberal bias in corporate media and just state that, IMHO, it has less to do with bias and more to do with lack of accuracy, no matter the policial leanings of those doing the reporting.

At least with most blogs, you know the bias upfront and can filter the information accordingly. The best blogs also provide more research and effort in one 700 word post than a week’s worth of nightly news casts.