This links to a piece outlining the development of MSM and its nascent decline.

By the early 1970s, mass media had reached its zenith (if you’ll pardon the pun). Most Americans were getting their news from one of three TV networks’ half-hour nightly broadcasts. With the exception of New York, most big cities had only one or two primary newspapers. And no matter what a modern newspaper’s lineage, by and large its articles, except for local issues, came from global wire services like the Associated Press or Reuters; it took its editorial lead from the New York Times; and it claimed to be impartial (while usually failing miserably).

Up until the Reagan years, Love says, “definitely fewer than one hundred people, and maybe as few as twenty people, actually decided what constituted national news in the United States.” These individuals were principally concentrated within a few square blocks of midtown Manhattan, the middle of which was home to the offices of the New York Times. The aptly nicknamed “Gray Lady” largely shaped the editorial agendas not just of newspapers but of television, as well. As veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Goldberg wrote in his 2003 book Arrogance, “If the New York Times went on strike tomorrow morning, they’d have to cancel the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts tomorrow night.”

More extensive coverage of the significant reduction in civilian casualties in Iraq. America succeeding in Iraq is just something Americans don’t want to read about it. They are only interested in US failure.

This post goes into more detail about the turn around in Ramadi. Some argue that the reason MSM does not print much positive news on Iraq is because nobody will read it. I reject this explanation primarily because the reports I’m most likely to read are these posts. If more MSM press were to have positive stories on Iraq I would read them as made evident by the fact I always this guys posts. It’s not hard for me to imagine that many people would happily pay to read a couple of good stories on Iraq mixed in with the bad stories.

MSM reluctance to publish positively on Iraq is most certainly not a matter of turning off readers. Unless of course their readers only want to read…oh well you get the idea anyway.

By they way, this is what its all about.

The literacy class for women and girls may have been cancelled, but the local would-be students wanted me to take pictures of them at their desks. So the classroom was opened and they sat in their seats for staged photos. We had no language in common. It was just obvious, from their beckoning hand gestures, what they wanted me to do. They seemed to be proud that they were learning to read, and that women and girls were allowed to be schooled again now that Al Qaeda is gone.

Over at personal responsibility a discussion has broken out about media coverage of differing smear tactics in the last presidential election.

As I’ve said, the MSM has been bashing conseratives lately because they’ve been the only public political figures of note for a long time; as soon as democrats start sticking their heads up, expect them to receive the same MSM smears. It’s about ratings and money; any aparent political agenda is just marketing.

I wish this were true. In regards to swift boat, by the time the second ad came out the MSM press had already gone into full force debunk the ad’s claims.

Contrast that with Rathergate. This was a so poorly forged document that bloggers within hours of the airing the story identified it as such. Yet left leaning news people at CBS were utterly incapable of seeing an obvious forgery despite that being integral to their job.

Difference in Coverage?

These instances do a fine job of showing what MSM bias means. We can say both had the same intention smearing a potential candidate to influence the outcome of the election with questionably true assertions.

In the example in which the democratic candidate’s reputation is impugned there is immediate skepticism within the MSM resulting in many editorials and news piece calling into question the validity of the ad. However, with the republican candidate obviously forged documents are not met with skepticism by CBS, a MSM news organization, but in fact are reported as fact. Thanks to skepticism of the right bloggers it took less than a day for them to expose the documents as fabrications.

Swift boat had to buy ad time. As such their assertions were already associated with advertisement hyperbole. Most everyone knows that statements made in commercials are to be scrutinized. Nevertheless the advertisements were scrutinized by the MSM for validity. On the other hand with Rathergate, you have a credible news source reporting on fabricated documents as true. Arguably new organizations assertions do not need to be scrutinized as carefully as advertisements because the point of such organization is to report avoiding overly biased information. Furthermore, it was not the MSM that discovered the forgery but non journalist that supported Bush.

One piece of propaganda is rightly labeled as advertisement and is heavily scrutinized by the press. Another piece of propaganda is labeled as fact and is not scrutinized by the press. Believe me the press leans left and has for quite some time.

Institutional Homogeny

It makes sense. One is more skeptical of things that violate their expectations. The converse is true as well. It’s called confirmation bias. News organizations that consist primarily of people with the same attitudes and opinions will be skeptical of things that violate those attitudes and opinions. MSM was skeptical of swifboat because it violated an expectation while they were less skeptical of Rathergate for it did not violate an expectation. Right bloggers were much less skeptical of swiftbaot but were skeptical of Rathergate.

News organizations have been packed with liberals for at least three decades. Ever since journalist decided to use their profession to do ‘good’ instead of report the news liberals have been clamoring to get in. This has had the unfortunate consequence of pushing the news towards the left. Homogeny in the newsroom has weakened the organization’s ability to perceive deception and maintain editorial neutrality. This weakness has manifested in declining readers and proliferation of talk radio and Fox News dominance.

Boy do I have the solution for you! CNN.com has all the stories you need to remind you just how much Iraq is a US FAILURE. With CNN you get top story after top story showing administration incompetence, impending civil war, children horrifically maimed by war, and political buffoonery in both countries. And with CNN you will never forgot that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

But that’s not all:

Led by Anderson Cooper, our top notch scienceporters have invented the patented RhetoricReverser™ technology. The RhetoricReverser™ works rapidly to find ways to reverse rhetoric when MSM inundation of narrative fails to obscure reality. RhetoricReverser’s™ secret lies in smart nano ‘rhetoric particles’ designed to anticipate optimistic events in Iraq and immediately seek new rhetorical narratives to reverse the focus to failure.

RhetoricReverser™ can handle the even the sunniest optimistic events in Iraq. Remember the good days when Iraq was clearly a quagmire hurtling towards an inevitable civil war because of an incompetent administration’s stubbornness to make changes? Who couldn’t be depressed about Iraq then? But, then the administration changed tactics reducing military and civilian deaths, restoring order in Anabar province, and making the inevitable civil war dubious. It was impossible to avoid having the sinking feeling of hope that Iraq could succeed.

Fortunately that’s when the RhetoricReverser™ went straight to work shifting rhetorical narrative from high body counts and inevitable civil war to an intractable Iraqi government political impasse. RhetoricReverser™ senses optimistic narrative in the news and gets you focused on the negative aspects to insure you never have to deal with optimism in Iraq. With RhetoricReverser™ say goodbye to hope in Iraq forever!

That’s why CNN should be your news source for eliminating all feelings of happiness about Iraq. No matter how good you feel about Iraq, CNN has the story that will bring down that happiness and remind you it’s a quagmire from which the US will never succeed. And with the RhetoricReverser™ you can rest assured knowing you will never spend another second being optimistic about Iraq. So next time you have an excessive happiness for US success in Iraq click on over to CNN. With CNN you will never have to be happy about Iraq again.

Looks like France might be getting involved in Iraq. Maybe all of Europe wasn’t so mad at the US, but instead the groups of people mad at Bush were the only one’s covered by a press that, was also upset at Bush. Perhaps this led to a false perception about Europe. A perception that can no longer hold, in large part due to the people in those countries voting in politicians much more in sync with conservative politics.

Huh, who would of thought?

From my view, one of the biggest problem with MSM bias is that it’s going to lead to calls for legislation. Tigerhawk suggests, though I’m not sure how serious, that the press should be held as accountable to their product as the press holds all other companies to their products. The press has been irresponsible in the cost and damage it has done over the years by presenting many simple corporate mistakes as something more serious. Debatable regulation and reform leads to additional unnecessary cost to products all because the some in the media wanted to perform some ’social Justice’ by sticking it to evil corporations. I must admit the irony of forcing regulation and laws onto news companies when they make mistakes in their coverage is very tempting. But its seems obvious that such laws would lead to first amendment violations. Nevertheless, the more blatant the bias, the stronger the calls for legislation. Hopefully the new media will assuage enough outrage that their is never enough political will to implement regulation of news coverage.

If it was possible one regulation I would like to see is that the news corporation must pay a portion of the cost their coverage incurs on corporations or government agencies it ‘exposes’. It costs news organization nothing to give bad coverage to a corporation while that coverage can cost the corporation or agency, and in turn, the consumer or taxpayer, lots of money. This is similar to the environmental argument demaninding that polluting compaines be charged for the damage they by releasing waste into the river. For me, news coverage biased by those looking for ’social justice’ are creating all sorts of pollution when they attempt to teach corporations lessons.

While in principle I would support legislation forcing news organization to pay a portion of the cost of their pollution I would in practice gladly vote down any actual attempts at regulation. Unlike the environmentalist, I’m fully aware of how such regulation can be easily abused for political ends.

Ann Althouse notes about the NYtimes coverage of the conviction of Jose Padilla.

“The Qaeda training camp form had six of Mr. Padilla’s fingerprints.”
That’s a fact I learn reading paragraph 20, on page 2 of the NYT article about Jose Padilla. Here’s paragraph 3:

The government’s chief evidence was a faded application form that prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

Both of them are facts. However where in the story you put those facts is purely a subjective call. Burying the fact that makes it obvious this guy filled out the Al Qaeda application while placing the fact that this was the only evidence the state had in the front of the story was purely an editorial decision. Those people most interested in seeing how the state might be abusing its power to unfairly convict citizen as terrorist would want facts that show a flimsy case for the prosecution closer to the beginning of the story. They would want to downplay facts that might contradict this narrative. In this case clear intent that Padilla signed off on being a terrorist justified the states intention to convict him as a terrorist.

Pay very close attention to how facts are arranged in a story. This and other editorial decision is where the vast majority of the bias exists in press coverage.

The unbiased AP has decided to defend Obama’s silly remarks on the war in Afghanistan. Captain’s Quarters has the details:

Besides, Obama and his campaign didn’t just say that civilians had been killed in Afghanistan. He claimed that it was Bush policy to kill civilians and that his strategy consisted “solely of air raids and bombing of civilians.” What’s the best way to fact-check that statement?

How about seeing whether ground forces have been deployed in Afghanistan? That seems to be a rather good indicator as to whether the strategy solely relies on dropping bombs indiscriminately on civilians — and as it turns out, the data is easy to find. The Congressional Research Office did a breakout of deployed American forces in Afghanistan. It shows that of the roughly 22,000 American troops in the country, only 3100 come from the Air Force. Over 17,000 come from the Army. You know — ground troops.

LOL

Several posts back I mentioned the left leaning media, ie MSM, black out on NASA revising its temperatures for the US. I came across a story that I think it does a fine job of being neutral in covering the story. Someone needs to get the author Danielle Day a liberal education her unbiased coverage of a politically loaded story is unheard of in modern journalism.