Defining MSM
Looking at this web page I calculated the amount of time each news organization spends on each party and found something completely surprising. Especially when surprising means utterly expected.
CNN and MSNBC, life FOX News, ain’t trying to be balanced. Is there any wonder why Fox news dominates the market? They are the only news provider that covers the conservative candidates more often than democrats. Five news sources fighting for one political group while the other news company has no competition. Good grief those other companies have editors that are idiots by letting Fox news dominate a whole market by itself.
If I collapse across networks we get something like this:
Removing Fox news we see this
This is exactly what is meant by the expression Main Stream Media (MSM). All these other sources which make up almost all of the available new sources(television broadcasts) available to your average person, in the aggregate covers democrats by almost double what they cover republicans.
This is coverage on presidential candidates. With such blatant bias I can only imagine what the numbers look like when it comes to Iraq. Especially when one the large groups of anti-war people are in the democratic party. Certainly some of those people work in the newsroom of MSM. I wonder how this translates into numbers on war coverage. Oh wait i know how it affects CNN. They like to play propaganda films for free for our enemy.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:35 am
In order for your little analysis to have any merit you need to ask the question of whether it is normal for their to be more reporting on the candidates of the party that is NOT in office.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
It’s not entirely clear why thats relevant.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Umm…. maybe its relevant because if it were historically more common for more press to be dedicated to the candidates from parties that were out of office, then that would explain the data you presented. It’s not clear why you miss that point.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
It is true, that the democrats have gotten into the down-and-dirty of politics a lot faster than the republicans have. Dirty politics tends to result in more news for the same reason that anna nichole smith was all over the news. I’m with you on the MSM being biased as all get out, but this isn’t necessarily a good measure of it. More study would be necessary.
August 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
because the the electorate as a whole swings back and forth, generally away from the party in office. while the findings are telling of what is going on now, jamie makes a good point. plus, the “MSM” as you call it wants to cover the party that is going to win in 2008.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Probably because it isn’t. Relevant that is.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:08 am
The MSM clumps a non-electable president into the same category as potential republican candiate for the next presidency which explains the difference in coverage. And somehow this demonstrate that the MSM is not bias. LOL.
One would think the editors would be wise enough to serparate coverage on the president from coverage on potential canidates. Well at least if you wanted to avoid charges of bias you would do that.
One should also note that the more bias sources are CNN and MSNBC. According to the argument of coverage, one would expect these news sources to spend much more time on the president relative to the broadcast channels. I suspect this is not the case.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Probably because it isn’t. Relevant that is.
Good point Einstein. Thanks for settling the issue.
August 6th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I wish they had NPR or PBS on here–I’m curious to see how they stack up.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Bad news, they lean to the left too. The term Main Stream is to indicate nearly all news sources lean left. You have to go outside the mainstream to get something that is non left leaning. Try talk radio or teh internets to get non left biased news.
August 7th, 2007 at 5:09 am
“You have to go outside the mainstream to get something that is non left leaning. Try talk radio or teh internets to get non left biased news.”
So, what’s the opposite then to “left biased news”?? “Right biased news”?? I think, that’s not the solution. What you really want is “right biased news” with the claim for objectivity, don’t you? That’s just as bad. I have long recommended the Spiegel to you…. (ha).
I am personally appreciating the surprising moment in reading so-called “biased” newspapers: That happens once in while, when you read your favorite left-leaning newspaper, and you discover slight (at times blunt) inconsistencies with the current (biased) ideas. Those moments are the really “truthful” ones.