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Memo to Journalists: Can the Phony Outrage, Bernie is Right About Bias
Tolpuddle Martyr:
--- Quote from: niam2023 on August 22, 2019, 12:24:34 am ---How is this different than GamerGate's MUH BIAS screeching about "Gamer is Dead"?
...oh right, this time its someone you like.
Its the populist instinct. If something goes wrong it must be collusion.
--- End quote ---
Well all claims of media bias can be reduced to "muh bias" if you like that sort of thing, it doesn't follow that all claims about media bias have equal weight or similar motivations behind them. It also doesn't follow that media bias doesn't exist because spurious claims about media bias exist.
Lets look and see if this horseshoe theory of Trump and Sanders doing exactly the same thing holds water.
Sanders:
--- Quote ---“I talk about that all the time and then I wonder why the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me,” Sanders, who is among the leaders in a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, said Monday. “I don’t know why. But I guess maybe there’s a connection. I guess maybe we helped raise the minimum wage at Amazon to 15 bucks an hour, as well. Maybe that’s why the Washington Post is not endeared to me. I don’t know.”
--- End quote ---
He is insinuating that Amazon's opposition to the minimum wage might have fueled antipathy towards Sanders in the WP. Well, it might not have helped but the WP were never fans of Sanders.
Here's Trump on the media:
--- Quote --- "The fake news, of which many of you are members, is trying to convince the public to have a recession. 'Let's have a recession.'"
--- End quote ---
Here Trump is also insinuating that the media has an agenda, lots of media outlets-all together have an agenda to bring about a national recession for reasons.
Qualitatively, the two positions are not the same. Yes both insinuate an agenda, yes neither have shown a 'smoking gun' or 'proof' that media outlets have an institutional bias but one claim posits that multiple outlets have a bias for reasons that are completely unclear in order to bring about a concrete goal that doesn't seem like it would benefit them. The other claims a singular media outlet has a particular bias for a clearly stated reason that aligns with the CEOs personal interests. Whether either claim has merit isn't the issue, as with most "both sides" arguments when looking at the left and the right on closer examination the thing that "both sides" are purported to be doing isn't the same thing.
dpareja:
--- Quote from: SCarpelan on August 22, 2019, 07:17:42 pm ---Sanders points out the same dynamics that intellectuals like Chomsky have criticized for decades. There is a difference between claiming that all the media are dishonest liars who hate you and pointing out that people in power protect their interests by selectively hiring and advocating for people whose honestly held opinions and values don't threaten them. One is a conspiracy theory, the other is criticism based on sociological dynamics. The bias is not in telling lies, it is in the perspective taken to the facts: which ones you think are pertinent and which can be ignored and how you present them. Every media source - government, corporate and alternative - does this editorial work from their own perspective.
Claiming that any given media institution has no inbuilt bias is claiming that people within it are robots with no values and ambitions.
--- End quote ---
See, this is why I have a tiny modicum of respect for, say, Sean Hannity: he doesn't pretend to be anything other than a Trumpite hack.
Kanzenkankaku:
Yeah. It's pretty obvious that the two aren't comparable. The article also talks about how the media had an interest in helping GW Bush go to war. They outright had memos about not letting on anti-war journalists or talking heads without stacking the deck against them with 2 or more pro-war guests. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue over being too critical of the war.
As much as cons say the news has a liberal bias because communists, it actually is anti-left and is conservative. Because of capitalist interests.
dpareja:
--- Quote from: Kanzenkankaku on August 24, 2019, 05:30:10 pm ---Yeah. It's pretty obvious that the two aren't comparable. The article also talks about how the media had an interest in helping GW Bush go to war. They outright had memos about not letting on anti-war journalists or talking heads without stacking the deck against them with 2 or more pro-war guests. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue over being too critical of the war.
As much as cons say the news has a liberal bias because communists, it actually is anti-left and is conservative. Because of capitalist interests.
--- End quote ---
They cancelled Phil Donahue, but perhaps worse, signed Jesse Ventura and then didn't even put him on the air while holding him to his exclusivity clause, so that he ended up being unable to air his own anti-war views anywhere.
But also, keep this in mind: Trump calls any poll that's bad for him "fake news". I don't think I've ever heard Sanders refer to a poll showing him trailing or otherwise doing poorly as "fake". (His supporters, sometimes, yes, sometimes with what may or may not be valid criticisms of the polling methodology employed, but not Sanders himself.) Or a story critiquing him for certain gun votes he's cast as "fake".
Skybison:
Personally I do think the issues with corporate media do have a lot of truth to them, but there is the issue that it can be easy to use that to read any negative coverage as the result of bias. You mention Noam Chomsky, but remember that guy has done things like accuse George Monbiot of blindly "following the Washington script" for saying the Rwanda genocide actually happened. He's not really all that great at telling the difference between when the media is biased and when he's just wrong. Sanders hasn't done anything like that but yeah I do think his supporters in 2016 exaggerated how much the media was against him (Vox had a good article on how there was bias against Sanders but there were also ways the media was biased in his favor https://www.vox.com/2016/4/7/11378858/sanders-media-bias ) and overlooking that there were huge sexist biases against Hillary. So yeah I do think the issue of media bias is true but I do think Sanders fans overstate it.
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