Norm is Right Tilt

[Gary]

Watching Norm on Saturday, I noticed his TS is Right Tilt. Funny, I would have thought he leaned more toward the left.

Gary

[Leon]

Old School

[George]

You use what you like, I guess. Exploit its strengths, work around its weaknesses.

Now PBS as a whole does tilt left....

[Rudy]

Mine too

[Agki Strodon]

Actually, PBS news shows have a more right wing color. The Nightly Business Report and the News Hour are more right than left. Guests and commentators on the latter show are most frequently conservative with weak and infrequent liberals thrown in. Others, like Frontline (not a news show) may be leftish or they may merely be reporting on things people don't want to hear about and it is perceived as leftish.

Much of this attitude about the media (in general) having a liberal bias is a result of a book published some years ago that "studied" the political views of journalists and concluded they were mostly liberal and then extended the conclusion (without testing it) to a bias in the reporting. The fact is that most journalists, journalism professors, and academics are liberals. The lifestyle and the professions attract liberal people more than conservative people but that seems to be about all.

Whether journalists actually write or present pieces that are biased has been tested. A fairly large number of newspaper, radio, and TV news stories were given to a panel of people whose political backgrounds and attitudes were balanced. They also came from several different professions They evaluated the reporting without knowledge of the name of the reporter or his politics. They scored each article on a bias scale and the results analyzed. The results indicated that there was no political bias _in the reporting_ even though liberals did most of it.

But, to return, if you recall, someone once commented that Gerald Ford was not so bright because he had taken too many hits on the head when he played football at Michigan. LBJ set the whole thing in perspective when he said that Ford's brain was fine but his perception wrong. Ford had played center for Michigan and was used to looking at the world upside down, backwards, and through his legs.

In this context, Norm's TS tilts left if you look at it from the back.

Agkistrodon

[George]

ROTFLMAO!!

[Swingman]

Well, if you're far enough one way or other, you can claim the opposite about anything.

[Agki Strodon]

So what's your problem? It seems that the experiment was well controlled and statistically valid. There's no good reason to doubt the results... unless you just plain don't want to accept the results and your attitude is colored by your own prejudices. Anybody can make up any kind of rationalization they want about anything. Someone may look at it and come up with some other explanation but without evidence against a null hypothesis, it is accepted. In cases of adequate experimental design where the null hypothesis is accepted, there's not much that can be said about the connection between cause and effect, or lack of one in such cases.

The fact (whether believers in media bias like it or not) remains that when a panel of equal numbers of evaluators from the political left, right, and middle determined that although the news reports were predominantly from liberal journalists, there was no liberal bias in the reporting itself. The panel did not know the politics of who wrote or produced a particular report and reports from liberal and conservative journalists were presented to them. They found no liberal bias nor did they find a conservative bias either.

You seem to say that the panelists could have biased the results deliberately. I assume you mean that liberals could have ranked a "liberal" piece as non-biased to skew the data. That doesn't seem at all reasonable but more a reflection of your own prejudices because conservative panelists could have done the opposite. Blinding the panelists certainly took that effect away. Such a problem was not encountered in the study and the conclusions stand until someone repeats the study and finds a bias.

[Agki Strodon]

At what? That The News Hour has more conservatives than liberals as guests? That's a simple matter of counting them up and it has demonstrated the exact point I made. It's been done. Conservatives outnumber liberals as guests on that show.

Are you laughing at the idea that TNBR is rightish? I think you ought to take a look at the show. It's pro-big business down the line. Of course, we all know that Big Business is liberal.... well, in the 17th and 18th Centuries it was.

If you want to refute the data, bring up some evidence.

Agkistrodon

[Swingman]

How about that Teddy Kennedy likely appears on the "right" to Fidel Castro ... meaning your entire rant is based solely on perspective, which invalidates it totally for any useful purpose.

[Agki Strodon]

Man, what school did you ever graduate from? I present a well controlled scientific study to you (in terms that can hardly be described as a "rant") and your best response is this crap? Are you at all familiar with the term "Argument from Ignorance"? How about "Argument from Personal Incredulity"? Do you know the meaning of the word "fallacy"? Do you know anything about formal or informal logic? Obviously not.

Agkistrodon

[Bob Schmall]

(snip)

1. On balance, I am moderate to slightly liberal.
2. I don't necessarily agree that reportage is biased, but if it is, I doubt that there is a truly unbiased source.

That said, the study has a few flaws, the primary being that it is not really statistical. It is based upon a panel's subjective evaluation of news stories rather than a rigorous numerical analysis. No matter how many stories were surveyed, the judgments were filtered through the panel members' individual sensibilities rather than those of a computer.

Also, you cite the "numerous" stories evaluated. How many? What was their source(s)? Who selected them?What were the subjects of the stories? In short, how were controls emplaced to eliminate selection bias?

Who defined "liberal" and "conservative"? Was it left to the minds of the judges?

[Mike Patterson]

I've been following this for a bit, and I'll just note that unless I missed a post somewhere, you haven't presented a single cite for your allegation of an impartial study having been done.

Can you do so? I'd like to see it. Sounds interesting.

You certainly seem to be a bit prickly on this issue. Your last post seems to be dipping down into shrill personal insult because someone is daring to disagree with you.

Take a slow breath...let it out...relax...better? :-)

Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific..."

[Swingman]

Incredulity"?

Logic? What you are doing is confusing subjective spin with logic ... I am thinking it is you who needs the refresher course.

[John Flatley]

Anyone who has traveled or lived in West Texas might have trouble believing the earth is round. (or mostly round.) However, folks who read the New York Times can clearly see and understand the liberal bias in the reporting, editorial and opinion sections. (Even though there is a token conservative columnist to sit by the door.)

Your story of the news evaluators leaves a question unasked and unanswered. You do not mention a baseline of relative facts on which to judge the bias of a story. For example; years ago a friend and I played golf every weekend. We tried to play many different golf courses. My friend loved to talk and one day he was entertaining a group in the club house. He said, "The last time I play Panama City..." As I listened to his tale, I was the only person at the table that knew that the last time he played that golf course was also the first time and the only time he played that golf course. What he said was true but biased to make himself seem more traveled than he was. The group did not have the same baseline of facts that I did. How you say something is as important as what you say.

The conservative columnist Thomas Sowell makes an interesting point in a recent piece which appeared in my local paper today. He suggests that the media's liberal bias is MORE in evidence in the stories NOT covered as compared to the WAY that stories are covered. He cites several examples. Did the news evaluators you refer to study the stories not covered.

An interesting side note to the discussion on media bias is the failure of the "Liberal Talk Radio Network." They didn't pay their bills, they didn't pay their employees and could not attract a listening audience large enough to support the advertisers they needed. Maybe failed is too strong a word; they may have just made an adjustment to their strategy. Some folks have wondered if the liberal philosophy would withstand the heat of talk radio.

Jack Flatley

hypothesis,

[George]

[BUB 209]

Gee....doesn't anybody have anything to say about the political leanings of the personnel on the Weather Channel? I heard Bill Kennealy's pop was a member of the Weather Underground.

[jo4hn]

Actually he was unsure of his leanings and therefore joined the Whether Underground. Oooooooo, that smarts. yuk, j4

[Gary]

Incredulity"?

Chill Agki, it was only a joke. Perhaps your superior vocabulary compensates for a lack of sense of humor?

Here in Virginia, "if walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck", we call it a duck. An operation that thrives on tax dollars and public charity and its public good is primarily to entertain us, I'd say that is a liberal program.

One last comment, what the heck does this have to do with woodworking? Sorry...

Gary

[Ian Dodd]

Or not so inteestingly. It is not only PBS commentators who use this nomenclature. It has become standard practice, in case you hadn't noticed, to refer to members of the old guard (the Communists in Russia, in this case) as "right-wingers". Historically (as you suggest), right-wing means refers to conservatives, meaning having "a disposition in politics to preserve what is established".

Seems to me it is you, George, who is trying to tar with a familiar brush when you try to paint PBS commentators as being left of the Communists. I hope you've got your shop apron on before you get some on yourself.