storyblogging
The latest Storyblogging Carnival is up. This is the first one ever
that I haven't had an entry in and I feel kind of left-out. I just
didn't have time to write until Saturday and by then it was too late.
This Carnival has more stories than usual and I hope that's is a sign
that the Carnival is growing.
posted by Dave Gudeman @ 7:33 PM |
racism in Congress
Conservative blogs have not been paying enough attention to the Native
Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. This act is a direct racist
attack on the unity of the United States. It will take native
Hawaiians and make them subject to a special government, even though
most of Hawaiians don't want it.
Even worse, the Bush administration is supporting the plan. It's a
good thing that the multiculturalist John Kerry wasn't elected, huh?
What is George Bush thinking? And why can't the Republican party
nominate actual Republicans for president?
posted by Dave Gudeman @ 4:53 PM |
Rutten on bias
For several years now, conservative writers have spilled hundreds of
thousands of words proving that the mainstream media has a bias in
favor of the Democratic party. Some of the argument has involved
pointing out that the large majority of the press consists of
Democrats and Democrat supporters, but by no means all. The huge
majority of that argument has consisted of hard evidence: press
accounts, individually or in summary, that clearly treat Democrats
differently from Republicans and leftists differently from rightists,
that frame issues to assume that the Democrat side is correct, that
push stories that hurt Republicans (contrasted with a lack of stories
that hurt Democrats). In other words, they don't just assume that the
press is biased, they provide huge amounts of evidence.
And when a prominent member of the mainstream media wants to argue
that the press is unbiased, how does he respond to this overwhelming
deluge of evidence? He ignores it:
You know this particular argument like a mantra: All humans have
personal beliefs, including political ones, which inevitably bias
anything they write or broadcast. Therefore, everyone who reports
or analyzes the news must publicly declare everything they believe
and all their personal associations so that their readers or
audience can -- to borrow Hewitt's phrase -- "correct" for the
journalist's bias. The notion that the former -- all people have
biases -- might be true, but not the latter -- they always
determine absolutely everything you say or do -- never is
considered. Nor is the possibility that personal discipline and the
conventions of the craft already accomplish that "correction" among
journalists who observe them. It's simply not an admissible idea
here. (Let's not even touch the common-sense proposition that it's
the normality of the mainstream media's workaday, unbiased
journalism that makes the biased stuff stand out so clearly -- and
offensively -- when it occurs.)
That's Tim Rutten of the LA Times writing about conservative talk
radio (via Pattericao and Hugh Hewitt).
This is a disgraceful caricature of the conservative position.
Actually, it would be disgraceful if it came from an admitted
partisan. Coming from a journalist who claims to be writing
impartially, it's downright journalistic malpractice --of the same
sort that we have been pointing out for decades. While arguing that
the mainstream media can report objectively in spite of its political
leanings, Rutten demonstrates that he, at least, is severely lacking
in this legendary capacity of the Professional Journalist. One might
even suspect that for Tim Rutten, the idea that his biases might be
infecting his writing "never is considered". Nor is the possibility
that personal discipline and the conventions of the craft have failed
to produce the objective reporting that they claim to produce. "It's
simply not an admissible idea here."
He makes no attempt to present evidence. All he gives us is a
dismissive assurance that he knows what he is talking about and we
should just be open-minded enough to take his word for it. Who are we
going to believe, him or our own lying eyes? He has nothing to say to
the volumes of hard evidence of press bias.
Where is his explanation for why a Republican who believes in
completely un-regulated abortion, who believes private citizens should
not be allowed to own guns, and who wants to legalize gay marriage is
called a "moderate Republican", but a Democrat who doesn't believe in
all those things is called a "conservative Democrat"? Can he explain
why the military record of a Republican presidential candidate who
never mentions his military record deserves endless scrutiny but the
military record of a Democrat presidential candidate who mentions it
in every speech is not worth questioning, even when people who served
with that candidate say that he is lying about his record? Is there a
good reason why on the one hand the press is so concerned with
America's image abroad and the way George Bush is tarnishing that
image,while on the other hand, they flog to death any story that will
tarnish America's image abroad --stories like Abu Ghraib, Korans in
the toilet, harsh questioning at Guantanamo, and the Iraqi civilians
killed in the war?
This is a tiny sample of the biases. For more, see Accuracy in Media.
For the LA Times in particular, Patterico has an examples of press
bias several times per week.
This volume of complaints shows how silly is Rutten's suggestion that
"it's the normality of the mainstream media's workaday, unbiased
journalism that makes the biased stuff stand out so clearly -- and
offensively -- when it occurs." There certainly are some good,
unbiased stories in the mainstream media. Probably even the majority
can be described as "reasonably unbiased". But biased pieces are far
from an aberration. They are extremely common. I once estimated that
every issue of the San Francisco Chronicle has at least one obviously
biased story on the front page.
So there is our evidence. What do we see in response? Well, the
response to AIM has been FAIR and Media Matters for America. Both
organizations purport to be critical of press bias, but neither offers
the kind of hard comparative evidence of bias that conservatives
offer. They berate the press for not pushing anti-Republican stories
enough, they give advice to the press on how to frame the issues in a
way that is more favorable to Democrats, and they engage in direct
advocacy. Neither of these sites can be seen as an actual response to
the volumes of evidences that conservatives have piled up.
Nor has the press itself answered the charges with anything except
empty assurances that their system will weed out bias. There is no
explanation of how they are going to even detect the biases when
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