American media - is it "leftist"?

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**halonachos**

Author Jim A. Kuypers, a senior lecturer at the Ivy League college, said he had no political agenda when conducting his research of nearly 700 newspaper articles from 116 publications. He called the results of his study surprising and warned of the consequences on American society.

"I didn't set out to look for a particular type of bias and I took steps to ensure I didn't impose my preconceptions," Kuypers said. "What I found was a narrow brand of liberal bias within the mainstream media."

The book, "Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues," is a compilation of Kuypers' research on six prominent speeches between 1995 and 2000. He first obtained copies of the speeches and then compared their objectives with their coverage in the news media.

link

**Kilkrazy**

Rented Tritium wrote:News media is neither left nor right.

News media is capitalist. Each network chooses an audience and gears news toward them to maximize ad revenue.

As a whole, the media isn't one way or the other.

The channels must reflect the biases of their audience segmentation.

OT: The BBC and the NHK are non-advertising companies.

**dogma**

halonachos wrote:
Author Jim A. Kuypers, a senior lecturer at the Ivy League college, said he had no political agenda when conducting his research of nearly 700 newspaper articles from 116 publications. He called the results of his study surprising and warned of the consequences on American society.

"I didn't set out to look for a particular type of bias and I took steps to ensure I didn't impose my preconceptions," Kuypers said. "What I found was a narrow brand of liberal bias within the mainstream media."

The book, "Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues," is a compilation of Kuypers' research on six prominent speeches between 1995 and 2000. He first obtained copies of the speeches and then compared their objectives with their coverage in the news media.

link

In fact, he said that bias is probably more expansive today, citing the rise in coverage of race and homosexuality -- the two issues that were the primary focus of Kuypers' study.

I haven't seen his methodology, but if this holds in terms of sample, then its a total derp moment.

**Ahtman**

dogma wrote:I haven't seen his methodology, but if this holds in terms of sample, then its a total derp moment.

Today is all about inspiration it seems. A doctoral thesis: Political Derp: Normative Methods for Understanding the Internets Effect on Political Media Coverage of Race and Sexuality

**dogma**

And you have titled my paper on new media in the 2012 presidential race.

**halonachos**

@Dogma,

Those topics he stated were used to compare the papers. Left and right are divided when it comes to issues like homosexuality so it provides a litmus test for the papers.

**dogma**

halonachos wrote:@Dogma,

Those topics he stated were used to compare the papers. Left and right are divided when it comes to issues like homosexuality so it provides a litmus test for the papers.

Do you not see the obvious problem with that?

Any statement that isn't against homosexual marriage is potentially coded as favorable to homosexual marriage.

Is the headline "Fetus Aborted Today." liberal, or conservative?

**Rented Tritium**

Yeah that seems like really bad methodology. If I'm reading that right, mere MENTIONS of gay people are being counted as leftist.

That's silly.

**Kilkrazy**

The fact that the "research" was released as a book rather than as an article in a reputable social science journal indicates that it was not peer reviewed.

**halonachos**

dogma wrote:
halonachos wrote:@Dogma,

Those topics he stated were used to compare the papers. Left and right are divided when it comes to issues like homosexuality so it provides a litmus test for the papers.

Do you not see the obvious problem with that?

Any statement that isn't against homosexual marriage is potentially coded as favorable to homosexual marriage.

Is the headline "Fetus Aborted Today." liberal, or conservative?

Bias is subjective to begin with and anything can seem bias. Fetus aborted today is neutral in my opinion, but the issue would come from the actual article written under the headline. If the article continues to state that there was some sort of injustice done to the fetus then it would be conservative and if it seemed to indicate that it was the right of the parents to decide then it becomes more liberal. The paper should state "A fetus was aborted today due to [insert reason].". Then that would be it.

Rented, you are reading it wrong. Its not the mention of happy people, its not the mention of homosexual people, its word choice for the most part. Someone could be determined or stubborn depending on the bias you spin on it.

**sebster**

halonachos, have you noticed how people here can quickly dismiss this guys research by saying 'oh he's just biased to giving a conservative view'? What substance he might have is just overlooked, because of 'bias'.

Well that right there is the problem with inventing ideas about media bias, and using it to ignore the media as a whole, or worse, repeating those claims of media bias so often and so loudly that you force the media away from meaningful, content driven analysis, and into just blandly repeating the claims of the two major parties, with no insight into whether their claims have any basis in truth.

**dogma**

sebster wrote:halonachos, have you noticed how people here can quickly dismiss this guys research by saying 'oh he's just biased to giving a conservative view'? What substance he might have is just overlooked, because of 'bias'.

Well that right there is the problem with inventing ideas about media bias, and using it to ignore the media as a whole, or worse, repeating those claims of media bias so often and so loudly that you force the media away from meaningful, content driven analysis, and into just blandly repeating the claims of the two major parties, with no insight into whether their claims have any basis in truth.

Someone else has come upon the truth. Quickly, we must keep this from the serfs.

**schadenfreude**

There is 3 types of American media.

Left wing media with a blatant left wing spin.

Right wing media with a blatant right wing spin.

Boring media with low ratings that attempts to control it's spin, sometimes unsuccessfully.

All American media falls into 1 category, sometimes 2 such as in the case of NPR.

**Melissia**

Frazzled wrote:I think anyone who believes the media isn't completely in the pocket of right wing corporatists are just slathering militia types with a thin grasp of reality. With Fox dominating the internet, cable, network, public TV, and newsprint, we have to resort to alternate weeklies just to stay informed of whats really going on, what The Man really is doing. I thank the Great Nothingness that at least we have one center moderate news source - the New York Times - as a shining beacon of unbiased news in a darkness of rightwingedness.

Not sure if serious. *insert heath ledger pic here*