The History of Media Bias
Peter Shaw - See all 8 of my articles
Media bias has a long, sordid history.
I'll never forget the famous black and white video of South Vietnamese Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Vietcong militiaman. It was a silent movie but when NBC acquired it they added the sound of a gunshot for drama. Does anyone remember that that Vietcong murdered Loan's whole family? Hmmm.
I'll never forget CNN's report on the AK47 years ago. The AK47 uses the 7.62×39 round. The weight and velocity of the bullet is very similar to the old .30-30. If you fire one 124 grain bullet at about 2,000 feet per second it has a fixed amount of energy (mass x velocity = energy). If you fire a second 124 grain at about 2,000 feet per second it will have the same energy. CNN however denied the laws of physics. Their report stated that the fully automatic version of the AK47 was more effective with more penetration. That is a lie.
I'll never forget CNN's report just the other year showing a Tea Party protestor who was legally caring a rifle in public. The image was zoomed in on the nicely dressed man to show clearly that the rifle was an AR15 variant. They reported that this person is a white supremacy supporter. When the same picture was shown not zoomed in, it was actually and nicely dressed black man and Tea Party supporter.
I'll never forget CBS's Dan Rather and the Killian documents. Who could forget that one? I can see why liberals want to pretend it never happened. Dan was certain President Bush, while serving in the Texas Air National Guard in the '60s, disobeyed orders but was given special treatment. The forgery was quickly identified by bloggers and experts. Dan and others lost their job and credibility.
There is a serious pattern of abuse by media. It is one thing to give commentary, like my articles, and another to present lies and half truths as facts. The Press has been described as the fourth pillar of the government which keeps the other three in check. The description has never been accurate but don't tell that to Chris Matthews. The Media Research Center's study shows that Governor Romney gets 13 times more coverage for his gaffes compared to President Obama. Aikin was nearly crucified for his legitimate rape comment but it's not any different from Whoopi Goldberg's comment of 'it wasn't rape rape'. I know Whoopi isn't running for office but it reveals the double standard that exists. Aikin should have received the same grace as Whoopi.
Don't you love it when the national news does a piece on Romney which shows his portrait for a second then plays 30sec of video of Obama! Familiarity earns trust and loyalty and they know it. My local news would report on the coming Obama events but only report on Romney after his events were over. Apparently they were called on it and for at least one day at each newscast they stated they will disclose Romney events also.
A couple of years ago on a local AM radio station Rush Limbaugh show would cut out at the most unusual times. The technical difficulty never happened during commercials or the less spectacular moments of the Rush Limbaugh show (every moment is spectacular but some are more so) always when Rush was about to make his point. I ran into an old friend after that and we started talking about it. He had made some phone calls that day of the technical difficulties. He was convinced the operator at the radio station did it intentionally. After my friend called and confronted them it stopped.
When was the last time you read legislation? I read the first 100 pages of Obamacare and wondered if the Democrats were channeling Karl Marx. Have you ever read the transcript of an Obama speech? Have you read the Federalist Papers? Do not trust CNN or CBS to deliver news. I don't even give Foxnews enough credence to take them for their word. Always look for the full video, read the transcripts, read the legislation, and get the first hand information. Be a skeptic of everything. Shape your perspective and understanding of the world we live in with facts and not commentary. Don't let anyone appeal to your emotions but be stoic, wise, and vote Republican this November. Trust me.
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Definitely read transcripts of speeches. There are a lot of cases of people's words being taken out of context and twisted to mean something different. Reading full transcripts gives you the appropriate context.
As for Akin vs. Whoopi, I definitely hold politicians to a higher standard when it comes to issues of public policy, since elected officials write the laws. A misinformed Senator can write harmful laws. A misinformed celebrity doesn't have this power. I don't turn to Whoopi for political insights any more than I turn to Tom Cruise for relationship advice.
There was also the second component of Akin's statement, that a woman's body would self-terminate a pregnancy in the case of rape. I was curious to see where he got his information, and I tracked down the document that many suggested is the source. It looks like it was written by a high school student – and not a very bright one at that. That author has a poor grasp of basic logic and statistics. The article asserts assumptions and builds on them with no proof, confuses the probability of in a single occurrence with probability within a series of occurrences, and treats all events as independent even though there are clear correlations between some. In short, Akin should have had a lot of red flags go up when he read the article. The fact that these red flags were apparently not tripped is a concern to me, as it raises questions about his ability to analyze information.
I'm not a big gun person, but I understand what you're saying about automatic weapons and penetration. The mere fact that you can fire more bullets in a short span of time wouldn't change the force of the individual bullets to any large extent. Perhaps the bullets would travel slightly faster due to less wind resistance (similar to drafting in auto racing, with the lead bullet cutting a path for the trailing ones), but that's probably a stretch.
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Martin Kelly
Kos, I like your arguements. Celebrties should only be judged on their entertainment performance, not on the other non-sense that they spout. But taking your red flag statement, the press certainly ignores plenty of red flags when it is convinient to supporting their basic belief systems. I do not believe that the bias is forced, I think that people with the basic bias that we see are the ones drawn to carreers in the press.
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I'd say that it might have more to do with the correlation between education and party affiliation, since journalists do have college degrees, but if one believes that media bias has been around a while, then that wouldn't hold water. It is only a fairly recent phenomenon that the more educated have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, while the less educated voted Republican, and we've heard cries of media bias for quite some time.
I'm not sold on the overwhelming media bias that some see, though. I think it is there at times, while at other times some people just don't want to hear facts that contradict their firmly held beliefs. The repeated studies that show how factually uniformed Fox News viewers (and to a slightly lesser extent in those studies, MSNBC viewers) are compared to consumers of other sources, for example, might explain how some of those viewers take umbrage when confronted with (incorrect) facts that they've previously heard.
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@ Evan – Is the education correlation tied to the level of education, or to the subject matter? Are journalism majors more liberal than the random college graduate?
Perhaps even the schools, since many journalism majors come from a handful of schools that have great programs. Just some thoughts.
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