Home » General Discussions » Heated Discussions and Debates » An Objective Look at Media Bias
| Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias [message #191466 is a reply to message #191296] |
Tue, 28 February 2006 14:56   |
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SuperFlyingEngi
Messages: 1756
Registered: November 2003
Karma:
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General (1 Star) |
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For a while he certainly was. Bill O'Reilly has claimed that this was both a clerical error and he didn't have the option to register for Independent after being caught as a registered Republican, both arguments of course being ridiculous.
| Crimson |
So, the fact that a couple talk shows that only a few people watch on one part of one day of the week feature conservative guests more often than not is significant how? I wonder how many of my tax dollars went to this useless study.
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The point of this survey is that it's the first quantified evidence, at least that I've seen, on even a moderate scale demonstrating a bias in the news media, or testing for one. Anyone can say, "Well, the media is biased this way or that" without backing it up with evidence [Something I've seen more than once on these forums] but this study actually shows something.
NeoSaber...
An organization being biased does not mean that they can conduct an unbiased survey.
| The Methodology From The Survey You Might (Should) Have Read |
Our goal in designing the methodology for this study was to ensure that the classifications would be as unambiguous and defensible as possible, even to those who profoundly disagree with the goals of our organization. Readers should be clear on what we did not do: These classifications do not represent an analysis of what each person actually said when she/he appeared on a show on a given date. Coding each guest’s comments for their ideological slant would have introduced enormous difficulties and opportunities for subjectivity. Instead, we simply classified each guest based on her/his general partisan or ideological orientation. Of course, in a few instances, these decisions were not easy to make. While the vast majority of guests are clearly identifiable by party or ideology (or as having none), there are a few whose public stances make such classification more difficult. We therefore constructed rules that could be applied as strictly as possible. The fact that we were dealing with one four-year term under a Republican president and one under a Democratic president (plus additional analysis on 2005) meant that certain types of rules, even if imperfect, are unlikely to skew the data in any meaningful way. For instance, we decided that all administration officials would be coded as representing the party in power. One might reasonably argue that some departments of the executive branch are more “political” than others and that therefore, for instance, the secretary of state represents the administration’s views in a way that the director of the National Institutes of Health does not. But making that distinction would require drawing the line somewhere between “political” and “non-political” departments, something we felt was nearly impossible to do objectively. Consequently, we decided not to draw the line at all and instead to apply the rule equally at all times. We understand that because we are a progressive organization, some on the right will seek to undercut the credibility of our findings, perhaps charging that we have stacked the deck by classifying too many guests as conservative. Partly for that reason, when a guest’s ideology or partisan affiliation was ambiguous, we erred on the side of identifying a guest to the left. Consequently, one can assume that, if anything, our figures underestimate the conservative slant to the Sunday shows. In any large-scale content-analysis project, the strict application of coding rules will, on some rare occasions, result in a particular unit being coded in a way that some might find inaccurate. This is an inevitable hazard of content analysis, and anyone who reviews the thousands of guests included in this study might find one or two they would code differently. Nonetheless, objective coding requires the use of rules that are applied the same way by any and all coders in order to eliminate the bias a particular coder might bring.
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| gbull |
Who cares? I for one would actually relish more liberal icons on television. It's just a shame they're too afraid to make public appearances on such quality programming as the O-Reilly Factor.
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O'Reilly's show consists of him agreeing with conservatives and getting into shouting matches with people whose positions he can't argue against.
msgtpain...
How would you conduct such a survey? Mediamatter's point with all this was to attempt the utmost unpartiality in this survey. Carrying out a survey based on such subjective issues would result in something ridiculous enough to be heralded on the O'Reilly Factor.
P.S. Slander makes you look like a fool. Or O'Reilly.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. --U.S. Supreme Court decision (407 U.S. 297 (1972)
The Liberal Media At Work
An objective look at media partisanship
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An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: Ryan3k on Sun, 26 February 2006 14:59 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: runewood on Sun, 26 February 2006 15:10 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: Crimson on Sun, 26 February 2006 16:21 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: NeoSaber on Sun, 26 February 2006 18:11 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: Jecht on Sun, 26 February 2006 19:40 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: msgtpain on Sun, 26 February 2006 21:39 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: Jecht on Tue, 28 February 2006 05:43 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: msgtpain on Wed, 01 March 2006 20:18 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: NeoSaber on Thu, 02 March 2006 15:27 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: NeoSaber on Sat, 04 March 2006 23:50 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: msgtpain on Thu, 02 March 2006 07:57 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: msgtpain on Thu, 02 March 2006 20:11 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: NukeIt15 on Thu, 02 March 2006 21:45 |
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
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Re: An Objective Look at Media Bias
By: NeoSaber on Sun, 05 March 2006 14:22 |
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