Difference between revisions of "Liberal bias"

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*an attempt to be consistent by treating men and women alike
 
*an attempt to be consistent by treating men and women alike
 
*an obsession with race where images are used
 
*an obsession with race where images are used
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*An unwillingness to admit they are wrong. See [[evoultion]]
 
<!-- *apparent [[blindness]] towards the blatant bias in the above activites --> <!-- Don't repeat yourself-->
 
<!-- *apparent [[blindness]] towards the blatant bias in the above activites --> <!-- Don't repeat yourself-->
  

Revision as of 17:58, September 2, 2008

Liberal bias is partisan support for liberal positions or policies. This bias pervades encyclopedias, periodicals and broadcast media, and the Internet. It is expressed by reporters and other journalists in mainstream media and by teachers in public school and in many private schools.[Citation Needed] It includes techniques such as placement bias, photo bias and liberal style. There is a difference between being liberal, having a liberal perspective, and having a liberal bias.

Such a bias could manifest itself as one or more of the following:

  • political correctness
  • a tendency to exaggerate and deceive to attract attention
  • a reliance on obscenity to attract attention
  • an attempt to be consistent by treating men and women alike
  • an obsession with race where images are used
  • An unwillingness to admit they are wrong. See evoultion

The Media Confronts Liberal Bias

Ann Coulter wrote:

  • To obscure the overwhelming liberal dominance of the media, the few designated media "conservatives" are cited tirelessly in testimonies to the ideological diversity in the nation's newsrooms. Democrats in the media are editors, national correspondents, news anchors, and reporters. Republicans in the media are "from the right" polemicists grudgingly tolerated within the liberal behemoth. Republican views must be accompanied by a conspicuous warning: "Partisan Conservative Opinion Coming!" Neutral news slots are reserved for Democrats exclusively. "Balance" is created by having a liberal host a debate between a liberal and a moderate Republican. [1]

Although many prominent liberal journalists and teachers deny being biased - or indeed that liberal bias exists at all in the media - same have freely admitted it (e.g., Andy Rooney).[Citation Needed]

New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. has denied the the New York Times has a liberal viewpoint and has stated the New York Times has an "urban" viewpoint.[2] However, in the summer of 2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, published a piece on the Times' liberal bias and cited the example of their coverage of homosexual marriage.[3][4] In regards to the Western World, although the New York Times has a particularly heavy bias when it comes to the homosexuality issue, the New York Times is not unusual in regards to the media having a liberal bias when it comes to the subject of homosexuality; see Homosexuality in the Media. John Stossel is an author, consumer reporter, and a co-anchor for the ABC News show 20/20. Cybercast News Service states the following regarding regarding the influence of the New York Times and Washington Post:

While the newspapers reach only a fraction of people compared to the television networks, he said radio and television producers rely heavily on their contents.

"The reason the Times, and to a lesser extent the Post, are so important, and they are, is because the TV and radio - all of the media - copy it sycophantically," he [John Stossel] said. "That's how bias at the Times becomes bias in other media."[5]


Liberal Bias.png

The following persons, organizations, television programs or media outlets have well known liberal bias:

U.S. Universities

Liberal bias is rampant in American university campuses. Leftist professors dominate the universities.[Citation Needed] "Because of this slant, it is virtually impossible for political balance in our universities and, as a result, the curriculum, the culture, the values, the atmosphere and the underlying currents of thought resemble indoctrination." [9]

"College faculties are not only mostly liberal, but lean even further to the left than conservatives have imagined." [10]

"The political tilt on campuses is decidedly to the left. If you're looking for balance, you're not going to find it." [11]

Even the students admit the liberal bias. "Here at Columbia, as at most top universities, we enjoy belittling conservative beliefs." [12]

Media

Associated Press

AP has a consistent anti-police bias, for example, referring to "the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day". Their article is designed to create sympathy for a person who talked and acted like he had a gun and then resisted arrest. The AP account reads more like an editorial than a straight news story. It is not until 400 words into the story that you read the judge's reason for acquitting the accused cops. [1]

AP does a biased piece on GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin. First paragraph includes "the latest in a string of disclosures that left the McCain campaign defending the thoroughness of its background check ". There isn't a string of disclosures. Everything about her was public with the exception of the pregnant teen daughter. Second paragraph, "her husband, Todd, had been arrested for drunken driving two decades ago", pathetic tabloid smear. "little experience", liberal media always ready to drive that message home with Palin, but rigorously defend Obama's lack of experience as the real heartbeat-away from the Presidency. "In a brief respite from partisanship, Democratic rival Barack Obama weighed in" The AP should have just wrote- Obama, staying high above political mudslinging because he is just that good.. "the pregnancy of Palin's daughter, Bristol, was aimed at rebutting Internet rumors that Palin's own youngest son, born in April, was actually the daughter's." AP giving credibility to Obama supporters' Daily Kos's gross slander, actually like it so much, repeat twice in the article. "The national convention... already had been relegated to a distant second to the hurricane on TV." AP thinks Americans can care less about the GOP. "McCain's team dispatched a dozen operatives and lawyers to Alaska, fueling speculation that a comprehensive examination of Palin's past was incomplete..." Rumors masquerading as worthy news with an actual GOP rebuttal cited "Palin underwent a ``full and complete review." [13]

CBS News

CBS insider Bernard Goldberg wrote the definitive book on liberal bias in the media, simply entitled Bias.

  • He asserts that an "inability to see liberal views as liberal views ... is at the heart of the entire problem."
  • He wrote: "Pauline Kael, for years the brilliant film critic at the New Yorker, was completely baffled about how Richard Nixon could have beaten George McGovern in 1972: 'Nobody I know voted for Nixon.' Never mind that Nixon carried 49 states. She wasn't kidding." [14]

Goldberg also suggested liberals don't even see their liberal values as "liberal":

  • "Their views on all the big social issues ... aren't liberal views at all. They're simply reasonable views, shared by all the reasonable people the media elites mingle with ..." [15]

During the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union was the principal ally of Communist North Vietnam, providing weapons and training in what was a major conflict of the Cold War that took 58,000 American lives.[Citation Needed] CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite regularly carried news reports from its Moscow Bureau Chief, Bernard Redmont. When peace negotiations commenced with North Vietnam in Paris, Redmont became CBS News Paris Bureau Chief. What Redmont never reported during the ten year conflict was, Redmont had been a KGB operative since the 1930s, and member of the notorious Silvermaster group. [16] Redmont was the only journalist to whom his fellow Comintern party member, and North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Mai Van Bo, granted an interview to bring the Communist point of view into American living rooms in what has been called, "the living room war.[Citation Needed]"

New York Times

Peter D. Feaver of the Boston Globe noted on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that MoveOn.org ran a full-page advertisement in the New York Times accusing General David Petraeus of activities befitting a traitor. The advertisement alleges, without evidence, that Petraeus would not give an honest, professional assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Feaver noted, "The MoveOn.org ad is vicious ... a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible...part of an elaborate effort to undermine public support for the Iraq war, and was foreshadowed by an unnamed Democratic senator who told a reporter, "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV . . . The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." The effort is funded by powerful special interests, and has all the trappings of a major political campaign.[17] Within a day it was discovered the New York Times gave MoveOn.org a “hefty discount” for its ad questioning Petraeus’ integrity. According to the director of public relations for the New York Times, “the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692.” A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed that the liberal activist group paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.[18] In July, 2008, the New York Times rejected an opinion piece written by John McCain, which was responding to earlier piece written by Barack Obama.[19] This came after the New York Times had previously published at least seven op-ed pieces by McCain since 1996, and endorsed him in the 2008 Republican Presidential primaries. The reason the New York Times cited for the July 2008 rejection was that they were asking the McCain campaign to provide a more substantive piece which would contrast his positions with the details of the Obama piece on a point-by-point basis.[20]

LA Times

The mainstream media including the LA Times had been guilty of being silent regarding the John Edwards affair that the National Enquirer had broke in October 2007. The Enquirer followed up with a publication in December of 2007. Then in July 2008, the Enquirer had confronted Edwards at the Beverly Hilton hotel after he spent the entire day with his mistress. After Edwards admitted the affair on Friday August 8th, the mainsteam media finally reported the scandal, including the LA Times. In an article titled "Mainstream media finally pounce on Edwards' affair", the LA Times declared that they had been pursuing the story prior to Friday. [21] But they gave no excuse for hiding this from the American public. They have showed their true liberal bias by not reporting the story earlier. Then making an attempt to further fool the public by saying they were pursuing the story, when in fact 10 months had lapsed. Plus, nowhere in the article does it mention the Edwards is a Democrat. To the credit of the LA Times, they do mention that Democratic party strategists say Edwards needs to address the story, at the very bottom of the article. Protection of fellow liberal Democrats by the LA Times is more important than being a honest news organization.

Media Bias

A 2005 report[22] by Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo political scientists at UCLA concluded that, based on estimated ideological scores, all of the news outlets they examined, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, showed a strong liberal bias (scores to the left of the average member of Congress). Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal. Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are." [23]

Name That Party

The liberal media refuses to identify the political party in their stories when a Democrat is involved in a scandal. Most times it is buried deep within the article so as to remain anonymous to the audience. [24] The Associated Press is the most guilty of this practice but it is in fact modus operandi by all liberal media sources. Compare that with Republican scandals which the liberal media will always includes the party name in its' headlines or within the first sentance or first paragraph.

Vision of the anointed

Economist Thomas Sowell in his book published in 1996, The Vision of the Anointed, discusses the anointed vision of liberals and liberalism to promote their agenda, and control the writing of history and the national consciousness.

Desperate evasions of discordant evidence, and the denigration and even demonizing of those presenting such evidence, are indicative of the high stakes in contemporary culture wars, which are not about alternative policies but alternative worlds and of alternative roles of liberals in these worlds. Opponents must be shown to be not merely mistaken but morally lacking. This approach replaces the intellectual discussion of arguments by the moral extermination of persons. This denigration or demonizing of those opposed to their views not only has the desired effect of discrediting the opposition but also has the unintended effect of cutting off the path of retreat from positions which become progressively less tenable with the passage of time and the accumulation of discordant evidence. The very thought that those dismissed as simplistic or maligned might have been right–even if only on a single issue–is at best galling and potentially devastating. Their last refuge in this situation are their good intentions.

For liberals, it is desperately important to win because their whole sense of themselves is at stake. Given the high stakes, it is not hard to understand the all-out attacks of liberals on those who differ from them and their attempts to stifle alternative sources of values and beliefs, with campus speech codes and ‘political correctness’ being prime examples of a spreading pattern of taboos. Here they are not content to squelch contemporary voices, they must also silence history and traditions–the national memory–as well. This too is a larger danger than the dangers flowing from particular policies.

History is the memory of a nation–and that memory is being erased by historians enthralled by liberalism. Open disdain for mere facts has been accompanied by adventurous reinterpretations known as ‘revisionist’ history. This is all yet another expression of the notion that reality is optional.

A very similar development in the law treats the Constitution as meaning not what those who wrote it meant, but what one small segment of the public today wants it to mean. This is the ‘living constitution’ of ‘evolving standards,’ reflecting what ‘thinking people’ believe. The law itself has been prostituted to the service of ideological crusades. The social cohesion that makes civilized life possible has been loosened by the systematic undermining of families and of commonly shared values and a common culture. [25]

Template:Examples of liberal bias

External links

See Also

  1. [[Slander (book)|]], P. 60
  2. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/weekinreview/25bott.html?ei=5088&en=452926dcb11511a3&ex=1248667200&pagewanted=all&position=
  3. http://www.cnsnews.com/facts/2007/facts2007914.asp
  4. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/weekinreview/25bott.html?ei=5088&en=452926dcb11511a3&ex=1248667200&pagewanted=all&position=
  5. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200401/CUL20040128a.html
  6. Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, "Is the New York times a Liberal Newspaper?," Mr. Okrent's first sentence was, "Of course it is." [2]
  7. Townhall.com, Enabling media bias, Marvin Olasky, December 4, 2001.
  8. During a phone conversation, Bernard Goldberg asked him, "What do you consider the New York Times? Rather answered, "Middle of the road." (Bias, page 221)
  9. Universities' liberal bias is real, Fred Singer, Denver Post, January 29, 2003
  10. Liberal bias in colleges bleeds into classroom, Cal Thomas, Townhall, March 31, 2005
  11. Liberal Bias on Campus, John Eberhard, Intellectual Conservative, June 18, 2004
  12. Liberal Bias is A-OK, J.D. Porter, Columbia Spectator, November 9, 2007
  13. Palin says daughter, 17, is 5 months pregnant AP, September 1, 2008
  14. (Bias (book), page 222-223)
  15. (Bias (book), page 222)
  16. KGB file 43173 vol. 2 (v) pp. 46-55, Alexander Vassiliev, Notes on A. Gorsky’s Report to Savchenko S.R., 23 December 1949. Original document from KGB Archives [3].
  17. MoveOn's McCarthy moment, By Peter D. Feaver, Boston Globe, September 11, 2007.
  18. Time Gives Lefties a Hefty Discount for "Betray us" Ad, Charles Hurt, New York Post, September 13, 2007.
  19. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/21/mccain-campaign-says-new-york-times-blocked-op-ed-response-to-obama/
  20. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/the-times-and-the-mccain-op-ed/
  21. Mainstream media finally pounce on Edwards' affair LA Times, August 9, 2008
  22. A MEASURE OF MEDIA BIAS
  23. http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
  24. Name That Party: Dem MA State Senator Charged in Sexual Assaults NewsBusters.org, August 3, 2008
  25. Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, New York: Basic Books, 1996.