Mikkel

Very funny, except you do realize that you are full of whatever your avatar is made out of.

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CanadianGuy

lol well at least his avatar isn't "bob the builder".

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I'm from good old Alberta a completly blue province Oh and P.S. blue is conservative up here in Canada
CanadianGuy's Political Profile:
Overall: 70% Conservative, 30% Liberal
Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Mikkel

Yo, man. What you got against bob the builder?

RightinNYC

Wow, I really don't even know where to begin dissembling your self congratulatory rant.

You asked how I would define liberal. Left leaning of the average voter is a good general starting point, considering that the Median Voter Theorem predicts that the median voter in any election is the central tipping point. Besides, you missed my point entirely. I'm not trying to say that I'M deciding what is liberal, simply that on average, being more left leaning as a whole than the average voter is a good description of liberal.


Wait, you mean that because a bookstore ALLOWS all books to be sold that it doesn't have a bias? I'm not even going to take the time to make the claim that liberal books are given far more prominence (which they are).

It's all relative. You CAN define things as liberal and conservative.

Wait. Didn't you just say ?

So do you really think that, or are you just a hypocrite? I would agree that radio generally has a more conservative bias, although I can very easily turn on my radio to Air America. You can't have it both ways, decrying me for claiming there is such thing as bias, while saying there is a conservative bias on the radio.



Wow, what an incredibly succint argument. You've convinced me. Amazing.


In this paragraph, you begin to grasp the concept, then manage to completely miss it. The point is this: it's not like it's a one to one exchange. Just because radio is conservative and newspapers are liberal doesn't mean it's equal. Far more people get their news from newspapers, and to a lesser degree, television, than get it from anywhere else. And those two forms of media are by far the most liberal. Thus, the overall bias of the media can be presumed to be liberal, unless you're clueless.

No, you couldn't prove it because you're making completely idiotic arguments.




Left-leaning by this standard: In 2000, 87% of journalists voted for Gore, while approx 10% voted for Bush. Pretty simple, eh? And don't you think that that inherent bias would logically carry over into the news?

Last I checked, he was a plutocrat who made billions by harming the economies of London and the US while simultaneously attempting to use his money to sway politics the way he desired. I bet if he dedicated 50 million dollars to helping Bush you'd have some bitching to do about him...






Because you're being obtuse, you think that invalidates scientific studies? Right.



You just can't see past your own ass, can you?

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Pacridge

[quote=RightatNYU]
Wait, you mean that because a bookstore ALLOWS all books to be sold that it doesn't have a bias? I'm not even going to take the time to make the claim that liberal books are given far more prominence (which they are).[quote]

Well it's good that you didn't take the time to make that claim.

cnredd

And I don't have time to make the claim that you posted that he didn't have time to make that claim even though he later claimed it so he did have the time and you pointed that out.

SixStringHero

I don't think that argexpat can see past his own blatant biases. You go off on a diatribe against FOX NEWS and this administration, but remain completely silent and have virtually no criticism of Air America and all the liberals on that network. I don't like any of the right-wing blowhards either, but I denounce the left-wing airheads just the same. You can't have it both ways.

And with all your preemptive congratulatory self praise, it seems to me that you are severely suffering from delusions of grandeur. I really couldn't see any empirical data or substantial evidence in anything you stated which ultimately leads us back to rhetoric. Tie that up with the fact that you managed to contradict yourself numerous times and you just might have some credibility issues.

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argexpat

That you don’t know where to begin rebutting my arguments is evidence not of their weakness, but of your rhetorical ineptness. Please spare me this inane puffery.

And again I ask you, What criteria determine the average voter, and whether something is left of that voter? And is the criteria objective, subjective, or simply arbitrary? Since it is you who are claiming the media has a liberal bias, the burden of proof is on you. And you can’t prove something without first defining it. And, as your reply so aptly demonstrates, since there is no objective definition of “liberal,” you can’t prove a liberal bias.

Since the “liberal media” is in fact the corporate media, which produces a product in response to market forces (as a Republican you should understand this) it is actually the Median Media Consumer Theorem that determines content, since the goal of every corporation is to maximize profit by appealing to as many consumers as possible.


But you are deciding what is liberal. This is your definition of liberal, according to your standard, not an objective one, since you haven’t provided an objective definition of “average voter” and how you determine that something is “left of” this undefined median point in the political spectrum. It’s just more circular reasoning: liberal is that which I arbitrarily determine to be liberal according my own biases and prejudices. And until you provide definitive definitions, and objective proof, the claim of a liberal media bias is no different than claims of alien abduction and sightings of Bigfoot.





I’m glad you didn’t take the time to make the claim, since you’d have to prove it if you did, which you can’t, which is probably why you chose not to make it.


Exactly, so what’s liberal bias to you, may be objective truth to someone else. So how do you prove it? You can’t. So you can continue claiming the media has a liberal bias, but until you prove it, it’s just a conspiracy theory.

You can, if you’re a narrow-minded partisan hack mindlessly parroting Republican marching orders.

I’m not “decrying you for claiming there is such a thing as bias,” there are all sorts of biases in the media, the result of lots of different factors, and driven by market capitalism, which makes your claim of a “liberal media bias” not only specious, but egregiously naïve and reactionary, and a very poor and feeble analysis of media content.

Again, I’m not the one making the claim that the media has a political bias of any kind, let alone a “liberal” one. My point here was to say that “the media” encompasses so many different outlets in so many different media, that to claim this vast array has a “liberal bias” is preposterous. But then I indulged your specious argument by specifically analyzing each major medium, and as far as radio is concerned, even by your own arbitrary definition, it does not have a “liberal bias,” which even you concede. So when you say “the media has a liberal bias,” you can’t possibly be talking about radio, which is dominated by commentators who proudly describe themselves as conservative Republicans who are counteracting the phantom liberal media bias, which, as you continue to demonstrate, cannot be proved.










Please prove that newspapers are “liberal” without resorting to anecdotal evidence and arbitrary definitions. You can’t. My argument is that “the media” in neither “liberal” nor “conservative,” but corporate, therefore if “the media” has a “bias” of any kind, it’s toward the maximization of profit.

Again, you can make this claim all you want, but until and unless you can prove it objectively, it’s just a lot of claptrap.


It can be presumed, if you’re a knee-jerk dittohead who can’t (or won’t) distinguish between objective, provable fact and grade A horsesh!t.


That according to some study 87 percent of journalists may or may not have voted for Gore only proves that according to some study, 87 percent of journalists may or may not have voted for Gore. It doesn’t prove an “inherent bias.” Inferring anything else from this factoid is sophistry.

But this statistic is counterbalanced by the fact the 99.9 percent of the media is owned by corporate plutocrats, who, if I am to believe your analysis, have hired a bunch of “liberal” employees who are disseminating a “liberal” agenda. Or, better still, that these “liberal” employees have infiltrated these media corporations and are pushing a “liberal” agenda under the noses of their corporate bosses, who are either ignorant of it, or complicit in it. However you slice it, it’s a crackpot conspiracy theory worthy of a HUAC investigation.


Does George Soros own any media corporations? If so, that would just make him one of the corporate plutocrats who own the media. This is a red herring on your part.








Dude, this is beneath you…or is it?


So let me recap: “The media” is a vast array of corporations encompassing every conceivable medium, which daily churns out a dizzying cornucopia of content, which is the product of market capitalism. Therefore, to claim that there is a “liberal media bias” is not only specious, fallacious argumentation and laughably “clueless” media criticism, but it belies either an ignorance of market capitalism or hypocritical ideological demagoguery, or both.

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argexpat

SixStringHero, are you rebutting anything specifically here? If so, it would help if you cite specific arguments so I can reply. Otherwise this is just the laughable ad hominem ranting of a jackass.

RightinNYC

Argexpat-

There are several serious problems with your line of argument. Rather than take your argument quote by quote, I'm going to refer to it as a whole.

Firstly, you mistakenly make the assumption that I'm claiming that the media as a whole is liberal. Nowhere in this thread have I made a claim even approaching that. In fact, as you look, I've acknowledged from the start that there is bias on both sides, yet you misguidedly took me to task for something I never mentioned.

Secondly, your entire argument is premised on an invalid argument. You make the claim that because the owners of the media are corporatists (and in your mind, conservative, although this is a leap in and of itself), that that logically means that the reporters must be corporatists/conservatives. This logic chain is inherently flawed.

What evidence do you have that this is the case? What do you have to back up this claim, other than your purported logic? Look at it this way: If, as you claim, all big business has a corporate bias, then according to your theory, all employees of "big business" should have a corporate bias, because why would corporatists hire anti-corporatists? As this is obviously not the case, your theory falls short.

Let's take it a step further: According to the study I previously mentioned, and the Pew study that was mentioned earlier in this thread, reporters have a tendency to self-identify as liberal more often than the general populace. If your claim of employees reflecting the leadership were to hold true, wouldn't this signal that the owners of the corporate media were more liberal than the general populace? And if that were the case, wouldn't that provide a solid basis for the argument of a liberal bias? Your claim that that lean to the left is counterbalanced by the ownership is based on nothing but your own opinions, while the claim of a distinctive disjoint between the media and the public is backed by meticulously researched fact.

You also at first refuse to accept the idea that there can in fact be a median voter (defying universally accepted political science), then, not a paragraph later, claim that corporations are tailoring their news toward the median viewer. If there is a way to define a median viewer's political leanings, wouldn't it stand to reason that there would be a way to define the median voter's leanings? And if a median voter's leanings could be defined, wouldn't that provide a comparison point to define liberal and conservative?

If one method of definition exists, so do both. I'm arguing that both exist, while you're arguing that one does and the other doesn't. Pick a side and stick with it.

To summarize, so you don't go off on a tangent again, knocking down the straw men you set up by putting words in my mouth:

I, and the vast majority of the political science community, believe that there is a method of defining the median voter, and from that, there is a way to define liberal and conservative. Whether it is based on votes, an arbitrary standard, or self-identification depends on the survey/source, but in all cases, a median can be determined. As a result of this, I believe that it is possible to measure, albeit with difficulty, the disjoint (if there is any) between the political leanings of various forms of media and the general public. As of yet, there are several studies that claim that in several arenas, there is evidence of a liberal bias. I agree that the media as a whole is too large to carelessly generalize with a bias. I would argue that much of the programming on the radio has a conservative bias, while the programming on television news as a whole, and many newspapers in general, has a liberal bias, although by no means are these uniform. As a result, I would not feel comfortable (and as a matter of course, have not) said that there is a blanket media bias. However, I feel that to deny the existance of bias in the media at all is not just ignorant, but disingenuous.