I've made up my mind.

NPR has a very liberal bias.

And this is from a liberal who loves NPR.

The role of the media, if they are to be important to us at all, is to question every action of the government to the greatest extent possible. What we have here is an attempt to squeeze out the last holds of public news media to pave the way for the corporate media, who complicitly echo the current administration. It's being labelled as a "liberal versus conservative" battle, but that's bullshit. Democrats and Republicans are largely on the same team, and the corporate media is spoon-fed by both, as all three serve the same interests. Ideally, NPR would be as critical of a Democratic administration, too.

Defend NPR and up the independent media movement.

[Edited on Jul 04, 2005 12:31PM]

I wonder how the B administration is going to crack down on this!
God forbid liberals views should be expressed in a country that prides itself on freedom!

OfScience is correct on all fronts!

[Edited on Jul 04, 2005 12:31PM]

I don't mind Democrat and liberal ideals being espoused in this country... hell, I advocate it.

But should the federal government be paying for part of it?

"Public" is just more of a liberal and democratic thing: Public Broadcasting should have a "public" bias to it.
Maybe what we need is a Corporate Broadcasting Service that has a "corporate" bias to it ... wait, we already have Fox.

[Edited on Jul 04, 2005 by GramNegative]

I wonder if NPR and/or public TV comes off as more "critical" of the administration, though, simply because they deal with these issues longer and more in depth than the rest of the media. It's not Fox News giving 1 or 2 minutes to news of public affairs between the lastest Missing Pretty White Girl of the Week, or the newest Celebrity Trial of the Eon -- they spend a lot of time dealing with these things, so, of course, more stuff critical of the government is going to get out there.

It strikes me that a lot of the news sources attacked as "liberal" by these people are the ones that do do the in-depth coverage. And when you do that, you'll see a lot more that the apologists for the government might now want out there.

What's a biased news source?

Any one that disagrees with me.


That's a simple way of determining the difference. And pretty much everyone has adopted that method anyway.

With deep pockets like Rupert Murdoch footing the bill for Fox News, it looks like the left needs all the help it can get. I love Janeane Garofalo, but I don't see her, or Marc Maron, as capable of anchoring Air America. Al Franken apparently knows his politics, but he's too flippant. It's difficult to recommend a book called "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." There's a fine line between using humor to blunt the pain of truth and overusing it to protect yourself from retaliation.

The left also has George Soros, but the bulk of political investment is still on the other side of the fence. Personally, I think it's ironic that the government subsidizes a media outlet that's so consistently critical of it, but I guess that's the beauty of America's free press.

Wow, this is the one case where it may have actually been better to suvey high school kids for their opinion. They're already experts on steroids and guns.

Nick

Sometimes I think that a propensity for critical thinking, basic human decency, and using common sense is interpreted by right wingers as a "liberal bias."

You view Fox News as biased, I (and other conservatives) view CNN, and many others as liberal bias.

It's all a matter of perception.

The report by Mann is amateurish. I don't know who he is, but there are plenty of people who do analysis very similar to his own with much more clearly defined criteria and still use simple categories like liberal and conservative- and their analyses actually mean something. Content analysis has a respected place among communications theorists, but they spend time actually debating methodology instead of going with their first impressions.

I note that Mann based his study on exactly four programs- NOW, Tavis, Rehm, and Tucker. Nice representative sample.

liberal = scientific

Yes, but when you pay for a study, you would expect more than just one persons personal perception.
Of course, if you find science (and statistics) to be liberally biased, you are shit out of luck.

Given that news reporting is most often about problems, any study should find "bias" against the ruling party - if the press is doing its job, and the ruling party makes mistakes - oh yeah, bush doesn't make mistakes...

Umm not to advocate higher government spending or dismiss other legitimate issues with the study, but isn't 14k a pretty low price tag for a legit study? I mean that is basically enough to cover the salary of one "researcher" for 4-6 months?