Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

jetsetter said:
The programs you speak of are opinion shows, not news. The O'Reilly Factor is O'Reilly's opinion on various news reports. You can't compare it to news reporting because that is what it is not. The news bit of Fox News is actually quite accurate in its reporting.
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Fox News has a "News" show that isn't opinion based? Every time I turn on the channel there is at least one talking head or another espousing some ridiculous claim in the guise of fact.

Though, this opinionation isn't limited to Fox; they all have horrible editorial shows which take up too much of the time on air, or they just report on unimportant news. Even CNN Headline News, which is supposed to be only major stories, has specialty shows.
 
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I'm pretty sure all the 24 hour news networks air opinion/analysis shows during prime time.
 
jetsetter said:
The news bit of Fox News is actually quite accurate in its reporting.
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Dogbert said:
And yet, it editorializes more than any other MSM outlet.
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That's the funny thing about Fox News. Their actual news coverage is the most accurate and objective of any cable news network (for whatever that's worth). But their pundits are insane.
 
tigger said:
That's the funny thing about Fox News. Their actual news coverage is the most accurate and objective of any cable news network (for whatever that's worth). But their pundits are insane.
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I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I was mentioning this exact thing to my father last night. When they report news, they do great! But it really feels like their news coverage is on for about 1 hour per day. So while they're great at that, their comical commentators are on far more often and at times of the day when people actually watch.

MSNBC and Fox aren't just partisan when they start the prime time lineup. They're caricatures of partisanship.
 
phuckingduck said:
MSNBC and Fox aren't just partisan when they start the prime time lineup. They're caricatures of partisanship.
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Yep, they're the 'lunatic fringe'. I almost posted a few videos of stuff like O'Reilly yelling and cussing, Hannity trying to brainwash people ... and Glenn Beck just being a total weirdo. :lol:

That point sort of leads into something a friend and I were talking about the other day. It can be argued that pointless partisan/sensationalist crap like this is a result of media consolidation. If you want to talk about conspiracies, it's a great one. We've gone from fifty major news networks to five since 1983. Congress actually stopped further consolidation in 2007. Those 5 own something like 90% of all media in the US.

Basically, it's now all about the bottom line. At newspapers for instance, it used to be that editors and ad staff probably didn't even know one another. Nowadays even my college paper has daily meetings between the two, doing lay out around advertising and trying not to step on any toes. You want to talk about the "demise" of journalism, it's not bias that's doing it. It's the ever-increasing pressure to turn a profit.

You can also see the dangers of such consolidation by looking at the Russian media. While there's some stuff that is banned outright, Putin/Medvedev can also squeeze the oligarchs that control the media (or just about any other industry) to sing their tune.

I could also rant about how completely idiotic the notion of the "demise" of media or journalism is, but I'll just stop now.
 
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If you need to know why media consolidation is a bad thing, look no further than the tales of Hearst.

The guy did build a great house though.
 
In Australia during the US presendential race it was more like Obama had already won, we heard pretty much nothing on McCain
 
Yeah. It was either black dude & old man or old man & hot chick.
 
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