HoosierDaddy, on 14 November 2009 - 03:05 PM, said:
At some point, you just have to connect the dots. Could this have been an honest mistake? Yes. Could the Fox producer who seemed to be riling up a crowd at one of Beck's or a Tea-Party rally actually just doing the Arsenio cheer while shouting for loudness also just a sufferer of Tourette's? Possibly.
It is just much easier to connect the dots once it becomes clear there is an agenda. Now, is it possible those dots are over-connected? Entirely, so, yes. I'll admit that MSNBC commentators have a clear agenda, and it is clearly left of true center, obviously.
To simply wash the entire news channel's obvious bias away with "well they are commentators," just doesn't sit with me. I don't see why it is so hard to admit.
This one seemed easiest to quote. What irked me about the whole rally screw up was that you could tell just watching the footage that it was two separate events. As Stewart pointed out they started with one portion of video showing a rally on a beautiful Fall day, all the leaves had changed colour or were falling off and people were in warmer clothes. Next scene shows what is clearly a Summer day with everything green and people wearing t-shirts. To say that was an inadvertant mistake is ridiculous. Either they're lying to cover their ass or those people are blind fools.
I also dislike how any faults are washed away with the excuse "oh, they're not news anchors, they're just commentators!" They're on a news channel, it stands to reason that people tuning into watch said channels expect the information to be pretty factual. I'll admit CNN and MSNBC has some issues with their commentary shows but Fox is in a category unto itself. I will agree that left-leaning organizations spin stories to their benefits, however the people of Fox seem to love actual hatemongering and outright dismissal if a logical counter argument is used.
cerveza_fiesta, on 16 November 2009 - 03:06 PM, said:
Something I've noticed on our national news network, the CBC, is that they have an obvious bias too. Not left-right political bias, but severe bias toward the underdog. For instance, if there is a story about a few disgruntled folks pissed about some new legislation, or somebody unhappy about the construction of a new power plant / factory...the CBC will give literally hours of airtime to the disenfranchised person and offer no explanation from the other side of the debate, saying only "government officials were unavailable to comment".
Let alone that they could have found an non-political expert to comment or maybe another person next door who disagrees with the complaints.
Seems if they shed the "overdog" in a little better light, they might have more government officials willing to comment. Instead official commentary tends to avoid the CBC talk shows like poison and I get airtime filled with a bunch of tiny minorities bitching about a ton of things I don't care about.
I still think the CBC is among the best of the huge newssources around, but the underdog bias gets on my nerves sometimes.
I honestly wonder if much of this has to do with the constant budget cuts CBC faces. You wouldn't be very sympathetic or forthcoming with someone who was short changing you either.