Greetings

Maybe we get a different version of Fox here in Spain, but I've always had the feeling that their being "fair and balanced" was a bit Orwellian.

For a while I was trying to do an informal survey on times given, etc. but finally gave up for lack of time. But I can say, while they do give time to both sides, the questions to the Dems appear a bit harder, if not laced with sarcasm - which I don't think any news group should use. If they'd cut out the personal notes, sarcasm, irony, and just report the news, I'd think they would be lot more serious about the news. Most viewers are intelligent enough to not need these extra props. As it is, at least here in Spain, it comes across as being a bit sensationalist. And I'll leave with one example; interviewing 2 politicians, and every time the Dem went to speak, u'd here "excuse us as we cut to this high speed chase..."

Cheers

The best links to articles by, and about, Democrats can be found at E Pluribus Unum.

re: Fox News -- Brit Hume is the only entity on that network that presents an accurate simulation of "fair and balanced."

One of my main points is that you won't find any "fair and balanced" reporting on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and the networks ABC, NBC, & CBS. All of them are left leaning and hardly objective.

So to say that the DEMs had no oppourtunity to get their message out is silly.

RE:Fox News

I watch it all day. Regular reporting is fair & balanced. Specialty programs like O'Reilly Factor or Hannity & Colmes are different. Either way they ALWAYS have both sides represented.

You crack me up!

You "watch it all day?" No wonder you think it's fair and balanced. You have nothing to compare it to!

Oh and another thing: CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and the networks ABC, NBC, & CBS might be "left leaning" (whatever that means) but Fox counterbalances them all quite evenly by being completely a house organ of the right-wing conservative movement.

And we're not even getting into the political shadings of talk radio, led by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

These media outlets are cleverly organized to be the mouthpiece and willing partner of the most aggressive partisans on the right.

C'mon Rosemary! Rush Limbaugh was invited by Tom Delay to speak to the incoming class of Republican congressman....again!

Not bad work, if you can get it. I wish the Dems could pull off a trick or two like that.

I mean, really, when was the last time "Tom Brokaw" spoke to the equivalent group of Democrats?

I work in a bar. We always have ALL the news channels on ALL day. I have plenty to compare it too.

It's the only news channel on the air that I can watch without feeling brain raped.

I would like to point out that my late father, a rabid "Carville like" Democrat, felt the same way. He would bounce between Fox and CNN. He was a news junkie until the day he died.

Tom Brokaw hasn't, but Dan Rather has.

Limbaugh, by the way, does not claim to be a journalist.

But this is a silly argument, and it begs the question: the whole problem is that one little cable news channel and some highly popular talk radio figures are responsible for Democrats' losses? These folks somehow blocked Democrats from getting their message out?

WHAT MESSAGE?!?!?!

It really insults a person’s intelligence to hear the Democrats whine about the popularity of talk radio, talk television shows, especially Rush Limbaugh. These people compete in the marketplace and succeed. Many liberal talk show hosts such as Tom Leikas and Mike Malloy have tried talk radio and failed. Talk radio favors conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, G. Gordon Liddy, Ken Hamblin et. al., since they express popular ideas; and they argue and debate better than liberals do as well. Ann Coulter discusses this at length in her highly readable book “Slander.”

It seems whenever there is a choice between a liberal talk show host and a conservative talk show host the liberal loses. The conservative wins. Why is this? Is this perhaps the marketplace at work? I think so. This stands in direct contrast to National Public Radio. NPR is clearly the loudest liberal mouthpiece in talk radio with 185 nationwide affiliate stations supported, by the way, with taxpayer funds. These liberal clowns could not survive without sucking off the government tit.

Perhaps their choice of programming is why. The last time I ever listened to NPR was when Cookie Roberts hosted “All Things Considered” interviewing gays talking about the gay experience in America. I changed the station. I thought the next day I would give them just ONE more chance and choke down another session of “All Things Reconsidered.” Their topic that day was “Coming Out of the Closet and the Gay Experience.” That was enough for me. It was also the last time I ever listened to NPR.

I could not take it any more. Please remember taxpayer money, and lots of it, pay for everything National Pubic Radio does. If these clowns tried this in the real marketplace they would last two months; then they would all be looking for a job. Liberals had plenty of opportunity to get their message out in 2002. They simply failed. They failed because fewer and fewer people listen to their loud-mouthed propaganda.

ABC, NBC and CBS all enjoy declining audiences. Cable news and talk radio pick up the remainder of their audience and add a few simply because when given a choice consumers PREFER the conservative alternative. NPR has no competition since they are the only federally subsidized national radio station. And, they are very liberal.

Metro newspapers also enjoy declining readership nationwide. The vast majority of them are liberal. I suppose when give a choice consumers find Internet news faster, more reliable. I hope they also find the Internet to be a nice balance to the usual liberal propaganda of print media.

It is only natural the electorate follow this pattern, too. It is also only natural that Democrats complain plaintively about this since they cannot stop this slide in their popularity. You see, liberals no longer have a monopoly of the airwaves the way they did in the 70’s and 80’s. It seems they do not like competition. Socialists don’t.

Rosemary is exactly right. Hannity & Colmes always offer one person from the liberal side and another from the conservative side of every issue they discuss. Dan Rather does not. O’Reilly is the same way. He can be obnoxious sometimes; but at least O’Reilly tackles issues other media stars do not. I suppose that is another reason why viewers trust him above all other television talk show hosts.

O’Reilly was the journalists who broke the scandal surrounding the disbursement of 9/11 funds for ONE YEAR following the 9/11 tragedy when nobody else would touch it. This is just one example.

If Democrats have less money and fewer media outlets, it is probably because fewer people want to give them money, when given a choice. If liberals believe conservatives have more media outlets then maybe they should create more NPR affiliates... that is if they can find new listeners.

If you think that the "news" is about journalism, then you REALLY HAVE been watching too much TV.

The line between entertainment and news has been pretty much completely obliterated.

The networks have SEVERELY cut back on the budget for news operations. This has been happening for nearly two decades. Why? Because news doesn't get ratings.

Look at CNN and ABC -- they're thinking of merging. Why? To save money and pump up the bottom line.

What pumps up the bottom line? Ratings. What pumps up ratings? Entertainment dressed up as news.

So, Dean:
You are correct -- Rush doesn't pretend to be a journalist. But then he doesn't have to. It's almost beside the point. People don't want to watch the news anymore. They want to be entertained. If they can GET the news while being entertained, that's all for the better.

So NBC News DOES have to be entertaining.

Look, forty years ago, the nightly network news was 15 minutes long. It's still that way now, except they pad it out to 30 minutes or more.

The difference is the entertainment part.

P.S. Rather spoke to the incoming freshman class of Democrats in Congress? When did that happen?

kevin:

I agree with pretty much everything you said, except that tired old stuff about liberals being socialists.

That said, it doesn't refute the original point that Jonathan Chait made about Republicans having an institutional advantage in electronic media and having more money for TV advertising.

He wasn't whining. He was stating the facts as he saw them. I think he's right. And I think you do too.

Enh. Since when have people not been complaining about news-as-entertainment? I've been hearing this my whole life. But if anything, the news on television seems more in-depth and interesting to me than it was 20 years ago. Newspapers have problems, but news magazines are still going strong.

Democrats still have the institutional advantages in the mainstream media. The notion that one little cable news channel, and a few charismatic radio hosts, have somehow led the stupid and gullible American people astray may well reassuring. But if you took ALL the cable news networks and put them together, you still wouldn't match the audience for ONE nighly news broadcast on NBC, ABC, or CBS. PBS' Frontline also competes quite well with cable news.

There are also lots of left-leaning voices on radio--they just aren't as popular. Rather than ask why they aren't popular, you'd prefer to blame those who are popular?

What this tells me is that certain Democrats are attempting to avoid the soul-searching and re-evaluation that might allow them to grow up and join the rest of us in the 21st Century. This is a shame. There's no reason they can't change as a party--it seems that they just don't want to.

It also tells me that, for some people, the party is more important than the ideas it espouses. Democrats have been appallingly idea-free and reactionary for the last few years, and now they're blaming other people for not getting their message out? Once again, WHAT MESSAGE?

Facing the possibility that you might be wrong about something is very painful. I've done it, I know. Maybe some people are constitutionally incapable of it?

>>"ABC, NBC and CBS all enjoy declining audiences. Cable news and talk radio pick up the remainder of their audience and add a few simply because when given a choice consumers PREFER the conservative alternative. NPR has no competition since they are the only federally subsidized national radio station. And, they are very liberal."

You're on the right track, but you're missing the point by just a tad. It's not that consumers prefer the conservative alternative, it's that there is a viable market for conservative opinion because it is not readily available elsewhere. There is little or no market for liberal opinion because the market is saturated.

The failure of commercial liberal-slanted radio to find a market is a fact of lack of DEMAND and nothing else.

There is actually a second possible reason for the lack of demand, but I don't beleive it. The second reason is that there are not enough liberals out there to pay for it.

Incidentally, the "media is conservative" line came out in a talking points memo issued by one of the Dem leaders the day after the election. Prior to that, you didn't hear the Dems whining about how the media are all against them.

There are reasons most journalists "lean left" or whatever you call it.

1. They are educated and think critically. They are not indoctrinated like many cooperate leaders and wealthy capitolists.

2. They have travelled the globe, talked to the "masses" and seen much more than 99% of us will ever see. War correspondence, in the middle of riots, at the White House, in the court rooms...I could go on forever. These first-hand, in the trenches, experiences shape their strong opinions.

3. They tend to distrust big business with good reason. Big business has been trying to screw the masses since, well, always...Ford (remember the Pinto? Iaacoca should be behind bars for murder), GM, Union Carbide, Enron, etc....not even going to get into the oil companies...

Yes, I know you are going to say that Democrats also are bought and paid for by big business. I agree, but journalists are not....their view of the left is probably unfairly less critical than that of the right, however, the left offers the lesser of two evils. My opinion - that's it.

Tim

We know, from surveys, that professional journalists have voted at about 80% for the Democratic candidate for President in every election since 1960. We know from substantial surveys that journalists tend, as a group, to be much like Hollywood directors, writers, and
producers: highly left-of-center socially, moderately left-of-center economically. This makes them somewhat more conservative than the Michael Moores of the world, and but somewhat left-of-center for about half of America.

What's amusing to me about reading your message, Tim, is that 20, 30 years ago, journalists would simply admit that they were by and large a left-of-center group. They tended to say that this was because, just as you suggest, they were more thoughtful, better educated, better informed.

It only was once certain people started challenging them on this that, as a group, the media elite started angrily denying that it was so.

The funniest part? Surveys of non-elite journalists show that a majority of them believe the members of their profession lean too far left in their reporting. That's right, most reporters think the media leans left. But a majority of them also believe that they, themselves, do not so lean.

What is so funny about the people who deny "media bias" is that responsible social scientists, who've published in peer-reviewed journals, have demonstrated all this and more, many times over. Denying that the media in general is dominated by leftists is sort of like denying that a disproportionate number of professional male dancers are gay.

Ah, but you see, if you refuse to look at the evidence, then you're free to conclude whatever you want, right?

Dean

>>You're on the right track, but you're missing the point by just a tad. It's not that consumers prefer the conservative alternative, it's that there is a viable market for conservative opinion because it is not readily available elsewhere. There is little or no market for liberal opinion because the market is saturated.

Gary,

I never thought of the situation that way before. I think you have a strong point.

==============================================

>>The failure of commercial liberal-slanted radio to find a market is a fact of lack of DEMAND and nothing else.
>>There is actually a second possible reason for the lack of demand, but I don't believe it. The second reason is that there are not enough liberals out there to pay for it.

Gary,
Is this nothing more than restating the same thing in two different ways? I see you drawing a distinction with very little difference here.

===========================================

>>That said, it doesn't refute the original point that Jonathan Chait made about Republicans having an institutional advantage in electronic media and having more money for TV advertising.

Ara,

Is this possibly because there an increasing market for conservative ideas? I believe the reason Republicans have more money for advertising AND enjoy increasing popularity is because their ideas are increasingly popular.

Democrats enjoyed the exact same advantage over Republicans right through the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1994. Almost all the top fund-raisers in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate were Democrats when they were in the majority. Republicans are now the top fund-raisers since they are the majority party enjoying the advantages of incumbency.

I seriously doubt that it has anything to do with BIG business. That is simply the usual bogeyman argument Democrats trot every two years.

Ara,

I almost forgot to mention the most important point of all here. Fund-raising does not equal political victory. The majority of losing candidates outspend their winning opponents. If fecund fund-raising equaled political victory then the Democrats never would have lost their majority to the Republicans beginning in 1994. They were the champion fund-raisers right through the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s.

I have worked on many winning and losing political campaigns. Only once did I ever work on a winning campaign where we outspent our opponent. All the other winners I worked for were outspent, usually by quite a bit. Most of the losing races I worked we outspent our opponents. Therefore, this myth that the Democrats lost to Republicans due largely to Republican fund-raising and support from big business is hogwash. Democrats lost simply because they got fewer votes on November 5.

Kevin,

>>The failure of commercial liberal-slanted > >>radio to find a market is a fact of lack of >>DEMAND and nothing else.

>Is this nothing more than restating the same >thing in two different ways? I see you drawing
>a distinction with very little difference here.

Nope. The point of the second statement is that there is no Vast Right Wing Conspiracy suppressing Liberal Talk Radio. It is purely a matter of lack of demand. (I failed to tie that closely enough to the point that I was disagreeing with from some earlier post.)

The majority of losing candidates outspend their winning opponents.

If you are right then we should be seeing some sort of "race to the bottom", i.e., George W Bush should be running AWAY from fundraising events, don't you think?

Instead, the reverse seems to be true, regardless of your own campaign experience.

One exception: candidates who self-fund their campaigns have a lousy winning percentage.

>>If you are right then we should be seeing some sort of "race to the bottom", i.e., George W Bush should be running AWAY from fundraising events, don't you think? Instead, the reverse seems to be true, regardless of your own campaign experience.

Ara,

No, I respectfully disagree. The point I attempted to make is that Democrats did not lose their political behinds nationwide on November 5 because Republicans are associated with BIG business; and, they were not out-fundraised because Republicans received their donations from BIG business. I clearly stated Democrats lost nationwide last week because they got fewer votes.

I believe this is because voters preferred the Republican Party message in 2002 to the Democrat Party message. Remember, I pointed out that Democrats were better fund-raisers when they were the majority party. Somehow, Republicans pulled off a clean sweep in 1994. They have sat atop that perch for the past eight years, and the next two for that matter. Republicans are the better fund-raisers now because they are the majority party, not because they prefer big business. This big business stuff is simply rhetoric Democrats trot out every two years to impress the easily-impressed BIG media.

Republicans had better learn this too; otherwise, Democrats will craft a better message in 2004 and beat the Republicans. You cannot sit on your butt and rely on fund-raising. You also have to craft a better message than your opponent; then out- campaign him.

I believe your “race to the bottom” argument” is false. I do not believe we are in a race to the bottom. We are instead in the process of a long overdue major national political realignment. This should have happened about ten or fifteen years ago. Republicans blew it then. I hope they do not blow it now.

The 2002 Electoral College map will probably reflect this new political realignment. I hope the Democrats do not realize this for another… ooh four years or so. It will be too late by then. It really looks to me as though the Democrats are setting themselves up to be the party of the big cities and not much else. The Republicans are preparing themselves to be the party for the rest of America under the leadership of George W. Bush.

>>One exception: candidates who self-fund their campaigns have a lousy winning percentage.

This is true. However, so do candidates who otherwise out fund-raise their opponents. They usually lose too.