News Liberal Media Attempting to Understand Conservatives

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The discussion highlights the liberal media's struggle to address its bias, particularly in relation to conservative viewpoints. The New York Times acknowledged its liberal staffing and the need for a dedicated "conservative beat" to better understand the conservative movement, which reflects a broader issue of media bias in reporting. Critics argue that mainstream outlets often overlook significant conservative stories while treating liberal narratives as mainstream, leading to a skewed perception of political issues. The conversation also touches on the challenges reporters face when covering conservative topics, often resulting in a focus on fringe ideas rather than balanced reporting. Ultimately, the dialogue emphasizes the necessity for media outlets to confront their biases to ensure comprehensive and fair coverage.
  • #91
Gokul43201 said:
Selective sampling. Ask Walmart, Exxon, Chevron, GE and BoA (the 5 largest)...
Without looking, I'd wager that at least GE (&MSNBC) CEO - Immelt in 2008 was a big Democratic pay day.
 
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  • #92
russ_watters said:
I realize this thread has moved fast, but a quick point about the argument looking for evidence of a liberal bias: Why nitpick the evidence, when some major players in the liberal media itself acknowledge the bias? There is no need to prove a fact that has already been acknowledged. Indeed, that was my main point in posting the thread in the first place!

The NYT did not need to do a study to prove to itself that it had a liberal bias: it knew and it made an attempt to deal with it.

Andrew Marr is a top journalist in the UK and he has said "...the press is relatively right-wing (with some exceptions) because it is owned by big business, which is a truism and is well known".
 
  • #93
russ_watters said:
I realize this thread has moved fast, but a quick point about the argument looking for evidence of a liberal bias: Why nitpick the evidence, when some major players in the liberal media itself acknowledge the bias? There is no need to prove a fact that has already been acknowledged. Indeed, that was my main point in posting the thread in the first place!

The NYT did not need to do a study to prove to itself that it had a liberal bias: it knew and it made an attempt to deal with it.


So the NYT made an attempt to deal with, what more could you want? That's a lot more than can be said for any so called right wing media outlet. There's always going to be bias in some form or another because it is humans who are running the show, but they should try to be concerned with one thing: the truth, no matter where it takes them. Unfortunately, that is not what they are concerned with.
 
  • #94
madness said:
Andrew Marr is a top journalist in the UK and he has said "...the press is relatively right-wing (with some exceptions) because it is owned by big business, which is a truism and is well known".

Is he talking about the UK media here?
 
  • #95
mheslep said:
Without looking, I'd wager that at least GE (&MSNBC) CEO - Immelt in 2008 was a big Democratic pay day.
I do not contest that. I'm just pointing out what would be closer to an unbiased sample. If that sampling supports your thesis over someone else's, so be it.
 
  • #96
mheslep said:
Of the 20 richest zip codes in the US, 19 of them overwhelmingly contribute to the D. party.
[PLAIN]http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/WELL.15-32.Caldwell.jpg[/QUOTE]

No, 19 out of 20 (according to your data) contribute a _majority_ to the Democratic party. I wouldn't call 52% "overwhelming".

I'm actually rather surprised that the one giving a minority to the Democrats is McLean, which is in a strongly Democratic area.
 
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  • #97
I'm not convinced. Using campaign contributions as a way to measure support in an area is sort of indirect, compared to the obvious measure of seeing who won in the voting in that district. Also, these numbers came in a year when Obama and the Democrats destroyed every fundraising record in existence, and the Republicans were in a slump.


http://www.physorg.com/news64503916.html
Research indicates that rich people tend to vote Republican

Research tends to indicate that rich people vote for Republicans, but the tie is tenuous
 
  • #98
CRGreathouse said:
No, 19 out of 20 (according to your data) contribute a _majority_ to the Democratic party. I wouldn't call 52% "overwhelming".
<shrug>. 72%, 76, 86, 84, 73, 80, 65, 75, 79, 78, 81, 64, 83, 84, 48, 77, 70, 57, 59, 52%. Taken as a whole, then, the richest US zip codes contributed overwhelmingly to the D's as of 2008.

CRGreathouse said:
I'm actually rather surprised that the one giving a minority to the Democrats is McLean, which is in a strongly Democratic area.
I don't think so. The adjacent areas are indeed strongly D' (i.e. counties of Fairfax and esp Arlington), but I doubt McLean itself, a part of http://wolf.house.gov/images/user_images/va10map_modified_smaller(2).gif" , if my observation of the campaign yard signs in 2008, and the fact that Speaker Newt Gingrich and VP Dick Cheney live there (or used to) are any evidence at all.
 
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  • #99
Office_Shredder said:
I'm not convinced. Using campaign contributions as a way to measure support in an area is sort of indirect, compared to the obvious measure of seeing who won in the voting in that district.
Not convinced of what? My thesis is not about popular support, but about the politics of the wealthy, and especially the uber wealthy in the US.

Also, these numbers came in a year when Obama and the Democrats destroyed every fundraising record in existence, and the Republicans were in a slump
Your point?


http://www.physorg.com/news64503916.html
Research indicates that rich people tend to vote Republican

Research tends to indicate that rich people vote for Republicans, but the tie is tenuous
1. That link reflects 2000, not 2008 data. 2. You might consider rereading your link and qualifying your summary:
physorg article on 2000 data said:
Higher-income states, which used to favor Republicans, are voting for Democrats; yet overall, Republicans remain the favorite among the wealthy. For decades, Democrats have been viewed as the party of the poor, with Republicans representing the rich. Recent presidential elections, however, have shown a reverse pattern, with Democrats performing well in the richer "blue" states in the northeast and on the West Coast, and Republicans dominating in the "red" states in the middle of the country
.
 
  • #100
mheslep said:
Ok, I'll have to qualify. The rich now live in the Democratic party, whether the poorer segment does or not.
From your link:
CNN 2008 Presidential, by income: $200,000 or More (6%) - Obama 52% McCain 46%
Moreover, the super rich overwhelmingly live the D. party; it is not even close as you say. Of the 20 richest zip codes in the US, 19 of them overwhelmingly contribute to the D. party.
[PLAIN]http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/WELL.15-32.Caldwell.jpg

I.e. mainly Wall Street, Hollywood, and DC, which I think should be unsurprising.
This is just 2007-2008 election. Could it be that this was a good year for the democrats. I don't think its possible to post one election year and interpret it as bias. Thats like if tuesday was 50 degrees and wednesday was 80 degrees and you decide to interpret this as thursday being 80 friday 110 and so on.

I don't think you could extrapolate anything from how journalists vote in real life since that may not be in agreement with the side they wish to give the news public. Take Gretchen Carlson who graduated from Standford with honors yet takes on a character of a country joe housewife who doesn't know what a czar is. People may play characters in the news that may contrast with their personal beliefs therefore how they vote in their personal life may not be relevant.
 
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  • #101
mheslep said:
Not convinced of what? My thesis is not about popular support, but about the politics of the wealthy, and especially the uber wealthy in the US.

Why is political support amongst the uber wealthy measured by campaign contributions to a single presidential candidate? I proposed looking at how those zip codes voted

Your point?

Your point seems to be that if Obama raised twice as much money as McCain in a wealthy zip code, then that zip code was overwhelmingly Democratic. But Obama raised twice as much money as McCain. Period. Everywhere in the country. So your thesis immediately extends to "prove" that the country is overwhelmingly Democratic, and your claim that the rich more so than the rest of the country are with the Democrats is wrong.


1. That link reflects 2000, not 2008 data. 2. You might consider rereading your link and qualifying your summary:

Qualifying my summary? Rich people in the northeast voted for Democrats because the northeast votes for Democrats. It explicitly states in the article that in Democrat-leaning states, there is essentially no rich/poor voting gap, and there is one in Republican-leaning states that tends towards wealthy people voting Republican.

The paper itself was finished in 2005. I guess I'll have to apologize for all of the social sciences for not being able to output high quality research on demand without actually spending time doing the research, but these things tend to lag a bit. If you have more recent research that indicates said patterns have changed since then please cite it. I have not been able to find a whole lot on the topic
 
  • #102
Missed this before...
mheslep said:
Ok, I'll have to qualify. The rich now live in the Democratic party, whether the poorer segment does or not.
From your link:
CNN 2008 Presidential, by income: $200,000 or More (6%) - Obama 52% McCain 46%
Since according to the exit polls, McCain had 45.4% of the total (exit) vote, he actually did a little better with the rich. More specifically, if the rich live in the D party, the poorer segment does to a greater extent (going by the exit polling alone).

Moreover, the super rich overwhelmingly live the D. party; it is not even close as you say. Of the 20 richest zip codes in the US, 19 of them overwhelmingly contribute to the D. party.
[PLAIN]http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/WELL.15-32.Caldwell.jpg[/quote]That is not a list of the "20 richest zip codes" (nor does it claim to be). The richest zip-codes are listed here: http://wealth.mongabay.com/tables/100_income_zip_codes-10000.html

In any case, winning a greater share of campaign contributions from a district is not a particularly water-tight argument that X wins a greater share of the votes from there. Recall that about midway through the election season, we had numbers showing that Obama was out-earning McCain 5-fold in terms of campaign contributions from members of the military.
 
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  • #103
Gokul43201 said:
In any case, winning a greater share of campaign contributions from a district is not a particularly water-tight argument that X wins a greater share of the votes from there. Recall that about midway through the election season, we had numbers showing that Obama was out-earning McCain 5-fold in terms of campaign contributions from members of the military.
This might be a good time to point out that campaign contributions are not an indicator of voter support in any region, as you said. Wealthy donors want to support whomever they predict to be the winner in a race so that they can apply some leverage after the election. When McCain picked Palin and she started opening her mouth on the campaign trail, it's likely that a lot of the "smart money" trended to the Dems. Unlike in horse racing, where you can place bets up until post-time, political wagering can continue well into the race.
 
  • #104
Office_Shredder said:
Research tends to indicate that rich people vote for Republicans, but the tie is tenuous
What's interesting is that the same people who claim this are the same ones who refer to Republicans' constituents as ignorant hillbillies when it suits them.

The only reason to care about such nonsense is if someone wants politicians to tell them what to think.

For those who like to ignore such nonsense and think for themselves, the votes of every congressman and Senator on every bill is public record. That's their job and that's how they should be judged.
 
  • #105
Al68 said:
What's interesting is that the same people who claim this are the same ones who refer to Republicans' constituents as ignorant hillbillies when it suits them.

That's a southern stereotype, not a rich/poor stereotype
 
  • #106
Office_Shredder said:
Al68 said:
What's interesting is that the same people who claim this are the same ones who refer to Republicans' constituents as ignorant hillbillies when it suits them.
That's a southern stereotype, not a rich/poor stereotype
Oh, I see. They're only talking about all those rich ignorant hillbillies being Republican. :smile:
 
  • #107
...in the two presidential election years of the 1990s, respondents in the highest quintile were more than twice as likely to identify as a Republican than were those in the lowest.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/PERG.mccarty.pdf

I would hope that no one needs to demonstrate the long history of racism found in the South, which swings heavily for the Republicans, and has, as he predicted, ever since LBJ signed the Civil Rights legislation.

Some stereotypes have an enduring historical basis.
 
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  • #108
Al68 said:
Oh, I see. They're only talking about all those rich ignorant hillbillies being Republican. :smile:

No, they're talking about all ignorant hillbillies. Ignorant hillbillyism is money-blind
 
  • #109
Ivan Seeking said:
I would hope that no one needs to demonstrate the long history of racism found in the South, which swings heavily for the Republicans, and has, as he predicted, ever since LBJ signed the Civil Rights legislation.

Some stereotypes have an enduring historical basis.
Of course the reality is that the offending bigot politicians were primarily Democrats. The stereotyping of Republicans for historical southern racism is just fraudulent propaganda by Democrats to cover their own racist history.

The swing toward Republican support in the south represented a trend away from the racist past of Democrats. But don't let reality get in the way of rewriting history.
 
  • #110
Al68 said:
Of course the reality is that the offending bigot politicians were primarily Democrats. The stereotyping of Republicans for historical southern racism is just fraudulent propaganda by Democrats to cover their own racist history.

The swing toward Republican support in the south represented a trend away from the racist past of Democrats. But don't let reality get in the way of rewriting history.

I hate it when people use the fact that the Democrats were the racist party in the 1800's/early 1900's to make it look like the south had some sort of cultural revolution when it switched parties in the 60's.
 
  • #111
Gokul43201 said:
Missed this before...
Since according to the exit polls, McCain had 45.4% of the total (exit) vote, he actually did a little better with the rich.
Trying to look at this from a couple angles, but I don't follow you there. In what sense did McCain do better with the rich, the 'rich' being defined for the moment by that CNN >$200k bracket?

That is not a list of the "20 richest zip codes" (nor does it claim to be). The richest zip-codes are listed here: http://wealth.mongabay.com/tables/100_income_zip_codes-10000.html
Well we're both, let's say, imprecise here. My list was zip codes by highest political contribution. Your list is by annual income as reported by tax returns. Income need not accurately reflect wealth, or more precisely net worth, as reported income misses the wealth of the idle rich. Income won't capture the value of a $30M mansion housing an heiress, or the accounts of a retired philanthropist taking large charitable write downs, or otherwise controlling the wealth of some business or trust by proxy (e.g. Andrew Carnegie). So if I wanted to go knocking on the doors of those able to write the largest checks, regardless of the cause, I expect my list is more likely than your income list to produce the best results.

In any case, winning a greater share of campaign contributions from a district is not a particularly water-tight argument that X wins a greater share of the votes from there. Recall that about midway through the election season, we had numbers showing that Obama was out-earning McCain 5-fold in terms of campaign contributions from members of the military.
Point taken, but I can not think of a better way to assess the connection between political party and wealth aside from direct interrogation of voters and their wealth (again net worth, not just income). Even an actual break down of the vote by candidate/party in those same zip codes means less to me than the financial contributions list I referenced, as we don't know the wealth of the actual voters, unless the statistical variance in wealth can be shown to be extremely low for one of those zip codes.
 
  • #112
Ivan Seeking said:
[...]
Some stereotypes have an enduring historical basis.
Without current evidence, the basis of a stereotype is ignorance.
 
  • #113
Office_Shredder said:
Your point seems to be that if Obama raised twice as much money as McCain in a wealthy zip code, then that zip code was overwhelmingly Democratic
No, not at all.

If you have more recent research that indicates said patterns have changed since then please cite it.
I did in post https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2795048&postcount=89" with 2008 data, just prior to your statement:
Office_Shredder said:
Research indicates that rich people tend to vote Republican
which is unsupported by even the old link.
 
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  • #114
mheslep said:
No, not at all.

Then what was the point of the zip code thing?
I did in post https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2795048&postcount=89" with 2008 data, just prior to your statement:

In which you pointed out that the wealthy voted for McCain at a slightly higher rate than the rest of the country. Ok, that convinced me
 
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  • #115
Office_Shredder said:
I hate it when people use the fact that the Democrats were the racist party in the 1800's/early 1900's to make it look like the south had some sort of cultural revolution when it switched parties in the 60's.
My point was that suggesting that the racist history of the south was attributable to Republicans is revisionist history, as you seem to recognize. I wasn't implying anything about current southern Democrats.

That being said, the south certainly did have a "cultural revolution" when it switched parties in the 60's. The only way not to consider it a revolution is to greatly underestimate just how bad things were. Racist Democrats had a stranglehold on southern state governments.

But the current stereotype (among some) of Republicans being racist is based solely on fraud and propaganda, not historical fact. Finger pointing is very effective misdirection for many.
 
  • #116
arildno said:
Jack21222 said:
Can you give an example of a "crackpot liberal position" that's taken as mainstream? Examples have already been provided of crackpot conservative positions being taken as mainstream by Fox.
Well, what about speculations that a certain Times Square would-be-bomber became so out of desperation that he couldn't pay his mortgage?
This looks to me more like an example of:

"Liberal Media Attempting to Understand (Religious Fundamentalist) Conservatism"

as in the title of this thread.

1) Muslim fundamentalist vigorously oppose anything like a liberal lifestyle.
2) A life under fundamentalist religious law would scare the hell out of liberal people.

Can you explain why you are nevertheless linking these two totally different groups?Regards, Hans
 
  • #117
Al68 said:
My point was that suggesting that the racist history of the south was attributable to Republicans is revisionist history, as you seem to recognize.

Finger pointing is very effective misdirection for many.

Ever notice that if someone is pre-occupied with homosexuality everyone claims its because they are in denial about their own homosexuality; however, if someone is pre-occupied with race, everyone else is racist? Things like this are why I can't stand social sciences, too subjective.
 
  • #118
Hans de Vries said:
This looks to me more like an example of:

"Liberal Media Attempting to Understand (Religious Fundamentalist) Conservatism"

as in the title of this thread.

1) Muslim fundamentalist vigorously oppose anything like a liberal lifestyle.
2) A life under fundamentalist religious law would scare the hell out of liberal people.

Can you explain why you are nevertheless linking these two totally different groups?


Regards, Hans
By its systematic factual occurence.

That is not my fault, but the fault of liberals.
 
  • #119
arildno said:
That is not my fault, but the fault of liberals.

That's far too broad.
 
  • #120
CRGreathouse said:
That's far too broad.

That's not my fault, but the fault of some liberals.
 

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