News Obama Misspeaks on Egypt Relationship Or does he ?

[russ_watters]

FAIR is a liberal advocacy "watchdog" so them finding no bias in NPR means NPR's agenda fits theirs!

FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints." FAIR refers to itself as a "progressive group that believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_and_Accuracy_in_Reporting

This is about NPR's audience leaning liberal, using statistics that NPR itself presented in a misleading way: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffber...-uses-fuzzy-math-to-fight-liberal-bias-claim/

This quantifies the bias, but of only one particular NPR show: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media/

And best:

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

 

[SixNein]

FAIR is a liberal advocacy "watchdog" so them finding no bias in NPR means NPR's agenda fits theirs! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_and_Accuracy_in_Reporting

This is about NPR's audience leaning liberal, using statistics that NPR itself presented in a misleading way: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffber...-uses-fuzzy-math-to-fight-liberal-bias-claim/

This quantifies the bias, but of only one particular NPR show: http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media/

And best:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/goals/objectivity/pollsummary.html

 

[russ_watters]

http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/goals/objectivity/pollsummary.html

I'm not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing, but it should not be shocking that a study commissioned by CPB finds -- or rather, states the results in a way that makes them seem like they find -- no bias.

 

[Pythagorean]

Here's how the freakonomics writer "quantifies" leanings:

An SQ of “0″ means that the outlet sounds approximately as conservative as a speech by Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) or Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). An SQ of “100″ means that the outlet sounds approximately as liberal as a speech by Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

Here's how the UCLA political scientist quantified:

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

The Freakonomcs had a "click here" for more details link but it was unlinked... anyway, how the outlet "sounds" is rather subjective to the rater, don't you think?

I can already see degeneracy in the system for the second one by UCLA. What if a policy group or lawmaker is making a good policy that solves a real problem; why does it matter whether they are liberal or conservative? If more liberals just happen to be doing more productive legislation that's relevant to real issues, then they're going to be mentioned more by a neutral outlet, and this test would rate the outlet as bias. Or what about the nature of the referral to a think tank? I don't see anywhere that it specifies whether the referral was negative, positive, or just factual.

 

[russ_watters]

I can already see degeneracy in the system for the second one by UCLA. What if a policy group or lawmaker is making a good policy that solves a real problem; why does it matter whether they are liberal or conservative?

I'm sorry, but it doesn't sound like you grasp the concept of "bias". The entire point here is that "right" and "wrong" is a matter of bias (and this after you criticized a subjective attempt to match positions with liberal/conservative stalwarts!)! The entire reason we have differing opinions is that there is no easy way to objectively say what the "right" and "wrong" ways of doing things are, for controversial issues. And even if there were, "right" and "wrong" could still be a bias.

Saying that (paraphrasing you) 'liberals are just right more often' is a clear statement of non-recognition of your own bias... or, worse: 'yes, I know the media has a liberal bias, but it is ok because that's the correct position'. In other words, if the liberal view was objectively "correct", it still wouldn't change the fact that it was also a bias.

Don't get me wrong: I think conservative values are more right than liberal values, otherwise I would not be a conservative. But an objective scoring of the bias just measures which direction the person/organization leans. It doesn't make value judgement on which leaning is "correct". And to flip it over: judging that one is more "correct" does not change the fact that emphasizing it more than 50% is a bias.

Or what about the nature of the referral to a think tank? I don't see anywhere that it specifies whether the referral was negative, positive, or just factual.

Think tanks are purported to be experts, so their reference are pretty much always positive. That's the point of citing them. However, the citation can reference bias in order to downplay the opinion. For example: "Liberal think tank Media Matters says..." tells the reader: "here's the opinion of Media Matters, but take it with a grain of salt, because they have a liberal bias."

 

[Pythagorean]

You spent a lot of time on that post trying to discredit my grasp of "bias" and accuse me of bias and avoid actual content. Liberals were a relevant example since we're talking about npr; the statement could hold for a conservative group and fox news as well. The point is that the methodology is flawed.

When I say good policy that solves a real problem, by "real" I mean that it transcends party affiliation. It's something that we all can agree on the moral philosophy part, (which is actually a broad number of things). There's plenty of examples of either party handling problems that members of both groups agree is a problem. So they argue about method instead, but methods can be objectively shown to be better or worse (unless you open a new argument on moral philosophy about methods). Anyway, as you can see: it's more complicated that you appear to realize. Sometimes, there just isn't a moral philosophy issue, so much as matter of which methods worked or are proven to work.

Or are you claiming that every single action performed by any liberal group automatically violates conservative moral philosophy? That, my friend, would be bias.