Media bias as a political tool

[Tyr]

The media has seemed to have morphed into the far right or far left depending upon your perspective and personal viewpoint.

How far does it go and does it actually affect our daily lives - what we buy, how we vote, how we react to certain viewpoints in the media

Possibly the largest range of bias is in the political spectrum as we have seen lately through both the American and Canadian elections.

Do people automatically take what they see and hear as the "gospel truth" or are they informed enough and objective enough to see through the bias and perhaps pull out the increasingly smaller bits of "fact"

Political bias may be impossible to avoid in today's style of fast-paced 24-hour news coverage. News programs today are apparently designed to retain the attention of hyperactive and impatient viewers — people with dozens of other channels from which to choose, and a remote control always nearby. (Forty years ago, when you had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel, people stuck with a program for its duration.) You'll rarely see a news story these days, especially during ratings periods, in which a single shot lasts more than three seconds. On a normal day, almost every story is told in less than two minutes. This results in a great loss of detail, and that's where the TV producer's personal bias comes into play: he or she decides what parts of a story to include or omit.

 

[Tyr]

TownHall

If you were to "search" the net, you would come across all of the Fox News favourites and their heavily bias discourse about everything (from a neoconservative view) that is wrong with the US.

I tends to rely more on fiction than fact

"I want you to meet a priest from Greenville, South Carolina named Rev. Jay Scott Newman.
He is the pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville.
And he has become my personal hero.
In a nutshell, Fr. Newman told his parishioners that if they voted for Barack Obama, they embraced “intrinsic evil” since Obama's opponent was a “plausible pro-life alternative.” And as a result, those Obama voters need to seek forgiveness from God before they receive Holy Communion again.

 

[Tyr]

What if....

Another brilliant synopsis brought to you by the mentally challenged in the RNC "bought and paid for" media camp

What if... you woke up one morning and found out that the President of the United States was a USURPER... a FRAUD... a PHONY?

What if... the leader of the free world was constitutionally ineligible to be President of the United States, but was simply allowed to take and hold office anyway?

It's happening RIGHT NOW!

The sad truth of the matter is that President-elect Barack Obama has REFUSED to provide proof that he is constitutionally qualified to hold the office!

Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States, states, "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President..."

Now shockingly, I've heard people say that compelling Obama to validate that he is indeed a "natural born Citizen" is a "technicality" that "should not be taken seriously."

But I take the Constitution seriously. I believe that you take the Constitution seriously. I know our Founding Fathers took the Constitution seriously.

And... trust me... Obama is taking the matter seriously!

That's why Obama has continually REFUSED to produce a valid copy of his vaulted birth certificate.

That's why his teams of attorney have continually tried to BLOCK efforts to compel him to produce his vaulted birth certificate.

That's why, when the question of Obama's status was first raised, a "Certification of Live Birth" suddenly appeared on his website and you were told that the issue of his status as a "natural born Citizen" was settled.

But the issue WAS NOT settled... what you weren't told is that a "Certification of Live Birth" and a "Certificate of Live Birth" are TWO DIFFERENT DOCUMENTS!

What you weren't told is that the "Certification of Live Birth" - which still appears on Obama's "Fight the Smears" website - IS TOTALLY INADEQUATE when it comes to validating his status as a "natural born Citizen."​

Look at it this way. For years, liberal activist judges have legislated from the bench. They have effectively made-up laws out of thin air... we've been told that there were "penumbras" in the Constitution... that the Constitution is a "living, breathing document."

Over a period of years, activist judges have slowly - almost imperceptibly - been able to chip away at your liberties by warping the meaning of the Constitution.

 

[Scott Free]

The media is just another confinement technology. It attempts to focus your attention and then presents a narrow set of solutions framed to prejudice you to prefer one.

It is designed to generate consensus.

It uses logic fallacies (like appeal to popularity) and distraction to conform people.

It isn't a conspiracy but the natural outcome one would expect of media completely owned and operated by the elite class.

 

[Tyr]

This from that bastion of "objective" and "impartial" thinking(?) Townhall.com whose claim to fame is propogating the intelligence of those mental midgets Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly


"The past year also taught me that the media can no longer be trusted. This has been developing for a long time, but media bias reached critical mass during the presidential campaign. Many in the press slanted their reporting to help Barack Obama, every independent study shows that.

So, the lesson here is clear: No longer can the American media be relied upon to bring us fact-based information. The news media has entered the ideology business much like talk radio. This will greatly harm the nation, as unbiased information is critical for an informed citizenry. The collapse of journalistic standards was a huge but largely untold story in 2008."

 

[Cannuck]

The collapse of journalistic standards was a huge but largely untold story in 2008."

Not really. Journalistic standards have been on the decline for decades. It was an untold story in '08 because it is not news. The main stream media is becoming entirely irrelevant because most people under 40 don't take it seriously anyway.

 

[Tyr]

Not really. Journalistic standards have been on the decline for decades. It was an untold story in '08 because it is not news. The main stream media is becoming entirely irrelevant because most people under 40 don't take it seriously anyway.

...and alot of people over 40 see it for the sham that it is

 

[Cannuck]

...and still count on it for their news source...unlike the younger generations

 

[In Between Man]

Media Malpractice Documentary Highlights. Part 1 and 2.

YouTube - Media Malpractice Highlights 1

YouTube - Media Malpractice Hilights 2

 

[Stretch]

as David Icke has said many times...we are controlled by our eyes and our ears

 

[Cliffy]

Left or right, the media decides who will win the election. As long as people listen to the so called experts. get their opinions from the pundits, the outcome of any election will be predetermined by who spends the most money. If you want to know who is going to win and by what margin, watch the papers and TV and you will know weeks before because the sheeple will vote exactly the way they are told to.

 

[Stretch]

Left or right, the media decides who will win the election. As long as people listen to the so called experts. get their opinions from the pundits, the outcome of any election will be predetermined by who spends the most money. If you want to know who is going to win and by what margin, watch the papers and TV and you will know weeks before because the sheeple will vote exactly the way they are told to.

with a pencil

 

[In Between Man]

Left or right, the media decides who will win the election. As long as people listen to the so called experts. get their opinions from the pundits, the outcome of any election will be predetermined by who spends the most money. If you want to know who is going to win and by what margin, watch the papers and TV and you will know weeks before because the sheeple will vote exactly the way they are told to.

More or less I can actually agree with you on this one.

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

Not really. Journalistic standards have been on the decline for decades. It was an untold story in '08 because it is not news. The main stream media is becoming entirely irrelevant because most people under 40 don't take it seriously anyway.

Cannuck is right, main stream media is no longer about the dogged truth seeker reporter. It's about ratings, corporate sponsors and the winds of public opinion. Major media organizations, like CNN have become so rating driven they fail to exercise basic principals like fact checking. ie: The death toll estimates after Hurricane Katrina were so inflated beyond believe and this is only one of many times a so called news outlet had to back track from unverified reporting.

What you were saying about them becoming right wing oriented, I don't buy that. Where they smell blood in the water they will go.

 

[Mowich]

The medium is the message.

McLuhan understood "medium" in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."[2]

Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself — the content — and more about the change in public attitude towards crime that the newscast engenders by the fact that such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner.[3]

Hence in Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.[4] This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time.[3] As society's values, norms and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium. These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions[3] that we are not aware of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message_(phrase)
I wonder what McLuhan would think of the media today?

 

[Liberalman]

This is another reason why the voters should put Stephen Harper out to pasture, he does not answer reporter's questions, only during elections.

Because of the hundreds of media outlets voters can get an acurate representation of the true politician because they can see the pros and cons of what they really stand for.

 

[Cliffy]

The media is nothing more than a mouth piece of propaganda for the ruling elite. They have refined and mastered the art and would make Goebbels proud. And the sheeple buy into it like Big Macs.

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

The media is nothing more than a mouth piece of propaganda for the ruling elite. They have refined and mastered the art and would make Goebbels proud. And the sheeple buy into it like Big Macs.

I'm going to start logging all the stupid Nazi comparison. :lol:

Cliffy, you should really knock it off, it makes you sound like a complete idiot.

 

[Cliffy]

I'm going to start logging all the stupid Nazi comparison. :lol:

Cliffy, you should really knock it off, it makes you sound like a complete idiot.

Coming from a conservative, I will take that as a compliment.

From a recent historical point of view, Goebbels was considered a master of propaganda. The reference was not about Nazis but about propaganda. CNN and FOX are the new masters, have taken the art far beyond what Goebbels had hoped to accomplish. I was thinking along the lines of Marshal McLuhan's "the media is the message". But you are welcome to stay in your safe little status quo conservative box.