Conservatives attack Media Matters study
Enraged by a Media Matters study that conclusively demonstrates the larger representation of conservative views on Sunday talk shows, conservative attack organizations are attempting to offset the public outcry against this imbalance by launching a letter-to-the-editor campaign.
Recent conservative attacks have been unable to successfully point out any flaws in the study's methodology or results. One attack, by RightMarch.com, labels the Media Matters study as a "totally skewed 'analysis' " and "bogus" but gives no supporting evidence to back up its claim. RightMarch.com also promotes a study that has already been discredited by Media Matters.
This hyperbole demonstrates that conservatives are worried about their overrepresentation becoming public knowledge -- and are willing to mislead their own activists by using flawed information.
Media Matters eagerly awaits any evidence that its study is flawed or "bogus."
In fact, each weekend we are faced with more support for the study's findings. This weekend, NBC's Meet the Press will host a roundtable with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul A. Gigot, GOP strategist Mary Matalin, and NBC White House correspondent David Gregory. Apparently, NBC believes that a panel composed of a straight-news reporter (Gregory), a GOP strategist (Matalin), the editor of one of the most ardently right-wing editorial pages in the country (Gigot), and a sometime liberal who also harshly criticized President Clinton (Dowd) is "balanced."
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I went to the RightMarch site (jeez, what a fascist freakin' name that is) and they have an easy system to e-mail 5 editors at once. Just cut and paste a few relevant passages from MM.org's debunking of the UCLA study into the e-mail. Put a couple of para's on the front and back end and there you go. Of course if you are conservative, they'll write the whole letter for you. Good luck and have a good week end.
Your inconclusive study shows one thing. Whoever is in the WH sets the agenda. They then go on the shows and (with multiple cabinet members usually) and they flood the airwaves. There are also more shows on air now. What is newsworthy about this?
Dems outnumbered Reps with Clinton and now it is reversed. I'd like to see you go back even further and see what the breakdown would be. I doubt it would be in the Republicans favor. When there were just three shows on air, the Conservative voice was few and far between.
Hogprint, thank you for being rational about it, but I'm afraid you've managed to miss a basic point of the study: it's not that there's an imbalance at all, it's the degree of imbalance. The conservative edge on these three networks' Sunday morning shows is enormous compared to the liberal edge that happened during the Clinton administration.
I remember reading a similar study--by Fairness & Accuracy In the Media--done about 15 years ago, just tabulating the left-right balance on guests of the show Nightline. The conservative tilt was even worse (the top recurring guests were Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Jerry Falwell, and Elliot Abrams). FAIR contacted Nightline's host and producers, and they ended up stumbling over themselves with weak excuses. Ted Koppel bleated: "We've got a conservative administration. If there were a liberal administration in power, you'd see an enormous imbalance the other way." "That would be equally lamentable," FAIR shot back, "The party in power shouldn't be setting the policy for the media." (Going off the top of my head here; the quotes might not be exact.)
I love FAIR, and greatly admire the work they do. MMFA is going the next step, and making the conservative nature of the mainstream media more notable to the public. As MMFA's influence continues to grow, more people will take a new and critical look at the "liberal media" myth. My, am I grateful for that!
it was these same shows mentioned in the study. Also, if you had actually read the study results and the rebuttals to the criticism it received, you would know that MMFA demonstrated how there was only a slight liberal advantage during the Clinton administration, while the past five years have shown an enormous conservative advantage in the number and ideology of guests and pundits. Actually, this was something many of us already knew from observation without the insightful MMFA study. BTW, i don't think faux news shows are even included. Imagin how THEIR inclusion would skew the results.
about the poor spelling and capitalization. My dog was whizzing on the floor.
David Gregory, the uber-liberal, who never tries to hide his liberalism is a stright news reporter? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lets see:
2 liberals-Dowd and Gregory 2 conservatives-Gigotand Matalin
I know liberals are terrible at math, but this one takes the cake.
Something else that makes me laugh so hard is that MMFA tries to act as if Dowd is fair when she and the New York Times are obviously extensions of the democratic party.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
"Dirk" (item previous) enjoys echoing the flawed contention of Michael Savage holding that (to quote the title of the latter's treatise) "liberalism is a mental disorder."
If that be the case, then, how many specimens of conservative Zealotry and True Belief have filed petitions under state mental-hygiene laws asking for Incompetency Proceedings against such suspected of holding "liberal" views (as if equating liberalism with Serious Mental Illness)?
And how many suspected "liberals" are now in psychiatric hospitals, or otherwise referred to psychiatric clinics, having been deemed "mentally incompetent"?
How many of those declared "mentally incompetent" solely for political reasons have been deliberately prescribed anti-psychotics of the crudest and most dangerous sort (including some with heavily-sedative side effects, among them risk of sudden cardiac arrest), yet without clear evidence of mental illness or disorder?
Is it a conservative desire here to see the mental-hygiene laws perverted to allow their willful and deliberate use against political critics, real or imagined?
Rightwingers obviously feel that ONLY Rightwing voices should be heard, or else America might go astray.
So powerful is the occasional liberal opinion, that it must be overpowered and ganged-up on.
This is as it should be. As it happens, with complete domination of all Media, the Rightwing's elected official popularity is nosediving. The more the American people hear, the less they like.
For a long while, I lamented that the Republicans in league with media ownership were creating a propaganda monopoly, and "controlling the message". I shouldn't have worried. When bad policy is coupled with LIES, the public cannot be fooled for long. They KNOW from personal experience that they are doing worse and worse, and being LIED to about it by Republicans.
In short, the NeoCons have peaked too soon. The kind of propaganda they are peddling only works if the regime has the power to actually SILENCE all speakers of truth, all alternative news sources. By peaking too soon with their dominance of mainstream media, without it being EXCLUSIVE, they have turned what should be a big PLUS into a big MINUS.
Only ONE Example: When Bush claims our soldiers are dying in order to promote DEMOCRACY in the Middle East, the administration needs the power to BURY the reporting of the Palestinians holding a democratic election and electing TERRORISTS to lead them. Now, when the American people hear Bush pimping for so-called Democracies, we are left to wonder if he realizes he is instead promoting TERRORISM? And that our soldiers are dying for an idea that is fatally flawed, and in fact works COUNTER to America's national security?
So, let the NeoCons dominate the media. The more they lie and make excuses, the farther their support amongst average Americans falls.