Fop Network Loves Attack Politics

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Fop Network Loves Attack Politics
58
Thu, 10-16-2008 - 11:09pm

"It's FOX "News" Channel vs. The Middle Class
by Jed L

Thu Oct 16, 2008 at 10:03:56 PM EDT

Now that FNC has reinvented itself as the "24-hour ACORN and Ayers" network, it's more obvious than ever that they don't give a damn about the pocketbook issues facing middle-class Americans.

Based on a search of closed caption data gathered since Sunday, FNC has has mentioned the GOP's favorite issues (ACORN and Ayers) nearly thirty percent more frequently than they mentioned the GOP's least favorite issues, the economy and the middle class.

The numbers are staggering:

Combined, FNC has mentioned "ACORN" or "Ayers" 1,231 times
Compare that to 963 references to "economy" or "middle class"
FNC's propaganda puts it out way out on a limb. Combined, MSNBC and CNN have made 798 references to ACORN or Ayers. Remember, that's both networks, combined.

Put another way, FNC has mentioned ACORN or Ayers 50% more often than both of its competitors put together."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/16/185021/72/626/632959

I have a question. Why does Fox insist on keeping its idiotic "Fair and Balanced" tag line? Is it like getting a trademark - you need to call something it's not to get a trademark. You can't get a trademark on the word car for a type of car, but you sure as heck can get one (if it's still available) on the name "car" as a brand name for a line of cabinets.

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2006
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 2:33am

>>Think about it....the newscasters are better informed on all sides of every issue than 90% of the general public. Besides being well-informed, they are intelligent, critical thinkers. And THAT is why they are liberal. Simple as that.


You do realize that, using your own rationale, the remaining approx. 2/3rds

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 3:33am

>>> What planet have you been living on?

Earth...that's probably why you haven't seen me around. ; )

>>> If the Ayers and ACORN issues were actually important to mainstream voters, Obama's poll numbers wouldn't have started going up FASTER after the McCain camp started bandying the charges around in the last few weeks.

Actually, in the past week, Obama's numbers have been falling and McCain's have been climbing. It's also a terrible shame if voter fraud and the character of a Presidential candidate are of so little import to you...and sadder still, the realization that it would be of immense interest to you if the fraud were being perpetrated by Republicans and it was the Republican candidate who had so many close relationships with such shady characters. Pathetic.

>>> As far as the whole 'Liberal Media' hogwash goes -- it is just that, a bunch of hogwash.

I'll let you take up your well supported argument with the good folks at UCLA who conducted the study.

>>> In fact, the articles and interviews I have seen on the mainstream media have covered both the Ayers and ACORN issues in MUCH greater actual DETAIL than the constant name-dropping of Fox News or the Right Wingnut radio hosts ever have.

I watch many "news" programs on several channels each day and, in my opinion, only FOX has been "fair and balanced, and covered these issues in any real depth...you will, undoubtedly disagree,

>>> You see, when you look at the issue in actual depth, you discover it is a 'red herring' -- and move on.

You're mistaken. ACORN is committing actual fraud, and considering how close this election is, you should be outraged that OUR election for OUR President could be manipulated and taken out of the hands of the people. Again, it's very troubling that your partisanship, which is doubtless shared by many on the left, would sanction this kind of crime against the country as long as it favors your ideology.

As far as Ayres is concerned...well, one could forgive, or ignore, a single questionable association, but it seems that you can't turn around these days without bumping into another shady, radical character...Ayres...ACORN...Rezko...Pflaeger...Wright. And these aren't just casual acquaintances, but actually close relationships, and they speak VOLUMES as to Obama's personal judgment and his character. Again, the hypocrisy is notable, because we all know if McCain had these type of close, long-term relationships the left would be going crazy over it.

>>> And it is that 'moving on' after an issue has been fully discussed that rankles the Conservative Media, because all of the 'ditto heads' want to discuss it over and over and over and over - and pat each other on the back for believing in the same 'God and Country' and for being so 'Patriotic'.

I guess that's why Obama he's trying to paint McCain as "George Bush II" over and over and over again to the thunderous applause and perpetually nodding heads of the cretinous left. You'd think once was enough and then he'd "move on"...but oh, not so. LOL!

>>> The mainstream media is NOT 'Liberal'. It is fair and evenhanded.

And yet the UCLA study says otherwise...and between you and UCLA?...I'll go with UCLA.

>>> But then I suppose that is hard to understand for people whose idea of 'fair and balanced' is to have a post-debate show hosted by the likes of Sean Hannity -- bashing and maligning Obama and touting the same tired and mostly disproven claims ad nauseum.

You sound like an Olbermann fan. LOL!

>>> I thought I was going to crack up when I saw the 'results' of Fox News's post debate poll that showed McCain 'winning' the debate 87% to 11%.

I guess "fair and balanced" reporting is somewhat humorous to you, but it's not surprising that FOX, with a FAR more diverse and bi-partisan audience, would have a more accurate perception than either CNN or MSNBama. But whatever the poll, it was very clear that McCain had Obama on the defensive most of the time, and that McCain's comments were much more substantive than Obama's lies.

>>> The fact that the actual Mainstream Media polls found Obama winning by 20 or 25 percentage points across the board does NOT make them 'Liberal'.

You're right...it just makes them wrong.

>>> The aberration here is caused by the fact that Fox and 95% of talk-radio are 'Right-Wingnut' 'Conservative' -- and they are quick to call ANYONE who doesn't share their narrow and angry views a 'Liberal'.

Actually, they tend to call people with wack-job leftist views "liberals"...the other intelligent undecideds are simply unconfirmed conservatives.

>>> I try to feel sympathy for the people that swallow this kind of swill hook-line-and-sinker, but it is hard to do because most of them are so darned angry and self-righteous.

As opposed to the simpletons who parked their brains at the door and bought the slogan "hope and change" and then averted their eyes when their Obamessiah turns out to be an old-school, tax and spend Democrat with VERY shady alliances and a socialist agenda.

>>> They have had their day in the sun - and it has brought about an economic collapse of our society, loss of international respect, a $10 Trillion National Debt, 4500 dead US soldiers, and over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians.

LOL! Sounds like a Democrat shopping list...especially since the Fannie/Freddie debacle belongs to the Democrats, owned and defended...as does a heaping helping of the Iraq war and the death toll you mentioned, since Clinton instituted the regime change policy for Iraq and your Dem leadership were the ones pushing action because of Saddam's WMDs and NUCLEAR weapons programs...as does a giant's share of the National Debt, including the Billions in earmarks for Obama, and all of the other pork that the Dems have had their greedy little hands in. Love it...embrace your ownership of each and every morsel of crap you've hypocritically laid on the table.

>>> In November of 2006 we saw the beginning of the end of the ascendency of this kind of social lunacy.

The Democrats progeny coming of age.

>>> This November 4th it seems the country is ready to nail up the coffin and send it back to the Looney Land it came from. Good Riddance!!!

Thank God! It'll be a relief to be rid of the perpetually corrupt Oblahblah and his Marxist ideals, not to mention the criminals Pelosi, Frank, Schumer and Dodd. Send the scumbags back under the rock from which they crawled. Free the American people from the corruption and degradation that slime like these bring to our government. Vote McCain.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 7:32am

Great study.

1. Says Drudge leans left and the ACLU leans conservative. Uh huh. Real accurate.

2. Also is dated. Says news pages of Wall Street Journal are most liberal, followed by CBS. Well, since then Murdoch bought the WSJ and Dan Rather got taken out at CBS.

3. The guys who wrote it are right-wing shills who had received funding from all those right-wing think tanks they complain are not cited enough by the media.

4. Ignores scholarly data showing there is no media bias. Instead they cite an article from the hack right-wing website Worldnetdaily. By the way, not surprisingly, here is a scholarly article which proves Murdoch bought the 2000 election. http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/foxvote06-03-30.pdf Buy a network, win an election for one of the worst American Presidents ever.

5. Most importantly, the Groseclose study is riddled with flaws.

Here is some criticism.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512220003

"None of the outlets that reported on the study mentioned that the authors have previously received funding from the three premier conservative think tanks in the United States: the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), The Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Groseclose was a Hoover Institution 2000-2001 national fellow; Milyo, according to his CV (pdf), received a $40,500 grant from AEI; and, according to The Philanthropy Roundtable, Groseclose and Milyo were named by Heritage as Salvatori fellows in 1997. In 1996, Groseclose and Milyo co-authored a piece for the right-wing magazine The American Spectator, titled "Lost Shepherd," criticizing the then-recently defeated member of Congress Karen Shepherd (D-UT) and defending her successor, Enid Greene (R-UT); when the piece was published, Greene was in the midst of a campaign contribution scandal and later agreed to pay a civil penalty after the Federal Election Commission found (pdf) that she violated campaign finance laws."

"Citations of scholarly media studies absent
Although the authors seem completely unaware of it, in reality there have been dozens of rigorous quantitative studies on media bias and hundreds of studies that address the issue in some way. One place the authors might have looked had they chosen to conduct an actual literature review would have been a 2000 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Communication (the flagship journal of the International Communication Association, the premier association of media scholars). The abstract of the study, titled "Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-analysis," reads as follows:
A meta-analysis considered 59 quantitative studies containing data concerned with partisan media bias in presidential election campaigns since 1948. Types of bias considered were gatekeeping bias, which is the preference for selecting stories from one party or the other; coverage bias, which considers the relative amounts of coverage each party receives; and statement bias, which focuses on the favorability of coverage toward one party or the other. On the whole, no significant biases were found for the newspaper industry. Biases in newsmagazines were virtually zero as well. However, meta-analysis of studies of television network news showed small, measurable, but probably insubstantial coverage and statement biases.
Standard scholarly practice dictates the assembly of a literature review as part of any published study, and meta-analyses, as they gather together the findings of multiple studies, are particularly critical to literature reviews. That Groseclose and Milyo overlooked not only the Journal of Communication meta-analysis, but also the 59 studies it surveyed, raises questions about the seriousness with which they conducted this study.

Indeed, they seem to be unaware that an academic discipline of media studies even exists. Their bibliography includes works by right-wing media critics such as Media Research Center founder and president L. Brent Bozell III and Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine (now deceased), as well as an article from the right-wing website WorldNetDaily. But Groseclose and Milyo failed to cite a single entry from any of the dozens of respected scholarly journals of communication and media studies in which media bias is a relatively frequent topic of inquiry -- nothing from Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Political Communication, or any other media studies journal."

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 7:37am

"Actually, in the past week, Obama's numbers have been falling and McCain's have been climbing."

And the fundamentals of the economy are sound, like McCain reassured us a few weeks ago. We need a change. We need a level headed President who is in touch with reality.

PS How do you explain that video I posted as the topic of another recent thread of McCain palling around with ACORN? Were they good then but bad now? And can you cite one instance, just one, of voting fraud (a false vote) versus voter registration fraud by ACORN. Unfortunately ACORN paid its people by the registration.

Avatar for songwright
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-28-1997
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 11:42am

Actually, in the past week, Obama's numbers have been falling and McCain's have been climbing.


Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you look at the following chart from usaelectionpolls.com you can plainly see that the trend is that the more recent the poll, the larger the gap between McCain and Obama.






State
Date
Obama
McCain

AVERAGE

X
48.5
41.6

ABC News National Polls
10/8-11
53
43

CNN National Polls
10/3-5
53
45

Cook Political Report National Polls
6/17/08
44
40

Democracy Corps National Polls
10/8-12
50
40

Diageo National Polls
8/29-31
48
39

Fox News National Polls
10/8-9
46
39

Gallup National Polls
8/7-10
45
38

Ipsos National Polls
10/9-13
48
39

CBS News National Polls
10/10-13
51
39

Los Angeles Times National Polls
10/10-13
47
39

Marist National Polls
9/28-30
47
43

NBC National Polls
10/4-5
49
43

Newsweek National Polls
10/8-9
52
41

Pew Research National Polls
10/9-12
50
40

Quinnipiac National Polls
9/11-16
49
45

Rasmussen Reports National Polls
4/28/08
46
46

Time Magazine National Polls
9/26-29
50
43

USA Today National Polls
8/30-31
50
43

Zogby National Polls
9/23-25
44
46

~ SW

~ SW

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:03pm
Criticism on liberal bias from media matters? LOL!
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2004
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:07pm

"I'm not surprised at all. Think about it....the newscasters are better informed on all sides of every issue than 90% of the general public. Besides being well-informed, they are intelligent, critical thinkers. And THAT is why they are liberal. Simple as that. "


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:21pm

< "Actually, in the past week, Obama's numbers have been falling and McCain's have been climbing."

>>> And the fundamentals of the economy are sound, like McCain reassured us a few weeks ago.

The fundamentals of the economy were sound a few weeks ago.

>>> We need a change. We need a level headed President who is in touch with reality.

Um...and you think that Obama...the guy who wants to RAISE taxes and INCREASE government spending in this economy...is the kind of "change" we need? Geeze. Find me a credible economist who thinks that raising taxes is a good idea.

>>> PS How do you explain that video I posted as the topic of another recent thread of McCain palling around with ACORN?

McCain wasn't "palling around with ACORN"...he was a speaker at a bi-partisan event that also included representatives from immigrant communities, labor, business, and religious organizations to support comprehensive immigration reform.

>>> Were they good then but bad now?

Well,"right now" they're kinda implicated in a huge voter fraud scheme, so whatever they were before, I'd say they were bad now.

>>> And can you cite one instance, just one, of voting fraud (a false vote) versus voter registration fraud by ACORN. Unfortunately ACORN paid its people by the registration.

How would you know? Anyone could walk up, present a "registered" name and then cast a vote. To prevent it, you'd have to verify each and every name and cross reference each name with a social security number.

There are around 200K fraudulent registrations in Ohio alone. Are you suggesting that no Dems would take the opportunity to exercise those fictitious registrations and vote more than once? LOL!

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:23pm
I guess that explains the now "2%" spread that separates Obama and McCain...which is a statistical tie. Watch for McCain's numbers to start climbing.
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Fri, 10-17-2008 - 4:30pm
Pop quiz: which of the following issues affect a greater number of the American people, to a greater degree, in measurable terms?

  1. The economy

  2. Barack Obama's association with William Ayers

  3. ACORN's voter registration issues



If you can answer this one correctly (and therefore honestly), you'll have your answer as to why FOX - along with every other new outlet - should mention the economy more frequently than either Ayers or ACORN.