Simply jaw dropping.
This morning I was reading Media Matters and they had a short article about the Time Magazine story on how the media is polarized and has a moderate bias.
So, I followed the link and read the article.
It is must reading and explains much in our frustration with the traditional media
http://www.time.com/...
As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle." You see it whenever an organization decides that "balance" requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious: "Some, however, believe global warming is a myth." (Moderate bias would also require me to find a countervailing liberal position and pretend that it is equivalent to global-warming denial. Sorry.
The media has long done this phoney equivelancy that stresses that if one side does something wrong, lies or mislead then the other does as well.
This sets up not just frustration in presenting the actual facts of story but, is ultimately confusing to the average person and negates the wrong the one side has done. It also creates the impression of all sides are as bad as the other.
While they do this, they also setting up bad, created controversy against someone or a group in people's minds that may not warrent the anger. Like making people distrust all government and all politicians as bad.
Or that Obama is a bad president because if the right is trashing him then, he must be doing something bad because both sides do bad things.
It works to undermine democrats more then republicans. Republicans have their own news network in Fox, their own newspapers like the Washington Times, ect. and these are presented as legit news outlets. So, you have a mainstream press that is furiously trying to do this whole, if one does it then the other must as well, created controversy and undermining of democrats because of the bad behavior of republicans that they have to report. This is topped off with the sheer bias by the conservative media that the same megaphone as the mainstream.
No democratic side is presented. They 'claim' MSNBC is like Fox because they must present it as balance and not what is real fact. And no one is called to be responsible for their behavior. To answer for lying or scaring people or doing something really nasty, like swiftboating a decorated war vet. Afterall, if one side is doing it....
This is why so many fall for the false stories, rumors, ect., about the president. We have Fox screaming and the mainstreaming saying that we scream as much as they do. Even if we are mute. So, if the republicans are doing something to undermine health care or job growth, then it must be that the president and the democrats are doing it too. And for all the stories about the loss of influence of the media, they are still powerful enough to not just influence the average american but, those on the left as well. Just look at all the diaries written about how Obama is a traitor, Bush II, evil, a rightwinger, a disappointment, ect., These people, like Huffington Post lately, seem to be influenced by these false narratives.
Moderate bias also grows from a related phenomenon: status-quo bias. Journalists, like anyone, have a built-in bias toward believing that what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow. Establishment news outlets grow cozy and comfortable with other establishments. One reason some journalists insufficiently questioned the run-up to the Iraq war and underestimated the housing bubble was that they listened to their usual, credentialed sources — and the history of the past decade is the history of the experts being wrong
Unlike the press of yesterday, today's press is in love with the status quo and the comfy life. Who would have thought during the Nixon era that the way to defang the press was to give them money, status and cushiness. If Nixon had known this then maybe Watergate never would have happened or been reported....
And like James Poniewozik wrote, this cushiiness, and insider thinking, 'teh Village', is why Iraq and other things were not closely looked at and questioned.
This is why we are so frustrated.
But, I have to give TIME kudos for having the guts to print this article knowing it is pointing the finger at them as much as the rest of the mainstream. My only hope is that if a magazine like Time is willing to print this, then maybe they are willing to do some tough looking at themselves and cleaning up their act.
A girl can dream, can't she???