I grew up reading my city's (one big) daily newspaper and listening to NPR. Wrapped up in my personal life, I just sort of took the news I got for granted.

One day I was channel surfing on the radio and came across a Fox News broadcast. Intruiged by their "fair and balanced" promise, I listnened for a little while.

"Wow," I thought to myself, "Fox News is really biased!"

"Bullshit," some skeptical impulse in me replied, "that's an unsubstantiated knee-jerk reaction."

"Alright, motherfucker," I thought, "I'll prove it!"

So I listened to several reports, and picked out the patterns I though showed bias.

It's all about emphasis. Broadly, which stories are reported, the time given them, how often their basic refrains are repeated, which stories they reference in other stories. In a report, the order in which the facts are presented, which related background data are given, the adjetives chosen. They did not explicitly editorialize in the report but it was clear how they meant you to feel about it.

I smiled smugly to myself as the inner skeptic sullenly retreated, defeated. I had proven, to my own satisfaction, that Fox News is indeed biased.

The next morning, I unfurled my staid and trusty 'paper, and read the main article on the front page. My jaw dropped. Every single pattern of bias I had noted in Fox News was there in the article. I read several more. The conclusion was inescapable: my newspaper is a biased outlet.

While driving that afternoon, I switched over to NPR. Not three minutes later I switched out of it again. I found it so incredibly biased that I actually blushed in the privacy of my car to think that I had taken it so dead-pan seriously for so many years, even contributing to it occasionally. To this day I cannot listen to it for long; the fact that I was duped by its thinly-veiled pretentiousness embarrasses me.

I do not often listen to or particulalry like Fox News, but I give it this: it burned away some of my innocence in exchange for insight that prompted more critical thinking. I know I should have been paying better attention to begin with, but I can't help but feel a little grateful to the surly gadfly that spurred me into pulling my head a little further out of my ass.

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The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy. ~Emily Dickinson

And yet when one points out these techniques in regards NBC, CBS, ABC and others for YEARS we were told it was all our imagination. Go figure.

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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. Indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

-Bertrand Russell

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable

-Laurence J. Peters

I never said that you had no right to have an opinion. I just said that it was, in fact, worth nothing.

-Maineman ( on 12 June 2007)

thats why it is called the 4th branch of government..the controlled media

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"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861

Remember, remember, the 11th of september The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I see of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.....

As I have said on other threads it is virtually impossible NOT TO BE BIASED when one is putting together a news report or program.

The world turns and you have to decide what will be reported.

IN choosing what to report your biases about what is important come into play.

Deciding what facts are relevant to that bit of news, also biased

How one reports it, in what order on the news, the tone and tenor of it, also biased.

Now one can attempt to be unbiased or one can just say to hell with it and decide to allow your world view to write the news reports for you, but either way you cannot report the news and completely eliminate all biases.

All that said, I think Fox news probably tried less hard to keep its own editorial biases in check than any other major media outlet on TV.

They are all biased, even if they make a sincere effort not to be. But an assessment of their bias will be biased also. All you can do is sift though the reporting and hope you are keeping a fairly open mind.

If you take out the editorializing adjectives and check three other sources you can often get to the truth of the matter.

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I guess you were naive and gullible.

I don't think bias itself is so bad. Everyone has a bias of some sort, but not everyone claims to be 'Fair and Balanced' implying everyone else isn't. I like the news in the WSJ yet and aware that it's editorial board is wing-nut intellectual (they fed the Vince Foster nonsense and other crap).

A news reporter can be and should be as objective as possible. An editor, columnist, critic and others can be biased with an agenda.

Do you think your local paper and NPR have an agenda when reporting 'news'? What about FOX news?

What about the news sections on FOX NEWS?

DId you see FOX NEWS coverage of the Katrina disaster?

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"I am not so much for State's rights as I am for the people's rights."

[quote=editec;706937]As I have said on other threads it is virtually impossible NOT TO BE BIASED when one is putting together a news report or program.

The world turns and you have to decide what will be reported.

IN choosing what to report your biases about what is important come into play.

Deciding what facts are relevant to that bit of news, also biased

How one reports it, in what order on the news, the tone and tenor of it, also biased.[/quote[ how does this explain most news orgs having the same stories with almost identical content?

FOX NEWS Channel does more than editorialize it's biased views. It will select talking points (like other cable news stations do to some extent) on stories and repeat them over and over again all day, on multiple programs, leading the audience in the dark about the coordinated effort to make spin news.

FOX NEWS had the best and the worst coverage (in my opinion) on Katrina. Yet, they never failed in attempts to make the Katrina thing an ideological battle against others as a way of defending the WH/

other news orgs, made Bush look bad, but it was not driven by a desire to attack the WH. If Bush had done well, they would've reported that as well.

\

I guess I am like Joe Scarborogh who recently echoed my own long held views...that the bias is usually not against people/views (fox is an exception) as it is for people/views. The media can become infatuated with people/views at the expense of objectivity, but not necessarily truth.

Most who complain about the media see problems through a prism that is warped. Problems exist, but not in the way they are led to believe.

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"I am not so much for State's rights as I am for the people's rights."

I'm not aguing that Fox News isn't biased.

In fact, I think Fox News sets out to be biased presenting news and editorials obvious flying the neo-cons flag.

As to how or why the various media outlets tend to vcover the same stories?

That's fairly easy to explain...those stories are unquestionably importatnt issues of the moment, or they have the sex appeal that they know sells soap.

NPR is about the only outlet that often runs stories that aren't covered by the commercial outlets, or more importantly, doesn't cover stories which have only sex appeal but no real relevance to the audience, otherwise.

Not that I think for a moment that NPR doesn't come at the news with their own obvious bias.

In fact the above, proves their bias is different that most of the other media outlets.

When I had heard nonstop reporting about the Sex In the City movie on regular news and then heard the same blah blah blah on NPR I decided I had had enough of the media for a while.

The only unbiased paper I ever read was Pravda.

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∙ Nuclear War: The quick and efficient means of chlorinating the gene pool.

10 points for humor...

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The empiricist will change his opinion in light of contrary evidence. The ideologue will retain his opinion despite contrary evidence.