Throwback Thursday: Where's that liberal bias?

Already the 2016 presidential campaign is well under way which has had me thinking back to the last campaign in 2011-12 and how the media covered it. 

There is a strong belief among conservatives that the mainstream media is always against them and that the way they write and talk about things is invariably slanted toward the left. An actual review of that coverage in 2011 told quite a different story. I suspect a similar review conducted in 2015 would show much the same thing. 

For example, that well-known "liberal" media outlet The New York Times has yet to write a positive news story about Hillary Clinton. Indeed, one could make a pretty strong argument that, for whatever reasons, the paper has engaged in a vendetta against her. At the same time, the Times generally seems to be straining to report positive things about the Republican candidates.

I wrote the following post on October 17, 2011 after the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released its study. I look forward to their study of the current campaign.

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Where's that liberal bias?  

It's a well-known fact, constantly reiterated by right-wingers, that the traditional media (newspapers, magazines, network television) in this country are strongly pro-liberal. Except that, like so many other well-known facts parroted by the right-wingers, this, too, is a lie.  Now, someone has actually quantified exactly how false it is.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released a study delineating the media's coverage of the Republican candidates for president versus coverage of President Obama over the last five months.  Can you guess which one received the most negative coverage? 

It turns out that Obama has received the most consistently negative press of any of the presidential candidates, with negative assessments outweighing positive ones by almost four to one.  Again, this is not Rush Limbaugh we are talking about here.  This is the New York Times,Washington Post, CBS News, etc.

Pew found that only 9 percent of the president's coverage was positive and 34 percent was negative.  By contrast, Rick Perry - Rick Perry, for heaven's sake! - had 32 percent positive coverage and 20 percent negative.

Tom Rosenthal, the director of the project stated that Obama had had substantially more negative coverage in every one of the last 23 weeks of the last five months, including the week that Osama Bin Laden was killed.

In contrast, the top four most favorably covered candidates were all favorites of the tea party.  Perry, with his 32 percent positive coverage, rated number one, followed by Sarah Palin (31 percent positive), Michele Bachmann (31 percent), and Herman Cain (28 percent).  Mitt Romney had 26 percent favorable coverage.

The next time Sarah Palin or any of her cohorts start whining about how they are so ill-treated by the "lamestream media," perhaps someone will show them this study.  Not that they would accept it, of course.  Too "scientificky."

Television news: The world of misinformation

The January ratings for the thirty top television news shows have been announced and, once again, unsurprisingly, Fox News dominates the ratings. The first thirteen shows listed are Fox entries. The inevitable conclusion is that most of the people in this country whose prime source for news is television get their news from Fox. Moreover, at least two scientific studies have revealed that Fox viewers are less well informed about current events than those who get their news from other sources. That explains a lot about our society and its dumbing down. Rupert Murdoch has a lot to answer for.

I don't watch Fox and so perhaps I'm not the best judge, but from what I read about the various shows, I believe that perhaps the worst offender of all may be Fox and Friends, the show that rates number 13 in the top 30, just above the first MSNBC entry to appear on the list, The Rachel Maddow Show, which I do watch. My impression is that Fox and Friends routinely and shamelessly distorts stories in the news to reflect the talking points of the right-wingers who control the network. Most, if not all, of Fox's programs apparently do this, but Fox and Friends seems the most egregious of all.

Media Matters has compiled an extensive list of the show's "Big Lies" from the previous year. For their work, the media watchdog awards them the title of "worst misinformer of 2011." Goebbels had nothing on these folks. And more than a million of your fellow citizens watch them every day and hang on every word they utter. That should keep you awake at night.

And another thing...

There's another rant that I need to get off my chest before I leave the subject of pundits. All year long we've been hearing from these looney tunes, tone-deaf guys and gals about how this election year will be come-uppance for incumbents. You see, according to them, Americans are mad as hell at incumbents and they are not going to take it any more. This will be the year when they throw the bums out and bring in new blood, according to the narrative of the punditocracy. Especially new tea party blood. The pundits really, really love the tea party, because it says and does outrageous things and gives them fluff with which to fill up their 24-hour news cycle.

So what has been the record so far of incumbents in this year of "throwing the bums out"? Well, roughly 99% of them have won their races. Only about four have gone down to defeat and two of those were turncoats who had switched party in mid-stream - one from Republican to Democratic and one from Democratic to Republican. What then will be the effect of this reality upon the pundits' narrative? Will they admit that they just made it all up out of whole cloth and will they begin actually reporting events as they happen rather than trying to fit them into their pre-set narrative mold? Is the pope Jewish?

Oh, they may be forced to make some minor changes. For example, this has now become the "year of the woman" because of all the women that are running - and many of them winning - in Republican primaries this year. (Thank you, Sarah Palin!) This is just a variation on the "throw the bums out" theme, because the bums, by definition, are almost all males and these women are now here to clean things up. Isn't that what women always do? The pundits, naturally, have missed the fact that women have been running and winning in Democratic primaries and as Democratic candidates in general elections for years! It only counts in the virtual world of the pundits if the the Republicans do it.

These may be unsettled times among the electorate and a lot of voters may be really unhappy with some of the people in elective office in Washington, (I know I am!) but I suspect, when crunch time comes, we will find that most voters are actually satisfied with their own incumbent and that they will not at all be interested in throwing him/her out.

But, never fear, I have no doubt that the pundits will find a way to spin that so that it fits the election stories that they have almost certainly already written.

Oh, just turn down the thermostat and forget it!

NASA is out with another report on the climate. Their data on the earth's temperature show that the last 12-month period is the warmest on record. In addition, April 2010 was the hottest April on record and March 2010 was the hottest March on record. Furthermore, taken together, January, February and March this year set records as the hottest of that three-month period on record. NASA now predicts that a new record 12-month global temperature will almost certainly be set in 2010. This has all happened, or is happening, in spite of the "moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance."

So, during this period, there has been reduced solar irradiance which should have meant that the earth would be cooler. Instead, we've recorded the hottest temperatures on record. Gee, I wonder how that could have possibly happened?

But...but, 1998 was cooler. And all those purloined emails from scientists in England - didn't they prove that the data was dodgy and that scientists just made it all up? Besides, there were snowstorms in the Northeast last winter. Doesn't that prove the earth is cooler?

1998 was an anomalous year and only one year. Every year since then has been one of the hottest on record. The purloined emails only proved that scientists are human but did not call into question any of the data. Snowstorms happen in winter. If it starts snowing in the Northeast in July and August, then the deniers might have a case. Or not.

What can we do about this? Just turn down the thermostat and forget it? Shouldn't we be trying to affect the policies of our country to address the monumental problem of climate change and all the related problems that it brings? There is a bill before the Senate now, a far from perfect bill, but then most bills that manage to get brought up in that imperfect body are. Imperfect, but it's a start. Perhaps we can begin with that and build on it.

Meantime, the news media in this country could do us all a favor and do its job by reporting the data from NASA, instead of engaging in the kind of he said/she said polemics that they usually employ. Just the facts, media. Just report the temperature data. Everyone is entitled to form his or her own opinion, but there is only one set of facts. Why don't you report them for a change?