Pew Research Journalism Project has a slightly interesting survey out:
Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:
- Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
- Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
- Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
- Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.
By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:
- Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.
- Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.
- Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.
- Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.
The survey results were characterized in this manner at HuffPo Politics:
Conservatives are more likely to distrust news sources that don’t reflect their point of view, the study said.
The delicious irony is in how liberals continue to fail to perceive the obvious: That the reason why conservatives trust “one” major news source than “trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured”, is for similar reasons as to why liberals gravitate toward all those other news outlets. The other ones- NPR, NYTimes, MSNBC, etc.- tilt center-left to far left. FOX News is the only cable news network that leans conservative.
What is deeply frustrating is in how so many liberals fail to see the bias in mainstream publications like the NYTimes, CBS, NPR, WaPo, etc. They tend to think of these news organizations as non-biased, non-partisan, and objective in their straight news coverage- and accurate (Re: “Facts have a liberal bias.“).
The Pew Research survey itself fails to draw this conclusion:
When it comes to choosing a media source for political news, conservatives orient strongly around Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives (47%) name it as their main source for government and political news, as do almost a third (31%) of those with mostly conservative views. No other sources come close.
Consistent liberals, on the other hand, volunteer a wider range of main sources for political news – no source is named by more than 15% of consistent liberals and 20% of those who are mostly liberal. Still, consistent liberals are more than twice as likely as web-using adults overall to name NPR (13% vs. 5%), MSNBC (12% vs. 4%) and the New York Times (10% vs. 3%) as their top source for political news.
This “wider range of main sources for political news” makes it sound like liberals are much more exposed to diverse news and worldly-wise because of it; however, this is just not the case. Not only do the news outlets these self-identified liberals tend to like, lean with a leftward tilt; but in some cases, they are merely parroting/intellectual-plagiarizing from one another. Of course this happens with the AP and Reuters. But it also occurs when you have a traditionally very influential paper like the NYTimes. It reports a certain story, and other outlets- from national to regional and localized rags- essentially parrots and cites what was written in the NYTimes.
A great example of this type of group-think occurrence happened when the 2007-8 Pentagon-funded study, The Iraqi Perspectives Project, was mischaracterized by McClatchy’s reporter, Warren Strobel, who wrote about an important report that he hadn’t even read, because it hadn’t been released yet. Other news organizations ceased upon the same bullet points, which prompted the Pentagon to release the study itself, because reporters were mischaracterizing the actual findings.
As Scott wrote back in March ’08:
His [Mark Eichenlaub of Regime of Terror fame]article highlights in perfectly plain sight just how a single, biased writer will bite on a rumor from a single anonymous source about a report that hadn’t even been revealed, and then a total falsehood becomes propagated by the Old Media. When the actual report came out, anyone and everyone reading it could see that it listed innumerable documented and confirmed connections between Saddam’s regime and the network of terror groups called, Al Queda.
~~~ This one is definitely worth the read. Think about what it shows: NO ONE in the McLatchy Newspaper chain of editors, no one at ABC, no one at the New York Times, no one at CNN, no one at the Washington Post, no one at AFP, and no one at any of the blogosphere sites that posted the original article actually read the report. NONE. Old Media/traditional media outlets are supposed to be special because they have armies of fact checkers yet no one in any of these armies ever saw the actual report. The actual report contradicts the original article at almost every turn.
Is there a fact checker anywhere, or have these outlets collapsed into rumor parrots? Were it not for spellcheck, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a spelling error from the original made it to all the outlets. Would yuo?
For the record, Scott took the time to read the entire report, in blogging about it. So did Mata. I’ve only read parts. And unlike so many journalists who are not experts on the topic, Scott is, having read a great number of government documents, declassified intell reports, etc., going directly to the source and not always relying upon the filter of a journalist’s reporting. Scott’s authored a couple of books worth checking out on Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda; and on Iraq.
The report described in the article was finally released to the public, and its contents are almost completely contrary to the leaked “article” that described it beforehand.
In fact, if anything this new study should finally put to rest the false perception that Saddam’s regime was too secular to work with radical Islamic holy warriors, and it should be a genuine wake up call for people who continue to ignore the threat posed by state-sponsors of terror like Saddam Hussein once was.
To this day, due to the strength and power of mainstream media, most people are unaware of Saddam’s ties to Islamic terror and have simply been told, “There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before 9/11” or before OIF. They were led to believe that it was all just a Wolfowitz/Feith/Cheney neocon fantasy/fabrication. A recent example of the influence and reach of the NYTimes is in seeing how many people expressed shock when Chivers article came out, talking about chemical weapons found in Iraq that so many people apparently were unaware of.
They were unaware, probably because they read only the wide diversity of liberal news outlets.
Further on in the Pew study report:
Liberals, overall, trust a much larger mix of news outlets than others do. Of the 36 different outlets considered, 28 are more trusted than distrusted by consistent liberals. Just eight earn higher shares of distrust than trust. Still, among those eight, the levels of distrust can be high: fully 81% of consistent liberals distrust Fox News, and 75% distrust the Rush Limbaugh Show.
This is just silly. Rush Limbaugh?! Rush Limbaugh is a pundit, openly and unashamedly partisan. He is not “straight news” but more like the op-ed section of a newsrag. Why are they including him and others like John Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a source for news? And when one looks at the filthy laundry list of “36 different outlets”, a big “duh” as to why they trust 28 of them.
Politifact characterizes this Pew point, this way: Pew study finds Rush Limbaugh least trustworthy news source. But then, Politifact is another outlet that should be better self-labeled as “PolitiPartisan”. It would be the honest thing to do.
Liberals with a wider swath of media outlets to trust from just means they have a wider echo chamber for them to inhabit. That’s all.
Hot Air’s Allahpundit’s takeaway from this is that liberals really are jerks (on account of being defriended for political views expressed on Facebook- whee!).
Bernard Goldberg’s Arrogance is a great read for any doubting Toms out there in regards to liberal bias in modern, mainstream journalism.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
@Bill #49:
“That is a problem, because it is impossible to determine exactly WHAT liberals base their decisions on. Demonstrably, it is not reality and, just as demonstrably, they regard what comedians say as fact and gospel.”
Not a problem for liberals. As you imply, the votes go where liberals want them to go, and if liberals base their decisions on comedy, and their political intelligence is nothing but a joke, that ISN’T a Democratic problem, now is it?
“This is because Fox reports ALL the news”
Major B.S.
No single outlet COULD ever cover ALL the news. Especially not when they run the same loops over and over again, and especially not when they re-hash the same subjects OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
Just because another Republican’s alarm clock woke him in time to make another statement condemning Hillary’s negligence in Benghazi doesn’t make it NEWS. Yet FOX keeps drumming the same beats to the exclusion of almost everything else that’s going on in the world. The huge percentage of their coverage that is devoted to political sniping proportionately decreases the remaining time that COULD be devoted to other NEWS.
“FOX reports ALL the news”?
Not a chance.
@Bill #50:
“THIS is one instance of a report coming in that may or may not have been proven true.”
No, Bill. It was a report of a lie. Did FOX ever retract the lie? No? Do two wrongs make a right?
I don’t keep a running tally of FOX errors, but I wish I got a candy bar every time I heard a false statement on FOX News. I’d be set for Halloween!
@George+Wells:
Absolutely.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/22/calibration-error-changes-gop-votes-to-dem-in-illinois-county/
Well, not when offering extensive coverage of Hillary’s grandchild or Obama’s date nights. However, it is possible to cover, extensively, the major stories that might be useful in, say, making a determination as to who the leader of the free world should be.
You don’t? Perhaps, if you are going to go on and on about the extensive lying and errors that goes on there, you should. It would come in handy. Otherwise, your (and that of others) constant complaining about Fox comes off as just that; constant complaining. YET, what you and the rest of the left rely on (and hold up against Fox as the gold standard) manufactures evidence, alters audio, massecres context and fails to cover what they, with their own liberal eyes, cannot bear to look at.
Fox lied?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/10/24/breaking-news-white-house-watched-benghazi-attacked-and-didnt-respond/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/13435-did-obama-watch-in-%E2%80%9Creal-time%E2%80%9D-as-benghazi-attack-unfolded
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/fox-news-and-benghazi-video-for-real/2012/11/09/79410b04-29d8-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_blog.html
So, there WAS real-time video available; nobody claimed it was in HD.
Apology accepted.
Of course, Obama didn’t watch it. We now know he wasn’t in the situation room. He went to bed. Had to get up early for a Vegas fund raiser. Can’t be bothered with little stuff like Ambassadors or other Americans being murdered by terrorists that he says don’t exist anyway.
@Bill:
Just a reminder of what Charlene Lamb testified to:
“Additionally, I was in our Diplomatic Security Command Center monitoring multiple open lines with our agents for much of the attack.”
So State Department officials knew exactly what was happening in Benghazi, as it was happening.
I am still waiting for ONE liberal to tell me where Obama, and Hillary, were during that time frame. We do know that Obama met with Panetta during a pre-planned meeting at 5:00 p.m. D.C. time which was less than two hours after the attack began. Where was Obama after that meeting, and why was Hillary not at that meeting since it was her charges that were under siege?
@Bill:
The moo-slime a$$hole was most likely sucking on doobies and high and low fiving with his MoBroHood buddies celebrating the 9-11 anniversary.
@retire05: Thanks for the info and facts. As far as the liberals are concerned:
1) These types of facts and documented, verified – FROM the source – information are summarily filtered out by their truth filters and they never even know of it and therefore it NEVER existed – and when they hear it – their Pavlov doggie kicks in and they call it as all lies!
2) Gotta protect Obie and the hildabeast – AT ALL COSTS!
@Budvarakbar:
You would not have known about Charlene Lamb’s testimony if it had been left up to the alphabet networks. When they reported on the hearing, she was persona non gratis.
But if the Under Secretary of State, the next in line after Hillary, was aware of the real time audio, Hillary should have been there, or at least in constant contact with her immediate inferior officer. She was no where to be found. Not in the 5:00 meeting with Obama, and Steven’s second in command testified that he last talked to Hillary at 10:00 p.m. shortly before Hillary spoke about the attack being over an internet video.
That 3:00
a.m.p.m. call came, and neither Obama, or Hillary, were available to take it.@retire05: You said:
I respectfully disagree — I am sure they were available and knew every detail on a real time basis – I think everything was going exactly to the MoBroHood’s plans!
@Bill, #50:
The Innocence of Muslims was a relevant factor—assuming that the wave of violent and deadly demonstrations that swept across the Muslim world the the wake of the film’s calculated promotion was a relevant factor. To persist in denying that the film mattered at all does little to enhance one’s credibility.
An initial theory that the violence in Benghazi likely had that factor in common with the violent demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Cairo earlier the same day was entirely reasonable at the time. That initial appraisal was quickly revised by the Obama Administration as additional information became available. It has remained a perpetual object of fixation on the right, however. They seem to find the delusional belief that the Obama Administration never revises it’s preliminary assessment to be very useful. They also seem to like to pretend that all of the information about the Benghazi attack that has since become available was available from the start.
@Greg: There are a lot of things we can legitimately argue but the use of the video as the motive for the Benghazi attack is not one of them. That has been stamped and sealed; the Obama administration, through a concerted effort, lied about it to avoid talking about an actual terrorist attack on a consulate that killed an Ambassador and 3 other Americans, stranded and abandoned.
We can argue about the motive for the lie, but as far as was it a lie, there is no argument. Numerous emails reveal not only that the administration had the information that it was a terrorist attack but also that the “talking points” was deliberately promoted for Susan Rice’s bullshit tour on the Sunday talk shows. Greg, there is no debate on that matter; of course, this is one of the reasons relying on all those other sources is fallacy; they hide the truth. The NYT even ran with this lame excuse AGAIN, thinking, I guess, that everyone had forgotten it had been tried once before. We now know, based on the testimony from the one and only captured perp (and we KNOW no coercion was involved, don’t we?) that this was a planned attack.
The administration ran with that phony story for two weeks. Hillary even promised the mother of one of those killed that the video makers would be punished. The video make is, in fact, still in jail.
However, you have no excuse, Greg, for the details of all these revelations has been laid out on this very site. But, this is not the only place such information can be found. In fact, the only place the thin lie of the video is promoted is on the liberal Pablum for idiots sites, aka the MSM.
@Greg:
.
ROTFLMAO
Really, Greggie? Odd that when Nic Robertson, of CNN, interviewed the organizers of the Cairo protest, ON THE DAY OF THE PROTEST, the video was never mentioned. Instead, the organizers claimed it was a protest for the release of the Blind Sheik.
And how odd that CNN pulled that report, that was supposed to run on September 12, 2012, AFTER the Administration came out with the video lie.
That’s what you get for trusting Wikipedia, when anyone can post anonymously there. Read the Wiki article. Reads like it came from the White House propaganda machine.
@Greg #59:
That’s exactly as I remember the event unfolding. The film was already at the center of a lot of Muslim unrest and violence across the world. And it did NOT take long for the darker context of the Benghazi violence to be recognized. Problem was that even by then, it was too late to respond – at the site.
I would think that Republicans should be thanking the dead ambassador, Hillary AND Obama for one bit of very good news: This debacle PROVED something that was not previously appreciated – that NO amount of “Mr. Nice Guy” on the part of America will EVER soften militant Islam’s attack on the West.
Bleeding-Heart Liberals have long believed that if we would only bend over backwards and praise Allah, Muslims might lighten up. We hadn’t really tried that approach before, so we couldn’t be sure what the reaction would be. Well, Obama tried it. IT DIDN’T WORK!
I think that 4 deaths, while tragic in their own right, is a small price to pay for convincing a whole lot of Liberals that we’re going to have to kill a whole bunch of Muslims to back them away from our doorstep. A WHOLE lot. I think that if enough ISIS vermin were to collect in one place long enough, we ought to nuke them. We’d get blow-back from our allies, but somehow we’ll have to send the message that little rat packs shouldn’t mess with America. We’re going to have to decommission and clean up a lot of old cold-war atomic weaponry anyway, we might as well get some value out of at least a few of them…
@George+Wells:
Up your Aracept dose.
I’ve found that this phenomenon, almost as strong as BDS, is something you simply can’t engage a liberal on. The White House and other media have singled out FOX and accused if of doing what they do themselves . . . all in attempt to mask it.
So, you have the usual lib trolls here deriding Fox, but not scrutinizing NBC, Huffpo, WaPo, NPR, ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, etc.
It does not occur to them that a minority share of American one political view is the overwhelming majority of those working in media and entertainment. Instead, they merely think they are just part of “normal” America, not just a small part.
80% (roughly) of the media leans left.
5% (I’m being generous) of the media leans right.
The rest is neutral-ish.
It’s a culture war, and when your kids are bombarded with the 80%, they are going to follow it.
The libs here just don’t understand that they are not “right”, but only a part of a greater democracy, one that deserves unbiased and objective reporting, not media-turned-propaganda to support a radical minority.
I seem to remember that pre-Iraq-invasion, all the talk coming from the BUSH Whitehouse and Cabinet was “OMG! WMD’S!” and then when we actually got there and found no WMD’s, the mission quietly morphed into regime-changing nation-building. “Saddam can run, but he can’t hide.” Did that switcheroo bother Republicans? Nooooooo.
And you find it a mystery why Democrats can’t get too excited when THEIR president doesn’t get it right the first time?
LOL. Democrats know that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
@George+Wells:
Ummm, actually, according to the New York Slimes, we did. But the Slimes had to spin it as “not the right kind of WDMs” to cover the Democrat ass.
The only time Obama actually got it right was when he refused to arm the Free Syria Army. But even that had a shelf life.
@retire05, #61:
Do you think the Cairo demonstrations were organized by one person or even by one faction? If you narrow your focus down to one interview with one person you’re hardly getting the full story, are you? In this case the person being questioned in front of a Western news camera was a close relative of the Blind Sheik, who had the specific goal of getting him released. How would any reasonable person expect him to use that moment?
The right is equally quick to latch on to anything that supports their own narrative, and just as quick to disregard anything that doesn’t. If some goofy hick preacher in Florida can incite murderous riots on the other side of the world simply by burning a book, what should we expect from a video designed to insult and incite that has been given a push in Muslim media as an anniversary that’s already expected to bring out demonstrators comes up? What does past experience with Islamic fundamentalists and common sense tell you is likely to happen?
@Greg:
Once again, you show how little you know.
And yet, if Christians all across the world were to riot over PissChrist or the Madonna being created out of camel dung, you would be the first to condemn them.
@George+Wells:
Pentagon hides finding over 5,000 chemical warheads in Iraq. Of course, the NYT denies this constitutes “finding chemical weapons”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0
He has gotten nothing right.
@Greg:
Well, to date, this is the only person this administration had pinpointed, captured (though he was living in the open and giving interviews) and asked. And, one of the answers he has given (as I have related but has not yet soaked through 2 years of far left talking points) is that the attack was well planned well in advance and the stupid idea of a video causing it was not even near accurate.
Note, Greg, that when the Muslims rioted due to the Koran burning, they did not carry GPS-targeted heavy mortars with them. The video excuse was a lie. From the very beginning, it was a lie. The administration knew it was a lie but believed, rightly, that no one in the corrupt MSM would call them on it.
The trouble with conspiracy theories is that when anyone asks what motive could possible account for such insane mischief, the answer necessarily has to be even more insane:
“Obama intentionally allowed the ambassador to be murdered because… Obama is an embedded Muslim intent on destroying infidel America!”
No, Obama WASN’T worried about his re-election. The only people who thought that Obama was going to lose in 2012 were the absurdly out-of-touch Republican “pollsters” and the commentators who reported their findings on Fox “News”. Oh, and the poor misguided sheep that took their bait, hook, line, and sinker… like Mitt Romney. Sucker! Democrats knew better, because THEY got their information from MORE THAN ONE SOURCE! Surprise-surprise! The Democrats got it right, and the Republicans stood out in the rain with their pants down, wondering what happened. So they convened a task force to study what went wrong, and it reported that the GOP needed to lighten up on things like gay marriage and illegal immigration and marijuana if it wanted to remain viable in the 21st century. And what did the RNC decide to do? Double down on its tried and proven messages of bigotry and exclusion, reaffirming its commitment to its own planned obsolescence. Good job!
@George+Wells:
Ah. So THAT’s why the White House had the IRS attack conservative groups. THAT’s why he spent almost a billion dollars on his campaign. THAT’s why he campaigned instead of acting as President. THAT’s why the Labor Department falsified unemployment figures. Because he had the election in the bag.
@Bill #71:
“he had the election in the bag.”
Yep. Democrats knew it, the pollsters knew it.
My question to you is: Why didn’t YOU know it? Why was Romney and the rest of FOX “News” viewers dumbstruck by the election results? You cannot ride along on your alternate-reality choo-choo train and expect your next stop to be in the REAL WORLD!
@George+Wells: That’s quite a selective and biased take on things. I think you’re confusing what the WH said and what the media said the WH said.
As I said, 80% of the media had the goal of making Bush into the faux demon they’d set out to make him. We’re still dealing with the aftermath, as read on some of these posts.
And it worked beautifully, because you have millions indoctrinated: the lib posters here can’t argue any points about Obama’s failures — they’re too busy spouting media points from 2000 to 2008, when everything they feared stepped into the White House (or so they were taught).
No, the libs have little to stand for and little to stand on.
@George+Wells: Well George, I guess when it’s a lib cause and crusade, the rest of the country should roll over and shelve their ideals…
You sound like a football fan, not a responsible voter.
We’ve lost so, so much due to Obama’s incompetence. I wouldn’t parade around and remind anyone that you voted for him. It makes you look like an idiot.
P.S. – if the NYT, CNN, et al started reporting that Obama was a failure, you’d agree . . . with the provided talking points that offered a way out of looking silly.
@Nathan Blue #74:
“You sound like a football fan, not a responsible voter.”
My “jocular” tone comes from knowing that the foibles of Man, and in particular his “politics,” are in almost every instance laughable, and the lack of a sense of humor demonstrated by right-entrenched advocates here at Flopping Aces adds irresistible mirth that I find difficult to restrain.
You huff and puff with righteous indignation and issue forth grave prognostications as if you were all going to live forever AND will have to suffer eternally the errors you allow others to make.
Don’t worry so. None of us have quite so long.
I’ve been watching as this ridiculous thread progresses, seeing how y’all keep making the “argument” that Fox “News” is the cat’s meow, “reports ALL the news,” doesn’t make mistakes, isn’t biased, blah-blah-blah, and how the liberal media lies constantly and is always wrong.
But when Greg makes a REASONED argument in the opposite direction, or when I make a sarcastic point to the same effect, your response is to belittle or ignore our facts altogether.
The points I made in #70 were spot on subject and accurate, but were not answered, reminding me that the fantasy worship of Fox News is just that.
And since I’m laughing at y’all careening around in stumble-mode, I’m an irresponsible voter?
I got what I wanted, got the President I wanted, and he got ME what I wanted.
In evolutionary parlance, that equates to survival of the fittest.
Now, don’t interrupt me whilst I do my victory dance around the goal post!
@George+Wells:
In case anyone on the Right was momentarily confused as to what to panic about, one of Ted Cruz’s senior advisors tweeted tonight: “Before Obamacare, there had never been a confirmed case of Ebola in the U.S.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119970/ted-cruzs-deputy-chief-staff-tweets-absurd-ebola-obamacare-comment?utm_content=buffer2a851&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
@Tom:
So…. before Obama, how many cases of Ebola had been in the U.S.?
@Tom #40:
Excellent comment Tom! I hadn’t really looked at it this way; but I think there is merit in what you point out. Thanks for that.
I’d love to see more conservative choices that are also as mainstream as FOX.
Incidentally, I have not had a working television set for the last few years. I only read about television news these days; or watch clips on the internet.
Here are a few random links (the number of past FA posts and links on liberal bias are numerous):
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/report-journalists-are-miserable-over-educated-under-paid-middle-aged-men-mostly/361891/
Bernard Goldberg (whose book I recommended in the OP): http://bernardgoldberg.com/bulletin-journalists-liberal-democrats-just-ask/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/journalist-consensus-media-leans-left-179852.html
http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/08/tim-groseclose-author-of-left-turn-answers-your-questions/
http://www.worldmag.com/2013/02/why_are_journalists_liberal
http://www.journalism.org/2006/10/06/the-american-journalist/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1919999
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/journalism_should_own_its_libe.php?page=all
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/liberal-media-7-of-journalists-say-they-re-republicans.html
@Tom #76:
And Retire05 misses the irony yet again.
One wonders if the absence of a sense of humor is a terminal condition.
The right has been so busy pointing its collective fingers of blame (Obama is such a TOTAL disaster) that it has completely failed to see the silver lining of his failed foreign policy regarding ISIS. (See my post #62) Beheadings continue. Murders continue. We NOW have the moral right, if not the obligation, to demand that the governments of Iraq and Syria snuff out the “Islamic State”, or else we proceed to systematically nuke their respective countries – with the purpose of eradicating ISIS once and for all – until nothing is left.
I don’t think that Hillary has the cojones to do it. Do any of the Republican contenders?
@Wordsmith #78:
Thanks for your refreshing acknowledgement of Tom’s #40.
So much better than the nodding sycophants who line up in a harmonious chorus of blind praise for Fox “News”.
Critical thinking is rare, and honesty even more precious.
@Wordsmith:
LOL, I’m not so sure that more conservative MSM news choices are what Tom really wants. I certainly agree with you Wordsmith. I think that what really upsets our leftist posters here is that Fox news not only exists, but that it is thriving as more and more viewers are turning their backs on the likes of MSNBC & CNN and the other leftist television news and are instead switching to Fox.
@Ditto #81:
If Fox “News” is so G.D. successful, why AREN’T there more?
Is their formula patented? Did giving birth to Fox break the mold?
The country truly DOES need a wider selection of right-leaning perspectives, and enough of them to cover a RANGE of both subjects and opinions.
Right or wrong, the left DOES have that range.
@George+Wells:
You might as well ask: why aren’t more of the existing MSM news turning away from their leftist bias, (bias which is losing them market share along with advertisers,) and either following Fox’s lead in going more conservative or Republican or at least neutral. When you drive your audience away by giving them what you want instead of what they want, and “the love is lost”, it’s not your competitors fault that they turn to them. It is CNN’s fault that Dish network is dropping CNN, not Fox. Surely you know that it takes big money to build a new cable news network from scratch, yes? For the other potential Murdocks out there it makes more sense to let the dying leftist cable news outlets continue to falter and lose their networks net worth until they can be bought cheaply. There actually are a few start-up subscription “Republican” online news outlets that are doing quite well indeed. Fox of course. The Blaze has continually held their own on their online subscription video news. Breitbart which provides a mix of blog and video news has taken off like wildfire. Drudge is still happily plugging along much to the chagrin of the Clintons.
Hell, I can barely stomach our local news because they have been adopting the preachy-nanny progressive reporter model and present too many thinly disguised marketing and advertisements presented as “news reports.” Aside from the weather and breaking news, it’s hardly worth paying attention. Often their leftist prattle gets so eye-rolling blatant that I just turn it off.
The left is just getting over the spanking it got from the failure of the leftist Air America. It wouldn’t surprise me for the leftist cable and broadcast news agencies to all go belly-up and expire with their comrades the far-left newspaper and news magazines (the latter of which also adopted the far-left progressive bias and managed to lose subscriptions in return for it). Except for Fox cable news which, (as I noted,) continues to grow it’s market share. The only reason PBS still exists is because of taxpayer funding and almost continual membership/sponsorship drives.
@retire05, #68:
The man Nic Robertson interviewed, Mohamed al Zawahiri, was reported to be the Blind Sheik’s brother. If that’s misinformation, Breitbart is equally misinformed. If you click on that link, you’ll find Breitbart states the following:
@George+Wells: Wow. The big words come out, but I’m not reading anything new.
Your assumptions continue to reek of bigotry. Every one “lines up” behind FOX? Really? That’s a stretch. The issue at hand is that libs point out the speck in others’ eyes while ignoring the log in their own. My concern is that you hate Fox because it leans to the right in the way most media leans to the left (supporting your point of view, overwhelmingly).
That your liberal point of view seems to be plastered on every street corner, movie, tv show, etc, and you get upset about a news organization leaning the other way (exploiting a marker created by liberal media/entertainment), is a little irrational.
Fox annoys you the way MSNBC annoys others. So what. Deal with it and move on.
As they say, “it’s a free country”. I think it’s time for you to understand the people in the country aren’t “lined up” behind Obama and the left, nor the right. The 2008 fantasy was just that. Nothing changed; just more of the same: politicians saying what we want to hear in order to gain power and money.
P.S. – you seem like a leftist “sycophant” yourself, so I wouldn’t throw that word around like it means something. I’m not a conservative, by the way. I called myself a liberal until around 2000, when the liberal turned into leftist bigotry. I find it occasionally necessary to point out that neither the Dem or Rep party are anyone’s master. The zealous loyalty to the Dem party by a minority in this country is chilling.
@Nathan Blue #85:
“Every one “lines up” behind FOX? Really?”
Here at FA they do. This ENTIRE thread has been nothing BUT. Save for Wordsmith, every time a FOX error is mentioned, we hear nothing but crickets from the right.
“My concern is that you hate Fox because it leans to the right in the way most media leans to the left”
Not at all. I like Fox, and I want MORE like it. There SEEMS to be too much MSM coverage from the liberal perspective, and not enough from the right. (Note that Ditto’s last post seems to be refuting that, and there ARE conservative sources out there, but like many others, when I tune in, it’s mostly left-leaning drivel that I run into.)
For the record, I think that the WORST bias comes from the line-up on MSNBC. What I hate is BIAS. I want the NEWS. MSNBC has the worst bias, but FOX “News” isn’t too far behind.
“P.S. – you seem like a leftist “sycophant” yourself… The zealous loyalty to the Dem party by a minority in this country is chilling.”
Again you seem to be ignoring the vast body of my self-explanation. I am a liberal on gay issues because I am gay, and because I see the Republican Party fighting against my equal rights.
I have argued against the gay movement’s position on religious freedom (a point silently ignored by your right-leaning cohorts),
I have advocated a nuclear response to ISIS to counter Obama’s failed foreign policy in that direction,
I own a gun,
I’ve advocated a lethal solution to illegal immigration,
I’m more fiscally conservative than the average Republican, and
I’ve taken up a number of other positions in tandem with your own.
I remain “zealously loyal to the Democratic Party only so long as my equal rights are in question. Once that issue is SETTLED, I’m back on with you.
But you’ve missed another nuanced perspective worth noting:
I have never begrudged the Republican Party its existence. I am a firm believer in our two-party system, if only because I am absolutely certain that a one party arrangement (either party) would quickly deteriorate into tyranny. Power too easily corrupts. When EITHER party controls EVERYTHING – the Senate, the House, the Whitehouse and the SCOTUS – all hell breaks loose, and 49.5% of Americans get screwed.
Yes, the Democratic Party IS the worst offender of the “truth,” but it represents a large and expanding class of poorer Americans who need what Republicans are unwilling to provide. On the other hand, Republicans are caught in a vicious cycle pandering to their only enthusiastic base – Southern white evangelic Christian males – to the detriment of their future viability in the national political arena. My #70:
“The only people who thought that Obama was going to lose in 2012 were the absurdly out-of-touch Republican “pollsters” and the commentators who reported their findings on Fox “News”. Oh, and the poor misguided sheep that took their bait, hook, line, and sinker… like Mitt Romney. Sucker! Democrats knew better, because THEY got their information from MORE THAN ONE SOURCE! Surprise-surprise! The Democrats got it right, and the Republicans stood out in the rain with their pants down, wondering what happened. So they convened a task force to study what went wrong, and it reported that the GOP needed to lighten up on things like gay marriage and illegal immigration and marijuana if it wanted to remain viable in the 21st century. And what did the RNC decide to do? Double down on its tried and proven messages of bigotry and exclusion, reaffirming its commitment to its own planned obsolescence.”
This intransigence will sink the GOP. It’s one thing to champion conservatism, but another thing entirely to deconstruct your own party into irrelevance. I honestly don’t want that. If the Republican Party loses the ability to win national elections, we’re sunk. Gerrymandered districts will continue to elect more than your fair share of Republican Representatives, but the best that they will be able to do is stall the country’s legislative process indefinitely, and that won’t end well.
Your failure to recognize THAT is chilling.
@Wordsmith:
@George+Wells:
Good comments. I completely agree. You can never have too many choices of news and perspective.
Related, I came across this Ross Douthat post that addresses this very sentement: The Missing Right-of-Center Media He has some interesting hypotheses why this gap exists and sees it as a missed business opportunity:
Re. media bias:
I think there is a critical difference between the media bias of the MSM compared to Fox News that’s important to understand when comparing the two sides. The bias of the MSM, to the extent it exists, is largely a bottom up bias. What i mean by that is that people who go into journalism tend to be more liberal than conservative and they tend to go into the media outlets that featured people who inspired them in the past. So it tends to build upon itself. A Mike Wallace idolizes an Edward R Murrow, and a David Remnick idolizes Ben Bradlee, and someone in college today idolizes one of the imbedded reporters in Iraq, and they follow in their footsteps. So even though journalistic ethics demand getting the story right, I can’t rule out subconscious bias at that level. What I don’t think is that there is a conscious editorial mandate, on the news side, to push an agenda. I think most of these people are too dedicated to their profession for that.
The bias of Fox News is bottom down. Fox News was created to be a conservative response to the perception of liberal bias in the media, so conservatism is in its DNA. The owner is a dedicated and active power in conservative politics. Moreso, Roger Ailes, the President of Fox News, is a powerbroker and a kingmaker in Republican politics. To say the relationship between Fox News and the Republican party is cozy is a gross understatement. Ailes has a huge influence upon decisions right up to who gets to run for President on the GOP ticket:
What happens in this type of environment is not that the individual Fox News reporters are not doing their jobs ethically. It’s the way news is presented at the editorial level. It’s leading the nightly news cast with Benhgazi again, or having the Obamacare story on the Foxnews.com homepage. It’s the unmistakable coordination of messaging between Fox News and the Republican Party. Finding bias at the New York Times is largely an exercise in finding fault with bias at the individual level. With Fox, it’s consciously institutional.
One solution, other than a competitor for Fox, is simply more conservatives in journalism working for existing media. And it does happen. Robert Costa, a highly talented reporter who covered Republicans in Congress for the National Review was hired last year to do the same for the Washington Post. I think there are conscious efforts to try to rebalance the stable of talent, but they have to be out there in the first place.
@George+Wells:
While Obama was leading Romney, Romney had pulled up pretty much even before Sandy hit (remember “thank God for Hurricane Sandy”?). So, no, it was not a done deal by any means. In fact, with the economy in the dumps, unemployment high (though the administration were cooking the books) and Benghazi, it should not have even been in question.
Enter the liberal MSM. As previously reminded by me, you certainly recall the foreign policy debate in which Candy Crowley jumped to the defense of Obama as he struggled with why he had not recognized the attack as a terror attack but tried to pass it off as a protest over a stupid video. Further, the media did not cover the economy or employment and did not, as it had during the Bush administration, covered the war and the casualties. I was concerned about the outcome for that reason only; the MSM was going all in for Obama and THAT is what saved the day.
The MSM had not covered Fast and Furious, had not covered all the delays, modifications and waivers to keep the harmful effects of Obamacare from hitting voters any time before voting, had not covered Benghazi and the obvious, thin, weak lies trying to direct attention away from a massive overall administration failure. The IRS targeting and harassment of conservatives had not yet been outed, but had the MSM been doing its job, it most likely would have. We got the President the media wanted.
@Tom:
While hyperbolic, it is far more accurate than this:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2014/10/16/michael-moore-blames-nra-other-boogeymen-left-ebola-scare
There WERE no cases before Obamacare; true. The NRA responsible for the outbreak? Patently false.
@George+Wells:
Because there are not enough non-far left “journalists” to populate another news outlet.
The problem the left has with Fox is the same problem any totalitarian regime has with facts; they make their failures look bad. If liberalism was all we had, it might look pretty good. Unfortunately for the left, they won both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008 and had complete control of the nation. They failed on every front, so having something like Fox that reports those facts is inconvenient, to put it mildly. Never before has the “Fairness Doctrine” been such an issue as when the liberals are in complete control and produce disaster. Instead of noticing the the liberal ideology is a failure, the left merely strives to destroy success.
@Bill:
It has nothing to do with being “hyperbolic”. It’s a logical fallacy: correlation does not imply causation.
@Tom: You do put the letters together and read them as words, then piece them together into sentences, right? It may have been a nonsensical statement, but it is TRUE. However, saying the NRA caused the outbreak is a LIE. Just as the left claiming Republican budget cuts caused the outbreak is a LIE.
Unless, of course, you can provide an example of Ebola in the US prior to Obamacare.
@Bill #88:
“There WERE no (Ebola) cases before Obamacare; true.”
No Bill. Have you stopped beating your wife?
Even a third-grader can discern the implication here that there is a causal relationship between Obamacare and the Ebola outbreak. There isn’t.
Constructing statements that intentionally imply that there IS a connection between the two does not get you to the truth, and your desperate attempt to conflate the two is pathetic.
As Tom says:
“It’s a logical fallacy: correlation does not imply causation.”
He just got there quicker.
“So, no, it was not a done deal by any means.”
B.S.
Obama was ahead all along, but the only moment that actually mattered was on election night. You remember? That LAST night, where Romney sat there, dumb-struck, as his fantasy evaporated. How is it that Democratic voters figured out the truth – or the lie – and voted Obama in, all in the last moments of the contest? And how is it that the Republicans THOUGHT that THEY had the lead all along? (Remember that you’re making the argument that Romney was at least even if not ahead all along.) If the Republicans were THAT far off-mark, how can you make the argument that they deserved to win in the first place?
Did Sandy blow into New Jersey and rescue Obama on November 6? If all this B.S. went down ahead of the election, how did Republicans miss the opportunity to capitalize on it?
If you can’t play the politics game, how do you expect to win?
@George+Wells: I don’t put much stock in tweets (I think it is a stupid way to do business, while this administration seems to think it can dictate policy by it) and from the sound of this one, I would almost assume it to be tongue in cheek; yet your leftists accuse the right of causing the epidemic through various means, something you don’t seem to care to address. Those statements don’t “imply” anything; they CLAIM it in not uncertain terms.
You recollection of the election is somewhat different from the reality. Also remember that Obama won by a mere 3 million votes. It was much closer than you claim you remember and, had the facts been reported more honestly, there is NO DOUBT Obama would have lost.
Where did I say he was ahead? I said he was closing. As to Sandy, did the media report how the people of New Jersey were left, stranded without power or water, for weeks, as they did with Bush? Did the media report about how all the RV’s used to house Katrina victims, had been disposed of? No, they did not because they were and are in the tank for any liberal.
All things considered, Hillary would have no legitimate chance. She has accomplished NOTHING and has failed at EVERYTHING. Yet, with 90% of the media behind her, people that do not research will be led to believe that she is a viable candidate for President. She was NOT ready for that 4am call, and it cost 4 men their lives. Then, she lied about it. But, the corrupt media will protect their own.
Ummm, actually, no, he was not.
Obama held the lead, as is normal with incumbents, until Sept. 5th, when the race was a solid tie. Obama then had an uptick, but on Sept. 12 (the day after Benghazi) his favorability began to crater. Hence, the reason for the talking points about a video being the cause of the Benghazi attack. Obama did not need another “terrorist” attack right before the election, and needed a scape goat, i.e. the YouTube video, to distract from the fact that Libya, the basket he had put all his eggs in, was a disaster.
On Oct. 10th, a month before the election, Romney overtook Obama and stayed ahead of him until Oct. 31st. Even so, the day before the election, the poll remained Obama/Romney 48.8/48.1, a dangerous place for an incumbent since Obama did not have 50%+.
Elections are decided in the last few weeks of a campaign. A majority of Americans don’t even pay attention to elections until then. That is why all candidates push so hard the last month before election day.
If you don’t know the politics game, why even comment on it?
@Bill #92:
“yet your leftists accuse the right of causing the epidemic through various means, something you don’t seem to care to address.”
I’m a scientist, Bill. I UNDERSTAND that politicians don’t cause epidemics. Not Democrats, not Republicans. There, since you brought it up, are we good on this?
I’ve never heard such B.S.: Obama caused Ebola, the ‘right” caused Ebola. Absolute nonsense. Is that addressed enough?
Gays didn’t CAUSE AIDS. They helped spread it in America, but world-wide, a majority of those afflicted with AIDS are heterosexual. But the heterosexuals didn’t CAUSE AIDS either. It’s an evolved viral pathogen that crossed species when African humans contaminated themselves with the bodily fluids of infected simians.
Ebola is an evolved viral pathogen that crossed species when the likely original hosts – fruit bats – infected other jungle animals who in turn infected humans who came into contact with the bodily fluids of THOSE animals.
Asian Bird Flu is an evolved pathogen that crossed species when humans ate infected birds. Are you seeing a pattern? Does anything in this pattern suggest that humans CAUSE these epidemics? NO. Careless human behaviors contribute to the spread of viral pathogens, but that is true of ALL diseases.
Perhaps if human efforts to weaponize something like anthrax lead to the use of such a genetically modified product, a resulting epidemic COULD be considered to have a human cause, but claims by the “right” that Obama has intentionally brought Ebola back to the United States in order to wipe out infidels and open the country to Muslim colonization is patently absurd and every bit as ridiculously offensive as any suggestion that Republicans have conspired to effect a similar end. Anyone who suggests either should have his mouth washed out with soap.
Enough yet?
Tom’s Ted Cruz link was the first I’d heard coming from the right. I HAVEN’T heard a similar charge from the left, other than your claim of them. But as a scientist, I WOULDN’T be looking at political parties for a “cause” of Ebola, now would I?
Regarding the 2012 election result, you’re beating the wrong dead horse. Romney lost. What did Republicans learn?
I ask this because I don’t want the GOP to self-destruct. So far, it looks to me like the GOP isn’t trying to learn from its mistakes, but is pinning all of its 2016 hopes on its ability to character-assassinate Hillary instead. With your well-reasoned critique of the limitations of Democratic voters, this strategy would seem to be ill-advised. Don’t you think?
@George+Wells:
That doesn’t eliminate the fact that you claimed “
,” which, in fact, is erroneous.
I have to call b/s on your sincere wishes for the GOP, since you are a one issue voter. But hey, you stick with the Gods of the Copybook Headings. Misery is an equal opportunity master.
@George+Wells:
What should they have learned? That pandering to and using minorities gets votes? Currently, Obama is having 34 million green cards printed, information that “leaked”. Of course, had Obama wanted to amnesty illegal immigrants, he could have done it at any time. But he chooses election time to hang that carrot out there… a carrot that will be quickly withdrawn and blamed on Republicans.
Of course, having the MSM cover your failures and exaggerate you efforts helps greatly. There’s a lesson to learn, though it is of little benefit to those on the OTHER side of that equation.
The Republicans “self destruct” by not playing by those rules. While they cannot do what is right by immigration reform when the left (Democrats and media) characterize anything less than open borders and full amnesty as “racist”, making actual reform impossible, they must hold some sort of intermediate position until (or if) they have the leverage to actually reform immigration without destroying the nation. How do the Republicans stop a “war on women” when there is no such thing and it only exists in the phony descriptions of the left? Self destruct my ass; they have actual done a phenomenal job of holding up against a monolithic media of lies and blame for every liberal failure. They are still standing while it is the liberals that are on the ropes, struggling, lying, weaponizing the IRS, trying to stamp out Constitutional rights and using US citizenship as if it were free cell phones. Where would the liberal ideology be without taxpayer money?
@retire05 & Bill, #95 and 96:
Ok. You’re happy with how the GOP is doing. Good. I don’t share your enthusiasm, but it is nice that you have confidence that your party will survive.
I’ve made the case that I am CURRENTLY a one-issue voter, much to the disgust of Retired05, but now you don’t believe my sincerity? You question my assertions of fidelity to the conservative principles I have already expounded upon? Your tendency to eat your own is… strange.
Don’t you think that the mischief that Democrats throw your way makes you stronger? Do you think that if the Democrats just disappeared, then the Republican party would be BETTER? You think Republicans would behave themselves in office any more than Democrats do? Without anyone looking over their shoulders?
A monopoly on power is a one-way ticket to dictatorship. I don’t want that any more than you do.
My concern for the health of the GOP is genuine, and I don’t think that it can remain viable as long as it holds onto its Southern white evangelical Christian male base to the exclusion of ALL of the other constituencies that Democrats have managed to form their coalition out of.
Lighten up on something already. Waiting for Democrats to self-inflict a mortal wound isn’t a good 21st-century strategy for political success.
@George+Wells: So, you are pleased with the character of the Democrat party?
@Bill #98:
“So, you are pleased with the character of the Democrat party?”
No, Bill. It’s $hit!
But you’ve got your Retire05’s and your Phelps/Westboro Baptists shouting about sodomites and God’s wrath. Y’all refuse to lighten up on the “homosexuality is sin” stuff, and there are conservatives as high in government as Supreme court justices, House and Senate republicans and Republican candidates for the presidency who want very much to return this country to a place and time where and when being homosexual could get you thrown out of a job or an apartment, and could get you thrown IN jail, and if you actually had sex, God forbid, you might never get out. Until I’m convinced that it is SAFE for me to vote for a Republican, I won’t do it, purely out of self-preservation instinct. Lighten up on gays and their equal rights, and I’m back. I go with you all the way back to Goldwater. But keep pushing the fringes off of your shrinking plate and see where it gets you.
@George+Wells:
Stop being a hypocrite. While you claim conservative bona fides, you vote Democratic. And you have already said (I’ll look it up if I must and paraphrasing) that the rest of us can go to hell.
And you disparage those of us who hold religious beliefs, time after time after time. And yes, you are, in the historical sense of the word, a sodomite.