Can’t argue. I maybe a little out of date on Ma Jones’ and Nation’s content.

Dugger

An informal exemplary left to right leftist political hierarchy: Commies, Indy media, Pacifica, Kos, OW, Nation, Ma Jones, SF Chronicle, Ny Times. WaPo

I gotta put in my $.02: I’d call it radical to left of center, and yes move Nation to the left of OW, if not Kos, and Mother Jones to the left of the Nation.

And no, I’m fully aware there are different conservative viewpoints, I just get tired of hearing about them all the time and like to listen to liberal voices once in a while.

(An informal exemplary left to right leftist political hierarchy: Commies, Indy media, Pacifica, Kos, OW, Nation, Ma Jones, SF Chronicle, Ny Times. WaPo.

Not bad. I’d slide the Nation and Mother Jones a little farther left, but otherwise pretty accurate.

Dugger (An informal exemplary left to right leftist political hierarchy: Commies, Indy media, Pacifica, Kos, OW, Nation, Ma Jones, SF Chronicle, Ny Times. WaPo.

I never said ADM cares about Citibank. I said ADM cares about genetic engineering and what the public perception of it is. Likewise Citibank wants to get a certain perception out there about the Bankruptcy Reform Act. Exxon wants the public to have a certain opinion about global warming. These guys spend millions of dollars on PR and a good chunk of that is their sponsorhip of the MSM.

Phillip Morris spends money on anti-smoking ads because they are under a court order to do so. The beer companies spend money telling people to “drink responsibly” because they want to avoid a court order telling them to do so.

And yes, corporations may make decisions to keep their hands off their publishing interests, and the pope may be jewish.

No problem, dugger, I can straighten this out easily. The NYT is at best moderate. Almost all of the rest are between center and right, edging out to the extremes of Limbaugh, FOX News, etc. The WSJ is interesting because their editorials are always hard right but their reporters will often give you more of the full story than what you see in the supposedly “liberal” Times. I used to have a job where I had to read it every day and I noticed that.

“The beer companies spend money telling people to ‘drink responsibly’ because they want to avoid a court order telling them to do so.” Why? If the end result is that they’re doing it, anyway, what’s the difference?
My point was, that even though it’s not in their interest, they’re doing it anyway.

Finally, just because you don’t believe me doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

If you start out with the belief that corporations with publishing interests (not necessarily publishing corporations) have a burning desire to influence the news — even when the news doesn’t affect them — and won’t accept even the possibility that they have other motives and goals, then you end up right back where you started. So, now what?

“It may be you are calling liberal what I would call moderate or even center right”

If you view the NY Times as moderate or center right then I agree with the above remark 100% See, we won’t agree on what constittues bias. I would be happy to have 50% of the media present programming I think is not biased and 50% present programming YOU think is not biased. I wouldn’t set your standards and vice versa.

And I really don’t see how you can come up with a coherent big picture of media and politics if the NY Times is even moderate much less center right. What then is the WSJ, then the Wa Times, then Rush Limbaugh. I mean you’ve already got the Times middle right. Do you just lump them all in the fascist category? Think!

Dugger

I disown the corporate media for their pro-corporate agenda, but I guess you guys don’t want them either, for a whole host of other reasons.

I stand by what I said, though. The corporate media is not liberal. You will never hear the straight poop about genetic engineering from Archer Daniels Midland. You will never hear the real story of bankruptcy reform from Citibank. That’s just the way it is.

I am perplexed, though, about your idea of “liberal” since you claim there are a lot of “liberal” businesses out there. It may be you are calling liberal what I would call moderate or even center right. It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.

And semanticleo, with sprinkles I hope?

You will never hear the straight poop about genetic engineering from Archer Daniels Midland. You will never hear the real story of bankruptcy reform from Citibank.

SadieB

I think you may be presupposing two things that aren’t true: 1) Quite possibly, Citibank doesn’t care what you think about ADM, and ADM doesn’t care what you think about Citibank; they are not in cahoots; and 2) If Philip Morris can publicize anti – smoking messages, and liqour companies’ ads can advise people to drink responsibly, why couldn’t any corporation, as a public service, publicize issues that are sore points with them. It’s like “institutional advertising” – ads that don’t necessarily sell products, but do improve the image of the corporation or industry.

Finally, corporations may make decisions to keep their hands off their publishing interests deliberately, to deflect accusations like yours…

Well we sure as h*ll don’t claim Chris Matthews. If he’s supposed to be on OUR team, I want to fire him ASAP and replace him with a person of our own choice.

sadie, Just think about it seriously for a minute. Yes, shows have sponsors and the sponsors are almost always businesses. But hereafter your logic falls apart. You assume that since there is a business sponsor, there must be a conervative bias or limiter. Wrong. First consider how many liberal businesses there are. Consider that even conservative CEOs might consider it “good business” to permit and say leftish things. Consider that we all differ on what constittues liberal or conservative bias. You read the NY Times and see no liberal bias. Many others do see some bias in the Times. So a CEO with strong personal liberal proclivities might think that, h*ll, Mother Jones is not truly liberal, so I’m gong to take their editorial position. Your argument puts the cart before the horse. To determine bias, one need not go any further than programming content. It makes little sense to look first at “guessed-at” motives and then back into an analysis of programming based on speculative motive analysis.

Dugger

Returned momentarily to say; someday I’m going to buy you a cup of coffee.

……….OK a donut too.

Other than that it’s the *corporate* media, thank you very much.

Radical wingnuts (I won’t call them “conservatives”, because there’s nothing “conservative” about them) hate the corporate media almost as much as we do though. And there’s good reason for that. Because the Corporate Media is only there to sell soap. With the exception of Fox and Limbaugh, they’re not there to push a radical right-wing agenda (endless war, Christian theocracy), they’re there to shell cheap consumer shit to a sheep-like public. “Liberals” hate them for that. So do the wingnuts.

The only people who actually *like* the media, most of the time, are those whose interests concide with them: people trying to sell cheap consumer shit to a sheep-like public. That includes the power elite of the Repug party: huge multinational mega-corporations and their business-uber-alles agenda. And of course some DLC shills on the take from corporate fat-cats.

Nobody of any principle– indeed of any significant ideological bent– likes the Corporate Media. There ain’t nothing “liberal” about them.

Bzzt, sorry, thanks for playing.

JK – I like your thinking. Kind of like “the hit dog yelps,” right?

Oh yea, they didn’t.

The media is liberal, which means they reported the reason why John Kerry voted “for it, before he voted against it”.

Oh yea, they didn’t.

The media is liberal, which explains why the so-called “Dean Scream” never made it to the news networks.

Oh yea, it did.

It’s their “binky.” As long as we keep hammering home that this is merely nothing more than a hackneyed, overplayed political device, then eventually, the thumb sucking will be seen for what it is.,

What we’re starting to see in recent years, are people who are effectively debunking the “myth” of a liberal propogandist machine in our nation’s major news outlets…let’s keep it up.

JK

I am incommunicado for a few days. Fill in the blanks

The point of the thread is that this Brian Williams admitted that, because of 9 / 11, “we ve offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt over the past couple of years , without saying who “we” are. Is he referring to NBC, the big networks, all TV news, including cable; or all media? Who knows?

Oliver, anxious to brush aside the “media is mostly liberal” ‘brand’ which just won’t go away, has grasped at yet another straw. You may have been reading this blog for a while. If you have, then you know that, for some time now, he has trotted out similar “evidence”, in the form of news broadcasters that, for example, refuse to condemn Bush for some (Oliver – defined) offense. Of course, if a reporter praises him, well, that clinches it.

You see, the press / media didn’t become liberal overnight. Thanks to Watergate and the Viet Nam war they shed their obligation to be neutral and objective. The liberals in the media, being more willing to advance their agenda than conservative reporters, moved “to the front” by attrition.