To witness Keith Olbermann – the most opinionated among MSNBC’s left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts – suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.
Back then, a policy against political contributions would have aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship. But today, when Olbermann draws more than 1 million like-minded viewers to his program every night precisely because he is avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan, it is not clear what misdemeanor his donations constituted.
The Baltimore Sun’s media critic is still fuming about MSNBC’s pathetic coverage on election night.
In his piece published Saturday, David Zurawik called the cable news network a “liberal prep school” while claiming the behavior of folks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Keith Olbermann was “so egregious” that the “entire realm of TV journalism was diminished in the public mind”
So my question is this then, considering the below examples (old and recent), if one who watches MSNBC cannot see the liberal bias in MSNBC… what does that say about their cognitive skills? BigJournalism has the ratings from the election night, and FoxNews trumps the liberal media… here is what the cable networks drew on average From 8-11 PM ET:
FNC: 6.957 million total viewers, 2.43 million A25-54
CNN: 2.423 million total viewers, 1.03 million A25-54
MSNBC: 1.945 million total viewers, 669,000 A25-54
Fox gets a better mix of watchers compared to other news outlets — a more even mix of political watchers in other words:
And it is why Fox slams MSNBC in the ratings daily! We find others agree (Media’ite) with the idea that Fox’s coverage was superior:
“Fair and Balanced” is a tag line for Fox News that often gets derided by its critics (and sometimes most deservedly.) But that does not mean that they don’t deserve credit when credit is due.
To be fair, NBC did join coverage earlier, after an all-new Biggest Loser.) Fox News, for all its image as the Republican-friendly network, actually seemed to have the most reserved coverage in tone of the three big cablers, going with a more reserved set and less flashy graphics (granted, by cable news standards) than its competitors. A whiteboard was even employed.
Credit where due, Fox also had a more, well, balanced panel much of the night than its competitor MSNBC. Holding forth from left of center for Fox were the recently-high-profile Juan Williams and Democratic political guru Joe Trippi. MSNBC’s main lineup, on the other hand, was basically its center-to-left lineup of nightly hosts: Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell.
Politico also drew a similar distinction between the coverage and analysis provided by MSNBC and Fox News:
Although Fox News took the most criticism during this campaign season for its alleged bias, it was MSNBC — whose new “Lean Forward” tagline inspired CNN’s promo — that wore its point of view most on its sleeve Tuesday night.
MSNBC’s election coverage was led by a panel comprised mostly of its opinionated prime-time hosts (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, along with frequent contributor Eugene Robinson), with nary a conservative voice in the mix. In contrast, Fox News’s was provided by two anchors from its straight-news dayside, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier, along with a panel that included conservatives like Karl Rove as well as liberals like Juan Williams. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity stopped by only briefly.
Verum Serum adds to the mix with the following stories:
Mediaite’s round-up did not include this similar conclusion from left-of-center NPR:
On MSNBC, however, the voices vied to dominate. From left to right — visually, not ideologically — the channel’s analysis was handled by Lawrence O’Donnell Jr., Eugene Robinson, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. (O’Donnell waited his turn to talk, but the others didn’t stand on courtesy.) They made up a lively liberal bunch, but hardly a varied one, with nary a feint toward balance.
Fox is at least making a pretense of maintaining the traditional separation between news and commentary. Then there’s MSNBC, which is being anchored, more or less, by liberal yakker Keith Olbermann…Occasionally they bring in the hyper-aggressively liberal bloviator Ed Schultz, setting up the image of the left quizzing the far left.
The Washington Post offered a pox-on-all-their-houses approach, which nevertheless criticized the biased MSNBC coverage. And sure enough the biased anchors at MSNBC provided plenty of far-left insight. Rand Paul’s victory speech was an occasion to predict the end of global civilization (no really). Marco Rubio’s win in Florida immediately led to a discussion of ethnic authenticity. Chris O’Donnell asked Michelle Bachmann if she’d be “hypnotized” to laughter from the panel. Lawrence O’Donnell warned Rachel Maddow not to compare any “human being” to Glenn Beck. And so it went.
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.
In the span of a mere 50 seconds on Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell managed to apply a conservative ideological tag four times to Pat Toomey, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, yet she failed to issue even a single label for liberal Democratic candidate Joe Sestak.
Sitting at the anchor desk with Brian Williams, Mitchell made clear Toomey “is a Republican fiscal conservative who was fiscally conservative before the Tea Party was cool,” soon repeating, in the narration for her story, how “Toomey is a former Congressman and a fiscal conservative” – all before driving home his ideology once more as she recalled that he “led a conservative Washington interest group.”
Joe Scarborough voiced the feeling of many at the time. “Well I just want to say, I love NPR and I listen to NPR, but I’ve been listening to reformed, pot-smoking hippies for the past thirty years on NPR with a very substantial left-wing bias — and I don’t care that they eat tree bark like Euell Gibbons, and I don’t care if they are still smoking pot in their sixties,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They put on great radio. But for NPR — for NPR, the leadership at NPR to question the bias of Fox News is a joke.” (Daily Caller)
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.
At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.
NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.
One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal discussions at NPR.
[….]
To the best of my knowledge, Mara Liasson has never ONCE appeared on either Glenn Beck’s or Sean Hannity’s programs. She has appeared on Fox News Special Report with Brett Baier and with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Unlike the Kool-aid-drinking mainstream media, Mara has been smart enough to understand the difference between news and op-ed, and she has remained on the news side.
Take a gander at MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s bias (see HERE and HERE) and then recognize that he is immediately followed by Rachel Maddow (see here and here), who is nearly as bad. There’s your Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on steroids.
The mainstream media seem to love bias and propaganda, just as long as it is LIBERAL bias and propaganda. And anything LESS THAN liberal bias and propaganda sends them into a hissy fit of galactic proportions.
Michael Eden continues:
The NPR ombudsman responded to a Pew study that challenged the liberal bias of the mainstream media by saying this:
There is much that can be pointed to as examples of inherent bias in the media — including NPR.
The media — as a class — tends to be remarkably homogeneous. As an NPR editor pointed out to me recently, “How many of our journalists have ever operated a business?” The poll indirectly points to the need for more diversity in our newsrooms — both intellectual and cultural. […]
This poll may have been done correctly, but in this one aspect — questioning the professionalism of journalists — the result will be a disservice to American journalists and journalism. In order to avoid the “liberal bias” accusation, some journalists might feel there is safety in pack journalism and that is likely to have a chilling effect on tough, independent journalism.
The media and its management have an obligation to maintain a skeptical and adversarial role to whatever party is in power. This poll could discourage that by implying that journalists will always let their personal politics trump their professional obligations.
Keep in mind that for much of the 2008 election campaign, and for most of Obama’s presidency, Fox News was basically the ONLY “adversarial” voice. Fox News has in fact stood alone in avoiding the “pack journalism” that the rest of the mainstream media has pursued. Which is to say, Fox News has actually done exactly those things that the NPR ombudsman argued that the media had to do.
Anti-Semitism can come in many forms; I would argue that when a news organization is very unbalanced in their coverage of the currant Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they are showing a bias that is feeding unhealthy views about the Semitic people and their history.
Another example from the recent “flotilla incident:”
A recent segment of On Point discussing the Gaza flotilla incident provided a reminder of why National Public Radio has been referred to derisively as “National Palestine Radio”. The segment hosted by Tom Ashbrook was broadcast on June 2, 2010 in the wake of the Gaza flotilla events and featured five guests — not a single one who defended Israeli actions. The show featured:
Dianna Buttu, the Canadian-Arab lawyer who has been been faulted by CAMERA for unabashedly distorting the facts and was caught brazenly lyingKarine AFrancop (Nov. 2009) intercepted by Israel and found to be loaded with vast quantities of armaments do not count. during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, asserting that Hamas rockets directed at Israeli towns do not contain explosives. Ashbrook introduced the former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman as an “Arab citizen of Israel.” Buttu provided her usual calumnies—”the blockade is a war crime”…”nothing linked to security”… “Israel cannot use the defense that the blockade is legal”… etc. Apparently, the two Iranian ships, the and the
Edward Peck, member of the Gaza flotilla and a friend to Hamas and Hezbollah, is associated with the Council for the National Interest, an organization that endeavors to end the close relationship between America and Israel. Peck describes the flotilla as “a humanitarian gesture, not in any way… hostile to Israel… The people were all of the humanitarian variety, ” he assured listeners. We have since learned that among that “variety” were Turkish militants seeking martyrdom.
Christopher Dickey, Middle East regional editor for Newsweek, has long contended that Israel is trying to drag the USA into a war with Iran. He reiterated this point-of-view again on the program. Dickey also falsely assured the audience that Israel, “knew there weren’t any lethal weapons to Gaza.”
Ehud Eiran was the sole Israeli representative. However, he did not present the dominant Israeli perspective. Polls have shown most Israelis solidly back their government’s stance on the blockade, but in typical NPR fashion, the person chosen to represent the Israeli perspective stated that he “does not even support the Israeli position.” On June 14, he published a piece in Newsweek describing Israel as a modern-day Sparta afflicted with a “hardening of the heart.”
Janine Zacharia, a Middle East correspondent with the Washington Post, was the only one who did not overtly criticize Israel. Neither did she defend its actions.
So there you have it – five perspectives and not one voice to present the mainstream Israeli perspective. That’s Ashbrook’s and NPR’s version of a balanced discussion on Israel.
“Fourteen percent of NPR listeners identified themselves as Republican, 40 percent said they were Democrats and 41 percent were independent, according to a survey taken in June by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Among all surveyed by Pew, the breakdown was 25 percent Republican, 33 percent Democratic and 34 percent independent.
