Mark Halperin acknowledges liberal media bias

[vulturesrow]

Mark Halperin is the political director at ABC news. He recently did an interview with Hugh Hewitt promoting his book(with co-authors), The Way To Win: Taking The White House In 2008 and had some pretty interesting things to say about liberal bias in the media. Please note this is a meme that I rarely pay much attention to because I just assume bias in everything I read and try to deconstruct from that starting point. But its hard to ignore when a guy of Helperin's experience makes some of these statements. I'll quote a few things and link the transcript of the interview.

[ QUOTE ]
MH: You’re asking me should people be skeptical? I think anyone who’s conservative should be skeptical of anything the old media does. But if they look at what we say in the book about the old media, if they look at the quality of ideas, I think that they’d have no reason to be skeptical, that the book is not a straightforward and honest account of not just the right, but of the left, and of the media.


HH: But the old media is overwhelmingly liberal, correct, Mark Halperin?


MH: Correct, as we say in the book.


HH: And so everyone that you work with, or 95% of people you work with, are old liberals.


MH: I don’t know if it’s 95%, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper. And it goes from the big and major like CBS’ outrageous story about President Bush’s draft record right before the 2004 election, to the insidious and small use of language describing Nancy Pelosi’s liberal policies and ideas different than they would Newt Gingrich’s conservative ones


[/ QUOTE ]

Interview Transcript

[canis582]

There is no liberal bias...if you believe in things like labor unions or regulation, you CANNOT become a news reporter. There is a strong corporate filter every reporter and editor must pass. Look at Disney's board of directors, how are they going to allow ABC to be liberal? Look at the NYT reporting on the transit strike.

Of course calling it the "liberal media" is useful when they report on a well-known republican teen sex predator. Or when it reports presidental lies.

[b] no wmd in iraq? liberal media!!!

[JackWhite]

[ QUOTE ]
There is no liberal bias

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you ever watch the major networks or CNN? If so, name me the last time you saw a negative story about a Democrat. They are not allowed. The Center for Media and Public Affairs just released a study showing coverage of Republicans has been overwhelmingly negative, while Democrats receive positive coverage.

Watch CNN. All day long they feature a left-wing crank named Jack Cafferty who preaches on the evil of Republicans. Not only is he on every weekday, he has his own show on Saturday. CNN just ran a long series of specials called "Broken Government." The theme: Republicans are bad. As Lynn Cheney told Wolf Blitzer, it sounded like it has been written out of DNC headquarters.

Everyone complains here about Fox News, and their lack of liberals hosts. Name me the conservative hosts on CNN. They featurue Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs, Paula Zahn, Anderson Cooper, and of course, Jack Cafferty hating on Republicans all day. Where is the balance there?

[adios]

Expect to have the FAIR study posted as a link soon to prove to you that FoxNews is totally right wing biased while CNN is right in the middle [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

[niss]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you ever watch the major networks or CNN? If so, name me the last time you saw a negative story about a Democrat. They are not allowed.

[/ QUOTE ]

False, of course ... for starters, I present you the Honorable William Jefferson (D-La.)

[kickabuck]

[ QUOTE ]
There is no liberal bias...if you believe in things like labor unions or regulation, you CANNOT become a news reporter. There is a strong corporate filter every reporter and editor must pass. Look at Disney's board of directors, how are they going to allow ABC to be liberal? Look at the NYT reporting on the transit strike.

Of course calling it the "liberal media" is useful when they report on a well-known republican teen sex predator. Or when it reports presidental lies.

no wmd in iraq? liberal media!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

Canis, the only people who believe that the mainstream(old) media is not left leaning are the far left. What is this 'you cannot become a news reporter if you believe in regulations and unions' assertion?

For many years now the only argument I hear against liberal bias in the news is the "well they are controlled by big corporations so they would never allow liberal bias". First, big and established corporations would do just fine under most progressive policies, spiking a liberal economic agenda is not particularly important. Second, the driving force behind the daily news cycle, the New York Times, is owned by a company that primarily consists of media outlets, they essentially answer to those of like mind. Most importantly is different vocations quite naturally attract like minded people often times. That young liberal people want to get in a field, journalism, where they can reach the most people and 'make a difference' seems obvious on its face, liberals want to change the status quo whereas conservatives by their very nature are less proactive. You can cling to your notions and no doubt you will, but think about why there is literally no one in the news business who comes out and admits of a conservative bias. Maybe because it doesn't exist?

P.S. Fox News is certainly conservatively biased but they were founded precisely because of the dearth of conservative viewpoints in the mainstream press. Canis, can you point to a former news person who has come out and claimed the secret conservative bias at the major networks? Good luck with that. <font color="black"> </font>

[Actual God]

Glenn Greenwald disseminates

[iron81]

I happen to think that the MSM is the best source available for unbiased news. If you are the kind of person who doesn't visit many outlets, you can't go wrong with the NYT or the network news.

1. I agree with the "corporate filter" argument Canis makes. All sorts of coverage that would reflect poorly on conservatives like media conglomerations and the negative effects of globalization get under reported.

2. The main-stream media are the only major organizations that try to be fair. Many outlets have ombudsmen that steer their outlet toward being fair. In addition, fairness is a concept that is drilled into reporters from their Journalism schools and early jobs. While perfection on this issue, the MSM is a lot closer to the mark than anyone else.

3. Even if you accept that the stories surrounding Democrats are more favorable than Republicans, there are two explanations for this. One is that there is a bias, the other is that Republican policies and decisions are worse than Democrats. If Bush hadn't decided to invade Iraq, we wouldn't be hearing the drumbeat of bad news out of there. Since Iraq is a mess, we should be hearing a lot of bad news. This concept applies to other issues as well.

4. Besides 3, the reason there has been a preponderance of bad news lately is that the press likes bad news stories. Bad news is more interesting and more frequent than good news in general: "If it bleeds, it leads" has been around for a long time. Republicans are associated with these bad news stories because they are in power.

I also like how JackWhite is ripping CNN for being biased, but he is using CNN's own efforts at fairness to rip on them by quoting Lynn Cheney. As for CNN's hosts that he mentions, the only one with an actual liberal bias is Cafferty. I think that Lou Dobbs is a conservative, its just that he's sick of Iraq.

And since kickabuck asked, I found this guy from the MSM who thinks Kerry got a bum rap with regard to the Swift Boat controversy.

[peritonlogon]

What most progressives see as a 'conservative bias' could also be described as a 'managerial class bias' which becomes a de facto conservative bias. This bias would not be know in the least to any ombudsman, any journalist or corporate executive. It would simply be the way they collectiviely view the world. Let me explain what I mean.

Left leaning people have similar views on things like taking care of the poor, education, race relations. But, the way all of these issues are framed in the debate is from management's perspective...even for progressives. For example, taking care of the poor is an issue of charity, well, an alternative and perhaps more valid framing of the issue is that unemployed people looking for work are paying the price for the nation's monetary policy. Specifically, unemployment is kept higher than it would naturally be to hold off inflation, but in so doing it keeps working wages lower, (working class wages go up when unemployment goes down) professional wages protected and more workers out of work. So, the issue is framed everywhere as the poor draining society, but a valid framing is also that the poor pay for our way of life with their poverty. This is also the perspective of many poor people.

Race issues are also given similar treatment from news media to entertainment media (every year there is a new show about a noble white person going into the inner city to help out the helpless black folk... simply an offensive premise to anyone who reads between the lines even if there are one or two white people who go into an inner city for this purpose every year). Affirmative action is typically covered (a program helping black people) but the mountains and mountains of discrimination are no longer covered (things hurting black people). Instead a 'pro black issue' story is more likely to involve a black person beating the odds, pulling himself up by the boot straps and becoming successful, which, rather than educating people on the extreme disadvantage that black people need to overcome just reinforces the myth that most black people are lazy.

A person could write a few books on media bias and how the entire framing of the debate is done by the managerial class...for example, terrifs and subsidies are protectionist (against free trade) whereas, state-based licensing for doctors, lawyers, accountants and most older professional vocations are not ever reported as protectionist, despite the fact that the country could save 10 times the ammount NAFTA and CAFTA did by coming up with universal licensing and opening up Medical Doctors to free trade.

All of this ammounts to a conservative bias because the framing of the debate distorts the validity of progressive issues.

Here is a source on the media bias that I found very enlightening. http://www.conservativenannystate.org/

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
3. Even if you accept that the stories surrounding Democrats are more favorable than Republicans, there are two explanations for this. One is that there is a bias, the other is that Republican policies and decisions are worse than Democrats. If Bush hadn't decided to invade Iraq, we wouldn't be hearing the drumbeat of bad news out of there. Since Iraq is a mess, we should be hearing a lot of bad news. This concept applies to other issues as well.


[/ QUOTE ]

Odd that the Daily Show, an unquestionably liberal source, has less of a problem with this than the MSM.