What Liberal Media Bias?
December 11th, 2006 by Peter
Headline of an AP story in yesterday’s (Waterbury) Sunday Republican:
109th Congress passes bundle of bills, then passes into history
Headline of the same AP story in yesterday’s Courant:
GOP Congress Goes Home With Tail Between Legs
Liberal bias at the Hartford Courant? Perish the thought.
The same people who think that the Courant is objective also think Hillary is a moderate and Lieberman is a right wing extremist in league with Satan… I mean Bush. To the rest of us who are in touch with reality, the Courant is only good if someone else leaves the comics page in the bathroom stall.
Wait, it’s “liberal bias” to do run a headline about how Republicans lost control of Congress? Isn’t that, like, TRUE?
Also, you are setting the Waterbury Republican-American as the standard for unbiased journalism? I’m not arguing that The Courant doesn’t have a liberal bias, but I think one would be hard pressed to say that the Rep-Am doesn’t have a conservative bias. I understand that you support their positions, but I think that’s because you’re a conservative organization and they’re a conservative paper.
Dem Girl, both papers’ headlines note the end of GOP control of Congress. But one headline reports it in a neutral fashion and the other throws in some anti-GOP editorializing.
That aside, it seems you and I agree about the Courant’s liberal bias. As for the Rep-Am, I think its slant is like the Wall Street Journal’s: conservative editorial page, standard center-left stuff on most of its news pages. There are exceptions, but the Rep-Am runs a lot of the same wire stories you’ll find in any other paper. Remember, the thing that jumped out at me about those different headlines is that they’re both for the same AP story.
Liberals think the Rep-Am is biased partly because it has the only conservative editorial page of any daily paper in the state. Conservatives think the rest of CT media is biased party because the Rep-Am has the only conservative editorial page of any daily paper in the state.
Peter
With all due respect, I hope you realize that your post is a bit silly, don’t you? You are trying to claim a liberal bias because of the headline of an article that, as DemGirl accurately stated, is true. You are correct that there is more than one way to write the headline. But for you to judge the paper based on this headline is absurd and frankly undermines your credibility.
Bottom line, the Republicans got whooped – lost both houses. Only the most optimistic dems predicted that, and even they had doubts. So, after such a bruising defeat, you bet the republicans have their collective tails between their legs. And you know what, they should. The American people have spoken and shouted a resounding “ENOUGH!” So whether you want to say that they “passed into history” or “went home with tail between legs” is really proof of nothing, except maybe that the Courant’s editors have a more colorful imagination.
Seriously, every time that you (and all others associated with FIC) take some minor piece of anecdotal information and use that to justify some claim that the sky is falling (or that the Courant is biased, or that homosexuals are unfit parents, etc.), it makes it that much more difficult for you to convince people to take you seriously. Reminds me of that story about that boy who cried wolf.
Perhaps you want to just preach to your choir. By all means go right ahead and beat the predicable right wing drum. But if you want the blog to be a place for people to come to maybe learn a little, have their eyes opened, and maybe open yours a bit as well, I’d suggest you pick your battles a bit better.
Simon, you might have a point if the Courant were just as likely to publish that headline if the shoe were on the other foot. But I don’t think they are. I don’t recall any similar headline in ’94 when the Dems suffered a greater defeat than the GOP’s 2006 loss.
And I didn’t say merely that there’s different ways to write a headline; I said one is neutral and the other is slanted. I think it takes some effort not to notice it.
In all seriousness, in my experience there aren’t too many that consider the Courant objective. I work in a Hartford office, for example, where most of the employees consider themselves moderate leaning liberal to outright “progressive.” (Most now get offended at the “liberal” label.) And even many of these people concede that the Courant isn’t representative of mainstream America. I have heard from these progressives, on more than one occasion, that they enjoy reading the Courant because it is representative of their views. This is great for them, I suppose, because they have the support of the state’s leading publication, and they enjoy the perceived camaraderie with the liberal elite. This may also be good for the Courant in that they have a solid base readership due to the liberalistic leanings of Connecticut citizens (although they have alienated many who do not find their leanings in print desirable.) But it certainly does not bode well for the journalistic credibility of the Courant when one can get even progressives to admit bias. Most reasonable people without axes to grind can see the forest for the trees in this regard.
Simon, “the Republicans got whooped”? Though the Dems gained more seats than at first expected, a one seat majority in the Senate is hardly a whooping, and I am not the first person to have to point that out to anyone. Even Associated Press calls it “fragile 51-49 control” with the emergency surgery today of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) (Prayers, BTW, for him, his family, his recovery)
But to point out the insulting tone of your choice of words, I’ll give them back to you: For you to judge this a whooping is absurd and frankly undermines your credibility. Especially if, God forbid, Johnson couldn’t serve, then “South Dakota law dictates that the governor–Republican Mike Rounds–would appoint a replacement if either of the state’s senators left office, and the governor would not have to appoint a Democrat if Johnson could not serve.”
On the subject of the post itself:
It can most definitely be demeaning to say “tail between the legs”. Clearly the proof of bias is in the reversing the words. Say “lady doctor” and “male nurse” without cringing. Now: you Dems who don’t think that the headline was biased at the Courant, pretend it was the Dems who lost control of both houses in the exact same way and numbers as the GOP just did, then say out loud to yourselves “DEM Congress Goes Home With Tail Between Legs” and TELL me you honestly think that would be a fair assessment of how it actually would have gone down when they exited the halls of Congress AND that you wouldn’t get your dander up.
Case is closed, ladies and gents!
Then ask the Ombudsman of The Washington Post (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015772.php ) who admitted they were biased in their election reporting this past month!
I’ll post it again, from the ultra liberal halls of UCLA, for those of you who don’t read old threads:
http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm
“Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America. Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts. All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.”