Lazy8 wrote: 
Which means they probably give the first word to Checker Finn or some other proponent of privatized schooling.

Are you saying they must flip a coin to decide who goes first? 

 Lazy8 wrote:

 
 So you fall into a familiar pattern that minimizes the cognitive dissonance in the audience.

And the reporter in question will have to justify that story to skeptical editors every time, and better not make a habit of it.

 

Are you saying that you deduced these kinds of conclusions based on news coverage you have read, or that you have read that reporters and editors routinely do these kinds of things?

 

  

 steeler wrote:
I can read.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 




Very good point.

 Lazy8 wrote:

 
And you know these things how?  

It was a long time ago, but when I was working as a journalist, those kind of thoughts never crossed my mind — and no one asked me to change or slant stories to better fit the viewpoints of a particular set of readers. Nor did I ever hear any of my colleagues talk about having to alter stories to appease a particular set of readers.  

 Edit:  Journalists are trained to be objective; there are tools one uses, and procedures one follows.  The process involves others — editors — part of whose job it is to point out and challenge unsupported parts of a reporter's story. Jurors are instructed to be impartial, but they have not undergone training for being a juror.          

Every person has biases. It is meaningless to say "that reporter is biased" or "that news program is unbiased" because every human thing has bias. Toss a dime in the air and count how many times it comes to rest standing on its edge. That's how many people are without bias—and if it happens that you find this person, it's still just a fluke. And they're just as likely to be a plumber as a politician or reporter.
 
The best we can hope for is a reporter or politician who is aware of their biases and takes steps to ameliorate them. For a politician, surrounding themselves with something other than yes-men is a good approach: develop policy in a room full of people of differing backgrounds. For a reporter, it can be harder, because things go online in such haste these days, but in the old days of a slow news cycle, editorial meetings would be held and the reporter told to get a statement from so-and-so, or include some background information on this person or that...
 
So anyway, I think we're using "bias" here when what we really mean is the politician or news outlet has an agenda. 

 steeler wrote:
We also ask people to set aside biases when they serve on juries. And (having served on a few juries) they by and large try—but if you took the case of a black defendant whose fate was decided by an all-white jury of Trump supporters, would you not prepare an appeal?

Yet we're expected to believe that a newspaper story shows no effect of the reporter's prejudices with much less at stake and a friendly audience who shares those prejudices.

Sure, they try. But they are selling words to an audience, an audience with little patience for thoughts that contradict their prejudices. You tell them the wrong kind of story and they stop reading. You give them a perspective on that story they don't want to hear and they claim bias...and stop reading. So you fall into a familiar pattern that minimizes the cognitive dissonance in the audience.

Go ahead and find an article on school choice on NPR that doesn't give the last word to the teachers union. Find a Fox News story with any sympathy for the people of Gaza. There may be a couple, but they will be buried under a mountain of others with the opposite slant. And the reporter in question will have to justify that story to skeptical editors every time, and better not make a habit of it.

it's literally the definition of politics...

bi·as

 sirdroseph wrote:

 
Most people do their jobs — despite of any prejudice or bias a person may harbor.  I might dislike a work colleague, but that does not mean I am not going to work with that person to the best of my ability to get the job done in a professional manner.  A physician may actually be a bit of a racist; does not mean the physician is not going to do his job and save the life of a member of the minority that the physician considers to be inferior.    

Edit:  Pardon the double negatives — too lazy to edit.

 steeler wrote: 




Yep, you're a lawyer. ;-) I submit that it is virtually impossible to deny one's very essence and this is manifest anywhere from a subtle nuance to full blown prejudice in everything that we do. We are all individuals even if that individuality is to be a lock step follower of a group or one who fiercely rejects the majority opinion whenever they can by virtue of a rebellious personality. In short, we do who we are.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
The question is not whether a person has a particular bias.  It is whether the person acts in accordance with that bias.   

To deny bias is to deny being human, I am not prepared to do that yet until the Cylons take over.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Not sure how it speaks to my statement regarding opinions and editorials in straight news.  This clip is not from a straight news program.  It is from the show, See It Now, a forerunner of 60 Minutes if you will.

Here's an expanded look at the show the clip above came from. 

 kurtster wrote: 
It's even worse than you think. Turn on a newscast. Any one. It won't matter. Mute the station to reduce "information" overload. (Yeah, I just did that! Even in a boring politics-related forum, I'm still a smart@ss!) OK, now watch the camera angle changes. Watch for swapping out the graphics. You're looking for significant movement, for changes. Ignore the banner on the bottom. I don't even need it to make my case. If you start counting or time from the start of a graphic to a change or movement, you will not hit 20 seconds. Ever. Producers are taught to do that, because, in this era, most people don't have the attention span to focus. TV viewers are multitasking...tv/phone/laptop/eating/etc. News organizations know that they can't compete with all our other toys and preoccupations if they give the public straight newscasts. That day has come and gone. So we get treated to the Max X equivalent of "news", which now supplements "reports" on all the latest gossip from the Jay Z and Taylor Swift feud. Oh, and Jay Z supports Hillary. You should, too, if you want to be hip and/or feel that link between you and someone famous. All that editing 

 kurtster wrote: 
This clip does double duty! Speaks to this statement, and also seems apropos for this thread. 
 
 

 KurtfromLaQuinta wrote: 
I don't see it as a candid manner. It seems more like an ineptness at adult dialogue.


 

 marko86 wrote:No.
I was saying the professionals aren't very proficient. 
The only knowledge they seem to have... is making sure they get re-elected.
So I guess they do know how stuff works.

When I hear some of the stuff that comes out of some politicians mouths, I don't think they're very smart at all.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, George Bush, Ted Cruz etc. etc. etc. and even Trump (though not a politician).
Trump will speak candidly... no namby pamby going on there.
 

 haresfur wrote: 
Indeed.

One thing no one has brought up is when TV network news crossed the line from hard news only and allowed entertainment into the mix.  There was a time when the people in hard news where forever banned if they stepped into any entertainment format.  The Today Show here in the states is where the line first began to blur.  Someone (D ?) mentioned earlier when the network news went from 15 minutes to a whole half an hour.  I do remember that.  There were only Cronkite (CBS), Huntley and Brinkley (NBC) and in 1965 ABC finally launched its own evening news with Peter Jennings of which I remember watching the first telecast.  Opinions were not allowed and editorials were rare and very carefully presented when they were, but mainly at local station level on local issues.  Surprised no one else brought this up because I'm not the only one here my age who should remember this turning point and think of it as significant.  I was going to say that I remember when The Today Show was brand new, but it turns out that they didn't start showing it in California until 1958.  It was new to us out West then anyway. (Mountain and Pacific time zones did not get it at all until 1958)  

No one knew Cronkite was a bleeding heart lib.  He played it straight, all the way through.  We didn't find anything out about Brinkley until he showed up on his Sunday show which did get political and dealt with opinion. 

Now its almost impossible to tell where news ends and entertainment begins.  Once the News Departments were immune from ratings issues and revenue problems.  That allowed them to play straight.  Now they are treated the same as any other show.  I think the end came in the mid to late 70's, but its been so long ago, I really don't remember.  Those born after 1970 have never seen straight news programs or knew they existed and have nothing to compare with in their real time memories and its hard now to believe it ever existed in the first place, but it did.

Just a thought I figured I'd throw on the pile ... 

 Lazy8 wrote: 
Again, those are just your opinions. You state them as if they were facts. They are not. You have not even stated the basis for your conclusions. I studied journalism in college and worked as a journalist for about a decade. I still know a lot of journalists. My experiences in the profession partly inform my opinion. 

That those in politics engage in spin does not mean that the journalists are spinning as well. That's not their job; it is not how they are trained. That is not to say that bias does not exist anywhere in the media. There have been well-documented instances where individual journalists have fabricated stories, including one who made up a 8-year-old heroin addict. There also are instances of sloppy reporting. The recent instance of the Rolling Stone article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia comes to mind. It happens. But to conclude from these kind of instances that the entire media — as a monolith— is biased is a leap into the logical abyss. 

You say that I seem utterly oblivious to the bias playing out in front of my unseeing eyes. Then , for good measure, you suggest that my inability to see the bias is due to my having found a news outlet that confirms my biases. To me , you seem utterly dogmatic on this subject. I previously stated that readers and viewers sometimes bring their own biases to an issue and if the story is not reported the way they think it should have been, they sometimes conclude tthat the media is biased. This is not just confined to the media. The veracity of papers on climate change issued by scientists have been dismissed as being the product of bias. There is a danger here. If the media is biased, as you say, it would follow that we could not trust what it states on any issue, which would make it largely worthless other than as an entertainment source. if true, that would deal a severe blow to our democracy.

 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
I'm with you. I understand the anger, but to turn to this as an 'answer' is just wrong. It saddens me to see how many people are willing to go this route.  It comforts me to know that we don't elect presidents by popular vote. Demographics are even more important in the electoral process. I've been ignoring a lot of the ugliness even though I know it's there. I'll check in with Nate Silver next week and get the read on the Dem convention bounce. Then I'll try to tune out for another month or so while the chaos churns and the media try to make it look like a horse race.