Sorry to get all political here, folks, but there's something that I need to get off my chest (no pun intended). The recent news reports of Dan Rathers' "watermelon" statement and Harry Reid's "Negro dialect" statement demonstrates the double standard that exists in the news media when it comes to questionable statements by Democrats and Republicans.
I dare any of you to deny that had George Bush or - heaven forbid! - Dick Cheney said either of the above statements, the news-media-that-does-not-have-a-liberal-bias wouldn't be trying to explain it away as "Bush being Bush" or "Cheney being Cheney", they'd instead be calling for their heads! Also, had Rathers and Reid both been conservative Republicans instead of liberal Democrats, the report on the story would be completely different.
Part of the reason why the news-media-that-does-not-have-a-liberal-bias is failing while conservative news media is booming is because of this inconsistency and double standard when it comes to reporting on prominent figures in the news. Plain and simply, the ideology of the prominent figure determines what kind of coverage they will get whenever they do something stupid publicly. Liberal prominent figures get endless explanations and excuses while conservative prominent figures get nuked.
Until the news-media-that-does-not-have-a-liberal-bias changes its ways and reports like it's supposed to, then they will continue their downward spiral into irrelevance.
2 comments:
I don't live in your country, but I do get US channels on my cable package. Do you believe that there should be balance when it comes to reporting the news?
Anon,
It wouldn't even have to be that much. All that our allegedly bias-free news outlets would have to do is to own up to their biases. Fox News is conservative and yet their ratings don't suffer. Why can't the allegedly "mainstream" media do the same and own up to their (plainly obvious to all except them) liberal bias, and then go from there? If Fox can manage to be "fair and biased", why can't they?
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