Just Amazing

[HARDCORE]

4-29-2018

I just heard one of that cadre of talking heads using the words – “The Battle For Public Opinion” give me a break! Since when has public opinion ever really meant all that much to some within politics or in the media? Sure- they mouth the words that polish-up their public image, but to my way of thinking, the public’s opinion is really just an after-thought – if even that?

“Now don’t blame me because things are the way that they are!” Like you, I am just a sideline spectator and a casual observer of the big picture, as viewed from the Cyclops’s-like eye of the television set that ominously leers back at me from a dusty corner of my own living room! I am however, agog when I take the time to really ponder what it was that people use to do before all of these university sages leered back at us from the tube, ordering us on just how we should vote, what we should think and believe, what brand of after shave and deodorant to apply, and telling us just how damned stupid we are if we do not echo or espouse their views exactly? I wonder what television network the likes of George Washington, John Adams, and Abraham Lincoln used to educate them on what was politically correct, and how they must think? “Somehow, however, we have still managed to survive and thrive (SO FAR) over the last 240 years or so – now haven’t we?”

“So now you know exactly how I feel”, and that, along with about a sawbuck thrown in for good measure, just might (maybe?) buy you a couple of cups of coffee Down in The Flatlands? (Tip Not Included!!)

Hardcore

[Boats]

Former NPR CEO opens up about liberal media bias
RE: https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-ot...-doesnt-cover/

Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now-dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio. When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.

This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience. Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work and pray. For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.

I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.

At Urbana, I met dozens of people who were dedicating their lives to the mission, spreading the good news of Jesus, of course, but doing so through a life of charity and compassion for others: staffing remote hospitals, building homes for the homeless and, in one case, flying a “powered parachute” over miles of uninhabited jungle in the western Congo to bring a little bit of entertainment, education and relief to some of the remotest villages you could imagine. It was all inspiring — and a little foolhardy, if you ask me about the safety of a powered parachute — but it left me with a very different impression of a community that was previously known to me only through Jerry Falwell and the movie “Footloose.”

Early this year, I drove west from Houston to Gonzales, Texas, to try my hand at pig hunting. It was my first time with a gun, and the noticeably concerned owner of the ranch at first banished me to a solitary spot on the grounds. Here, he said, the pigs would come to me and I could not pose a danger to anyone else. It was a nice spot indeed but did not make for much of a story, so I wandered off into the woods, hopefully protected by my Day-Glo hunting vest.

I eventually joined up with a family from Georgia. The group included the grandfather, Paps, and the father, CJ, but it was young Isaac, all of 8 years old, who took on the task of tutoring me in the ways of the hunt. He did a fine job, but we encountered few pigs (and killed none) in our morning walkabout. In the afternoon, with the Georgians heading home, I linked up with a group of friends from Houston who belied the demographic stereotyping of the hunt; collectively we were the equivalent of a bad bar joke: a Hispanic ex-soldier, a young black family man, a Serbian immigrant and a Jew from DC.

None of my new hunting partners fit the lazy caricature of the angry NRA member. Rather, they saw guns as both a shared sport and as a necessary means to protect their families during uncertain times. In truth, the only one who was even modestly angry was me, and that only had to do with my terrible ineptness as a hunter. In the end, though, I did bag a pig, or at least my new friends were willing to award me a kill, so that we could all glory together in the fraternity of the hunt.

I also spent time in depressed areas of Kentucky and Ohio with workers who felt that their concerns had long fallen on deaf ears and were looking for every opportunity to protest a government and political and media establishment that had left them behind. I drank late into the night at the Royal Oaks Bar in Youngstown and met workers who had been out of the mills for almost two decades and had suffered the interlocking plagues of unemployment, opioid addiction and declining health. They mourned the passing of the old days, when factory jobs were plentiful, lucrative and honored and lamented the destruction and decay of their communities, their livelihoods and their families. To a man (and sometimes a woman), they looked at media and saw stories that did not reflect the world that they knew or the fears that they had.

Over the course of this past year, I have tried to consume media as they do and understand it as a partisan player. It is not so hard to do. Take guns. Gun control and gun rights is one of our most divisive issues, and there are legitimate points on both sides. But media is obsessed with the gun-control side and gives only scant, mostly negative, recognition to the gun-rights sides.

Take, for instance, the issue of legitimate defensive gun use (DGU), which is often dismissed by the media as myth. But DGUs happen all the time — 200 times a day, according to the Department of Justice, or 5,000 times a day, according to an overly exuberant Florida State University study. But whichever study you choose to believe, DGUs happen frequently and give credence to my hunting friends who see their guns as the last line of defense for themselves and their families.

At one point during my research, I discovered a video of a would-be robber entering a Houston smoke shop, his purpose conveyed by the pistol that he leveled at the store clerk. But the robber was not the only armed person in the store. The security cameras show Raleigh, the store clerk, walking out from behind the counter, calmly raising his own gun and firing an accurate stream of bullets at the hapless robber. The wounded robber stumbles out, falls over the curb and eventually ends up under arrest.

It is not just defensive gun use that makes the video remarkable — it is Raleigh himself, who evidences such a nonchalance that he never bothers to put down the cigarette that he is smoking. At the end, Raleigh, having protected his store, enthuses, “Castle Doctrine, baby” — citing a law that allows a person to use force to defend a legally occupied place.

It is an amazing story, though far from unique, but you simply won’t find many like it in mainstream media (I found it on Reddit).

It’s not that media is suppressing stories intentionally. It’s that these stories don’t reflect their interests and beliefs.

It’s why my new friends in Youngstown, Ohio, and Pikeville, Ky., see media as hopelessly disconnected from their lives, and it is how the media has opened the door to charges of bias.

The mainstream media is constantly under attack by the president. They are “frankly disgusting,” “tremendously dishonest,” “failing,” “they make up the stories” and are now threatened with loss of broadcast licenses if they continue to author “fake news.” And that is just a random Wednesday’s worth of words from Donald Trump.

Some may take pleasure in the discomfort of the media, but it is not a good situation for the country to have the media in disrepute and under constant attack. Virtually every significant leader of this nation, from Jefferson on down, has recognized the critical role of an independent press to the orderly functioning of democracy. We should all be worried that more than 65 percent of voters think there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and that our major media institutions are seen as creating, not combating, our growing partisan divide.

Some of this loss of reputation stems from effective demagoguery from the right and the left, as well as from our demagogue-in-chief, but the attacks wouldn’t be so successful if our media institutions hadn’t failed us as well.

None of this justifies the attacks from President Trump, which are terribly inappropriate coming from the head of government. At the same time, the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.

I did that, and loved it, though I regret waiting until well after I left NPR to do so. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.
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That last line say's it all: It is the public that is the long-term loser.

[Boats]

WHOSE SIDE IS THE MEDIA ON IN POLITICS?
By: Ann DeLaney
RE: http://www.dummies.com/education/pol...n-in-politics/

When you’re trying to figure out what’s going on and which candidate to support, you may wonder whether the media reporting on candidates and issues is reliable. Does the media choose sides in elections? Is the reporting objective? Can you trust what you read in newspapers and see on the nightly news? Is the media there to assist you in making an informed choice on Election Day, or is it just another obstacle to making that informed choice?

The answer to each of these questions is a little of both. Many people don’t have much faith these days in the media. According to some polls, Americans like the press as a profession only slightly more than used-car dealers and slightly less than the politicians the press covers. Television reporters are seen as more trustworthy than print journalists, perhaps because they appear in person in people’s living rooms every night. All in all, journalism is not currently a profession that moms and dads urge their offspring to enter.

TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

In reality, journalism is no different from any other profession. There are good and bad reporters. There are lazy reporters and energetic reporters. Some reporters are smart, and some aren’t so smart. Some reporters like some candidates and dislike others. Some reporters can’t help rooting for the underdog and bend over backward to help give that candidate coverage (they call it leveling the playing field). There are reporters who like to be schmoozed by important people, including candidates and officeholders — if these reporters are treated right, they treat the candidates right.

The media is a cross section of America, the good and the bad. Reporters are no better or worse than any other groups of citizens. Most of them try to cover campaigns fairly to the best of their abilities. They try as much as possible to leave their own personal prejudices at the newsroom door. Some reporters try harder than others, and some are more successful than others in getting that done.

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS BEING TOO OBJECTIVE

A problem with many journalists is that they try to be too objective. Hold on, you might say — it isn’t possible for a journalist to be too objective. It’s like a judge being too fair or a minister being too kind.

Perhaps you think that reporters should not filter the election news you receive — you want to get it all without any editing or commentary. Maybe you feel that you are better equipped to make judgments about the candidates and the issues if you have just the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. You may want the reporters to keep their judgments and opinions out of your news. If they have opinions or viewpoints, they should be columnists, not news reporters.

When reporters try to be too evenhanded in their campaign coverage, they give each candidate equal time. The ideas and responses of both the candidates are given identical weight in the news story. The reporter writes a story saying that Candidate Anderson said the following about Candidate Baily. Candidate Baily responded by saying the following about Candidate Anderson. Sounds okay so far. Sounds as if the reporter is doing what you want — giving you the facts so you can make a judgment for yourself. The reporter is not filtering the information that you’re receiving. You’re getting it just the way it happened. It’s just as if you were there.

The problem is that you weren’t there. You don’t have the benefit of knowing the candidates personally. You probably won’t be as familiar with the issue and the facts as the reporter covering the campaign. You may not know that Candidate Anderson’s attack is completely bogus. You may not know that the charges have no merit at all and that Candidate Anderson is just a little bit flaky. A he said/she said story is merely a reporter’s regurgitation of the charges and countercharges made by the candidates or the campaigns. The reporter doesn’t evaluate the charges or tell you that the issues raised by one or both of the candidates are without merit and that voters should disregard them.

Some reporters don’t necessarily do an independent evaluation when a candidate makes an accusation. They feel a responsibility to report what the opposition says in answer to a charge or attack in a campaign, but that’s the extent of their duty as they see it. They may not perform an investigation of the underlying facts and charges to determine for themselves and for you which has more merit, the attack or the response. They may leave the responsibility of providing the other side to the opponent, who no doubt will tell voters that if the charges are untrue or unfair.

The problem with reporters who maintain this kind of objectivity is that you lose. If the reporters don’t provide any independent evaluation of the facts, you are left to sort between the charges and countercharges to find out which is true. But you, the voter, are handicapped; you may not have ready access to the information that’s available to reporters. It’s much more difficult for you to do an independent evaluation to determine the truth than it is for a trained professional reporter.

Knowing the truth enables you to make an informed choice. You don’t want to be manipulated into voting for a candidate who doesn’t share your views and values. You don’t want your support going to a candidate who has suckered you into supporting her by making unfair attacks on the opposition. You want the candidate who is right for you. Knowing the facts allows you to vote for that candidate and have confidence in your decision.

[Boats]

Harvard Study reveals media bias
RE: https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/exa...ls-media-bias/

There are four links below showing charts the Harvard students - compiled on the issues of media bias.

1. US News Outlets & ratings: https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-...MP-820x516.png

Example of Media Bias:

A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

The report is based on an analysis of:

- news reports in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and
the Washington Post

- the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC

- and three European news outlets – the UK’s Financial Times and BBC, and Germany’s
ARD

To arrive at the percentages, Harvard obtained data from Media Tenor, which “codes” media according to its topic, source, and tone. The broadcast portion of the study accounts for reporting on CNN’s The Situation Room, CBS Evening News, Fox’s Special Report, and NBC Nightly News, but does not represent talk show coverage. Newspaper analysis incorporates all sections but obituaries, sports, and letters to the editor.

Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity. Findings include:

. President Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.

. Every news outlet in the study was negative more often than positive.

. Fox was the only news outlet that came close to giving Trump positive coverage overall – though they did not – 52% of news reports on Fox were negative towards President Trump. Only 48% were positive. (There was variation in the tone of Fox’s coverage depending on the topic. Trade and terrorism were news categories where Fox’s coverage was starkly different from that of the other outlets. Whereas their coverage in these areas tipped strongly in the negative direction, Fox’s coverage tipped strongly positive. This just shows that those are two areas where Fox executives agree with Trump’s position. Thus the positive coverage.)

The study also divided news items across topics. On immigration, healthcare, and Russia, more than 85% of reports were negative. (Consider the fact that on illegal immigration, President Trump has broad public support in his effort to crack down on sanctuary cities.)

On the economy, news reports were still negative, but less negative than other topics – 54% negative to 46% positive. It should be difficult to publish negative stories about the economy when it is improving.

so;

The next subject was Tons of News Coverage: link https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-...-on-topics.jpg

The study highlighted one exception: where Trump got overwhelmingly positive coverage for launching a cruise missile attack on Syria.

Around 80% of all reports were positive about that.

A third major part of Harvard’s study compared coverage of President Trump to that of the three previous presidents – Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clintons’ first 100 days. Link: https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-...MPcoverage.png

Trump received 80 percent negative coverage, with only 20 percent of news reports were positive. Compare that to:

- President Obama, who received 41 percent negative coverage and 59 percent positive coverage.

- President Bush’s news coverage was 57 percent negative – 43 percent positive

- President Clinton, 60 percent negative, 40 percent positive

“The media needs different narrative frames [when reporting on President Trump] – not just an antagonistic one,” said Nicco Mele, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, to The Daily Caller News Foundation. Link: https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/wp-...MPcoverage.png

Questions

1. How do you think persistent and widespread negative coverage of President Trump affects the way people view him and his administration?

2. What to you do to avoid being influenced / having your views shaped by the media?

CHALLENGE: Check out the editorial cartoons found at several of the media sources evaluated in the Harvard study. What percentage of the cartoons about President Trump are positive? negative? neutral?


Answer(s)

1. Opinion question. Answers vary.

1. Opinion question. Answers vary.