Major Media Bias Towards NSA Defenders
from the and-they-attack-others? dept
One of the more ridiculous arguments against Glenn Greenwald (and others, but mainly Greenwald) concerning the Snowden NSA revelations is that Greenwald is somehow "biased," rather than an objective reporter. Of course, there's this myth of the objective reporter out there, which in practice tends to not actually do journalism (the search for truth) but stenography (repeating what someone tells you). Too often "objective journalism" means he said/she said journalism, where equal weight is given to all kinds of ideas, no matter how ludicrous. If you're actually searching for truth, then there's no problem calling out something as being wrong when it is, in fact, wrong. But, even more ridiculous is that the claims of "objective media" also whitewash the fact that those media players are clearly extremely biased as well.Take, for example, the episode of Face the Nation, which aired on Sunday, November 3rd. A major point of discussion? The Snowden NSA revelations. The guests to discuss it? Senator Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Mike Rogers, and former NSA boss Michael Hayden. Basically, those three are the biggest defenders of the NSA outside of current NSA employees. To argue that this isn't a clear "bias" is ridiculous. But at least Greenwald is clear where he stands. CBS and Face the Nation still pretend that they're objective.
That may be just one example, but a new study by the Columbia Journalism Review showed that major media sources were uniformly biased in favor of the government. They scoured the four largest newspapers in the US: the NY Times, USA Today, the LA Times and the Washington Post. They had a list of pro- and anti-surveillance words that they used to determine whether or not the general tone of coverage in these newspapers was to support the NSA or to be critical of it. It won't surprise many around here to find that it was overwhelmingly supportive of the government. The major newspapers apparently aren't that big on speaking truth to power.
USA Today led the pack, using pro-surveillance terms 36 percent more frequently than anti-surveillance terms. The LA Times followed at 24 percent, while The New York Times was at 14.1 percent. Even the Washington Post, where Barton Gellman was the first US journalist to break the news of the NSA’s surveillance, exhibited a net pro-surveillance bias in its coverage of 11.1 percent. Although keyword frequency analysis on its own is not always conclusive, large, consistent discrepancies of the kind observed here strongly suggest a net media bias in favor of the US and UK governments’ pro-surveillance position.As CJR points out, this finding also suggests that the claim from NSA defenders that all of the hubbub over spying is merely a "media creation" may not be true either. The major media is leaning towards the NSA's side of the debate.
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Filed Under: bias, face the nation, journalism, media, nsa
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You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
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Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
You raise a really good point here. Why do you read techdirt?
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Re: Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
Why does he do that, though, is anyone's guess.
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Re: Re: Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
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Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
I actually agree with you on this one. This is something I've been aware of since I was a teenager in the late 70's. It's why I've always supplemented my information with non-MSM sources. The truth usually runs somewhere in the middle of the two.
But, when a story becomes as widespread as the Snwoden revelations, it eventually reaches a point where it can no longer be ignored by MSM because it undermines their manufactured illusion of objectivity they need to survive. The internet age has greatly magnified this phenomenon.
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Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
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Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
watch?v=ApZDJo5wsH4
I mean its not like they would use blue screens and place "anchors" in the same parking lot claiming to be a satellite interview:
watch?v=xdK26vO6wtQ
What kind of conspiracy would it take to keep all involved quiet:
watch?v=TOzRwwtk7q8
[insert life-sized sarcasm tag here]
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Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
As ever, I'm inclined to apply Hanlon's razor: the people running the US government are exactly as stupid as they appear to be.
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Re: Re: You are slowly re-capitulating the good parts of 1980's conservatism.
The MSM aren't individually stupid; there's just no reason for them to do more than the minimum requirement for their employment: reading whatever press release someone hands them.
Likewise with the NSA - it's just easier for them to, for example, walk into the Level 3 Communications office and demand they install a tap, rather than do something cool and clandestine like digging up a fiber bundle out in the woods and actually splicing their own fucking taps.
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Disconnect
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Re: Disconnect
FTFY
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As seen on Twitter...
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My post was just CENSORED via phony "comment moderation" message
viclivingston(dot)blogspot(dot)com/2013/06/us-cyber-commandlockheed-martin.html
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Re: My post was just CENSORED via phony "comment moderation" message
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This article immediately grabbed my attention
Judge for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7v2qZx4Rg8
I considered this "news" segment to be state propaganda.
There's absolutely no legitimate reason for the government to be allowed to erode our Constitutional rights under any circumstances.
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Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
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Re: Re: This article immediately grabbed my attention
What a country.
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Selling Access for Compliance
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In my eyes it is the medias duty to at least translate it correctly and in addition, to point out the obvious wordplay used to mislead.
It can easily be done in a neutral fashion without taking sides, allowing people to make their own decisions; like so: "Actions taken in the past were not mentioned".
With so much focus from the people in power on using misleading words, we need the media to do their jobs and ask the hard questions. Right now it just feels like they have been bought.. even here.
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Not suprising
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No risk of objectivity here
if you can call Government hate speech 'journalism', or what Masnick does to be journalism.. I don't.
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Re: No risk of objectivity here
The more general media does however claim they are neutral and are, in my country, considered public service. Public service is supposed to represent as much of the public as possible and not take sides.
Lastly I do not see you loving your government... if you did, you would want to improve it, not just keep silent and fall in line. A government is not the people in power. It is a concept; one which has been eroded and malformed.
You are impressively ignorant if you think that we want no government just because we protest its actions.
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Re: No risk of objectivity here
Journalism is the search for truth? No?
Yet you're not arguing he's wrong, so it must be good journalism, maybe even the best kind.
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Re: No risk of objectivity here
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We have global surveillance, and the best they can get is 22 people?
This is why we keep losing, our views are too nuanced.
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Re:
Ok - who is the "we" you are speaking of? And who are the 22 people?
This is why we keep losing
Again who's the "we" and what is that "we" are "losing"?
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