CBS Public Eye blogger Matthew Felling has a message for those of us who complain about media bias. Don't expect the media to pursue balance. In fact, it's YOU who should balance your news diet, with slanted reporting from the opposing side of the political spectrum. Insisted Felling, "It’s one thing for an ideologue to cry bias over this story or another, but it’s far more productive to offer a solution or an alternative."
From Felling's September 6 entry "Fairly Balance... Yourself":
If you're a Rush listener, try Ed Schultz. If you like Keith Olbermann’s take, change channels afterwards and see what Sean Hannity has to say. Likewise, if you see something coming down the pipe that looks like the "Censored" list or Goldberg's liberal media smoking gun -- and you initially resist it -- don't dismiss it offhand.
Until we push ourselves out of our media comfort zone, we risk continuing to argue past each other -- us of the by-now-trite 'red' and 'blue' Americas --wearing blinders and not connecting at all. So even if you like your blinders and feel intellectually justified in wearing them, don’t be afraid to swivel your head once in awhile to get a fuller view.
The CBS ombudsblogger --Public Eye purports "to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News"-- offered this advice after he tossed up a liberal and a conservative complaint about media bias, hoping to show that left and right-wing complaints have equal merit and/or that media bias is subjective according to the ideological lens of the beholder.
But what were the examples he cited?
For the liberal example he cited the left-wing San Francisco Bay Guardian's laundry list of stories the media missed in the past year with a largely alarmist, conspiratorial bent to them, featuring headlines like "Good-Bye Habeas Corpus" and "Marital Law: Coming to a Town Near You."
By contrast, Felling's conservative example was National Review's Jonah Goldberg lamenting the media's sensationalism in covering the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
So let's see, we have hydrophobic hysteria about new laws supposed setting up a Bush dictatorship being unreported by the media versus pitted against the observation that the liberal media embraced the most dire of storylines after Katrina partly out of a liberal conviction that everything that can go wrong will go wrong in part due to the Bush administration.
It's hardly a strong comparison if you're attempting to show liberal and conservative complaints are of equal merit, but it'll do if your aim is to dismiss dissatisfied media consumers' complaints of bias and insist the problem lies in the bias of the reader.
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters















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Comments Policy
Abdication of Responsibility
September 7, 2007 - 12:44 ET by mattmThis guys an obvious Liberal - they never accept responsibility for anything. They have created a political ideology based on avoiding responsibility. Abortion, Welfare, Medicare, Foodstamps, Outcome-based Education, Amnesty...and on and on.
What a great illustration of the despicable Liberal mindset.
Deluders
September 7, 2007 - 12:46 ET by HadEnoughHere is a solution, just report the facts. Period. Until then, I am not interested in anything you have to say, OK Matt?
So even if you like your
September 7, 2007 - 12:49 ET by bigtimerSo even if you like your blinders and feel intellectually justified in wearing them, don’t be afraid to swivel your head once in awhile to get a fuller view.
Don't be afraid to to swivel our heads once in awhile?
Is he deaf dumb and blind?
We are swamped with leftist spewing tripe every single day on the msm....have been for decades.
Give me a break here...
Of course we swivel our heads, we have for years , we have had a hard time having a fair and balanced view without searching with the exception of Rush until lately with the internet now and other talk radio.
....me thinks the leftist need to swivel there heads along with their BDS hatred ... listen and learn....of course reading and digesting would be completely out of the question.
Big: Remember, they read
September 7, 2007 - 12:57 ET by Conservative_in_mass.Big:
Remember, they read more than us, are more enlightened than us, and know all thats good for us. Oh and they are such good listeners, they never shout anyone down.
Libs need to come to grips with the fact that their media monopoly is gone and no amount of spin is going to change that.
Comparing Left And Right
September 8, 2007 - 11:46 ET by JoelCTMy late mother, God Rest Her Soul, was a deep-thinking liberal. She was very good at arguing every point. Believe me, with a radical right-winger like me for a son, we did argue every point thoroughly, especially during the Clinton years.
About a year before she died, during one of our political discussions, she said, "I watched Fox News one evening, just to see what all the fuss was about. Joel, it made me physically ill to watch those people!"
I replied calmly, "Now you know how *I* felt, watching DAN RATHER for twenty years with no other choice on the TV."
Ever wonder why
September 7, 2007 - 12:53 ET by Conservative_in_mass.Ever wonder why conservative sites don't not have to grovel and beg like these idiots to get attention?
Who needs to swivel heads?
September 7, 2007 - 13:00 ET by motherbeltWho needs to swivel heads? It's all around us...if we swivel our heads, we just see more of the same.
It's the same thing they do with the media. The MSM all has one viewpoint...NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and they expound it day in and day out. They all say pretty much the same thing. Then someone like Limbaugh or Hannity comes along and says something different, and they howl "They have to include an opposing viewpoint!" The haven't figured out that the conservatives ARE the opposing viewpoint.
Liberal media bias vs "conservative" bias
September 7, 2007 - 13:02 ET by exLibwell, as far as I can tell the arguments are such;
We conservatives argue that the STORIES are biased and the VIEWPOINT espoused in the stories are biased. All we are looking for is a balanced non-partisan view of the issues.
Liberals argue that Republicans/Conservatives are wrong, corrupt and devious by nature and that NOT ENOUGH stories detailing that are reported.
If you go to media matters or Fair.org, most of their issues revolve around the fact that Bob Shieffer actually said Bush should be given the benefit of the doubt on an issue until the media can prove he lied.
Liberals believe the opposite, that EVERY story on conservatives should question the motives and assume guilt. While liberals intentions are always in the right place and should be given the benefit of the doubt.
As one liberal blogger once said, Conservatives and Liberals are both corrupt. It's just that Conservatives align themselves with "scarier" corrupt people. In other words, the corruption of the Democrats is "less dangerous" and isn't as harmful as that of the Republicans.
The Left
September 7, 2007 - 13:12 ET by ricklailI have listened to The Left on Siruis. I am not going to sit there and listen to the foul language used against Bush or any other conservative. It is terrible. I used to be a DI so I know how to curse. It makes me blush.
A bonafided and certified member of the beer guzzling, NASCAR watching middle class.
It's the coverage
September 7, 2007 - 13:22 ET by mattmIt's not the stories that are (necessarily) biased, it's the coverage that is biased. This includes the lack of coverage, the proportion of coverage and the timing of it.
What's interesting to me in this story is that it's a tacit admission of bias. The Libs can no longer ignore or scoff at the bias charge - so what do they do? They tell us it's our problem....typical.
I couldn't agree more
September 7, 2007 - 16:51 ET by mulerider24I couldn't agree more Matt. Omission, story selection, placement, sourcing, labeling, and endorsement are just a few of the major bias food groups. Libs look at the Senator Craig footsie story running at a 10:1 ratio to the Hsu/Hillary campaign debacle as just another news cycle.
It would take Matt Lauer saying "I hate Republicans" before a lib could even fathom the scales of objectivity leaning at a 51% slant. Even then they would probably brush it off as a statement of fact.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. - Abraham Lincoln
Srop complaining and join us???!!!
September 7, 2007 - 13:25 ET by c5thenWell, well... Rupert Murdoch and FoxNews channel adopted that tactict and have been vilified and condemned in the main-stream media and especially in liberal haunts everywhere.
The bias in the MSM is a bit weighted. 90% toward the liberal viewpoint and 10% toward the conservative viewpoint. It's no wonder that FoxNews is kicking all their butts. They at least make an atempt at ballance.
The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic
...some people think before
September 7, 2007 - 13:30 ET by TruthMonger...some people think before they speak...
Some people think after they speak...
Liberals just speak...
Protest Craig's conservative abandonment - vote Democrat in 08'
Our beef about liberal bias
September 7, 2007 - 13:27 ET by BuffNBoneOur beef about liberal bias involves the quantity, quality, timing, etc. of coverage about seemingly equal events.
If you get the chance, you might ask the "non-biased" liberal what they would consider to be an example of liberal bias.
"Fighters are fun but bombers make policy"
My problem...
September 7, 2007 - 13:32 ET by dvdaughtry...is they "think" there is no bias.
I have a journalism degree (embarassed by it, but still), and we were taught to be the 'gate keepers'. So by default, what we decided to write/report already had a bias.
It would be nice if they would just come out and say they lean a certain way. That, however, will never happen because they are not there to report, but to be 'signifigant'.
I am not for diversity. I am for what works.
No worries, I also have an
September 7, 2007 - 13:47 ET by greenfairieNo worries, I also have an undergrad degree in journalism.
Ah, but I get the liberal
September 7, 2007 - 13:46 ET by greenfairieAh, but I get the liberal side all day long from work, friends, neighbors, etc.. Hell, I get the liberal side every time I see a movie. Or watch a t.v. show. Or read a book not authored by a conservative. Or listen to a pop/rock song. It might be nauseating. But it's there.
The thing that's wrong with bias is that the MSM pretends it's objective when it's not. The choice of story and angle are what create the bias. Editors, producers, on-air personalities, and reporters don't seem to really understand this. When I listen to Rush, I know exactly what I'm getting and he doesn't pretend otherwise. When I tune into Brian Williams, he's pretending to sell me the "objective" view when it pretty much isn't.
This whole issue represents
September 7, 2007 - 13:49 ET by SmartypantsThis whole issue represents the flawed moral equivalence argument perfectly. There is an inherent assumption here that both sides have their own merits which need to be weighed against each other, and that is incorrect reasoning. It might be true if you had two sides presenting their own arguments in a fair forum, but that is not the case at all. We have one side which spews endless invective that is unsupportable at best while the other side tries to use some sense of reason and logic. How exactly does one counter the "Bush lied, people died" message that is presented daily by the left? Modern liberals are living at the extreme of the political spectrum (which is why they think President Bush is a far right conservative) and it is patently unfair to juxtapose these extreme messages with those on the right that are not even half as extreme.
It's Not Just Talk Shows
September 7, 2007 - 15:36 ET by Tom PaineIt would be one thing if it were just a matter of liberal and conservative talk shows competing in an open forum. However Felling sidesteps the legitimate conservative complaint that the supposedly objective network newscasts are firmly in the grip of liberal bias. The news broadcasts are not objective; they are liberal cheerleaders who echo the nonsense spewed by idiots like Olbermann while pretending to play it straight down the middle. Have we heard anything remotely approaching an objective look at topics such as immigration, welfare reform, race relations or radical Islam from the mainstream media? The major networks and newspapers spend their time attempting to shape public opinion and then express surprise that we’re not buying their bulls**t. In the words of that great American philosopher Judge Judy – “don’t pee on my leg and then try to tell me it’s raining.”
TP.... Bulls-eye! I am
September 7, 2007 - 15:41 ET by bigtimerTP....
Bulls-eye!
I am also LMAO with your...In the words of that great American philosopher Judge Judy – “don’t pee on my leg and then try to tell me it’s raining.”
I love it, plus I needed some laughter this afternoon.
Journalist, see thyself ...
September 7, 2007 - 15:42 ET by KC MulvilleNotice that Felling's message is about other sites. I doubt that Felling includes CBS in that left/right bias pendulum.
No one complains about a site having a bias and admitting it. That's not the problem. Nobody begrudges a liberal site for being biased when they admit it. The problem is when major media outlets claim to be neutral. They aren't, and they're either shameless or ignorant about their biases.
Preachy kid, that one
September 7, 2007 - 21:29 ET by krismcsherryUntil we push ourselves out of our media comfort zone, we risk continuing to argue past each other
Can't we just all get along???
As for comfort zones: Let's see, once one's done the recommended out-of-comfort-zone thing for a while then what? I do try reading "their" stuff from time to time but the only thing I see is that we can agree to disagree at the most. Problem is, they won't leave us alone.
And they're utterly bitter. Leaves a bad taste in your brain.
Can’t we all just get
September 8, 2007 - 00:55 ET by maggieqpublicCan’t we all just get along?
I read Felling’s piece twice, searching and searching for the distillate. You found it, Kris.
Feller is blind to his own bias in his piece.
September 8, 2007 - 02:52 ET by SportPoliticsDid you notice how he gave us a whole laundry list of "from the left" censored stories and linked to them, 35 total ? Then he praised a left wing hit media for going after another left wing hit media for not publishing an expose on democrat Diane Feinstien.
So there we have LINKED advertising for unknown and "unheard of" leftist viewpoint stories, then praise for another left media piece, and if you go read the "takedown of The Nation" you are forced to conclude the story on the democrat is untrue, and unsupportable because it's "speculation without facts" these shining left wing places like The Nation and Slate have integrity and standards.
So, after not disagreeing with the lefty hit pieces and praising another lefty - even admitting they're lefty... and making certain you have a convenient link to click and suck it all up...
He goes after a known and admitted rightie, but not a hard rightie, JG, and then totally disagrees with him on his story from the right. "Sure the media overreacted but that's not bias"
I guess this Felling guy is a RETARD, and is like not at all self aware - and is so left he just can't help himself.
I quite understand the intention of his piece - it's darkly linked to Dan Rather -and those "problems" that all caused, so he names a lefty or two, praises one, then attacks a righty and claims with cover, the "mainstream" media like CBS might have overreacted but it wasn't biased.
His little screed about people on either side need to see the other is just his way of proclaiming his "own unbiased mind" that sees and views all, and therefore "immunizes him from any possible bias" - and wishes those "other lessers" out there would get with the program.
What a ****head and an idiot. MORON Felling.
I'm sure is he sees this he can whine I'm an extremist just look at the name calling... and totally ignore his own massive bias he will publicly pretend forever isn't there.
Whatever, these people like M Felling are absolutely pathetic.