Media bias is never a story to our liberal media....unless the tilt is contrary to their worldview. NB reader Gary Hall pointed out a story in Friday’s Los Angeles Times about Greece. The print headline was “Greece media show vote bias; News outlets have been far from neutral in their coverage of the referendum on the bailout offer for the debt-stricken nation.”
Reporter Henry Chu began by just calling out the one-sided media in Athens against the leftist government of prime minister Alexis Tsipras:
Anyone looking for an account of the big antigovernment, pro-European Union rally in the heart of the Greek capital this week can find it easily on the Skai TV network's website.
There are news articles written before and after the event, which was held Tuesday in Athens' Syntagma Square. You can watch a video of the thousands of protesters who pressed for approval of an international bailout offer for Greece in a clutch referendum scheduled for Sunday. To help you find like-minded material, the items are conveniently tagged #NAI ("yes").
If, however, you're interested in what happened at a rival pro-government oxi, or "no," demonstration the evening before, which also drew more than 10,000 people, look elsewhere. Determined hunting won't yield anything on Skai's website about those who gathered to urge rejection of the bailout offer and its tough austerity measures. Yet Skai is one of Greece's most popular news providers.
Strong emotions are in abundant supply. But impartial reporting is not.
Along with Skai TV, nearly all the mainstream press and television stations in Greece have skewed their coverage or are openly in favor of the "yes" campaign, throwing in doubt just how fair Sunday's election will be.
What? It’s not a free and fair election with rigged media coverage? This is a funny complaint coming from the Los Angeles Times, who knows how they and their liberal journalist friends all get thrills up their leg at Occupy Wall Street or marches for amnesty, but clam up or write tiny dispatches when the protest opposes abortion. Surely they recall the “fair election” of 2008, when they all glorified Barack Obama.
When the media leans right, then they fret about "the fact that many of Greece's biggest news outlets are owned by corporate titans and other 'oligarchs'" and their narrow financial interests. Chu continued like a NewsBuster, counting minutes of air time:
In a widely circulated examination of how the six biggest TV networks treated the rival referendum rallies Monday and Tuesday, freelance journalist Markos Petropoulos found that the pro-government "no" demonstration got about 81/2 minutes of coverage, whereas the "yes" protest received more than five times that much.
In another newscast, one network devoted 18 minutes to warnings and statements from European leaders about the breakdown of bailout negotiations with Athens and the surprise referendum announcement that had precipitated it. The Greek government's position got two minutes....
Whether the relatively one-sided coverage by the mainstream news media will affect the outcome of the referendum is hard to tell, because public trust in them has eroded in the last few years, [George] Tzogopoulos said.
And as is the case in other European countries such as Britain, the papers' obvious political slants tend to attract readers who already agree with those views.
As Hall joked to us: “Surely they're referring to the Guardian, the BBC and The Economist... those right-leaning media outlets, right? Or, is it possible it's an awareness that the shoe is on the other foot there? What about here in the US?”
