The 2008 Presidential Campaign: What Happened and Why?

Discussions of and about the historic 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
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Post by halplm »

Ellienor wrote:What about the conservative endorsements of Obama? 4 newspapers that backed Bush are now backing Obama.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-tr ... id=topnews

Thanks SF for the explanation. I couldn't figure it out but when I saw that Fox was considered "most centrist" I knew it had to be wrong. I mean, Fox, centrist??? Come on. No way.
SF was lying while trying to make a joke.

And the Wikipedia entry is revisionist history.

FOX is centrist, which is is why it gets higher ratings.
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Post by Dave_LF »

Good lord, hal, is there anything out there that isn't a huge liberal conspiracy?
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Post by Ellienor »

Nah, Fox isn't centrist, it just concentrates all the Republicans to one network while us liberal socialists have our pick of any of the liberal socialist media outlets. ;)

Unfortunately, as the study showed, people who watch Fox news end up with the most misperceptions of the essential facts of a situation, such as the Iraq War. :(
The world went to Iraq WITH us.
France, Germany, Russia, and Canada, among others, did not. That's a pretty substantial part of the world, Hal.
Last edited by Ellienor on Tue Oct 21, 2008 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
halplm
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Post by halplm »

Dave_LF wrote:Good lord, hal, is there anything out there that isn't a huge liberal conspiracy?
Not when it concerns the media.
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Post by sauronsfinger »

Hal... listen to the old Simon & Garfunkel song "The Boxer". There is a line in there that you should make your signature on every post you make on every board you frequent.

"a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

I rarely have come across anyone of any political stripe on any board in discussing any topic who proudly proclaims that they will not read a link to become informed or will not watch the news because they know in advance that it is biased. Back in the 1800's there was a political party that came to be known as the Know Nothings because they proudly announced their disdain of knowledge to the world rather than engage in informational exchanges and opinion. You might want to look them up somewhere.
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Post by JewelSong »

halplm wrote: I prefer truth to lies, thanks.
Me, too. Which is why I never watch FOX.

For newspapers, the Christian Science Monitor used to be considered the most unbiased American paper. I don't know if it still holds that distinction or not.
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Post by halplm »

Why would you read something you know is twisted from the truth?

The great thing about this message board, is that smart people can (I'm not saying they do all the time) pick through the distortions, and quote the facts to make the points they say are true.

Jewel, I'd appreciate proof that FOX lies on its news programs.

SF, you should read that line yourself, you have a problem far worse than mine. You don't question your side.
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Post by sauronsfinger »

Hal

Information is not like a junior high kid getting the cooties. In all the years I have been going round and round in some pretty bitter disputes with CG, I always read the links he provides even when I find out they are pure libertarian propaganda. How can I argue his point if I do not educated myself to that point of view?

Think about that. I promise you - if you read the RS article you will not be dispatched to the Gates of Hades.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.... John Rogers
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Post by Ellienor »

Well, Hal, the only proof would be from another journalistic organization...which you would denounce because it was slanted. :help:

But it's a damning statement when people who watch Fox are more likely than viewers of other outlets to be misinformed. Is it because Fox watchers are less capable of understanding the news, or is it that the news they are given is less likely to present the correct facts?
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Post by TheEllipticalDisillusion »

Hal there is a problem with that study. It only looks at news programs on networks. "Special Report with Brit Hume" on Fox News was cited just right of center, while "NewsNight with Aaron Brown" on CNN is just left of center. It further states that "If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

The report seems hardly damning, but on shows like O'Reilly Factor, there is a clear right-wing bias just like Countdown with Keith Oberman has a clear left-wing bias.

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left Also from that same study.

True believers can never be swayed though.
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Post by JewelSong »

halplm wrote: Jewel, I'd appreciate proof that FOX lies on its news programs..
Fox doesn't LIE so much as it seems to distort and twist. And worse (to my mind) Fox tends to sensationalize. They pick one specific bit of a story and make that BIT the story in and of itself. It is incomplete reporting.

It's like the Daily Mail or New York Post of TV reporting. In my opinion - and for my own tastes. I don't have any recent examples, as I am not in the US and I don't get the Fox channel over here in the UK.

I find that reading a wide variety of news sources tends to even things out a bit. On line, I try to get a look at the NY Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, London Times and the Christian Science Monitor every day. (I read the Globe mostly for home-town news...it's not that good on the global front.)

I find that doing this gives me several slants on the same story. If I find some severe discrepancies, I do a bit more research. But usually, I simply find slight leanings one way or the other...or, as I said, incomplete reporting, depending on which way the news sources lies. So I do my best to fill in the gaps. If I read something that is WAY over to the left or the right, I make it a point to find opposing viewpoints...so I can draw a reasonable conclusion.

When I am home, I do watch Jim Lehrer (in tribute to my Dad) and also CNN as well as the local and network news programs. I miss Peter Jennings, as I liked his reporting style.
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Post by Pearly Di »

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, and a blond Etonian with a plummy accent, has endorsed Obama in -- wait for it -- The Daily Telegraph, the most conservative and popular of all our broadsheets.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... do2101.xml

This paragraph in particular caught my attention:

The defining image of the battle so far is of the two candidates leaving the stage after the last TV debate - Obama moving confidently off, after another grave and measured performance, and McCain gagging like a gargoyle, tongue out, as he realised he was about to walk over the edge.

I am not suggesting that McCain is a buffoon, or that Obama is quite as Messianic as some of his supporters seem to believe.

He gave a speech of unrivalled torpor in Germany, for instance. He needs to stick up more vigorously for free trade, and we must hope that any ill-considered new taxes will be thwarted by Congress.

But then again, he is patently not the Marxist subversive loony Lefty that some of his detractors allege.

I revere Melanie Phillips, and I have carefully studied her blog entries about Obama and the vote-stealers, or Obama and his association with a quondam terrorist called Ayers.

In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun.

Obama's terrorist chum is now a professor, and his last act of terrorism took place when the candidate was eight, and it is not really clear that he and Obama are chums at all.

The entire set of allegations seem to be an attempt to smear him by association, and are about as damaging as pointing out that some of Tony Blair's colleagues used to be Stalinists, or that Tory party conferences used to feature people who advocated the hanging of Nelson Mandela.


Which is pretty much my take on it.

Many of the comments in the thread are asinine (my favourites being those which go along the lines of: 'how dare you comment on US politics, Euro- trash'! :rofl:) but Boris's essay is not.
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Post by halplm »

JS, it's not incomplete, its focused differently. One would have to conclude based on ratings, that they are focusing on what is more important to people.

SF, I stop reading anything If i can tell it's biased, because there is no point. The fact you are refusing to pull facts out of the article, only proves to me that there are no facts, it's all slanted distorted opinion.

Ell, I'm not saying some stuff on FOX isn't distorted, and people will believe what they want to believe when they hear it, but that's not the news programs. I would also question if it's really people who are misinformed, or that they ahve drawn different conclusions that seem misinformed.
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Post by JewelSong »

halplm wrote:JS, it's not incomplete, its focused differently. One would have to conclude based on ratings, that they are focusing on what is more important to people.
Well, it's more entertaining, that's for sure. I'm not certain if it's focused more on what's important to people, or merely has tapped into what many people want to hear. And as I'm sure you know, just because a show has good ratings doesn't make it a quality program.

For my own taste, I find it too sensationalist and full of sound bites and flash. Unfortunately, I think that may be inherent in the medium - TV is supposed to entertain, after all and who wants to watch a "talking head" for an hour?

I do find Jim Lehrer's program to be a measured, careful and pretty much unbiased reporting of the news. Just the facts...as complete as possible. Not easy to do - but he's still on the air.

And I do recommend the Christian Science Monitor for good writing and unbiased reporting in print form.
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Post by Primula Baggins »

Hal, so people don't have to go to a lot of trouble to provide source links for you for nothing, can you give some examples of news organizations, newspapers, and television news sources that are unbiased by your standards? Besides Fox, I mean—or is Fox the only one you trust?

I would like to be able to link to information that you'll actually consent to read, so people can discuss it with you.
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Post by yovargas »

Um, I just wanted to point out something that I figured would be obvious but I guess not: if the vast majority of other organizations are to the left of Fox then cannot, by definition, be "centrist". They would instead be, by definition, on the very far right.


ps - popularity is a spectacularly awful way to judge the quality of anything.
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Post by JewelSong »

In politics, centrism usually refers to the political ideal of promoting moderate policies which land in the middle ground between different political extremes. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of Left-Right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between left-wing politics and right-wing politics.

(From Wikipedia.)
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Post by halplm »

yov, popularity is awful in judging quality, but is entirely appropriate in knowing what people want to watch. FOX is to the far right of the media, but is centrist to the political spectrum in the US. Thus, the rest of the media is biased to the left.

Prim, any article can be unbiased from most sources, but there are a few exceptions. Most of the time, I don't have to bother slugging through the bias of an article, because people quote the relevant bits... Since SF can't do that, I can only assume there aren't any.
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Post by sauronsfinger »

from Hal
The fact you are refusing to pull facts out of the article, only proves to me that there are no facts, it's all slanted distorted opinion.
This board has asked all its members that instead of posting long articles filled with information which stretch the page, we simply provide a link and maybe a short summary to interest the person. That is what I did. For you and anyone else here.

To be truthful, I would much rather print the article right here for you and make it so much easier. But I honor the wishes of those who run the board. I hope you can respect that.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.... John Rogers
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Post by Dave_LF »

I think what hal must mean is that all the media in the world except Fox News are liberal compared to him. Which I suppose might actually be correct. For the record, I also might as well say that bias does not imply falsehood and lack of bias does not imply truth.
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