Defining the "Liberal Media" and the "Mainstream Media"

I know the right loves to say this. But, I would not call CNN "mainstream left". This was something that Foxnews started promoting when they first came on the scene because they saw CNN as their main competitor for viewers.

But, they are far from "Mainstream left".

Probably could say the same thing about ABC, CBS and NBC.

 
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What's interesting is that mainstream Republican media has sequestered itself into a tight ideological bloc (there's an interesting fracture going on currently, but all things Trump aside...) while it's not true of the rest. Things you find in TIME or NYT are not so different from what you might find in The Economist. Conservative voices who aren't focused on demonizing Obama -- who by most non-U.S. definitions is at least a modest fiscal conservative -- have jumped ship to other publications.

This leaves a highly distilled agenda to be represented by the media giant that is Fox News, rivaled only by the even more concentrated crazy to be found in Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, or outlets like Breitbart that are even less good at posing as a legitimate news front than Russia Today.

You can see why they do it. One, there's a sizable audience for it and two, they are indeed 'victims' of a broad mainstream that gives them little respect. Cornering themselves into no-compromise differentiation feeds into both. It's not something that can't happen to the Democrat-friendly media; it just hasn't quite made it there yet.

 
zoogs said:
What's interesting is that mainstream Republican media has sequestered itself into a tight ideological bloc (there's an interesting fracture going on currently, but all things Trump aside...) while it's not true of the rest. Things you find in TIME or NYT are not so different from what you might find in The Economist. Conservative voices who aren't focused on demonizing Obama -- who by most non-U.S. definitions is at least a modest fiscal conservative -- have jumped ship to other publications.

This leaves a highly distilled agenda to be represented by the media giant that is Fox News, rivaled only by the even more concentrated crazy to be found in Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, or outlets like Breitbart that are even less good at posing as a legitimate news front than Russia Today.

You can see why they do it. One, there's a sizable audience for it and two, they are indeed 'victims' of a broad mainstream that gives them little respect. Cornering themselves into no-compromise differentiation feeds into both. It's not something that can't happen to the Democrat-friendly media; it just hasn't quite made it there yet.
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Funny you mention those two outlets.

I've recently begun using the site Reddit much more often than I used to. It's a great outlet for news and generally interesting facts and things to help pass time.{

But /r/politics (the way that the site labels "subreddits," or the equivalent of the different forums on Huskerboard) has gone nuts upvoting (Reddit operates on a karma system where you can upvote or downvote a piece to either raise or drop its position in the subreddit's queue) stories from the likes of Breitbart, RT, and other rather nefarious media outlets. That particular sub, though you'd imagine it to be a good place to discuss politics in general, has turned into a gigantic Bernie Sanders hivemind. It is poorly moderated, and they upvote anti-Clinton or Pro-Bernie stories like hotcakes in order to get them to the front page of Reddit (constantly being turned over with the most upvoted stories).

It's pretty funny how we can be so blind to bias sometimes when it's convenient for our chosen narrative.

 
I guess you could call it a big grassroots movement. The Tea Party does!

I really like Bernie, even if I don't see him as the most capable candidate (but he seems like quite a worthy contender, and I think I'm glad he's done so well in the race). I like him a lot more than I like the aggressive 'Berniebros', as they've come to be called.

 
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zoogs said:
I guess you could call it a big grassroots movement. The Tea Party does!

I really like Bernie, even if I don't see him as the most capable candidate (but he seems like quite a worthy contender, and I think I'm glad he's done so well in the race). I like him a lot more than I like the aggressive 'Berniebros', as they've come to be called.
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He's done great things to shape the focus of the Democrats as a whole. I think it's a good thing for the party and Hillary (in the event that she were to win the nomination) that he ran. He brought to light ideas that would've been otherwise left in the dark.

Reddit is a magnet for those Berniebros. They're very narrow minded and tend to work en masse to try to push Bernie's platform on people. They tend to not see the forest through the trees and seem somewhat politically naive, on the whole.

 
Here's a great example of why you shouldn't use Breitbart as a source for anything, not even to "promote discussion."


Breitbart Caught Passing Off Photo Of Cleveland’s NBA Championship Parade As Image Of Trump's Jacksonville Rally

In an article hyping “Trump’s Jacksonville Rally Draws 15,000,” Breitbart News used a photo titled “Cleveland parade celebrates NBA title,” taken from a June 23 CNN report. Breitbart News has changed the image without issuing a correction, the original photo remains in a Google cache of the write-up.

Breitbart's deceptive use of an image displaying celebratory NBA fans is consistent with their non-existent editorial practices, as previously seen when they attempted to attack Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and instead devoted an article to attacking a woman of an entirely different race. Breitbart later admitted this error, writing ‘[t]he Loretta Lynch identified earlier as the Whitewater attorney was, in fact, a different attorney.”
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https://twitter.com/BecketAdams/status/761023483623059461
 
Most average people outside the "media" which would be a very broad collection of the TV, print media, radio, internet, Hollywood, political and social organizations, etc. in today's communications world don't even know the difference between right and left in the political or social sense. This same 'media' has, perhaps purposely and perhaps without any particular intent or design or motive or agenda, has so skewed and distorted the messages they spew forth that it is difficult for the relatively uninformed or inattentive to really know what's actually going on.

In some cases, the leftist leaning media will hide their agendas and in other cases they are blatantly obvious and do so deliberately.

The 'truth' is no longer important - only the effect created or caused by the message's content. To most left leaning media, the impact of the message on the minds of the targeted audience is all that matters. The effort is to sway public opinion on any given topic to a leftist perspective without regard to any attempt to honestly inform them. The slant is often in the omitted information as much as in the 'facts' included in the story.

The left learned years ago that 'what the public does not know won't hurt the cause to be supported. When the facts honestly are told, a relatively large majority of the public can think sufficiently rationally so as to make reasonably good judgments as what is and is not best for the Nation and the people who live here. Distortion, lies and misrepresentation is the modus operandi of the left. This approach was promoted by the communists and socialists of eastern Europe and Russia for many decades.

For decades, the hard core left (perhaps a couple % or so of the population generally) denied and hid their socialist/communist inclinations for obvious reasons. Being a radical leftist was simply unacceptable to the general public, particularly in electoral politics. For good reasons of course but they knew to hide in the closet so to speak. Bernie Sanders is really the first major political candidate to publicly campaign successfully in a national election in American history. He was a legitimate threat to win the nomination but for the obvious conspiracy within the establishment of the national democrat party to prevent his campaign from actually winning. He came perilously close.

 
knapplc said:
Here's a great example of why you shouldn't use Breitbart as a source for anything, not even to "promote discussion."

Breitbart Caught Passing Off Photo Of Cleveland’s NBA Championship Parade As Image Of Trump's Jacksonville Rally

In an article hyping “Trump’s Jacksonville Rally Draws 15,000,” Breitbart News used a photo titled “Cleveland parade celebrates NBA title,” taken from a June 23 CNN report. Breitbart News has changed the image without issuing a correction, the original photo remains in a Google cache of the write-up.

Breitbart's deceptive use of an image displaying celebratory NBA fans is consistent with their non-existent editorial practices, as previously seen when they attempted to attack Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and instead devoted an article to attacking a woman of an entirely different race. Breitbart later admitted this error, writing ‘[t]he Loretta Lynch identified earlier as the Whitewater attorney was, in fact, a different attorney.”
Click to expand...


https://twitter.com/BecketAdams/status/761023483623059461
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Point taken - which I knew you aimed at me for using them to 'promote discussion' on the other thread. I don't read BB & know that they are in the tank for Trump. As someone mentioned, they have moved from being a conservative news organization to a very partisan organization after their founder died.

 
84HuskerLaw said:
Most average people outside the "media" which would be a very broad collection of the TV, print media, radio, internet, Hollywood, political and social organizations, etc. in today's communications world don't even know the difference between right and left in the political or social sense. This same 'media' has, perhaps purposely and perhaps without any particular intent or design or motive or agenda, has so skewed and distorted the messages they spew forth that it is difficult for the relatively uninformed or inattentive to really know what's actually going on.

In some cases, the leftist leaning media will hide their agendas and in other cases they are blatantly obvious and do so deliberately.

The 'truth' is no longer important - only the effect created or caused by the message's content. To most left leaning media, the impact of the message on the minds of the targeted audience is all that matters. The effort is to sway public opinion on any given topic to a leftist perspective without regard to any attempt to honestly inform them. The slant is often in the omitted information as much as in the 'facts' included in the story.

The left learned years ago that 'what the public does not know won't hurt the cause to be supported. When the facts honestly are told, a relatively large majority of the public can think sufficiently rationally so as to make reasonably good judgments as what is and is not best for the Nation and the people who live here. Distortion, lies and misrepresentation is the modus operandi of the left. This approach was promoted by the communists and socialists of eastern Europe and Russia for many decades.

For decades, the hard core left (perhaps a couple % or so of the population generally) denied and hid their socialist/communist inclinations for obvious reasons. Being a radical leftist was simply unacceptable to the general public, particularly in electoral politics. For good reasons of course but they knew to hide in the closet so to speak. Bernie Sanders is really the first major political candidate to publicly campaign successfully in a national election in American history. He was a legitimate threat to win the nomination but for the obvious conspiracy within the establishment of the national democrat party to prevent his campaign from actually winning. He came perilously close.
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Well said. There will always be media bias, but most of the mainstream outlets Americans get their news from tend to be biased toward Democrats, while talk radio is biased toward Conservatives. We are seeing tonight a prime example with the MSM blowing up about one off-hand Trump comment to have 2nd Amendment supporters help ensure Hillary is not elected. Nearly all of his speech was focused on the real issues, yet this one comment is what dominates the news cycle. As a Republican nominee, Trump needs to be smart enough to realize this is what the MSM does...find any story that will create a negative impact on viewers toward the GOP nominee and/or minimize any negative stories about the Democratic nominee. Unfortunately Trump is not smart or disciplined enough to stop making any statements that will be blown up or taken out of context.

 
bnilhome said:
most of the mainstream outlets Americans get their news from tend to be biased toward Democrats
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Most mainstream media outlets are biased towards laziness and sensationalism, which the Republican party has given a greater, higher amount of fodder for over the last decade plus.

 
bnilhome said:
84HuskerLaw said:
Most average people outside the "media" which would be a very broad collection of the TV, print media, radio, internet, Hollywood, political and social organizations, etc. in today's communications world don't even know the difference between right and left in the political or social sense. This same 'media' has, perhaps purposely and perhaps without any particular intent or design or motive or agenda, has so skewed and distorted the messages they spew forth that it is difficult for the relatively uninformed or inattentive to really know what's actually going on.

In some cases, the leftist leaning media will hide their agendas and in other cases they are blatantly obvious and do so deliberately.

The 'truth' is no longer important - only the effect created or caused by the message's content. To most left leaning media, the impact of the message on the minds of the targeted audience is all that matters. The effort is to sway public opinion on any given topic to a leftist perspective without regard to any attempt to honestly inform them. The slant is often in the omitted information as much as in the 'facts' included in the story.

The left learned years ago that 'what the public does not know won't hurt the cause to be supported. When the facts honestly are told, a relatively large majority of the public can think sufficiently rationally so as to make reasonably good judgments as what is and is not best for the Nation and the people who live here. Distortion, lies and misrepresentation is the modus operandi of the left. This approach was promoted by the communists and socialists of eastern Europe and Russia for many decades.

For decades, the hard core left (perhaps a couple % or so of the population generally) denied and hid their socialist/communist inclinations for obvious reasons. Being a radical leftist was simply unacceptable to the general public, particularly in electoral politics. For good reasons of course but they knew to hide in the closet so to speak. Bernie Sanders is really the first major political candidate to publicly campaign successfully in a national election in American history. He was a legitimate threat to win the nomination but for the obvious conspiracy within the establishment of the national democrat party to prevent his campaign from actually winning. He came perilously close.
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Well said. There will always be media bias, but most of the mainstream outlets Americans get their news from tend to be biased toward Democrats, while talk radio is biased toward Conservatives. We are seeing tonight a prime example with the MSM blowing up about one off-hand Trump comment to have 2nd Amendment supporters help ensure Hillary is not elected. Nearly all of his speech was focused on the real issues, yet this one comment is what dominates the news cycle. As a Republican nominee, Trump needs to be smart enough to realize this is what the MSM does...find any story that will create a negative impact on viewers toward the GOP nominee and/or minimize any negative stories about the Democratic nominee. Unfortunately Trump is not smart or disciplined enough to stop making any statements that will be blown up or taken out of context.
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But one ridiculous statement negates everything else he says. It doesn't matter the person or vehicle that reports on it. He makes more missteps than any adult, much less professional should make and certainly more than would be acceptable in political office. If you have to do one thing right it's be conscientious about what's coming out of your mouth.

Do you really think his statements have been blown up or taken out of context or do you wish that was the case? Seems to me that all the folks are reporting on it - not just left leaning outlets. It's what your fellow republicans are siting as they announce day after day that they are supporting Hillary.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/seven-times-trump-was-misunderstood-226846

Edit: and honestly, they aren't having to stretch the truth at all with what they report. They are showing unedited video and transcripts.

 
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Trump said the outrageous thing here, and again it's a combination of his team bending backwards to try and fit an alternate narrative to what happened and blame the media for Trump's actions.

The context is, Trump is claiming Hillary wants to tear up the 2nd Amendment and that if she is elected and chooses judges, there's nothing to be done. Except maybe 2nd Amendment people, maybe they can do something in spite of Hillary being elected and able to choose judges.

In the most optimistic view, that's a half-serious dog whistle. It's right in the mold of all the other outrageous comments Trump makes under the "hey, I don't know if I agree, but many people have said this..." guise.

 
At least Hannity is there to cushion the blow with a hand-holding interview.

I used to laugh when the Dems decided they'd push a "Trump is dangerous" narrative. I understand it, but at the time, it seemed lazy and a bit melodramatic.

As this has gone forward, it's becoming more and more apparent that it's legitimate. He "jokes" about popping a protestor in the fact, two of them get attacked. A homeless man is beaten by Trump supporters. He promotes torture, war crimes, and nukes to deal with ISIS, they turn it into a recruiting video.

Now he jokes about shooting Clinton, or at least the media is running with that media, if you believe he was misinterpreted. It doesn't really matter if this notion gets into the mind of one deranged sicko with a gun...

 
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