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

zoogs said:
(Salon) The danger of the right’s noise machine: Years of misinformation led to Trump’s rise

A quote from conservative radio host and soon-to-be not true Scotsman, Charlie Sykes, on MSNBC:

Over the years conservative talk show hosts, and I’m certainly one of them, we’ve done a remarkable job of challenging and attacking the mainstream media. But perhaps what we did was also the destroy any sense of a standard. Where do you go to have any sense of the truth? You have Donald Trump come along and the man says things that are demonstrably untrue on a daily basis. My experience has been look, we live in an era when every drunk at the end of the bar has a Twitter account and maybe has a blog and when you try to point out “this is not true, this is a lie” and then you cite the Washington Post or the New York Times, their response is “oh that’s the mainstream media.” So we’ve done such a good job of discrediting them that there’s almost no place to go to be able to fact check.
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All media puts out nonsense and I agree with BRB that its up to viewers to disseminate truth from fiction. There have been plenty of studies and articles written about the slant of the MSM as well. To counter your point above, if Fox News were to point out something factual that people should be concerned about, the common response from the left and Democratic politicians is "it's just more Fox News propaganda." The fact that you would site an article from Salon.com (a leftist media outlet) would be no different than me citing something directly from Breitbart. Even if there is some truth to the article, those who don't agree with Salon or Breitbart won't accept anything they say, and given that some of the "mainstream" media also has been proven false on many occasions, I agree with BRB that most people now will believe what they want to believe.

http://www.naturalnews.com/048714_mainstream_media_propaganda_lies.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/j-peder-zane/article96003182.html

 
#ManyPeopleHaveSaid ...

I'm a little selective of what I post from Salon, as some of their stuff just isn't very quality writing. That said, even WaPo and the NYT has stuff worth criticizing -- for example, a number of outlets did a good job taking the Times to task for the way they jumped on that unpublished paper as a "Harvard study".

And this was a good article.

Still, there's a difference between a site that has poorer quality op-eds than others, and Zero Hedge, Breitbart, and whatever the hell those other two are.

 
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bnilhome said:
zoogs said:
(Salon) The danger of the right’s noise machine: Years of misinformation led to Trump’s rise

A quote from conservative radio host and soon-to-be not true Scotsman, Charlie Sykes, on MSNBC:

Over the years conservative talk show hosts, and I’m certainly one of them, we’ve done a remarkable job of challenging and attacking the mainstream media. But perhaps what we did was also the destroy any sense of a standard. Where do you go to have any sense of the truth? You have Donald Trump come along and the man says things that are demonstrably untrue on a daily basis. My experience has been look, we live in an era when every drunk at the end of the bar has a Twitter account and maybe has a blog and when you try to point out “this is not true, this is a lie” and then you cite the Washington Post or the New York Times, their response is “oh that’s the mainstream media.” So we’ve done such a good job of discrediting them that there’s almost no place to go to be able to fact check.
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All media puts out nonsense and I agree with BRB that its up to viewers to disseminate truth from fiction. There have been plenty of studies and articles written about the slant of the MSM as well. To counter your point above, if Fox News were to point out something factual that people should be concerned about, the common response from the left and Democratic politicians is "it's just more Fox News propaganda." The fact that you would site an article from Salon.com (a leftist media outlet) would be no different than me citing something directly from Breitbart. Even if there is some truth to the article, those who don't agree with Salon or Breitbart won't accept anything they say, and given that some of the "mainstream" media also has been proven false on many occasions, I agree with BRB that most people now will believe what they want to believe.

http://www.naturalnews.com/048714_mainstream_media_propaganda_lies.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/j-peder-zane/article96003182.html
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Bril....

What is your opinion of the quote from Sykes?

 
BigRedBuster said:
bnilhome said:
zoogs said:
(Salon) The danger of the right’s noise machine: Years of misinformation led to Trump’s rise

A quote from conservative radio host and soon-to-be not true Scotsman, Charlie Sykes, on MSNBC:

Over the years conservative talk show hosts, and I’m certainly one of them, we’ve done a remarkable job of challenging and attacking the mainstream media. But perhaps what we did was also the destroy any sense of a standard. Where do you go to have any sense of the truth? You have Donald Trump come along and the man says things that are demonstrably untrue on a daily basis. My experience has been look, we live in an era when every drunk at the end of the bar has a Twitter account and maybe has a blog and when you try to point out “this is not true, this is a lie” and then you cite the Washington Post or the New York Times, their response is “oh that’s the mainstream media.” So we’ve done such a good job of discrediting them that there’s almost no place to go to be able to fact check.
Click to expand...
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All media puts out nonsense and I agree with BRB that its up to viewers to disseminate truth from fiction. There have been plenty of studies and articles written about the slant of the MSM as well. To counter your point above, if Fox News were to point out something factual that people should be concerned about, the common response from the left and Democratic politicians is "it's just more Fox News propaganda." The fact that you would site an article from Salon.com (a leftist media outlet) would be no different than me citing something directly from Breitbart. Even if there is some truth to the article, those who don't agree with Salon or Breitbart won't accept anything they say, and given that some of the "mainstream" media also has been proven false on many occasions, I agree with BRB that most people now will believe what they want to believe.

http://www.naturalnews.com/048714_mainstream_media_propaganda_lies.html

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/j-peder-zane/article96003182.html
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Bril....

What is your opinion of the quote from Sykes?
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I don't agree with his premise that talk radio has resulted in conservative voters falsely believing the mainstream media is biased. As I've said before, all outlets are biased, and some do a better job of disguising their bias. The fringe elements on the left and right are in your face with their media of choice, whether its talk radio, online and social media, or through television. The mainstream networks such as ABC, NBC, and CBS can better disguise their bias through their selection of what they cover as "hard news", where the place it in their news program, which slant or angle they take on a story, etc... In 2008 the MSM was fully in the tank for Obama at Hillary's expense in the primaries. I don't like Hillary as you know, but it was obvious to me they were playing favorites.

I do think that those who listen to Rush and can't think for themselves help lead to situations where someone like Trump can win in a very crowded primary field. I would argue though that had their only been 4-6 candidates running in the primary which is more typical, Trump would have never survived. The non-Trump vote would have consolidated early on to get it down to a 1/1 race where Trump would have lost.

 
I don't ever remember any negative talk about the Main Steam Media until Rush came on the air and others took that ball and ran with it.

So, I tend to agree with him.

 
BigRedBuster said:
I don't ever remember any negative talk about the Main Steam Media until Rush came on the air and others took that ball and ran with it.

So, I tend to agree with him.
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First off, I'm not a huge fan of Rush and some of the other talk radio hosts and have never tuned in to listen to a full show of his. I will read some of his statements or listen to clips if something is noteworthy. With that said, until Rush came along, there was NO opposing views to the liberal bias in the MSM. The same goes for Fox News. So without any media outlets to highlight the hypocritical coverage or statements from the MSM, you would not have heard much about MSM bias. I think in a given month or year, you will find many examples of how the MSM slanted a story to cover their own bias, but like I said earlier, one of the most noteworthy examples (because it's pitting two Dems against each other) was how they covered the 2008 primary. I really think had the media not been rooting for Obama to win and continuing to lavish positive stories on him, Hillary would have won that primary, but given she is such a lousy general election candidate, I actually think McCain would have beaten her. I know that's a lot of looking back on what could have been, but the media is extremely powerful in this country, and the bias on all sides has grown worse in the last 10-15 years.

 
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Just because you didn't listen to Rush and get the idea from him doesn't mean you weren't influenced by them. Conservative radio is where the idea originated about this MSM liberal bias...bla bla bla. It spread from there. It's like if you get the Zika virus, it doesn't mean you came in contact with the first few people that ever had it. But...hey...you still got it.

 
BigRedBuster said:
Just because you didn't listen to Rush and get the idea from him doesn't mean you weren't influenced by them. Conservative radio is where the idea originated about this MSM liberal bias...bla bla bla. It spread from there. It's like if you get the Zika virus, it doesn't mean you came in contact with the first few people that ever had it. But...hey...you still got it.
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Sorry BRB, you are 100% wrong on this one. I'm a highly educated guy that prides myself on not being influenced by anyone to be honest. I don't identify with the alternative fringe right or with the "establishment" part of the GOP. I agree that there are many on both sides of the aisle influenced by media, whether its talk radio, print media, television media, social media, or what is instilled into the entertainment media of our time.

 
"I'm not influenced by anyone."

Unironically, he said, while regularly offering up Trump surrogate party lines nearly verbatim.
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Moiraine said:
bnilhome said:
zoogs said:
"I'm not influenced by anyone."

Unironically, he said, while regularly offering up Trump surrogate party lines nearly verbatim.
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You go on with your judgmental self zoogs. We can make an argument that everyone on here is influenced by some media outlet.
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We can make that argument. The thing is, nobody here made the claim that they aren't influenced by anyone. Except for you.
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If you actually read the thread above, a specific accusation was made by BRB that I am influence by right-wing media/propaganda which I refuted, and then went on to make the point that everyone is influenced by media in one way or another. I simply pointed out that I am not influenced by a certain type of media as BRB was suggesting, so nice try.

 
Sure. To turn this around, why is influence bad? I've been influenced by a lot of people -- including posters on here who I think make great arguments. I wasn't born politically active and I still am far from an expert in any policy matter.

I've been influenced by Barack Obama. It didn't occur to me, for example, that Iran might not be an evil country we should never deal with. Even that the Iraq war and the American policy of nation-building were mistakes.

I've been influenced by a number of outlets that do good journalism. I think Glenn Greenwald does a great, earnest job with The Intercept and pushed me in a different direction on Snowden. I think Paul Krugman is a very smart guy and he's shaped my views in his area of expertise, economics. Various influences, media and otherwise, which I respect have swayed my opinion on the current administration's drone war. I don't agree with everything from the NYT, or WaPo, etc, even on these topics, but on balance I think they offer a lot of valuable, critical thinking.

There's a big difference to my mind between that and the organized, cohesive messaging machine of the right that we're criticizing here and which you seem to be defending. Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart, the New York Post. These are intentionally dishonest swillers and sellers of partisan programming. If that's a judgment, I'm happy to stand by it.

 
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