By: peterbroady

peterbroady — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:12:03 +0000

I know nothing about Al Franken or his views (I remember him from SNL, and have seen his books – that’s really about it), but I read these supposed exposes of the ‘liberal media’ and am baffled. They seem to be based on the strange assumption that selection of news topics and writing of articles in newspapers is supposed to be somehow completely non-ideological. Yet it is just obvious that out of all the million things that go on in the world every day, a small number of stories must be selected and put in the limited space of a newspaper (or any other kind of media), and thus selection based on some ideology, philosophy, or more likely intuitive conception of the stories’ importance based on intended audience and other factors is necessary. This accounts for the obvious bias of every kind of media; it is just unavoidable and trivial. If one wants the whole picture then the thing to do, it seems, is just read widely across the national and international press and analyze the different interpretations given to stories, understanding each and coming to your own conclusions based on some rough objective standards. This could be much harder, I guess, but that’s the burden you’ll have to bear if you want to actually understand the world. One can read almost the exact same sort of analysis as seen in this post, but with respect to ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’ media (FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, New York Post, Washington Times, etc.), and it makes just as much sense.

One thing that news media folks can do, however, is actually be honest about how their news is shaped. This isn’t often done, but The New York Times, to it’s credit, at least had an editorial in 2004 from the public editor doing this:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E7D8173DF936A15754C0A9629C8B63

Comments on: AP: Forgets to Mention Al Franken is Liberal in Senate Run Announcements

By: peterbroady