The JournoLIST Scandal

[Pliny]

I actually agree that there is a slight journalistic bias towards Obama, much as there was towards Reagan and (even in retrospect, thanks to mythmaking and hagiography) towards JFK.

Reagan loved by the media? They found it very difficult to criticize him but they did anyway. Today the hard left despises him but he is a hero to the right.

The media loved JFK at the time. He was a bit of a scoundrel but you never heard anything about that in the media. Granted the media was a little more discreet back then. I liked him initially but I knew nothing about politics, had I looked at what he actually did as President I would not today vote for the man.

But I'm talking about an institutional bias towards power and wealth....while you're talking about how one wing of the Power establishment might be receiving slightly more favourable coverage than the other wing of the same Power structure.

Liberalism grows government faster than Conservatism and if you are talking about an institutional bias

toward power and wealth Liberalism has to win that bias hands down.!!!!!

Edited August 5, 2010 by Pliny

[punked]

Liberalism grows government faster than Conservatism and if you are talking about an institutional bias

toward power and wealth Liberalism has to win that bias hands down.!!!!!

Largest growth of US Government was Under FDR, Reagan and Bush. So please don't act so high and mighty.

[Shwa]

In fact, they take the Tea Party seriously, in a way they don't do for comparable movements in other situations. The TP's received far more coverage (including interviews with its proponents) than did the far bigger anti-war protests leading up to the Iraq War. This global movement constituted the biggest protests against government action in history: tens of millions of direct activists/protesters, never mind the many more who sympathized with their views.

The media didn't take them seriously at all. Even though global opinion generally agreed with them.

But the elites did not agree with them.

Is it that they didn't agree or that it was simply an ad-hoc organization that came and went, while the Tea Party - no doubt the purpose of their focus - appears to be less of an ad-hoc movement, even though they play up that motif a good deal?

For example, the Rolling Stones have likely sold more tickets and albums during a given touring year than all the other ad-hoc music festivals during the same year. Something can be said for permanence and consistency, for internal integrity. Which kinda leads into Pliny's assertion making sense, in a completely unsubstantiated way.

Permanence, consistency and internal integrity generates more "news." Smaller governments generate less "news." And what is news, mostly about? People. So the bigger the government, the more intrusive the eye, the more stories available.

I can see "the media" being kind of like farmers in a way: you might get a good yield if you plant crops are here and there, once in a awhile, that's horticulture. But if you want to control the supply of your product, you establish fields. And if you want to increase your yield, bigger fields and more fertilizers are in order. That's agriculture. Big news media are news farmers, not subsistence hunters and gatherers of news. And what does big government supply? A steady yield. And in these days of competition, good yields are required for survival.

Of course I can't readily prove any of this, but thought it was an interesting take that ties in the two topics.

[bloodyminded]

Permanence, consistency and internal integrity generates more "news." Smaller governments generate less "news." And what is news, mostly about? People. So the bigger the government, the more intrusive the eye, the more stories available.

Who are these smaller governments? The Republicans?

[Shwa]

Who are these smaller governments? The Republicans?

Naw, neither Republicans, Democrats, Liberal, Consevative or NDP. Most likely Libertarians or their close cousins, the Anarchists.

Edited August 9, 2010 by Shwa

[bloodyminded]

Naw, neither Republicans, Democrats, Liberal, Consevative or NDP. Most likely Libertarians or their close cousins, the Anarchists.

Ah! just so.