Posted on 09/14/2001 7:02:19 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
I believe your analysis breaks down here. Certainly, "if it bleeds, it leads" serves as the motto for local TV news. A good fire or murder beats the hell of out a Boy Scout getting his Eagle in the ratings. But these are not usual times. American forces advancing on Baghdad while slaughtering Iraqis is just as newsworthy as American forces not advancing because of a sandstorm and supposed supply problems, and it's being treated as such by the media. People are hungry for news either way. What's the biggest story of the last 24 hours? A PFC POW being rescued. If that's not a "good news" story, what is? You seem to be saying that there's an inherent bias in these stories, in that bad news will get better ratings than good news. Maybe in peace, but not in war. Iraqi blood sells as well as American blood. Maybe even better.
The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source. American forces advancing on Baghdad, taking light casualties, is essentially the only story.People are hungry for news either way. What's the biggest story of the last 24 hours? A PFC POW being rescued. If that's not a "good news" story, what is?
Certainly it's good news, beyond peradventure. But coverage of it might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.You seem to be saying that there's an inherent bias in these stories, in that bad news will get better ratings than good news. Maybe in peace, but not in war. Iraqi blood sells as well as American blood. Maybe even better.
I think to be fair you'd have to say that the few dozen coalition casualties have gotten at least as much coverage as possibly scores of thousands of Iraqi Army deaths. But as to the coverage of the small number of civilian casualties, that is over the top--because it is recognized by all as bad news.I'm saying that commercially successful journalism features bad news. Any other kind of story is smilingly referred to as "human interest." That means that only people who are willing to feature reports of bad news become journalists. And that causes the "bias" in journalism. Any journalism which does not more-or-less explicitly lean against that wind--which does not seem "patriotic"--will in practice be anticonservative in tone.
But CNN willingly conceded the right to report any news [at all] for what it saw as the far more valuable right to be allowed to continue to appear as if it were reporting the news.
People are afraid to ignore bad news and are afraid to accept good news uncritically.That implies that the easiest way to grab people's attention is with a negative headline which people will fear to ignore. The whole phenomonon of "bias in the media" pretty much boils down to the institutionalization of that skewed perspective among journalists. Hey, it works--the journalists who employ that principle survive commercially.
Which explains why journalism leaves a niche wide open for commentary which is consistently more accurate than "The News." Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative--will almost inevitably have a better track record than herd-mentality "pure journalism." Thus, talk radio. Thus, Fox News.
And how many headlines in conservative-oriented news or commentary articles fit just this description? Generally along the lines of "The country's going to hell in a handbasket", "The liberals are betraying the country to the Communists", or things along that line. "Liberal" media hardly have a lock on negative press.
Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative
I'm afraid that this implies a equivalency that I don't accept; i.e., that negativity and superficiality is limited only to liberals.
Hindsight is always 20/20. News reports are not history books. At the time, the sandstorms and supply problems were causing issues with the American advance, and at the time this was reported. Should it have been ignored? Once the sandstorms ceased, and the security of the supply lines was tightened up, the stories ceased. It seems to me that it would have been irresponsible for the media to ignore the effects of weather and improper security on the American forces.
But coverage of [POW Lynch's rescue] might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.
I didn't notice any upstaging. I thought that the Coalition forces successes were quite well covered by all the media, both Fox and CNN. Due to a quirk in what I do for a living, I am able to track what's on both of these all day. When the Coalition advanced, all the media outlets covered it.
Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservativeI'm afraid that this implies a equivalency that I don't accept; i.e., that negativity and superficiality is limited only to liberals.
Liberals--journalists and those who sail down journalism's prevailing wind for political profit--are negative toward the people and institutions upon whom/which we-the-people do and must depend.Is your water safe to drink?That is the sort of negative questioning beloved of journalists and other liberals.Is the supermarket meat department unsanitary?
Are the police incompetent to control crime?
Are the cops arbitrary and brutal?
As to superificality among conservatives, that is undoubtedly to be found among rank-and-file voters. It is however subject to withering journalistic scrutiny, and therefore has no survival value for the conservative politician or spokesman. In the prevailing journalistic environment you really have to have your ducks in a row to defend a conservative position. Mouthing liberal platitudes, OTOH, is gutless--perfectly safe, if all you are worried about is what Dan Rather will say about you.
The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source.Hindsight is always 20/20. News reports are not history books. At the time, the sandstorms and supply problems were causing issues with the American advance, and at the time this was reported. Should it have been ignored? Once the sandstorms ceased, and the security of the supply lines was tightened up, the stories ceased. It seems to me that it would have been irresponsible for the media to ignore the effects of weather and improper security on the American forces.
True, hindsight can be 20/20--if you bother to look backward after the fact. My point is that journalism's credibility depends critically on never looking back when the journalist's first report was wrong. If you do look back into the past, and compare the historical reality with contemporaneous reporting, you will find that whoever was least inclined to accept the worst-case scenarios of the day was nearly always right. Fox News seems "patriotic"; IMHO that's true primarily in contrast to the systematic negativity of "straight journalism."It may not be appropriate to ignore the problems you know about, but in fact when the military says the problem is minor it almost certainly is minor--the military spokesman just can't afford to sugar-coat things in the slightest precisely because journalism will have a field day if he is overoptimistic. Journalism consistently accuses the military of overoptimism, in any event.
So if you listen to a journalist sniping at a military spokesman, you can pretty well set your watch by the fact that the journalist is making a mountain out of a molehill.
I didn't notice any upstaging. I thought that the Coalition forces successes were quite well covered by all the media, both Fox and CNN. Due to a quirk in what I do for a living, I am able to track what's on both of these all day. When the Coalition advanced, all the media outlets covered it. In the context of Coalition casualties numbering over a hundred, and especially in context of the hundreds of thousands of Coalition troops who are not casualties, how important is the Jessica Lynch story anyway? I wouldn't change the fact that she was rescued--but history shouldn't attach much significance to it. The signal coalition success in aerial bombardment of Iraqi positions saved coalition lives wholesale, but received similar report time as the rescue of that single damsel in distress.
We were all interested in hearing about Private Lynch--but the fact that we were interested in that story does not change the fact that you should have known at the time that the defeat of the Iraqi army was more important. We just didn't know the names of the coalition troops who were not injured or killed because of it--whereas Private Lynch has a pretty face.
I thought at the time that the rescue of Private Lynch was overblown in the media. However, what I didn't notice was any difference between Fox, CNN, or the various broadcast media on how that was covered vs. how the progress of the Coalition forces against the Iraqis was going. I see no evidence of bias, liberal or otherwise, in the way the different media handled the story.
Fox is less inclined to assume that an American military operation is going bad at the first sign that there is actual (gasp!) opposition. That does not make it any less breathless at the (good) news that a damsel in distress had been rescued.Overemphasis on the Lynch story was universal so far as I know--which only says that entertainment value trumps historical significance in the heirarchy of values which determines what is, and what is not, "news." This is an illustration not of negativity but of the superficiality intrinsic to journalism. And since the superficiality of journalism applies to Fox News as well as the others, perhaps the best idea is to make it a policy to not get too wrapped up in breaking news, from any source whatsoever. 'Course when there's a war on, that discipline tends to break down . . .
Ta Da!
Drum roll please!
I won!
Why me?
In my #114 I pointed out that Mark War's #19 bears on the point in question.
You seemed to take Mark War's point at the time . . .
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