I went to the major news organizations after the debate to see what popular opinion was after the debate. I don't know why I tried the major news organizations. These were the front page discriptions of the debate.
ABC News
"Sen. John Edwards accused the Bush administration Tuesday night of bungling the war in Iraq and presiding over a historic loss of..." Pro Edwards
CBS News
"In a lively debate dominated by Iraq, Democratic Sen. John Edwards bluntly accused Vice President Dick Cheney of "not being straight with the American people," about the war. "Your facts are just wrong," Cheney shot back." Pro Edwards, they did however give Cheney 3 words.
Fox News
"Cheney, Edwards take jabs at one another in only veep debate in 2004 race" Unbiased
Its amazing people cannot see the media bias. Its really starting to pess me off. It seems to get worst everyday.
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"If you are 20 and not a Democrat, you have no heart. If you are 40 and not a Republican, you have no brain"
its hard to find someone who doesnt think the media is biased toward the opposing party.
conservatives might say fox news is unbiased.
liberals would say that fox news is the most right wing conservative news program on tv.
conservatives say cbs and abc are run by communists
liberals claim them to be unbiased.
avoiding bias is impossible.
this is because they think that accusations that are in favor of their party are true, defining it as unbiased.
they see accusations against their party as lies from the opposing party, defining it as biased toward the opposing party.
lies told by their party are in most cases ignored, cognitive dissinance
but i must agree, the quote from fox news was unbiased. fox news is, however, very conservative.
It is not imposible to avoid bias, all that is required is to report the facts on the evening news and leave the opinions to a clearly stated opinion/editorial section. Reporters may avoid bias by simply avoiding the buzz phrases used so often to signify their own moral superiority over those people and events they report on.
Opinion and editorializing clearly have their place, but not in the news room.
As for last nights debate, I personally call it a draw. Neither man came out with anything new or decisive, neither man clearly dominated the debate with rapier wit or incisive comment, rather they plowed through the same old accusations and counter accusations we have been hearing for months with neither scoring anything close to a coup. This is my opinion, if you have not already figured that out.
Come on, that's absurd. We're all biased in life, but we can also overcome such biases if we make the choice. A professional journalist more or less has a complete responsibility to represent the entire truth in the media. It's a rare case when that happens, but that is no excuse.
Fox came into being in order to fight liberal bias. The big media companies have highlighted the Left while downplaying the Right for decades. Now that a company comes to give the other side of the story, they're labeled as Republican propagandists. Give me a break!
Let me correct you. Avoiding bias is very much possible.
Avoiding having someone THINK you are biased, however, is not.
I don't care what a particular organization is covering: Be it a presidential debate or a hometown city council, someone somewhere is going to claim that there is a bias in the reporting. You go to messageboards frequented by liberals and you see them claiming that the media is biased against them.
That said, I DO think the major networks are very biased. All of them. Even Fox News, albeit towards the right instead of the left.
But avoiding bias is not hard to do at all.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world -- Ghandi
http://www.rightminded.net
The evening news used to have an editorial comment at the end of almost every broadcast. Then it became once a week and now almost never. Reason? Every news broadcast is really nothing more than an editorial commentary anyways. It has been accepted by viewers and it sells.
You think there is a divide in this country now on political issures. Wait a few more years and it will be O'Reily vs Rather in the arena fighting to the death - not literally but I hope you get my point.
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If you give a politician an enema you can easily hide them in a bread box.
Media Bias after VP Debate
