From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Feb 05 2005 - 23:49:25 GMT
Ant, Platt, msh and all:
Ant McWatt expanded:
...3rdly, Robert Lichter is very much biased towards a conservative agenda.
Lichter was a fellow of the conservative American Enterprise Institute which
was endorsed by leading right-wing figures (such as Ronald Reagan, Pat
Buchanan, Ed Meese and Pat Robertson) and his public statements reveal a
conservative worldview. Moreover, the Scaife Foundation, a major right-wing
funder, provided money for Lichter and his wife money towards their book,
"The Media Elite". However, as Jim Naureckas's confirms in his 1992 paper
"Study of Bias or Biased Study?" the book was criticised by academics
because of its methodological flaws...
dmb adds:
Richard Mellon Scaife is infamous for funding extremely hateful and
outrageous right-wing propaganda. He spends millions to demonize and destroy
people (liberals) he doesn't like. A reasonable person can conclude that
anything he touches should be treated with extreme skepticism. The AEI is
not a scary old crank of that magnitude, but like most conservative "think
tanks", the vast majority of their so-called research and scholarship
amounts to little more than finding justifications for previously held
ideological positions and/or finding palatable rhetorical packages for
previously held ideological positions. I mean, their aim is not intellectual
discovery or integrity so much as to give their beliefs a verneer of
intellectual respectability. The Heritage Foundation is to political science
as the Creationist Institute is to biological science, if you will.
Ant also said:
..........though there were a number of studies on the "Media Bias Basics"
webpage concerned with the political affiliations of journalists (such as
the four mentioned above) there were no studies examining the affiliations
of CEOs or the owners of mass media organizations.
dmb adds:
Exactly. This is why Chomsky's work is so important. He points out that news
information has to go through a series of instituional filters before it is
printed or broadcast. And he usually has to point out that his analysis does
not constitute a conspiracy theory. He simply points out how these
institutions operate. As many have already tried to point out in this forum,
the media's need for profit, need to accomodate advertisers, the limits of
broadcast time and print space, the personal motives of owners and managers,
and other practical realities play a decisive role in shaping the
information we get from the media.
And don't forget that the media are not necessarily interested in the truth
of anything. Their job is to provide eyeballs. Advertisers pay all their
bills and generate all their profits. As far as the media are concerned, we
are NOT the consumers. We are the product. The media serves us only in the
way a chef serves roast beef - on a platter.
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