VisorBoy wrote:HokieHam wrote:VisorBoy wrote:HokieHam wrote:VisorBoy wrote:HokieHam wrote:
They’re all biased and partisan. None of them would pass simple journalistic standards. One has to glean from each story published or reported upon and then research others to find what’s been left out or twisted. It’s the nature of reporting today. It’s especially true of breaking stories. Instead of trying to get things correct, there is a race to get something out. And the narrative is taken into account before the first thing is said.
It is what it is.
Equating the New York Times and Front Page Magazine as equally biased and partisan would be ridiculous. When right-wing media was created and sold to the public 25 or so years ago, it was initially sold as an alternative to "liberal bias" in journalism. But instead, they've gone so far into their own bias (and so far toward promoting conspiracy theories, relying on emotionally charged headlines, and publishing yellow journalism) as to no longer even be
in the category of "journalism" which they originally sought to improve.
Total and complete blind spot..... it expected.
So you do equate the bias and journalistic quality of FPM with those of the NYT? That is an astounding claim by an intelligent adult.
Frontpage Magazine does not promote itself as a news outlet. Much less as an unbiased source for opinion. The piece that RG brought to the table is opinion. An opinion of a highly respected economist and social theorist. Frontpage, from what I gather is 90 % opinion pieces. It’s not a site I visit or have bookmarked.
This is where you are completely off the rails. So, your claim is even more astounding and shows how you just look past any truth. You label it as automatically crazed and write it off when it doesn’t even purport to be what you claim it is. Anyone can see what it is.
The NY Times and other journalistic outlets you hold in such high regard say they are unbiased.....you believe it. They aren’t. I can’t remember who it was who was interviewed on MSNBC, but he was a journalist and essentially said the legacy media rallied together to get Trump. Reporting on him was over 80-90% negative and you believe they have any journalistic integrity? Using unnamed sources like they did for major stories? Refer back to my post about the story on Netflix about the Challenger disaster. The vaunted NY Times wouldn’t run with the story about the O-rings until they could name the source. My, how we have fallen.
But please.....continue to trust your biased sources by all means.
There is a lot to unpack here, but I'll try to go point-by-point.
1. I'm not limiting this to news outlets. I'm limiting it to journalism, which takes many forms, among them news reporting, opinion pieces, and news analysis. The NYT provides all three, while FPM is a news magazine akin to any other such magazine out there (with respect to its framework, not its quality). It's articles blend news with opinion. So, it is possible to compare the NYT and FPM on journalism.
2. Why does it matter whether FPM touts itself as a biased source of news and opinion? Whether they say up front they are biased is irrelevant when comparing their journalistic quality. As a general rule, publishing crazy opinions and overly biased news analyses, which all slant
heavily in a single direction, is a fault, not a feature of good journalism. My point was that in the last 25 or so years, there's been an outgrowth in conservative "news" (if you will) media sources as a reaction to supposed left-wing bias from traditional sources of media. The reaction has grossly outweighed the biases of those they purported to balance. A skiff slightly listing to one side does not need 30 tons of ballast added to the other side to sail true.
3. My claim was and is simply this: FPM, Zero Hedge, and Gov't Pundit are orders of magnitude more biased than traditional media. What astounded me was that you seemed to disagree.
4. The NYT doesn't say it is unbiased. In fact, no self-respecting journalist nor journalistic enterprise would ever purport as much. Writers, editors, and publishers have their own personal biases that can influence their work. What sets traditional media outlets apart is that they try to adhere to reporting the truth. To wit, "In print and online, we tell our readers the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it."
https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-stand ... OurReaders
Yes, bias does come through in story selection and opinion writers. In the latter case, I'd argue the Times does a very good job of publishing opinion pieces from both sides.
5. Unnamed sources are not inherently bad. They are, naturally, less preferred than named ones, but the job of the press is to pursue the truth, especially on sensitive stories that impact a large segment of the country. And, of course, in those cases, it's not uncommon that a source cannot expose themselves publicly. I'd much rather rely on unnamed sources than on no sources. If no sources, then no reporting.
In case you wondered, the Times prefers named sources too:
In addition to this handbook, we observe the Newsroom Integrity Statement, promulgated in 1999, which deals with such rudimentary professional practices as the importance of checking facts, the exactness of quotations, the integrity of photographs and our distaste for anonymous sourcing; and the Policy on Confidential Sources, issued in 2004. These documents are available from the standards editor or on the Newsroom home page under Policies.
https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-stand ... AndPurpose
6. You used an unnamed source to protest the use of unnamed sources. Can you link to the MSNBC reporter's opinion?
7. In summary, neither I, nor the NYT themselves, claim that the NYT is unbiased. However, its quality of journalism and its nearness to the "unvarnished truth" is sufficiently high for it to be dependable in most cases. That does not excuse the reader from reading other outlets, especially in cases where an extraordinary piece of news is published by the paper (as Carl Sagan reminds us, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.") But to equate the bias of the Times with the biases (admitted or not) of sites consistently posted on UWS is astounding.