They’re brainwashed of course

Where’s the bias?

People Choose News That Fits Their Views

News readers gorge on media messages that fit their pre-existing views, rather than graze on a wider range of perspectives. In other words, they consume what they agree with, researchers say.

The finding comes out of a recent study which tracked how college students spent their time reading media articles on hot-button issues such as abortion or gun ownership.

Unsurprisingly, students gravitated toward articles that supported their views.

Fairly straight forward. People seek out those things that re-enforce their own beliefs, what could possibly be biased about this article?

People with stronger party affiliation, conservative political views, and greater interest in politics proved more likely to click on articles with opposing views, according to the Ohio State study.

“It appears that people with these characteristics are more confident in their views and so they’re more inclined to at least take a quick look at the counterarguments,” Knobloch-Westerwick noted.

Oh yes, of course. Conservatives read both sides only because they’ve been so brainwashed they couldn’t possibly be open minded or thoughtful. They’re just stupid conservatives who can’t understand brilliance when they see it.

However, Knobloch-Westerwick added that her latest study was not designed to assess reader motives, and that she hopes to more carefully study the issue in the future.

D’oh. Didn’t have the numbers to fudge those conclusions, so you just made some stuff up. Good call.

It’s hard to seperate the bias of the reporter from the bias of the study authors, but you get the point. I’ve exaggerated the completely made up conclusions about conservatives, not much though.

Maybe journalists need consciousness raising excercises to discover the true nature of their society.

When in Doubt, Post a Poll

The best part about conducting a poll…no blogging.

Quote o’ the Day:

“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.”

–Jerry Seinfeld

Tim Russert, RIP

Meet the Press used to be a Sunday tradition of mine. Every Sunday was spent getting up early to watch the long-running news almanac. Truth be told, I was always more interested in watching George F. Will on the ABC program which broadcast right after Meet the Press. Yet, I wouldn’t have gotten up early to watch Meet the Press if there wasn’t a good reason.

Clearly, the big reason was Tim Russert. I didn’t know for a very long time that Russert was in fact a former Democrat Party hack (for Pat Moynihan). I always assumed Russert only suffered from the standard media bias of being liberal and not knowing how to hide those biases. When I found out he was a former hack, it just made him more impressive in my eyes. As far as network TV talking heads went, he was the best.

Unfortunately, to get ahead in Washington D.C., be it in non-profits, lobby orgs, staff, hacks or media people, you make sacrifices. You don’t get to the gym as often as you like when you’re working late trying to make the next deadline. You don’t eat well either. I have to believe the stress and hours caught up with Russert, who died today at 58 of an apparent heart attack. Success can take its toll.

Who Will Gather the News?

Patrick Ruesse:

The public can take or leave another Reusse column after roughly 8,000 of them, But if the Minnesota sports addicts don’t have Seifert, Zulgad, Christensen, Neal, Russo, Scoggins and Zgoda (to name a few) to get them the news, there will be a significant void.

And don’t kid yourself:

A doesn’t-cost-a-nickel, stand-alone Internet site is not going to have the quality of resources the Star Tribune has mustered for a rich sports section that lands on a doorstep.

Learned Foot:

Talented guys like Seifert, Neal and Zulgrad (I haven’t read much of the others to form an opinion about them) will always be needed – and paid -by some news outlet. And you can bet those outlets will be willing to expense for good stories too. Reporting, commentary and the written word transcend the media they are affixed to. The only guys who really need to worry are the press operators and paper carriers.

And Reusse. There’s no shortage of lame douchebags who insult Packer fans on the internet for free. I don’t see how Reusse could draw a paycheck with that kind of competition.

I like Reusse, I was even able to do a segment with him (he called into KNSI before the Superbowl, which one I forget) and he seemed a knowledgeable, pleasant professional. He personal jihad against bloggers is getting tiresome though.

And what if blogs kill newspapers? What loss would this be?

How Many?

Foot and Mitch and others have already weighed in on how many people attended the tax rally. Well, I took the time to actually count every face in this picture, and I counted just around 700, and I would increase my estimate to 850 were I to guess at the numbers hidden behind signs. As for the entire rally? Fifteen-hundred, max.

This makes the Star Tribune estimate seem quite close (which was the controversy).

Why are there so many Twins Fans on Bleacher Report?

Look around the MLB section of the Bleacher Report and you’ll see all sorts of articles dealing with the Minnesota Twins. Where did they come from? Why are they here?

To understand this, we must first understand the media market in Minnesota.

It sucks.

The largest newspaper in the area, the Star Tribune, is one of the worst major metropolitan dailies in the country. In terms of prestige, try finding how many Pulitzer’s the paper has won, then compare that number to other papers of similar distribution and you’ll see what I mean.

The local TV stations are no better, and their sports coverage lacks any depth.

The sports columnists in the area are at times bad, at others completely incoherent. Jim Souhan spends most of his columns trying to be funny, which he’s not, and making pop-culture references which don’t fit anywhere in the subject matter and are otherwise incomprehensible.

Patrick Reusse isn’t a bad. He’s arrogant and snarky, shallow and he relies heavily on old sports cliches and is generally not very informative, but at least he knows how to write.

Sid Hartman. Sheesh. The guy is an 88 year old high school dropout who somehow convinced someone he knew how to write. An arrogant simpleton who acts as a cheerleader for the local sports teams, his writings provide nothing of value.

Often, a “good” sports columnist is someone who has written mediocre columns over a long period of time. Sid is a “great” sports columnist because he has written terrible sports columns forever.

Just last year, the Star Tribune finally got around to adding a few bloggers to the mix and they’ve been pretty good. The Pioneer Press, the other Twin Cities paper, also has a guy, Phil Miller, who’s been blogging about the Twins and his insight is refreshing.

But this is all too little, too late.

Twins fans have been forced to look elsewhere for in depth analysis of the Minnesota Twins. The new media, blogs, websites and the like, have accomplished the task quite successfully. It’s frustrating being a fan in Minnesota without intelligent media coverage and Minnesotans finally took the burden unto their own shoulders.

Also, the weather in Minnesota is so unpleasant everyone has tons of time to pound away at a computer.

Conservative Canon Discussion: Media

After careful consideration, I decided to create another category in the Conservative Canon, this one about the media. An understanding of the media and the role it plays in shaping American politics is central to being a good conservative activist. Unfortunately, I’m not certain what books to include here. Here are the one’s I came up with:

The Drudge Manifesto, Matt Drudge
Blog, Hugh Hewitt

I need some help here, I don’t know any other books (That are good, timeless even) that fit this category. Something by Bernie Goldberg? Just don’t know. Leave me some help in the comments section.

Waiting for the Other Shoe

Others, including the McCain Campaign, are focusing on answering and analyzing the charges from the NYT regarding a lobbying “scandal” and potential infidelity dating back to the previous millenium. My interest is waiting to see what the Times has in store for the coming months.

This was simply the opening salvo to a long campaign season. John McCain was also involved in a messy divorce, there was the Keating Five scandal and McCain uses sailor’s language from time to time. (The last of these is understandable, he was a naval aviator.) I don’t think these smears are going to have an effect on the electorate but the media won’t stop there.

Campaigning is a terrible business and the media willingly wraps itself in the mess like flies to a rotting carcass. This has been true a long time but now the media has decided to include itself as part of the story of politics and add its own fecal matter to the pile. A pile delivered fresh to your day every day.

The Times article was a piece of shoddy journalism poorly timed but I wonder if the Times has more. Pictures, witnesses, tape recordings, that they are holding back to use later. The Times normally uses all of their ammunition at once but who knows, maybe they have an entire series of articles ready to go. The goal being to catch McCain in a lie or a coverup. We’ll see.

Understand this, John McCain is mortal with all the rights, privileges and faults therof. It would not be hard to conjecture he finds his wife attractive:

And, noting the similiarities it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine McCain would find Vicki Iseman (the lobbyist in question) attractive:

This is perhaps the worst of it, no one would be especially surprised if McCain did have a relationship with this lobbyist. In the absence of evidence there is always the perpetual guiltiness of being male. (Yes, men and women are different). If the Times has more and are waiting for another day to catch McCain in a lie then they are practicing political strategy rather than journalism and deserve denunciation; If this is it, if this is everything the NYT has on this “scandal” then the Times deserves ridicule.

Time will tell; In either case the Times doesn’t deserve continued notoriety.

Pat Neshek, Still Awesome

From a Seth Stohs interview:

SethSpeaks: Can you discuss your thoughts on the value of blogs as opposed to more mainstream media?

Pat Neshek: Blogs are much more in-depth and have more reasoning to what is posted for the most part. Mainstream media is about sensationalism and making a story and having connections to try and get a story first. For the most part blogs are for people that really understand the game and the media is for people who just want to read a story or see how the team is doing. There are + and – for both categories and you can sit here forever and debate about which is better…I guess you just take what you want from each!