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This is something that I just can't wrap my head around.

There is no doubt that it is, it only takes 5 minutes of watching any of the MSM to see that, but why?

My typical rationale would be "follow the money", but how is it monetarily advantageous for them to lean to the left?

The best explanation I've heard is that viewers love sensational stories and they are able to draw more people from the left with stories that paint the right in a bad light, but this seems like it would be just as easy to do the other way around.

What says the braintrust?




 
Posts: 1514 | Location: Ypsilanti, MI | Registered: August 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
A Grateful American
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The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx

It is a systematic approach at boiling the frog.

Most are "live and let live" types. Others are "control and be controlled" types.

The latter fear self reliance, responsibility for self and accountability for actions and the acceptance of consequences for actions, good or bad.

That leads them to "create safety" (a fiction) by controlling others, and being controlled.



Beware of those who are afraid and cowards. For they are more dangerous than the brave and strong.
-sigmonkey




"the meaning of life, is to give life meaning" Ani Yehudi אני יהודי Le'olam lo shuv לעולם לא שוב!
 
Posts: 43882 | Location: ...... I am thrice divorced, and I live in a van DOWN BY THE RIVER!!! (in Arkansas) | Registered: December 20, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Do the next
right thing
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When you are part of the "elite" and insulated from the ordinary everyday peons, you have the luxury of the sort of magical thinking necessary to be a leftist, combined with the desire to control said peons and maintain your position.
 
Posts: 3660 | Location: Nashville | Registered: July 23, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
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There are two sets of factors - one I'll call "unintentional bias" and another I'll call "intentional bias". Adds up to quite the total bias.

An example of an "unintentional bias" factor is that the media is primarily based in liberal bastions - Los Angeles, New York, etc. So they recruit from a labor pool made up of primarily liberals. And naturally they base their idea of what makes up the "average viewer" on the locals, who are all primarily liberal.

Then you get into "intentional bias". The owners and controllers of most media outlets are liberal elites with major ties to liberal political organizations, so of course they're going to intentionally steer their company's content towards their liberal point of view in an attempt to spread their message and further liberal goals.
 
Posts: 32509 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Far more than left leaning IMO, more like the media propaganda machine for the democrats such as CNN and MSNBC.

 
Posts: 9747 | Location: Northern Illinois | Registered: March 20, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by RogueJSK:
There are two sets of factors - one I'll call "unintentional bias" and another I'll call "intentional bias". Adds up to quite the total bias.

An example of an "unintentional bias" factor is that the media is primarily based in liberal bastions - Los Angeles, New York, etc. So they recruit from a labor pool made up of primarily liberals. And naturally they base their idea of what makes up the "average viewer" on the locals, who are all primarily liberal.

Then you get into "intentional bias". The owners and controllers of most media outlets are liberal elites with major ties to liberal political organizations, so of course they're going to intentionally steer their company's content towards their liberal point of view in an attempt to spread their message and further liberal goals.


Rogue,

I read a few articles that hit on your first point from conservative journalists who were the extreme minority at some of the big networks.

Your second point was one theory I've always assumed, but I could never quite fully get behind as having worked at very liberal companies and not changing my view. I guess they weren't media roles though which could be a whole different animal.




 
Posts: 1514 | Location: Ypsilanti, MI | Registered: August 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fighting the good fight
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You also have to take into consideration the common liberal mindset of "we know better than you/it's for your own good". They see themselves as intellectually superior to "the masses", and they feel that it's their job (and the Nanny State government's job) to protect the average "dumb citizen" from themselves.

So people with that mindset have no qualms against abandoning traditional journalistic impartiality and putting forth intentionally biased or misleading content, justifying it in their own mind that they're "doing it for the greater good".
 
Posts: 32509 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Big Stack
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It's my theory that different types of people are drawn to different professions.

People who's become conservatives tend to be drawn to business, the military, LE, and related activities.

Liberals tend to be drawn to other fields. The arts, social services type stuff, teaching, and media.

This is just based on my own observations, but it tends to hold up.
 
Posts: 21240 | Registered: November 05, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by BBMW:
It's my theory that different types of people are drawn to different professions.

People who's become conservatives tend to be drawn to business, the military, LE, and related activities.

Liberals tend to be drawn to other fields. The arts, social services type stuff, teaching, and media.

This is just based on my own observations, but it tends to hold up.


I think that's generally fair. But there are always exceptions. I was in Law Enforcement for 30 years, and there are many, many liberal people in law enforcement these days.

At any rate, networks like CNN, etc.. will deny being left leaning for the most part. They'll claim to be fair and fact based, and crap like that. Meanwhile, Fox will generally claim to be fair and fact based, as well. I think it's all in the perception.

Both sides think they're fair and impartial (and "right"). Both sides often get it wrong.


--------------------------------------
 
Posts: 3479 | Location: Central California | Registered: April 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
No ethanol!
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quote:
Originally posted by RogueJSK:
There are two sets of factors - one I'll call "unintentional bias" and another I'll call "intentional bias". Adds up to quite the total bias.

An example of an "unintentional bias" factor is that the media is primarily based in liberal bastions - Los Angeles, New York, etc. So they recruit from a labor pool made up of primarily liberals. And naturally they base their idea of what makes up the "average viewer" on the locals, who are all primarily liberal.

Then you get into "intentional bias". The owners and controllers of most media outlets are liberal elites with major ties to liberal political organizations, so of course they're going to intentionally steer their company's content towards their liberal point of view in an attempt to spread their message and further liberal goals.

Then you consider the typical liberal mindset of "we know better than you/it's for your own good". They see themselves as intellectually superior to "the masses", and they feel that it's their job (and the Nanny State government's job) to protect the average "dumb citizen" from themselves. So people with that mindset have no qualms against abandoning journalistic impartiality and putting forth intentionally biased or misleading content, justifying it in their own mind that they're "doing it for the greater good".


^^^ Well stated. Further, I have believed this bias to be increasing, and is the the root cause for the widening gap between the 2 political sides. Without getting far into the weeds it is precisely the Regan quote, "The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Stated a different way, though I find it disturbing to listen to Pelosi go on a rant, or Schumer give a speech that contradicts his own speech in 2013, I find it much more disturbing that the masses believe them, and / or repeatedly show it as fact, and fail to challenge the truthfulness. The enablers are now what disturbs me more.


------------------
The plural of anecdote is not data. -Frank Kotsonis
 
Posts: 2009 | Location: Berks Co PA | Registered: December 20, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Big Stack
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There are always exceptions.

As far a LE goes, in recent years, in the name of diversity, LE organizations have been actively recruiting in populations that would tend to be left leaning. And having gone through an era when good jobs were scarce, LE was seen as one, and has been attracting people for that reason that it likely wouldn't before.

quote:
Originally posted by redwood25:
quote:
Originally posted by BBMW:
It's my theory that different types of people are drawn to different professions.

People who's become conservatives tend to be drawn to business, the military, LE, and related activities.

Liberals tend to be drawn to other fields. The arts, social services type stuff, teaching, and media.

This is just based on my own observations, but it tends to hold up.


I think that's generally fair. But there are always exceptions. I was in Law Enforcement for 30 years, and there are many, many liberal people in law enforcement these days.

At any rate, networks like CNN, etc.. will deny being left leaning for the most part. They'll claim to be fair and fact based, and crap like that. Meanwhile, Fox will generally claim to be fair and fact based, as well. I think it's all in the perception.

Both sides think they're fair and impartial (and "right"). Both sides often get it wrong.
 
Posts: 21240 | Registered: November 05, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Dies Irae
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The Democrats have befriended the press as a means to control the dialogue. You talk shit on your buddies and you won't get interviews, invitations, juicy "leaks" and name-dropping. Naturally, nobody wants to be left on the outside, even if truth and morality were.
 
Posts: 5756 | Location: Fort Heathen, Texas | Registered: February 25, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Staring back
from the abyss
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quote:
Originally posted by sigmonkey:
The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx

There's your answer, right there in the first response.

Media is a necessary institution to take over (and arguably the most important) in order to spread the propaganda. Education and the Church are next. All three of which have been successfully turned over the past 100 years.


________________________________________________________
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
Posts: 20100 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Get Off My Lawn
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quote:
Originally posted by BBMW:
It's my theory that different types of people are drawn to different professions.

People who's become conservatives tend to be drawn to business, the military, LE, and related activities.

Liberals tend to be drawn to other fields.


I remember an interviews years ago with the editor in chief of the NYT and he flat out stated his paper had a liberal bias and he attributed it to the fact that most, if not all, of his staff were Democrats.

I remember during and after the Watergate crap, journalism became a trendy major in college. Lots of idealistic kids going into the news game to bring down the next Nixon Roll Eyes



"I’m not going to read Time Magazine, I’m not going to read Newsweek, I’m not going to read any of these magazines; I mean, because they have too much to lose by printing the truth"- Bob Dylan, 1965
 
Posts: 16699 | Location: Texas | Registered: May 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Chip away the stone
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There are multiple studies that have shown what we already know to be true: universities, and especially the liberal arts schools, are completely dominated by left leaning professors. This is most certainly a factor, IMO.
 
Posts: 11597 | Registered: August 22, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Maybe there is alignment between the Left (who may tend to be more emotional and have emotions steer their lives) and the media who focuses upon stirring emotions and sensationalism as engines behind revenue generation?




"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy
"A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book
 
Posts: 12719 | Location: In the gilded cage | Registered: December 09, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
always with a hat or sunscreen
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I seriously wonder if some chemical imbalance in their brains doesn't play a role.



Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club!
USN (RET), COTEP #192
 
Posts: 16219 | Location: Black Hills of South Dakota | Registered: June 20, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Eschew Obfuscation
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quote:
Originally posted by oddball:

I remember an interviews years ago with the editor in chief of the NYT and he flat out stated his paper had a liberal bias and he attributed it to the fact that most, if not all, of his staff were Democrats.

If I'm thinking of the same article, it was the Times "public editor" who said this in an article titled something like "Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?"

I tried to find the article on the Times website but *surprise!*, it's not there. But, I did see another news article that announced that the Times had since eliminated the public editor position. Razz


_____________________________________________________________________
“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again." - Will Durant
 
Posts: 6403 | Location: Chicago, IL | Registered: December 17, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Glorious SPAM!
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Liberals (like the communists and socialists they are derived from) crave power and influence over other people. That is why they gravitate to politics, law, academia, and journalism.
 
Posts: 10635 | Registered: June 13, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Still finding my way
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Soros probably pays people a sum for each negative thing they say about Trump on air.
 
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