Which major news media do you consider to be the most biased? Which do you consider to be the most credible? Personally, I believe they're all biased, but I believe the media is overwhelmingly liberal.
Why even bother to ask? It sounds like you're going to just dismiss any opinion that contradicts the one you already hold. I do enough in real life. I could be wrong, so I'll check back later.
I'd say that media in terms of sitcoms, music, movies, etc is generally liberal. When it comes to News Media (TV/Print/Radio), I'd say its pretty well mixed up.
Journalists are human. Come in all political hues. Media owners, OTOH, you know, the people who actually decide the editorial line, tend to be pretty right-wing.
^ Following that logic and the opinions of some of the Americans on here that would mean that Al-Jazeera is owned by Al-Qaeda
Just personally, I've noticed CBS news and Time/Life are the most biased against guns. I've yet to see them do any piece on guns that doesn't involve misinformation, poor research, and rhetoric.
There's two biases in media. There's the overt bias of the media owners - it's absolute, tends to be conservative and pro-business, however is obvious when it's applied. Think Fox. Then there's the bias of the reporters and editors - a large majority of whom are liberal, and are the ones that 99 times out of a hundred actually dictate what words are used, what ideas are stressed, and how the news is presented. It's more subtle - and I think far more powerful. And of course Ted Turner and the BBC are both examples of the editorial and ownership structure also being liberal. I'd say the rise of conservative radio show hosts and bloggers had success because there was a large group of people who didn't see their understanding of the world reflected in the news. Which is the same reason those groups are so hated by others.
Of the "reputable" news media, at least in the US, I'd say CNN or CBS for TV with a dishonorable mention for FOX. Time and Newsweek for magazines. For major papers with national circulation, The New York Times wins by a landslide. Major papers with regional circulation, The LA Times beats even the NY Times. Of the local papers I know of, the SF Chronicle is quite biased, though somehow it's occasionally less so than the LA Times. A dishonorable mention for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for being whiny bitches, "Why is shit happening to us in Cleveland? " The least biased newspaper I've seen is probably the Sacramento Bee. Magazines... Sky and Telescope. TV... C-SPAN.
^Yeah, C-SPAN presents 'news' in a pretty much unedited format, but it's boring as fuck. The Bee is pretty middle-ground because I think there's about an equal balance of liberal and conservative customers they have. CNN has always struck me as liberal, while FOX News has always struck me as conservative. I don't usually watch other news channels because they have a lot more useless boxes of scrolling crap compared to CNN and FOX News. Both CNN and FOX News have their share of crazies, though. Also, The Weather Channel seems fairly unbiased (unless they start talking about global warming ).
Ted Turner sold controlling interest in CNN and his other broadcast outlets to AOL/Time Warner in 1996 and resigned as Vice Chairman of AOL/Time Warner in 2001 and gave up his position as a director in 2003. In ohter words, his influence at CNN has been shrinking for a long time.
The media has always struck me as more "uncurious" than biased. They're lazy, they take whatever story they're spoon fed, with no follow up, no rebuttal, no fact checking.
This statement can't be repped enough. The media has become so obsessed with the bottomline in this country in my lifetime that all anybody cares about is ratings instead of the quality and substance of their news.
Which probably says as much about the American public as about the media, because it's the public's tastes that drive ratings. I think that what's also happened is that the advent of widespread 24 hour reporting has created a situation where 1) there's a really big rush to be first with a story, which means more surface and less depth in reporting and 2) there's not enough news to fill the news cycle, so people get hired for their ability to produce filler.
Actually if you check out CNN headline news these days, it seems more like supermarket tabloid than real news. Alec Baldwin yelling at his kid, Ann Nicole is still dead, Brittany did something kookoo again.... Oh yeah, btw, somebody shot somebody, and, um, something in Iraq, we think. They'd better be, since they take up the whole bottom THIRD of the fucking screen! Hey shootER, how the hell do you compose a shot these days knowing you're likely to lose the bottom third? Drives me nuts when they're showing something that's supposed to be interesting, but all I can see is sky and some smoke rising, with the rest taken up by a stock ticker, a title for the news item, the reporter's name, and printed sound bite telling you what you should be thinking!
Robin's cute, but she's no Linda Stouffer or Erica Hill. And they all pale in Rudi Bacthiar's shadow.
