Posted by meanceprimea on 2/23/2011 9:41:00 PM (view original):
Most of them do not "pander" to a specific group. They simply put a slant which follows the opinions of the bigwigs running the network.
Now if, for example, the CEO of ABC is against the war in Iraq, he is NOT going to air segments which show any good coming out of the effort. In fact he may go as far as to specifically ask for stories which show the war in the worst light possible, HE is against the war and HE has the power to make those decisions, so then individuals who are strongly against the war LOVE to watch ABC because they are slamming W and the war almost nightly.
Again this is just an example that can be applied to nearly any controversial issue out there. The big dogs decide what sort of light to shine on a topic, and like-minded viewers will tune in.
Fox is indeed different, in that they saw an opportunity to be a news network that could "pander to the right".
True.
I was even in one of my city's newspapers many years ago.
The article's focus was not about me.
It was instead about a church I was new to that I started to attend.
After the church service, a reporter (no video, but a camera, with a pen and a notepad) was asking the people in the parking lot to allow her to interview them.
The pastors and the members were refusing (others ignoring) the requests of the reporter, who I quickly was informed by her, was doing a homework assignment for a community college via the city newspaper.
I felt sorry for her, plus I was bored (I felt more sorry for her than my being bored though), so I accepted her request, on condition that she realize that my views would not be objective enough since I had only attended about 4 weeks of services...I was still new to the organization.
She agreed.
Anyway, to make a long story super short (sorry, cuz the long version is almost filled with drama):
When I read that newspaper (the cities', numbnuts, not the college's;) the next morning, I was shocked at the article!
In essence, it was a smear campaign against the church.
About 5 years later, when I quit attending the place, I found out that most of the accusations against it were true.
But I had a greater shock regarding what the article said about me, than about the church.
I will split it up into 3 sections:
1- There was a quote of me, which was correct. And the writer's comment about my comment was correct.
2- There was another quote of me, which was also correct. But this time they took the quote completely out of context and ended up stringing that into a lie (without quotes of me, of course).
3- There was a paragraph paraphrasing, without any quotes, what I supposedly said. Not only did I not say it, directly or indirectly, I did not even have the views they claimed!
...so I did my research by phone and ended up speaking with her over the phone at the college.
Needless to say, she was shocked that I could reach her and so easily.
(the newspaper passed the blame on to her and told me where to reach her)
She said she had not yet read the newspaper, so then I told her all of the above (though in far more detail) that I just told you.
She then expressed further shock that the article would be worded that way and said that she did not write the article, but only photographed me and took notes on what my answers were to her questions. She said she then passed that info on to the newspaper's editorial staff to compose the article themselves.
I expressed shock that she did not do the article writing at all, but admitted that I do not know exactly how the media is organized.
She then said something that shocked me, which I will paraphrase cuz I forget exactly how she said it, several years ago:
"The editors gave me permission to do my college assignment with their organization, by interviewing people at that church, to ask certain questions to get a certain slant for their paper's article,
and if the people interviewed did not provide answers that are of that slant, that they would type it so that it would anyway."
Yeah, I know this is a super long post,
but if you know me by now,
if I had given you ALL the details,
this post would be FAR longer in length than it already is!
ANYWAY, THE POINT OF THIS POST IS TO GIVE YOU A PERSONAL EXAMPLE
OF A MAJOR MEDIA (economically conservative slanted as opposed to the competing paper which is economically liberal slanted) OUT LET
INTENTIONALLY LYING, NOT SIMPLY BEING BIASED.
...
it also proves (at least with 1 example) this statement of yours,
primea:
"They simply put a slant which follows the opinions of the bigwigs running the network."