Wow. Things are so UNFAIR. Sounds like what we need is a return to the Fairness Doctrine!

I wonder if the caucus, if formed, will actually look at the numbers and go, "Huh, would ya look at that? The media has a conservative bias."

My prediction is that if seen, the members would say the media isn't portrayed as conservative enough, or they will just ignore it and continue the shameful spectacle that is the Republican Party.

reading all about how dismal the media is here in the united snakes, i have an astonishing admiration for all us common folk... that we all haven't gone galt, or berserk or fascist or sumptin' is a real tribute to the evolution of the the public's sensibilities...

i am sure there are thousands of public school teachers and grandmothers -- in all their anonymity -- who must be thanked for saving the republic from itself...

... and in the alternate space-time continuum, a Texas Republican congressman complains that media coverage of economic crisis isn't negative enough. Well, I'm convinced.

What do you expect? They are Republicans, also known as brain people at this point. In the words of Michael Steele "that's the way they roll".

I live in Austin, fabulous liberal oasis in a red desert, but thanks to Tom Delay's gerrymandering, this fucker is actually my representative in congress. Grrr.

Wait. The US Congress is forming a legislative group with the express purpose of shaping journalistic speech?

"The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias." - Lamar Smith

Take out the word "liberal" and I agree with him. It was, after all, media bias that made the Iraq war possible. Would there be so much fear of a bunch of cave dwellers, were it not for them? CNBC is little more than an infomercial for the financial industry. Health care? Torture? Excessive borrowing? The media has played its role.

Lamar Smith, who calls media bias "the greatest threat to our democracy today."

If he actually referred to "media bias" in general, without the political qualifier, then you gotta admit, it's dead-on.

Seems like morning joe had Cheney's daughter this am to critique Obama's speech, how's that for an impartial voice? Then I put Andrea Mitchell on this lunchtime, heard her say Ms Cheney would be on to critique the speech, it was then that I switched off my TV set.

It is called 'working the refs' and the rethugs have been doing it for the past 30 years.

The truly annoying part is that the rethugs keep telling the same lies over & over again until they believe them.

"Wow. Things are so UNFAIR. Sounds like what we need is a return to the Fairness Doctrine!

Posted by: JoXn Costello"
Thanks for the great comment JoXn...

actually a bunch of congress people looking at "media bias" strikes me as a great threat to our democracy. if i recall correctly, the first words of the first amendment are: congress shall make no laws.

Thank you, thank you--and the Liz Cheney appearances just keep on coming. Mika B. was cooing as she announced the former VP's daughter as the upcoming guest on "Morning Joe," and now she's on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show responding to Obama's Cairo speech (spouting phrases such as "I was troubled," "American exceptionalism," "moral relativism," "Probably I would not have recommended . . ."). No humility at all to signal that she gets it that she's supremely out of her league, as if she has what it takes to advise any president.

Cheney got her State Department position via nepotism, not qualifications, so that former role doesn't justify all these appearances on TV of late. I know she and her hapless father are lobbying hard, but why are these TV shows hosting her (them)? She's spooky and self-righteous, with unsupportable ideas, and is just as discourteous and willing to mislead as her father. Tries to hide her fear-slathered dim bulb behind big words such as "hegemonic," like him. Why give her this public voice on a day when so many bright people are available to comment about Obama's important speech?

Thankfully, Andrea Mitchell didn't let her ride roughshod as the "Morning Joe" crew did.

Lamar Smith, who calls media bias "the greatest threat to our democracy today."

Well, at least the gays will be happy that they aren't tops on the list.

Steve Benen wrote: "As for a member of Congress arguing publicly that news outlets are a bigger threat to the United States than terrorists, global warming, economic collapse, poor infrastructure, energy needs, and a broken health care system ..."

The fact is that the member of Congress has a point.

As long as the American public is being deliberately and systematically disinformed about those problems by the mass media from which the overwhelming majority of Americans get the overwhelming majority of their information, it will be difficult or impossible to effectively address those problems.

And in fact, the American public IS being systematically disinformed by the relentless corporate-sponsored propaganda from the handful of giant corporations that own and control virtually all of the mass media in the USA. And their agenda is not "liberal" (although they are occasionally willing to put "liberal" infotainment like Rachel Maddow's show on the air to attract a "liberal" audience, given the reality that liberals have money to spend and have eyeballs with which to watch commercials).

What is needed is not a new "caucus" to investigate "media bias".

What is needed is a Congressional investigation into the ever more extreme concentration of media ownership into the hands of wealthy and powerful corporations, which was facilitated and accelerated by the Cheney-Bush administration's policies of radically deregulating media ownership.

Bill Hemmer is a complete tool whose greatest talent is personal vanity

Republicans are like vaudeville performers who didn't have any other act to fall back on when vaudeville failed.

This whining is what keeps the MSM listing to the right. Cowards that they are, the MSM and their corporate owners are terrified of the wingers.

It must be terribly frustrating to find that even with the current high level of corporate media bias they still can't make the Republicans look good.

So this means we can pencil in Lamar Smith as a supporter for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine?

Can I safely assume their great media bias tour will skip AM radio ?

I get the feeling that this little stunt is meant to give corporate media the cover it needs to move even further right ?

In some kind of extremely abstracted theory, this could be a good idea. A MediaMatters watching liberal voices in the media for genuine misinformation and the kind of crass insults that Fox continually disgorges would be a fine idea for the promotion of democracy--assuming that there is enough such dirt to dig up. Methinks, however, that a site that did research, put up transcripts, made connections, and let the record speak for itself would be rather beyond what would ever be done.

Dmonteith - I too live in Austin and have the misfortune of being "represented" by Lamar Smith. Thanks Delay and Craddick. Uggghhh. If I wasn't already motivated to campaign for Smith's opposition candidate - I am now. Texas has got to be 'Blue' in the 2010 senate race as well as the 2012 presidential election. Smith's "Fair Media Caucus" is excellent grist for our mill.

More important than any liberal or conservative bias is the fact that our news media just plain suck. After all, many overseas news sources have an explicitly stated bias but actually report news (e.g., The Guardian).

All coverage in the US is reduced to who won and who lost, self referential stories about how the media are covering some story, and media stars preening before the public.

Corporate or military press releases are reported unedited as "news". All reporters end up as part of the "inside the beltway" establishment sucking up to their sources in order to maintain their access to them. Political hacks go straight from election campaigns to being pundits given huge amounts of air time to spout their drivel.

It's astonishing. Has no one played the "Guess What Party" game? MSM stories concerning Democrats tagged for corruption never mentioning the perp's party affiliation anywhere in the article. While Republicans similarly tagged are party-labeled in the headline?

Does no one watch the "journalists" kow-towing to Obama-san? Does no one remember the sneers and snarls aimed at Bush? Does this purely emotional, blatantly biased approach seem balanced to you? Objective?

How much scrutiny did Obama get during the campaign? (Sample Question: How cool are you?) How much frantic dirt-digging did Palin endure? (Sample Question: Why are you such a skank?)

You would have to be entirely blind not to notice the flagrantly obvious media bias. Or perhaps you have noticed, but you like it that way.

politicians monitoring news outlets which are monitoring politicians

"And I wonder, who's watchin' the man who's watchin' me?
And I wonder, who's watchin' the man who's watchin' the man who's watchin' me?
Who's watchin' the man who's watchin' the man who's watchin' the man who's watchin' the man who's watchin' the man who's watchin' me?"
-Si Kahn, "Who's Watching the Man?"

MSM, bought and paid for by the Rethugs. They lie and the MSM repeats it and makes it the truth for the ignorant.

Hey Nancita, my sweet chiquita, please tell me who in the MSM asked Palin anything like "Why are you such a skank?"

OTOH, they did ask softball questions like "Which newspapers do you read?" and let Palin demonstrate her idiocy by claiming she read ALL OF THEM.

Working the refs works -- they've proved that.

To Palin's addled supporters (like John Ziegler), SNL and Letterman are part of the MSM, and conservative candidates have every right to expect joke-for-joke equal treatment from the late night shows.

Wait. The US Congress is forming a legislative group with the express purpose of shaping journalistic speech?

Halfdan, did your IronyOmeter just explode too?

Sheesh.

It should be interesting to see how the media covers this. They do like to talk about themselves.

And will the Democrats in Congress put together a coherently-planned, smartly organized, and above all, SUSTAINED response to this idiocy, with top party leaders like Dean and Rahm and Reid and Pelosi and yes, Obama, working in a coordinated fashion to deliver a simple, powerful message to the American people and the media itself?

You bet your ass they won't. Whatever response the Dems manage will be how they always deal with communication: disorganized, ad-hoc, uncoordinated, one-off comments by random Dems to Women's Clubs in Cedar Rapids and local NPR affiliate talk shows in Ann Arbor and an empty House chamber broadcast on CSPAN at 3am. There will be no coherent, memorable message that anybody will remember for more than 15 seconds. But boy, they'll certainly fire up the communications machine when it's time to ask us for campaign contributions!

The Democratic Party as a whole has yet to understand, with a few notable exceptions, what communication of your ideas is all about in this media environment. To a great extent it's dependent on fundamental principles of marketing. The trouble is that Democrats as a class of people appear to fundamentally regard marketing, communications, and advertising as unpleasant things that you should only have to dirty your hands with during campaign season. It's a greatly self-limiting attitude, since it cedes the communications field to the Rethugs, who as a class of people heartily and enthusiastically accept the necessity and value of marketing and communicating their idiotic notions of how the world should work. Most of the good liberals and progressive I know sneer instinctively at anything smacking of marketing and PR. Unfortunately, if you don't embrace something as necessary or valuable, you're never going to do it well, if you do it at all.

The "liberal media" meme has legs because many reporters and commentators have socially liberal ideas and are indeed friendly to Democrats per se, but that hides the corporatist/anti-populist basis of the Media's ownership. Indeed, "anti-populist" is a better name for them than not "conservative", as it is for many forces we fight against.
(BTW, our own liberal friends are too often anti-populist, considering that a dirty word - which it isn't in the right, American Prospect/Mother Jones - style context.)

Absolutely. The government should take over the news business entirely. That way, when the Dems are in charge, all the news will be "Dems Rule!" And, as will inevitably happen, the GOP will take charge and all the news will be "GOP Rules!" And on it will go.

Or, we could keep things as they are, and the MSM will maintain the news as "Dems Rule!" regardless of who is in charge.

I thought the biggest threat to democracy was criticizing Bill O'Reilly for inciting violence against doctors who perform abortions, which O'Reilly says is punishing people for right wing dissent. But I guess punishing people for liberal dissent via right wing vigilante committees is perfectly OK.

Anyone notice all the media coverage given to Carl Levin's recent speech where he refuted everything that Cheney has been saying re torture?
Yeah, me neither. Damn liberal media. I guess Liz Cheney's opinion is more important, as opposed to a senior sitting U.S. Senator. What does he know?

who calls media bias "the greatest threat to our democracy today."

Strangely enough, I agree -- but the threat is in the media's bias toward lazy, he-said, she-said narratives, anonymous sources, "access" and sensationalism.

"How much scrutiny did Obama get during the campaign?"

Nancita, you are a delusional fool. Either that, or you are suffering from dementia, in which case you and your family have my condolences.

Let's see: Obama faked his birth certificate, he's really a Muslim, he belongs to a crazy whitey-hating church, his wife hates whitey, he's a cozy inside speculator in Chicago real estate, he's a socialist, he will make the United States less safe, he will hand everything over to blacks, he wants to destroy capitalism, he gave a speech in Berlin that showed how arrogant he was, he hates people who have guns and go to church, he eats arugula, he drinks orange juice, he doesn't talk to reporters enough, he's too slick, he's not a "real" American, he supports child molesters, and, oh yes, he hates America.

Every one of these manifestly false notions, and this is by no means the complete list, was exhaustively hashed and re-hashed on Fox and Rush and Michael Savage and CNN all campaign long, 24/7.

And your mention of MSM allegedly dropping out references to Dem corruption while mentioning GOPers by name is comical, since FOX has been caught a number of times as far back as 2006 substituting "DEM" for "REP" during coverage of political scandals. This happened specifically with Mark Foley, the Republican pervert in Florida, who was on at least one occasion was identified as a Democrat on-air.

As for dirt-digging on Palin, she continued to lie repeatedly all campaign long about numerous aspects of her record as governor in Alaska, but since you're a Republican, you regard investigation into someone's actual record in office as somehow unfair.

Or, we could keep things as they are, and the MSM will maintain the news as "Dems Rule!" regardless of who is in charge.

I'd like to visit your planet one day. It certainly isn't like Earth.

Wait, didn't Congress pass a resolution earlier this year denouncing the Fairness Caucus?? Oh wait, that was the Fairness Doctrine.....

Republican Leadership are a bunch of tools.

Polls show Americans are leaning more to the left. So when the media reports on Americans' left-leaning views, actions, opinions, elections, etc. isn't it possible an unbiased media is simply reflecting America as it really is?

Republicans will continue to diminish as a political force until they are able to be more self-reflective and respond rationally to someone who says, "I disagree with you and here are all the reasons why . . ."

To show the penultimate idiocy and pretentious narcissism of their claims, the spokesman for these ReRushlikan non-leaders said "The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias." [on Faux news!] WTF?! A greater threat than terrorism, than a collapsing economy, than our stressed environment? What pathetic, self-inflated wankers.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/143lkblo.asp

"Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative."

The media does report the good and the negative. However, in President Obama's case, even though they reported all the negativity they could find (beleive me they looked), the problem for republicans is the fact that with everything that was dug up, the majority of voting Americans voted for our current president (both electorally and popularly). Therefore, in their minds, the media wasn't negative enough so it must be biased.

Smith, and his ilk, believe that the media is liberal. Honestly, they aren't shitting you. That's because they also believe this:

If the media puts out a story about the earth being more than 6000 years old, it's a sign of liberal bias.

If the TV mentions a gay person without pointing how that he/she is going to hell, it's a sign of liberal bias.

Anytime abortion is mentioned without labeling it as "murder" is an example fo liberal bias.

Any report that mentions global warming without labeling it as a "hoax" is proof of bias.

The failure to run stories on how Obama was probably born in Africa or Asia is an example of a liberal media.

Any story on Iraq which does not mention 9/11 is a sign of far-left media bias.

A National Enquirer story on Sarah Palin's kids, repeated by a few obscure blogs, is an example of how the mainstream media raked her over the coals. A National Observer report on how Obama is a secret Muslim, backed up by virtually every major on-line right wing site and all of right wing talk radio, is an example of being fair and balanced.

No, really.

Oh my. Name-calling is so sophisticated. And unverifiable assertions so...so...Wikipedian!

Anybody out there with a post-graduate education? A mortgage? A small business? Any world travelers? Any entrepreneurs? Hello?

I wonder if there is more to his choice of words. In the early 1980s I was editor of a small weekly in rural New Jersey, and I published an editorial about the myth of liberal media bias.

In response, someone taped an envelope to my office door that was a publication by a neo-nazi anti-Semetic group that said that Jewish control of the media was the biggest threat to the country's future. There was a drawing of a skeletal Uncle Sam slumped over and dead in a chair watching a TV with a Star of David on the screen.

The parallels to what Smith said and the ongoing militant hate groups is eerie.

Irony alert: "Nancita" complains about unverifiable assertions...

this is what they were up to with all that chatter about the fairness doctrine months ago.

they were laying the groundwork for this little endeavor.

who wants to bet there won't be a bill introduced replacing c-span with fox?

To show the penultimate idiocy and pretentious narcissism of their claims . . .

Does this mean we're finally nearing the end of Republican idiocy? I mean, penultimate is pretty close to the end. Like, right next to it.

@nancita: Anybody out there with a post-graduate education? A mortgage? A small business? Any world travelers? Any entrepreneurs? Hello?

i think you are looking for craigslist. http://florencesc.craigslist.org/

C-Span is probably the only objective news source out there. Fox is, obviously, right-wing. Most of the rest of them are left-of-center (which you may not notice if you consistently agree with their point of view).

But I think most of us will agree that it is difficult to get the simple, straight-forward, un-spun facts. Most news is packaged in commentary. Facts are wrapped in subtle bias (both right and left).

Irony alert: "Nancita" complains about confirmation bias.

Most of the rest of them are left-of-center (which you may not notice if you consistently agree with their point of view).

Which is obvious, because they never give air time to the likes of Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Jonah Goldberg, Megan McCain, Liz Cheney...oh, wait...

But I think most of us will agree that it is difficult to get the simple, straight-forward, un-spun facts.

Because of the media's bias toward "he-said, she-said" objectivity that gives an unhindered forum to Republican liars.

The national media is not liberal -- not even close. And sadly for Republican hacks like you, "Nancita," repeating your assertions don't make them true.

Nancita, just out of curiosity: Would you mind telling us where you get your un-spun facts from, considering that, as you yourself state, the MSM is all biased and CSPAN is the only objective news source out there?

Nancita wrote: "Most of the rest of them are left-of-center ..."

That is a blatant lie.

You are a liar.

Hey Luther, most of us are already aware that the reporters and the underlings tend "liberal", but:
1. That term includes social attitudes, and not just concepts of economic policy and class loyalty.
2. The *owners* are mostly conservative/corporatist, and that's who decides the real agenda (like, displaying Liz Cheney over and over again.)
Get it?

In an authoritarian society like the old Soviet Union facts and opinions not authorized for public discussion by the state were liberal by their very nature. Soviet leaders went to great lengths to denigrate and silence dissenters.

When it comes to branding someone's political ideology the GOP sounds and acts like the old, authoritarian Soviet Union. Rather than address liberals' legitimate criticisms of their ideas Republicans respond by telling us essentially to shut up.

It's going to be a long exile for the GOP if they keep whining like this.

Wow. Why do I keep getting the feeling I'm conversing with high school students who are still getting their news from comedy shows? (The reason for my previous questioning post).

In response to the one civil question: The NY Times (online) and Wall St. Journal (in print) I read almost daily. I read a lot of essays -- because I do like opinion pieces -- one can see the logical progressions (or leaps) in the writer's thinking -- these come from all over the internet. I watch CNN and lots of C-Span and sometimes local news.

I am clearly a conservative, so even though FOX news is often embarrassingly biased (& just plain stupid on occasion), I am very thankful to have at least something on TV that appeals to my political prejudices.

If you see yourself as a liberal, notice if the news you are viewing speaks to your prejudices. If it does, you are likely reading or hearing a liberal bias.

So, basically, kids: Grow up, get some self-awareness.

Hateful prejudice is hateful prejudice -- just because it's aimed at people you and your friends don't agree with, doesn't make it any less intolerant.

Try to argue intelligently. Drop the ugly name-calling. Try some critical thinking.

Respect diversity.

Nancita wrote: "Try to argue intelligently."

How does one "argue intelligently" with someone like you, whose comments consist entirely of sweeping unsupported generalizations, mixed with blatant falsehoods, all delivered in an intentionally offensive tone of arrogance and condescension, and who responds to substantive refutations of her claims by whining that they are "ugly name-calling"?

It's obvious that like most "conservatives", the only actual content of your fake, phony pseudo-ideology is hatred of "liberals", and your idea of "intelligent argument" is to "say stuff that annoys liberals". You are posting comments here for no other purpose than to impress yourself with your ability to annoy people into wasting their time responding to your bullshit.

I'll say it: your name is Rumplestiltskin.

Now begone.

Nancita: "If you see yourself as a liberal, notice if the news you are viewing speaks to your prejudices . . ."

What the hell does this mean? If the news reports that in Cairo today Obama called for homelands for both Israelis and Palestinians, and liberals agree with this, does that mean the media has a liberal bias?

Furthermore, is my view an arbitrary "prejudice" as you seem to characterize it or is it possibly a thoughtful position arrived at after careful consideration of the rights, needs and alternatives of the various parties involved?

What liberals respect is the quality of your ideas, not the fact that you choose to characterize yourself as conservative, libertarian, liberal or whatever. When you set yourself up as a victim, low and behold you become one. You will never convince people about the better quality of your ideas as long as you keep turning fundamental differences of opinion and values into attacks against your right to affiliate with conservatives.

Go ahead and affiliate yourself with any ideology you want, it's your ideas that matter.

Nancita, you are saying nothing. The post and the comments are focused on whether the Republicans have any good basis for griping that the media is liberally biased (overall, not just social issues and self-identification but deep economic policy and class issues.) Steve and his supporters argued well that the Rs don't have a case - so what the hell is your stupid point? Just to see if you can construct bemused snotty prose for its own sake?

If you see yourself as a liberal, notice if the news you are viewing speaks to your prejudices. If it does, you are likely reading or hearing a liberal bias. ... Respect diversity.
Posted by: Nancita

But there is NO diversity with factually incorrect statements. There is no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, there were no WMDs, wishing won't make it so, and you're wrong to think that the propagandists of that POV deserve equal time with the truth.

The lack of investigative reporting by an incurious media, and spoon-fed analysis to an intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt populace is a toxic mix.

Either facts matter or they don't. Conservatives have devolved into the racism and nationalism inherent to their viewpoint, and cannot make their argument anymore with facts, which are consistently against them. Which is why they're dying.

Of course facts don't matter. what matters is the voting history of those who report them. in other words, nancita and her kind care more that olbermann is clearly liberal, than Hannity is making shit up as he goes, because he's a damn liberal. it's no longer facts v propaganda. It's left versus right. He's a liberal, so it doesn't matter. It's not "NO THE EARTH IS NOT 6,000 YEARS OLD", it's "the earth is whatever you think it is and the media will way whatever you want to hear and that's what matters"

I have to say this:

WaMo's trolls suck as hard as its platform.

Better Trolls.
Better Platform.

Please.

If the left ever had to deal with equal media coverage they wouldn't know what hit them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102079.html

Even CSPAN shows its liberal bias in the hosts / guest it picks and the telephone calls it accepts and has the guests answer. It is maddening.