Could Tribune employees soon be working for the Koch Bros?

How can you say that? Our newspapers never had an agenda!

 

You are.

 

Fixed.

Only had to see how quickly the self-appointed guard dogs of current administration went after patron saint of political reporting, Bob Woodward, a couple of weeks ago to know which way the slant has leaned for the past four decades or so.

What percent of those employed in newsrooms voted along one specific party line in November, and do so in lockstep in most national elections? Professional standards used to encourage folks to check that sh** at the door. Not anymore.

 

Left-wing? Chicago Tribune? Are you fucking high?

 

But it has exponentially gotten worse, on both sides of the ball, in the last 10-15 years.

 

And how many of us attempt to watch this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour

 

Really?

Remember the Maine!

 

Not talking about their editorials or editorial board, Unc. Not talking about their columnists, either, who line up probably 4 or 5 to 1 on liberal side of any scale. I'm talking about what they put in their newshole, the overt and covert bias or, when particularly subtle, "shading" of stories, headlines, cutlines. And let's never forget the slant inherent in news budgets, in terms of stories pursued vs. stories skipped. This is a joint that still pushes the "comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable" stuff and decides for itself who is who. When, bottom line, a newspaper's job is to inform everyone and afflict no one.

I read the Tribune on a regular basis and this conclusion is drawn entirely from my training and years of work in newsrooms, not from my personal politics. I couldn't care less if partisan people behave in intensely partisan ways. I expect major media that still hold themselves out as professional and fair to filter that crap out of the news product.

 

The "most news organizations are biased" thing is trumpeted FAR more by the right than the left, used as a way to justify bias by Fox News. I rarely hear folks on the left talk about media bias, but I hear it from my conservative friends regularly.

And I don't know where you work, but when it comes to newsrooms, political views should be checked at the door. We work pretty hard to make sure politics aren't a factor in our newsroom decisions. That doesn't mean there aren't political discussions between friends in the newsroom; it means that when you're deciding what stories to print and what questions to ask, you don't approach it with a slant left or right; you approach it trying to find out the truth of the matter.

Out of curiousity, do you work at a paper, or are you one of the non-journalists on here? (Not aiming that as an attack, just wondering how much knowledge you have of newsroom decision-making.)

 

As I see it, the left-wing media tend to describe themselves as objective, which causes the right-wing media to react with screeds that the left-wing media are biased and the right-wing media are truth-tellers. It's a circle of lies.

 

But when you look at some of the "left-wing" media, independent analysis shows they don't do a bad job keeping things down the middle, or only slightly left. CNN is an example. Gets a bad rap for being ultra-left when it isn't. The Washington Post too.

And when you go to organizations outside the biggest few like the NYT and such, you get a lot of papers that try to reflect the views of their communities.

 

The opposite can be true, too. Sometimes you work too hard to avoid the appearance of bias, making sure to include "the opposing side" when, bottom line, the opposing side on some issues is just nuts (and that goes for both the left and right on some things).