WSJ Civil War

[Fenian_Bastard]

http://www.observer.com/20060717/20060717_Gabriel_Sherman_media_offtherecord.asp


If I put this on the J-board, Moddy's going to move it here anywhere. I wondered how long the WSJ could continue to be both a great paperin its news hole and a festival for fruitcakes on its ed page. Anybody know anyone who works there?

 

[Guy_Incognito]

http://www.observer.com/20060717/20060717_Gabriel_Sherman_media_offtherecord.asp


If I put this on the J-board, Moddy's going to move it here anywhere. I wondered how long the WSJ could continue to be both a great paperin its news hole and a festival for fruitcakes on its ed page. Anybody know anyone who works there?

I'm surprised you're surprised. It's well known (and was supported by the study of a while back that I believe we discussed here) that the right of center reputation of the Journal is editorial page only, but that that the rest of the paper tilts left.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Guy --
The editorial page is a haven for crackpots and extremists -- witness its close ties with the loons of the "Arkansas Project" back in the day. The newspaper plays it down the middle. "Tilts left"? The WSJ? Yikes.

 

[Guy_Incognito]

Guy --
The editorial page is a haven for crackpots and extremists -- witness its close ties with the loons of the "Arkansas Project" back in the day. The newspaper plays it down the middle. "Tilts left"? The WSJ? Yikes.

From your perspective, I'd say that's about right, and that we both just said the exact same thing.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

"The strange pursuit of poor Vince Foster, in death as in life, is a case in point. While it is obviously a bit unfair to blame the Journal writers for Foster's suicide- though he may have-their journalistic values with regard to his case left a great deal to be desired. "Until the Foster death is seriously studied, a Banquo's ghost will stalk . . . the Clinton administration," one long editorial warned, paying particular attention to Mrs. Clinton's movement on the day of Foster's death, as if to cast her as a contemporary Lady MacBeth. The Journal also praised other media outlets' outlandish pursuits with regard to this paranoid endeavor. Its assistant features editor, Erich Eichman, later books editor, expressed "a debt of gratitude" for the New York Post's irresponsible speculation that Foster's gun had been put in his hand after his death and the body had been moved to the spot where it was found. Two days afterward, the editors imagined a vicious physical attack on a reporter whose notes were allegedly stolen, no doubt to prevent the disclosure of some other dastardly deed. This piece was entitled "Censored in Arkansas" and argued that Harper reporter L. J. Davis had met with foul play while reporting a story on Whitewater in Little Rock. But the Journal editors turned out to have played fast and loose with the facts, once again, though the facts themselves are quite confusing. Davis lost some pages of his notes after waking up unconscious in his hotel room. He told a reporter he did not remember much beyond that and admitted to having downed at least four martinis on the night in question. But the hotel manager later explained, "We have records that he was down here [at the hotel bar] at 10:30 that night," which was supposed to be the end of when he said he had been unconscious. The hotel bartender confirmed the manager's version and put the number of martinis Davis consumed at six. Davis, meanwhile, quite understandably, never mentioned the incident in print, thinking it insignificant and not trusting his own memory. He says he asked the Journal to print a retraction of its wild allegations, but of course it refused." (Eric Alterman: What Liberal Media?)

Guy --
After the requisite "What do you expect from a liberal book?" disclaimer, please find me a WSJ news story equivalent to these facts in which the paper tilted similarly left.

 

[terrier]

I get a laugh out of these nutbags trying to play class warfare with NYT reporters and editors. Like nobody at the WSJ vacations in the Hamptons or Nantucket?

 

[Guy_Incognito]

"The strange pursuit of poor Vince Foster, in death as in life, is a case in point. While it is obviously a bit unfair to blame the Journal writers for Foster's suicide- though he may have-their journalistic values with regard to his case left a great deal to be desired. "Until the Foster death is seriously studied, a Banquo's ghost will stalk . . . the Clinton administration," one long editorial warned, paying particular attention to Mrs. Clinton's movement on the day of Foster's death, as if to cast her as a contemporary Lady MacBeth. The Journal also praised other media outlets' outlandish pursuits with regard to this paranoid endeavor. Its assistant features editor, Erich Eichman, later books editor, expressed "a debt of gratitude" for the New York Post's irresponsible speculation that Foster's gun had been put in his hand after his death and the body had been moved to the spot where it was found. Two days afterward, the editors imagined a vicious physical attack on a reporter whose notes were allegedly stolen, no doubt to prevent the disclosure of some other dastardly deed. This piece was entitled "Censored in Arkansas" and argued that Harper reporter L. J. Davis had met with foul play while reporting a story on Whitewater in Little Rock. But the Journal editors turned out to have played fast and loose with the facts, once again, though the facts themselves are quite confusing. Davis lost some pages of his notes after waking up unconscious in his hotel room. He told a reporter he did not remember much beyond that and admitted to having downed at least four martinis on the night in question. But the hotel manager later explained, "We have records that he was down here [at the hotel bar] at 10:30 that night," which was supposed to be the end of when he said he had been unconscious. The hotel bartender confirmed the manager's version and put the number of martinis Davis consumed at six. Davis, meanwhile, quite understandably, never mentioned the incident in print, thinking it insignificant and not trusting his own memory. He says he asked the Journal to print a retraction of its wild allegations, but of course it refused." (Eric Alterman: What Liberal Media?)

Guy --
After the requisite "What do you expect from a liberal book?" disclaimer, please find me a WSJ news story equivalent to these facts in which the paper tilted similarly left.

I can't, not only because I don't have access to their archives, but because it's a silly request. First, their should be more partisanship on the editorial page than in the news, and as a good paper, I'd certainly expect it from theWSJ. Second, if you look at what I said, I didn't make the leanings equivalent, I said the editorial page had a deserved RW reputation, while the rest of the paper "leaned" left. What does Alterman's book have to do with any of that?

 

[Guy_Incognito]

From the well known bastion of the VRWC - UCLA:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist


While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet.  Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist...

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512220003?offset=20&show=1

Off the topic here, because, as you know, the WSJ under the late loon Mr. Bartley, pioneered the "investigative editorial," which helped mainline all different sorts of baseless slander and blurred the line between the editorial pages and the news pages, so your "the editorial page is supposed to be more partisan" is a bit misleading, since the WSJ editorial page is sui generis in its approach. And, whatever, it did sell out its reporter pretty badly here.
Ah, Groseclose and Milyo. Everybody's favorite junk researchers.
Sorry. The WSJ is not "the most liberal" news coverage in America. Not even close.

 

[Guy_Incognito]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512220003?offset=20&show=1

Off the topic here, because, as you know, the WSJ under the late loon Mr. Bartley, pioneered the "investigative editorial," which helped mainline all different sorts of baseless slander and blurred the line between the editorial pages and the news pages, so your "the editorial page is supposed to be more partisan" is a bit misleading, since the WSJ editorial page is sui generis in its approach. And, whatever, it did sell out its reporter pretty badly here.
Ah, Groseclose and Milyo. Everybody's favorite junk researchers.
Sorry. The WSJ is not "the most liberal" news coverage in America. Not even close.

I know nothing about the researchers, but you're going to have to come up with a source other than MediaMatters to discredit it. Why not just cite Alterman, I bet the DailyKos also thinks it was flawed.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Read the Media Matters piece and respond accordingly. Were these guys NOT connected to conservative think tanks? Did their research NOT consist of, among other things, calling the ACLU "conservative" because it rated a 49.8?
Anyway, the real piece of complete hackery comes from that stooge, Paul Gigot, who slimed his own reporter without ever talking to the guy. Nice.

 

[JR]

FB, Guy,

You guys are having a D_B argument.

This UCLA "study" and the subsequent Media Matters rebuttal was hashed out here months ago.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

OK, my bad for releasing the hounds on the UCLA study in any context except for the inexcusable behavior of the WSJ editorial page in this matter.

 

[Guy_Incognito]

FB, Guy,

You guys are having a D_B argument.

This UCLA "study" and the subsequent Media Matters rebuttal was hashed out here months ago.

http://www.observer.com/20060717/20060717_Gabriel_Sherman_media_offtherecord.asp


If I put this on the J-board, Moddy's going to move it here anywhere. I wondered how long the WSJ could continue to be both a great paperin its news hole and a festival for fruitcakes on its ed page. Anybody know anyone who works there?

I'm surprised you're surprised. It's well known (and was supported by the study of a while back that I believe we discussed here) that the right of center reputation of the Journal is editorial page only, but that that the rest of the paper tilts left.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Gold star for Guy!