If people saw Beat the Press this past Friday, John Keller repeated the oft stated meme of the liberal bias in media. Yet not one other guest countered this statement. Why?
A few minutes later, one guest (it might have been Dan Kennedy?) commented that the reason Obama got as much coverage as he did was due to the ability of the media to sell more copy using articles about Obama.
I would think this makes it obvious that the media is not biased left or right, but rather is really concerned with their own bottom line.
In other words, they’ll write what can so they sell copy. To me, this is the bedrock of serving corporate interests, not conservative or liberal, and should provide a strong counter argument to Keller’s meme propagation.
Of course, no one on the show mentioned this.
It used to be a good show, especially when Mark Jurkowitz was still on the panel. Now they rotate in center-right “conventional wisdom” purveyors like Jon Keller and Joe Sciacca and, occasionally, right-wing shock jock Michael Graham. Now Dan Kennedy and Callie Crossley are the only ones that ever have anything interesting to say.
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p>Of course, BtP earned a huge blot on its record with the Jerome Armstrong satire screw-up. It was about that time that the show started to take a turn for the worst. Prior to that, it was usually pretty good. Even John Carroll, the key culprit in that saga, used to provide good commentary. It’s sad, because that incident wasn’t indicative of his work as a whole.
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p>So yeah, Keller continues to make his baseless assertions. I hardly watch BtP anymore due to his kind of commentary.
We’ve entirely stopped watching it for the most part.
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p>Really, if they just got rid of Emily Rooney, who obviously thinks more highly of her opinion than most other people do, I think you could turn the show around. Nothing against her personally, but I can’t stand listening to her as a talking head. Ug.
As the LA Times reported in July: according to analyst Andrew Tyndall Obama received more than twice as much air time on the CBS, ABC and NBC evening newscasts as McCain — but it was more negative. When network newscasters ventured opinions, 28% were positive for Obama and 72% negative. For McCain, 43% of comments were positive and 57% negative.
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p>So much for liberal media bias.
because he is a more interesting person. Heck, even Sarah Palin got more press than McCain once she was seleceted as VP nominee.
Media concern with the bottom line is significantly connected to consolidation of media ownership nationwide. The Fairness Doctrine must be reinstated, and the government must undertake major anti-trust activity through application of existing laws or passage of new ones if necessary. Republican operatives behaving as entertainers to make money while masquerading as commentators should be exposed with a media version of a 50-state strategy to supplement Dr. Dean’s redemption of the Democratic Party.
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p>Mr. Keller’s ‘analysis’ is a mile wide and an inch deep.
this angry little man to give his opinion on television about anything?
Except the word “asshat” was in there somewhere.
I use to love Keller when he was on channel 56. Lately however, ht seems to be auditioning for Fox. I would say Fox News but I think like cheese food and cheese product, as opposed to Cheese, Fox should be required to add some sort of label so the consumer knows that what they are getting is not actually news but a news product.
As I recall, I was already done flapping my gums by the time Jon got to speak. “Beat the Press” is not “Hannity & Colmes” – you don’t get to go back and start yelling at someone if you disagree with him. (I would never yell at Jon anyway.)
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p>What I said was that the accusation of liberal media bias in Obama’s case was ridiculous, because those making the accusation were demanding “balanced” coverage of a campaign in which one candidate outperformed the other by a huge margin.
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p>I’ve bored everyone on “BTP” with my theory of liberal media bias on any number of occasions. There’s a long version, but the short version is this: There isn’t, at least with respect to the way the press covers politics.