Jophiel wrote:
No, it's just wrong. The whole point of the manufactured outrage is that supposedly NPR is imposing a different standard upon Williams as they are upon Spitz.
No. I'm pretty sure that whole bit was just red meat for conservatives who already view public media as a pretext for using taxpayer money to spread liberal propaganda by showing an example of extreme anti-conservative bias at another publicly funded media outlet. You know. Show a pattern of behavior and all of that.
Varus just got it wrong is all. There are dozens of examples of NPR analysts expressing political opinions. This example is about something else entirely.
Quote:
But NPR has jack all to do with Spitz so throwing a fit over her remarks is just asinine.
Not if your point is to show a pattern of publicly funded media having an anti-conservative slant.
Quote:
Quote:
The broader point is the perception that the entire publicly funded media system is blatantly and strongly liberal biased and has been for some time.
Agreed that people who just want to whine and cry about things don't need to worry about actual facts in order to throw a hissy fit and wave their arms around. Why worry about understanding something when you can just grab random stuff and pretend it's all related under the umbrella of your pet complaint?
As examples of just how biased publicly funded media outlets are, it seems very very valid Joph. William's firing is just one in a long history of this sort of thing. It's getting attention because it's happening right now and because his connection to the "right wing" is tenuous at best. He appears on Fox news to argue *against* the conservative viewpoint, and arguably does it quite well.
There's a broader aspect to this Joph, which I think you either don't see, or are trying hard to ignore. The liberal rant about Fox news is that it's just full of crazy conservatives spouting nutty conservatives ideas and it can be dismissed as horribly biased and nutty and whatever. However, that perception doesn't really survive actually watching Fox News for any length of time. Someone who's only knowledge about it comes from such assumptions might be quite surprised to watch it and see a panel, thinking "Ah hah! This is where they just stack the panel with conservatives". Then they might be confused as the panelists are introduced by name and publication. "Huh! That person writes for the New York Times? And that one works for NPR? Hey! I even listen to his/her show. He/she isn't a conservative! What's going on here?". And then when the realize that these people are actually expressing differing opinions and they aren't just reading some conservative script, they realize that most of the BS they've been told is just that: BS.
One might even suspect that this is the reason why, despite all the assumptions tossed around on liberal blogs and even forums like this one, Fox News has massively more viewers than any other cable news network. And it might even explain why it consistently polls with a more politically mixed viewer list than any other news outlet (massively more "balanced" in fact).
But what happens if the other media outlets (the ones that are massively off balanced towards liberal view points) start firing any of their people who express opinions on Fox New? What happens? Think it through Joph. That's the real concern here. All the rest is kind of a smoke screen. The real issue is the polarization of our media/news coverage. What NPR is basically telling us is that if you work for them you better be really careful if you ever appear on Fox News. Don't you dare express an opinion, or you might just lose your job!
That's the chilling aspect to this. And if you don't see this in the broader context of media manipulation in order to dismiss and diminish one point of view in favor of another (by a publicly funded organization no less!), then you are freaking blind as a bat. If they can make liberal analysts and commentators afraid to appear on Fox News because they might lose their jobs, then the BS they say about Fox News becomes true. And if it just takes a bit of control of the media to do this and a little fear on the part of the journalist community, well... that's a small price to pay to get rid of anyone who dares to say things that "we" don't agree with. And there goes free speech...
It's not just about Williams Joph, and it's somewhat insulting to insist that that's all we should even think much less talk about.
Edited, Oct 22nd 2010 7:02pm by gbaji