Jonathan Foreman writes a good piece explaining that the reason the media has played up the "looting" angle is either because they are ignorant or disingeneous. And Peter Collins elaborates on the Eason Jordan admission that CNN had to suppress the news from Baghdad in order to maintain access. Both are good articles and are reflecting the serious questions that are being asked (and will continue to be asked) about both media bias and media ignorance. This is another good effect of the war. Even Dick Morris is talking about a media meltdown. It is interesting that no one has asked why the former Iraqi ambassador to the UN, upon leaving his New York apartment for Syria (via France) felt the need to hug and kiss the CNN’s chief UN correspondent. A bit awkward, that.
I really don’t understand these claims of media bias, with regard to the looting that has been taking place in Iraq. I have yet to see a single news outlet that has criticized the looting of Saddam’s palaces or government offices. Only once that looting spread to hospitals, museums and shops did the criticism start. I have a difficult time believing that the media is fabricating these stories.
Dick Morris notes that, "Among younger viewers (18-34), CBS Evening News fell 16 percent while Fox News Channel gained fivefold."
Which dovetails with my earlier claims that the current "media bias" has a generational mechanism. I reminded of the Oldsmobile ads a few years back, only the major networks don’t get it.
Perhaps we’ll be hearing new ads soon, This is not, you’re father’s network anymore!
Nah. :)
Back from my Shakespeare class. It was good fun; I am sure I learned more from the students today than they learned from me. I do have a simple (anecdotal) comment about CBS’s fall and FOX’s five-fold gain among younger viewers: I asked a high school class about a year ago what television news they see when they do see TV news. Less than ten percent said they looked at the network news (CBS, NBC, ABC); the majority said FOX and a slightly lesser number said CNN. There were some (maybe 25%) that had never, ever, seen any network news. I was amazed. There is no question in my mind that there is a crisis in TV news. It is partly a credibility problem, partly the existence of talk radio, and--progressively more true with time--the internet. TV news, especially the networks, will have to re-invent themselves, and soon.
I’m having a difficult grasping the correlation between media bias and network ratings. Are you suggesting that Fox’s ratings among the 18-34 crowd are high because it is biased, or because it is not biased?
A difficult grasping?
Huh?
To the anonymous poster in Comment 5, it should have read "a difficult time grasping." My apologies.