Media coverage

[Urbane]

• lol, you guys crack me up.... media bias?
  
  it should be your own bias and whether or not you happen to agree with what the reporter/columnist is saying about a particular topic or in this case a political party. media is bias when they are attacking your party and leader, the media is doing an excellent job when they are attacking the other party and their leader.
  
  you only have to look right here in BC at the absolute crap MSM reporting when it comes to the liberals and compare that to how they report when the socialists were in power. of course, you liberal supporters obviously think global, the sun, the province are doing an excellent job at reporting the news when it comes to the liberals.... others, like myself, think they are doing a crappy job. it is all in the eye of the beholder.

I'm genuinely astonished that you think there is no such thing as media bias. I look at Fox News, for example, and I see a strong slant to the right. Have you ever gone on the Toronto Star site? You really think they have no bias? And have you watched Terry Milewski on CBC? You think he was fair during the campaign? He certainly wrote nasty things about Harper on his blog and it spilled over into his "objective" reporting. Anyway, perhaps you just need to be more observant because there most certainly is media bias out there.

[grammafreddy]

Pssst ... George Soros can tell you all you ever NEED to know about media bias.

[Logitack]

I'm genuinely astonished that you think there is no such thing as media bias. I look at Fox News, for example, and I see a strong slant to the right. Have you ever gone on the Toronto Star site? You really think they have no bias? And have you watched Terry Milewski on CBC? You think he was fair during the campaign? He certainly wrote nasty things about Harper on his blog and it spilled over into his "objective" reporting. Anyway, perhaps you just need to be more observant because there most certainly is media bias out there.

i guess you didnt read what i said... bias is in the eye of the beholder....reader/listener. i know people who watch fox news, mostly americans, who say their coverage is "fair and balanced" and recite the tag line that foxnews uses. I listened to Milewski on election night, he didnt come across as being "bias" at least to me.... he was asking questions. you dont agree with what he said, so you say it is biased... see the difference? I havent watched SUN news, because I know (heard) they were just going to be the fox news of the north. I have a bias, but you on the other hand would most likely agree with the commentary from SUN news.... see the difference?

[Urbane]

• I'm genuinely astonished that you think there is no such thing as media bias. I look at Fox News, for example, and I see a strong slant to the right. Have you ever gone on the Toronto Star site? You really think they have no bias? And have you watched Terry Milewski on CBC? You think he was fair during the campaign? He certainly wrote nasty things about Harper on his blog and it spilled over into his "objective" reporting. Anyway, perhaps you just need to be more observant because there most certainly is media bias out there.

  i guess you didnt read what i said... bias is in the eye of the beholder....reader/listener. i know people who watch fox news, mostly americans, who say their coverage is "fair and balanced" and recite the tag line that foxnews uses. I listened to Milewski on election night, he didnt come across as being "bias" at least to me.... he was asking questions. you dont agree with what he said, so you say it is biased... see the difference? I havent watched SUN news, because I know (heard) they were just going to be the fox news of the north. I have a bias, but you on the other hand would most likely agree with the commentary from SUN news.... see the difference?

But you said:

media is bias when they are attacking your party and leader, the media is doing an excellent job when they are attacking the other party and their leader.

Bias is bias. One might enjoy the bias when it is in favor of the party of one's choosing or against the party one dislikes but the bias is still there. I saw examples of bias against Ignatieff during the campaign, for example, even though he wasn't my choice. Just because you can't recognize bias don't assume that others are missing it too.

[Logitack]

lol urbane

when i see the media, the MSM, begin to fairly hold ALL politicians to account for their actions, ask probing questions of these polticians, investigate what politicians, or for that matter ANY corporations, unions, et cetera, are doing that may not be in the "public" interest, then i might agree that some media are biased. the facts are the MSM do NOT hold, for example, here in BC, the liberals to account for their actions and deceptions, instead they give fluff pieces. now if it were the NDP socialist scumbags, like in the 90s, the MSM were ALL OVER the ndp and their misdeeds...... now THAT is bias. but, from your point of view, i am sure, you have absolutely NO problems with how the MSM covers the liberals, and most likely believe there is NO bias from the MSM when they report on the liberals.

you continue to rant about the cbc and their reporters bias, because you FEEL they are being unfair to harper and his party....again, to repeat myself, I listened to milewski interview the conservative candidates and didnt find his questions to be bias in ANY shape or form. they were leading questions designed to have that person say something that might be controversial...that isnt BIAS, IMO, that is being a journalist!

anyhow, if you feel the cbc and certain reporters have a bias....so be it...knock yourself out in your rant. ijust find it humorous when you view bias when it goes one way and not the other.

[Urbane]

LOL Logi . . . if you saw nothing biased by Milewski yelling at the Prime Minister, "What are you trying to hide?" then we obviously have different views about the meaning of bias. Milewski asked the Conservative official, just before the votes started coming in from BC if he was worried and when the official said no Milewski replied, "We you should be." No bias there? Yes, bias cuts both ways and, for example, there are media types who are biased for and biased against the BC Liberals.

I think you're conflating two things - how people view bias and the actual bias. Do we recognize bias more easily when a candidate we support is the victim? Absolutely. But the bias is still there if the guy you don't like is the victim. Your own example proves my point. You saw nothing biased in Milewski (literally yelling) asking Harper what he's trying to hide or him actually telling the Conservative official that he should be worried about the votes to be counted in BC. But that's your perception.

My father was a journalist and he taught me a lot about the subject and we often discussed bias in the media. When I was teaching (I taught some English classes) media bias was a small part of the curriculum and I think the students enjoyed looking at the subject. I remember having them look for examples of bias, cutting the article out of the paper, and bringing it in. They were able to find lots of cases of bias. Maybe you should have been in my class! (LOL)

[Logitack]

again, bias is in the eye of the beholder. your example of milewski "yelling" at the PM is your interpretation as was the question posed. I viewed it not as a bias, but being a journalist not allowing the candidate to ignore or not answering the question.

everyone has a bias, i agree. what you view as a bias may not be interpreted as such by, say, me! my interpretation of a bias is probably not shared by .....oh ..lets say YOU!

thats all i am saying.....you dont agree? how DARE you...LOL, i am right, you are clearly wrong! :nutzoid:

[Urbane]

• again, bias is in the eye of the beholder. your example of milewski "yelling" at the PM is your interpretation as was the question posed. I viewed it not as a bias, but being a journalist not allowing the candidate to ignore or not answering the question.
  
  everyone has a bias, i agree. what you view as a bias may not be interpreted as such by, say, me! my interpretation of a bias is probably not shared by .....oh ..lets say YOU!
  
  thats all i am saying.....you dont agree? how DARE you...LOL, i am right, you are clearly wrong! :nutzoid:

If you think you're right then you're biased against me! LOL Maybe we're both saying the same thing . . . sort of, perhaps, in a way. Anyway, we're both in favour of journalists doing their jobs in a professional way and that certainly includes holding the politicians' feet to the fire.

[steven lloyd]

Anyway, we're both in favour of journalists doing their jobs in a professional way and that certainly includes holding the politicians' feet to the fire.

Everyone has a bias, and it takes a great deal of courage (the courage to consider you might be wrong about something – how devastating is that?) to report or present a case contrary to your own bias. For us readers and consumers of media news, the onus is on us to recognize bias and consider the information presented appropriately (there is a reason extremist right-wing governments want to discontinue funding for all those "fluff" programs). If we are tied to one ideological perspective, and by default think everyone who disagrees is out to lunch, it doesn’t matter what information we are provided with. An exceptional journalist challenges the person he/she is interviewing on the points made no matter what perspective.

[NAB]

Kelly McParland: Should Stephen Harper be nicer to the media?

I was reading this week that Canadian political campaigns are boring for the people who have to cover them.

The leaders, surrounded by yes-people, fly around the country making the same statements over and over. They use the same applause lines, announce the same announcements, issue the same denunciations of their opponents. Day after day. For the poor travelling press, stuck in the back of the plane or bus, scratching for something new to send their editors, it’s very tedious.

They don’t like it. They want it to stop. They want politicians to campaign differently, to be more interesting.

So I’m wondering how they could do that, and why.

There are, after all, good reasons why politicians campaign the way they do. Mainly it’s because, despite television, and radio, the internet, tweeterdom, and Facebooklandia, not to mention constant communications every second of the day via cellphone and those little bluetooth devices people stick in their ears — despite all that, voters still persist in firewalling themselves from politicians and what point it is those politicians would like to make. Because most people just aren’t interested and don’t really want to be bothered.

So, to crack the wall of indifference, politicians have to put themselves in the face of the public and repeat the same lines over and over, until they succeed in penetrating a few skulls. And thy have to do it again and again all over the country, because if people in Moncton don’t want to hear what politicians have to say while they’re actually speaking in Moncton, they really don’t want to hear what they have to say if they’re speaking in Salmon Arm or some other godforsaken place.

Politicians do it because they have to. Reporters, now there’s a different bunch. They want the politicians to spice things up: say something different at every stop, for instance. Be controversial. Make bold pronouncements. Answer all their questions.

If politicians complied, it would be great for reporters. They could immediately attack the politicians over the absurdity of their bold pronouncements, the inadvisability of stirring controversy, the confusion created by constantly bringing up new issues. They’d ask endless questions constructed to elicit juicy responses, and then crucify the candidate for being dumb enough to respond. The politicians would get hammered; the reporters would get great stories.

No one knows how unfair the press is better than the press. The only thing they consider more unfair is people who won’t talk to the press. It really bugs them (maybe I should be saying “us”, having been a member for 35 years). Stephen Harper got royally flayed by a certain left-wing Toronto newspaper when he limited his daily question quota to five. Reporters hoped to ask stuff like: “Why are you such a secretive, micromanaging, paranoid, anti-Democratic abuser of Parliament? Oh, and I have a follow-up”. Who does he think he is evading legitimate questions like that?

Late in the campaign, when people actually started paying attention to him, Jack Layton also started dodging questions. He didn’t get flayed as much as Mr. Harper (even after it was discovered he can’t tell a sleazy bawdy house from Sheila’s Neighbourhood Family Back Rub Emporium) because reporters like Jack and didn’t want to spoil his day. Michael Ignatieff was desperate for attention, and thus willing to talk to anyone; he got very sympathetic treatment as a result, even though it was increasingly obvious that Canadians didn’t share the press’s high regard.

Having thought about it, it makes perfect sense to me why politicians don’t run their campaigns the way the travelling press would like them to. They’d never get elected if they did. They’d get great exposure for a while, and have lots of interviews lined up. Then the pundits would get bored (all at the same time) and start writing articles denouncing the guy they’d been lauding the week before. That’s just how the business works. And I think Stephen Harper figured it out a long time ago.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... the-media/

[Al Czervic]

• lol, you guys crack me up.... media bias?
  
  it should be your own bias and whether or not you happen to agree with what the reporter/columnist is saying about a particular topic or in this case a political party. media is bias when they are attacking your party and leader, the media is doing an excellent job when they are attacking the other party and their leader.
  
  you only have to look right here in BC at the absolute crap MSM reporting when it comes to the liberals and compare that to how they report when the socialists were in power. of course, you liberal supporters obviously think global, the sun, the province are doing an excellent job at reporting the news when it comes to the liberals.... others, like myself, think they are doing a crappy job. it is all in the eye of the beholder.

I'm genuinely astonished that you think there is no such thing as media bias. I look at Fox News, for example, and I see a strong slant to the right. Have you ever gone on the Toronto Star site? You really think they have no bias? And have you watched Terry Milewski on CBC? You think he was fair during the campaign? He certainly wrote nasty things about Harper on his blog and it spilled over into his "objective" reporting. Anyway, perhaps you just need to be more observant because there most certainly is media bias out there.

Personally I think it is a sad day for Canadians if we refuse to recognize media bias or solely write it off as bias ONLY from the view of the beholder. As a highly partisan right wing nut job I can say that one of my favorite BC journalists is Tom Fletcher from the Black Press. However I enjoy him precisely because of his blatant right wing bias. Are his columns fair and factual? Sure, but they almost ALWAYS go one way in attacking the NDP and only the NDP. Precisely why I enjoy them and him as a reporter. However I am not for a moment going to suggest he is non partisan or non biased because clearly that would not be true.

That said, there are also people such as Vaughn Palmer who are (at least in my opinion) as close to being as non partisan and non biased as you are going to find. The CBC on the other hand? Incredibly biased and Terry Milewski is an actual embarrassment for his blatant partisanship. To me there is media bias and I don’t have a problem calling it out when I see it, including those in the media who lean in my favor.

Conversely ever notice how it is ONLY the lefties who ever defend the CBC as being non biased ?

[Al Czervic]

Here is an interesting take on "media bias" from the election with examples....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... --iWMP48Fs

[Logitack]

Conversely ever notice how it is ONLY the lefties who ever defend the CBC as being non biased ?

no i havent, however, i have noticed it is ONLY the right wingers who are offended by the CBC for their bias!

[Al Czervic]

Conversely ever notice how it is ONLY the lefties who ever defend the CBC as being non biased ?

no i havent, however, i have noticed it is ONLY the right wingers who are offended by the CBC for their bias!

and that in itself says something doesn’t it?…...kind of like only lefties accuse Tom Fletcher of being biased....

[Logitack]

what it says, at least to me, al, is that media bias is in the eye of the beholder......didnt i say that before.....shrugs

fletcher does have a left wing bias....or maybe it should be a right wing bias, he is certainly more PRO right wing. same for so called journalists like baldrey and palmer, they generally write/speak in favor of the liberal agenda more than they critique it. does it bother me.....only when you right wing nut jobs bring up this media bias when it is directed at your side of the political spectrum! :127: