Goofy media bias study of the day

"Newspapers want to appeal to readers by writing about things that readers are interested in? You don't say! God forbid that newspapers would try to please their audience and maximize profits. The horror...the horror.

Here's a news flash, professors: the entire dadgum newspaper industry is wobbling on its last legs! And you are not only shocked, but offended that newspapers struggling for their lives would actually, you know, try to create products that actual readers would pay cash money to read?!"

What does that have to do with whether a story is positive or negative? What you (I think) are implying is that people are only interested in stories that reinforce their opinions/mindset.

Is that the role that you see newspapers playing?

"If, as you say and I have no reason to doubt, newspapers try to create products that actual readers would pay cash money to read, and if, as most conservatives say and I highly doubt, newspapers and other media are slanted to the left, doesn't it follow that most of America is liberal rather than conservative?"

Maybe not. Maybe they write for each other and don't care if more conservative people don't buy their papers.

We don't subscribe to the local paper anymore, except for the Sunday edition which has a TV Guide and advertising inserts. And Newsweek, and Time which we dumped quite a while ago. Get our news from the web.

Rod, so a media providing news that their readers want to read--slant-to make money is a no-brainer?

So conservatives who complain about liberal main stream media is bs? And liberals who complain about Fox News are bs?

Reads like you've basically ruined your crusasde about liberal media bias. Right?

trotsky is on point here.

I'm in California, but north. I have family in the south, though.

Dirty diapers and trash left in the desert by fleeing illegals. Bodies out in the wilderness. Drugs by the ton being carried across the border. Crime and corruption. All this and much much more is a lot easier to contemplate from a distance of 500 miles than it is up close.

If this is happening in someone else's town far away, well, you can contemplate the Clear Alleged Truth of the thing in the cool light of morning. If it's in your backyard, it's a lot different.

Newspapers are "trying to please their readers"? Maybe the papers up close to the problem have a clearer view, and are just reflecting that.

I'm going to ignore the immigration thing and focus on this:

Rice U: "It's been well-documented that the media report heavily on sex, violence and crime to appeal to readers," she said. "The immigration issue is an emotional national issue that newspapers can sensationalize and provide influence on."

Rod: Holy cow! Newspapers want to appeal to readers by writing about things that readers are interested in? You don't say! God forbid that newspapers would try to please their audience and maximize profits. The horror...the horror.

Let's be brutally honest here: Rice is accusing newspapers of pandering. Rod is defending that pandering in terms that could fit the mouth of "Davis" (played by Steve Martin) In Grand Canyon.

Davis: The point is there's a gulf in this country; an ever-widening abyss between the people who have stuff, and the people who don't have shit. It's like this big hole in the ground, as big as the fucking Grand Canyon, and what's come pouring out is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence, and the violence is real, Mack. Nothing's gonna make it go away, until someone changes something, which is not going to happen. And you may not like it, even I may not like it, but I can't pretend it isn't there because that it is a lie, and when art lies, it becomes worthless. So I gotta keep telling the truth, even if it scares the shit out of me, like it scares the shit out of you. Even if it means some motherfucker can blow a big hole in my leg for a watch, and I'm gonna walk with a fucking limp for the rest of my life and call myself lucky.

And so life imitates art.

To wit:

Davis: The point is there's a gulf in this country; an ever-widening abyss between the people who have stuff, and the people who don't have shit. It's like this big hole in the ground, as big as the fucking Grand Canyon, and what's come pouring out is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence, and the violence is real, Mack. Nothing's gonna make it go away, until someone changes something, which is not going to happen. And you may not like it, even I may not like it, but I can't pretend it isn't there because that it is a lie, and when art lies, it becomes worthless. So I gotta keep telling the truth, even if it scares the shit out of me, like it scares the shit out of you. Even if it means some motherfucker can blow a big hole in my leg for a watch, and I'm gonna walk with a fucking limp for the rest of my life and call myself lucky.

Here's the thing Rod...there used to be authentic journalism. By that I mean Journalism that actually dug into things and revealed stuff and kept the sh**heads in line. Those days are long gone. The national newspapers helped to blow up the real estate bubble, no doubt because of real estate ad revenue. This was/is a HUGE conflict of interest, whoring.

So, yeah, stroking the Latinos to sell papers is what it is; whoring.

You can bet that most Californians, especially now with the budget crisis, are NOT too happy with the lax immigration policies that have allowed the state to be overrun with illegals.

Does this mean that your heart is not really in this Traditional Chinese Medicine, Orthodox Christianity and healing Templeton project?

No, of course my heart is in it, and my mind too. I was simply trying to make the point that I've had exactly four weeks to work on a project about which I knew very little from the beginning. As I said, I'm not posting my results to this blog until I've published them in my newspaper, which, by the way, will require me to do more reporting and refining. This blog, like most blogs, is a "weblog" -- that is, a daily diary of what the author finds worth noting down in diary form. All I'm saying is don't make it to be more than it is.

If I remember correctly, didn't you want to do a project on Dr. N, your distance healer? That you were interested enough not to just write about him on your blog, but in a newspaper article also? And you hoped to follow up about him on this blog in the summer, with Dr. N's permission? Whatever became of that? Why wasn't Dr. N the subject of your Templeton project? Don't you feel you owe to the readers of your newspaper article on Dr. N to follow up on the fantastic claims made for him?

I couldn't figure out a way to write about Dr. N. for Templeton in a meaningful way in that short a period of time. If I manage to turn my project into a book, I hope to have the time to do a lot more research on this. I would expect everyone to be skeptical of N., and I hope to return to the topic of him and what he does later. It was all I could do to focus on a topic for which there is a significant theological and scientific literature.

I read some correspondence to Flannery O'Connor once, can't remember who wrote it to her.

Author said that the white folks up North didn't care how high blacks got, as long as they didn't get too close, white folks down South didn't care how close blacks got as long as they didn't get too high.

People who do university studies are usually very good at pinpointing the biases of folks very different from themselves. It's not usually very useful information.

It seems like bad research, as it doesn't address a pressing research question (i.e. is anyone surprised by the finding? or is there an ongoing debate about the question?). But academics live in the world of publish or perish, so there they go. If they go this published, more power to them. Above all, though, the tone of the commentary says more about the commentator than about the research. Settle down, Rod! Have a pint of bitters!