Reply #5: Another aspect in addition is that media has "fast tracks"

[Land Shark]

These "fast tracks" to publication are oftentimes considered "reliable sources" but which can boil down to "someone who regularly provides news content that is interesting and at least debatable, and not readily disproven."

For example, the press releases of government agencies are often printed without seeking comment from the subjects of those press releases. Corporate news is released in video form and played by media "as is", as if the corporate "news" reporter actually works for the station playing the videotape.

Now big corporations, big government, and rich people tend not to be "readily disproven" because they have the resources to defend their positions with PR people, lawyers, and what not. So even if the corporate press release is an outright lie, chances are very good that if there is a public debate on that issue they will, at the very least, be able to confuse and obfuscate the issue, and sometimes the lies win, posing as truth.

True, a lot of media is owned by conservatives, but with the "news standards" shown above, it is much more likely that conservative stories get out than liberal ones, though liberal stories DO get out from time to time only less.

Problem is, when liberal stories DO get out, conservatives are much better are complaining about the "bias" that is then ialleged to be in the media. Though wrong in doing so, conservatives are not completely crazy in seeing "bias", there are liberal inferences in the media from time to time, and they readily spot those inferences, object to them, while at the same time experiencing conservative and corporate bias as "neutral truth" because they agree with it. The reverse is often true with liberals, we can see the corporate bias but sometimes won't see the liberal "bias". THE THING IS, THE LIBERAL FACTS AND OPINION AS WELL AS THE CONSERVATIVE FACTS AND OPINION SHOULD BE IN THE PAPER, SO READERS CAN BE WELL INFORMED.

The solution is to reframe the debate as one of freedom of speech and reporting integrity, calling denunciations of liberal bias an anti=freedom of speech because it wants to squelch news based on its tendency to rally one side of the political debate. Our demand should be that all points of view and sides of the political debate be reported faithfully and LET THE READERS DECIDE. This allows for real freedom of debate, and one CAN NOT decry as "liberal bias" the fact that liberals get some facts in the paper that support their ideas, nor do progressives need to self-censor in order to "qualify" for the MSM. Taken to its logical extreme (as it often is) those complaining of "liberal bias" are actually against freedom of speech -- for liberals. In more moderate and reasonable form, a "liberal bias" attack takes the form of asking that "opinion" get off the news pages and back onto editorial pages. That's not an unreasonable position necessarily, but it is impossible to report the news without reporting liberal (and conservative) opinion OF OTHER PEOPLE (not the reporters' bias or opinion). Consequently, news media should report what activists of all sides say, but the media is over the line when the news articles drip with attitude from the point of view of the reporter or the paper, whether it be sarcasm making fun of someone's "conspiracy theory" or whatever. Simply report the facts and points of view, and let me the reader decide.

If (like with the NY Times and election fraud) the very first thing you hear about a theory "burning up the internet" is that they are "conspiracy theories" spread "by blogs" that are "quickly disproved" without faithfully saying what the facts and allegations of the supposed conspiracy are, you are not seeing a faithful reporting of news, but rather a mild exercise in thought control where the reporter (no matter what his subjective intent) is instructing the reader in how to handle certain unspecified information -- by blowing it off as "conspiracy theory".

The frame should be: Report all the news and significant opinion faithfully, and let the readers decide.

The debate will then be whether a point of view is "significant" or not, but 30% of the public doubting the election is NO DOUBT a significant point of view, but even if only one person held the point of view but did so in a compelling way, there is a public interest in hearing so, yet again, the public can decide.

The voters, as democracy's decisionmakers, must be fully and properly informed, thus all points of view should be fairly reflected in the media.

If we frame the debate as above, we are set to win the "liberal bias" debates, the debates over whether the United Church of Christ ads should be banned by the networks, and we are poised to get points of view that are not funded by the wealthy out to all of the people.