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In practice, as far as world news is concerned, the US media simply ignores the rest of the world, until the State Department sends out a release putting a new country on the Axis of Evil, whereupon the press rallies for a nuclear attack on that country.
Any time there is a human element to a story, there will inevitably be bias. Most Westerners would agree that the Afghan Taliban was a repressive regime. When they covered it in news, or cover it in history, they usually approach it from that standpoint. Yet Taliban officials or sympathizers will disagree, and write their histories in a different light.
Likewise with major social issues. There seems to be a sub-culture among journalists in the mainstream media, and the values of this sub-culture are often identical to that of the transnational educated, urban, upper middle-income, "creative class". Stemming from those values are liberal views on the social matters of the day: support for same-sex marriage, legalized and unrestricted abortion, etc. It's difficult not to be biased when you and most everybody surrounding you take the views that homosexuality is normal and that abortion is a woman's right for granted, almost as if they are self-evident facts. Hence there is bias when a media outlet covers these stories (or fails to cover, as has been the case at times too), even if unintentional.
Bias is inevitable. It's the right kind of bias, I think, that makes one media outlet superior to another. But things like comprehensiveness of coverage (rather than reducing all stories to a series of sound-bites), broadness of stories covered (rather than covering solely domestic issues and trivial ones at that, e.g. the Michael Vick scandal and celebrity marriages), and accuracy of facts (rather than views) can redeem an otherwise sometimes wrongly-biased media outlet.
In practice, as far as world news is concerned, the US media simply ignores the rest of the world, until the State Department sends out a release putting a new country on the Axis of Evil, whereupon the press rallies for a nuclear attack on that country.
Interesting to see UK, Australia France and US all so low. Given how often our media, especially the BBC, loves to put down the government so often and have extreme political bias and are not afraid to hide it, I'm surprised we're not higher.
They seem to be as much anti-Labour also, they slate them every day! Question time, daily politics and BBC parliament are from the BBC also at least they give the viewer a wider look at politics.
Among the free country where "democracy" is being pratiiced, Malaysia seems to have the worst journalism as it is supposed to be the mouth piece for the govt basically it is being owned by the parties. Even the negative news being reported, it would be blacked completely out the next few days. And during the Mahathir iron fisted rule, journalists were being detained with the opposition political figures under Internal Security Act where there is no trial and can be detained indefinitely. Heck, the Act is still enforced though they "promised" to do away with it. Other than that , journalists can be detained under OSA - Official Ssecret Act. So if and where there are corruption, how are they going to expose it?
The mainstream media is being shunned nowadays as there is no reliable news especially on corruption allegations, abuses or mismanagement.
Thank God for internet media and text messaging where it was pivotal to the downfall of govt to get its mandate with 2/3 majority in the last election as being enjoyed for many years.
With the influence of face book and smart phones, it is going to be interesting, how the ruling govt is going to fare with mainstream media blitz against the might of internet from facebook and internet media like the public forums like data-city.com where comments are being asked and posted.
Last year we have had seen the Arabs Spring uprising where the downfalls from Egypt to Libya. Must be the Act of Internet at work. CIA couldnt bring down Gaddafi but text messaging or internet did!
Last edited by zinglicious; 02-22-2012 at 04:37 PM..
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