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Revision as of 19:46, 2 January 2014 editW163 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users9,867 edits →most of the conservative bias section should be removed: it would be better to answer the question← Previous edit Revision as of 20:26, 2 January 2014 edit undoWhatzinaname (talk | contribs)951 edits →most of the conservative bias section should be removedNext edit →
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::: It would be more constructive if you could answer ]'s question. I would support fixing problems over deleting all or most of a section. This article often has two sides to its arguments and deleting all or most of one side and leaving the other side will give us a different sort of NPOV problem. Statements like "fantasies and propaganda of leftists orgs like FAIR" make it sound like you might have an agenda of your own here. --] (]) 19:46, 2 January 2014 (UTC) ::: It would be more constructive if you could answer ]'s question. I would support fixing problems over deleting all or most of a section. This article often has two sides to its arguments and deleting all or most of one side and leaving the other side will give us a different sort of NPOV problem. Statements like "fantasies and propaganda of leftists orgs like FAIR" make it sound like you might have an agenda of your own here. --] (]) 19:46, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

:::: i do have an agenda. It's called the truth, which is scarce a commodity on wikipedia. I've read through the main section several times now, and the best I could offer is a section on "corporate bias", but not conservative bias. You can't conflate the two and pretend they are the same. I thought maybe 25%, but on rereading more comprehensively, nada. As far as a section conservative bias, from what I've read, none of this salvageable. It's almost entirely a corporate bias section, nothing more. ] (]) 20:26, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

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Archive of prior discussions

Archive 1 through 2005 Archive 2 through June 2006

Bias in the entertainment media.

Do you mean "discrimination of conservatives" or "discrimination against conservatives"? Rick Norwood (talk) 12:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

"against" may be better. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 19:04, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Acadēmica Orientālis edit

While by and large Acadēmica Orientālis's edit seems good to me, he has eliminated a couple of referenced quotes that strike me as making important points not mentioned elsewhere in the article, especially the Silverstein quote that was near the beginning of the article, about how "balance" is often inappropriate, as in the case where one side is clearly false and the other side clearly true (for example denial that George Washington owned slaves). Acadēmica Orientālis sees that quote as representing one side of the debate. It seems to me it is equally applicable to both sides.

Also, the following cited material was deleted:

"Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a self-described progressive media watch group, has argued that accusations of liberal media bias are part of a conservative strategy, noting article in the August 20, 1992 Washington Post, in which Republican party chair Rich Bond compared journalists to referees in a sporting match. "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time." A 1998 study from FAIR found that journalists are "mostly centrist in their political orientation"; 30% considered themselves to the left on social issues compared to 9% on the right, while 11% considered themselves to the left on economic issues compared to 19% on the right. The report explained that since journalists considered themselves to be centrists, "perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers." FAIR uses this study to support the claim that media bias is propagated down from the management, and that individual journalists are relatively neutral in their work."
  1. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2552
  2. Hart, Peter (1998-06-01). "Examining the "Liberal Media" Claim". FAIR.org. Retrieved 2007-03-28.

I do think the quote could be shortened, but the quotation by Rich Bond seems important enough to include. Maybe we could put back just the first sentence and the reference.

Finally, I don't know when it happened, but the section about anti-science bias has disappeared. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:48, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

There is a quote section at the end of the article where the quote could be. Starting the article with a long quote is not encyclopedic. Especially by a strong proponent of one side. There is also Wikiquote for quotes. If it should be in the article body, it should not be at the start of the history section, but maybe in a section arguing whether news should be biased or not. It should also be presented as an argued view using the same format as all other views and not presented as some sort of higher wisdom deserving to be especially prominent.
The cited material has not been deleted, just moved to another section.
Anything about anti-science bias I cannot remember editing. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I knew it wasn't you who removed the anti-science bias section. That was just an afterthought as I campared the old version with the new.

But please explain to me how reporting that tells the truth is strongly supportive of one side. Or are you saying that the author of the quote is strongly supportive of one side, rather than the quote itself?

I'll restore the quote, but at the end of the article. And I see that the Rich Bond quote is in the article now. Maybe I just missed it before.

Rick Norwood (talk) 14:39, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Deleted content said to be an anti-semitic and controversial trope from a biased and unreliable source

The following content was deleted by 76.99.54.147 at 13:03 on 10 April 2012‎ with the edit summary, "power of jewish lobby is an anti-semitic and controversial trope...deleted reference to it; walt and mearsheimer biased on this subject, not a reliable source".

A former spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York said that as a result of this lobbying of the media: “Of course, a lot of self-censorship goes on. Journalists, editors, and politicians are going to think twice about criticizing Israel if they know they are going to get thousands of angry calls in a matter of hours. The Jewish lobby is good at orchestrating pressure.”
1. Mearsheimer and Walt (2007), p172

My question is, how do we know that Mearsheimer and Walt are biased and why isn't their book a reliable source? I'm just asking. I don't know anything about Mearsheimer and Walt one way or another. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I have restored this since no concrete reasons have been given for removal. That is a source is seen by some as having a certain POV is not in itself a reason for removal. Misplaced Pages includes significant POVs from all sides. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 22:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Possible Change to "Claims of anti-Israel bias"

I mostly have issue with the sentence in the first paragraph on David & Goliath that reads "The 500-page book is sourced with over 2,000 footnotes and includes statistical studies." How many pages the book consists of or how many footnotes it has seems irrelevant to it's legitimacy. No actual content from the book is described, aside from the fact that the book argues that anti-Israel bias exists. I can't see any reason why this book is distinguished from other books that make the same argument, so would it be fair to scrap the paragraph? In it's entirety, it reads as follows: In 2012, journalist Shraga Simmons released David & Goliath, a study of Western media bias in reporting the Israeli-Arab conflict. The 500-page book is sourced with over 2,000 footnotes and includes statistical studies. It argued that there is a pervasive pro-Palestinian slant in the New York Times, CNN, and much of the British media. ] 76.103.138.118 (talk) 07:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Lack of specific arguments from the book may be a reason to add argument from the book but is not a reason for deleting all mention of it A sample chapter with arguments that could be added is here: . Academica Orientalis (talk) 08:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm just wondering why the book is considered significant enough to mention as opposed to a book like Clinton Versus Israel, or the Deadliest Lie. The writer suggests it's because "the 500-page book is sourced with over 2,000 footnotes and includes statistical studies," and I think contains simplistic faulty reasoning that should be discouraged, such as the larger a book is, the better a book is or the number of footnotes are more important than the content of the book. 76.103.138.118 (talk) 06:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
If there are important sources missing, then please add them. If you are just disagreeing with the footnotes and page number description, then that can be removed. I agree that there is no need to mention it since we do not do so for the other books so I will remove that part. Academica Orientalis (talk) 09:24, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Why were these removed?

and Media coverage of climate change

99.181.154.33 (talk) 02:39, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

See 2012 Colorado wildfires mentioned in article. 108.195.136.157 (talk) 07:07, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

racial bias section outdated

It is stated that "local officials and editors often claim that mentioning the black-on-white nature of the event might inflame passion, but they never have those same qualms when it's white-on-black."

Did no one hear about the Trayvon Martin case? I feel like this section needs to be modernized to reflect that. Dillan.Murray (talk) 19:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The Trayvon Martin case was a "white-on-black" killing. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
This is ignoring the fact that George Zimmerman isn't even white. He's Hispanic and he is a registered Democrat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.76.46.132 (talk) 04:32, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

exactly, so that white-on-black case inflamed passion, did it not? Dillan.Murray (talk) 20:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

So you're saying local officials and editors are wrong. That may be true, but you need a source, otherwise you're just making an editorial comment, which is against Misplaced Pages policy. Rick Norwood (talk) 16:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Being Hispanic does not exclude someone from also being White. FamAD123 (talk) 09:22, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

2012 Election

Where, if anywhere, do the following references best used, and how?

I get that the first cite is commentary, however the other two cites show that Romney received more negative coverage than Obama overall. Would this best be used to build a new section on the 2012 United States Presidential Election, or integrated into that article? I will leave a link in that article consistent with WP:CANVASS#Appropriate notification at that article.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like original research to me. Negative coverage is not the same thing as bias. The third source is even explicit about this: The study of the tone in news coverage is not an examination of media bias. The second source is not a news column ("a fun, insider's view of Washington") and does not mention bias at all. aprock (talk) 21:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The second source summarizes this report produced by the Pew Research Center, the same source of the third source. That being said, only using the Pew Research Center data, it shows that more negative stories were written about Romney, and more positive stories were written about Obama, additionally more coverage of Obama occurred.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The Pew Research Center report doesn't mention bias either. aprock (talk) 23:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

RightCowLeftCoast: Your response makes me wonder if you understand Aprock's comment "Negative coverage is not the same thing as bias." Rick Norwood (talk) 13:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct, negative coverage does not always equal bias. However, in order to show that this distinction holds true, the negative coverage must be warranted (i.e. that Romney was really just an evil capitalist that wanted to give people's husbands cancer and then take their money and put it in Bermuda. What a riot considering he was the most liberal Republican in history back as governor of Massachusetts--the father of Romneycare and supporter of same sex marriage). I think together, the three sources make the case that there is negative coverage and that such negative attention is not warranted. Thus, there is good reason to make a heading for the 2012 election considering there is so much data about a colossal disparity in coverage and why that disparity was motivated by bias.--173.76.46.132 (talk) 03:19, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
It isn't enough for you to think that three sources make a case, you need to find a reliable published source that makes the case. If you do it yourself, you are engaged in original research or an improper synthesis of multiple sources. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 04:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Link Trouble

note # 44. pertaining to a study of media bias by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting does not link to any relevant page- I found nothing relating to said study. Furthermore, a brief search on Yahoo! yielded no pertinent results. In addition, following 'Purported Pro-Israel bias' under External Links takes one to an Error 404 page on the FAIR website.Cheechnig (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done. I fixed the link problems on note # 44 and 'Purported Pro-Israel bias' in the External links section. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:04, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
There were several other problems with links in the External links section. I fixed the ones I could and marked the rest as 'Dead links'. If someone doesn't fix these after a few weeks, we should delete them. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:04, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 Done. I deleted the dead links. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I noticed that the article contains a number of bare URLs. I fixed one, but there are more that need fixing. I suspect that the whole article would benefit from a review of all of its links, but I haven't done that. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:04, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Graph under Conservative Bias

Just wondering...if the idea of wikipedia is to give a generally unbiased telling of the situation..why would we use a Liberal group's graph (which is openly admitted to be subjective ) to prove a conservative bias when the entire stated position of the group is that there is conservative bias? What would we expect them to say? That it doesn't exist? Including the graph is like including a scientific article from a pro-creationist group under a section entitled "criticism of the big bang theory". It just doesn't make sense.

I agree that the graph should go, especially since it does not show what it claims to show.Rick Norwood (talk) 19:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Also agree. Thargor Orlando (talk) 21:38, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Right under the graph the description states, "Studies done by FAIR - a progressive media watchdog organization - argue that the majority of media citations come from conservative and centrist sources." -- But the graph shows that in the last few years more citations actually come from non-conservative sources (look at the bars). 209.147.144.7 (talk) 08:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 Done. I went ahead and deleted the graph. I don't see a problem with citing reports from FAIR in an article such as this where there are different sides to an argument and organizations from both sides are cited. And phrases like "they say" are used to make it clear that the claim is from a particular organization and not something that is necessarily accepted as fact, which seems appropriate. The real problem witih the graph from my point of view is that it doesn't help make the case for either a conservative or a liberal bias, but rather seems to support the idea that the media isn't particularly biased or perhaps is balanced. As such including it in the section on conservative bias is confusing. It would be confusing if it were in the section on a liberal bias too. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

most of the conservative bias section should be removed

Most of it not encyclopedic. It's loaded with opinion and speculation. There is a whole host of random supposed facts but that fact isn't relevant or demonstrated to be relevant to the case of bias existing or not. Instead of actual studies and valid empirical information the reader is greeted by the fantasies and propaganda of leftists orgs like FAIR, and the whole thing reads like a random rambling. The section on liberal bias is nothing like that. It actually has real facts/studies/etc. I'll be removing about 75% of it unless it's cleaned up significantly. Whatzinaname (talk) 12:15, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about which material you think is problematic? I see numerous authors and citations listed here. If anything, some of these claims could be expanded, but I don't see much here that seems "not encyclopedic". Thanks & happy new year, groupuscule (talk) 16:59, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
a better question is what material is not problematic. The whole section is garbage, speculation, or speculative garbage. I don't underastand how it is the liberal bias section is so much better written, factual, and encyclopedic and you get to the conservative bias section and it looks like a drunk trolling wikipedia. Whatzinaname (talk) 18:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
It would be more constructive if you could answer groupuscule's question. I would support fixing problems over deleting all or most of a section. This article often has two sides to its arguments and deleting all or most of one side and leaving the other side will give us a different sort of NPOV problem. Statements like "fantasies and propaganda of leftists orgs like FAIR" make it sound like you might have an agenda of your own here. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 19:46, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
i do have an agenda. It's called the truth, which is scarce a commodity on wikipedia. I've read through the main section several times now, and the best I could offer is a section on "corporate bias", but not conservative bias. You can't conflate the two and pretend they are the same. I thought maybe 25%, but on rereading more comprehensively, nada. As far as a section conservative bias, from what I've read, none of this salvageable. It's almost entirely a corporate bias section, nothing more. Whatzinaname (talk) 20:26, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
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