From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with
March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often
tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing —
foreign affairs,
social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.”
(Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and
may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues,
including (
eventually) America’s
entry to WWII. Video samples are available at
Time.com, the
March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online,
(free registration required) at
HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 22, 2011 -
8 comments
"The symbiotic relationship between the press and the power elite worked for nearly a century. It worked as long as our power elite, no matter how ruthless or insensitive, was competent. But once our power elite became incompetent and morally bankrupt, the press, along with the power elite, lost its final vestige of credibility."
"The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News" by Chris Hedges.
posted by AugieAugustus
on Feb 2, 2010 -
51 comments
Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States, according to a
new poll [.pdf] of 1,151 Americans conducted by
Public Policy Polling (a polling firm with a mostly Democratic and progressive
list of clients), the most trusted news network among Americans is FOX News, which was trusted by 49% of respondents (beating out CNN, MS-NBC, CBS, NBC, and ABC (though PBS was not included in the survey)).
The pollsters conclude:
“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most
neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. “But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more
toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”
posted by washburn
on Jan 26, 2010 -
126 comments
The First Freedom Project --new from the Dept of Justice,
announced at the Southern Baptist Convention along with a call for their help---specifically and only to protect the religious from discrimination against them. Many are not impressed:
The administration has often ignored the importance of the no establishment principle by supporting attempts of governments to endorse a religious message, using tax dollars to fund pervasively religious organizations, allowing religious discrimination in hiring for federally funded projects, ... Legal strategies and actions from groups like the
Alliance Defense Fund and
ACLJ are now official DOJ policy, it appears.
...In his statement, Gonzales mentioned several cases litigated by ADF and its allies ...
posted by amberglow
on Feb 23, 2007 -
56 comments
"If anything, a civil rights background is considered a liability." Meet the politically-appointed career staffers of the Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division:
... the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians. ... Thorough Boston Globe article on how the administration disbanded the hiring committee in 2002 to appoint lawyers with a very different vision of what civil rights are, and the ensuring and ongoing results.
posted by amberglow
on Jul 23, 2006 -
24 comments
Why do we always seem to expect the worst from some people? By now, it's common knowledge that media reports of widespread looting, violence and sexual assault in the wake of Katrina's strike on New Orleans were grossly exaggerated, but why? Some might attribute such distortions to
unconscious bias, offering up some hope of alleviating racial tension by bringing unexamined racial biases to light; still others see the problem of racial tension as an intractable one, leading inevitably to an all-out clash of cultures--even finding "evidence" of the inevitably of such a conflict in the
unlikeliest of places. Still
others seem especially eager to bring all these tensions to a head. What's really going on these days? Is racial tension ultimately a political problem or, as some suggest, a
psychological one?
posted by all-seeing eye dog
on Oct 21, 2005 -
35 comments
The Newsweek-Fahrenheit wars - Michael Isikoff's "seven errors, distortions and selective omissions of crucial information" detailed by Craig Unger, "
House of Bush, House of Saud" author (read excerpts of his book
at Salon.com, for members or by a "day pass") Isikoff has heavily cited Unger's book but, it seems, not bothered to read Unger's generously provided
source files. "Liberal" PBS is not excluded, as credulous (or ignorant) "On the Media" host Bob Garfield's July 2 interview with Isikoff
demonstrates. What shall we call such
pervasive, ongoing and seemingly willful patterns of inaccuracy, distortion, and selective omission?
posted by troutfishing
on Jul 7, 2004 -
34 comments
Reading With the Enemy - "Inspired by
Supersize Me: What if you spent one month reading, listening to, and watching only right-wing media. No New York Times, no NPR, no network news, no CNN, no lefty blogs, no liberal novels. Nothing left-wing or centrist, and nothing ‘objective.’ Nothing that makes up the world you currently inhabit."
posted by Space Coyote
on May 12, 2004 -
58 comments
Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Metafilter has managed to deceive those limits, and sensationalize beyond that pale. What makes this quote funny? It's automatically generated by
this site, which can add your name or website to any accusation of liberal bias you'd ever want. This will save so many people so much time.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Oct 14, 2002 -
37 comments
The Washington Post follows an agenda. There truly exists a bias in the press and here's an example. Metatalk had a thread on there being so many NYT links, perhaps this helps explain why. Many many more examples of the Post's biases can be found at SpinSanity and other such sites but this one comes from "next door" in Baltimore.
!Only MetaFilter is trustworthy!( P.S. Looking for an example of "liberal bias?" This isn't it.)
posted by nofundy
on Aug 19, 2002 -
28 comments
