Media Bias [Merged]

[Kirkhill]

I think the phrase for which M. Trudeau and I are looking is "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" ~ welcome to the 1990s (the Chrétien era), as Pierre Trudeau might have said.

What IS Scott Reid doing with himself these days?

Oh,Wait! He is Co-anchor at Globe Media's CTV News National Affairs programme.

 

[Kirkhill]

A note to the moderators:

The title of this thread has been sticking in my craw for a while.  The original thread was aimed at the CBC, but the trend had become a more generic drift towards media bias in general.  In the interests of accuracy, fairness and dodging accusations of slander (a predilection already discovered among some journalists) I propose this thread be retitled to Media Bias.

Just a thought.

Cheers.

 

[Edward Campbell]

A note to the moderators:

The title of this thread has been sticking in my craw for a while.  The original thread was aimed at the CBC, but the trend had become a more generic drift towards media bias in general.  In the interests of accuracy, fairness and dodging accusations of slander (a predilection already discovered among some journalists) I propose this thread be retitled to Media Bias Follies ~ because it's not just bias we are discussing.

Just a thought.

Cheers.

 

[Kirkhill]

Second the proposed amendment.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Second the proposed amendment.

Since it's not JUST CBC being assessed, this can be done.

Milnet.ca Staff

 

[a_majoor]

Notice the conspicuous silence from the opposition parties on Syria? Where is the media these days?

http://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/media-party-refuse-to-ask-trudeau-and-mulcair-to-comment-on-syria-bombing/

Media Party refuse to ask Trudeau and Mulcair to comment on Syria bombing
September 5, 2013 — BC Blue

A week later and the Media Party apparently still can’t find either the Liberal or NDP leader to get them on the record supporting or condemning US president Barack Obama on his plan to bomb Syria.

I guess no Press Gallery member follows Trudeau on Twitter as that would let them know he’s at a fellow Liberal MP’s BBQ today:

 

[OldSolduer]

Notice the conspicuous silence from the opposition parties on Syria? Where is the media these days?

http://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/media-party-refuse-to-ask-trudeau-and-mulcair-to-comment-on-syria-bombing/

I noticed that Mr Trudeau and Mr Mulcair are conspicuous by their absence.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I noticed that Mr Trudeau and Mr Mulcair are conspicuous by their absence.

Trudeau, a bit....

• "Trudeau urges Parliament recall to debate Syria"
• "Canada should accept more Syrian refugees: Justin Trudeau"

Mulcair?  Not a single headline mention - not quite :crickets:, but close enough

Notice the conspicuous silence from the opposition parties on Syria? Where is the media these days?

Chasing the decision makers mostly - for now, anyway.

 

[pbi]

The problem with terms like Mainstream Media is that it has come to mean any media that doesn't agree with you. 

Good observation. As I have commented elsewhere, all parties (Right or Left), groups, special interests, etc, etc. squeal endlessly that they are victims of a media that is controlled by their enemies. This suggests to me that the media are probably doing their job, more or less. It's true that the media is powerful and pervasive, and that it isn't always responsible. It's also true that various media outlets pander to various interests (some more than others).

But that said, if it were not for the much maligned media, who, exactly, would hold the government accountable for anything? Who would whistle blowers turn to? Who would ask the rude questions? Who would dig into the nasty embarrassing things that all (and I mean ALL) Canadian governing parties eventually engage in?

The government itself? No.

The Opposition: they can try, but if they are facing a steamroller majority government, especially one that doesn't really believe in sharing information, there's only so much they can do. And, anyway, without the media the efforts of the Opposition would go largely unnoticed. After all, how many Canadians actually read Hansard, or watch CPAC?

Without a free media, that can do or say pretty much what it wants (subject to reasonable libel laws), I don't see much hope for transparency.

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting catch by a blogger: your tax dollars at work with the CBC:

http://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/questions-to-cbcs-peter-mansbridge-about-his-role-in-parks-canada-scandal/

Questions to CBC’s Peter Mansbridge about his role in Parks Canada scandal
September 21, 2013 — BC Blue

Being CBC’s top journalist as anchor of The National, it’s imperative for Peter Mansbridge to divulge what he knew about the deal (see here) between Parks Canada and the CBC to run the story on the Franklin Exhibition:

1) Were you aware Parks Canada paid CBC $68,000 for you to cover the Franklin Exhibition story?

2) Were you aware Parks Canada paid $20,000 to fly you in to cover the Franklin Exhibition story?

3) Were you aware Parks Canada paid CBC $10,000 to fly in a crew to cover the Franklin Exhibition story?

4) Do you know how much it cost taxpayers for Parks Canada to arrange a research ship for you to use?

5) Do you know how much it cost taxpayers for Parks Canada to arrange a Coast Guard ice-breaker for you to use?

I’ve sent these to Mansbridge via Twitter and although he has responded to select questions in the past, I’m not going to hold my breath on these ones.

With some other costs then at least $100,000 from the Parks Canada budget for all this (if the various ships were already there for training or operations, then those costs are already "sunk" and should not count). Since Parks Canada is a government department, why do they need to pay anything at all to the CBC for coverage (indeed, news organizations have budgets to pay for reporters and crews to go to stories, or pay stringers to send stories from areas where there are no on site crews)?

Like the blogger, I expect to hear crickets.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Welcome to the 21st century where even government departments doing legitimate research feel a compulsion to advertise some things (and bury others) and where the media expects to be pampered and even to be bought.

There was nothing wrong with looking for the Franklin expedition ... not even when many other programmes are being gutted to save money. And the search should have been a good news story for someone, and CBC is crying poor so I expect one Ottawa hand washed another one.

I doubt that similar deals were offered to CTV, Global or Sun News.

 

[a_majoor]

All the Media outlets, from SUN to the CBC, are going to have to figure out how to crack this problem or die. CTV, being owned by a "pipe" (Bell) and any news or content providers who hook up with other "pipe" owners like Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco etc. will survive, but only as a subsidiary rather than an indipendent entity in their own right.

One other prediction. With the demise of "reader" services like RSS and the growth of services like Twitter being used to announce "news" to readers, the role of the "editor" may become much more important. If a editor or editorial service (or algorithm) can become a credible and trusted source of information (via tweets or whatever replaces that), then they will effectively become gateways for information services.

Amazon may be one model (it is a commercial service today, but who is to say they might not post "news articles of the day" or something like that for people who browse the site, and quite possibly tied to their noted preferences from previous visits or current browsing), Google with a vastly amplified tracking algorithm that sends hits based on your previous reading preferences, or Instapundit, where Glenn Reynolds curates links to news and events based on his interests. Specialized "magazines" may exist as well. NextBigFuture curates links to science and technology based news and events, and might be considered a "science" magazine like Discover or Popular Science.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-30/we-are-googling-the-new-york-times-to-death.html

We Are Googling the New York Times to Death
By Megan McArdle Sep 30, 2013 2:20 PM ET

This morning brought Eleanor Clift’s reminiscence about 50 years at Newsweek to my Twitter feed. Those words alone seem to tell the story: Newsweek was a phenomenally successful product designed for a world that no longer exists. It was an amazing world for journalists, to hear the great Clift describe it. But it couldn’t survive the new financial realities.
In the Washington Post last week, my friend Tim Lee argued that we shouldn’t mourn the old world; we should celebrate a vibrantly competitive market. Newspapers made so much money in the late 20th century, he points out, because they effectively had a monopoly on most local markets (ironically, because competition for television and radio meant that most markets could support only one newspaper). That allowed them to charge a lot for ads and spend a lot on reporters. Those days are over, he says, precisely because there are now so many ways to get news:

Imagine a world where there was only one news organization in the world. Obviously, this news organization would be extremely profitable. Not only would it get 100 percent of the advertising revenue, but its monopoly status would let it demand a high price per advertising impression.

But as more news organizations entered the market, the former monopolist's revenues would decline for two reasons. Most obviously, it would have fewer eyeballs to sell to advertisers, as some readers shifted to competing news outlets. Even worse, the competition among advertisers would push down advertising rates.

That double whammy means that the profitability of the news business is highly sensitive to how competitive it is. Late-20th-century newspapers were extremely profitable because they had a lot of readers and the ability to charge a lot for each impression. Today, it's hard to make a profit in Internet news because there are so many news organizations competing for advertising dollars, reducing each publication's traffic share and pushing down the amount outlets can charge for each impression.

I think Tim is right about one thing: The last 10 years have been an extremely exciting time to be a digital journalist, because we can do so much more. Policy journalism is better than ever, because reporters can easily access data and research that would have been difficult and time-consuming to track down even in the 1990s. Digital has also allowed us to develop narrow and deep niches, instead of pitching our writing to the proverbial old lady in Dubuque. Economics and finance blogs assume a level of background comfort with technical terms and concepts that would have been impossible in the days of print for anyone except trade publications -- something I am vividly reminded of every time I write a magazine feature.
(“No one wants to read this,” said the editor who excised 1,000 words on the intricacies of calculating confidence intervals for small samples. I protested. He responded with a raised eyebrow, which brought me to my senses. But I bet if I’d put it on the Web, I would have gotten at least 50 comments, proving that some people -- however few and brave -- do want to read that sort of thing.)

And Tim is right that this is all to the good, however much print journalists dislike the haste of digital journalism. But he is wrong to say that this flowering of competition is the reason that so many news media outlets are in trouble. Or rather, he’s right about the competition, but wrong about the source. The competition does not come from other news producers; it comes from other people selling ads. And most of those companies are not in the business of producing news.

The accompanying is a nice chart of ad spending in 2011, lifted from this presentation by Microsoft Advertising.

Source: Microsoft Advertising
Over the next few years, they expect newspaper ad spending to decline by 7.1 percent and spending on magazine ads to decline by 8.1 percent, while digital rises 27 percent. Yet who will be getting those dollars?

According to eMarketer.com, the answer is “big technology companies.” Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Facebook Inc., AOL Inc. and Microsoft Inc. took in almost two-thirds of U.S. digital ad spending in 2012. And the New York Post reports that Google and Facebook account for basically all of the growth in digital ad revenue; without them, according to an analyst at Pivotal Research, web ad revenue grew just 1 percent last year, even slower than our slow economy.

The problem for newspapers and magazines and websites is not that other people are in the news business. The problem is that in the days of print, a newspaper or a magazine controlled a valuable distribution channel -- its printing presses and delivery vans. People would pay a lot of money to use that distribution channel to spread news about their products and services. They owned “the pipes,” as we used to call them, back in my brief summer internship as a technology investment banker. But now the cable company owns the pipes. All the media companies have is the news. And that was never a very good business to be in -- which is why it was getting subsidized by advertising copy about Chevrolets and GE stoves.
In some sense, Facebook and Google are “pipes” -- at least as long as they’re dominant, they can sell a lot of ads, because they are the mechanism by which we access information. And data services such as those provided by Bloomberg LP and Thomson Reuters Corp. are pipes, because they control proprietary software. But Bloomberg and Reuters are in a somewhat unusual position: They make money because they sell people information that they can use to make money. That information has a short half-life; you can copyright a story, but you cannot copyright facts, so once information has appeared on a market data service, it propagates pretty quickly. Given the speed at which the markets move today, that really doesn’t matter for market data services. By the time you have rewritten their story and posted it online, the financial value of that information has already fallen to zero.
But that’s not the business that newspapers or magazines were in -- at least, not since the 1960s. They were in the business of giving ordinary people news. That worked as long as they could also sell those eyeballs to advertisers. That’s getting harder and harder, because the Washington Post is no longer a pipe. Newsweek is no longer a pipe. They produce the stuff that travels down the pipes. And because the people who actually control the pipes are not willing to pay them for the content, that makes it pretty hard to monetize.

And it’s getting harder all the time. Ten years ago, there was a plausible story where great news media brands transferred their advertising to the web and still got paid almost as much. That story is no longer believable, partly because of the ad inventory glut that Tim mentions, but mostly because people no longer access stories the way we thought they would. Instead of turning print Washington Post readers into digital Washington Post readers, we’ve turned them into consumers of stories that they find via Google and Facebook and Twitter. Saturday night, I was at an event with a bunch of bloggers and Web journalists. We started talking about the demise of Google Reader, and I turned out to be one of the few people who still uses an RSS reader every day. They figure they’ll get what they need off Twitter and Facebook. I defended the usefulness of RSS, but it felt a bit like the old doctor in the period movie arguing that horseless carriages will never catch on.

So now two layers of pipes are between us and our readers. Each layer takes away some of our ability to get revenue. We can’t get readers to pay us for the product, and we lose leverage with advertisers. So even as more people than ever are reading stories from the New York Times, less revenue exists to support reporting those stories. Fitful attempts to raise a paywall have stanched some of the bleeding, but they don’t alter the underlying terrible economics.

Question: Why does nytimes.com allow me to read stories for free if I come in via Google?
Answer: Because search is too important a component of their traffic to cut off.
And there you have the underlying paradox of the news business: Google is selling ads against content that the New York Times provides to it for free.

Those ad sales hurt the New York Times's ad sales. But the Times cannot afford to cut off Google, because then it will lose the pitiful amount of ad revenue it collects from all the eyeballs that Google sends them. It’s like the mordant old economist’s joke: “We’re losing money on every unit -- but we’ll make it up in volume!”

If the problem was competition from other news providers, it would be self-correcting (as Tim notes): Eventually, the market would shake out, and the winners would have enough money to live on. Maybe the market wouldn’t be ideal -- maybe it wouldn’t be able to support the kind of deep, careful reporting that wins prizes, or have reporters spending months sitting around waiting for the president to do something.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is competition from people who are not in the news business. Which at least raises the possibility that they will compete us right out of existence.

 

[The Bread Guy]

To be fair, thought it was worthwhile sharing this confession:

A month ago I was pulled into an office by one of The Toronto Star’s city editors.

Two printouts were laid out on the desk in front of me. Two printouts of two different, yet uncannily similar, stories about rejected vanity licence plates in Ontario. A total of six paragraphs were similar in form and substance.

The first was written by Star journalist Daniel Dale in 2010; the second by myself in August 2013.

I was asked whether I had knowingly plagiarized from Dale’s article.

Plagiarism.

It’s a dirty word, imbued with negative connotation, and a label that’s difficult to shake off.

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.

As I clicked on the ‘publish’ button back in August, I knew what I was doing wasn’t right, wasn’t up to my usual journalistic standards.

I’d never plagiarized before in my life.

And so with this confession came relief.

Yes, I felt pressured to clean up, analyze and convert a data set I’d just received into an online database to accompany the story.

Yes, I was feeling burned out after spending a month of evenings and weekends working on code that would scrape the city’s lobbyist registry

But frankly, I can’t make excuses for the inexcusable. No matter how much pressure there is in a newsroom, no matter how tired you may be, there’s no justifying plagiarism.

In one moment I committed professional harikiri and – more importantly – I let down my editors, my Star colleague Dale and the Star readers.

In one moment, I laid ruin to a summer of innovative and enterprise reporting – journalism that was driven by a mixture of new-school data journalism and old-school dirt-digging.

Stories that – through custom-written code and interactive graphics, and Freedom of Information requests – among other issues revealed the prevalence of discarded needles on Toronto’s streets, and the extent to which city councillors are lobbied by big corporations.

And so last week Kathy English, the Star’s Public Editor, published a note in the newspaper and on the online version of the article – a standard process adopted by the paper to promote transparency with its readers.

An investigation was conducted into all the articles I’d written for the Star to ensure this was a one-off – it was.

And today English published a column about my lapse in judgement.

My initial reaction was mixed.

Anger at the attention drawn to my indiscretion.

Shame at this public humiliation. I felt like burying my head in the hand, and I thought about giving up a career I’d only just begun, a career I love so much.

Someone at the Star – not the Public Editor – told me this week that what I did was stupid, and has caused a gash in my CV that will take a long time to heal.

And they’re right.

But instead of giving up, I’ve decided to take the harder path, to take this knock fully on the chin, hold up my hand, admit my mistake, and to slowly try to regain people’s trust and to become a better journalist.

Confession can bring relief, and can set the foundations for a new beginning.

So let the rebuilding begin with this confession: I plagiarized.

 

[vonGarvin]

Confession can bring relief, and can set the foundations for a new beginning.

So let the rebuilding begin with this confession: I plagiarized.

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

 

[Journeyman]

I let down my editors, my Star colleague Dale and the Star readers.

Wow.....to let down a Toronto Star reader.  I suppose the reality is, keeping to such high standards of literary excellence is all but impossible. 

Still....the shame.      :boring:

 

[a_majoor]

Despite his employer, I'll give the author credit for admiting to his mistake and taking the punishment standing up.

Not too many of his fellow journalists would do so.

 

[a_majoor]

And yet we will hear protests there there is no "double standard" or "media bias" for or against political parties and personalities...

http://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/how-many-liberals-need-to-go-to-jail-before-media-party-notice/

How many Liberals need to go to jail before Media Party notice?
October 28, 2013 — BC Blue

Currently, the Media Party is going ape over PM Stephen Harper now saying he dismissed his chief of staff Nigel Wright over the Mike Duffy cheque but of course almost completely silent with Liberal Joe Fontana going to court today on fraud charges.

To compare, look at this Google search for news stories on “Harper dismissed” here vs this one on “Joe Fontana fraud” here.  You’ll notice the word “Liberal” missing from the tiny CTV story – funny that huh?

Also: On this same theme, check out another embarrassing column from National Post’s Michael Den Tandt where Liberals Mac Harb and Raymond Lavigne don’t exist (see here)

The second article referenced. Indeed, there is no mention of any Liberals who may have been implicated in anything unsavoury:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/10/27/michael-den-tadnt-mulcair-is-doing-the-work-in-the-senate-scandal-but-trudeau-will-reap-the-rewards/

Michael Den Tandt: Mulcair is doing the work in the Senate scandal, but Trudeau will reap the rewards

Michael Den Tandt | 27/10/13 | Last Updated: 27/10/13 5:01 PM ET
More from Michael Den Tandt | @mdentandt

As Canadians gape in dismay or disgust at the spectacle in Ottawa or, more likely, tune out, it’s worth asking this question: Who wins? Does anyone? Broadly, the answer is no. We all lose. But politically, there is a winner. Justin Trudeau probably takes this round, though he barely appeared to set foot in the ring, simply because of what he represents, and doesn’t, and where he was, and wasn’t, when Senator Mike Duffy’s latest cluster bomb went off.

To give credit where due: NDP leader Tom Mulcair has lived up to his nickname, “The Grizzly,” conferred on him during his former political life in Quebec City. Mulcair was good last spring, when the Senate mess first erupted. In recent days he’s been great. He laughs, even as he cuts the Conservatives’ shifting storylines to ribbons. This is a rhetorician at the top of his game — better than Prime Minister Stephen Harper, better than Trudeau, and possibly better than Bob Rae, who was among the best in modern times.

Likewise, Mulcair has avoided the leg-hold traps set for him thus far with respect to free trade with Europe. Tory talking points portraying the NDP as “against” CETA and thus “against trade,” are, simply, lies. There are tonal differences between the NDP stance and the Liberal one, for example — Unlike Trudeau, Mulcair did not pop figurative champagne corks or congratulate the government — but not material ones. Openness to CETA, of course, helps the New Democrats shore up their credentials as economically competent.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Couldn't resist sharing the attached - interesting exercise when reading news stories  ;D

 

[Remius]

The CBC's coverage of JT's latest slip up also included a "but look at what Harper said about China"... :  I don't always think there is media bias but this was particularly crass.

 

[pbi]

The CBC's coverage of JT's latest slip up also included a "but look at what Harper said about China"... :  I don't always think there is media bias but this was particularly crass.

I was quite surprised when I watched Rex Murphy's monologue on Thurs 14 Nov: he launched into quite an anti JT rant, at one point drawing not very subtle connections between JT and both Mao and Hitler (including background graphics showing those two). He left no doubt as to his opinion of JT.