FAIR examined the 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories about Iraq on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The study began one week before and ended one week after Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation at the U.N., a time that saw particularly intense debate about the idea of a war against Iraq on the national and international level. Results? -At a time when 61 percent of U.S. respondents were telling pollsters that more time was needed for diplomacy and inspections (2/6/03), only 6 percent of U.S. sources on the four networks were skeptics regarding the need for war. -Sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. On the four networks combined, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than 1 percent. Just one of 267 U.S. sources was affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than half a percent. More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official U.S. sources-- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.)-- expressed skepticism or opposition to the war. Even this was couched in vague terms: "Once we get in there how are we going to get out, what’s the loss for American troops are going to be, how long we're going to be stationed there, what’s the cost is going to be," said Kennedy on NBC Nightly News (2/5/03). Similarly, when both U.S. and non-U.S. guests were included, 76 percent (297 of 393) were either current or retired officials. Such a predominance of official sources virtually assures that independent and grassroots perspectives will be underrepresented. Of all official sources, 75 percent (222 of 297) were associated with either the U.S. or with governments that support the Bush administration's position on Iraq; only four out of those 222, or 2 percent, of these sources were skeptics or opponents of war. Twenty of the 297 official sources (7 percent) represented the government of Iraq, while a further 19 (6 percent) represented other governments-- mostly friendly to the U.S.-- who have expressed doubts or opposition to the U.S.'s war effort. (Another 34 sources, representing 11 percent of officials, were current or former U.N. employees. Although members of the U.N. inspection teams made statements that were both critical of Iraq's cooperation and supportive of further inspections, because of their official position of neutrality on the question of war they were not counted as skeptics.) Of all official sources, 14 percent (43 of 297) represented a position skeptical or opposed to the U.S. war policy. (Sources were coded as skeptics/critics if either their statements or their affiliations put them in that category; for example, all French government officials were counted as skeptics, regardless of the content of their quote.) The remaining 96 sources-- those without a current or former government connection-- had slightly more balanced views; 26 percent of these non-official sources took a skeptical or critical position on the war. Yet, at a time when 61 percent of respondents in a CBS poll (2/5-6/03) were saying that they felt the U.S. should "wait and give the United Nations and weapons inspectors more time," only sixteen of the 68 U.S. guests (24 percent) who were not officials represented such views. Half of the non-official U.S. skeptics were "persons in the street"; five of them were not even identified by name. Only one U.S. source, Catherine Thomason of Physicians for Social Responsibility, represented an anti-war organization. Of all 393 sources, only three (less than 1 percent) were identified with organized protests or anti-war groups. Overall, 68 sources, or 17 percent of the total on-camera sources, represented skeptical or critical positions on the U.S.'s war policy-- ranging from Baghdad officials to people who had concerns about the timing of the Bush administration's war plans. The percentage of skeptical sources ranged from 21 percent at PBS (22 of 106) to 14 percent at NBC (18 of 125). ABC (16 of 92) and CBS (12 of 70) each had 17 percent skeptics. Is there a conservative media bias? Only when we need the media to BE a media the most.
morality or immorality aside superdave - the Dems should worry about it because they are not winning any of those states .... unless of course you just don't care about those "red" southern states. And if the Dems view remains that way - they will remain out of contention for political power.
Two things superdave -- Your first point about conservative bias is so out of touch with where many voters are - that you are living in fantasy land. Big Soccer fantasy land. You see many people just don't agree with you. Second - - your point about the 911 commission simply illustrates your view that the American electorate is stupid because you think they are ill informed from your point of view. That elitist view is why many voters in this country treat the "liberal elite" with disdain. You see you should not simply assume that only voters that agree with you on 911 and Iraq and terrorism are "enlightened". Exit polling of "moral issues" in the election really boils down to lack of faith in John Kerry and democrats right now - all other debates aside. Geez - at least Carville has woken up to the fact that the Dems have to seriously remake their message and image. If you insist on denying that reality perhaps you should resign yourself to continued election defeats.
so how do you explain Dan Rather and 60 Minutes and the NY Times incident and those sorts of occurrences? simple "anomalies" in "balanced" reporting?
I didn't mean the Dems should not care about Georgians as people. Of course they should. We should be uniters and not dividers. But we shouldn't care about them as part of a winning coalition, any more than the GOPs should care about New York as part of a winning coalition.
Right, they don't. But they never cite any evidence either, do they? So you're saying it's wrong to look at the 30something percent of voters who are ignorant about a key issue like Iraq and think, they're ignorant about a key issue, and that's a problem?!?!?! If 36% of voters thought that George Bush had publicly declared himself a Satanist, and almost all of them voted for Kerry, and Bush won 70% of the rest of the voters, but nonetheless lost the election, would you be cool with that? So valuing the truth is an elitist view. That's about as pomo as you can get. You righties are so...decadent. semi Are people who think 2+2=5 as good at math as people who think 2+2=4? I'm not talking about interpretations or viewpoints or anything. I'm talking about objective fact. If you don't like it, take it up with the 9/11 commission. 22%. Check out my "4 kinds of red states" thread and you'll see that I agree with Carville. As a side note...this is why we on the left despair. Righties voted for Bush because he's in their tribe. If you point out various Things That Are True, they say that's evidence of bias. Way, way too many righties for comfort are, literally, irrational. That's why moving abroad is not a crazy option. I'm hopeful that this election is the high tide of irrational tribalism, but if it gets worse, I'm gone. Because some of the values of your tribe strike too close to home for me to risk staying here.
1. What NYT incident? 2. Look up the word "anecdote." Bottom line is that CBS was 2nd to Fox in misinforming its viewers on 3 objective facts regarding Bush's foreign policy.
Because Georgia went from having 13 electoral votes in 2000 to having 15 electoral votes in 2004, thanks to the 2000 Census. Would you care to guess whether or not it's going to have more electoral votes after the 2010 Census? Had George W. Bush not flipped a single state in 2004 and merely won all the states that he won in 2000, he would've won the electoral votes by a greater margin than he did in 2000. The Republicans aren't as worried about flipping blue states because they don't have to worry about it. What you steadfastly fail to acknowledge is that the red states are growing and are increasing their electoral votes. The blue states are losing electoral votes. THAT is why we need to flip red states.
??? Yeah, we need to flip red states. Duh!! But the red states we need to be worrying about are Iowa, Colorado, and Ohio, not Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and Idaho.
You explain FAIR's data first. Then I'll explain Dan Rather (with a story about what he says outside the country, and what he says inside it) and Judith Miller. Miller IS the "NY Times incident" you're referring to, right?
Flipping Florida would be far more productive on a long-term basis than flipping Ohio and Iowa. After all, Florida has added six electoral votes in the last 20 years, while Ohio and Iowa have lost four. And yet, we went from basically being tied in 2000 in Florida to losing by almost 400,000 votes in 2004.
Hey, it's bad enough that I gotta put up with my Republican wife's Terrell Owens-like showboating for the next four years. If I gotta put up with it for another eight or even 12 years, I'll start thinking that we should've never given women the right to vote. So I'd rather help my fellow Democrats help me get the upper hand.
Don't most women end up marrying the guys that they do as some sort of "outreach project" or "charity"?
My wife was extremely upfront about this, actually. "You'll learn" is almost a mantra around our house.
1. George Pataki is governor of New York. 2. The Senate is now 55-44-1. Is your plan for a winning coalition to lose the country 2 votes at a time?
Did Senator Kerry pick up most of the votes from people who supported Nader in 2000? If so, then that makes his losing margin even more remarkable.
Was I supposed to name every single Red state and put it into "target" and "non-target?" Seriously, read my "4 kind of red states" thread. Or if you don't want to click it, let me know, and I'll just cut and paste the first post over here.
And governors don't decide how their state's EVs go, so I'm not sure of the relevance here. The Senate is obviously a concern. I think a Democratic strategy would be to make Chaffee, Snowe, people like that, make them answer to their states for people like the new guy from Oklahoma. That handful of northeastern Republicans are really Democrats in 2004 terms, and they should either go the Jeffords route, or the Dems need to be a-holes and make their states realize that when they vote for Chaffee, they're voting for Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott to have power. The South has pretty much already lost all of its Dems who represent GOP strongholds, and are ideologically more at home in the GOP. We need to do the same thing with the areas where GOPs represent blue states. The Dems also would be well advised to make gains in the Southwest. But really, what the Dems need to do is figure out a way to grind out victories in the close ones. Our record in races decided by <5% is horrible the last two cycles. I forget the exact numbers, but the GOPs are winning like 3/4 of those races.
Well, it does show that the state on the whole can go to the GOP, in spite of the NYC Dem stronghold. Most people from NY could admit to a divide in the state. If you really don't see how a governor can influence or demonstrate how a state can or could vote, then why did you all blame Jeb for "helping" his brother get elected?
All these threads are the same. Your 4 state thread was nothing near as groundbreaking as you would want to believe. Again, groundbreaking! Umm, we lost in these areas, with a few bright spots, so we need to do better! Hey coach, we are down by 5 goals at the half! What should we do? I am the coach and I say...score more goals! D'oh! [slaps forehead] Why didn't I think of that? It all comes down to the Dem mantra... F the South! Sorry world, 51% of the American voters are actually stupid! This is why I will miss THK. At least she was willing to tell the world how the Dems think. Either you're with us or you're against intellect.
We've got a Democratic governor, and have since 1992. How many times has NC gone Dem since then? In many states, national (esp. presidential) politics are separate from local politics. Touche'.