bmags

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 03:12 AM) So you really think the media isn't pro-Obama? Oh well. I would laugh, but i believe you are studying journalism and if you really think Obama has been treated worse than McCain by the MSM media it's more tragic than funny. The media is made up of a select few people whom consider themselves more informed and elite as compared to the general public. People don't trust the news like they did in the past, mainly because they know the are being preached to half of the time; as compared to watching a news broadcast. One of my favorite things about the internet is how it gives much more people a voice. I honestly don't understand where you draw your conclusions. The media covers Obama more. Coverage is huge. Name recognition is gigantic. So yes, Obama has an rather large edge in media. However, McCain whining this soon about media coverage should worry him. Unlike Clinton, he has not had critical coverage of his campaign for months in addition to high coverage of Obama, sans Gramm saga. This tactic will likely bring critical coverage on Obama again. BUT, if the reaction is to raise coverage on McCain, critical coverage will also increase, and that could bury him. McCain is a unique candidate. His campaign is fumed off of 8 years of high praise from the media outlets giving him top name recognition as a free thinker in his own party. This reputation has stuck with him. And because of the pre-established reputation, the lack of coverage hasn't hurt him, IMO, it has helped. In the past few weeks, McCain has essentially adopted every policy of Obama's concerning foreign policy with hardly a blink from anyone. Obama was considered waffling on his own policy for mentioning his tactics are flexible. The mainstream media is trying to balance out the heavy Obama coverage by giving credence to every McCain campaign accusation*. I'm not sure if changing this is in his best interest. He's demonstrated the ability to control the narrative in the media with the exception of the past week. He shouldn't panic just because of his trip oversees. What's happened this past week is absurdly positive for OBama, instead of freaking out he should just let the ebbs and flows of the election follow the course and thanks his lucky stars this happened in July and not September. *The media seemed acutely aware of their own overboard coverage of Obama's overseas trip, so they counteracted this with talk shows talking about how the media (in third person) was going overboard in covering this. And the overall theme was that this trip is going to hurt Obama, because with so much attention, any gaffe will clearly get covered, and how Americans don't want to see an American popular over in Europe. Now you could see this as lowering expectations, and to Obama's favor, but with every Obama coverage there was this need to clarify how poor a decision this trip was, how much of a show it was and how it will backfire. Coincidentally, these were the same points coming out of McCain's campaign. The media is made up of thousands of individuals from all different backgrounds and states, specializing in topics from local agriculture and community events, to world issues and specific tribes in Afghanistan. Members of the media have the ability to cover topics so thoroughly (i.e. public schools, jails) that they can end up being experts in themselves, and as two reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer became, are called upon for governmental hearings just for their information. As for why people don't trust the media. One peculiar aspect is the publics distinction of what media is. When asked if they trust their local media outlet, even if it's a large paper ala the Tribune, largely it's yes. If they are asked if they trust the media, the answer is largely no. Reasons for this? I've read studies that have attributed this to a scandal happy press riding the wave of watergate, that in their pressing to find gov't scandals, became lapdogs for the minority parties. One problem, journalists too willing to use unidentified sources, publishing libel and hiding behind a source with unfortunate motives. Another reason, the extremely popular campaign of the right to vilify the media as liberal. Not only that, their ability to detach themselves from government themselves. People should not trust the government, nor the media, both controls of the leftist groups. This worked effectively in garnering support for a Republican takeover 20 years in the making with the likes of Goldwater in the seventies. In addition, high crime coverage marginalized large groups of people to turn to alternative sources of news, who, while being members of the media, claim not to be members of the media. So, do people trust the media? Depends on what the media is. If it's the media they like, they are not the media. If it's the media, they don't like the media. Once again, if you are to look for a critic of media, journalists are the biggest critics you'll find. BUt these accusations are large generalizations brought on by demagogues and distributed through emails. I'll rip apart any article you bring me and I may very well find a liberal bias in it. And there's no denying that the majority of journalists are liberal. BUt you'd be surprised when you are covering something how unpolitical most reality is. As much as a politician can claim a boy with no leg in his campaign. To interview said boy and the problem he faces, will have nothing to do with democrat and republican. Media will continue to be specialized to everyone and the good and the bad will come of it. People will be able to ignore what we don't want or care about. And I wonder, with the same movement in education, how our democracy will fair.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 12:02 AM) Not true for all. far more true than you realize. And I think the #1 reason fox wins is format. They pumped their lineup with vitalic, dynamic personalities, thin on news. I don't need another long post to say what's dangerous about fox news has nothing to do with ideology, but of shallow content. They have only like 3 hours of the day devoted to a news hour.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 22, 2008 -> 11:53 PM) Unbiased news may sell, but the MSM isn't doing it right now so it won't reach the masses. The problem the left wing press is facing, with losing viewers or readers, is that there is too much competition for pro-Democrat news. Look at FOX, they don't even have a good presentation (CNN nad MSNBC are better in this category) but they are the only pro-GOP news on television; they destroy in the ratings. I disagree with your opening statement here; the news has not always been what you are calling 'progressive'. The American news media has long history of being for freedoms, against authoritarianism, for self determination, living the American dream, and individualism; all of which many 'progressives' view as dangerous. The news can cover issues without bias, but stories that the Times covers directly coincides with whatever the Democrat party is currently pushing. Proof? Well, there is no point here arguing, as the paper is blatantly liberal. The proof is in each days paper and no matter what they do many will never see the paper that supports their political party as biased. Oh and the Iraq war piece? Yea, that was back when the majority of Dems supported the Iraq war, when the Dems turned so did the NYT. Go figure. The dumbing down of news is not something only on cable. Most of the MSM stories are really dumb. Obama gets glowing coverage by the MSM, broadcasts are basically a Obama campaign ad. This is a big advantage for him, and he knows it. then go head, read the nytimes everyday and send me what articles you deem to be liberal and the reasons why, and you have to say whether those liberal views are qualified by the article. As for you last statement, I whole-heartedly agree that Obama has had much more press. I can't help but laugh at your assertion. If McCain got half of the critical coverage of Obama and then added on 50% more of the positive coverage he already gets, he'd be in deep s***. "I disagree with your opening statement here; the news has not always been what you are calling 'progressive'. The American news media has long history of being for freedoms, against authoritarianism, for self determination, living the American dream, and individualism; all of which many 'progressives' view as dangerous. The news can cover issues without bias, but stories that the Times covers directly coincides with whatever the Democrat party is currently pushing. " The american news has moved with the american people on all of these. It's made up of the people. But the themes I've mentioned have been and continue to be deeply involved in journalism worldwide.

people don't want objective news. Everyone conservative wants a cheering section for conservative viewpoints. Every liberal in here wants the cheering section for the progressive viewpoints. And neither one of us see's the news as being objective or on our side. Isn't that the funny part, that no one is right. And everyone is losing. News is worse now, and it is worse for no reasons that contain liberal or conservative. They're delusional grasp to maintain 20% profits has them cutting content and creates awful news. There isn't money to do long term investigations and to have your own data collecting. Luckily Lexis/Nexis is helping many make due. In reality, news is going to be progressive. They need to cover the uncovered, the less fortuned, and the corrupt. And great stories cover everything, and give sympathy to the unsympathetic. That's the history of news since the penny print. That has nothing to do with politics. And politics are what everyone is talking about. You can't put out a positive article on Obama without being in awe of him, you can't put out a negative article on Obama without being a republican hit job. And the result is news that just covers reactions. Everyone covers the media, and no one claims to be the media. The articles talk about how what a candidate says will be perceived by a group of people, and not how what a candidate will affect a group of people. Talking about what a candidates policies will actually do will lead to claims of bias. But the NY Times news is biased. You don't need proof. It's been said. And if it's been said it's true. That's news in 2008. The NY Times has had an awful decade. Judy Miller's mouth piece for the Iraq war, falling off of investigative reporting and foreign affairs, and the McCain innuendo story in Feb. (a pretty direct affect of the price restrictions of a newspaper). (Edit: add their despicable coverage of Duke Lacrosse) I think all of those I can attribute to something tangible (except lacrosse). I think they've picked up pretty well. For instance, this weekend, they resisted printing Maliki's Obama stance right away because it was merely hinted(by CentCom) that it was a misquote, mistranslation. They held off and got their own translation and found it was accurate. While initially criticized by left blogs, they affirmed for everyone that this was an undeniable quote by Maliki. They've done excellent stories about McCain and his son, McCain and his career, Obama and his mother, Obama and his neighborhood organizer years, McCain v. Obama taxplan. But that doesn't matter, because the NY Times is liberal because it is said they are. And make no mistake about it, it is because of their editorial staff. Just like it is said the Tribune is conservative because of their editorial staff. The editorial staff and news staff doesn't even see each other much, if at all, during the day. The WSJ, completely conservative editorial staff, has had great coverage of the presidential candidates. There are differences, If you were to take 1000 papers you'd find probably find them a few articles difference in pos./neg. coverage of candidates, but not enough to be significant. Not enough to skew a regular reader's minds. And that's the problem with cable news, which probably defines, whether we like it our not, how we think of the media covering elections. And cable news is all editorial. There's no analysis, they just have surrogate one and surrogate two. And youtube vid #1 and youtube vid #2. And then cut to a video of a helicopter crash in Boomer, Montana that has no value to democracy. So this media bias is stupid. This is not an example of media bias. This is the news we've all created. So enjoy it. And memo to McCain, don't mistake less coverage with unfavorable coverage. If you were covered as much as Obama, you'd be in more trouble than you already are. And Jackie Hayes, no I don't think Obama came out with anything new. It was more nuanced and better written. The border problems and explanations of Shia differences in the region were educational and heighted political dialogue. McCains was more general. He could've said the same thing in a better way and it would've ran. Framing is everything. He should just get better writers.

ay, they didn't say, Make your opinions more like Obama's, they wanted the content to (repeated ad nauseum, they wanted the definitive McCain Foreign Policy piece) be like Obama's (because Obama's in every way was his policy for the middle east. Had little to do with McCain besides clarifying their two positions). In other words, they didn't want to know why Obama was wrong, they wanted to know what McCain tried to do. So we are criticising the times for wanting a higher level of discourse. In Obama's piece, McCain was mentioned 4 times, in the intro and conclusion paragraphs, in McCain's piece, Obama or the pronoun "He"-which refers to Obama in the context, was used 11 times - in every paragraph except one. So they wanted a new draft. Boo hoo.

Right, because the NY Times leaked that they rejected McCain to seem really cool, I mean, they're so big they don't even NEED presidential candidates editorials. Hop on the cool kid's subscription bus! I didn't miss it. You saying that wouldn't it suck for you to edit balta's post are nothing remotely similar to the situation. At a newspaper there are editors and there are reporters and there are columnists and then theres the sports/arts/what have you. When you write a story, you take it to your editor, she/he will tell you what they think you are missing, where a better framing might be. AFter it's approved, it gets edited for copy and fact checked. In editorials, it's a little stranger. There are some regular contributors, but the also take on outside editorials from different papers on the wire and what have you. Then they'll also have guest editorials, sometimes from political players. Recently I had to copy a piece from a local official. The thing was really almost completely copied from their web site. We went through 4 drafts. It was annoying. He didn't go public about how unfair we were being. In my last, repeated statement I will say: This wasn't about bias. This was about selling papers. McCain has been pushing these talking points every where. They wanted an exclusive. McCain apparently doesn't want to clarify their positions, because it's much easier to say, No Surrender. Victory. Stay the course. Surge Surge. Obama (socialist) Inexperienced. Ba, what? Um, No, don't ask those questions. You do not ask those questions to John McCain!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 22, 2008 -> 05:32 PM) Length is not what the NYT was trying to change. They were trying to get McCain to change what he wrote. There is a big difference there. I don't think you would be happy if all of the sudden I started making it so that I had to approve your posts, based on the changes I suggested, and let other people's fly by. Who knows what the true reasons are, but it doesn't look good when you start forcing changes in people's writing. In some parts of the country they call that censorship. Give me a break. A privately owned newspaper asking for a different draft for an editorial that could have huge impact on how much papers they sell is not akin to censorship in any way, shape, or fashion. And, balta said length, CONTENT. Yet you focused solely on length for some reason. And comparing a message board to a newspaper is just completely out there. It's like comparing cooking shake n bake at home to working as a cook in a Chef's restaurant.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 22, 2008 -> 04:51 PM) Which isn't any better to me. If they are going to publish editorials, the writer of them, not the editor, needs to decide what his message and relative content will be. Forcing changes in that, changes the authors message. If they wanted to have something specific to print, they should have just written it themselves and put their own name on it. Like I said, they wanted money. And they wanted to scoop. If McCain would've said, this is my copy, if you want I'll take it to the WPost and I'm sure they'll gladly take it, NY Times probably would've backed down. But, like I said they wanted "how I'll win Iraq", instead they got "talking points by John McCain". Especially with all that was happening that weekend I'm not surprised they wanted a better editorial. It wasn't much more than Obama and a bunch of glittering generalities.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 22, 2008 -> 03:59 PM) That's sort of irrelevant to the fact that Obama ran a piece, on the same subject, and McCain's was rejected. Unless McCain's letter clearly violated some rules of the paper (like it was full of expletives, or revealed state secrets, or whatever), then this is B.S. journalism. The editorial board should be ashamed. There's a big difference between rejected and revising. Rejected would be refusing to publish anything from McCain. Revising is what most everyone does. And when you are going to get a big spread in the Sunday edition of the NY TIMES, yeah, you might have a few drafts.

Is this sarcasm?

the republican thread also is carrying this dialogue btw.

First, the editorials are a different staff than the hard news portions of papers. And two, in my opinion, this was the NY Times wanting to out Scoop everyone. They got Obama's definitive Middle East positions before his speech exclusively, and got mucho coverage for it. They wanted the same from McCain. McCain's editorial wasn't much different from what he says on TV, so it wouldn't have been big news, and when I say this, I'm saying it's not much different because of the way it is structured/the way it is said. The Times is looking for the "Why we are going to win Iraq by: John McCain". Big, Bold, huge talking point for every media, and they'll all have to say : McCain's editorial in the NY Times today. I come to these conclusions due to the editor clearly wanting another draft from McCain. I understand the perceiving this as favoritism, from the ill-worded "what are your troop withdrawel timetables", but I can also see how the Times just wants to sell some papers by outscooping everyone. They are one of the big news outlets who are doing well with their web site, and out scooping everyone at a national level helps immensely. And further, I'd love for the responses to my query letters to editors to come back so polite and explained. Perks of being a Presidential candidate.

Sounds excellent! I'll read the journal when I have the chance.

see here's the thing, as someone said, and why I laugh at when some people argument about who is good and bad in the nfl so adamently, every year the opposite happens of what everyone expects except for a few AFC teams. Sure, the cowboys will probably be good this year. BUt besides that, I wouldn't put a guarantee on any team.

no. Super hero movies sure to bring in big bucks. I suppose they won't know the difference though and soon we get to see great ones like Capt. America and ...Thor.

god, more proof how stupid america is, space chimps is in 7th place. People here just aren't ready for good cinema. /green.

QUOTE (ChWRoCk2 @ Jul 21, 2008 -> 05:14 AM) So, I need some help: My hard drive crashed just the other day. Obviously, lost all of my music on my computer (9000+ songs). On the positive side I have an iPod with basically all the songs I listen to on it. My question is do any of you know a program where I can take music off of my iPod and put it into iTunes free of charge? I know there are programs you can use to do this but the ones I have found require a payment which I'd rather not do. iRip used to give a 15 day trial but I think it's been taken down since. Download.com used to have it. So if you had this problem in 05, i'd have been great help.

the joker was the only batman villain that i've loved on film. But hell, I guess if I had to choose I'd take riddler.

I hope what batman learns is to not fall into the trap in, while trying to top the previous movies, they add too many villains. I know the thinking behind it, but the story becomes to convoluted and moves too slow.

I saw it today. Then I finally read all the black script in here.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Jul 19, 2008 -> 07:10 PM) Have the people that made that list ever been to Aurora? hey watch it soxy, you're talking about the city of lights here. this is in that sardonic tone.

I think Columbia, MO is an awesome town. But yay, Naperville/Aurora...I am awesome.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 18, 2008 -> 11:26 PM) My brother was telling me after the Cubs sweep, that week was unbearable with all the people in his face talking all that hot s***, but the next week after the Sox sweep they were nowhere to be found, and he had to track down some people because they were avoiding him. lol. haha that's hilarious.

why would cubs fans be under sui watch, they've made their entire marketing scheme after being losers (but FUN LOSERS!!)

i couldn't help but laughing ... but seriously what trash.