Political Bias In News Coverage

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067
Some have suggested that Fox's conservative point of view and its Republican leanings render the network inherently unworthy as a news outlet. FAIR believes that view is misguided. The United States is unusual, perhaps even unique, in having a journalistic culture so fiercely wedded to the elusive notion of "objective" news (an idea of relatively recent historical vintage even in the U.S.). In Great Britain, papers like the conservative Times of London and the left-leaning Guardian deliver consistently excellent coverage while making no secret of their respective points of view. There's nothing keeping American journalists from doing the same.

If anything, it is partly the disingenuous claim to objectivity that is corroding the integrity of the news business. American journalists claim to represent all political views with an open mind, yet in practice a narrow bipartisan centrism excludes dissenting points of view: No major newspaper editorial page opposed NAFTA; virtually all endorse U.S. airstrikes on Iraq; and single-payer health care proposals find almost no backers among them.

With the ascendance of Fox News Channel, we now have a national conservative TV network in addition to the established centrist outlets. But like the mainstream networks, Fox refuses to admit its political point of view. The result is a skewed center-to-right media spectrum made worse by the refusal to acknowledge any tilt at all.
April 22, 2007

50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/europe/22russia.html
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Correction Appended
MOSCOW, April 21 — At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”
In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.
How would they know what constituted positive news?
“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”
In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

Blog

CNN News Reporter Withholds Information on Saddam Hussein

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june03/cnn_4-15.html
TERENCE SMITH: CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan became part of the news himself in recent days when he revealed that he withheld information about how Saddam Hussein's regime had intimidated and tortured Iraqis who had helped the Cable News Network over the years. Jordan made his comments in an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week, two days after the fall of Baghdad. He revealed on his own network Thursday night that other CNN staffers were targeted by the Iraqi government, in particular by Saddam Hussein's information minister.
EASON JORDAN: I had a meeting in December with Minister Sahaf, and during that meeting, I asked for his permission to send a CNN team to northern Iraq, which is actually Kurd-controlled territory. When I asked him this question, he bristled and said, "Mr. Jordan, if you send a CNN team there, the severest possible consequences will come to them." When I said, "what does that mean?" He just snapped back. He said, "Don't you understand? The severest possible consequences." And to me it was clear he talking about assassinating those journalists.
TERENCE SMITH: CNN's Baghdad coverage has been largely spearheaded by Jordan for the last 12 years, as he has been the cable network's chief emissary to Iraq, making 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. In recent days, several opinion pieces have assailed Jordan for not revealing what he knew about the threats much earlier. Rush Limbaugh took him to task on his Web site, and CNN's rival, the Fox News Channel, carried extensive commentary on the story.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, Syndicated Columnist: (Fox News Channel) It's a classic example of selling your soul for the story. He clearly gave up truth for access.
TERENCE SMITH: Yesterday, responding to critics, Jordan sent a memo to his staff defending his actions: "CNN kept pushing for access in Iraq, while never compromising its journalistic standards in doing so. Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin."

Fox News - Conservative and Middle Eastern Bias

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fox_News
The Fox News Channel (FNC) is a cable news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Considered largely conservative in its projections and perceptions, it occasionally ventures into original news topics that are uncovered by other outlets. Fox is considered by many as a quasi-arm of the Republican party or at least the conservative movement.

Public Opinion Being Shaped in 1984

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/quotes.html#explanation3

I.
"And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested."

Winston has just had a frustrating conversation with an old man about life before the Revolution, and he realizes that the Party has deliberately set out to weaken people’s memories in order to render them unable to challenge what the Party claims about the present. If no one remembers life before the Revolution, then no one can say that the Party has failed mankind by forcing people to live in conditions of poverty, filth, ignorance, and hunger. Rather, the Party uses rewritten history books and falsified records to prove its good deeds.

II.
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy."

This quote occurs in Book One, Chapter VII, as Winston looks at a children’s history book and marvels at the Party’s control of the human mind. These lines play into the theme of psychological manipulation. In this case, Winston considers the Party’s exploitation of its fearful subjects as a means to suppress the intellectual notion of objective reality. If the universe exists only in the mind, and the Party controls the mind, then the Party controls the universe. As Winston thinks, “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” The mathematical sentence 2 + 2 = 5 thus becomes a motif linked to the theme of psychological independence. Early in the novel, Winston writes that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” The motif comes full circle at the end of the novel after the torture Winston suffers in the Ministry of Love breaks his soul; he sits at the Chestnut Tree Café and traces “2 + 2 = 5” in the dust on his table.