Great find, G.M. What a surprise! (Sarcasm)

Posted by Woody at October 1, 2005 12:33 PM

Now, tell me again how the MSM isn't biased?--GMR

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This was a brilliant expose of the ever-missing context in MSM propaganda.

They are much more than biased. They are every bit as corrupt and corrupting as their spiritual breathern from the now deceased tyrannies.

They truly believe that they are the defenders of LIBERTY, but they are instead its potential grave diggers.

When ALL information,and all peddlers of it, become suspect, who will tell the people what they need to know in order to make informed decisions? What is the real difference between a 'big lie' as practised by our illustrious media members and the BIG LIE as practised by a future political opportunist?

When all information is neither 'true' nor 'un-true', but merely one or the other depending totally upon how the audience perceives it, how can any 'agreement' ever be found? It's not like a disagreement on the weather. If you say it's 100 degrees and I say it's 0 degrees, there remains always the option of simply stepping outside to check. My neighbour may not care for me, but when he steps outside and freezes his a** off, there is every chance that he will perforce be constrained to accept that my interpretation of reality is closer to the 'truth' than is yours. When there is no 'outside' to consult, there is no 'intellectual' way to resolve the conflict . It must either fester away unresolved or be settled by a more 'direct' action. There is NO UMPIRE.

When 'truth' becomes negotiable, hypothetical , and dependent solely upon the vision of the audience , how does the society maintain a central vision of itself?

Propaganda, even if it is not 'intentional' is both corrupt and corrupting. The current polluted information stream is debasing civic discourse not only because it is polluted but because new technologies allow 'some' portion of the population to 'see' that it is polluted.

The problem is that it is ONLY 'some' portion.

Posted by dougf at October 1, 2005 12:43 PM

Oh the shame.

The coverup and extreme leftist agenda of the SF Chronicle continues...when will these people begin to show some decency, some sense of proportion, some modicum of objectivity, a fair shake for their critics and quit trying to confuse us with the facts.

http://tinyurl.com/datvr

Posted by reg at October 2, 2005 05:38 PM

http://tinyurl.com/datvr

(better link? other one didn't seem to take)

Posted by reg at October 2, 2005 06:28 PM

The coverup and extreme leftist agenda of the SF Chronicle continues...when will these people begin to show some decency, some sense of proportion, some modicum of objectivity, a fair shake for their critics and quit trying to confuse us with the facts.---Reg

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Geez Reg. This attempt at refutation was remarkably lame.Your own reference does almost nothing to counter the context arguments presented against Media Propaganda.

Apart from the usual, 'what bias;are you alleging a conspiracy?' drivel the 'defense' posits, we get this as a concluding thought from your OWN source.

For the record, I didn't think the close-up photo was a good choice as the sole picture on the home page -- not because of the is-it-radical-or-not debate, but because it gave too narrow a sense of the demonstration. While a crowd shot might not have "read" as well in such a small space, it would have been more reflective of the overall event.

You think ?

That is ALL the justified anti-media complaint is really about. A biased ,tendentious,and DELIBERATE CHOICE which per se clearly distorts the context of the event.

Posted by dougf at October 2, 2005 09:22 PM

For starters the original allegation that this was the front page photo was FALSE...but Zombie is too shifty to acknowledge the error. Plus, there was no mention of the other photos that the Chron printed, so Zombie was deliberately misleading and tendentious to the point of absurdity.

Beyond that, if you think that this piece by the reader's rep, prominently place on the Sunday op-ed page isn't an indication that the SF Chronicle does a good job of being open to criticism, examining the facts and trying to be fair, you're the moron that I have a nasty feeling you probably are. If they operated on the same principles as Zombie, they wouldn't have even mentioned the criticism and given their own perspective, correcting his factual errors but also engaging his attempt at an argument. They would have ignored this fringe blogger.

This post is actually a continuation of Woody having made a total ass of himself over at Marc Cooper's sight and was a lame attempt to debunk an interview with Pat Tillman's mother by attacking the Chronicle as a bunch of liars and leftist misinformation. What we find out is that Zombie's key charge, that this was the way the Chron depicted the demo on it's front page turned out to be false. Who is the "untrustworthy" source of distorted information ???

You guy's are living in your own little echo chamber, you're not very bright and you are very quick to judge other people as biased when your own biases are enormous and manifest.

Nuff said. Waste of time to debate closed minds and ideological wingnuts.

Posted by reg at October 3, 2005 12:28 AM

reg, I gave up on any any reasonable debate with you at Cooper's and said goodbye, so you then followed me home. You're like a guy whose girl friend broke up with him and then he later charges over to her house and says that he's dumping her. Not only is she dumbfounded, she probably is glad and laughing. I do find it funny when you say that we're not very bright, as though that's supposed to hurt me. By the way, you meant Marc Cooper's SITE--not sight. Someone with your brains should have known that.

Posted by Woody at October 3, 2005 09:36 AM

I do find it funny when you say that we're not very bright, as though that's supposed to hurt me. --Woody

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Speak for yourself. I was personally crushed to learn of Reg's disdain for my intellectual prowess.

It hurt.

Especially since I hold Reg's opinions in the highest possible regard at all times.

That was unkind Reg. I hope you're happy now.

Posted by dougf at October 3, 2005 09:44 AM

I thought about how G.M. would respond to reg, but he's out of town; so, I'll have to do my best.

"Reg, the discussions aren't always about debating to change minds. That's not likely to happen in most cases. However, we like to offer a forum where a wide range of ideas can be presented and considered, even if not accepted, and presented knowing that all viewpoints will be respected and personal attacks discouraged. We appreciate your viewpoints and hope that you'll come back to share with us in the future. Cordially, G.M."

Okay, that's what G.M. might say, so I guess I'll go along. We do want to be fair and not act like the left does on its sites. At least we might learn something with reasonable exchanges, and maybe, just maybe, they might learn something, too.

Posted by Woody for G.M. at October 3, 2005 12:49 PM

Woody, if you can't see that the Chronicle's printing that response - not to mention the fact that it shows your guy's "evidence" to have been far less than factual - you're hopeless. You used this nonsense to cast aspersions on anything the Chronicle might print, no matter how well sourced for reasons having nothing to do with the picture in question. I read the Chronicle every day, incidentally and gave you an honest assessment of its approach to journalism. This bears me out and makes "zombie" look like a right-wing hack, and amateurish to boot. From your very first comments about the Chron, you were speaking out of ignorance and extreme bias. Frankly, you've proven you're nothing but a bigot when it comes to media outlets or people you consider "left" or liberal...and no there's not a lot of intelligence on display here.

I've already spent too much time on a hopeless case - trying to get you to admit that your attempt to build a case that the Chronicle has no regard for truth or objectivity - but your bias outweighs any capacity for rational response.

Posted by reg at October 3, 2005 05:40 PM

corr: "trying to get you to admit that your attempt to build a case that the Chronicle has no regard for truth or objectivity was very weak at best"

Oh, and thanks for the spelling tips. That's one thing you got rite. Oooops...

Posted by reg at October 3, 2005 05:43 PM

reg, when you first posted the link to the site that you're referencing, I couldn't get the link to work, so I didn't try again. Then the guy that runs our network messed things up and knocked me off for a day. Since then, I've been trying to catch up and keep up the site and attending a CPE course--sooooo, in short, I haven't had the time to do justice to the site you referred. However, I will try again.

(A few minutes later.)

Okay, I've seen the explanation from the paper. I'm not so stupid or stubborn that I wouldn't admit when you're right. Facts are facts. I might have a different take on it, though.

The picture ran on the front page of the web site and not the paper itself. You are correct on that. However, it did run in the paper, and the position is not of primary importace. That seems more a point to discredit the blogger who bought it to our attention.

The picture from a distance futher back told a more accurate and more complete story than did the picture from the paper. The picture from the paper showed a strong image of a protester. The picture from the blogger showed a bunch of sheep or hired activists being led by protest organizers to make the protest look more legitimate than scripted. That had all the phony enthusiam and excitement of the Republican and Democratic conventions.

Keep in mind that I didn't make the Zombie post or link to it, so my passion for this might be overstated. While I'm sure that there is no shortage of liberal bias from the paper, this image was chosen to represent a snapshot of a bigger problem.

The simple point is that mass media in this country has a liberal bias. In a recent poll, three out of four people agree with that and the fourth person is lying. If you want more examples, I think that we might possibly be able to find them.

I do appreciate your finding that link from the Chron, as I wanted to see both sides. There is no question that the original information from Zombie had errors in its detail, which were later corrected. Still, the conclusions reached are subjective and do not necessarily rely on those points of disagreement.

I still think that the major mass media has a liberal bias.

I won't get deep into this now, but today I listened to a recording of Walter Cronkite speaking, and he basically said that the American voter was stupid and we shouldn't count on them to elect officials to run the country. What arrogance! That, unfortunately, is not terribly untypical of the left.

Posted by Woody at October 3, 2005 09:10 PM

Point of information: I didn't "find that link from the Chronicle" in the sense that I went looking on the internet to discredit Zombie. I read the article in my Sunday paper and it's typical of the way the Chronicle is open to a variety of opinions and doesn't routinely engage in the kind of political slanting of news endemic to, say, FOX. As I said in my first reference to this issue, before you even attacked the Chron as "leftist", the paper reflects the culturally liberal environment of the Bay Area in much of its local reporting - it wouldn't be honest or relevant as a local paper if it didn't - but it's politics and opinions are very open and mixed. Like many papers on a budget, probably the bulk of it's national and international reporting originates with wire services. Their Washington DC correspondent is very measured and doesn't write screeds against Bush. Not even close. The Chron never prints a liberal op-ed without "balancing" it with a conservative view. Many days there's more conservative opinion printed than liberal. The only columnist on national political issues that writes regularly for the Chron itself is a conservative, Debra Saunders. I would be shocked to find a newspaper in a relatively conservative city that only hired a liberal columnist. Maybe this exists, and if it did I would consider it an indication that the publishers weren't on a political misson from God to pander to their readers' biases. The SF Chronicle is, unfortunately, not a great newspaper and not without many of the faults of corporate media, but to dismiss it's journalism as leftist propaganda is just plain wrong. I think that Rogers' open-minded, informative and factual response to Zombie's critique is testament to that judgement. Incidentally, for many, many years the Chronicle was staunchly Republican in a Democratic town. It was bought a few years ago by the Hearst Corp. and supersceded the old WRH flagship, The Examiner in a merger of the two papers. Phil Bronstein, the editor, is a very liberal guy but he has a sterling reputation as a journalist - he did a lot of award-winning reporting from the Phillipines on Marcos and the insurgencies - and puts protecting the paper's journalistic credibility before any bullshit political agendas. He's not corporate or political hack. At some point I have to look at people on the basis of their track record and trust their professionalism. Wild scattershot attacks against "the media" or "lawyers" won't do. (Sort of like Judge Roberts having more credibility as a highly qualified, effective Chief Justice than Ms. Miers, regardless of how I may feel about his conservatism.)

Posted by reg at October 4, 2005 04:09 PM

Woody, reg, dougf, and GM

As an Oaklander, though I am not a regular reader of the SF Chronicle, I would say that "reg" in his last posting has given a "fair and balanced" history and assessment of the Chronicle. Unlike the Bay Guardian (an alternative weekly) or our local Pacifica station, which clearly have an openly leftist agenda, the Chronicle is [relatively] centrist or right-of-center with respect to the political coloration of the Bay Area. Indeed, the left groups often accuse the Chronicle of being captive to "downtown and corporate interests" [i.e. right-wing/conservatives]

On the other hand, with respect to the photograph constituting the topic of the post, moving past quibbling over minor details, I would agree that Zombie did make a solid and educational case showing how selective editing of a photograph can significantly alter the viewers' understanding of the event being photographed.

Unfortunately, the level of heat in the comments does not seem commensurate with the incident; I don't see anything in this photo incident that is sufficiently weighty as to change anyone's position regarding bias in the MSM media. In other words, let's stop with the huffing and puffing.

Posted by civil truth at October 4, 2005 11:38 PM