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How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

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Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#61
post #31

It's disappointing, but just a fact of life now, that people will see the world so differently. People have always had differing politics, but there was a semblance of a baseline. I feel like we need a generation that strikes out against the notion of identity altogether (as I think identity is a core part of the issue), but that already feels like an identity in itself.

The “baseline” was established by ignoring points of view that didn’t align with the ruling class. It’s still largely the case, for example crime stories are popular, except for crimes committed by law enforcement, which - in some cases, like theft - is actually the majority of all cases in US, just not reported that way.

Now we have a world where there is no baseline to even start a discussion. Depending on your perspective, either crime is worse than ever before and the criminal are running crazy. Or the only criminals are the system and those in power. You can literally find non-trivial populations in the US who believe that we need to build more prisons and others who think we need to free all prisoners. There's no place to even stand to begin to have a conversation.

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#62

i'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent You only need to read the first chapter, which is about 30 pages, to see the arguments. the rest of the book is example and analysis.

video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost all issues with any controversy seem to have identity at the crux. This is why there is virtually no principled consistency. That's why you have Defund the Police and then Defund the FBI. Or "athletes get paid too much" and "it's a free market". Or "go back where you came from" and "go back where you came from". Or "my body my choice" and "my body my choice". If I woke up tomorrow I think the supporter…

How is identity at the crux of “defund the FBI”? “Identity politics” are generally considered to be issues related to things like race, gender, social class, etc

Yes, view identity as the group of people you identify with. It's a cross section of race/gender/social class/political party/geography/etc... "Defund the FBI" is just a reaction of a specific identity group -- largely the same group that hated people saying Defund the Police, fought for Blue Lives Matter, etc...

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#64

The scariest thing about biased news sources is not how they cover something but whether they cover something at all . People who don't tune into multiple will simply have no idea that something even happened. They'll have completely different realities based on their perceptions. Just looking at the graph you can see four whole stories that CNN completely omitted, yet there was nothing that CNN covered that Fox igno…

First - your assessment of 'omitted by CNN' isn't quite right.

"yet there was nothing that CNN covered that Fox ignored. " - this is wrong. There is at any given time, thousands of 'stories' to cover. Almost by definition CNN will have covered something else that Fox didn't. All of the stories they covered are not on that chart.

...

There's one level scarier and that's when neither/none of them cover something.

In particular, the issue of possible lab leak and US institutional involvement in research over in China.

It's kind of the biggest story of a generation, but it's complicated and almost all that will come out of it is insane populist hysteria and misrepresentations, to it's kind of ignored.

It's so hot that nobody seems to want to give it really good airtime; also, it might also be because of relationship with National Security apparatus who probably have maybe told them not to talk about it, but it's hard to know. It's like one of those 'wartime' issues where most of the press closes rank a bit. The implications are just gigantic.

If nobody talks about it, then it didn't happen ... kind of thing. It remains an issue for bureaucrats and academics to meander on.

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#65

i'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent You only need to read the first chapter, which is about 30 pages, to see the arguments. the rest of the book is example and analysis.

I had a long-untouched copy laying around and read this chapter on your suggestion. There's definitely some good info in here if you haven't been exposed to these ideas. However, I'd probably review Ch. 1 as a mixed bag overall. A good chunk of it is out of date info-dumps about the state of the industry 30-40 years ago. That said, its central thesis of media we consume being largely propaganda (and necessarily so, given the reasons provided) is certainly still true. I think one could filter and update these points, however, to make them more accurate to the current state of affairs and thus make more compelling of an argument.

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#66

i'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent You only need to read the first chapter, which is about 30 pages, to see the arguments. the rest of the book is example and analysis.

I wish everyone knew about Edward Bernays, nephew of Freud, and father of modern propaganda, aka public relations, aka marketing.¹² It's a real eye opener to be able to notice when you're being manipulated (often emotionally) by the others, including family and friends. The media and ad industries have been playing us for years. It lets you reevaluate where you stand as opposed to where you think you stand. I went th…

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Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#67
post #37
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 60% of Republicans turn to Fox News for political news and 53% of Democrats turn to CNN It'd be nice to see comparisons of all the news networks, but if you're going to start somewhere it seems like the two which have the majority of viewers seems appropriate.

It doesn't provide much useful info. That one item is much crappier than another crappy item is not very helpful information.

>That one item is much crappier than another crappy item is not very helpful information.

How is it not? If my options are crap, crappy, super crap and super-extra-duper crap... It seems helpful to know which one is the least crappy.

As an aside, are you willing to share which news station you don't put in the crap bucket?

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#68
post #51

The scariest thing about biased news sources is not how they cover something but whether they cover something at all . People who don't tune into multiple will simply have no idea that something even happened. They'll have completely different realities based on their perceptions. Just looking at the graph you can see four whole stories that CNN completely omitted, yet there was nothing that CNN covered that Fox igno…

It should be noted that the four stories that CNN didn't cover aren't actually real stories, but are bordering on conspiracy theories.

No post body was provided.

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#69
post #65

i'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent You only need to read the first chapter, which is about 30 pages, to see the arguments. the rest of the book is example and analysis.

I had a long-untouched copy laying around and read this chapter on your suggestion. There's definitely some good info in here if you haven't been exposed to these ideas. However, I'd probably review Ch. 1 as a mixed bag overall. A good chunk of it is out of date info-dumps about the state of the industry 30-40 years ago. That said, its central thesis of media we consume being largely propaganda (and necessarily so, g…

[deleted]

Re: How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?

#70
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNN is not a crappy news source. It's mostly above board, if biased. The non-opinion parts of Fox are not that bad but it's more rare. My bet is they are looking at headline coverage both news and opinion. I think this is a really worthy excercise so that we can see a bit more methodologically what kind of bias happens with selective coverage. The tone and content of the coverage matters a lot. Almost all of the edit…

> It's mostly above board, if biased. Above board does not equate with quality. CNN is pretty crap compared to most big print newspapers.

Above Board definitely correlates with quality, because it implies truthiness, which is obviously a key consideration.

CNN is a broadcast news channel that covers things as they happen, not a newspaper where they write articles as long as they like.

So you'd compare it to MSNBC and Fox and possibly Network News, not news papers.

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