Liberal Media Bias (1 Viewer)

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

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Skoo said:

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

Click to expand...

Which journalist is a part of the Obama administration?

Click to expand...

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

Maurile Tremblay said:

Republicans Who Fault the Media Show Their Bias

NOV 16, 2015 2:44 PM EST

By Cass R. Sunstein

For Republican presidential contenders challenged by the media, the go-to answer has become a claim of victimhood: You are biased against us. As Marco Rubio put it at the CNBC debate last month, "The Democrats have the ultimate super-PAC. It's called the mainstream media."

Are media outlets really biased against Republican candidates? One of the most careful studies, by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago, doesn't find much evidence of that. Its central conclusion is that readers have a strong preference for like-minded news -- and that newspapers tend to show a slant in a direction that is consistent with the preferences of their readers.

With respect to television broadcasters, the evidence remains ambiguous. But Republicans who think that the media are biased against them might want to consider a striking empirical finding: Whatever their beliefs, political partisans have long tended to see, and to complain loudly about, media bias.

In short, people are biased about bias.

For more than 20 years, researchers have identified a phenomenon called "hostile media perception," which means readers and viewers are inclined to think that journalists are biased against their particular point of view. People with strong convictions show a remarkably consistent tendency to conclude that the medias presentation is skewed against them. This is true whether the issue involves football teams, genetically modified organisms, labor disputes, animal rights, climate change or the Middle East.

Political partisans see bias even when news coverage really is neutral, according to Colorado State University's Cindy Christen and her co-authors. Rutgers University's Lauren Feldman finds that partisans show a kind of "bias against bias," seeing far less bias in opinionated news sources with which they already agree.

For presidential primaries, where activists are especially important, here's an especially important finding from Christen and her co-authors: As people become more involved with the particular topic, they become a lot more likely to complain about media bias. The more you know and the more you care, the more bias you're going to see.

Hostile media perception is nothing new, but on the Republican side it has been intensifying. Like-minded people, listening mostly to one another, tend to become both more confident and more extreme in their beliefs.

Within Republican echo chambers, claims of media bias have become so widespread that they are increasingly taken as gospel. (Democrats have their own echo chambers, of course, but they tend to involve policy issues, such as the minimum wage and the Keystone pipeline, rather the media.)

The empirical findings don't show that Republican claims about media bias are wrong. People who are predisposed to find bias might still be right that it exists. But the evidence of hostile media perception suggests that even if such a bias is real, the candidates are probably exaggerating it.

Is that a problem? As a matter of politics, it may be smart strategy to complain about media bias when pressed to respond to hard questions about climate change, immigration reform or the debt limit. But any such complaints are a disservice to the voters; they are evasive, even cowardly. At its best, American conservative thought represents a politics of ideas, not victimhood. It offers answers to substantive questions -- not attacks on those who ask them.

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Not a very compelling article, IMHO. The article itself demonstrates bias using terms like Republican echo chamber, which is something only a left-winger would do. Also concluding that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly? IMHO, the article is a perfect demonstration of the point it is trying to disprove.

Click to expand...

Way to prove the point of the article. The author refers to both Republican and Democratic "echo chambers", but is clearly a "left-winger" for mentioning the Republican version. The article says ducking questions by switching to complaints about the liberal media is cowardly, but that somehow becomes the liberal media saying that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly. With only two completely off the wall mis-characterizations, you can "prove" it's a liberal media piece. Amazing.

Click to expand...

IMHO, anyone who can't see a bias in media is blind. There is bias all over the place. Every media outlet has a bias towards a political party and towards a specific position on issues like abortion, global warming, taxes, social welfare, race issues, war, etc. If you look at the reporting on a particular topic and don't see how the source is bias, you really are not looking or more likely it confirms your bias and you are blind to it.

Click to expand...

Media bias is like biased referees in football. Everyone feels they favor the other side, and the worse you are, the more convinced you are that it's the biased referees who are the fault.

Click to expand...

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint.

Click to expand...

Skoo said:

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

Click to expand...

Which journalist is a part of the Obama administration?

Click to expand...

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

Maurile Tremblay said:

Republicans Who Fault the Media Show Their Bias

NOV 16, 2015 2:44 PM EST

By Cass R. Sunstein

For Republican presidential contenders challenged by the media, the go-to answer has become a claim of victimhood: You are biased against us. As Marco Rubio put it at the CNBC debate last month, "The Democrats have the ultimate super-PAC. It's called the mainstream media."

Are media outlets really biased against Republican candidates? One of the most careful studies, by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago, doesn't find much evidence of that. Its central conclusion is that readers have a strong preference for like-minded news -- and that newspapers tend to show a slant in a direction that is consistent with the preferences of their readers.

With respect to television broadcasters, the evidence remains ambiguous. But Republicans who think that the media are biased against them might want to consider a striking empirical finding: Whatever their beliefs, political partisans have long tended to see, and to complain loudly about, media bias.

In short, people are biased about bias.

For more than 20 years, researchers have identified a phenomenon called "hostile media perception," which means readers and viewers are inclined to think that journalists are biased against their particular point of view. People with strong convictions show a remarkably consistent tendency to conclude that the medias presentation is skewed against them. This is true whether the issue involves football teams, genetically modified organisms, labor disputes, animal rights, climate change or the Middle East.

Political partisans see bias even when news coverage really is neutral, according to Colorado State University's Cindy Christen and her co-authors. Rutgers University's Lauren Feldman finds that partisans show a kind of "bias against bias," seeing far less bias in opinionated news sources with which they already agree.

For presidential primaries, where activists are especially important, here's an especially important finding from Christen and her co-authors: As people become more involved with the particular topic, they become a lot more likely to complain about media bias. The more you know and the more you care, the more bias you're going to see.

Hostile media perception is nothing new, but on the Republican side it has been intensifying. Like-minded people, listening mostly to one another, tend to become both more confident and more extreme in their beliefs.

Within Republican echo chambers, claims of media bias have become so widespread that they are increasingly taken as gospel. (Democrats have their own echo chambers, of course, but they tend to involve policy issues, such as the minimum wage and the Keystone pipeline, rather the media.)

The empirical findings don't show that Republican claims about media bias are wrong. People who are predisposed to find bias might still be right that it exists. But the evidence of hostile media perception suggests that even if such a bias is real, the candidates are probably exaggerating it.

Is that a problem? As a matter of politics, it may be smart strategy to complain about media bias when pressed to respond to hard questions about climate change, immigration reform or the debt limit. But any such complaints are a disservice to the voters; they are evasive, even cowardly. At its best, American conservative thought represents a politics of ideas, not victimhood. It offers answers to substantive questions -- not attacks on those who ask them.

Click to expand...

Not a very compelling article, IMHO. The article itself demonstrates bias using terms like Republican echo chamber, which is something only a left-winger would do. Also concluding that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly? IMHO, the article is a perfect demonstration of the point it is trying to disprove.

Click to expand...

Way to prove the point of the article. The author refers to both Republican and Democratic "echo chambers", but is clearly a "left-winger" for mentioning the Republican version. The article says ducking questions by switching to complaints about the liberal media is cowardly, but that somehow becomes the liberal media saying that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly. With only two completely off the wall mis-characterizations, you can "prove" it's a liberal media piece. Amazing.

Click to expand...

IMHO, anyone who can't see a bias in media is blind. There is bias all over the place. Every media outlet has a bias towards a political party and towards a specific position on issues like abortion, global warming, taxes, social welfare, race issues, war, etc. If you look at the reporting on a particular topic and don't see how the source is bias, you really are not looking or more likely it confirms your bias and you are blind to it.

Click to expand...

Media bias is like biased referees in football. Everyone feels they favor the other side, and the worse you are, the more convinced you are that it's the biased referees who are the fault.

Click to expand...

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint.

Click to expand...

When viewed through the same lenses that decided a journalist who mentioned both Republican and Democratic echo chambers must be a left-winger for mentioning the Republican's, yeah I would guess so.

Click to expand...

jon_mx said:

Skoo said:

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

Click to expand...

Which journalist is a part of the Obama administration?

Click to expand...

‘Revolving Door’: More Than Two Dozen Journalists Have Joined the Obama Administration, but Is It Really Anything New?Mar. 29, 2015 2:41pm Fred Lucas
When she steps into her new role as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Shailagh Murray will become the latest in a long line of former journalists who have left their Fourth Estate roles to go work for the White House.
Murray, a former Washington Post and Wall Street journal reporter, first joined the Obama administration as Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director in 2011. On Tuesday, she was named as the replacement for longtime Obama hand Dan Pfeiffer, who departed the West Wing earlier this month.


Some 30 journalists have left their profession to go work in the Obama administration or on one of his presidential campaigns, according to the most recent tally by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group. One of the most visible jumps was by Jay Carney, a former Time reporter who went to work as Biden’s communications director — Murray’s old post — before ending up as White House press secretary.
While the number of journalists who have gone from covering President Barack Obama to working for him has garnered notice over the years, it’s not a brand-new phenomenon.

“It was much more common in the very earlier times,” said George Condon, White House correspondent for the National Journal and who’s working on a history of the White House press corps. “But it has always happened.”

A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson was so pleased with the reporting of Washington Post reporter Raymond W. Pullman that he appointed him District of Columbia police chief. Wilson appointed other journalists he liked to be D.C. commissioners, well before District home rule.


It’s also not unique to Democrats: George W. Bush press secretary Tony Snow ping-ponged between journalism and politics several times, starting his career as a journalist before going to work in the George H.W. Bush administration, then becoming the first host of “Fox News Sunday” in the 1990s, then returning to the White House to serve as press secretary in 2006.

Top George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes was a Texas TV reporter in the 1970s and early 1980s before leaving the news business to join the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign. Hughes joined up with George W. Bush first on his Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994, then became a top State Department and counselor to him during his White House tenure.

It wasn’t an immediate journalist-to-White House transition for Hughes, just as it wasn’t for David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who toiled in politics for some time before going to work for Obama.

Condon recalled that as a young reporter for the San Diego Union newspaper, editor Jerry Warren went to work for Richard Nixon as White House deputy press secretary before going back to journalism in 1975 after Watergate. Commentator Pat Buchanan left his job at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat to work as a speechwriter for Nixon and ended up a senior adviser to Nixon, Ford and Ronald Reagan.

In Bill Clinton administration, former U.S. News and World Report reporter Don Baer became White House communications director, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time editor, served as a deputy secretary of state.

Two legendary journalists held roles in Democratic administrations, Condon noted: CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and NBC newsman John Chancellor. Murrow went to work for the John F. Kennedy administration to run the United States Information Agency, which later became Voice of America. Chancellor ran Voice of America under Lyndon Johnson.

It was previously common for all press secretaries to come from the ranks of the press, Condon said, as 12 of the first 13 White House press secretaries were all once reporters. After the tumult of Watergate, just four of the next 18 press secretaries were former reporters.

While some would point to the new uptick in journalists going to work for the Obama administration as evidence of a certain coziness, Condon said he thinks it has more to do with economics.

“The number was up a little when Obama came in, but that’s because it was such a time of turmoil in journalism,” Condon said. “For newspapers, there were a lot of reporters out of work. So I’m not surprised it’s up under Obama.”

But Brent Baker, vice president for research and publications at the Media Research Center, said he’s been tracking the “revolving door” of journalists going into government for the last three decades and said the number of prominent journalists joining Democratic administrations or campaigns has been consistently higher than those joining Republican administrations or campaigns.

“The claim that this occurs equally with Democratic and Republican administrations is bogus,” Baker told TheBlaze. “Tony Snow is the exception, and he never worked for a major mainstream media outlet, unlike Jay Carney.”

Baker has monitored TV networks, major news magazines and newspapers with a national reach and says the numbers are clear.

“I’ve been tracking the revolving door since the late Reagan years and the ratio is a good 3– or 4–to–1 toward journalists going to work for Democratic administrations and campaigns over any back-and-forth between journalism and Republican administrations,” Baker said. “As soon as Clinton came into office, a flood of journalists joined his team, to say nothing of his operatives who became major media figures [like ABC News anchor] George Stephanopoulos. And it happened again as soon as the Obama transition began in late 2008. And I’m sure we’ll soon see some Obama officials taking prominent journalism positions.”

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apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

Skoo said:

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

Click to expand...

Which journalist is a part of the Obama administration?

Click to expand...

‘Revolving Door’: More Than Two Dozen Journalists Have Joined the Obama Administration, but Is It Really Anything New?Mar. 29, 2015 2:41pm Fred Lucas
When she steps into her new role as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Shailagh Murray will become the latest in a long line of former journalists who have left their Fourth Estate roles to go work for the White House.
Murray, a former Washington Post and Wall Street journal reporter, first joined the Obama administration as Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director in 2011. On Tuesday, she was named as the replacement for longtime Obama hand Dan Pfeiffer, who departed the West Wing earlier this month.


Some 30 journalists have left their profession to go work in the Obama administration or on one of his presidential campaigns, according to the most recent tally by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group. One of the most visible jumps was by Jay Carney, a former Time reporter who went to work as Biden’s communications director — Murray’s old post — before ending up as White House press secretary.
While the number of journalists who have gone from covering President Barack Obama to working for him has garnered notice over the years, it’s not a brand-new phenomenon.

“It was much more common in the very earlier times,” said George Condon, White House correspondent for the National Journal and who’s working on a history of the White House press corps. “But it has always happened.”

A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson was so pleased with the reporting of Washington Post reporter Raymond W. Pullman that he appointed him District of Columbia police chief. Wilson appointed other journalists he liked to be D.C. commissioners, well before District home rule.


It’s also not unique to Democrats: George W. Bush press secretary Tony Snow ping-ponged between journalism and politics several times, starting his career as a journalist before going to work in the George H.W. Bush administration, then becoming the first host of “Fox News Sunday” in the 1990s, then returning to the White House to serve as press secretary in 2006.

Top George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes was a Texas TV reporter in the 1970s and early 1980s before leaving the news business to join the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign. Hughes joined up with George W. Bush first on his Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994, then became a top State Department and counselor to him during his White House tenure.

It wasn’t an immediate journalist-to-White House transition for Hughes, just as it wasn’t for David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who toiled in politics for some time before going to work for Obama.

Condon recalled that as a young reporter for the San Diego Union newspaper, editor Jerry Warren went to work for Richard Nixon as White House deputy press secretary before going back to journalism in 1975 after Watergate. Commentator Pat Buchanan left his job at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat to work as a speechwriter for Nixon and ended up a senior adviser to Nixon, Ford and Ronald Reagan.

In Bill Clinton administration, former U.S. News and World Report reporter Don Baer became White House communications director, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time editor, served as a deputy secretary of state.

Two legendary journalists held roles in Democratic administrations, Condon noted: CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and NBC newsman John Chancellor. Murrow went to work for the John F. Kennedy administration to run the United States Information Agency, which later became Voice of America. Chancellor ran Voice of America under Lyndon Johnson.

It was previously common for all press secretaries to come from the ranks of the press, Condon said, as 12 of the first 13 White House press secretaries were all once reporters. After the tumult of Watergate, just four of the next 18 press secretaries were former reporters.

While some would point to the new uptick in journalists going to work for the Obama administration as evidence of a certain coziness, Condon said he thinks it has more to do with economics.

“The number was up a little when Obama came in, but that’s because it was such a time of turmoil in journalism,” Condon said. “For newspapers, there were a lot of reporters out of work. So I’m not surprised it’s up under Obama.”

But Brent Baker, vice president for research and publications at the Media Research Center, said he’s been tracking the “revolving door” of journalists going into government for the last three decades and said the number of prominent journalists joining Democratic administrations or campaigns has been consistently higher than those joining Republican administrations or campaigns.

“The claim that this occurs equally with Democratic and Republican administrations is bogus,” Baker told TheBlaze. “Tony Snow is the exception, and he never worked for a major mainstream media outlet, unlike Jay Carney.”

Baker has monitored TV networks, major news magazines and newspapers with a national reach and says the numbers are clear.

“I’ve been tracking the revolving door since the late Reagan years and the ratio is a good 3– or 4–to–1 toward journalists going to work for Democratic administrations and campaigns over any back-and-forth between journalism and Republican administrations,” Baker said. “As soon as Clinton came into office, a flood of journalists joined his team, to say nothing of his operatives who became major media figures [like ABC News anchor] George Stephanopoulos. And it happened again as soon as the Obama transition began in late 2008. And I’m sure we’ll soon see some Obama officials taking prominent journalism positions.”

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Uhhhh, that's the opposite of "journalists who have been part of the Obama administration". That's members of the Obama administration who have been journalists. If I hire a dozen ex-cops to be investigators for my law firm (because I value how they do their investigations), it's not the same as saying there are dozens of cops who were part of my law firm, and it certainly doesn't mean that the cops still on the street will be biased in favor of my firm.

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jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

Maurile Tremblay said:

Republicans Who Fault the Media Show Their Bias

NOV 16, 2015 2:44 PM EST

By Cass R. Sunstein

For Republican presidential contenders challenged by the media, the go-to answer has become a claim of victimhood: You are biased against us. As Marco Rubio put it at the CNBC debate last month, "The Democrats have the ultimate super-PAC. It's called the mainstream media."

Are media outlets really biased against Republican candidates? One of the most careful studies, by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago, doesn't find much evidence of that. Its central conclusion is that readers have a strong preference for like-minded news -- and that newspapers tend to show a slant in a direction that is consistent with the preferences of their readers.

With respect to television broadcasters, the evidence remains ambiguous. But Republicans who think that the media are biased against them might want to consider a striking empirical finding: Whatever their beliefs, political partisans have long tended to see, and to complain loudly about, media bias.

In short, people are biased about bias.

For more than 20 years, researchers have identified a phenomenon called "hostile media perception," which means readers and viewers are inclined to think that journalists are biased against their particular point of view. People with strong convictions show a remarkably consistent tendency to conclude that the medias presentation is skewed against them. This is true whether the issue involves football teams, genetically modified organisms, labor disputes, animal rights, climate change or the Middle East.

Political partisans see bias even when news coverage really is neutral, according to Colorado State University's Cindy Christen and her co-authors. Rutgers University's Lauren Feldman finds that partisans show a kind of "bias against bias," seeing far less bias in opinionated news sources with which they already agree.

For presidential primaries, where activists are especially important, here's an especially important finding from Christen and her co-authors: As people become more involved with the particular topic, they become a lot more likely to complain about media bias. The more you know and the more you care, the more bias you're going to see.

Hostile media perception is nothing new, but on the Republican side it has been intensifying. Like-minded people, listening mostly to one another, tend to become both more confident and more extreme in their beliefs.

Within Republican echo chambers, claims of media bias have become so widespread that they are increasingly taken as gospel. (Democrats have their own echo chambers, of course, but they tend to involve policy issues, such as the minimum wage and the Keystone pipeline, rather the media.)

The empirical findings don't show that Republican claims about media bias are wrong. People who are predisposed to find bias might still be right that it exists. But the evidence of hostile media perception suggests that even if such a bias is real, the candidates are probably exaggerating it.

Is that a problem? As a matter of politics, it may be smart strategy to complain about media bias when pressed to respond to hard questions about climate change, immigration reform or the debt limit. But any such complaints are a disservice to the voters; they are evasive, even cowardly. At its best, American conservative thought represents a politics of ideas, not victimhood. It offers answers to substantive questions -- not attacks on those who ask them.

Click to expand...

Not a very compelling article, IMHO. The article itself demonstrates bias using terms like Republican echo chamber, which is something only a left-winger would do. Also concluding that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly? IMHO, the article is a perfect demonstration of the point it is trying to disprove.

Click to expand...

Way to prove the point of the article. The author refers to both Republican and Democratic "echo chambers", but is clearly a "left-winger" for mentioning the Republican version. The article says ducking questions by switching to complaints about the liberal media is cowardly, but that somehow becomes the liberal media saying that the conservative viewpoint is cowardly. With only two completely off the wall mis-characterizations, you can "prove" it's a liberal media piece. Amazing.

Click to expand...

IMHO, anyone who can't see a bias in media is blind. There is bias all over the place. Every media outlet has a bias towards a political party and towards a specific position on issues like abortion, global warming, taxes, social welfare, race issues, war, etc. If you look at the reporting on a particular topic and don't see how the source is bias, you really are not looking or more likely it confirms your bias and you are blind to it.

Click to expand...

Media bias is like biased referees in football. Everyone feels they favor the other side, and the worse you are, the more convinced you are that it's the biased referees who are the fault.

Click to expand...

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint.

Click to expand...

When viewed through the same lenses that decided a journalist who mentioned both Republican and Democratic echo chambers must be a left-winger for mentioning the Republican's, yeah I would guess so.

Click to expand...

If you think those were both mentioned in a fair and unbiased way, you are being disingenuous. He was excusing the Democratic Echo chamber claiming they were about policy thus insinuating a more dubious motive for Republicans..

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jon_mx said:

apalmer said:

jon_mx said:

Skoo said:

jon_mx said:

In journalism, it is about 90% who favor a liberal viewpoint. There are dozens of journalists who are or have been part of the Obama administration. Nothing like that has ever occurred in a republican administration. If you want a football analogy, it is like having 90% of referees who use to be ex-Bears football players. The Packers may have a legitimate beef.

Click to expand...

Which journalist is a part of the Obama administration?

Click to expand...

‘Revolving Door’: More Than Two Dozen Journalists Have Joined the Obama Administration, but Is It Really Anything New?Mar. 29, 2015 2:41pm Fred Lucas
When she steps into her new role as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, Shailagh Murray will become the latest in a long line of former journalists who have left their Fourth Estate roles to go work for the White House.
Murray, a former Washington Post and Wall Street journal reporter, first joined the Obama administration as Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director in 2011. On Tuesday, she was named as the replacement for longtime Obama hand Dan Pfeiffer, who departed the West Wing earlier this month.


Some 30 journalists have left their profession to go work in the Obama administration or on one of his presidential campaigns, according to the most recent tally by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group. One of the most visible jumps was by Jay Carney, a former Time reporter who went to work as Biden’s communications director — Murray’s old post — before ending up as White House press secretary.
While the number of journalists who have gone from covering President Barack Obama to working for him has garnered notice over the years, it’s not a brand-new phenomenon.

“It was much more common in the very earlier times,” said George Condon, White House correspondent for the National Journal and who’s working on a history of the White House press corps. “But it has always happened.”

A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson was so pleased with the reporting of Washington Post reporter Raymond W. Pullman that he appointed him District of Columbia police chief. Wilson appointed other journalists he liked to be D.C. commissioners, well before District home rule.


It’s also not unique to Democrats: George W. Bush press secretary Tony Snow ping-ponged between journalism and politics several times, starting his career as a journalist before going to work in the George H.W. Bush administration, then becoming the first host of “Fox News Sunday” in the 1990s, then returning to the White House to serve as press secretary in 2006.

Top George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes was a Texas TV reporter in the 1970s and early 1980s before leaving the news business to join the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign. Hughes joined up with George W. Bush first on his Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994, then became a top State Department and counselor to him during his White House tenure.

It wasn’t an immediate journalist-to-White House transition for Hughes, just as it wasn’t for David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who toiled in politics for some time before going to work for Obama.

Condon recalled that as a young reporter for the San Diego Union newspaper, editor Jerry Warren went to work for Richard Nixon as White House deputy press secretary before going back to journalism in 1975 after Watergate. Commentator Pat Buchanan left his job at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat to work as a speechwriter for Nixon and ended up a senior adviser to Nixon, Ford and Ronald Reagan.

In Bill Clinton administration, former U.S. News and World Report reporter Don Baer became White House communications director, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time editor, served as a deputy secretary of state.

Two legendary journalists held roles in Democratic administrations, Condon noted: CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and NBC newsman John Chancellor. Murrow went to work for the John F. Kennedy administration to run the United States Information Agency, which later became Voice of America. Chancellor ran Voice of America under Lyndon Johnson.

It was previously common for all press secretaries to come from the ranks of the press, Condon said, as 12 of the first 13 White House press secretaries were all once reporters. After the tumult of Watergate, just four of the next 18 press secretaries were former reporters.

While some would point to the new uptick in journalists going to work for the Obama administration as evidence of a certain coziness, Condon said he thinks it has more to do with economics.

“The number was up a little when Obama came in, but that’s because it was such a time of turmoil in journalism,” Condon said. “For newspapers, there were a lot of reporters out of work. So I’m not surprised it’s up under Obama.”

But Brent Baker, vice president for research and publications at the Media Research Center, said he’s been tracking the “revolving door” of journalists going into government for the last three decades and said the number of prominent journalists joining Democratic administrations or campaigns has been consistently higher than those joining Republican administrations or campaigns.

“The claim that this occurs equally with Democratic and Republican administrations is bogus,” Baker told TheBlaze. “Tony Snow is the exception, and he never worked for a major mainstream media outlet, unlike Jay Carney.”

Baker has monitored TV networks, major news magazines and newspapers with a national reach and says the numbers are clear.

“I’ve been tracking the revolving door since the late Reagan years and the ratio is a good 3– or 4–to–1 toward journalists going to work for Democratic administrations and campaigns over any back-and-forth between journalism and Republican administrations,” Baker said. “As soon as Clinton came into office, a flood of journalists joined his team, to say nothing of his operatives who became major media figures [like ABC News anchor] George Stephanopoulos. And it happened again as soon as the Obama transition began in late 2008. And I’m sure we’ll soon see some Obama officials taking prominent journalism positions.”

Click to expand...

Uhhhh, that's the opposite of "journalists who have been part of the Obama administration". That's members of the Obama administration who have been journalists. If I hire a dozen ex-cops to be investigators for my law firm (because I value how they do their investigations), it's not the same as saying there are dozens of cops who were part of my law firm, and it certainly doesn't mean that the cops still on the street will be biased in favor of my firm.

Click to expand...

When you put quotes around words, actually use the words I used. You conveniently left out words to attempt to make a false point.

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msommer said:

No need to argue apalmer, it is evident that liberal media bias is exponentially in the rivers

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Eminence said:

I think people are starting to wise up to the bias. I think it's a generational thing. This generation grew up where not everybody had the same rights, right? So now, there's nobody being discriminated against too badly and the Liberals seem oversensitive and politically correct.

Young people's view of liberals is going to change drastically because there is no "evil" holding anybody down. If that makes any sense, because they're achieved a few of their goals, they have less strength. There's no machine to rage against anymore, just a lot of politically correct bs to overreact about.

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Scoresman said:

Millennials like Bernie Sanders because Millennials like and expect free handouts and Bernie wants to hand them this stuff for free*

*not free for the rest of us

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Ilov80s said:

My only point was that Em is wrong. 

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Ilov80s said:

Is that why Bernie Sanders has the highest approval rating and is getting the strongest support of any candidate from Millennials? Or by young people, do you mean like toddlers?

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Scoresman said:

Millennials like Bernie Sanders because Millennials like and expect free handouts and Bernie wants to hand them this stuff for free*

*not free for the rest of us

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Eminence said:

Also, if you noticed I used the verbiage:

"I think people are starting to wise up to the bias. I think it's a generational thing."

and

"Young people's view of liberals is going to change drastically because there is no "evil" holding anybody down."

As in, it's a prediction of what is going to happen not an observation.  Didn't know you can see into the future, bruh.

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Eminence said:

Is that why Bernie Sanders is getting killed at the polls?

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Ilov80s said:

Didn't know you saw the future either, brah. 

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Ilov80s said:

Not with millenials. 

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Mario Kart said:

Some people will just never be happy. Bias is what you make of it. There is very little if any bias in media. People will look for it even when its not there and than complain about it to others even when they didn't find any. Just another something for people to complain about because their supposed point of view was not mentioned at a certain time.

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Eminence said:

Is that why Bernie Sanders is getting killed at the polls?

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Mario Kart said:

Some people will just never be happy. Bias is what you make of it. There is very little if any bias in media. People will look for it even when its not there and than complain about it to others even when they didn't find any. Just another something for people to complain about because their supposed point of view was not mentioned at a certain time.

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Mario Kart said:

Some people will just never be happy. Bias is what you make of it. There is very little if any bias in media. People will look for it even when its not there and than complain about it to others even when they didn't find any. Just another something for people to complain about because their supposed point of view was not mentioned at a certain time.

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Pots said:

People actually question whether or not Fox News is conservative bias and most every other network/media is liberal bias?

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Walking Boot said:

So today, the Boston Globe openly resorted to making up fictional news about Donald Trump. That's the point liberal media bias has reached. 

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Walking Boot said:

So today, the Boston Globe openly resorted to making up fictional news about Donald Trump. That's the point liberal media bias has reached. 

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Layoffs hit Salon


Layoffs hit digital news site Salon today, POLITICO has learned.

A Salon spokeswoman said that six staffers were affected by the layoffs. Sources close to the company said that assistant managing editor Ruth Henrich and life editor Kim Brooks were among them.

Henrich and Brooks could not be reached for comment.

Henrich had been at the company since the late 1990s. Joan Walsh, Salon's former editor in chief, told POLITICO that Henrich was "the heart and soul of Salon for the last 18 years."

"She saved our asses from so many mistakes and so much bad judgment," Walsh added.

In a statement, Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers said that the layoffs were due to budget cuts.

"Salon Media Group took steps that we believe will put the company on a stronger path forward," Jeffers said. "We made the difficult decision to reduce our staff, in addition to other budgetary cuts. We hope these steps will move us in the direction of profitability and align us more closely with our strategy."

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Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users.

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Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” said the former curator. “Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.”

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sho nuff said:

If Facebook is your source for news...you are an idiot.

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Walking Boot said:

Twitter, Google, and Facebook should all be taken over by the government and regulated like utilities.

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Higgs said:

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

Pretty clear now that the two main social networking sites, twitter and Facebook, are both heavily left leaning.  Unfortunately the only thing I see coming down the road to rectify the situation is alternative sites for Conservatives, just like what happened with the media.  America is becoming more and more divided by the day.

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Higgs said:

Once again you miss the point.  Amazing.  You're consistent at least.

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Walking Boot said:

Twitter, Google, and Facebook should all be taken over by the government and regulated like utilities. They're no different from the electric company or the phone company.

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sho nuff said:

The point that you complain a lot?  i got that.

Facebook is not the news media...neither is twitter.

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Walking Boot said:

Twitter, Google, and Facebook should all be taken over by the government and regulated like utilities. They're no different from the electric company or the phone company.

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SaintsInDome2006 said:

I think it's arguable sites like those, and even FBGs, should be moderated in a content neutral fashion, with maybe some extreme exceptions, because they do serve a function as a public forum.

eta - However in reality newspaper editors and journalists have been doing this for years anyway.

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