Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers 426
The AP is reporting that a senator has introduced legislation that would allow struggling newspapers to operate as nonprofits, similar to the way public broadcasting works. "[Sen. Benjamin] Cardin [D-Md.] introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to choose tax-exempt status. They would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible. Cardin said in a statement that the bill is aimed at preserving local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. ... The head of the newspaper industry's trade group called the bill a positive step."
On the face of it... (Score:2)
Mandated not-for-profit media sources make for better reporting: discuss.
Re:On the face of it... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is, the vast majority of newspapers are owned by giant conglomerates. Gannett and McClatchy just going to say, "Oh hey, lets dissolve!"? Don't think the CEO's with their 7 figure salaries are gonna get behind that one.
Anyway, even the papers that are already non-profit are taking it in the ass. Look at St. Pete. The industry has to successfully make a revenue transition from 1 medium to another without going bankrupt in the process, and it doesn't help that the web sucks for revenue. Look at all these huge, popular web 2.0 services that still haven't found a way to make a profit. The Ad revenue pie is the same size, but way too many people want a piece, and you don't get that natural geographic advantage that newspapers have traditionally enjoyed.
Yes, And After That Cursory Approval? (Score:2)
The so-called "fourth estate" is still irrelevant.
You've *still* got media access tightly controlled in most government.
You've heard of National Public Radio right? They are non-profit get their content from the same sources, report it with about the same amount of complicity as any other news source.
Note, I am not laying all blame on newspapers. The consumer is happily paying for half-truths, advertising disguised as news, and 'man bites dog' stories.
This is another corporate welfare project.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then in the next statement you assume that 'large contributors' would be stupid enough to support something that you are insinuating is going to be ignored ("just needs to please the few large contributors").
That is self-contradictory and tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theory thinking at best. (That, or I you were not very clea
1st Amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
So in the US, we have the 1st Amendment which says this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ..."
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
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I am not 100% sure on this, but don't churches and other nonprofits have to avoid explicit endorsements too to retain their nonprofit status?
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Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happens when the government decides a newspaper is a little too biased in their reporting and claim that it's endorsing another candidate? Will the press have to censor themselves to avoid appearing like an endorsement?
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I'd be interested in how it applied to the whole Op-Ed part of the paper. That stuff isn't remotely factual, and it's very clearly listed as "Opinion" right there in the name. That's where the endorsements come from: the e-board brings in all the candidates (if it can) and interviews them, and then makes a recommendation.
Anyway, the whole idea of bias is impossible to define. Everyone thinks a paper is biased if it doesn't reflect their personal world view. I've seen liberals and conservatives up in arms ab
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The press won't have to censor itself any more than other nonprofits who deal with government issues. Its not like this is completely uncharted legal water - precedent does exist regarding what sorts of statements a nonprofit can make without those statements constituting an explicit endorsement of a candidate.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most tax-exempt nonprofits that deal with government issues don't have to censor themselves at all, only charities (to which donations are tax-deductible for the donor) have to do that. Most tax-exempt nonprofits aren't prohibited from endorsing candidates, and many are quite active in doing so (e.g., the Sierra Club and the NRA, among many others, as nonprofits organizations that are tax-exempt under 26 U.
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The bigger reason for that is that the Catholic Church contains about the same distribution of political perspectives as the public at large, and even the Catholic heirarchy is only slightly less diverse.
Plus, the Catholic Church isn't, in the last couple centuries, quite as vigorous about the public use of the "ban hammer" as it once was, perhaps having learned, through seve
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Nonprofit: Tax-exempt v. tax-deductible-for-donors (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonprofit isn't a single status. Certain nonprofits to which donations are tax-deductible for the donor have to avoid "substantial involvement" in politics, including explicit endorsements, to retain that particular status (Particularly, 501(c)(3) organizations, so called because their tax exemption is established in 26 U.S.C. sec. 501(c)(3)). When the group of people who make up a 501(c)(3) want to act collectively politically, they typically set up separate organizations which are also tax-exempt nonprofits, but to which donations are not tax-deductible for the donor, which can be substantially involved in politics.
Most tax-exempt nonprofits are not restricted in their political involvement at all. See, generally, 26 U.S.C. sec. 501 [excluding 501(c)(3)].
Furthermore, with regard to newspapers, any newspaper which chose to become a nonprofit (i.e., not to be operated for the benefit of private owners/shareholders) could do so now and become a 501(c)(3) now with the restrictions that would be imposed by this bill. So I don't see how this really provides any new options.
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It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Currently, official religious organizations have tax except status in the USA.
Non-official or small religions ( or cults) often have problem with the IRS because they can't get official recognition (sometimes).
Though, I think Scientology has tax-except status so YMMV.
So with your logic, the government is giving advantages to major religions over minor religions because of tax reason
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So with your logic, the government is giving advantages to major religions over minor religions because of tax reasons.
I think that's correct. During the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, I think some churches were going to intentionally endorse candidates, to force the IRS into court on the matter so the law could be invalidated.
I'm not sure whatever happened with that, but I suspect the IRS avoided going after those churches. For what reason, I don't know.
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You don't need to make an official endorsement to show a bias toward one side or the other.
I think this actually fosters more discussion by allowing more voices in a particular market. If there is only one large newspaper spewing out it's story, then you can't get counterpoints from other papers. I think this bill would actually allow people to keep their voices by not letting finances silence them.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with you, but there's already a lot of precedent for this.
For instance, churches are already tax exempt. (Apparent First Amendment violation number one.) But they are legally prohibited from making political endorsements, or risk losing their tax exempt status. (Apparent First Amendment violation number two.) As with all nonprofits organizations.
A lot would have to change for this to be considered unconstitutional.
Churches have already argued this and lost (Score:2)
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
The same basic argument has already been made by churches many times [washingtonpost.com]. The answer by the Supreme Court has always been, "Endorse anyone you want, just don't expect the Federal government to subsidize it with a tax expenditure [c-span.org]." Seems like a reasonable outcome to me.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
Not really, because the assumption is that everyone deserves to be taxed. Not being taxed is the exception - it's a special privilege, and if you want that status, you are required to do certain things.
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's still a stupid idea. Reporting of news is always going to be slanted one way or another. It's just as easy to not report news that hurts your candidate as it is to only report news that hurts your candidate's opponent.
Besides, it's not taxes that are hurting the newspapers. It is that no one wants to wait until tomorrow to read something that is already old news on the web.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also the quality of the reporting has gone to shit (in Denmark).
Back in the olden days in the before time before internet, becoming a journalist was extremely tough (here in Denmark), you had to have a high average in high school and getting through journalism "school" was tough. Back then reporters could spell their own name without looking it up, they could ask intelligent questions rather than just writing down whatever their subject was saying.
These days you have to look hard to find a single article th
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose you are the Salt Lake Tribune, and you want to continue as a regular newspaper, in which event you will be taxed. And suppose that your competitor, the Deseret News or whatever, chooses tax-exempt status and hence gets a 20% 'reward'.
Do you think you'll be able to compete with that for long? How are you able to believe that in this situation, the government is "not punishing" your Salt Lake Tribune?
There is no way to turn the sow's ear of preferential tax breaks into a silk purse of "fair economic controls" or "level playing field" or "reward Paul without punishing Peter".
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just Newspapers?
Why not TV?
Blogs?
Magazines?
What is the Press these days?
I am all for the press not endorsing candidates but I just don't see that happening.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Not really.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.journalism.newspapers/browse_thread/thread/7d20a09702df3dc8 [google.com]
Although his bill would expressly permit nonprofits to publish newspapers, there is nothing under current law to prevent them from doing so. [...] The only major substantive change in the Cardin bill is a provision that would allow nonprofit newspapers to sell commercial ad space free of charge, provided that at least as much space is allotted for editorial content
as for ads.
There are already non-profit news organizations that get along just fine.
And nothing I've read contradicts what that google groups posting says.
The only thing that isn't 100% clear, to me, is whether the current non-profit newspapers operate under Section 501(c)3 of the IRS tax code (which is what everyone is so scared of & the google groups post elaborates on) or if they operate under some other fr
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Not only that, but why are we trying to resuscitate the dying corpse of print media? If you got 10-20 min. This is a really great article [shirky.com] on this subject. Elevator speech of the article: We don't need newspapers, we need journalism. There are opportunities to be had by these businesses, but they are unwilling to adapt and embrace them. **AA easily fit this same situation.
Sooo... (Score:2)
Would that make any capital gains on your shares in a newspaper tax exempt as well?
Or would any newspaper apply for non-profit status have to buy all their public shares and go private?
Either way, I don't think Murdoch would make his papers non-political.
Great (Score:5, Informative)
Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.
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There should be no nonprofits (Score:2)
Indivuduals should be equal in the eyes of the law. No special groups, no nonprofits. The "churches" already scam this all way too much.
If you want a low tax, go with this:
http://www.apttax.com/ [apttax.com]
Loophole are just avenues of abuse by which the well structured, well-to-do (read: corporations) with lawyers get away with paying less than their fair share.
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Indivuduals should be equal in the eyes of the law. No special groups, no nonprofits. The "churches" already scam this all way too much.
The constitution specifically was clearly written for tax exceptions for these matters.
In fact if you wanted to legally avoid taxes you could invest in state Municipal funds because the constitution specifically says the Federal government cannot tax state funds directly. Also, they had a big hoo-doo back in the 1790's over this matter and the consensus (with the founding f
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Wow, I had never heard of this before. Thanks for the link.
-Rick
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If the tax system was fair in the first place, no loopholes would be needed. Income tax is really unlawful. It punishes productivity and penalizes saving.
First and third sentences are debateable. The second sentence is, as far as I understand, untrue as stated, according to Article 1, section 8, clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America [justia.com].
You might argue that the income tax is immoral, unconscionable, or unfair, but it appears to be pretty darn legal in the US.
Re:There should be no nonprofits (Score:4, Insightful)
If the tax system was fair in the first place, no loopholes would be needed. Income tax is really unlawful. It punishes productivity and penalizes saving.
Umm... Arguably, without taxes and nothing backing the US dollar, inflation would spiral out of control and that would really punish savers.
Arguably, income tax is preferable over spending tax, because if you reward saving too much you end up with a deflationary death spiral which is what caused the great depression and would still punish people who saved their money because they'd probably be unemployed and have to spend those savings.
Good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
i like it (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is a really great idea. It forces them to be a little less biased, and it keeps well-written articles available. The natural beauty of print is that it's costly to publish, compared to digitally. This tends to force the writing to be polished, which online articles, blogs specifically, never achieve. There's just something nice about reading an article someone else has proofread before you. It's jarring to read blogs that have foregone this, as you tend to notice the little grammatical mistakes everywhere. Or worse, it's syntactically correct, but semantically rubbish.
Like Public Broadcasting? (Score:3, Funny)
You mean we can look forward to having an entire week's worth of issues, once a quarter, be full of nothing but spots begging for donations? Yeah, that'll make subscription rates soar!
What's preventing them them from doing this now? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is my first thought - what is preventing them from doing this right now?
There is noting that says you can't incorporate a "business" as a non-profit, or rather nothing prevents a non-profit from generating revenue. One of the major disadvantages is that since you don't have profit, it's hard to have investors, which makes getting capital for expansion harder.
So to me the most important question is what does this bill allow the newspaper companies to do that a normal non-profit couldn't and is that real
BS (Score:3, Insightful)
That's bullshit, if a news organization cannot survive in the market it doesn't deserve to exist. We don't need another NPR-style organization. News is not Sesame St. for adults. The papers are facing the 21st century with a 19th century technology, WHAT DID THEY THINK WAS GONNA HAPPEN? Meanwhile, New York Times still makes me laugh every time someone links to it and it asks for registration, BS, I close the window right there. Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Drudge and news should never appear in the same sentence.
The fact that Drudge and the Huffinton post and other piles of shit like them are what passes for Web journalism, is the reason so many people are worried about the demise of the traditional newspaper.
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The "traditional newspaper" is printout of an AP wire feed, with a "Local" section that is written by four year olds trying to be a part of the politics, not report on them.
Good riddance.
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And the AP is what? You know that 95% of the AP content comes from member newspapers right? Nice circular logic there.
I'm sorry your local rag sucks the pole, but that's not a good basis for condemning the entire industry.
Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
In case you didn't notice, Drudge and his host of imitators are news aggregators, not reporters. The stories they link too have to come from somewhere. If all the old line, stale, MSM news outlets that people love to bitch about closed up shop, the blogosphere would have precious little to do.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're aware that modern newspapers are news aggregators just like Drudge, adding little more than local flavor, etc.
To a large degree, this is true -- which is one of the main reasons they're in trouble. The way for papers to survive is not for them to become more like blogs, but less so. My problem is with the idea that the line I quoted (your words, "Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die") provides a model for newspapers or other organizations which want to do original reporting in this century
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Do the same for the "big three" (Score:2)
Doing this for the big three would also save them. Money would be generated from taxes on selling things like gasoline and servicing these cars/trucks at dealerships.
I wonder for how long these companies can last given that for GM, which owned almost 75% of the market, has seen share dwindling to less then one-third. Sad indeed.
Newspapers should die (Score:2)
They've been replaced by newswebsites, just the same as the grass-eating horse was replaced by a gasoline-eating engine. There's no point to keeping around old, inefficient, and environmentally-damaging papers when the web can fulfill the same role.
In fact my local paper just started a website that looks identical to the old paper-based product, but with the advantage of (1) not killing trees (2) not burning millions of gallons for delivery trucks (3) early delivery at 2pm instead of waiting til 6pm, and (
The best part of Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail. If the newspapers can't fund themselves legitimately through voluntary commerce, like any other business, they need to fail, as they deserve.
With tax-exempt status, they exists solely at the mercy of government legislation. What are the chances they will criticize the government that grants them favored status?
This is a recipe for State control of news dissemination.
Re:The best part of Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail.
If the bailouts Congress has been handing out so freely haven't convinced you that we aren't really in a capitalistic society any more, nothing ever will. We're running an unholy union of capitalism and socialism right now, and I really wish we'd pick one of the two and stick with it. As it is, we get the drawbacks of both, and the benefits of neither.
They may not be able to make political endorsement (Score:3, Insightful)
but they surely will still have their respective slants on stories, which political cartoons they carry, and so on.
No tax on losses and independence (Score:2, Interesting)
Just between us, are you comfortable with a newspaper's independence if government officials and bureaucrats can threaten their tax-exempt status?
Couple this with the return of the fairness doctrine, and you have a recipe for an Orwellian experience.
Considering costs... (Score:5, Interesting)
The two primary costs of operating a newspaper are (a) paying the reporters, and (b) printing papers. We all know subscriptions are down and that the medium is evolving so that only the largest national papers can afford to print copies. Also, readership in local areas doesn't really demand printed copies as much as they want access to the information. For example, one thing local reporters cover is town council meetings and police reports. Thanks largely to digital search mechanisms, it's way easier to grab this information from the pages of a reputable townie news service website than to sift through a printed paper.
So, I see the costs of printing a newspaper disappearing over the years and that leaves only the cost of paying reporters. My question is... what's to stop the small newspapers from firing the majority of their staff and operating like Internet newspapers with self-moderated volunteer staffs? All it'd take is to deploy Slashcode, buy-in from town administrators and business owners, and a critical mass of town residents to begin operating a near-free town news service.
Meanwhile, I see "tradition newspapers" as an occupation disappearing, regardless of tax exempt status or not.
And look at it this way... the newspaper profit model has been largely based on ad-revenue for so long that a simple "local" implementation of Craigslist could easily facilitate job postings, garage sales, and local advertising so that tiny, tiny charges for these would pay the small staff that's needed to maintain the hardware and post the most interesting stories on the mainpage.
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So how come in every newspaper I read about a subject I have personal, first hand knowledge about, they get it completely wrong? I have had the experience of being completely misquoted in a newspaper article, where something I said was completely changed (and I knew I was speaking to a reporter, and I had approx. 8 witnesses who all agreed I was misquoted) and a complaint to the editor didn't even get a retraction. Whenever I see a news article in my local paper about technology or science, it is complete
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Only hindering the inevidible. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, the online news services are all leaching off the traditional media for their content.
I'm actually looking forward with mild amusement to the panic when the flow of content from the big boys ceases.
Tax Breaks for Corporate Media (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably the goal is to preserve newspapers as a necessary source of information gathering. The idea is that in the age of the internet, we face a free-rider problem and fundamental news gathering is less profitable. Ostensibly journalists are performing a public service.
But how well this proposed solution will address the real problem? There are lots of right-wing newspapers that are not profitable but they have dedicated corporate sponsors so they keep operating. Consider the Washington Times, or the Pittsburgh Tribune. If we let newspapers be non-profits we are giving a huge tax-break to Richard Mellon Scaife, and Rupert Murdoch, and Sun Myung Moon. All of the money these guy pump into their right-wing propaganda machines will be tax-deductible.
I want to save newspapers too, but this proposal will incentivize more propaganda than it will actual news.
Not that bad of an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Desperation effort (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to realize how desperate the newspaper industry has become. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed their last paper edition last week. They're just a web site now, and they distribute their news via Twitter. That's how far down they've come. The Detroit Free Press only prints on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday now. The San Francisco Chronicle may go next.
And those were once Great Metropolitan Dailies. Little papers go under every day.
Nothing is really replacing them. Blogs are mostly punditry; few have paid reporters. If anything, the future may be TV news presented via the Web. TV news has historically been time-limited, but that's not a Web problem.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is where all the problem is, really.
Its the dailies, which have largely lost their local character by merging into giant national media empires, slashed local staffs, and turned into nothing but outlets for (1) wire stories that are available in every news outlet, on the web, and through TV news, (2) syndicated content that, again, is available equally everywhere, including often on the web for free, etc. Surprisingly enough, with most of their content t
Re:Desperation effort (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they never should have been dailies in the first place? Perhaps the fact that they are now only printing when there is enough there to print is a GOOD THING. Now they aren't wasting several thousands of trees daily to print fluff that no one actually gave a flying fuck about in the first place other than the person who wrote it and the company that is trying to justify to people why the need to buy a daily subscription.
There really isn't THAT much news in the world that people NEED to know about, even less that people care about, far less still that people will actually bother to read about.
You seem to think that the newspapers were 'needed' before and 'needed to have daily issues'. I suggest that the need was far less than you think and was nothing more than a way for them to take in more advertising and subscription revenue.
They are failing for the same reason the record industry is. They were pushing bullshit product that people didn't actually want for more than people wanted to spend, but there were basically no alternatives. Newspapers were virtual monopolies in most towns, only larger ones had multiples. Something else came along and people realized they didn't have to subscribe that that bullshit monopoly anymore, now rather than adapt and cut their ridiculous costs and move on to the next stage, they are whining and dieing.
Its not because we don't need/want the news. Its because the people running these businesses and the employees working for them are incapable of changing. The lack of ability to change to your environment means you either have to move to a different environment or you die. The employees at newspapers that can adapt will move on. The editors, reports and management that can't, will die with their newspaper.
Endowments (Score:3, Interesting)
David Swensen and Michael Schmidt proposed [nytimes.com] that newspapers simply receive endowments and operate off the interest, insulating them from commercial pressures and conflicts of interest. I think that's a fantastic idea, especially in conjunction with legal nonprofit status for newspapers.
Did people lament the end of the town crier too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Newspapers are largely full of things I don't care about and things that I don't understand why they even have like coverage of national sporting events. Aren't the multiple ESPNs and Fox Sports channels and websites enough? Why do newspapers have horoscopes? Why do they have comic strips that haven't been funny for 20+ years?
If newspapers want to survive they need to figure out what they do better than any other medium. Coverage of what the news channels talked about yesterday isn't one of them.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth. The reporters allow their own biases to sneak-into the articles. Not on purpose of course, but just as a natural consequence of being human. For example if you asked me to report on the Democratic Convention, it would probably be very negative since I don't like big-government parties. Vice-versa if I did a Libertarian Convention article, it would probably end up being a fluff piece. It's just natural bias.
I prefer reporters be honest about their views, even if those views are slanted, rather than pretend to be unbiased, which is a falsehood. Nobody is unbiased.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Omission is not always bias (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there? If you want a story on it, it should be a SEPARATE story (or even editoral) and thus shouldn't be a part of the general convention coverage article. Thus omission isn't bias, it's proper reporting.
By your argument, failing to report the tin-foil hat conspiracy version of stories is biased omission. But what is the cutoff? Presenting "both sides of the story" isn't the basis of unbiased reporting, it is the basis of turning editorials into reporting when it should be left to the opinion pages. I don't need to read the conservative counter to a Democrat's speech in an article about the speech. That counterspeech should be its own story or in the OP-ED.
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there?
Because generally speaking, the reporting about the RNC is /certain/ to mention them. That's where bias leaks in, as GP stated - not so much in what is said, but what is left unsaid.
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:5, Informative)
Alicia Shepard, ombudsman at NPR, has a lengthy article and attached PDF with charts over here [npr.org]. The main article is about NPR and campaign coverage, but they have something to say about the "general" news bias as well, and not just about themselves; an extract:
Timothy Groseclose is a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also studies media bias. He and another professor published a study in 2005 that concluded that 18 of the 20 major media outlets studied (including NPR) were left of center, as compared to the average U.S. voter. Only Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume and The Washington Times scored to the right of the average U.S. voter. (Results are on P. 22 of PDF.)
"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," said Groseclose. "It had the same scores as Time, Newsweek and was slightly less liberal than the Washington Post and well to the right of the New York Times and CBS Evening News. One of the surprising findings is that NPR is not as left as everyone says it is."
NPR got a score of 66.3, with 50 being centrist and 100 being most liberal. The Wall Street Journal's news pages (not the well-known conservative editorial pages) got an 85.1 and The New York Times and CBS each got a 73.7.
Does this mean that news organizations are, on average, to the left of the general public, or does it mean that we've been sold the idea that they're lefties, and we see them through that lens, and this shows up when asked about bias? That's another matter.
Can we separate the concepts of coverage and quality? I would generally prefer to listen to something that sounds reasoned and equitable, though it may have a left-leaning bias, than listen to something clearly spewing, conspiratorial, and accusatory that has a balancing right-leaning bias. I care less about the bias than the approach to the news, to the guests, to the context.
Re:Omission is not always bias (Score:5, Insightful)
An unbiased news report might look like this:
Politician A today unveiled his plans for [some program]. The major parts of this program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week.
A biased new article is more like this:
Politician A, whose approval ratings are at record lows, today unveiled his plans for [some program], which has been is blasted by [some hyperventilating critic] as [some affront to any number of fringe groups] . The major parts of this [controversial] program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week but faces widespread opposition by [a minority of lunatics].
Note that there would generally be several paragraphs detailing the supposed failings of the three parts and featuring criticism from various people who have not even seen the legislation.
I suspect that if you are paying attention, you will notice that articles of the latter nature are more prevalent in the media today than.
I care less about the bias than the approach to the news, to the guests, to the context.
So you are OK with the condescending, arrogant attitudes that are typical of NPR?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree entirely. There seems to be a bias on /. that scientists are some kind of creative robot, where it's all about the facts and no bias or preconceptions creep in. People who say as much get flamed for questioning the objectivity of scientists. I suppose they think they're some different kind of creature than what the rest of us humans are.
Sure, bias can creep in, but objectivity can be applied. You may not achieve perfect balance and have the most correct interpretation of the event in question, b
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News.
Even if it is a mostly unattainable goal, it's better to try and deliver an unbiased product.
I do admit, it'd be nice if a reporter would be open about their bias right from the start. The nice thing about the web (if any papers transitioned to it correctly, which, of course, none have) is that you could make that sort of information available in a reporters bio. Trusting your news source is important; nobody has time to fact check all their news.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Funny)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News.
Or the Economist. Bias is OK as long as you acknowledge it - does Fox still claim to be fair and balanced?
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever read The Economist ? These guys are economic conservative, and social liberals. Pretty much the opposite of Fox News: they advocate gay marriage, abortion...
I find in particular that they try to separate facts from opinions, and to be reasonably pragmatic.
Sample of articles for this week:
Mr. Obama's first 2 months: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13362078 [economist.com]
Religious people and death: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13315834 [economist.com]
Funding impacting a research paper: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13361480 [economist.com]
Online dating and the crisis: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13381506 [economist.com]
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News, or CNN, or MSNBC, or Pravda.
Fixed that for you. Bias doesn't just swing to the right. A major complaint of a lot of people is that most of the media bias seems to be to the left.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't resist: that's because reality has a well-known liberal bias. ;)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which facts? Facts according to whom?
All media choose to include certain facts, and exclude other facts.
Here is a good example of media bias. Next time someone gets into trouble with the law, pay attention. The news headline will say "Prominent Republican So and so was caught ______ " while if it is a Democrat you might see "So and so under suspicion of _______". The bias is there, because facts are emphasized or de-emphasized according to the bias.
It is up to you to realize that such things happen all the
Bias (Score:3, Informative)
Does CNN management send memos to their reporters with instructions like "His [Bush's] political courage and tactical cunning ar[e] [wo]rth noting in our reporting through the day"? Memos that a former employee describes as "talking points instructing us what the themes are supposed to be, and God help you if you stray"?
If so, I promise to despise them. If not, then Fox is a different kind of organization than CNN, not a differently biased one of the same kind.
You can be biased and still be honest. You can
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe instead of shooting your mouth off you can make the observation that liberals and conservatives think the media is biased against their respective positions. Both sides dutifully drink the Kool Aid served up to them by whomever they consider a trustworthy source.
There is liberal and conservative bias, predominantly on cable news, but it most often is in the form of very vocal editorial (O'Reilly, Olberman, etc.) rather than true journalism. Perhaps what we are seeing is the polarizing effect of editor
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
When everyone else in the world seems to have turned upside down, maybe it's time to look at your own orientation.
Truthfully, until the internet came along, we used to get most of our daily news filtered through some reporter and editor. Today, we can read the federal register, congressional web sites, get blogs from people in the middle of a war zone, and so on.
This is just like all the problems we're having with the RIAA, MPAA and others. Distributors do not have a monopoly on the news any more and they're losing out to people who want to get their information, movies, music, entertainment or whatever from the source.
I won't argue whether "the media" is biased or not. It's rapidly becoming irrelevant. And now my very own Senator Ben Cardin wants to prop them up with my tax dollars.
I have a better idea: let them die a normal, free-market death.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people are Chinese. A fair old number are Indian. HTH.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No thanks, I'd rather my media doesn't treat me like I lack the ability to come up with my own conclusions.
My favorite is, "What happened (was discovered, almost happened) today, and why you should be scared." At least I know what they're trying to sell.
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
MSNBC and HNN have nearly the same format, a morning variety show with varied opinion, but definitely not a "just news" program, some number of hours of news readers and then opinion guys/gals for primetime.
Nobody from Fox News would ever claim that O'Reilly is a news man (well he might, who knows? His program clearly isn't a news program though, and even he'd say that) same with MSNBC, Olberman nas been very outspoken on the fact that's he's paid to give his opinion, that's the point of his show, and as such, it's not a news program. It was MSNBC that really botched it over the convention coverage and tried to use the prime-time opinion line up for news.
Bottom line though, and it affects papers too, people tend to like to read opinions and editorials and they seem to like to watch it more than they like real news. You non-profit either the papers or the broadcast news and you probably have to dump them. There is probably a greater problem here if you take a step back; ABC,NBC, and CBS have been scaling back news for decades, they're basically down to a 30 minute evening news broadcast and that's about it without some sort of entertainment/investigative journalism spin. More people want to watch Jeopardy than "The News." Making papers non-profit might be a good way to make them cover more news and to protect them a little bit, but it remains unclear to me that people want to actually read news, they kind of like how they get to pick the kinds of "news" they can read or watch on their own and listen to the bias.
Even the financial news has become a sham, and if there is ever something you should be able to report on without bias, it's the markets. They do more cheerleading than real news. They're poopooing Jon Stewart's criticism and he's the wrong messenger but his points are 100% valid. Honestly, I think a whole lot fewer people watch and you can hardly run a 24 network with real news, let alone the dozen or so that we've got. It's hard to put the horse back in the barn.
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, their slogan is "Fair and Balanced." I admit they're not trying to be unbiased, but they are definitely trying to pretend like they're unbiased, which is the worst of all worlds.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think advertising your bias works either. People who don't like your bias won't read your article, even if you did some excellent work.
What's missing is reading (and listening) with a grain of salt. Trusting news because it came from The Paper, or A Scientist, or A Doctor. Credentials are just there to stand out amidst the riff raff. They may still be complete idiots.
You may not like the DNC, and will obviously have a bias going in but presumably while you will have a critical eye you are going to b
Re:What a good idea (Score:4, Informative)
The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
Sounds surprising right? The report eventually concludes to with that while most media leans left of center, they are almost all more moderate in comparison to our politicians.
And no offense but I take it you are not a reporter. The fact that you would be unable to provide an unbiased article on the DNC does not indicate that people trained in journalism would be unable to do the same. The ability to put aside personal beliefs is a skill that is stronger in some compared to others. Lawyers do it everyday for instance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth."
Which is exactly why we don't want the government doing the press any favors. It's going to be hard to get anything critical about the government from press that needs government favors to survive.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Reporter bias, editor bias, assignment bias, publisher bias. Take your choice.
The only people not biased are people that don't have any background in the subject. And they are worthless too, since they don't understand what they are seeing and hearing.
Which leads us to how Entertainment Tonight covers political campaigns. Or maybe thats ABCNNBCBS Faux sensati-celebri-news. Hard to tell anymore.
Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the more diverse sources of reporting there are, the better. Readers can read different reports which focus on different details and make up their own minds based on the whole. Unless of course they want to be spoon-fed a headline and two-sentence summary and sound bite of outrage, then they can watch Fox News.
Incidentally I work as a newspaper reporter, and I think this senator's idea is great. So I am clearly declaring my bias.
If diverse sources of reporting are conglomerated into fewer and f
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that the path to a "somewhat more balanced media" rides right though my local newspaper collapsing and falling into oblivion. Of course, I'm speaking of the San Francisco Chronicle, and they are collapsing.
Balanced media (Score:5, Insightful)
The newspapers are not making money now, so having their advertising and subscription revenues tax exempt won't matter. The big difference would be they'd be able to get tax deductible donations.
Why do you think soliciting donations will make the media more balanced? As the mayor of Corruptville, I of course realize that we need balanced reporting in our fair town. I will even donate some of my embezzled funds towards that end - as long as the newspaper doesn't tell anybody about my embezzlement.
Re:Balanced media (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, though, the one major example I have of donation supported media (National Public Radio) is remarkably balanced, especially in it its coverage of the ongoing economic troubles. At the very least they've not been more unbalanced in any direction than privately funded media.
Re:Balanced media (Score:5, Informative)
NPR is national, so it is relatively easy to keep tabs on and has to cater to a large and diverse audience to keep in the donations.
A local newspaper is a lot smaller, and will only attract donations from rich people in that town - so it has a much more pronounced bias in its donors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How will this make the media "more balanced?"
Non-profit status for newspapers (that now can't have a political view) is simply a tax on newspapers that do. This seems like a limit on free speech along the lines of the fairness doctrine.
This is further complicated by the fact that no journalist seems to believe that they are capable of bias.
Re: (Score:2)
It removes them from the control of vested interests who would have them drum up artificial hysteria about trivial things rather than report the news.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We've actually had that for a while now. [nea.gov]
Someone just forgot to tell the suits that they couldn't really commoditize culture without some serious problems creeping in.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes we should have large unelected corporations do it instead. That works so much better doesn't it.