Presidential Politics, The Media And The Search For Facts
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-09-27/presidential-politics-media-and-search-facts
Political reporters on separating fact from fiction, and the challenge of providing fair and accurate coverage in a partisan world.
Guests
Jim VandeHei
executive editor, Politico.
Jane Hall
associate professor of journalism, American University.
Glenn Kessler
columnist, "The Fact Checker" for The Washington Post.
Mark Hemingway
online editor, The Weekly Standard.
Comments
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“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” is a saying popularized by Mark Twain. How to evaluate the numbers spouted by the candidates?
First, as with all answers, ask if the numbers presented by the candidate address the question. If the question is about the number unemployed, then the answer is the number unemployed (12.8 million) , unemployment rate (about 8.3%).
Second, ask the question, :”Compared to what?” Yes, unemployment rate is bad , but compared to what? To what economic groups, Regions, industries, what period in our history, etc.
Third, ask the question, “Over what time period?” Yes, the unemployment rate is changing (up down), but over what time period; yes, the number of new jobs are changing (up down), but over what time period?
As part of the third point, ask if Group A is changing more than Group B over what time period; was Group A much lower than Group B, at first, which may account for Group A changing more?
More tricky points deal with certain buzz words, like “model” or “study.” Don't forget that the most elegant and robust economic models crashed when the stock market crashed. Maybe that was partly because of another buzz word, “assumptions”. If a model equates junk bonds to AAA bonds, that's an assumption not built on reality. It's similar to making statements which begin with, “When people have wings, or when people walk through brick walls..” Not too reality based, is it? A study conducted at an Ivy League school or the local community college can be conducted by students , faculty, – and as with a prior admonition, if it is testing a model with assumptions not based in reality, what does it say; how does it help?
As when you buy a car, don't just accept the salesperson say so, by kicking the tires. Take time looking under the hood to evaluate what you're being presented.
We have a number of listeners here who refuse to believe the polls, presumably because they yield a result that these listeners don't like. One complaint I have seen and heard repeatedly is that Democrats are oversampled- in spite of the fact that Dem voter registrations dwarf Rep registrations. Could you address this? Please give an explanation of how polls are constructed to provide accurate and reliable results, what can go wrong, and how to determine their value. This would be a great program to invite Nate Silver of 538.com.
I assume were talking about media perceptions and coverage and not specific issues or talking points. The American voter by and large has to rely on themselves to discern the facts. The main stream media does not look for facts it looks for snippets of information to drive an agenda, a personal agenda held by the correspondents, producers and on air hosts that report on the issues at the time. Overall there is an agreed upon bias by mainstream media outlets that favors the democrat party. Let's just cut to the chase, it's all about wooing the misinformed, the unwashed, the disengaged and the easily manipulated to vote one way. In other words people most likely to not know what they believe in or why, potential democrats.
"Back in September, Gallup documented the public detected liberal bias by a nearly three-to-one margin: “The majority of Americans (60 percent) also continue to perceive bias, with 47 percent saying the media are too liberal and 13 percent saying they are too conservative"
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2012/02/11/pew-record-high-67-s...
"Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4. Another 8% say journalists don’t favor either candidate, and 13% say they don’t know which candidate most reporters support"
http://www.people-press.org/2008/10/22/most-voters-say-news-media-wants-...
Somebody......PLEASE.....inform Fox News, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the rest of the Blame-Stream types that they really are THE MEDIA.
When you participate in writing, broadcasting, and publishing political content, you ARE the media. Pretending to chime in as outsiders is truly phony. Sean Hannity might be the worst offender. At least Bill O'Reilly acknowledges his role and the fact that these types are mostly in it for the millions, as he alluded in his discussion with Ted Koppel recently.
HonestAbe wrote:"Somebody......PLEASE.....inform Fox News, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the rest of the Blame-Stream types that they really are THE MEDIA."
You are confusing alternative media with mainstream media. ABC, NBC, CBS and the AP are mainstream sources where most of the news coverage on national and local broadcasts comes from. The place where the sheeple primarily get their news.
That's right, Honest Abe, you're confusing the places where the 47% get their reliable information with the places where low information voters get their propaganda. Can't you tell the difference?
Mitt Romney is out of touch and a liar. He`s running ads against Bill Clinton in Ohio.Why? Bush lied us into 2 wars,I guess Romney wants to get a head start on lying.
I didn`t know we had to boot lick Israel ?
I am a former businessman.I am a former Governor.I am an Ivy League grad. I am born of wealth.I am George W.Bush XXXX Mitt Romney.
Fox News' hyperbolic, hype shows easily trump the numbers of all of those news outlets every single week. This is why they have the number one seat in the White House press corp and it's not because the White House wanted them to move up the order. They're very popular.
However, it has also been shown many times that people who routinely watch Fox News are actually less informed than people who don't watch the news at all.
You could say that mainstream media are liberal bias but you could also say that there are more liberals in America than conservatives. Look at the popular opinions for allowing gay people to marry, women's access to health care, or legalization of marijuana. They are all popular now (greater than 50% acceptance) so perhaps it's fine that conservatives have their very popular, mostly singular mainstream source to be misinformed from and the rest of us "liberal elite college grads" can continue to listen to NPR because we can actually understand it.
How do they feel about the Daily Show? That's where I get my TV political news. I don't really care what the candidates say today. It's their record added to what they said that provides any meaning or substance. I hear too many reporters caught up in the events on the ground just reporting "Pep Assemblies."
Sorry Partisan, the Reality is that FOX and even Breitbart (the guy that used to have an excellent editing machine) ARE The Media, and they ARE mainstream. The big difference is that while you have been convinced by them that the "MSM" has a "subtle liberal bias" FOX has an OVERT bias, which renders them unable to report objectively. I am constantly amazed that when I speak with FOX viewers how misinformed they are. According to them I am going to have my fire arms taken by Obama, my taxes are going to go up to over 50% rate, Obama is a Muslim Marxist and the Obama administration is the most corrupt ever (never mid that no Obama official has been convicted of a single crime, as a opposed to the Bush II and Reagan record of multiple convictions). Having a large segment of our media peddling blatant falsehoods cannot result in a better republic. What it does lead to is a ban on gay marriage and a ban on regulation of hedge funds. Which do you think has been the greater threat to our economy?
5 of the top ten rated radio programs (by # of listeners) are "conservative talk" shows. How one comes to the conclusion that this is not "mainstream" is beyond me.
Eric Zehnder wrote:"You could say that mainstream media are liberal bias but you could also say that there are more liberals in America than conservatives"
Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from 2010.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71385.html#ixzz27g74f6KH
Freedom rocks wrote: "5 of the top ten rated radio programs (by # of listeners) are "conservative talk" shows. How one comes to the conclusion that this is not "mainstream" is beyond me."
If you listen to those shows you would know the top of the hour news break information is from MSM broadcasting. As mentioned above ABC, NBC, CBS and the AP are the mainstream and omnipresent, that is the difference.
I'm among the millions that consider themselves socially liberal and fiscally conservative. It is the task of Christians to be generous to our fellow humans even though we work toward and deserve efficient government (the one We The People are part of and don't despise).
BUT...just because we want taxes to be spent efficiently doesn't make us insane enough to listen/watch the Blame-Stream Faux Snooze propagandists. Many of us learned creative writing in college - we don't need Hannity, Rush, and their ilk inventing bogus conspiracy theories for us.
At least Gilda Radner's character Emily Litella would eventually say "never mind" when her ravings were exposed.
partpol claims:
40% are conservative
35% are moderate
21% are liberal
As we all know, the only poll that counts is on election day. Since 53% of voters chose Barack Obama, and conservatives claim Obama is a communist/socialist/leftist, doesn't that mean that, in your view, 53% of American voters are communist sympathizers, if not outright communists themselves? Or do you only accept polls that agree with your bias?
Jim Gamble wrote: partpol claims:
Jim Gamble wrote: "We have a number of listeners here who refuse to believe the polls, presumably because they yield a result that these listeners don't like"
That's Gallup, the same organization Obama's corrupt DOJ threatened to sue apparently because of unfavorable polling.
Sounds like you're doing just what you are accusing others of doing, what a shock!
"A story concerning the possible abuse of power by the White House or Obama campaign that was initially dismissed by liberal blogs appears to be proving otherwise. According to internal e-mails, obtained by the Daily Caller'sMatt Boyle, sent between senior Gallup Organization executives, senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempted to intimidate the well known polling firm, when numbers for President Obama were not particularly ideal.
When news broke that the Justice Department was filing a lawsuit against Gallup for overcharging their clients, there was suspicion that either the White House or the Obama campaign may have applied pressure to Gallup because of President Obama's less than great polling numbers from the organization."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/6/picket-intern...
It's all about the money.
Making money telling people what they want to hear is, I suspect, a profitable business. And especially those with a gift for talking, but no other discernible skills.
I find it troubling that the fact-checkers have a bias. They seem to take a "what he meant" approach to conservatives, and a "what he literally said" approach to liberals.
They need to set a clear set of standards for their own work, and stick to it.
Not to be nasty, but: How carefully did you examine the methodology of those polls?
A lot of confirmation bias appears as not questioning a result when it agrees with one's preëxisting notions, and intently questioning all others...I'm certainly prone to that.
Why does the media insist on calling politicians out of office by their former elected position? It's a matter of disrespect for the office of the leader of our country and for the citizens and the election process. Specifically, the specific individuals are President Obama and Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Carter, not President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton, President Bush, and President Carter. George Washington essentially refused to be called or treated as President after he left office. He showed this by his action. He refused Jefferson's offer to follow Adams when Jefferson offered. Adams had just been sworn in as President and Jefferson as Vice-President. Washington was demonstrating by his actions that HE was no longer President and showing respect for the office and the electorate.
Glenn Kessler has a wonderful piece on WashingtonPost.com today:
"From video to terrorist attack: a definitive timeline of administration statements on the Libya attack"
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 09/27/2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/from-video-to-terr...
Anyone interested in the facts about the Benghazi attack needs to read this.
Mr Kessler exemplifies all that is good about American journalism.
De oppresso liber.
The Republicans believe the Democrats are dishonest. The Democrats believe the Republicans are dishonest. The truth is both are dishonest. Indeed everybody is dishonest to a certain extent, some more than others.
So discerning the truth can be a difficult task, to say the least.
And even if you were sure you were truthful, there's always someone about who will call you a liar.
People have a lot of trouble with truth. Probably the main reason for that is that truth can be very unpleasant. For instance, how many people would want to hear from a doctor that the cancer biopsy was positive? We don't want to hear that! We want to hear that it was negative.
For that reason, we tend to accept lies as truth because they are more in tune with what we want to believe.
Truth can be tough!
I'm concerned about the promulgation of the myth that government workers earn so much more than private company employees.
In my experience as an engineer, government employees with much more education (a PhD vs. my Masters Degree) earn substantially less--$50K less in the salary or $30K less accounting for benefits--than I do working in the private sector.
Your panelist asserting such mythical information really needs to check his facts. Tom, you need to really challenge this prevailing "wisdom".
Best regards to you all.
I'm old enough to remember when reporters who knew they were getting an evasive or dishonest answer used to find a second question, slightly different, to follow up with so that the politician's tactic was exposed at the moment. That is most efficient for the listener/viewer who can't go chasing all over the place to find out the truth. It never happens anymore. Reporters simply repeat the question once or twice, get the same answer, and then they move on. When reporters lost the courage to pursue the truth like this, they contributed to the loss of respect for them and to the ignorance of the body politic.
I think Mark Hemingway is wrong in his suggestion that fact checkers should not pursue issues that he labels as subjective or another listener has called 'heated rhetoric'.
Yes!
We want those types of statements checked as they drive opinions and thinking of the listeners.
Tim Polente saying that "Obama's Healthcare plan is unconstitutional", directly implies that the president is a reckless scoff law, with a political agenda that he considers more important than our founding legal documents and by extension us.
I want to hear a full vetting of such statements.
Somebody needs to fact-check this show. Ads run by the super PACs are cited as ads run by the campaigns. Errors of fact bloom like a thousand flowers.
The fact-checking racket is just cover for journalists who put notions of balance ahead of the truth of any issue. So many facts are checked with weasel words and projections about what something might mean and hunches that there might be more to the story.
It really is a sign of major journalism failure.
No wonder people no longer trust the folks on your panel.
Why is the Repblican supporting cynic Glen Hall talking about the problems with Fact Check? Every example he gave that he was critical of had to do with a GOP spokespearson.
Why is Kesller falling all over himself providing examples of Obama's duplicity?
Do you hear Dem supporting reporters whining?
The GOP is losing. Stop apologzing Kessler. It has to do with Romney's tripping all over himself and not with Fact Checkers.
Fact Check sites are absolutely necessary in a world where the Big Lie Technique is prominently employed by marrying false statements to each other as the argument of their campaign. On the media side the so called "wife died ad" wasn't by the campaign and near as I can tell died before it was shown anywhere. Why is the media the promoting this "ad?"
Ann Pierce wrote: "Tim Polente saying that "Obama's Healthcare plan is unconstitutional", directly implies that the president is a reckless scoff law, with a political agenda that he considers more important than our founding legal documents and by extension us."
It is and it does.
What about Brett Baier interviewing Mitt Romney - he challenged him live and it didn't go over too well...