Sunday Morning Book Thread 09-16-2012: Media Beclowning Edition [OregonMuse]

"What are you laughing at? We're serious journalists."

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the completely fair, unbiased and totally down-the-middle objective Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Media Bias? What Media Bias?

We all know that the mainstream media is so completely in the tank for Obama that they need snorkels and scuba gear. Thay want him to win, they will help him win, and I can't think of anything they wouldn't do to help him win. And boy, was it on display this week. Here is how Zombie from PJMedia described it:

When the world erupted on September 11 and the Obama administration groveled at the feet of our barbarian attackers, the major news outlets — knowing that this was a disastrous turn of events for the Obama campaign which could not be spun in his favor — decided the only solution was to brazenly change the subject to a fabricated peripheral side issue: that Romney had committed some kind of “gaffe” by criticizing the government’s weak-kneed response.

Here is a particularly jaw-dropping example of this I pulled from he the sidebar.

Of course, there have been many books written about media bias.

Media Mischief and Misdeeds: Reed Irvine is the original "old hand" at observing liberal bias. He founded the first conservative media watchdog group, Accuracy In Media (AIM), in 1969. This book was published in 1984, so it's probably way out of date and probably doesn't anticipate how despicable the current MSM has become.

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News must be really irritating to liberals since Goldberg used to be one himself, and adding insult to injury, he once worked in the belly of the beast, CBS News. The book starts out by Goldberg analyzing a "fact check" by CBS News on a statement made by a conservative politician, and he exposes it as nothing more than just another biased, liberal opinion. And it gets better from there. Goldberg has gone on to write other books in the same vein, notably

A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. This is another one which is probably outdated, since it was published in 2009, and the Obama knob-slobbering it describes has only gotten worse.

On a more sober note, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind is an atteant to use rigorous academic research methods and precise, quantitative techniques to measure the extent of media bias. Here's a spoiler of the book's conclusions:

(i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets.

Of course there are are books written by those who believe that the media unfairly favors the conservative perspective (this book and this book, for example). The moonbats are fond of using the phrase "corporate-owned media", as if "big corporations" are automatically conservative. Also, Rush Limbaugh. And that's it. That's pretty much the extent of the liberal argument that the MSM favors the right.

From the E-mail Bag

Last month's sci fi thread prompted moron Joe Clunis to write and to tell me about audio fiction podcasts, hitherto unknown by me. But it may be worthwhile to those of you who are into audio books. Joe says

These podcasts, and the others they link in their sidebars, do quality work in everything from short stories, really short stories (100 words), longer multi-episode works, and radio drama style serials. These are great ways to sample new authors. I'll also point out several authors publish their own podcasts with their own works, including full length novels. While production values might not be as tip top as other outlets, the price (free / soliciting donations) is more than reasonable.

Most of these are downloadable, which means you can burn them to a CD or maybe a flash drive or SD card and listen to them in your car or mp3 player. Here are some of the examples Joe provided:

Asimov's Nightfall on Escape Pod

Heinlen's All You Zombies on Escape Pod

Beagle's Come Lady Death on Podcastle

Clarke's The Star on The Drabblecast

Clarke's The Last Question on The Drabblecast

So that's it for this week. As always, book thread tips may be sent to aoshqbookthread@gmail.com

So what have you all been reading this week?

posted by Open Blogger at 11:06 AM

| Access Comments