hingston@bnrmtv.UUCP (Joe Hingston) (09/25/86)
There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the Media in the USA is biased toward the right or the left. It is my contention that there is a bias. One form this bias takes is emphasizing abuses of the left while ignoring abuses of the right. I know that it is bad form to use facts to back up a contention (:-)) but ... This information is from "The Real Terror Network" by Edward Herman. Copyright 1982, South End Press. It shows the tendency of the mass media, in this case the New York Times to emphasize human rights abuses by the left rather than the right. The period covered in the study is from 1/1/76 to 6/30/81. (so it is not up to date, the trend has most likely not changed since then.) Individual Frequency of Frequency of by name and mention intensive occupation coverage Heri Akhmadi 0 0 student leader Indonesia Dom Helder Camara 4 0 Archbishop Brazil Dom Pedro Casaldaliga 0 0 Bishop Brazil Enrique Alvarez Cordova 2 0 Political leader El Salvador Father Luis Espinel 0 0 Bolivia Father Carlos Galvez 1 0 Guatemala Alexander Ginzburg 68 2 Writer Soviet Union Muhammed Heikal 8 0 Journalist Egypt Father Francesco Jentel 0 0 Brazil Jose Luis Massera 5 0 Mathematician Uruguay Zelmar Michelini 5 0 Politician Uruguay Yury Orlov 70 2 Scientist Soviet Union Ananta Toer Pramoedya 0 0 Writer Indonesia Oscar Romero 36 1 Archbishop El Salvador Father Stanley Rother 0 0 Guatemala Andrei Sakharov 223 8 Scientist Soviet Union Anatoly Shcharansky 138 5 Writer Soviet Union Luis Silva 3 0 Trade Union Leader Brazil Lech Walesa 81 4 Trade Union Leader Poland Frequency of mention is based on a count of number of times mentioned in the NEW YORK TIMES INDEX. Frequency of intensive coverage is defined as where the subject is mentioned six or more times during any consecutive 30 day period. Joe Hingston HASA - S Division Q. How could these thoughts be anyone's but my own? A. For a small licensing fee.
berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) (10/01/86)
> There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the Media > in the USA is biased toward the right or the left. It is > my contention that there is a bias. One form this bias takes > is emphasizing abuses of the left while ignoring abuses of the > right. I know that it is bad form to use facts to back up a > contention (:-)) but ... > A table follows, showing that the opressed persons from Soviet Union and Poland are mentioned frequently, while the opressed persons from 'friendly' countries are hardly ever mentioned. > Joe Hingston > HASA - S Division To some extend this may be explained by the natural focus of the media on super-power relationship with USSR: because of its size and significance in the world, USSR is covered much better than, say, Indonesia (or Bulgaria). However, the bias is larger than that. The slouther in Guatemala is covered very sparsely. Recently, NYT magazine had a cover story on Miss Bhutto. The story was surprizingly warm toward the current dictator Zia, and his full page portrait was smashing: Zia usually looks like a drill officer he is, but on NYT picture we have seen a gentle golf player in arty apparel. I keep another NYT with the cover page annoucing: THE STAR WAR SPINOFF: Star wars is no longer in a mere phase of debating point. For better or worse, the controversial SDI is already yielding new technologies that seem destined to change the world. WOW! I started to read what those technologies are. Number one: rail gun, a way of accelerating projectiles to phantastic speed (with the use of a dedicated power station). May be used to defend nuclear power plants against Soviet forces of all kinds. Although interesting, hardly a spinoff (it is merely a controversial proposal of a weapon). Number two: developement of circuits based not on silicon, but on gallium arsenide (they should be much faster). Nice, but sounds familiar. Of course, a new source of money for R&D may be useful here, but this technology should be able to develope with or without SDI. Number three: optical switches. Same as above. Military was interested in super-fast computing anyway, and so should be DoA (whether prediction) and many others. Number four: software development. Computer experts working for SDI projects are streamlining problem-solving procedures. One of their approaches (HERE! HERE! THERE GOES A BIG ONE!) is "to break up a complex problem into many small elements that can solved simultaneously and than be rapidly reassembled to yield the required result." My, my. Parallel computing was invented a while ago. Number five: super-laser Nova, completed last year in Livermore. It may be a big step toward controlled fussion. Here the role of SDI money rescued a project initially financed by Dept. of Energy. In general, not a single non-military spinoff was presented. As written in the article, "SDI funds have played an important role not [only] in fostering new projects, but rescuing or reviving old ones." In the case of super-laser, Dept. of Energy funded the huge project, but before if was finished "financing for many fussion experiments has dwindled almost to the vanishing point". What happens is that Administration chops the scientific budgets madly because of fiscal consideration. The only source of new money for science is in DoD, and within DoD it will be mostly SDI. What the article describes (if read cynically) is not a process of creating spinoffs, but spin-ins: research areas of independent merits, spinned-in to the fabric of SDI. In the process, scientist are taken as hostages: their projects, before funded because of their independent merits, now can be funded either as a part of SDI, or not at all (a quote of an engineer: "Fussion may be our salvation, and Nova may be the route to fussion. If Star Wars keep the Nova alive, it's all to the good"). I do not want to quote too much. The point is that the story was an exelant example of NYT bias: enough of objective details that an intelligent reader will not feel insulted, and may even gain a new insight. On the other hand, the big title and the proportions (a lot of space devoted to positive images, negatives hidden in the chopped ending) will mislead the general public (i.e the majority who votes, and in the case of affluent readers, who finances the political process). Sorry, the last quote. Same issue of NYT Magazine, a letter to Editor: " To a seasoned Kremlinologist, Mr. Salisbury's unprecedented access to a number of high-level Soviet officials close to Gorbachev would seem to be a part of a carefully arranged scenario arranged by Dobrynin, closest foreign policy adviser and expert on American politics and psychology". Without a doubt, during his many years in Washington, Dobrynin learned something from American media, Needless to say, the scientific reporter of NYT who prepared propaganda piece prepared above had lavish access to military officials involved in funding SDI research. Piotr Berman
janw@inmet.UUCP (10/05/86)
[ hingston@bnrmtv.UUCP /* ---- "Media Bias" ---- */] >There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the Media >in the USA is biased toward the right or the left. It is >my contention that there is a bias. One form this bias takes >is emphasizing abuses of the left while ignoring abuses of the >right. I know that it is bad form to use facts to back up a >contention (:-)) but ... A list of names, with frequencies of mention in the NYT, follows, to demonstrate the point... The years covered are 1976-1981. >This information is from "The Real Terror Network" by Edward Her- >man. Copyright 1982, South End Press. It is good form to use facts - but statistics on an *arbitrarily* selected list of names can easily back up the *opposite* of truth. As they did in this case. Mr. Herman's list is that of people persecuted by left/right regimes and mentioned/not mentioned by the NYT. How were the names *selected*? We _are not told_. Grep in it for Mandela! No Nelson Mandela, no Winnie Mandela. Would statistics on these two names change the picture? Would *other* names from South Africa? Well, grep for SA - it is not mentioned! Now grep for Argentina. Repression there was covered extensively and in depth in just these years; names were all over the pages. No mention of them here. Was repression in left-wing thugdoms given more or less coverage than that in the right-wing ones? You won't learn it from Mr. Herman's list - only his *own* bias is demonstrated. BUT to really estimate the media bias - it is not enough to compare *absolute* coverage of the two groups of nations. It matters where the *actual* repression is greater! If the Left repressed 100 times as much as the Right, and if the numbers of mentions were *equal* - that would demonstrate a clear leftward bias. In the years covered, all of Cambodian genocide came and went. It was very scantily covered in the NYT, until the very end. Rare mentions on back pages, with "unverified" the prominent word. (Herman's list contains no Cambodian names). That alone, were coverage proportional, would have crowded away *all* of the names arbitrarily selected by Herman. Next in volume would come the beginning genocide in Afghanistan (covered a little) and massive terror in some nations of Africa - of which only Uganda got *some* coverage. Repression in Latin America was much less, but *Cuba* ought to have dominated the repression news from this hemisphere. But it didn't, of course. The bias was there - *not* of the kind Mr. Herman sees. But his "proof" methods are worse than his obvi- ous bias. One can't always avoid bias; but one can argue honestly. Jan Wasilewsky