News Busted

Some info on this group:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... rch_Center

Media Research Center Inc. (MRC) is a conservative media watchdog group run by president and founder Brent Bozell. In 2006 the MRC had total revenue of $10.8 million[1] and 50 full-time staff members. It is predominately funded by larger right-wing foundations (see below) with other comparatively minor sources of income from rental income and investments. In it's 2006 annual report, the group's founder wrote that MRC "continued to regularly provide intellectual ammunition to conservative activists, arming them with the weapons to fight the leftist press."[2]

Mission statement
On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove - through sound scientific research - that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed --- Media Research Center (MRC)."[4]

Criticism
Extra!, the magazine of the progressive media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, has criticized the MRC for selective use of evidence--the MRC had complained, for example, that there was more coverage of government death squads in right-wing El Salvador than in left-wing Nicaragua, without mentioning that there were roughly a thousand times more extra-judicial killings in El Salvador. Extra! also characterized the MRC as wanting to force out of the media any opinions that it disagreed with, even tracking the off-screen political comments of actors in a project that the magazine said "bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Red Channels, the McCarthy Era blacklisting journal." [4]

http://mediamatters.org/research/200505110005
MRC studies that "prove" media's "liberal bias" collapse under scrutiny
May 11, 2005 5:03 pm ET

The MRC has not posted complete data for the Social Security "study" on its website, so it's impossible to know what criteria the group used to classify statements in news stories it examined to arrive at its conclusions. Nor does it provide a list of guests, sources, institutions, or ideas that were unfairly labeled "conservative," or a similar list of guests, sources, institutions, or ideas that ought to have been labeled "liberal" but were not. The MRC is certainly free to cry "liberal bias" at every news report it sees. But when it labels something a "study," it is presenting its analysis as more objective, and should thus be held to a higher standard.

Sounds like they could use some improvement on how to conduct "sound scientific research"...

I'm all for holding the media more accountable for their crappy reporting, but how about instead of focusing on "liberal bias" which is vague and subjective criteria, how about emphasizing accurate, comprehensive, and appropriately represented sides of a story?

Neptune - what part of the statement I quoted from mediamatters is liberally biased? They point out that MRC's claim of conducting sound scientific research on representation is unpublished - and that's true. If MRC wants to make that claim, then they have to put their data and methods out there for all to analyze and see if they come up with the same conclusions. Mediamatters makes no such claim so you can hold it against them if you like for having a liberal bias, but in this case, the burden of proof rests on MRC, not mediamatters.

I never said that News Busted didn't take itself seriously, but when misrepresentation in the media runs rampant, with no voiced objections, it tends to start being taken as fact/gospel. I immensely dislike misrepresentation of facts and misuse of scientific method so I'm going to comment to bring light to the problem, especially when a "news organization" purports to do scientific research and it resembles nothing like true scientific research.

Nmysys - where did I say anything about Bush and Palin?

daisypusher - that is the stated mission of the organization behind News Busted.