Roy Sekoff on Hannity and Colmes

Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff on Hannity and Colmes discussing Carole Simpson's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and the question of bias in the media.

Comments

[KOisGod]

The media doesn't have a liberal bias, it has a CORP bias.

The haters at Faux news enjoy their open megaphone for lying being pumped into American homes via a well bankrolled JUGGERNAUT of backers who benefit from keeping the country divided. To them its sport. An us vs. them mentality. Its build on lies, deceipt, rudeness and over the top dramatics.

They remind me of children, saying "me, me, me, look at me, I'm the loudest, the rudest, the most offensive, watch me, PLEASE WATCH ME, DON'T YOU KNOW I HAVE TO KEEP MY JOBBBBB???!!!!"

Go get a bigger TV, what a 50 inch model? Its a 50 inch sewer pipe, flowing into the room where you watch.

KILL YOUR F'IN TV!!!

Or at the very least, don't watch Fixed News, please.

[Mike169]

Didn't Hannity endorse Giuliani?

[timregler]

Pot, meet Kettle

[Perrier007]

I don't understand what all the hubbub is about here. Because someone works in the news business as an anchor person, that precludes them from having a political opinion? As I understand it, the lady never stated her political leanings when she anchored on TV, so how does her revelation of her political leanings now point to media bias?

I just don't get how people are making this into such a big deal.

[AnotherunhappyDemocrat]

Why would someone, who is not an inbred right-winger, even bother to go on this show? They hardly gave Sekoff a chance to talk, whereas the other faceless conservative had plenty of opportunity to shout out his tired talking points.

Wouldn't it be nice if our side just ignored this worthless show and its worthless network?

[roald]

Without even listening to the words said, I could hear "fair and impartial". One speaker was uninterrupted. The other could barely complete a sentence, much less a concept. Guess which was which.

[MilwaukeeMike]

"Reality has a very well known liberal bias" - Colbert

That being said, it's hard to argue that there actually is something called a "liberal bias" in the media. Any resemblence of reality has certainly been replaced by distraction, shock, Britney, and reliance on issues no doubt important (guns, God, gays, abortion)--but that have very little daily impact upon us. Keeping us unfocused on the real issues (societal, military, and economic security) serves the masters (GE, Viacom, Newscorp, Disney, Zell, Blackstone, Goldman, etc.) vary well. Finally, isn't it ironic that the folks talking about Simpson's "liberalism" are the same ones that were (and are) cheerleaders for a war that has done everything to diminish our military and economic strength, and along the way our societal strength through the squandering of resources? "Liberal bias" is nothing more than a catch phrase designed to misdirect and slander.

[jbatch]

Roy:

You were in the process of making an excellent point -- most of the "leftist" positions Hillary Clinton holds are in fact held by the majority of Americans. That means, by definition, they cannot be leftist, they must be centrist. In fact, it's because she's so poll driven and so bereft of liberal (aka "leftist") values that I find it difficult to support her.

But of course, you were shouted down and interrupted. Which is why no one should go on Fox -- it dignifies a farce, and gains us little.

[londonexpat]

Fox is "fair and balanced" but when their "journalists" leave directly from their jobs to work at the white house (more than an endorsement, eh?) it would never prove that they were GOP hacks all along, right? This is ridiculous. Simpson did nothing but have an opinion and share it with college students. Brava to her.

[priorzola]

It's telling that Fox had to use stock footage from way back in 1992 to even show Carole Simpson performing journalistic duties. Still, I have always contended that journalism by definition requires the ability to try and tell a news story through as many points of view as is relevent to do justice to the story. In other words, journalist employ a capability of putting the reader or viewer in someone else's shoes. This is also, in part, the definition of a good liberal, the compassionate capacity to consider the needs of others as much as one's own needs. That doesn't mean that is either all those who are labeled a liberal or defines themselves as such are truly liberals, mind you, but it's a starting point. Therefore, the definition of journalist and a good liberal parallel one another.

If this theory were in practice in modern-day journalism, we would have, for example when reporting about Iraq, actually Iraqis, family members of US soldiers, citizens of nearby effected countries, leaders of insurgent groups, etc as part of the litany of opinions being expressed to reveal an evermore fully fleshed-out picture of what exactly is happening in Iraq. As it stands, we hear more doled out unsolicited opinions from professional blowhards from both the left and right than we do from those who have more at stake than book sales and lecture tours. The problem with contemporary American journalism is not that it's too liberal or conservative, it's that it's far too narrow in it's point of view. It fails to even come close to giving the US citizenry the important extensive information needed for each person to reach a reasonable opinion of their own.

[Tellmethetruth]

Here is another article from the Boston Globe about the media blackout on candidates.
Here is a wonderful article in the Boston Globe about the media's inability to report on all the candidates running.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1045906

So here"s the question: why then is Biden still in single digits? Light years away from Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, the three top Democratic contenders?

The answer"s "pretty simple," said Biden in a telephone interview yesterday with the Herald and 96.9-WTKK. "Money ... we will have raised $12 or $13 million by the time this is over," he said, an amount that would have been competitive not long ago. "Now we"re talking about two candidates spending that much in Iowa alone (Hillary and Obama) ... a state with just 3 million people."

In any case, in the national newspapers that set the national political coverage of the day, here"s how often reporters of the main stories mentioned Hillary and Obama vs. Joe Biden. The New York Times [NYT]: Clinton, at least 21 mentions; Osama, 9, Biden, 2. The Washington Post: Clinton, at least 25 mentions; Obama, 17; and Biden, 0. USA Today:Clinton, at least 14 mentions; Obama, 6;Biden, 1.

"We pushed for three or four months to have just one debate about Iraq and the only one who would take us up on it was Dennis Kucinich," who"s hardly mentioned either. Said Rasky, "The trending of America toward celebrity culture, it"s a huge problem for the future of our democracy."

Joe Biden"s son Beau, by the way, is Delaware"s attorney general and a National Guardsman likely to be deployed to Iraq in 2008. But Beau is not a celebrity. So most of us didn"t know that, either.

The article goes on to conclude that others have come back in Iowa such as Carter, Kerry, and Bill Clinton a month before the primaries.

[Tellmethetruth]

Another column in the Boston Globe backs up your statement about the bias in the media.

"IF YOU'VE watched the last few debates in the Democratic presidential campaign, you may have found yourself shouting at the screen over the way these forums have been conducted.

more stories like thisIn their quest to tease out any possible conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or John Edwards and Clinton, the moderators and panelists have ignored the other candidates for long periods, leaving them to stand like mannequins as they have tried to foment a fight among the front-runners.

"The Washington television media is fixated on a three-person race, and it's more than a three-person race," Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico told me on Monday. "It's frustrating."

And mind you, Richardson, a former congressman, UN ambassador, and energy secretary, has had it relatively good compared with what's happened to senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.

For my money, Biden is consistently one of the best in these forums. With his call for a federal solution, he's the only Democrat with something truly different to say on Iraq. Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden shows his international expertise in answers consistently more complete and complex than those of most rivals.

When he gets to talk, that is. During CNN's Las Vegas debate, his first opportunity didn't come until more than nine minutes into the discussion, and when his first question finally came, it was this inane query: Was the squabble CNN had just provoked between Clinton and Edwards good or bad for the Democrats?

Biden's entire speaking time was slightly more than nine minutes - about half of Obama's 18 minutes. In the last three debates combined, the Delaware senator has spoken for about 22 minutes... she logged another 16 minutes.

Is Obama, with his three years in the US Senate, really twice as noteworthy as Biden, who has been there since 1973?

"The American people are entitled to a debate here," Kucinich protested on Thursday.

[SamThornton]

Haven't watched Fox News in a long time. Hannity, Colmes, and Bozell remind me why.