"Liberal news bias"

[heathwaldrop]

Read this, which was a headline on the Yahoo! home page today, then come back and tell me how biased the news media are and how the mainstream media won't portray Democrats in a "negative" light:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060511/ap_on_re_us/democrats_gays

Use of the word "mischaracterize," in this journalist's opinion, certainly implies intent. "Misstate" is a more "neutral" word that does not make an implication either direction.

[DR]

The media will take a token potshot at Dems every once in awhile.

But 95% of the time, it's anti-GOP.

I don't see what's so biased against the Dems in that article.

[heathwaldrop]

dr said:

I don't see what's so biased against the Dems in that article.

The entire lead, specifically the use of the word "mischaracterize" in the lead. When somebody "mischaracterizes" something, generally that implies that he or she did it on purpose.

This is the kind of language that gets journalists in trouble when writing about conservatives. I dont' take great offense to the story or anything--it's not horrible, but I've seen much less be called wild-eyed liberalism by nuts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and this sewer rat down in Houston who used to e-mail me every day named Allen Heidt.

You report it regardless of the side--but had it been me writing it, I would have been much more careful in my use of words.

Believe it or not, in j-school they TEACH you how to be careful about neutral phrasing. Our professors didn't give us any anti-GOP pep talks. We used to do these exercises where we'd be handed articles and challenged to highlight all of the subjective language. Then we'd rewrite it to make it more objective. Then we'd go over it again, change it again.

One class that we did this in was Editing--one of the toughest college classes that I ever took.

[DR]

Where'd you go to school at?

[heathwaldrop]

dr said:

Where'd you go to school at?

Southern Nazarene University.

A LIBERAL arts school