Is the Young Turks the most balanced show in america no the world | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 hidden)
You have to define... (none / 0)

...the context of these percentages.  If you asked the "balance" question about Joe Scarborough, you'd get a barrage of different answers, since the context in which he could be viewed is enigmatic.  "Well, of course he's on the Right, Right of Center, anyway.  ...But Joe often implores the Republican Party to be slightly less dismissive of moderates.  So that makes him considerably to the Left of most Conservative pundits.  ...But he looks so starkly Conservative compared to the rest of the MSNBC talent.  ...But MSNBC is a _lot_ less Liberal than common wisdom suggests--there is no shortage of echoing Conservative talking points, framing issues in FOX's terminology, and denigrating Liberals (with or without merit) to achieve false "balance."  So maybe he blends in fairly well, so he isn't really much on the Right at all."

As it pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the only valuable information from a news source is truth.  There are still some vestiges of truth coming from some pundits on the Right, but most of the demand for accuracy and fairness and logic is indisputably coming from the Left these days.  Rachel Maddow is given a kneejerk high percentage as though on the "far Left", but what people are actually saying is that she is telling the truth an astounding amount more than is the norm in the media, so people have to rate her as immensely far removed from a typical analyst.  So instead of framing it this way, they just call her "really Liberal."  In truth, there is no American Liberal news analyst who is even close to as far Left as Lou Dobbs and about 11 FOX hosts are on the far Right.  The actual Nader/Kucinich-style left is virtually absent from the MSM discussion while they interview the Feinsteins/Schumers/Harold Fords/James Carvilles of the world and pretend _those_ are the voices of Liberal America.
  Cenk deserves to be judged on a scale of truth vs. lies, and on this scale, he rates very high, and most of the media (Rachel and a few others excepted) rate very low.  It really doesn't have to do fundamentally with balance. 

by Milltycoon on 11/07/2009 10:58:29 PM EST

I agree, it's about context (none / 0)
but also, what is balance? Around what centre do you have to measure balance. Because from a European perspective (or at least my perspective) you might find that Cenk is quite right wing. As far as news-facts go they seem to be on the level, there is no 'slant' (lying) in their reporting of facts, offc they play up certain polls, but they do not remain silent about ones that are less favorable) and they try to give background about who does and how a poll was done.

But that is on the facts side of the show, on the opinion side they are quite rightwing from my perspective, (remember here liberals are rightwing, but there is a lot less of a divide between the two sides here). Cenk seems  to have a naive view of the virtues of capitalism (I think he means free market capitalism in a liberal democraty by that, but it's telling that he doesn't seem to grasp the peculiarity of that kind of Capitalism), leftier ppl like me are a bit more sceptic about free market and see it as the role of the state of weaker actors in such a system.  This is because capitalist systems seem to favor those with a lot of capital,  not those that actually make that capital work. So all in all, the answers in this poll are very subjective.

by Nangijala on 11/08/2009 06:41:23 AM EST

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I agree (none / 0)
with you for the most part that from a Eurpean perspective some of Cenk's positions are quite to the right of the political spectrum. Cenk is mostly socially liberal which does not necessarily correlate with any particular economic postition in Europe and Cenk would find a home with many of the liberal European parties (that would be Republicans if transplanted into America). But liberal in the American sense does not translate into liberalism in Europe. European liberalism is vectorially libertarianism in America, while American liberalism is to the right - but in that direction - of European social(istic), green and progressive parties.

In other words: America is so far to the right, that most of the right wing extremists in Europe (many of which priding themselves with Nazi heritage and values) would be easily accepted by most mainstream Republicans but would be decried as too liberal by the teabaggers.

by eborujion on 11/08/2009 08:17:31 AM EST

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Cenk is a self-confessed conservative ... (none / 0)
... in some regards. Not surprising given his academic and familial background, not to mention that he was raised in the US.

He is also an amazingly effective conduit of information and ideas. It's fortunate that his stamina is used largely for good.

(And I nominate "vectorially" as the most impressive use of vocabulary on this thread. Seriously.)

by Landbeyond on 11/09/2009 03:27:32 AM EST

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That is a great idea. (none / 0)
Along the lines of the 2-dimensional left-right, authoritarian-libertarian spectrum of political affiliation there could be a spectrum of press neutrality (or press accuracy, etc.) that would contain one axis of left vs right and another one of factual vs convoluted. IMHO you can argue, though, that rarely the media absolutely and unequivocally lie to the public. In most of the cases they just omit factoids or stress some facts more than others to create the narrative they are told to present to their audience.

One other thing: I cannot understand why Carville is presented as a liberal at all. Maybe he was a liberal by 1969's establishment standards but nowadays he is just a slick spin doctor who just wants to keep the machine greased enough so that he can keep on going on MSNBC and smile and laugh about anything.

by eborujion on 11/08/2009 08:31:49 AM EST

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Not totally on the issue (none / 0)
Freedom House publishes a ranking of the freedom of the press. each year.

"The first thing Fascists usually try to do is silencing the opposition."

by opposition on 11/08/2009 09:56:25 AM EST

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woot 3rd place (none / 0)
makes sense though, our media has nothing to do with the gouvernement (not bad for a 'communist' european state ^^).Quite ironic if you realise that the largest papers in our country started out as party-affiliated publications. Even more ironic offcourse that the publications that contain quite inf ormative articles  ;about politics and economics you can get in Belgium are actually those of the unions (which are party affiliated), because they have the money to fund such studies.

by Nangijala on 11/08/2009 04:00:26 PM EST

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3rd place is still a medal (none / 0)
America on the other hand is in 20th place. Quite ironic when you always hear them shout about their freedom of speech and freedom of press.

Both seems to be better in socialist countries.

"The first thing Fascists usually try to do is silencing the opposition."

by opposition on 11/08/2009 11:39:01 PM EST

[ Parent ]

Is the Young Turks the most balanced show in america no the world | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 hidden)