According to Politico, CNN president Jeff Zucker has told several insiders and outsiders that he will not hire Trump alumni he perceives as "complicit in spreading falsehoods or spurious talking points"

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/ ... ion-951989


A major media outlet is comfortable defining what constitutes invalid discussion and wishes to remain thought of as a serious, unbiased news source, because it's based on their perception.

There is no law that prevents journalists from politically discriminating against potential hires and CNN is taking full advantage of it.

Not sure where you're going with this - the President of CNN isn't allowed to determine who to hire? (Journalists aren't doing the hiring.) Zucker must hire people who are "complicit in spreading falsehoods or spurious talking points" in order not to discriminate? The article details a related problem that many (all?) WH employees signed non-disclosure agreements that preclude them from making any negative statements about the administration. Obviously that does not lead to a truthful discussion. As the article mentions, there are plenty of conservatives available who have not engaged in spreading falsehoods and don't have NDA restrictions.

And more than its competitors, CNN tends to air commentators from across the political spectrum, including liberals and pro- and anti-Trump conservatives.

The bigger picture in that article is Trump administration employees are widely seen as damaged goods. In prior administrations they could use rarefied experience in the executive branch to gain high paying jobs in the private sector. That's much less true with this one.

“The corporate gigs do not exist,” one former White House official said.

I dont know how long youve been off the grid, LandRover, but CNN doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation for unbiased reporting

ant wrote:I dont know how long youve been off the grid, LandRover, but CNN doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation for unbiased reporting

Compared to Fox News, CNN is like Moses coming down the mountain with the word of God written in fire on stone tablets.

ant wrote:I dont know how long youve been off the grid, LandRover, but CNN doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation for unbiased reporting

I don't particularly like CNN or FoxNews (actually I hate them both), though which is worse in terms of being biased, I'll leave to others to decide. Or go to a media analyst site and see which delivers news more accurately.

I would argue that CNN is mostly vacuous, and FoxNews is mostly ideological. But what the two have in common is that both are on the air 24 hours a day. As such, they have to come up with "stuff" to fill up all that space. Only a small percentage of FoxNews is actually news. The rest of it is endless bloviating from talking heads. The actual news from FoxNews is just fine. I suspect CNN is very much the same. But you have to get through an awful lot of crap to get to the news. Why not just tune into a devoted news program, such as NBC Nightly News, which is 30 minutes long. Or read a credible daily newspaper.

geo wrote:

ant wrote:I dont know how long youve been off the grid, LandRover, but CNN doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation for unbiased reporting

I don't particularly like CNN or FoxNews (actually I hate them both), though which is worse in terms of being biased, I'll leave to others to decide. Or go to a media analyst site and see which delivers news more accurately.

I would argue that CNN is mostly vacuous, and FoxNews is mostly ideological. But what the two have in common is that both are on the air 24 hours a day. As such, they have to come up with "stuff" to fill up all that space. Only a small percentage of FoxNews is actually news. The rest of it is endless bloviating from talking heads. The actual news from FoxNews is just fine. I suspect CNN is very much the same. But you have to get through an awful lot of crap to get to the news. Why not just tune into a devoted news program, such as NBC Nightly News, which is 30 minutes long. Or read a credible daily newspaper.

Agreed

Great point, geo. The large amount of content on CNN, Fox, and probably MSNBC that isn't news creates charges of "media bias" from both sides (but most often from pro-Trump people). Well, what else would be expected from opinionating talking heads? With a newspaper, the proportion of news vs opinion probably is reversed, which is as it should be. You'll still have newspapers that tend conservative or liberal, but that is a function of the paper's editorial stance and the mix of columnists it puts in op-ed. That is also a healthy diversity of print media.

There's another angle on media bias I'll mention. I like some things from The National Review, but one line they push on media bias is wrong. A recent NR article said that Trump and the media are engaged in battle in which each side is equally biased, equally responsible for the lack of respect for the media. That's a faulty equivalence argument. The media consists of hundreds of possible inputs. One can cite instances of pretty egregious anti-Trump talk from CNN or another outlet, but does that prove general media Bias? No, in fact it would be surprising if there weren't a few such deviations. Trump, on the other hand, is just a single person, whose bias profile is easily identified and unmistakable, really. He is enormously biased and bears the bulk of the responsibility for the erosion of trust in news reporting.

Media Bias Fact Check lists some of these media sources as being left bias outlets:

CNN
Huffingto Post
Mother Jones
MSNBC
New Yorker
Newsweek


I would have added to their list, the following:

New York Times
Los Angeles Times
The Guardian




source

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/

ant wrote:Media Bias Fact Check lists some of these media sources as being left bias outlets:

CNN
Huffingto Post
Mother Jones
MSNBC
New Yorker
Newsweek


I would have added to their list, the following:

New York Times
Los Angeles Times
The Guardian




source

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/

The Atlantic
NPR
PBS
Washington Post


This game is fun.

I think a book on media bias would be relevant to the discussion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

I read the original by Chomsky years ago, and wonder what's changed. One of the points Chomsky made is that the overall weighting of the political spectrum has shifted rightward since the 70's, based on a few different rating methods. Even the media has shifted to the right, and outlets that are on the left of the spectrum today would have been conservative a few decades ago.

It might not be relevant to the conversation, but I thought I'd chime in.