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| ABC News Listens to Viewers' Concerns About Iraq Coverage |
| 2006-03-23 |
| Majority of Viewers Feel Iraq Coverage Is Flawed March 23, 2006— Over the last 24 hours, ABC News has been reading hundreds of messages sent in by viewers in response to President Bush's claim that the media are undermining support for war in Iraq. Viewer opinions ran the gamut, but the vast majority believed the media were biased in their Iraq coverage. "I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this, because it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good," a woman from West Virginia asked President Bush at a recent town hall. Teena from Wisconsin agreed. "If we have the capabilities of the media and we can see the blood, bombs, killing and horror, shouldn't we also see the teaching, cleanup, building, training of soldiers … and the many other great things I know our soldiers are doing for us?" she wrote. Many of the postings expressed a desire to get a better sense of the reconstruction effort, and the improvements in daily life for Iraqis. "I think you should cover how many women are now allowed to work, how many kids are now enrolled in school and excelling," wrote Renee from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. Mary Mutschler's son is in the Navy. She wrote from Oregon: "We need to hear about deaths, and what's going on as far as that's concerned. But we need to hear what's going good also." The latest national poll reveals that 31 percent of Americans believe the media make things in Iraq sound worse than they are. But some of our viewers, like Deborah from Texas, said delivering the bad news served an important purpose. "It is the job of the media," she wrote, "to report what's happening on the war front, and that means insurgent attacks and sectarian violence." |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #12 These people actually believe ABC News gives a candy-coated crap about being unbiased or being accurate or fair? How touching. ABC and their ilk don't WANT to be unbiased, fair or accurate; they want to convince their viewers to vote Democrat at the next election. That's the business they're in: producing pablum to influence the masses in favor of the Party. The only interest ABC could possibly have in viewer responses is to figure out how to better conceal their manipulation of peoples' perceptions and become better propagandists. This should have gone under Fifth Column... |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2006-03-23 17:07 |
| #11 ABC News, eh? I wonder what John R. Green (Producer, Good Morning America, Weekend Edition) thinks about the viewers. We know what he thinks about Bush (Drudge). |
| Posted by: eLarson 2006-03-23 14:42 |
| #10 ABC’s “We want to report the news how you want” gimmick is the biggest bunch of crapola since the first huckster said “We just givum what they want.” Does anyone believe that CNN would improve the quality of their product if Debbie from Ohio complained that Wolf Blitzer repeatedly referred to the Cheney hunting non-story as a “crisis”? Pshaww…As if! But you can bet your bottom dollar what stories are covered the next day will depend on how many people respond to their “Question of the Day”. Get me the pliers son this un is a hooked purdy deep. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-03-23 14:26 |
| #9 "If it bleeds it leads" is the mantra of the MSM today.... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-03-23 14:24 |
| #8 Just watch the first five or seven minutes of any local newscast. Murder, rape, assaults, vehicular homicide, on and on and on. Why would anyone want to live in any metro area? Its just the form of 'entertainment' that once was dubbed 'news'. Jerry Springer but with blood. The hack job about unbias news is a joke. Every administration or DoD action is subject to endless hours of anaylsis and criticism. Every bit of good news is handled with 10 shots of the same image of a car bombing or something dragged up again from Abu Ghrab. Where's the criticism and analysis of the failure of the enemy? Where's the loop images of heads being cut off? Wonder how long ESPN would be a viable network if they had Lawn and Garden 'experts' covering the play offs, let alone season play in sports. Yet that what passes as experts on military history, organizations, culture, and operations in MSM. The internet and its blogs are making hamburger of the what once the image of 'professional' news. |
| Posted by: Groth Ebboluck9539 2006-03-23 14:19 |
| #7 The majority (60%) of Fox employees political campaign contributions went to Democrats. It just wasn't nearly as skewed as the other networks. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-03-23 12:08 |
| #6 The 31% figure given is absurdly low - I've seen polls where the MSM's negatives are double that for their incredibly biased "reporting". Is this supposed to be Step 1 in the rehabilitation of the media? If so, they flunked miserably. They couldn't resist (after drawing readers in with something approaching reality) pushing their agenda as a closer. ABC. *PTUI* |
| Posted by: phased array 2006-03-23 11:56 |
| #5 It takes a lot of people to put together a news cast, not to mention to gather the news. Most of them aren't paid a lot of money. The people at Fox, like the people in most industries, work for the industry as much as for any specific company. When they lose their job, they'll be looking for a job at another company in the same industry. It is not a smart career move to alienate yourself from every other company in the industry. So the Fox news tends to be the same as the news everywhere else, just not so much. It is only in the commentators, who are not employees dependent on Fox for bread on the table, who are balanced. That is why network news will not change until the entire current generation in management is replaced by a new generation that sees things differently. More likely is that alternative media, talk radio, blogs, reporters of David, will expand at the expense of the MSM. These media are less labor intensive and less eadily influenced by the MSM industrythink. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-03-23 11:53 |
| #4 Is that all it means? I think she meant to add: BUSH LIED! |
| Posted by: Dreadnought 2006-03-23 11:49 |
| #3 "It is the job of the media," she wrote, "to report what's happening on the war front, and that means insurgent attacks and sectarian violence." Is that all it means? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-03-23 11:45 |
| #2 Agreed. Fox has lost it. Fair & Balanced now means posing two paid (and usually at least one is completely insane) ideologues against each other, which is a pointless waste of air time. The best we have and they suck. |
| Posted by: phased array 2006-03-23 11:42 |
| #1 I am forced to watch Fox every morning for about 20 minutes. It's always the same dose of medicine. Under the guise of being pro-American, they show a burned out car and say something like, "in spite of all of the violence, and the nearing of a sectarian civil war, there was one tiny upbeat note this morning when the peace activists were freed." Yeah, one upbeat note. Never but a positive aside about the poltical process. Never a picture of soldiers being waved at or swarmed by children, never a single picture of a school built or an interview from an Iraqi saying the power is back up, or that something...anything .... good happened. I guess all of that Saudi investment into Fox has paid off. I wonder to myself - would this war already be over if they didn't only post the same message of "you've already lost the war, go home!" And instead posted the positive news of the fact that Saddam is gone, they have a chance at democracy and the genocide, people shredders and rape rooms have been abolished. And Fox is the best we've got. CNN etc are blatantly promoting propaganda for the other side. It's really pathetic that our own press puts Tokyo Rose to shame in their ability to shill for the other side. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-03-23 11:37 |