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Tim_Tex
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16 Sep 2021, 9:35 am

In the U.S., a great deal of our media has a political bias, be it MSNBC on the left or Fox on the right.

Is media in other countries biased in any way, or is it more or less balanced?


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Brictoria
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16 Sep 2021, 10:46 am

Over here in Australia, the media certainly has varied bias.

With regards to newspapers in Melbourne, we have a left-leaning paper ("The Age" - also known as the "Spencer Street Soviet") and a right-leaning paper (The "Herald-Sun" - Also known as "The Hun"). Sydney have something similar, and I'm not sure on the other states (At one stage most capital cities had a "Murdoch" (right leaning) and (formerly) "Fairfax" (left leaning) newspaper, but I believe Fairfax withdrew from several regions as their papers were not considered "economical" to produce for those locations).
"The Age":
Image
The "Herald-Sun":
Image

With radio and free-to-air television, we have several options - many radio stations, 3 major television organisations - as well as 2 "government owned" organisations (The ABC and SBS) which maintain multiple television and radio stations. The privately owned radio and television stations vary in their bias, depending on the target audience...

As to the government-owned broadcasters:
The ABC is widely considered left-leaning (despite having a charter which requires they be balanced in their reporting). This opinion is also shared by independant media monitoring organisations, such as https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news-australia/ which rates it as:
Image

SBS is similarly positioned by independant media monitoring organisations, such as
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/special-broadcasting-service-sbs/:
Image

There is also "pay-tv", where Sky has a "right" lean (I'm not sure what other options there are here)...



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16 Sep 2021, 4:10 pm

From what I've heard, the British papers all have different leans, but are up front about it, i.e. no one pretends to be neutral, you know whether you're consuming a right wing paper or a left wing one. I'm not super familiar though, I'm sure someone who lives there could give a better explanation.


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naturalplastic
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16 Sep 2021, 4:29 pm

The country itself has a pov.

If you can get the Megahertz group of channels from around the world (French, Japanese, Chinese, RT, Jazeera, BBC) you can savor foreign news. They have a different set of BS than the BS in American news.

Both RT (Russia Today) and Al Jazeera are supposed to be anti american. But during the Arab Spring they cover the Libyan uprising very differently. Al Jazeera would root for the rebels, show graffiti in western Libya of locals demonizing Khaddaffi, and would generally applaud NATO bombing of Libya. On RT they would demonize NATO, show libyan civilians bombed out of their homes by NATO, demonize the rebels, and apologize for Khaddaffi. You would have thought that there two different countries in the world named "Libya" - from the opposite ways RT and Jazeera covered events in that same country.

Also Jazeera was NOT as rabidly anti Israel as I expected an Arab outlet to be. They portray Israel much the way Sixty Minutes would portray the USSR back in the Eighties. Talk about "the balance of power" with Israel, focus on dissident groups, and upon dissident intellectuals within Israel (like Sixty minutes would focus on Solzenitzin). They didnt go out of their way to give the Israeli pov. But they were more measured than I expected them to be. I guess I expected Al Jazeera to be like the SNL spoof of Al Jazeera...women broadcasters wearing burkas...and ending each news story by saying "death to America". I dunno. The real thing isnt like that. Lol!



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16 Sep 2021, 10:28 pm

Brictoria wrote:
Over here in Australia, the media certainly has varied bias.

As to the government-owned broadcasters:
The ABC is widely considered left-leaning (despite having a charter which requires they be balanced in their reporting). This opinion is also shared by independant media monitoring organisations, such as https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news-australia/ which rates it as:
Image

This is no surprise to most.
Even fair-minded left-wing people would agree privately. 8)



Brictoria
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17 Sep 2021, 1:57 am

Off Topic
Pepe wrote:
Brictoria wrote:
Over here in Australia, the media certainly has varied bias.

As to the government-owned broadcasters:
The ABC is widely considered left-leaning (despite having a charter which requires they be balanced in their reporting). This opinion is also shared by independant media monitoring organisations, such as https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news-australia/ which rates it as:
Image

This is no surprise to most.
Even fair-minded left-wing people would agree privately. 8)


I think it's simply a case of the further "left" a person is, the more likely they are to see it as "balanced" (or even, in extreme cases as being to the "right"), simply because what it presents, while "left leaning", is sometimes still to the "right" of their position, leading to their subjective belief in it being "balanced".