One of the most common criticisms of the PBS NewsHour is that it too often mimics the elite bias of the commercial media.
A recent broadcast of the NewsHour (6/8/11) had two segments about the debate over the Afghan War–the first a news report covering the Senate nomination hearings for Ryan Crocker, Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan. Quoted in the piece were senators Jim Webb (D.-Va.) and Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Barack Obama.
The discussion segment that accompanied it featured two more senators: Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez. Chambliss is a supporter of the war, with some reservations, while Menendez wants to continue the war with a different strategy:
I think you could do more of a counterterrorism effort, where you are striking at Al-Qaeda and along the Afghan/Pakistan border, even striking at the Taliban to just to continue destabilize them.
As FAIR pointed out in our most recent study of the NewsHour, actual opponents of the war are hard to find.
On June 7, the NewsHour had a discussion about the state of the economy, and what the White House might be able to do to turn things around. Again, the guestlist was disappointing. Here’s Gwen Ifill’s introduction:
We explore that now with Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wells Fargo in Charlotte, N.C., and Tom Binnings, senior partner at Summit Economics in Colorado.
A Beltway political reporter for a mainstream daily, an economist for a bank and a partner at an economic forecasting firm. The banker expressed a view common in corporate America–that there’s too much government regulation.(“It seems that regulation has increased…. Companies are really kind of put off by the amount of regulations that are hitting them all at once.”)
There was little challenge to that sentiment–a predictable outcome, given the guests that the show booked to talk about the issue. The NewsHour should do better.
Too much interference with the private sector by the public is bad, but no amount of interference with the public sector by the private is ever enough.
Or so the corporate media would have the public believe about the finance capitalists and their weapons-producing war-mongering corporate funders.
My understanding and once confirmed by a staffer at the Newshour is the Newshour does pre interviews with possible interviewees to determine what they will say. My response was, “So you go fishing.” The staffer explained was it was to determine which guests would work best together.
The simple fact the Newshour failed to report, or even refer to later, the Pan-Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and that coincided with the US and Israeli governments also ignoring it was a big red flag to me.
Well my feeling is the “corporate media” as well as the commercial media leans heavily left.That said I do believe it is changing…thank God
Michael e: Would You please identify who the Liberals were among NewsHour’s guests? Again, you
don’t (read:can’t) back up your claims with reputable sources or facts. Wich means you can’t make an intelligent argument for your assertions. Regurgitating today’s talking points from the RNC or the
NewsCorp. doesn’t make an intelligent debate, just a smelly mess to wipe up.