As Professor Jacobsen points out, there’s a full court press against the SCOTUS to rule the “right way” on gay marriage, to not “go against the march of history” so to speak, and declare gay marriage a right. Under the guise of giving the people what they want despite the fact at every opportunity they show they don’t want it. Even this poll shows that, so Politico assigns worth to the data depending upon its propaganda value.

Comment by Steve57 (25fb74) — 12/14/2012 @ 7:21 am

I live in San Francisco. I know all about media bias on same-sex marriage. If I had the time, I could write a book about it. In fact, in June 1999, my very first blog (before the term “blog” came into vogue) was about media bias at the San Francisco Chronicle, which in August 1998 refused a full-page ad from Exodus Ministries, an “ex-gay” organization.

In the aftermath of the murderous Matthew Shepard incident in Laramie, Wyoming (which was not a “hate crime,” but a strongarm robbery and assault and battery), the Human Rights Campaign alleged that the men who left Shepard beaten and tied on a fence were in part inspired by their ideological opponents:

“There is a climate right now of intolerance that we believe is being fostered by religious political organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition,” said Kim I. Mills of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay and lesbian political group.

She said the groups began an advertising campaign Thursday “with a message that basically says there’s something wrong with being gay and that you should and can change your sexual orientation,” she said.

“They hear these messages and say, ‘I am going to go out and beat up a fag because they are bad.’”

My piece was titled “I Won’t Hate Homosexuals No Matter How Much The Media Wants Me To,” and it detailed word-for-word how a Chronicle editorial excoriating Exodus not only lied about what the ad said, but contradicted the paper’s own reporting. The Chronicle’s editors signed off on their opinion that “ads such as this will encourage ostracism of and violence against gays,” but in the very same edition, there was a news story about an American Psychological Association conference in the city in which this was written:

No data exist either, [psychologist and gay studies professor Gregory M. Herek] said, to back up the theory that anti-gay violence rises when cultural rhetoric against homosexuality heats up, as during the current ad campaign by conservative Christian groups calling gays sinners and urging them to find God and go straight.

24. The old slogan is “If it bleeds, it leads.” I guess now there has to be a footnote added to that: “*It sometimes depends on who is doing the bleeding.”

Comment by L.N. Smithee (6fca88) — 12/13/2012 @ 10:49 pm

It always depends on who is doing the bleeding; that was the point of my “The Assassin’s Creed” comment. Not all deaths are of equal “news value.” And by the same token not all violence or racism is of equal “news value.” It has to fit the narrative. If it doesn’t support the narrative, or worse contradicts it, it not only doesn’t lead but as far as the MFM is concerned doesn’t exist.

Of course if news has to fit a narrative to have value then by definition what we are talking about is not news but propaganda. It’s the conclusion that the powers-that-be insist the target audience must arrive at that must be supported at all cost. The data points are assigned weight depending upon how well they support that conclusion.

Off topic, but a useful illustration of the concept:

Legal Insurrection – Politico poll showing “plurality support” for gay marriage also shows majority opposition: Politico creates the narrative it wants from unhelpful numbers

So while is strictly true that a plurality do support gay marriage when gay marriage is put as one choice of three questions, it is also true, and more faithful to the data, to say a majority is against it.

Since this bit of mathematics is trivial, even a journalist could have done it, and probably did. That means the decision to write the headline was either deliberate, chosen to align with the site’s prejudices, or the result of blind enthusiasm for the subject.

Smart money is on the former.

As Professor Jacobsen points out, there’s a full court press against the SCOTUS to rule the “right way” on gay marriage, to not “go against the march of history” so to speak, and declare gay marriage a right. Under the guise of giving the people what they want despite the fact at every opportunity they show they don’t want it. Even this poll shows that, so Politico assigns worth to the data depending upon its propaganda value.

The winners and losers have been decided. The history of the future has been written. Now it’s only a matter of filling in the blanks. And shutting up the “pockets of resistance” who refuse to accept the verdict of history.

Half of the “news” on your local newscast has nothing to do with anything anybody needs to know about. It may be topical, but unimportant. My ultimate example of this is something that happened in the Sacramento area in 2002.

A woman who worked in a real estate office and who once served as a Sunday school teacher at a large Christian church had enrolled her daughter in kindergarten in its private school. Then it was discovered that after her divorce, she had become a stripper to pay bills, including tuition for the girl’s school. Soon enough, she started bringing in enough money to quit the real estate job.

The church’s staff caught wind of this, and said it was a violation of an agreement she signed to back up the lessons learned in the school, and said that while couldn’t allow her daughter while she was stripping, they’d try to find something else for her to do to earn tuition. She refused, and they told her she broke their agreement, and had to leave.

Next thing you know, the church is facing an “investigation” by a local TV news crew asking why they had to expel her daughter. The MSM came down on the “cruel,” “un-Christian,” “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” etc. church like a ton of bricks. But nobody except for me actually called the TV station to ask who got the story started in the first place. The answer: Her new boyfriend sicced the news on the church.

Stripper Mom ended up getting interviewed by Playboy.com and said she thought posing in the mag was “The American Dream.” I don’t know if she ever did. But nobody at the TV station said, “Ehhh, forget her. She’s just looking for publicity.”

No death is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the narrative,
A part of a tweet.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Darwin is served.
As well as if a plain man died
Of a heart attack in a frame house of his own
Or if thy friend were.
Each man’s death varies from the other,
As set out in the talking points.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls as told.