Political Bias

There have been acknowledged failures of the mainstream media leading up to the war in Iraq.

My Echo Chamber Hypothesis proposes that the "He Said/She Said" objectivity constraints of journalistic production broke down after there was a consensus within the political leadership in Congress to authorize military intervention in Iraq.

After October 2002, the media served as an uncritical Echo Chamber to the Executive Branch's countdown towards war.

* How can this dichotomous objectivity constraint be overcome without resorting to a partisan press?
* Is there a new paradigm of journalistic production that can more comprehensively cover the complex issues of the day?

The problems with the pre-election 2004 CBS Bush-National Guard story will probably become the most convincing circumstantial evidence for the liberal media bias hypothesis.

Producer Mary Mapes' sloppy journalistic practices are already proof enough of liberal bias within conservative circles. This is based upon the assumption that her actions were explicitly or implicitly motivated by a liberal political bias against George W. Bush.

As I continue to focus the goals of this project, I have drafted up some ideas as to how to characterize the needs of the current market:

* The mainstream media shapes political discourse in ways that are often unseen, and is therefore accused of having either a political or economic bias.
* Claims of liberal media bias have created a deep distrust of objective mainstream news and increased the demand for a more alternative and partisan press.
* The political discourse is becoming increasingly politically polarized and partisan, and the two parties are talking at each other and not to each other.

The Media Research Center is the conservative watchdog group that is the most influential intellectual authority behind the claims that the media "slant reports in favor of the liberal position on issues."

While there may in fact be instances where the media’s coverage is tainted by a political bias, the standard of scientifically validating this causal path goes beyond simply collecting "a mountain of evidence."

The MRC claims to have proven the existence of liberal media bias through "sound scientific research," but yet their scientific methodology relies solely upon inductive method of investigation while never using a more comprehensive Hypothetico-Deductive Method of scientific inquiry.

I am trying to take an integrative, systems approach to this documentary. It’s hard to pin the blame of any alleged failings of the mainstream media squarely on the media.

This is because there is a complex feedback loop relationship between the government, the media, and the society. Just critiquing the supply (media) without analyzing the demand (popular culture) is a simplistic and reductionistic approach to the issue.

One implication of this is that our public education system and college educational paradigms have a major impact on our culture, which then influences the demand for the programming that commercial broadcasters provide.