media matters is engaging in a bait/switch. The discussion was the approval rating for Congress. the media matters # isn’t about congressional approval but about specific democrats.
The approval rating of Congress is in the toilet with an average 25/66 approval to disapproval
Argh, I need to start reading these things closer. Apparently the number last fall (16%) was an all-time low. Not much better now.
This page has approval rating charts for the last few years (which I assume aren’t made up, but it’s democratic underground, so who knows). This guy says it was 18% in 1994, 1993, and 1991.
Background from june talking about how the losses in Democratic congressional approval rating are almost entirely Iraq.
Public blames Bush/GOP over Democrats 50/25 for not getting anything done (scroll down to “Who would you say” here). Combined with the “I like the policies proposed by the Democrats” number at 50/40, happy the Democrats won last fall at 50/35, the 37/55 has this Congress been a failure, 60 “not much change”, it looks like it’s mostly disgust with lack of delivery than with the Democrats.
On the 2008 congress, Democrats have a generic 9 point advantage, and there’s a 51/39 “elect someone new” number. Of course when you ask people directly about “elect your rep again”, it’s 58/39. :)
I have read that neither Republicans nor Democrats are happy with “their guys” in congress, and Democrats are getting fed up with what they consider spinelessness in the Senate for even trying to force Bush et al to publically veto items, etc. Just read an article in a Chicago paper where some Dems are also complaining about the short work week, etc. that Dems promised to change not being changed, but I assume that’s just a symptom of overall frustration.
Again, I agree with Rangal - stop whining about the Republicans will filibuster or veto and go ahead and pass the bills you believe in, and MAKE them filibuster or veto. Then you’ve done your part, and you can make it clear where the roadblock is. Now all people are seeing is that they aren’t doing a damned thing.
YES. Jesus, dude. Just because they make fun of O’rielly doesn’t make them reputable.
I’m not kidding, find somewhere where they’ve lied. They’re played it straight as far as I know.
They say right in the ABout Us page that they’re a progressive think tank out to expose the conservative lies and their media driven agenda. That doesn’t strike you as partisan? You think that’s going to be a source for completely unbiased reporting? Are you some kind of naive idiot? I’d like to think you’re not, but just in case, swap progressive and conservative in the first sentence of my post, and tell me how you would react to such an organization.
Fox News has plenty of conservative lies. Can you point out one specific example of where Media Matters has outright lied?
Partisan, biased, and lying are not quite the same things. Admittedly I’m having a hard time coming up with a outlet on the right that doesn’t lie constantly, though - the Weekly Standard, maybe?
One where one needs to think rather than react in a kneejerk fashion :)
Bush and his cronies have redefined the partisan stance and have been untouchable for years because of it.
That last election the repubs were really untouchable, weren’t they? Now which planet are you from? :)
I saw distressingly few Americans rejecting those kinds of remarks from 2002-2005.
Really? The elections as I recall were rather close. And just because Bush won doesn’t mean that people were falling for his remarks. One does not necessarily follow the other.
If you think Americans aren’t ready for some tough talk and action from the other side, you are wrong. That’s what got Democrats control of Congress in the first place.
That’s not tough talk, that’s stupid talk. Which is exactly why the dems recanted.
Ninja edit: Besides, what is most called for right now is public partisan statements against the bullshit the Republicans have been pulling for the past 7 years.
I think you have to be careful about the war. Saying the equivalent of repubs just like to kill out troops is ridiculous and no one is going to fall for that. Sure, be partisan, call Bush stupid, incompetent, thare’s plenty of true stuff without making that s###t up.
They’re not even close to the same things.
If media matters has lied, then I invite Anti-Bunny (or anybody else) to call out their lies.
However, being a partisan of truth and biased in favor of truth is good. Pure & simple. So putting in your mission statement a desire to overturn conservative lies (and the conservatives have truckloads of lies that need overturning) is nothing but good.
Has media matters always been truthful? Hell if I know… I haven’t followed them that closely. But you seem to have, Anti-Bunny. So please… show where they’ve lied.
I could of course have used the link in the Media Matters article and retyped the facts in my own words, but that would have been a bit dishonest.
Still, to prove that another source can point out what is obvious:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_121107.html?sid=ST2007121101622
According to the 12/6-9 poll by ABC/Washington Post, approval for Congress was at 32 (33 for President Bush), while it was 28 (33) in November.
For Democrats in Congress, the figure is 40 (32 for Republicans) according to the latest poll, and was 36 (32) in November.
So apparently approval for Congress as an entity trails individual Congresspeople in general. That probably has something to do with distrust for “politicking” and such.
And that poll has consistently higher numbers than the Gallup (which shows numbers for Congress in the very low 20s) and, say, the CBS/NYT polls. I imagine it’s again a matter of how they ask the question.
The fact is, though, that people are overall very dissatisfied with both Congress and just about anything at all coming out of Washington.
As for Media Matters or any source that is strongly biased, as long as you know their bias, cool. But you have to realize they are going to filter out any facts that are counter to their point of view and spin things hard in favor of their view, so they aren’t going to be a good source if you’re trying to simply gather unfiltered data to make your own opinion (i.e. they are best for reinforcing your own beliefs.) So, for example in the case of the topic at hand, they’ll use data that shows a significantly higher number for a Democrat led Congress than Bush - they won’t lie, but they’ll use an answer to a question that gives them the number they want to make their point, and not point out that Gallup shows reverse data.
Look what Media matters did in this story.
The story is written to compare President’s approval rating with the rating of Congress. The story talks about how congressional ratings have tanked over the last year and are below Bush’s.
but Media Matters does is blast the WashPost for not telling the truth. And the truth is a rewrite with Media Matters changing the story from a comparison of Congrss vs. President’s approval rating to an approval rating of Democrats in Congress. That’s a different measure and asks a different thing. B/c it’s not an approval of CONGRESs (which was the pt of the story) but a question about a specific political party. It gets a higher result b/c it’s more likely to illicit a result from folks who consider themselves Dems. (just like approval of a Republicans in Congress get higher marks that Congress in general) Furthermore, Media matters ignores the sentence that talks about Congressional approval since the Congress started(11 months ago!) and tries to make it a story about Congressional approval from the last poll.
In essence, Media Matters accuses the Post of faux journalism practices and then Media Matters does a complete rewrite changing the focus of the story to meet Media Matters specific goals. Media Matters is very successful in changing stories and spreading confusion. Just witness how folks on this thread thought that the actual congressional approval rating was at 40% instead of near historic lows.
Erm, did you read the linked Washington post article? The title is “Democrats blaming each other for failures”, and it’s entirely about the Democrats, not Congress in general.
Obviously they’re not going to be the Columbia Journalism Review, but the point is that unlike, say, the WSJ editorial page and the National Review, they don’t lie through their teeth.
One of the greatest papers in the world “lies through its teeth”, unlike an openly left-wing blog, eh? You’ve really gone off the deep end.
Media Matters is just like Timeswatch.org: http://www.timeswatch.org/ or NewsBusters http://newsbusters.org/, or the old Spinsanity (which was better than any of them, because it was even-handed) - a site that tries to highlight biased spin. There’s no shortage of such sites, and they’re all generally correct in identifying spin, because there’s so much political bias in the media these days.
This stands alone as an illustration of your thought process.
The WSJ news is great; it’s just the loony toons editorial page.
That’s exactly the way conservatives feel about the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, etc. We live in a time when the media are basically functioning as unpaid (hopefully!) political lobbyists. Maybe it was always like that, but it’s glaringly obvious now.
They’re almost all badly biased towards one political perspective, in the stories they choose to run, and the points they elect to emphasize - but if your perspective has devolved to the point of saying one of, if not the most reputable newspapers is “lying through its teeth”, as opposed to just emphasizing a political perspective that’s incongruent with your personal views, you’ve really ventured into partisan-la-la-land.
Your first paragraph invalidates your second paragraph.
Which conservatives? Whenever I see complaints about, say, the NYTimes, it’s always about a straight news story being horribly biased for saying something that’s completely true (the US is torturing people, Iraq isn’t going very well, etc.), not Maureen Dowd or sometimg.
Anyway, bias and agenda is fine and expected. Straight up lying - Hillary killed Vince Foster, for example - isn’t.