Pence Defends Law, Bashes Media on ABC's This Week

This past Sunday, Mike Pence defended Indiana's recently-passed controversial 'religious liberty' law and condemned the "wave of misinformation" spread by, among others, "the press," referring to coverage of the law—and the subsequent firestorm—as "shameless."

"Following Digital Breadcrumbs"

In response to Monday's class discussion on Politiwoops and opposition research firms:

On March 28, The New York Times announced the hiring of 20 new online opinion writers. Gawker looked back at the work of one of the new hires, Razib Khan, and found Khan had a “history with racist, far-right online publications.” In response to Gawker’s article, the New York Times fired Khan.

Following the announcement that Trevor Noah will be the new host of The Daily Show, tweets as far back as 2009 have resurfaced that are calling into question Comedy Central’s decision. The New York Times asks “why his Twitter account was not more carefully vetted before he was named host of “The Daily Show." Comedy Central's response to Noah's controversial tweets: “Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included. To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes isunfair. Trevor is a talented comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central.”

Both are instances of opposition research. The New York Times was influenced by Gawker's article while Comedy Central is not retracting their support of Noah.  

Congress and the Media

Newt's C-SPAN strategy

House Press Gallery

Senate Press Gallery

Congress and electronic communication

Reid announces retirement ... on YouTube:

Tweets and Politiwoops

Social media and staff

Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Chu

Committee:Ways and Means and minority page

Party:
House GOP
House Dems
Senate Democratic Policy & Communications Center (see p. 83)

Social Media and Staff

Natalie Andrews and Rebecca Ballhaus report at The Wall Street Journal:

Liz Mair, a free-speaking, fast-tweeting and sometimes profane political consultant, was observing the Republican presidential candidates in January when she offered a thought on Twitter. The sooner that Iowa forfeits its leading role in the nominating process, she wrote, “the better off American politics and policy will be.’’

Then, she took a job with a candidate who has high hopes of carrying Iowa.

A day after her new job with GOP Gov. Scott Walker was announced, she was off the payroll, thanks to her knock on a politically potent state. It was the latest example of the clash between the world of politics, where a top imperative is to stay on-message, and the more free-wheeling ethic of social media.

In recent weeks, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, both likely candidates for the GOP nomination, have also cut ties with staffers and volunteers over their social media posts.

Ms. Mair declined to comment. Mr. Walker, of Wisconsin, on Thursday referred to the matter, saying that “you need to respect the voters.’’

Politicians try to control every facet of their political profile, giving consideration to their speeches, their travel schedules, whether to wear a red tie or open collar. As they try to take advantage of the reach and immediacy of social media, they are hiring staff members who already have “personal brands’’ of their own—years of social media posts to thousands of followers, and a sometimes provocative online voice that can cause the candidate problems.

Rich Galen writes at Mullings:

• How does this stuff come out? The professional opposition research firms that have sprung up over the past few years put the NSA to shame when it comes to following digital breadcrumbs.
• And, while a candidate's allies will go to great lengths to protect the principal (see, also Sec. Clinton's emails), no donor or major player will lift a finger to help a staffer caught with their fingers on the SEND key.
• One of the issues with Twitter, etc. is to write something that will get other people to make it a "Favorite" and/or to "ReTweet" it to their followers. The game is to get as many "Followers" of your own as you can.
• There's an old saying at the Galen School of Political Press: "Anyone can make news if they say something stupid enough."
• Here are some guiding principals for young people who want to be professional political operatives:
• Don't Tweet stupid stuff.
• If you've been drinking, don't Tweet at all. It will be stupid stuff
• If you pause for even a nano-second before hitting the "Tweet" key, erase it. Your internal governor is trying to tell you something.
• You can't generate context in 140 characters

A press release from Shield Political Research:

Shield Political Research, a Democratic opposition research firm with experience researching opponents as well as offering self-research to clients, is pleased to announce the launch of a new service to campaigns and political organizations: self-research on the social media history of potential staffers and other new hires.

The early stages of the 2016 cycle have been filled with stories of what turned out to be short-term campaign hires generating distractions — and embarrassing headlines —with regretful social media posts that were discovered too late, including misogynistic Twitter posts, tweets taking a swipe at early-state voters, and tweets calling officials on both sides of the aisle “idiots,” and worse. […]

Many of the men and women who will staff and lead campaigns this cycle are from a generation in which virtually their entire adult lives —for better or worse —are reflected on social media accounts.

Shield will examine these social media accounts — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, among other sites —and flag any potential sources of trouble, including questionable photos, comments, tweets, “likes” or followed feeds.

Our methods go beyond simple searching, using triangulation, archived pages and social-web analysis to guarantee we capture a full picture of the staffer’s social media footprint.

The service will employ the same touchstones that mark Shield’s other research products: speed, accuracy and a price that makes it a shrewd investment for national and local campaigns alike.

Shield’s social media reports for staffers will be completed in three days or less, and be protected by a confidentiality clause.

Followups

If youa are taking part in the simulation in any way, I  strongly encourage you to tweet in character – but please adhere to Twitter rules:

https://support.twitter.com/articles/106373-parody-commentary-and-fan-account-policy 

 And please let me know your Twitter handle.

------

As class was under way today, The Washington Post published a piece on how the press room seating chart has changed since 2009.

A New Washington Community

Simulation Roles

A stop-video exercise:  Sen Corker (Charlie Montgomery in the simulation)

A Blast from the Past:  the Dreyer Memo

Seating Chart for the White House Briefing Room:
The new environment (Malecha, 26):

Words uttered on talk radio and cable TV, once considered almost entirely disposable, are now etched onto servers around the world. They can end up on sites such as YouTube where they are viewed time and again by people well beyond the target audience. They can be redirected to potential critics via e-mail, as happened in this case. In other words, they live on and can come back to haunt the people responsible for them.

Opportunity for pushback

Newt talks about the new Washington of the 1980s.

Lobbying (data in the link do not account for outside lobbying)

• Contract lobbyists
• Communication consultants

Issue networks,

Revolving doors

• From the media to the executive branch
• Recent White House staff hires
• White House and tech

Jobs

• How tech changed communications staff work
• From the White House Chief Digital Officer

Mail, E-mail, and Congress

Third Essay Assignment

Pick one:

1. If you are taking part in the legislative simulation, write an essay comparing and contrasting your experience with that of your counterparts (reporters, officials, or interest group leaders, as the case may be). In your essay, explain the opportunities and constraints that you encountered. How did you use the participants, and how did they use you? How did coverage affect the behavior of the participants? You should draw upon course materials, including class discussions and the Malecha-Reagan book.

2.  Drawing on the Malecha-Reagan book, write a memo to the Republican or Democratic leadership of the House or Senate, laying out a communications strategy to position the chamber's party for the 2016 congressional campaign.  In your analysis, take careful account of political circumstances and the party's status as the majority or minority.  Also note the different roles of the formal congressional party leadership, the party congressional campaign committees, congressional committees, and individual members.

3.  Pick a "niche" issue that is typically not at the top of the news agenda (e.g., California transportation funding, food safety, NASA funding, research on Alzheimer's Disease).  Examine coverage both in mainstream media outlets (e.g., The New York Times) and specialized media (e.g., issue blogs, social media).   What facets of the issue are showing up in the specialized media but not in the mainstream media?  Examine the interaction of the mainstream and specialized media:  is one driving coverage in the other?

4.  Compare and contrast two of President Obama's press conferences.  Why did the president hold these events when he did?  What was he trying to accomplish?  What kinds of questions did he get? How did the press conferences play in the new media and legacy media?  To what extent did he succeed?  In your research, you should watch the video of the conferences as well as reading the transcripts:  take tone and body language into account.  You will also need to do background research on the issues that came up during the press conferences.

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than six pages long. I will not read past the sixth page. 
• Cite your sources. Use endnotes in Turabian format. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. 
• Return essays to the Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Thursday, April 9. Essays will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness and a full grade after that. I will grant no extensions except for illness or emergency.

New and Governing: Overview

Some terms:

• Pitch calls
• Pitching oppo
• Murder boards
• Planting questions: President Obama and Lois Lerner
• Talking points
• The Starbucks Papers
• OFA on climate change
• Surrogates
• "Quote sluts"
• Spin rooms
• Leaks (also see blog post for 2/9/15)
• Slow-walking
• Document dumps
• Miscellaneous techniques for limiting access

Ch7Graber9e.ppt by Jack Pitney

Meerkats and Dan Pfeiffer

Your new favorite social media application has arrived! Meerkat, an application that allows users to livestream video footage to their Twitter followers, debuted at last week's South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. It quickly caught the attention of 2016 contenders Martin O'Malley, Jeb Bush, and others, including the mainstream media. Politico dubbed 2016 the "Meerkat Election" and CBS raised concerns about privacy. Buzzfeed's Political Editor Katherine Miller took a more pragmatic approach in reminding readers of the inane and boring nature of most election events, making Meerkat not all that exciting and revolutionary most of the time. Regardless, it should be interesting to see how the app makes its way into media coverage and candidates' personal media outreach.   

Additionally, here is an interview with WH Communications Czar Dan Pfeiffer in Medium on media and modern communications strategy in the White House. One particularly interesting quote is below. 

I think that—and this one is tricky—a White House will have to have many more resources dedicated to producing content. We have a lot of people around here who write written words—speeches, talking points, press releases—and you will need people who are creating visual, graphical and video images to communicate the same message. It’s tricky because you don’t want to be in a world where it is propaganda. You’re going to have to vet this and give it scrutiny, but there is an insatiable appetite for content out there. Your traditional news outlets don’t have the resources to produce the amount of content that the Internet requires on a 24/7 basis.

There’s this funny thing where it’s like, if we put out a press release, it is accepted as a proper form of Presidential communication. But if we put out a video, that’s somehow propaganda. The mentality is going have to shift [to acknowledge that] a video is just a more shareable, more enjoyable way of communicating the same information as the press release. Everyone is going to have to adjust to that.

Ted Cruz the Fireman

Early last week, Ted Cruz went on "Late Night with Seth Meyers." I found a few things about the interview and its coverage interesting.

First, the media coverage of the interview itself seemed particularly polarized. For example, here's a tweet from Salon:

Seth Meyers -- Seth Meyers! -- absolutely skewers Ted Cruz in brilliant late-night interview http://t.co/49OwvdDbGo pic.twitter.com/5oW9xBULZs
— Salon.com (@Salon) March 18, 2015

And here's a tweet from CAP:

Seth Meyers confronts Ted Cruz on climate change: ‘I think the world’s on fire, literally’ http://t.co/N72EFPTVf6 pic.twitter.com/jvTKU0YM9S
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) March 18, 2015

Then, from the other side, Red Alert Politics sympathizes with Cruz:

Seth Meyers interviews Ted Cruz about global warming and gay marriage. That’s called an ‘away game.’ http://t.co/VnhGQycAC6
— Red Alert Politics (@RedAlert) March 17, 2015

But if you watch the actual interview, it seems Meyers and Cruz, though less than friendly, were not openly hostile, as the tweets or Think Progress' picture would lead one to believe:





In addition, Cruz highlights in the interview that media coverage of his recent stump speach while campaigning in New Hampshire was exceedingly unfair. Not to pick on Salon, but here's their coverage of that event:

Watch Ted Cruz scare the bejesus out of a little girl in his new stump speech http://t.co/GSf9PwD38u
— Salon Politics (@Salon_Politics) March 17, 2015

However, video from the event is not nearly as dramatic (starts @ 0:28):





While Cruz does damage control on exactly how much he scared the young New Hampshirite, the interview with Seth Meyers seems to have been a win-win. Meyers pressed Cruz on weighty issues and gained media attention. Meanwhile, Cruz proved to his base that he is a true conservative and even got a few shots in on the liberal media along the way.

...
For what it's worth PolitiFact found Cruz's scientific claims on "Late Night" to be "mostly false":

Ted Cruz: Climate 'alarmists' have 'problem' bc 17 yrs of satellite data show 'zero warming." Mostly False http://t.co/CZrs10ZHJE
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) March 20, 2015

The New American Center

In its November 2013 issue, Esquire published a feature called "The New American Center," which provided an in-depth look into a survey it commissioned together with NBC (the survey was conducted by "Benenson Strategy Group, President Obama's pollster, and Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the polls for Governor Romney").

The feature provides a lot of really interesting information about the political, social, and other attitudes — as well as demographics — of those in the "center" of the American political spectrum. What I found unique about the survey was that the pollsters identified eight distinct ideological groups, with the "bleeding hearts" being furthest left, and the "talk radio heads" being furthest right, and four of the eight groups comprising the center. While the media frequently reduces ideology to conservative or liberal (or at best, adds distinctions of financially or socially conservative/liberal) Esquire & NBC paint a much more nuanced and revealing picture of public attitudes.

Also, you can find out your own ideological group by taking the poll yourself on the Esquire link above.

"The Injustice the DOJ Uncovered in Ferguson Wasn't Racism"

“The Injustice the DOJ Uncovered in Ferguson Wasn’t Racism” is the title of an article written by Ian Tuttle of the National Review.

The article objects to the widespread conclusion that the Ferguson Police Department is systemically racist. Tuttle claims that the DOJ Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department presents biased statistics such as the "disparate impact criterion"-- the choice to present the number of police interactions with African American citizens comparative to the whole African American population, rather than the number of African Americans who are found in violation of the law.

However, Tuttle fails to respond to the witness testimonies of racially motivated stops or to explain the disproportionate use of force against African Americans—the report reveals that over 90% of police force was directed against African Americans, while the black population compromises only 67% of Ferguson’s residents. The report is replete with other instances of racial bias—implicit and explicit—exercised by the FPD. However, Tuttle chooses to ignore these findings of racial bias and instead focuses on the “predatory government” of Ferguson, or the imposition of heavy fines and fees for municipal code violations. Tuttle claims that policing in Ferguson disproportionately affects black communities not because of racist attitudes, but because of high levels of poverty.   While this article supports the necessity of reform in Ferguson, it avoids an important discussion of racial bias in policing.  

MSNBC: rap music is to blame for racism at University of Oklahoma

I'm very liberal/progressive/left-leaning — whatever we want to call it — but I actually can't stand MSNBC most of the time. Part of my problem with the network is the liberal bias, the Jon Stewart-esque no-risk "low hanging fruit" content that just tells Democrats and liberals what they already agree with and want to hear, but this post from Jezebel (love Jezebel, won't apologize for citing it!) illustrates another issue I have with MSNBC a lot of the time: it may be overwhelmingly "liberal," but it's in large part a much older and more socially reserved streak of liberalism. Notice the table in the MSNBC clip featured here is full of middle-aged white folks, who aren't the best source of expertise or understanding when it comes to rap music.

Here's some excerpts from the post: "Morning Joe Has a Good Explanation for the Racist SAE Kids: Rap Music" ....

On Tuesday night, Waka Flocka Flame–who has performed at the OU previously for SAE but says he's cancelled his upcoming performance there–went on CNN to express his "disgust" with those in the video. "I was more like hurt, I was more like disgusted," he said. "Because I knew those kids, I performed for those kids. They made me feel like a brother."
... Brzezinski said she doesn't get why the rapper would be upset because he is partially to blame:

I look at his lyrics, and I'm thinking, why wouldn't you ask this guy, why would you go on this campus, and if you look at every single song I guess he's written, it's a bunch of garbage. It's full of n-words, it's full of f-words. It's wrong. And he shouldn't be disgusted with them, he should be disgusted with himself. That's all I have to say.

Scarborough also weighed in:

Anybody who watches Empire knows that 70 percent of the audience is white! The kids that are buying hip hop or gangster rap as Mark [Halperin] wanted us to call it, it's a white audience, and they hear this over and over again. So do they hear this at home? Well, chances are good, no, they heard a lot of this from guys like this who are now acting shocked.

Perhaps he should have listened to rest of Waka Flocka Flame's comments: "To me, I really can't blame the kids. To me, I feel like that's passed down." 

...in other words, yeah, they actually probably did hear it at home, from racist parents.


In my opinion, this is a case where more diverse voices in media—more younger folks, more people of color—would likely (though not assuredly) improve the perspectives they feature. To their credit, other programs on the network like the MHP show and Janet Mock's So POPular do a much better job of this—and are also housed on MSNBC.

Bias IV

Simulation and  Claremont Beat

Images and other forms of bias

The case of abortion: NPR report this morning

More data (albeit older) on journalist opinions:

 As was the case in 2004, majorities of the national and local journalists surveyed describe themselves as political moderates; 53% of national journalists and 58% of local journalists say they are moderates. About a third of national journalists (32%), and 23% of local journalists, describe themselves as liberals. Relatively small minorities of national and local journalists call themselves conservatives (8% national, 14% local).

 Internet journalists as a group tend to be more liberal than either national or local
journalists. Fewer than half (46%) call themselves moderates, while 39% are self-described liberals and just 9% are conservatives.

 Among the population as a whole, 36% call themselves conservatives – more than triple
the percentage of national and internet journalists, and more than double the percentage of local journalists. About four-in-ten (39%) characterize their political views as moderate, while 19% are self-described liberals, based on surveys conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. 

In the general public:

• Ideology
• Party Identification
• The case of evolution
• The case of abortion

Commentary v. News

• On Cable
• The problem of conservative media: punditry v. reporting

Pew on polarization:



Pew study of media habits:

A1 Day

Dylan Byers reports at Politico:

Three weeks ago, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet informed staff that the paper would no longer take enterprise pitches for Page 1 of the print edition. Instead, editors from the various news desks would pitch their best enterprise pieces for digital slots on what will be called "Dean’s List." Those stories' publication in the print edition would be a secondary consideration to digital.

On Monday, Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief Davan Maharaj made a similar announcement: The morning editorial meeting "is no longer an A1 meeting," he wrote in a memo to staff, "but a coverage meeting, with an emphasis on what we can deliver for readers in the coming minutes and hours." (Emphasis his.)

Click here for an example of what editorial meetings once looked like.

An Apparent Example of Media Bias

The photo that The Times ran.

On Sunday, The New York Times ran a picture of President Obama and his family (along with a crowd of others) crossing the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The President was in Selma to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march in Selma that became known around the country as "Bloody Sunday." As part of the ceremony, President Obama gave a moving speech and marched in the footsteps of MLK and his original followers across the bridge. Although the image printed on the front page of The New York Times captures this moment perfectly, the news media decided to ignore the substance of the words below the image and focus on the cropping of the image itself - in an effort to prove the age old belief that the mainstream media is an elite liberal institution.

According to the traditionally conservative media outlet (ignore Groseclose's claims), Fox News, The New York Times deliberately cropped the former President and First Lady, George and Laura Bush, from the paper's Sunday cover image. This supposedly doctored image is apparently a prime example of the liberal media bias that infects America's mainstream news coverage. In fact, Fox News contributor and outreach director for FreedomWorks, Deneen Borelli, claimed that it was "a stunning example of media bias," but this is more of an opinion than fact. 

In response to these accusations, the Public Editor of The New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, published a piece that aired the complaints of many upset subscribers and third party commentators  Sullivan claimed that the Photo Editor at The Times, Michele McNally, had not altered any photos, but simply ran the photo that she was given from longtime Times photographer, Doug Mills, who had only sent one image - the one that appeared on the front page. Mills offers a fairly understandable rationale for only sending one image:

"Just so you know … at the time the photo was taken, I was using a 70-200 long zoom lens. I also had a remote camera with a wide-angle lens attached to the side of the truck that took a photo at the just about the exact moment as the tighter one. As you can see, Bush was in the bright sunlight. I did not even send this frame because it’s very wide and super busy and Bush is super-overexposed because he was in the sun and Obama and the others are in the shade."

The photo of both Presidents crossing the bridge.

Unsurprisingly, The Times believes that they did no wrong, citing the fact that the photo that included both President Bush and Obama was simply too "busy" and "overexposed," making it unfit for the cover page. I happen to agree with the explanation of the paper, but as I mentioned earlier, I have a bias to agree with my home city's flagship paper, so I am wondering what you all think? Was the 'cropping' of this image a prime example of the liberal media bias or just another baseless 'issue' drummed up by partisan commentators?

P.S. here is the video of my uncle Jonathan Steafel, the managing editor of the Daily Mail, getting into an argument on British Television and here is an article praising the Daily Mail. Just so both sides are covered.

Poll: Fox News most trusted network

According to a Quinnipiac University poll released today, Fox News, is the most trusted cable news coverage network in the United States with 20% of those surveyed saying they trusted Fox's journalistic coverage "a great deal" and 35% saying they trusted Fox "somewhat". CNN followed with 22% while CBS and NBC shared 10% each with 8 % of people saying they trusted ABC a great deal. Overall however, the poll suggests people generally trust network coverage a lot less than they used to. Also interesting to note, forty-two percent of registered voters think NBC should allow Brian Williams to anchor “NBC Nightly News,” while 35 percent think they should not give him another chance after his suspension.

The poll, conducted Feb. 26-March 2, polled 1,286 registered voters nationwide via landlines and cellphones, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Bias 3

Research and Writing

• Always introduce direct quotations.
• Learn the proper use of the apostrophe.
• "Avoid announcing the thesis statement as if it were a thesis statement. In other words, avoid using phrases such as `The purpose of this paper is . . . . ' or `In this paper, I will attempt to . . .' Such phrases betray this paper to be the work of an amateur."
• Examples of how not to write.

Different View of the NY Times

Outgoing public editor Arthur Brisbane:

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

(Then) executive editor Jill Abramson;

"In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane's sweeping conclusions," Abramson told POLITICO Saturday night.

"I agree with another past public editor, Dan Okrent, and my predecessor as executive editor, Bill Keller, that in covering some social and cultural issues, the Times sometimes reflects its urban and cosmopolitan base," she continued. "But I also often quote, including in talks with Mr. Brisbane, another executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, who wanted to be remembered for keeping 'the paper straight.' That's essential."

Attitudes, Perceptions, Bias

• Industry contribution data
• Journalist perception of self-censorship
• 2001 Survey
• Survey of attitudes

• Perceptions of media bias: Gallup

• Perception of media bias: Pew

Reasons for perceptions of bias

RE: The Continuing Saga of Clinton's Email

The coverage of the Hillary Clinton email situation has proved for some interesting coverage by a variety of news and media sources. 

Vox.com published an overview of the scandal, both giving an explanation as to why the use of a personal email was controversial while also comparing her to Jeb Bush, among other insights.

Even left-leaning publications have been critical of Clinton's email, including this Slate article that states her personal email is defenseless.

In parallel with Clinton's email situation, Senator Lindsey Graham has also received some attention for not having an email at all: "Graham's answer: 'I don't email. No, you can have every email I've ever sent. I've never sent one.' He added: 'I don't know what that makes me.'"

Finally, SNL poked fun at Hillary's situation (if she runs) this weekend with a cold open on the show.

Questionable Claim in Left Turn

On page 52 of Left Turn, Tim Groseclose claims that most nonvoters are moderates in order to rationalize not accounting for nonvoters in his model: "Even if we could force all of these people to vote, then it is doubtful that they would overwhelmingly vote for the Democrat. More likely, since they are approximately indifferent, they would approximately split their votes between the Republican and the Democrat."

I was surprised by this comment because I think of nonvoters tending to be minority members of the population who would probably support liberal policies and political candidates if they were to vote. I looked up research from the Pew Research Center and found data that supported my hypothesis:

As one can see, nonvoters are younger, earn less, and are more likely to be Hispanic than likely voters on average. As a result, nonvoters were more likely to support Obama than likely voters in the 2012 election (59% versus 47%). This data persuades me to object to Groseclose's argument that the average nonvoter is equally likely to support a liberal or conservative candidate.

The Office Of Communications Threatens to Revoke RT's Broadcasting License

Following our discussion on media bias this week and to further the discussion on ‘corporate control of the news’, which Carlos posted on; here’s a brief synopsis of Glenn Greenwald’s recent piece that highlights the hypocrisy and double standards inherent in the UK government’s policies toward, and regulation of, the media.

The article centers on the Office of Communications (Ofcom), which functions as the UK government’s official media regulator and watchdog for ‘bias’. Greenwald cites that although Ofcom rarely reprimands establishment British media outlets (such as the BBC) for bias, it is now conveniently reprimanding RT, the Russian state funded television outlet for airing biased and anti-western comments while covering Ukraine. More specifically, “the program is understood to have featured a number of anti-western views in the discussion between the presenter and three studio guests”.

The point Greenwald is trying to underscore is the “propagandistic purpose of touting ‘media objectivity’ versus ‘bias’, as the former simply does not exist”. Further, it’s alarming that it is British journalists themselves who are most vocal in demanding Her Majesty’s Government ban RT on grounds of bias. Greenwald therefore encourages one to wonder how authoritarian a society must be if it gets its own journalists to play the leading role in demanding that the state ban (or imprison) the journalists it dislikes.

Ultimately, the point Greenwald drives home is that “purporting to compel media objectivity is always about imposing a very specific and subjective agenda masquerading as impartiality”. To emphasize his point he cites the Chair of Ofcom, Colette Bowe, who previously served as Chief Information officer at the Department of Trade, as a board member of Morgan Stanley and Electra Private Equity, among various other positions with conflicting interests. Greenwald cites her background and then questions whether anyone should believe in her concept of objectivity and impartiality” as it is unlikely to be anything other than the prevailing conventional wisdom and orthodoxies of the British elite.

The article ultimately emphasizes that while Her Majesty’s government lectures foreign governments on infringements of media liberty, it simultaneously and hypocritically threatens to revoke the license of a media outlet that broadcasts views and perspectives at odds with those of its own, “all while shielding (and venerating) the equally virulent biases from pro-state television”. This Greenwald asserts, “is the classic hallmark of how a government propagandizes its citizens: ensuring that they hear only those views of which the government approves and which serve its interests and agenda”.