Dan Rather sues CBS for $70 millionFollow

I'll bite. I think that pundits have overtaken most of the media outlets, bowing to pressure that mainstream journalists are too liberal (and they need a conservative view) and largely representing much of the news that comes out of the right-leaning media. So in essence, they call themselves pundits who are only giving opinion but are represented on outlets that are ostensibly news stations and programs, usually without challenge and are supported and have communication and legitimacy within the beltway.

I think pundit used to be about expressing an opinion but was separate from the mainstream press. Now it is just a way for blowhards to voice an extremely biased opinion based on nothing with no challenge, to bully the media and without having to be responsible for anything. And they are comfortable with slander.

I think it's easy to target Rather, b/c of precisely your argument, but it begins to muddy the waters. I say that pundits should be held to the same standard and not allowed to voice unfounded and slanderous opinions. And I think it was developed by people who have a vested interest in marginalizing the political press. I think you guys talk semantics and don't realize how much manipulation has gone into the formation of these definitions and how different people are viewed based on these definitions.

And I think if you watched the rightwing media, or listened to it, etc. you could tell that there would be a sacrificial lamb and it'd be likely to be Dan Rather--I mean, people were waiting for that since at least the late 90s but much more in 2002-3.

And I think the right were excited to hold up Rather as an example so they can discredit the press, pretend its biased and march out extremely biased pundits to spin the fiction that somehow any criticism of Bush must be fabricated. And they can criticize without having any actual fact b/c they can just say it is opinion--putting the burden much more on one side than the other, even though are given equal airtime in the same outlets. It's a social control mechanism. Clamp down on the press and put up the flags, we gotta be patriotic!



Edited, Sep 20th 2007 4:57pm by Annabella

It's a slang phrase, it doesn't have to be grammatically accurate!

I think you're reading too much into the meaning of "pundit". A pundit is someone who holds a particular viewpoint on something. More specifically, it's someone who is known to hold a particular viewpoint. The critical point is that the pundit's position on something is already known. The reason for airing the pundit is so that he can express his reasons and/or arguments for why his position is the right one.

Pundits appear on all sorts of media outlets. I even mentioned someone like Rev. Jackson in an earlier post. He's a pundit, but I'm pretty sure no one here would consider him "right wing". I'm also reasonably certain that if you asked the average person to list off people they'd heard of who held strong political views, you'd find them listing off many times more Liberal then Conservative pundits. Heck. Half the stars in Hollywood serve as liberal pundits (and the other half keep their mouths shut). Where or how their views get expressed doesn't matter that much.

Now. You do have a point with regards to say Fox News and its format. However, I would argue (and have in the past) that what you call "bias" with regards to Fox's approach is actually "honesty". What's happened is that the mainstream media has become so reliant on pundits (liberal pundits) doing their talking for them, that it has replaced real journalism. I also suspect that many journalists, while not openly advocating viewpoints themselves on their shows, have a tendency to bias their journalism simply by the choices off what stories they cover or investigate and by their choice of pundits they put on their shows.

The difference between Fox News and say "60 Minutes" is that when Fox News has a panel of experts (pundits), they say that they are biased, and they typically list off their political affiliations as part of their introduction. The audience knows that argument A is being expressed by pundit A, and that he's a Conservative or a Liberal, or whatever. On most mainstream news shows, if there's an expert or panel of experts that appear to present opinions, they are almost all "liberal", and the show never makes note of that fact. It's quite amusing for example to watch some of CNNs shows and see a panel of experts discussing an issue and they all are saying variations of the same thing, and all expressing the liberal viewpoint.

Fox News does not say it's unbiased. What it does say is that it's "biased fairly" (Fair and Balanced). Which is to mean that they make an effort to present as many different sides to an issue as possible. Most other news sources are just as biased, they just don't tell you. They hide the bias and pretend that somehow by putting 4 liberals on a panel that they're presenting you with facts rather then skew.

I actually did a test with this a couple months ago. Can't remember the issue at hand now, but I remember DVRing two shows on the same day. One was Chris Wallace on Fox News (his sunday show). The other was another similar name on CNN (blanking on the name). During one particular segment, both shows had a panel and were discussing the exact same political issue. Wallace's panel consisted of two liberals and two conservatives and presented a wide range of viewpoints. The other guy's panel had 4 very obvious liberals (cause they said the same things that the two liberals on the other panel said). Of course, they weren't labeled as such, so the average viewer would never know that he's only getting one side of the story.


I guess what I'm getting at is that there's a right way of using pundits in news shows and a wrong way. I seriously suggest that you take some time and do some research. Don't take my word on it. Do what I did. If you have a DVR, pick a Sunday news show on Fox (Wallace is a good one), and one on CNN (or any of the various CBS/NBC/ABC "investigative" style news shows). They'll usually cover similar topics (cause only so much happens in a single week). Pay attention to the viewpoints expressed by whatever panels they bring in. See how those match up between the two different shows. Ask yourself if you're seeing a wider representation of viewpoints or a narrower one on either show, and if so, which one?

It's not about whether your news show presents views that you personally agree with. It's about whether it presents views you *don't* agree with as well as those you do. If your favorite news source only ever presents things the same way you view them, then you have to ask yourself if all views are being properly represented.


I'll also note that this is pretty much off topic to the issue of a journalist's responsibilities. But you seemed to mostly be talking about what pundits do and don't do, so I responded to that.

Edited, Sep 20th 2007 5:55pm by gbaji