Has Talk Radio reached it's peak?

[MattParker]

You've worked in radio. You know exactly how easy it is to book a guest with a differing viewpoint and still maintain a bias. NPR maintains an illusion of fairness with their listeners because of their calm delivery. They don't have a guy like Ed Schultz foaming at the mouth and ranting about evil conservatives, so people just assume that they're unbiased.

From comments I see posted here and from quotes I see in news stories, I don't think very many people assume NPR is unbiased.

As social scientists have been showing for decades, people go to the news media for confirmation - not information. "Fair and balanced" exists only in the eyes and ears of beholder. If something supports what the viewer/listener/reader already thinks, then the source is objective. This is the same phenomenon that has people boo an umpire when the home team's runner was clearly out.

There is also the mind-set Walter Cronkite once set forth that if he gets and equal number of complaints saying he is biased to the left and biased to the right, he must be doing his job.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

As social scientists have been showing for decades, people go to the news media for confirmation - not information.

I guess I missed getting that memo.

Let's look at the logic. I can't be here in Georgia and at the same time be in Washington, D.C. and in Madison, WI and in Egypt and in Lybia. How would I know the information about these places if I didn't have media? Does the Tooth Fairy stop by and leave you nightly briefings?

So people get their REAL INFORMATION WHERE? They read the blog from the Tea Party? They read the blog from the Americans for Democratic Action? Then they have the facts.... and they check with the media... not to get facts... but to grade the media?

I guess my brain is small. That logic does not compute for me.

There is also the mind-set Walter Cronkite once set forth that if he gets and equal number of complaints saying he is biased to the left and biased to the right, he must be doing his job.

Morning Edition on NPR and All Things Considered on NPR both have a scheduled time each week when they real aloud letters and e-mails from listeners. They routinely hear from listeners who say "atta' boy" and listeners who say "You screwed that one up!"

When you guys come here over and over and over again and say: NPR constantly broadcasts highly biased material but they do it using the "Chicago style calm voice technique" to make listeners think they are not biased, your repeated posts tell us who is delivering highly biased material.... and NPR isn't close to being "it" in this game of tag.

In a world where Barry Goldwater in his glory days was considered by the public to be a far-out right-wing wacko conservative and in today's world he would be considered something of a leftist, I am a loss to know who gets to decide what is bias and what is balance-and-truth. Does that place out in Boulder, CO where they have the atomic clock that we all depend on to keep the space lab from bumping into the moon and the Dead Sea have a Truth-o-meter where we can feed items of news in and they come out certified as Right, Left or Unbiased?

Everybody can jump in on this one: Tell me what source of information, what "media vehicle" you believe to be the one that delivers the most unbiased current events information and news in 2011.

This may turn out to be a better read than the comics in last Sunday's paper.

 

[KeithE4]

Everybody can jump in on this one: Tell me what source of information, what "media vehicle" you believe to be the one that delivers the most unbiased current events information and news in 2011.

This may turn out to be a better read than the comics in last Sunday's paper.

At least to me, the Washington Post is the most balanced news source in the country - newspaper, radio, or TV. Sure, their editorials lean a bit left (but not as far left as they were decades ago), but they have liberal and conservative columnists in their employ (not just syndicated guys like George Will and Charles Krauthammer holding down the right side of the opinion page). And they do a decent job at keeping bias out of their actual news articles.

CNN is a distant second.

But in truth, because we are all imperfect human beings, it is impossible by definition to be completely unbiased in anything. That includes journalists.

 

[DonTheTrucker]

As social scientists have been showing for decades, people go to the news media for confirmation - not information.

I guess I missed getting that memo.
I guess my brain is small. That logic does not compute for me.

He's right. It's called selective exposure. We all do it, whether we think we want to admit it or not.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

As social scientists have been showing for decades, people go to the news media for confirmation - not information.

I guess I missed getting that memo.
I guess my brain is small. That logic does not compute for me.

He's right. It's called selective exposure. We all do it, whether we think we want to admit it or not.

I'm sorry. I'm not sure you are in the same conversation we were having.

If people don't get their information from news media, where do they get their information.

What Matt claims reminds me of the old bromide of humor from the days when country music shows used to perform in high schools in a revenue sharing arrangement:

"In little towns, we don't read the news paper to know what is going on... we read the news paper to see who got caught!"

People on larger communities don't know what is going on unless they obtain information from some form of news media.

Even people out here in Hooterville have to turn to some form of news media in order to know if Kadafy in Lybia is still alive or not.

No one gets up in the morning know what crimes took place last night until they consult with some form of news media.

The idea that the only purpose of news media is to confirm what you already know, why waste time consulting news media. If the only purpose of news media is to confirm what you already know, why would any radio station ever consider scheduling any newscasts?

"Selective Exposure" probably is what a good looking babe does at the beach on a sunny day. I don't understand how that fits into a discussion of Talk Radio.... unless the babes bring their radio to the beach.

 

[quadraphonic]

We all choose our favorite news organizations, our favorite clothes, our favorite soaps and shampoos, our favorite part of town to live in, our favorite car, our favorite car color, our favorite everything,
all based [mostly] on our biases.
Our choices aren't usually exclusive, sometimes we might even choose the opposite of the usual, but usually we will choose our favorite, settle on a favorite at some point, based on our biases.
That's 'selective exposure.'


'Selective exposure' also affects how you view what you choose to promote to your friends and internet forums as your 'favorites.' Nobody's going to say they choose to do something because it's bad for them "I listen to Rush because it activates my angina." "I watch Rachel Maddow because she makes me so mad I could spit." At the least, they promote their choices as if they are trying something different because they are 'openminded' or 'testing the options' or some such.

If people in Hooterville are for the most part interested in the goings-on at The Jersey Shore, then they probably aren't going to spend a lot of time pursuing information about whether or not Qadhafi is alive. They will learn what they want to learn actively, then they will learn the rest by accident and osmosis, unintentionally. That's kind of why most news programs seem to focus on the banal, because that's what Hooterville wants.

 

[DonTheTrucker]

"Selective Exposure" probably is what a good looking babe does at the beach on a sunny day. I don't understand how that fits into a discussion of Talk Radio.... unless the babes bring their radio to the beach.

The idea of selective exposure can be applied to any communications medium, but even more so for news and opinion programming. People by their very nature want their beliefs to be confirmed. When we seek out media sources, we choose sources that confirm our pre-dispositions. This isn't something I just made up. It's one of the most important ideas in communication theory.

Even people who are respectful of opposing viewpoints still give the vast majority of their attention to like-minded media sources. This is why wishy-washy opinion shows don't work.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The one area of life where Selective Exposure may be most observable is the way we choose to expose ourselves or protect ourselves from RELIGION.

And the decision that happens is whether you choose to embrace a "community of religion" that tells you what you want to hear, that reinforces what you already want to think.... or whether you embrace a "system of faith" that says: "Here is a better way for you to think... try life our way, you'll like it!"

Can I suggest something radical: While some people turn on their radio wanting to be pampered, wanting a "spa massage" experience for their ego and psyche, there are other people who turn on their radio saying: "I want to go to bed every night knowing I learned something new and useful and important today and tonight I understand my world just a little bit better than when I woke up this morning."

This conversation seems to assume everybody lives in that first category.

What does radio offer to the people in the second category? If radio is going to take a commercial message (that is the way most radio survives) and deliver it to a listener who might act upon the message and walk into the door of the advertiser for the first time.... wouldn't it be logical I would want my station to have some listeners in that second category.... people who are ready to embrace a new way of thinking, a new product, a new lifestyle.

If ALL my listeners already know what they think and what they want, and expect the station to spoil and pamper them, how do you effectively deliver a commercial announcement that says: "Get off your butt and do something new and different and buy my product."

 

[DonTheTrucker]

The one area of life where Selective Exposure may be most observable is the way we choose to expose ourselves or protect ourselves from RELIGION.

And the decision that happens is whether you choose to embrace a "community of religion" that tells you what you want to hear, that reinforces what you already want to think.... or whether you embrace a "system of faith" that says: "Here is a better way for you to think... try life our way, you'll like it!"

You bring up an interesting point. Sometimes people want to make a radical change in their lives, and your religion example is one of those instances. Being human, we're not total creatures of habit, so of course there are exceptions to the usual.

Can I suggest something radical: While some people turn on their radio wanting to be pampered, wanting a "spa massage" experience for their ego and psyche, there are other people who turn on their radio saying: "I want to go to bed every night knowing I learned something new and useful and important today and tonight I understand my world just a little bit better than when I woke up this morning."

This conversation seems to assume everybody lives in that first category.

The point with media is that even the guy who wants to learn something new will go to the outlets he trusts for that new information.

What does radio offer to the people in the second category?

Not much, perhaps nothing. But then again, TV and newspapers are in that category as well.

If ALL my listeners already know what they think and what they want, and expect the station to spoil and pamper them, how do you effectively deliver a commercial announcement that says: "Get off your butt and do something new and different and buy my product."

If any of us had the answer to that question, we'd be the richest marketing people in the world.

 

[MattParker]

The principles at work here are:

Selective attention: People go to media that support their views. Conservatives go to Fox and conservative talk radio. Liberals go to progressive talk.

Selective recall: People remember what they agree with and what supports their views.

Selective perception: People make what they hear support their views. When Nixon said he was not a crook, people who disliked Nixon heard Nixon-Crook.

This board - this thread - offers plenty of evidence of these principles at work.

The fact that so few broadcasters are aware of or accept these principles is evidence for them.

 

[quadraphonic]

The one area of life where Selective Exposure may be most observable is the way we choose to expose ourselves or protect ourselves from RELIGION.

And the decision that happens is whether you choose to embrace a "community of religion" that tells you what you want to hear, that reinforces what you already want to think.... or whether you embrace a "system of faith" that says: "Here is a better way for you to think... try life our way, you'll like it!"

Can I suggest something radical: While some people turn on their radio wanting to be pampered, wanting a "spa massage" experience for their ego and psyche, there are other people who turn on their radio saying: "I want to go to bed every night knowing I learned something new and useful and important today and tonight I understand my world just a little bit better than when I woke up this morning."

This conversation seems to assume everybody lives in that first category.

The "lowest common denominator" is the "greatest unwashed masses." Advertising-providers in mass media shoot for the bigger numbers.
Most people who aspire to greater things, well, mass media is probably not going to help them do that. It's too "mass." The ways people would want to improve themselves are more varied than the individuals who want to improve themselves. That niche would be impossible to serve, without cheesing off and boring almost all the other listeners.
If people are interested in personal wholesale change, they will go to a bookstore, a church, join a support group, do something active rather than just turning on a radio station.
Besides, you can't shove "improvement" down people's throats, they will be repulsed, so broadcasters are waiting on demand to provide the supply.

What does radio offer to the people in the second category? If radio is going to take a commercial message (that is the way most radio survives) and deliver it to a listener who might act upon the message and walk into the door of the advertiser for the first time.... wouldn't it be logical I would want my station to have some listeners in that second category.... people who are ready to embrace a new way of thinking, a new product, a new lifestyle.

Way of thinking, product, and lifestyle would all be marketed differently.
Hasn't politics and the way it's marketed taught us that?
The lifestyle/need for change is promoted (a slogan, say "A chicken in every pot" or "Change to make it easy"), then a product (candidate) is promoted to meet that need, and over time, that marketing might change a way of thinking (more or less reliance on government, say). None of those are things you can promote and make change happen in one fell swoop (fell enough for mass media broadcasters to be interested in), except maybe for the product/candidate and all those ads during campaigns.

If ALL my listeners already know what they think and what they want, and expect the station to spoil and pamper them, how do you effectively deliver a commercial announcement that says: "Get off your butt and do something new and different and buy my product."

Sure, people want "change," but they want it in increments, and they want it to be palatable [except in the occasional and rare "Damascus Road experience" kind of instance]. That's why they are shocked when a light AC station changes format to rock, and email the pd, as compared to being just being a little peeved and getting over it faster when they let the evening dj go and start running Delilah.

 

[DonTheTrucker]

The principles at work here are:

Selective attention: People go to media that support their views. Conservatives go to Fox and conservative talk radio. Liberals go to progressive talk.

Selective recall: People remember what they agree with and what supports their views.

Selective perception: People make what they hear support their views. When Nixon said he was not a crook, people who disliked Nixon heard Nixon-Crook.

This board - this thread - offers plenty of evidence of these principles at work.

The fact that so few broadcasters are aware of or accept these principles is evidence for them.

I beat you up a lot for some posts, but this one is spot on.

Here's something to throw a monkey wrench into things....I watch MUCH more MSNBC than I do Fox News. But I only watch Lockup. Where does that fit in?