Pew Study says MSNBC is almost all "opinion", but what I don't undersand is this:

[CreekDog]

for example:

if MSNBC reported that Colin Powell says that metal tubes were evidence that there were WMD's and therefore we should invade Iraq, and all that has turned out to be totally false...

this is an example of a "fact".

but when Rachel Maddow, or Chris Matthews or Lawrence O'Donnell does a segment on their program that carefully documents the ways in which non-facts, even falsehoods were used to justify the Iraq War and even that Colin Powell's testimony itself was false...and if they do it based on a careful recitation of the "facts"...

this is an example of an "opinion".



I have lost a lot of respect for PEW and this idiotic study.

http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/overview-5/

[tularetom]

1. All I can say about that study is...pew

[House of Roberts]

2. Pew had to have a panel

who decided what was 'fact' and what was 'opinion', thus all their criteria was based on 'opinion'.

[graham4anything]

3. Dan Rather, and the real news was character asssassinated. RIP to those days

the opinion may be 100% fact

but since Dan Rather was taken down for a true statement of fact, and since Dan Rather was character asssasssinated, and most people don't like now or then Dan Rather, and most did not have his back (including the rest of CBS let alone any other network),

and since Fox lies and since they invented this nothing is true except what one decides is true
(which is genius, evil genius, but genius just the same)

well what does one expect?

When they give Wayne LaNutJob a forum on the major stations, spewing propagnada, what does one expect?

Rest in Peace, the news when Dan Rather was broadcasting, let alone Ed Murrow or Walter Cronkite

[Robb]

4. If you're dismissive of opinion, it makes sense to be upset.

However opinion is an exceptionally strong tool in the news business. It's how the news organization is defined -- even historically, a paper was defined by its editorial board.

Pew does not associate a negative value judgment with opinion. I don't, either.

[OldDem2012]

5. Pew Research is a direct organizational descendant of Sun Oil Company....

...Pew Research is a subsidiary of Pew Charitable Trusts which, in turn, was started by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew.

That's all you need to know about their bias against media outlets like MSNBC.

[Scuba]

6. +1

[2naSalit]

17. And their

questionable research has also been a pall on the environmental conservation movement and helped to keep numerous policies that would help keep the environment healthier from ever being completed, heard or voted on.

Pew sucks, period. Have had that opinion of them for nearly a decade now.

On edit: They mainly manufacture misinformation that ends up being taken as golden research.

[ReRe]

7. PEEEE-EWWWW

Something's rotten in Denmark. Of course, this will be printed in all newspapers & periodicals today, discussed on NPR, especially talked up on Foxed-Up News, Chuck Todd himself will debate it for 45 minutes, no telling what Joe Scarface said about it this AM. Repeated 3 times...it's the truth!
Facts + Truth = Opinion, according to P-ew. Kill the messenger, much?
And the American People fall for it. Hook, line and sinker.

[The Straight Story]

8. I think it makes a lot of sense:

But here are what I would call the details.


Let's say in on 24 hour news cycle fox spends 12 hours talking about Benghazi. Stating over and over again that the ambassador died, etc and asking questions like 'why' on various things.

This is not opinion. It is worthless and terrible journalism but not really an opinion.

So technically the study could very well be accurate but pretty much meaningless.

[samsingh]

9. CNNs so called objectivity has 2 repugs talking to every one Democratic and progressive guest

last night's Anderson Cooper was an example. 2 repug idiots defending the gop intolerance with one Democratic guest who was constantly interrupted by the 2 repug idiots and even cooper.

[MoonchildCA]

10. I agree

It is opinion, but it's opinion of the facts.
Faux is opinion based on made up shit.

[OnyxCollie]

14. +1

On the other hand, much that is characterized as propaganda comprises undeniable facts. Mr. Brisbane points out the relative smallness of our airplane defenses. Is this propaganda? The conclusion that we should immensely enhance our expenditures on military and naval aircraft may be argumentative, but it is not essentially deception. The Junior Chamber of Commerce urges that the use of school buildings be denied to Communist groups. Whether or not the practice thus urged is sound public policy is a matter of opinion, not fact. Mr. Hearst (as Mr. Coolidge did in his Delineator articles, when Vice-President) declares that our colleges are permeated with "reds." This may or may not be a fact, according to the definition given to the term "red." What the facts mean, and what should be done about them, if anything, are matters of opinion.

It should be pointed out, moreover, that not everything taught in the schools can be definitely labeled as fact. Perhaps the data of mathematics are facts; yet the examples given for solution in any given textbook of arithmetic or algebra may-can, in truth-scarcely escape embodying a point of view concerning economic institutions. A school reader containing stories of the lives of great men may inculcate Carlylean individualism; a community civics may, on the other hand, stress ideals of and co6peration the importance of the group. A high school economics text (if it be several years old) may indicate that the Federal Reserve Act made depressions
impossible or unlikely. Through all the writing and teaching of the social subjects runs inevitably a current of interpretation. The spoils system may be described as an evil that should be abolished; it may be stated that the Supreme Court interprets, but never makes law; the Spanish-American War may be referred to as a humanitarian undertaking designed to save Cubans from oppression. These are not facts, but opinions about facts.

Wooddy, C. H. (1935). Education and propaganda. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 179, 228-229.

[AlbertCat]

11. Just another attempt to make MSNBC seem like

Fox News.... that they are equivalent.

Nope... anyone with a brain who has seen the two will not be swayed.

[JDPriestly]

12. Me too! That was my first thought when I saw the article about the study.

[mtasselin]

13. PEW

PEW is slowly losing any credibility it had.

[Samantha]

15. Pew is a right-leaning organization with ties to the John Birch society

It is not surprising they would be critical of MSNBC.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pew_Charitable_Trusts

"Although today the Pew Charitable Trusts is non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were themselves politically conservative. The mission of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, one of the seven funds, was to "acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy and the values of a free market and to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won". Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S. businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs".[5] (emphasis added)"


http://www.pewtrusts.org/about_us_history.aspx

The Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent nonprofit, is the sole beneficiary of seven individual charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph Newton Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. Honoring their parents’ religious conviction that good works should be done quietly, the original Pew Memorial Foundation was a grantmaking organization that made donations anonymously.


Fred Koch, father of Charles and David, was also a founding father of the John Birch Society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch

"Fred Chase Koch (September 23, 1900 – November 17, 1967) was an American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States

***

He was one of the founding members of the John Birch Society.[18]

He claimed that the Democratic and Republican Parties were infiltrated by the Communist Party, and he supported Mussolini's suppression of communists. He wrote that "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America," and that public welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks and Puerto Ricans to Eastern cities to vote for Communist causes and "getting a vicious race war started." (emphasis added)

Sam

[dreampunk]

20. I don't see where you

Tie the Pew trust to the Koch brothers trusts?

[EC]

16. It's Pew

that's how they interpet things...they're almost always wrong. Wasn't it Pew that said Romney was going to win?? I never had any respect for pew.

[dreampunk]

18. Thank you for posting - one can contact Pew

through a link at the lower right of that page, which I DID. Here is a copy of the email I sent to them. You can to - it's easy.

'In my subject I say "article" because this document is so full of holes that I can not take the time HERE to point it all out to you~ Sufffice to say that MSNBC NEWS and the programs on MSNBC to include especially RACHEL MADDOW and others is some of the best reporting I have seen in a long time. Listen - I am 66 years old and remember the FIRST televisions in homes, thus have been watching television news a long time. The people at MSNBC news do an amazing job of vetting news sources, investigating the stories and bringing FACTS, not so much of what you insist upon calling OPINION.

Shame on you. The Pew name means much more to me!'

Signed my name
my town
my email

[DirtyDawg]

19. If those...

...bastards can have all these years of FauxNews, we can have a few hours a day - and who the watches more than that, regardless of what time? - of 'opinions' that we happen to share. After all, just as I don't, and won't, watch FauxNews, 'they' don't have to watch MSNBC, so what are they bitchin about?

[moondust]

21. There is nothing wrong with commentary

and extended discussion as long as it's based in fact and not on spin and propaganda. Extended discussion and analysis are good and necessary to a deeper understanding of a given subject.

[kelliekat44]

22. So, I like MSNBC "opinion" better than "FOX" opinion. You know it hurts when facts must be called

"opinion."

[ThoughtCriminal]

23. In the U.S. Media, "The sky is blue" becomes an "Opinion"

As soon as a Republican or right wing pundit says "It's green".

[Cleita]

24. This one was really flawed and biased.

I used to like Pew, but damn did the Koch Brothers take them over too?

[Rex]

25. The M$M is kinda like Lizard Lick Towing.

They both always are there for entertainment purposes only and of course subtle social engineering. PEW is just another brain trust set to keep the status quo.

Remember, we are NOT supposed to use critical thinking skills, just welcome and help maintain the status quo. Anything else will be met with this kind of force;

[Dawson Leery]

26. What exactly does Pew call Fox "News" Channel?

[OneMoreDemocrat]

27. It is pretty much all opinion...

sometimes annoyingly so.

I happen to agree with much of MSNBC's opinion, but it's hard to fault Pew's findings.

[Shankapotomus]

28. MSNBC has a lot of opinion shows

and opinion shows can present facts but they are still opinion shows. MSNBC is missing more straight news coverage. And I am concerned at the missing World News coverage there, as well. They don't claim to be anything other than "The Place for Politics" but I think it's important people get a daily dose of world and non-political news coverage from a news organization. MSNBC needs to get on that.

[MoonchildCA]

29. The format of MSNBC shows

... is not news reporting. They are opinion shows. The hosts are pundits, that's what they do. So technically the PEW study is correct.

The difference is MSNBC hosts offer opinions of the facts while Fox just makes stuff up. I doubt the study qualifies that...