Bill -- you forget the MSM tendency to print feel-good stories when the news fits their preconceived notions. Imagine a WaPo story about the adopted child of lesbian parents who overcomes ridicule and discrimination to become valedictorian. Or an athlete with AIDS who wins a competition. Or a child of an inner-city single mother who wins a scholarship to Juilliard. You know the ones I mean; we've all seen them. They're the good news stories that are "newsworthy".

Good point. But these aren't daily front page fare, or general round-ups of larger narratives about the war. "Bomb Kills 35" is going to trump "32 New Schools dedicated in southern Baghdad" every time.

Bill, mostly you'd be right there. But I bet that in 1986, say, on the front page of the Post (but below the fold) you'd be likely to find a headline like "Sandanistas Opening New Clinics in Remote Areas", with a picture of cute kid opening her mouth to say "Aahh" for the socialist doctor.

A couple things:

I remember one Christmas season during my own traditional media career. One Sunday, I had a paper with several open pages that needed filling. Lacking local copy, I headed for the wire and downloaded a touching story (with pictures) about how a community supported and loved a mentally disabled man. My first thought? "Readers might like this, and it will fill space." The next day, the assistant editor (in that newsroom, the no. 2 man in the newsroom) talked about what a great, touching story it was. "Bias" on bad vs. good news isn't just about agenda. It's also about filling space.

Second, this isn't from here, but I can't help noticing that the "good news" from Iraq is inevitably brought on and occasionally discussed by an inherently negative slant -- the "MSM" that fail to cover the good news from Iraq because of (presumably) evil or liberal intent.

--|PW|--

Oh, lord. I don't know whether this post is good news or bad news. I'm paralysed over whether to comment or not.

Of course, if you pass off good news as a criticism of the MSM for not reporting it (ala Chrenkoff roundup), then people will read good news because of the negative spin :D

On another blog I noticed where a commenter had satirically morphed the vaunted acronym MSM into LSM, standing for "Lame Stream Media." I thought that really hit the nail on the head.

Lame Stream Media. Do we have a winner here? Could we morph from the acronym MSM to LSM to better articulate the corpolitically crippled condition of those involved? Ahh.. the alliteration of it all.

I don't think it's really a 'bad news' vs 'good news' issue - it's about what will hurt President Bush, the Republicans and/or make the US look bad.

See the following for a classic example of selective (as opposed to bad vs good) coverage which has those 'objectives' in mind:

http://newsisyphus.blogspot.com/2005/02/sickness-of-msm-its-all-about.html

Baron Bodissey: Your recollection of the coverage in Nicaragua is pretty accurate.

Thanks, John. Maybe the Post had one like it in 1985...?

I used to read the Post all the time back in those days, and winced through all the stories like that one. But the Times story seems even worse than the ones from the WaPo.

Thank God I don't have to read newspapers any more to find out what's going on.

It's not just "if it bleeds it leads" but as PW points out, it's what will gather an audience.

I don't know how many times I hear from people that the MSM is really rightwing because the "owners" are corporate "bigwigs". IMHO that is a disingenuous argument because people that far removed from day to day operations and editorial decisions they just look at the bottom line. A person who owns a bunch of theaters leaves the decision of what plays to put on to the manager ... who really cares what goes on the stage as long as there are paying butts in the seats.

Now personal bias does come into play in selecting the stories and the POV of how they will be protrayed. A very easy and recent example of this process is the MSM coverage of the GW/Wead tapes -- anyone hear it covered in any OTHER manner than "Tapes show President Bush admitting marijuana use"? If that doesn't point out the general left-bias of the MSM yet again ... !

I always kind of assumed that positive pieces on blogs don't generate as much commentary because they don't provoke so much ire in the readers. Most people just won't bother leaving a comment that says "great post, thanks" (or whatever), and I suppose I'm guilty of that as well.

By the way, great post, Bill, thanks. ;-)

...and by the way, Darleen's right again! (No, I'm not following you! LOL)