side without noting aspects favorable to the other side; putting out the interpretation of what an event means while giving little or no time or space to explaining an opposite interpretation. An example of liberal bias spin would be a poll that was asked concerning George W. Bushs’ effectiveness. It states that the mainstream media was biased towards Bush when seeking “public opinion,” according to a pollster who often tracks voting trends for the Gop. Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, CEO and president of the firm “the polling company,” accuses the segments of the mainstream media of engaging in “egregious questions” weighted on the negative side. Fitzpatrick doesn’t quite go as far as saying that it was push polling, choosing instead to refer to “examples of how the media typifies their political bias against President Bush.” The questions cited by the pollster “appear to be written with a specific intent to portray President Bush in an unfavorable light as well as cast doubt on his presidency in its infancy. An example of a loaded question that was asked by CBS news was, “Given that a majority of voters did NOT vote for George W. Bush, do you think it will be harder for him to accomplish his goals as president, or won’t it make a difference?”9 Another example would be: “A CNN/USA Today poll out on 8/14/97 has headlines that stated “More Americans Want Jones vs. Clinton Settled Out Of Court” based on a poll that 48% to 42% were in favor of an out of court settlement. The poll had a 3.5% margin of error, which gives the poll a 2.5% edge in favor of settling out of court. This does not justify the headline. It is basically a dead heat.10Another form of media bias is how the press intervies political candidates. I found a great deal of interviews where the Liberal candidate was asked very easy questions and the Republican candidate wa...
