For those of you who use Yahoo e-mail: have you ever noticed the news headlines that appear on the page after you logout of your e-mail? Have you noticed any trends in those headlines? I log in and out of my e-mail multiple times a day and so get a pretty good feel for those headlines. I certainly have no solid data to back me up, but it seems to me these headlines show a very distinct conservative bias.
For example, recently I've seen headlines touting positive poll results for McCain and Hillary (the conservatives choice for an opponent on the Dem side since they think McCain has a better chance against her in the general election), but none for Obama. In the primary battles, they seem to show a lot of positives about Hillary's wins, but very little for Obama.
Here's another subtle thing I just noticed while typing up this post: in most WYSIWYG interfaces (like Microsoft Word, the post entry box on Blogger, Yahoo e-mail text boxes, etc.) the words Hillary, McCain and Clinton are all ok according to the auto-speller (and using the manual spell-check), but Obama gets automatically underlined (with those annoying red dots) as a possible spelling error. Why is that?
Am I imagining this, or is this a powerfully subtle and serious media bias going on here? Since Yahoo e-mail is by far the most used program in the U.S., if not also around the world, just putting these headlines in front of millions of people on a daily basis, regardless of whether they click through to the stories, can have a very large impact on public opinion. Am I just turning into a crazy conspiracy theorist?
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2 comments:
I have been logging on to Yahoo receintly and every time I do there is a new story about North Korea. The title usually emotes fear and worry about their hostility toward the U.S.! Immediately after seeing that I have checked MSN news on multiple days and I couldn't find ANY stories about N. Korea. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I just before the U.S. invaded Afganistan and Iraq I saw the same type of news stories.
And we know what happens when the general public keeps reading suggestive and emotionally charging headlines.
Hey, you aren't kidding. Seems like yet another right wingnut writing those headlines. Really biased, and many many targeting Obama- always keeping the negative associated with his name. Probably yet another right wing Wall Builder member. They get detailed instruction on how to keep hate speech and divisive rhetoric constantly spewing. Trying always to sway public opinion their sicko way, instead of letting good news come out-the ownership class just cannot permit!
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