3 ms·

>How is this frightening? Why should we turn a blind eye to a source that continually posts provably fake and completely contrived news stories? Most of Breitb

by rudolf0 10y ago

>How is this frightening? Why should we turn a blind eye to a source that continually posts provably fake and completely contrived news stories? Most of Breitbart's inflammatory-headline stories are based on real scientific studies. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes-women-unattractive-and-crazy/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes... cites multiple real university studies. Also supported by studies conducted by reasonable sources, if you read the articles: http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/01/not-sexism-women-just-suck-interviews/ http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/01/not-sexism-women-ju... http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/05/fat-shaming-is-good-science/ http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/05/fat-shaming-is-good... http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-rights-have-made-us-dumber-its-time-to-get-back-in-the-closet/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-right... (the writer himself is gay, if it matters) Exaggerated, sure, but it's not fake news by any means. It's biased news, like many other news outlets. Ad agencies are perfectly free to not associate with them anymore, but calls to mark them as fake news is extremely dangerous and would be a clear case of censorship. I strongly disagree with Breitbart's agenda but there are times when publications like WaPo post stories that are at roughly the same degree of the bias axis as Breitbart, just in the opposite direction. People just need to treat media sources with a grain of salt. Facebook and Twitter should only ban the websites that are clearly just fake article mills, posting nothing but completely fabricated information.

justinlaster 10y ago
> http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-right.. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-right.... (the writer himself is gay, if it matters) As a gay man, no it doesn't matter. You can have completely off base opinions no matter who you are. He panders to an audience, and damages the rest of the community in the process. Calling those articles "exaggerated" is extremely forgiving. The article I quoted uses a combination of outdated pseudo-science and philosophically iffy reasoning behind its pretext. As someone who struggled to come out, I can't tell you how absolutely disheartening and difficult it is to get past your family when they read pieces like that, and clearly don't have the skills necessary to understand why the rationale is bad in the first place. It makes me want to just yank Milo by the neck and show him what irreparable damage he is doing to people (if I could); if he even has the morality to care. >http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes.. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes.... cites multiple real university studies. And then you have things like this. Is this supposed to make up for everything else they do? You gave me a list of articles, but these aren't contradictory to their other practices. To my original point: why bother with the source when you can consume that information elsewhere, from a source that is far more likely to be reliable? To your point about other publications such as the Washington Post being on the other axis of bias, I have trouble understanding how you can simply say they're just on the other side. From everything I've seen from the Washington Post, they're nowhere near as advertently dishonest as Breitbart is, accidentally or otherwise.
- rudolf0 10y ago
  Here's the summary of his stance: >When I express views like this, I’m sometimes called a reactionary. People say I want to go back to the 50s. And they’re right – but it’s the 650s BC I want to return to, because Sparta had the right idea about male love. You can spend all day wrestling and wanking each other off if you want to, chaps, but you still have to get married, have kids and go off to fight wars. Sure it combines "outdated pseudo-science and philosophically iffy reasoning behind its pretext". But it's not fake news. It's just shitty news, like so much other shitty news out there. I'm not defending Breitbart, I'm just saying it is a press outlet and it should be allowed to exist as one. It shouldn't have to suffer from censorship. No media source should have to suffer from censorship. Fake news mills aren't media sources. >It makes me want to just yank Milo by the neck and show him what irreparable damage he is doing to people (if I could); if he even has the morality to care. Milo is a partisan asshole but he's not a total idiot. Instead of calling for his website to be blacklisted, why not present your opposing view and start a reasonable debate on the subject? You could probably even get him to agree with a lot of your points, and perhaps even empathize. Healthy dialogues are critical in a democratic society. Censorship is the antithesis of everything our society stands for. >To your point about other publications such as the Washington Post being on the other axis of bias, I have trouble understanding how you can simply say they're just on the other side. From everything I've seen from the Washington Post, they're nowhere near as advertently dishonest as Breitbart is, accidentally or otherwise. I don't have any particular examples right now, but just as Breitbart will group together articles of alleged attacks by immigrants or minorities, I've often seen WaPo group together articles of alleged attacks against immigrants or minorities on their top bar. I think Breitbart is probably more biased on average, but they both spin things pretty heavily. Between Breitbart, Fox, Drudge, Huffington, NYT, NBC, WaPo, there is not a single source of objective and neutral news analysis out there. It's probably more fair to put Breitbart and Huffington Post at the same bias degrees than Breitbart and WaPo, but the point is that all these sources are pretty shitty and biased and calling for just one of them to be censored is quite silly.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    No one is arguing Breitbart should be prohibited from existing. Other people choosing not to subsidize or do business with them is not a ban. Also, degree of ideological bias is not the same thing as degree of journalist integrity or factual falsity. A "news" outlet can have no particular ideological bias and be completely disconnected from the truth, or it can have a strong ideological bias and be completely reliable on facts and even have high integrity in presenting all relevant facts in the stories it covers (while, or even would assume, being quite selective in its selection of which stories to cover at all.) So, saying Breitbart is no more biased than HuffPo is not an argument that they are no more fake than HuffPo.
kafkaesq 10y ago
Most of Breitbart's inflammatory-headline stories are based on real scientific studies. This is sort of like pointing out (correctly) that a lot of junk food in fact also contains perfectly healthy ingredients. At the end of the day, it's a quality issue. And as applies to Breitbart, what it comes down to is that a lot of their stories are just really insipid (and basically contain way more noise than signal), even though (snippets of them) may make reference to more "reasonable" sources. I strongly disagree with Breitbart's agenda but there are times when publications like WaPo post stories that are at roughly the same degree of the bias axis as Breitbart, just in the opposite direction. MSM outlets do go a bit overboard, at times. But the extent to which (even during their worst lapses) their output resembles of the puerile drivel that sources like Breitbart produce every day, in nearly every every article -- just picking a random snippet from one of your sample articles posted above, at random: This is a group that thinks anything ending in “salad” is health food. A pound of taco beef and a huge scoop of guac? It’s fine as long as it’s called a “taco salad”! Greens smothered in 700 calories of oily dressing? SOD OFF YOU STICK INSECT, IT’S A SALAD! is basically negligible.

by rudolf0 10y ago

justinlaster 10y ago

> http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-right.. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-right.... (the writer himself is gay, if it matters) As a gay man, no it doesn't matter. You can have completely off base opinions no matter who you are. He panders to an audience, and damages the rest of the community in the process. Calling those articles "exaggerated" is extremely forgiving. The article I quoted uses a combination of outdated pseudo-science and philosophically iffy reasoning behind its pretext. As someone who struggled to come out, I can't tell you how absolutely disheartening and difficult it is to get past your family when they read pieces like that, and clearly don't have the skills necessary to understand why the rationale is bad in the first place. It makes me want to just yank Milo by the neck and show him what irreparable damage he is doing to people (if I could); if he even has the morality to care. >http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes.. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/08/birth-control-makes.... cites multiple real university studies. And then you have things like this. Is this supposed to make up for everything else they do? You gave me a list of articles, but these aren't contradictory to their other practices. To my original point: why bother with the source when you can consume that information elsewhere, from a source that is far more likely to be reliable? To your point about other publications such as the Washington Post being on the other axis of bias, I have trouble understanding how you can simply say they're just on the other side. From everything I've seen from the Washington Post, they're nowhere near as advertently dishonest as Breitbart is, accidentally or otherwise.

rudolf0 10y ago
Here's the summary of his stance: >When I express views like this, I’m sometimes called a reactionary. People say I want to go back to the 50s. And they’re right – but it’s the 650s BC I want to return to, because Sparta had the right idea about male love. You can spend all day wrestling and wanking each other off if you want to, chaps, but you still have to get married, have kids and go off to fight wars. Sure it combines "outdated pseudo-science and philosophically iffy reasoning behind its pretext". But it's not fake news. It's just shitty news, like so much other shitty news out there. I'm not defending Breitbart, I'm just saying it is a press outlet and it should be allowed to exist as one. It shouldn't have to suffer from censorship. No media source should have to suffer from censorship. Fake news mills aren't media sources. >It makes me want to just yank Milo by the neck and show him what irreparable damage he is doing to people (if I could); if he even has the morality to care. Milo is a partisan asshole but he's not a total idiot. Instead of calling for his website to be blacklisted, why not present your opposing view and start a reasonable debate on the subject? You could probably even get him to agree with a lot of your points, and perhaps even empathize. Healthy dialogues are critical in a democratic society. Censorship is the antithesis of everything our society stands for. >To your point about other publications such as the Washington Post being on the other axis of bias, I have trouble understanding how you can simply say they're just on the other side. From everything I've seen from the Washington Post, they're nowhere near as advertently dishonest as Breitbart is, accidentally or otherwise. I don't have any particular examples right now, but just as Breitbart will group together articles of alleged attacks by immigrants or minorities, I've often seen WaPo group together articles of alleged attacks against immigrants or minorities on their top bar. I think Breitbart is probably more biased on average, but they both spin things pretty heavily. Between Breitbart, Fox, Drudge, Huffington, NYT, NBC, WaPo, there is not a single source of objective and neutral news analysis out there. It's probably more fair to put Breitbart and Huffington Post at the same bias degrees than Breitbart and WaPo, but the point is that all these sources are pretty shitty and biased and calling for just one of them to be censored is quite silly.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  No one is arguing Breitbart should be prohibited from existing. Other people choosing not to subsidize or do business with them is not a ban. Also, degree of ideological bias is not the same thing as degree of journalist integrity or factual falsity. A "news" outlet can have no particular ideological bias and be completely disconnected from the truth, or it can have a strong ideological bias and be completely reliable on facts and even have high integrity in presenting all relevant facts in the stories it covers (while, or even would assume, being quite selective in its selection of which stories to cover at all.) So, saying Breitbart is no more biased than HuffPo is not an argument that they are no more fake than HuffPo.

kafkaesq 10y ago

Most of Breitbart's inflammatory-headline stories are based on real scientific studies. This is sort of like pointing out (correctly) that a lot of junk food in fact also contains perfectly healthy ingredients. At the end of the day, it's a quality issue. And as applies to Breitbart, what it comes down to is that a lot of their stories are just really insipid (and basically contain way more noise than signal), even though (snippets of them) may make reference to more "reasonable" sources. I strongly disagree with Breitbart's agenda but there are times when publications like WaPo post stories that are at roughly the same degree of the bias axis as Breitbart, just in the opposite direction. MSM outlets do go a bit overboard, at times. But the extent to which (even during their worst lapses) their output resembles of the puerile drivel that sources like Breitbart produce every day, in nearly every every article -- just picking a random snippet from one of your sample articles posted above, at random: This is a group that thinks anything ending in “salad” is health food. A pound of taco beef and a huge scoop of guac? It’s fine as long as it’s called a “taco salad”! Greens smothered in 700 calories of oily dressing? SOD OFF YOU STICK INSECT, IT’S A SALAD! is basically negligible.