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Agree. Another big problem I've noticed is that there are so many partisan news sources. If you are liberal, you go to CNN which has a liberal spin to it. If yo
by newguy1234 6y ago
Agree. Another big problem I've noticed is that there are so many partisan news sources. If you are liberal, you go to CNN which has a liberal spin to it. If you are conservative, fox news. The problem is each one is adding their own biases to it.
I saw this clear as day when I was watching live streams during the Portland federal courthouse protest. I would watch these for several hours per day as a form of entertainment. When I read the news articles written the following day, I was completely shocked at how much bias was present in the mainstream news media.
During these protests it essentially went like this: during the day, the protest was 100% peaceful, hardly any police. Literally a perfect 100% peaceful protest. As night came, the crowd would shift. The peaceful people would leave and then a new group would start showing up, dressed in all black and start doing full blown violence against police. Starting fires, destroying private property and many similar illegal and dangerous stuff.
The following day I read articles on CNN that said there was very little violence and it was almost entirely peaceful. This was false because there was tons of violence at the night. When you read articles in fox news they say the protest was mostly violent. This was also false because the day time protest was 100% peaceful.
This type of news reporting is pushing division politics and social media further fans the flames because people can confirm their narrative and also get false reporting from idiots on twitter/facebook which spreads misinformation.
I could also tell this is heavily influencing people's view on the world because I would debate people on reddit. For liberal people, they would link me CNN and washington post articles to support their arguments. If I argued with conservatives, they would link me fox news and breitbart articles. This is what they're linking to me as their "proof" to support their argument. If I responded by saying that fox news/cnn is biased reporting, they would jump to personal attacks at me, almost like this was their favorite football team I was bashing.
- WalterBright 6y agoThis is hardly new. "60 Minutes" was infamous in the 1960s for the egregious slanting of their segments. It was so bad that the smarter people being interviewed by them would demand that the interview be simultaneously filmed by their own people. As for riots, my dad remarked to me that the TV media would represent the crowds as large or small simply by where they pointed the camera and the zoom level used. And they would, depending on their agenda. Mass media has always been heavily agenda based.
- newguy1234 6y agoYeah very true I guess. I guess the big eye opener now is that cell phones are cheap and high speed mobile data is cheap so that allows anyone to become a "citizen reporter" so to speak. If something serious is happening, it is very likely someone will be live streaming it to facebook, youtube or similar platform so that is a complete game changer at breaking away from main stream media.
- tekknik 6y agoI think an even bigger eye opener for me is that we seem to have agreement on both sides that there is bias and it’s creating division, but we don’t see any catalyst for change it. If a true ly neutral news org came out (or exists already) would people give up their biased soap operas for the good of the country?
- Pokepokalypse 6y agoThere is way too much money to be made in biased "news" sources. And they're all biased. I think the only one we MIGHT be able to rely on is AP since it's a non-profit. But I don't know if that is any guarantee.
- WalterBright 6y agoGovernments are non-profit, but history shows us that government news sources are heavily biased.
- treeman79 6y agoTrump boat parades are an example. Some were epic in scope, thousands of boats. Multiples more people on beaches. Nicest bunch of people. News almost completely ignored it.
- mr_toad 6y ago> almost like this was their favorite football team I was bashing. And there you have it.