6 ms·

Is this really what people want in the news? A biased political stance?

bra-ket 6y ago
when all mainstream news are heavily biased in favor of one political party and spread blatant misinformation, you need an alternative as a counterbalance and source of truth. the fact people don't even notice, or choose to ignore the bias in mainstream media is beyond me.
- hobs 6y ago
  Fox News is already amazingly biased and censured world wide - claiming you need even worse liars to help you feel better about "balance" makes no sense.
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    Fox is drown in liberal propaganda just like other corporate media. The only alternative now is DailyWire with its uncompromising conservative stance.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      You posted the same thing (almost word for word) five posts upthread. Just repeating yourself is not a convincing argument. It might be a decent propaganda technique, but it's a lousy argument.
      - bra-ket 6y ago
        i'll repeat myself as many times as my words are flagged and hidden.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        That's OK. I get a new "flag" button on every post you make... (Also, those of us who have "showdead" turned on can see your posts, even after they're flagged. That's how I knew you were repeating yourself.)
        bra-ket 6y ago
        never noticed that option, it's not a default though, thanks for the tip.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK, to those who downvoted the parent: I understand the temptation to downvote everything someone says when you disagree strongly with them on some point, but there is nothing in the parent post that deserves your downvotes. Downvote the post; not the person.
    - tomrod 6y ago
      This is incorrect. Fox continues to maintain a conservative view. DailyWire and similar are radical right, which maps fairly cleanly to Nationalism, Fascism, and similar. That's if you are using the commonly received connotation of conservative, rather than trying to rewrite reality. My $0.02.
      - bra-ket 6y ago
        'fascism' these days is something you accuse your opponent of when you've lost the argument, the word lost any meaning due to overuse.
        tomrod 6y ago
        Or, it's a coherent philosophy of corporate ownership of the economy directed by government dictate, as it has been known since long before your identified method of deflection.
        bra-ket 6y ago
        woah, that's a mouthful. My grandpa fought fascists and I never heard any of these fancy words from him.
        tomrod 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#False_authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Fals... Your lack of understanding or stubbornness aside, if your grandfather fought actual fascists it is doubtful he defined the term. All that is immaterial, of course, to your current incorrect claim that Fox News somehow became liberal recently, which I can only assume is established in your view by the idea that Trump presently dislikes them.
        paradox242 6y ago
        > corporate ownership of the economy directed by government dictate Your "explanation" contains a contradiction, so you're not off to a great start here. If the economy or corporations are directed by government dictate, they don't really own anything in a meaningful sense. In this arrangement they are more like managers than owners. If you disagree, ask yourself if any corporation really has another option other to comply if one of their decisions is countermanded by the state. There is a reason it is named after the Fasces, a symbol of authority borne by a Lictor through the streets of Rome ahead of Tribunes and other officials with authority (okay, granted that this term and symbolism is decidedly Italian, fascism will always feature symbols distinct to each nation). The essence of fascism is power. A fascist believes this power comes from unity (another reason the Fasces is a chosen symbol, as it contains a bundle of sticks that when bound together cannot be easily broken) and so the subordination of the individual and every institution to state power is the cornerstone of their policy. You seem to misrepresent the primacy of economics in fascist ideology, perhaps confusing this with Syndicalism, which Mussolini was involved with early in his political career. Fascism is something else. While it incorporates the subordination of the economy to the state, above this it values ethics of action, a willingness to commit violence against its enemies, courage, and obedience to authority. It is inherently anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian. It will not tolerate internal rivals or dissent. It always features a leader who rules as dictator and to my knowledge has never succeeded in a stable transfer of power once that leader dies. It has often been linked to the Romantic period as so much of fascist ideology is based on emotion, feeling, symbolic mysticism, and the irrational. It's politics can be seen as a reaction to the ultra-rational basis from which Communism claims to descend.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  It's attractive to ignore it because "reality has a well-known liberal bias". Politics are not created equal. Conservatives are observably less educated than liberals: look at the demographics. That said, any bias (including corporate influence) is worse than an agnostic information reporting machine (which C-SPAN or the BBC approach best).
  - cltby 6y ago
    Education is indeed becoming the dividing line between left and right all over the world. Sadly, it is because the scope of "education" has been expanded to include subjects with no intellectual content.
    - namlem 6y ago
      Such as?
      - bra-ket 6y ago
        safe spaces, gender studies, wokeness certificates, virtue signaling workshops, degrees in conformity & groupthink. read William Dereshevitz' "Excellent Sheep", it's the best book on the subject.
    - gurkendoktor 6y ago
      Mhm, there have always been soft sciences (sorry MBAs). I agree that education is becoming a major dividing line, but in my opinion that's because the "left" is moving towards elitism, whereas the "right" is slowly embracing populism. "Only dummies vote for the others" is just a snobby way of saying "we lost the working class".
CodeWriter23 6y ago
> Is this really what people want in the news? A biased political stance? When we have a great number of people who say things like “but that’s from xyz source so it’s bunk”, without examining the underlying facts or lack of facts, I’d have to say the answer to your question is Yes. PS I’m willing to examine news from any source and employ discernment.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
All news is biased. Left, Right, Center is a false trichotomy. There is no such thing as objective journalism because the news is a filter. Even if one reports "just the facts", the facts one decides to report impart a bias. I might report that "a woman is suing McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself". That is an unbiased fact. And it implants a story of runaway litigiousness. If I also report that "McDonalds was warned many times about the temperature of its coffee and even sure once already and the woman sustained 3rd degree burns" the story becomes one of corporate malfeasance. Compound this further. I now state that the woman won millions of dollars, you may be tilting back toward over litigiousness. But if I report that she only sought damages and the jury awarded her punitive damages of its own accord the we're back to corporate malfeasance.
- matwood 6y ago
  IMO, the largest bias, which you left out, is what story is told at all.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    Absolutely. I can think of no better example than the recent moral panic over free speech. Because a few college kids on the wokest campuses in the country booted a few right-wingers we spent months covering every campus invitation as if it was the ratification of the first amendment itself. (I'm not saying there are no first amendment issues in America but who decided the events of a few college campuses were the evidentiary standard for a new social phenomena).
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  What, then, is your stance - do you think there is a difference of degree or agenda that matters? Or are they all the same, and should all be thrown out together.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    In terms of trying to sift and acquire information it probably doesn't make much of a difference. It helps to know each outlet's priors so you can distill the useful information. The Drudge Report is obviously biased but for years it was the best place to get the straight dope on natsec because they had 4th amendment sensibilities. Lately I've actually become pretty avid Fox reader because they're bullshit is so blatant it's very easy to discard it and take the value. This approach does have its limits. At a certain point you do hit Infowars levels of nonsense and all useful information is scrambled. Even if you want to focus on an ethical argument I'm not sure how to create a standard to compare them. Who is worse, Fox News who wears their bias on their sleeve or the New York Times who constantly hold themselves out as remarkable while piping all kinds of military and intelligence propaganda through to their readers. Who is worse? The organization that just outright supported Bush or the one that claimed to be a check and then held the illegal NSA spying story through an election? IMO it's best not to choose which is better or worse. It's better to know how to read through both.
nomel 6y ago
Assuming actual investigative journalism here... Someone once told me that you need bias in the news to create an adversarial system. Those that are biased towards some other viewpoint will be the only ones that dig deep to expose the problems of that other viewpoint. If everyone was neutral, there would be more motivation to present what happened rather than call foul. I'm not sure I completely agree with this, but it did nudge my perspective.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  I’d agree that has its place. But there is an important difference between honest bias and dishonest bias.

when all mainstream news are heavily biased in favor of one political party and spread blatant misinformation, you need an alternative as a counterbalance and source of truth. the fact people don't even notice, or choose to ignore the bias in mainstream media is beyond me.

hobs 6y ago
Fox News is already amazingly biased and censured world wide - claiming you need even worse liars to help you feel better about "balance" makes no sense.
- bra-ket 6y ago
  Fox is drown in liberal propaganda just like other corporate media. The only alternative now is DailyWire with its uncompromising conservative stance.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    You posted the same thing (almost word for word) five posts upthread. Just repeating yourself is not a convincing argument. It might be a decent propaganda technique, but it's a lousy argument.
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      i'll repeat myself as many times as my words are flagged and hidden.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        That's OK. I get a new "flag" button on every post you make... (Also, those of us who have "showdead" turned on can see your posts, even after they're flagged. That's how I knew you were repeating yourself.)
        bra-ket 6y ago
        never noticed that option, it's not a default though, thanks for the tip.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK, to those who downvoted the parent: I understand the temptation to downvote everything someone says when you disagree strongly with them on some point, but there is nothing in the parent post that deserves your downvotes. Downvote the post; not the person.
  - tomrod 6y ago
    This is incorrect. Fox continues to maintain a conservative view. DailyWire and similar are radical right, which maps fairly cleanly to Nationalism, Fascism, and similar. That's if you are using the commonly received connotation of conservative, rather than trying to rewrite reality. My $0.02.
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      'fascism' these days is something you accuse your opponent of when you've lost the argument, the word lost any meaning due to overuse.
      - tomrod 6y ago
        Or, it's a coherent philosophy of corporate ownership of the economy directed by government dictate, as it has been known since long before your identified method of deflection.
        bra-ket 6y ago
        woah, that's a mouthful. My grandpa fought fascists and I never heard any of these fancy words from him.
        tomrod 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#False_authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Fals... Your lack of understanding or stubbornness aside, if your grandfather fought actual fascists it is doubtful he defined the term. All that is immaterial, of course, to your current incorrect claim that Fox News somehow became liberal recently, which I can only assume is established in your view by the idea that Trump presently dislikes them.
        paradox242 6y ago
        > corporate ownership of the economy directed by government dictate Your "explanation" contains a contradiction, so you're not off to a great start here. If the economy or corporations are directed by government dictate, they don't really own anything in a meaningful sense. In this arrangement they are more like managers than owners. If you disagree, ask yourself if any corporation really has another option other to comply if one of their decisions is countermanded by the state. There is a reason it is named after the Fasces, a symbol of authority borne by a Lictor through the streets of Rome ahead of Tribunes and other officials with authority (okay, granted that this term and symbolism is decidedly Italian, fascism will always feature symbols distinct to each nation). The essence of fascism is power. A fascist believes this power comes from unity (another reason the Fasces is a chosen symbol, as it contains a bundle of sticks that when bound together cannot be easily broken) and so the subordination of the individual and every institution to state power is the cornerstone of their policy. You seem to misrepresent the primacy of economics in fascist ideology, perhaps confusing this with Syndicalism, which Mussolini was involved with early in his political career. Fascism is something else. While it incorporates the subordination of the economy to the state, above this it values ethics of action, a willingness to commit violence against its enemies, courage, and obedience to authority. It is inherently anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian. It will not tolerate internal rivals or dissent. It always features a leader who rules as dictator and to my knowledge has never succeeded in a stable transfer of power once that leader dies. It has often been linked to the Romantic period as so much of fascist ideology is based on emotion, feeling, symbolic mysticism, and the irrational. It's politics can be seen as a reaction to the ultra-rational basis from which Communism claims to descend.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
It's attractive to ignore it because "reality has a well-known liberal bias". Politics are not created equal. Conservatives are observably less educated than liberals: look at the demographics. That said, any bias (including corporate influence) is worse than an agnostic information reporting machine (which C-SPAN or the BBC approach best).
- cltby 6y ago
  Education is indeed becoming the dividing line between left and right all over the world. Sadly, it is because the scope of "education" has been expanded to include subjects with no intellectual content.
  - namlem 6y ago
    Such as?
    - bra-ket 6y ago
      safe spaces, gender studies, wokeness certificates, virtue signaling workshops, degrees in conformity & groupthink. read William Dereshevitz' "Excellent Sheep", it's the best book on the subject.
  - gurkendoktor 6y ago
    Mhm, there have always been soft sciences (sorry MBAs). I agree that education is becoming a major dividing line, but in my opinion that's because the "left" is moving towards elitism, whereas the "right" is slowly embracing populism. "Only dummies vote for the others" is just a snobby way of saying "we lost the working class".

CodeWriter23 6y ago

> Is this really what people want in the news? A biased political stance? When we have a great number of people who say things like “but that’s from xyz source so it’s bunk”, without examining the underlying facts or lack of facts, I’d have to say the answer to your question is Yes. PS I’m willing to examine news from any source and employ discernment.

DubiousPusher 6y ago

All news is biased. Left, Right, Center is a false trichotomy. There is no such thing as objective journalism because the news is a filter. Even if one reports "just the facts", the facts one decides to report impart a bias. I might report that "a woman is suing McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself". That is an unbiased fact. And it implants a story of runaway litigiousness. If I also report that "McDonalds was warned many times about the temperature of its coffee and even sure once already and the woman sustained 3rd degree burns" the story becomes one of corporate malfeasance. Compound this further. I now state that the woman won millions of dollars, you may be tilting back toward over litigiousness. But if I report that she only sought damages and the jury awarded her punitive damages of its own accord the we're back to corporate malfeasance.

matwood 6y ago
IMO, the largest bias, which you left out, is what story is told at all.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Absolutely. I can think of no better example than the recent moral panic over free speech. Because a few college kids on the wokest campuses in the country booted a few right-wingers we spent months covering every campus invitation as if it was the ratification of the first amendment itself. (I'm not saying there are no first amendment issues in America but who decided the events of a few college campuses were the evidentiary standard for a new social phenomena).
edmundsauto 6y ago
What, then, is your stance - do you think there is a difference of degree or agenda that matters? Or are they all the same, and should all be thrown out together.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  In terms of trying to sift and acquire information it probably doesn't make much of a difference. It helps to know each outlet's priors so you can distill the useful information. The Drudge Report is obviously biased but for years it was the best place to get the straight dope on natsec because they had 4th amendment sensibilities. Lately I've actually become pretty avid Fox reader because they're bullshit is so blatant it's very easy to discard it and take the value. This approach does have its limits. At a certain point you do hit Infowars levels of nonsense and all useful information is scrambled. Even if you want to focus on an ethical argument I'm not sure how to create a standard to compare them. Who is worse, Fox News who wears their bias on their sleeve or the New York Times who constantly hold themselves out as remarkable while piping all kinds of military and intelligence propaganda through to their readers. Who is worse? The organization that just outright supported Bush or the one that claimed to be a check and then held the illegal NSA spying story through an election? IMO it's best not to choose which is better or worse. It's better to know how to read through both.

nomel 6y ago

Assuming actual investigative journalism here... Someone once told me that you need bias in the news to create an adversarial system. Those that are biased towards some other viewpoint will be the only ones that dig deep to expose the problems of that other viewpoint. If everyone was neutral, there would be more motivation to present what happened rather than call foul. I'm not sure I completely agree with this, but it did nudge my perspective.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
I’d agree that has its place. But there is an important difference between honest bias and dishonest bias.