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2018/02/27 23:24:08
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
NinthMusketeer wrote: We go back to the part where I can't take you seriously because you feel Alex Jones' positions are based on facts. Trying to make it out like WaPo is at all on even a similar level to Alex Jones is simply a lie. It just isn't true. To even start equating then on the same level is to chuck logical thinking out the window from the onset. If that's the level you are asking me to respond on then I don't have a response, because I won't offer a rational response without a rational position to respond TO.
Both InfoWars and WaPo are for profit media companies. They decide what stories to present to the public and how to present those stories with the purpose of maintaining and growing their audience to maximize their profits. All media companies are happy to lie, obfuscate, mislead and affirm preconceptions and/or misconceptions in order to fulfill their primary purpose, to make money in a manner that is pleasing to its ownership.
Jeff Bezos owns WaPo. Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the US, owns Amazon, two thirds of American households have an Amazon Prime membership, Amazon has gutted local economies by undercutting small businesses, avoiding sales tax, depressing wages and actively working against efforts of their employees to unionize. All of that plays a significant role in the US economy and the economy is always one of the highest priorities for Americans in political polls/surveys (especially in election years) but the country's political paper of record, WaPo doesn't cover the negative effects of Amazon because it's owned by Jeff Bezos. The purpose of the paper is to make Jeff money not to fulfill some altruistic purpose of being a paragon of journalistic integrity and informing the American public of "important" facts.
InfoWars exists so Alex Jones can get paid for his conspiracy schtick and avoid working a real job. That's why he creates stuff like PizaaGate. He takes real things like John Podesta's hacked emails to the Obama administration about hot dogs, weird footage of Podesta performing in the basement of a pizzeria and wild conjecture/unfounded speculation of a pedophilia ring of transdimensional vampires running the DNC and creates content that spikes up his audience numbers and gets him more money. Podesta really did write those emails and he is a little odd but that doesn't mean that transdimensional pedophile vampires exist it's just a salacious conspiracy manufactured to make Alex Jones more money.
Media companies are not your friend, they are not here to help you they are only here to profit from you.
You just used a whole lot of text to state 'media can't be trusted' which is agreed on by all parties here and has never been in contention within the thread. I... Kinda want that minute I spent reading back.
No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
No media companies are trustworthy. Media companies don't present bullet point lists of objective facts or universal truths, they crafts stories in which they select which facts are included, how the included facts and events are characterized, which viewpoints are acknowledged, who is interviewed, what quotes are used, and what opinions are endorsed. That's why we get reactions like the person from Poland thinks that WaPo's coverage of Polish politics is just opinion disguised at facts. I don't know anything about Polish politics but why should I accept what WaPo publishes about it at face value? Numerous times I see examples of media companies reporting on something that either I or somebody I know is enough of an SME on to see the media got a wrong. If they're getting topic A wrong why should they get the benefit of the doubt on topic B?
Nobody should have blind faith in the trustworthiness of media companies' reporting that they don't have the ability to fact check for themselves. That's just putting yourself in a bubble of a reality created by media reports.
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feeder wrote: This thread has certainly proven the idea that everyone, including me, are manipulated more by 'muh feels' rather than any kind of objective reality.
And your feelings about things that are outside of your own anecdotal experiences are created by the media reports on those things and we all agree that media reports are biased. So are those really your feelings or are those the feelings that certain media companies have crafted narratives to make you feel?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/27 23:27:18
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
2018/02/28 00:11:39
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
A word on the sebster-vs-Luciferian debate on ">All media is biased< as a fundamental cognitive lockpick to dismiss all unwanted content" vs ">All media is biased< as a fundamental problem of journalism":
- the former, in an overall social landscape, is definitely true as there exist people who do sort news by such logic on an axis of trustworthiness. But personal media strategy resulting from this position is not universall safe nor "idiot proof". It is very easy to unconsiously "spread" the authority of particular ethical journalists over entire media title (as seen above with Washington Post example). It can also lead to a sort of "laziness", when title falsely treated as trustworthy shifts it's dominant narration, and because of previously established assumption/conclusion about particular's title objectivity, one can then become a victim of a "boiled frog" kind of effect of shifting one's viewpoint unconsiously. This happened a lot in Poland because of shifting ownership of strongly-biased titles exactly to bait unaware electorates. So caution is strongly advised if ones want to be actually well informed, not just "well and cosy misinformed";
- the latter mainly addresses the fact, that typical media consumer is totally unequipped to verify information - either lacks time, skill or means to cross check everything - and ends up with a biased personal POV. This seems trivial, as this can sometimes translate to positions of simply "you should not trust anyone" or "media should be ethical while they aren't". But on the other hand, awareness of the simple fact, that all (without exceptions) media is biased and cannot be universally trusted, can lead to one of IMHO the best personal media strategies there is - if only one can derive a sort of "weight" to measure bias of any particular source, one can then "debias" content. It requires quite a lot of knowledge about means and techniques of propaganda and manipulation, personal history of journalists and ownership of media, but after the initial learning curve can significantly reduce amount of time spent on sorting out facts from fiction. The added bonus is that it is much more involving than simply dividing media by trustworthiness and in the result can lead (can, not always leads) to much more in-depth understanding of more obscure mechanisms of social manipulation. But same as with the above strategy, this is not "idiot proof" nor universally usefull approach, as it can lead to "conspiracy theories everywhere" paranoia or straight up helplessness and catching all the "good enough quality bait" there is...
My personal favourite strategy however is to kind of "hack" the first method by utilising the second method and identify and establish "bias weights" of media totally oposite to your personal viewpoint and then follow mostly those and applying negation sign to their narrative bias. This way you never get into echo chamber, you don't reinforce your unsupported positions by neither crowd or authority and are constantly subject to verification and defending your point of view, either publicly or just mentally. As with both previous ones however, this is also not "idiot proof" nor universal strategy, as it can lead to "siege mentality" if you are not ready to admit your mistakes.
2018/02/28 00:47:10
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
That'll probably depend on your definition of trustworthy and how you apply it.
Do I trust that if ABC news airs a report about a bill in the senate that there is actually such a bill in the Senate? Yeah probably. Be kind of weird to just make up a bill. Even the conspiracy nuts don't generally do that.
Do I trust that if ABC says "insiders report that this bill is actually just a ploy by party X to embarrass official Y" I probably trust that someone said that somewhere but I'm not taking it as "true" in the sense that that is actually what the bill is.
And of course some media is more trustworthy than others. Declaring all media equally untrustworthy is absurd. The Daily Mail got banned from Wikipedia for being so absurd, and there's even a song about their more ludicrous headlines, and when Wikipedia won't take you there's something wrong cause Wikipedia's standards for source quality are basically "is it in English" and "does it say what we say it says" (and they're not to good with that last one).
No one has proposed media companies lack bias or that there exist unquestionably trustworthy ones. This thread has basically become a few posters arguing past each other to grind their respective strawmen into dust, which is ironically an example against the echo chamber which is the original point of this thread XD
Do I trust that if ABC news airs a report about a bill in the senate that there is actually such a bill in the Senate? Yeah probably. Be kind of weird to just make up a bill. Even the conspiracy nuts don't generally do that.
Just a fun, educative fact - you would have had a very hard time in Poland for the last two years trusting all those reported bills... Seriously, we even had two major demonstrations against such "virtual bills". We also had probably the first such occurence in history of democracies: a demonstration of one oppostiion party against the actions of the rest of the opposition... Our last two years of medial history could be a great source of case studies of all kinds of misinformation and propaganda in every media of all possible sides (we have more than two here).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/28 01:03:10
2018/02/28 01:33:28
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Luciferian wrote: It's not just counter-intuitive, it's self-contradictory. It's a paradox. You can not critically asses media sources without addressing their bias.
You continue to rail against fantasy versions of the actual debate. I've never said that people should just ignore any bias in a piece. I've said, repeatedly now, to accept that everything has a bias, it is inherent in simply having a viewpoint, and not disqualifying in itself. Instead a piece should be judged for accuracy and completeness.
OK, Info-Wars and WaPo are not literally the same thing, but they both employ many of the same tactics to disseminate a distorted view of reality.
Except that's some ridiculous bs. The existence of mistaken reporting at an organisation like WaPo does not make it the same as a conspiracy mongering lunatic.
The reason I pivoted to Alex Jones is because of your claim that not all media should be subject to the same level of scrutiny, because there are some that report on facts, even if they do so in a biased manner.
You have no idea what my actual point is, do you?
Alex Jones said that the Uniform Crime Reports showed no murders in Newtown in 2012. That is a fact. It's also a fact that since state police handled the investigation instead of municipal police, the murders were counted under the state-wide numbers instead of the city numbers. This is exactly what I'm getting at. Alex Jones presented a fact, whether you like it or not, about the Sandy Hook shooting.
Alex Jones took a minor statistical quirk, and reframed it to make it appear to support his conspiracy. This was done with an intent to deceive the reader. It was a plain and simple lie, and you are being ridiculous in trying to pretend otherwise.
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Frazzled wrote: Wapo has a financial interest in only publishing issues that support it's target audience or get them riled up - educated coasts elites. Their demographics are not middle class, or working class.
Not quite. WaPo are educated coastal elites. They write their viewpoint, which resonates with people like them, who are also educated coastal elites.
Yes, this means they have a viewpoint which isn't the same as everyone else. But that's just a reality of anyone who wants to write anything that says anything at all - it will reflect your viewpoint. The point is that when read WaPo or anything else, you don't just say 'oh they've got a bias so I can ignore that'. Instead you look at what is actually written, whether their claims are backed by accurate facts, whether they've included all relevant information, and use that to determine whether the piece is something that needs to be accounted for in your understanding of events.
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Luciferian wrote: In my opinion, he is the one being falsely equivocal by establishing two categories of media sources; a select few which can be trusted because of their reputation or status, and everything else.
It should be noted that I have not at any point made a claim even remotely similar to what is claimed here. Luciferian is making things up.
I am not saying that you should give the Alex Joneses of the world the benefit of a doubt. I'm saying that you should give no one the benefit of a doubt.
And it should be noted at no point did I say any article from any organisation should be accepted simply because of the source. Luciferian is making things up.
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Luciferian wrote: You can't even admit that Alex Jones' work contains some factual content.
The problem is you've created a completely false standard, to push a completely non-sensical argument. You should note I've said, repeatedly, that as well as accurate facts a piece should also be considered in terms of completeness. This means including all relevant information, not just some random factoids cherry picked to support fantastical nonsense.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/02/28 02:06:27
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2018/02/28 02:11:50
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
sebster wrote: The existence of mistaken reporting at an organisation like WaPo does not make it the same as a conspiracy mongering lunatic.
[...]
The point is that when read WaPo or anything else, you don't just say 'oh they've got a bias so I can ignore that'. Instead you look at what is actually written, whether their claims are backed by accurate facts, whether they've included all relevant information, and use that to determine whether the piece is something that needs to be accounted for in your understanding of events.
I have only one question for you as I don't see an answer to it in any of your previous posts: at what point exactly does perpetually making "honest mistakes" in a given subject become a "forcing false narrative"? Because all I can see on WaPo about the subject I brought up is pushing one, very clearly identifiable agenda and not in any way reporting anything on that matter in an objective way... It's way beyond "having a viewpoint", it's incepting a viewpoint. I get that this is a very sidenote subject for you or most Americans, but exactly because of that it shows how "high standards" WaPo actually has when it comes to veryfying content. What I would expect from a media tilte that simply "has a viewpoint" when publishing content on a subject such irrelevant for a typical reader is to actually try to show at least a couple of angles, not pushing a very clear and singular one, because you simply cannot "have a viewpoint" on subjects you don't typically dwell in or don't have in-depth understanding of; in such cases you have presupposition which is very much bias. I'm not expecting it to be left, centre or right adherent, I'm expecting it to be fact-based and not misleading to give a title a credit of good intentions. And I don't see any of that so yes, now I most certainly can have a "oh, they've got bias so I can ignore that" view on WaPo objectivism untill I'm proven otherwise.
2018/02/28 02:21:19
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
That'll probably depend on your definition of trustworthy and how you apply it.
Do I trust that if ABC news airs a report about a bill in the senate that there is actually such a bill in the Senate? Yeah probably. Be kind of weird to just make up a bill. Even the conspiracy nuts don't generally do that.
Do I trust that if ABC says "insiders report that this bill is actually just a ploy by party X to embarrass official Y" I probably trust that someone said that somewhere but I'm not taking it as "true" in the sense that that is actually what the bill is.
And of course some media is more trustworthy than others. Declaring all media equally untrustworthy is absurd. The Daily Mail got banned from Wikipedia for being so absurd, and there's even a song about their more ludicrous headlines, and when Wikipedia won't take you there's something wrong cause Wikipedia's standards for source quality are basically "is it in English" and "does it say what we say it says" (and they're not to good with that last one).
No one has proposed media companies lack bias or that there exist unquestionably trustworthy ones. This thread has basically become a few posters arguing past each other to grind their respective strawmen into dust, which is ironically an example against the echo chamber which is the original point of this thread XD
If ABC published a story that a bill was proposed in congress, would I believe that such a bill existed? Yes.
Would ABC publish a story that simply said bill X was coming up for a vote? Doubtful.
Chances are if ABC or any other media company puts out an article on a bill it is couched as Here’s what you should know about bill X, how it affects you and why your representative should vote for/against it. That is something I wouldn’t trust at face value. I’ve seen misleading synopsis of bills and their impact from numerous sources and viewpoints. If I am interested in learning about the content of the legislation I’ll read it on the .gov website.
I’m not a big media consumer I primarily use it to learn about opinions/viewpoints. Finding out what different pundits opine on an issue helps me figure out how the issue will be framed in public discourse which is usually a debate that is only tangentially related to the actual contents of the legislation. The media will show me how something will be discussed but actual facts get left behind and ignored in a hurry.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
2018/02/28 02:23:21
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Luciferian wrote: He is actively engaging in that type of behavior in this thread. He is treating some media sources more leniently and less critically, to the point where he can't even admit that they publish false or misleading material at all except as an honest mistake.
Let's say you've got two kids. One runs a consulting business teaching honesty and ethics, and is widely respected for his forthright, direct approach focusing on truth and integrity. Your second kid is a meth addict, in and out of jail repeatedly for credit fraud. The meth addict comes to you with a business opportunity, asks you to cut a cheque for $10,000 to get the ball rolling. The next week your other son comes to you with a different business opportunity, also asking for $10,000 to get the ball rolling.
You shouldn't just accept either offer without really reviewing it. But you're being absolutely delusional if you think both the meth addict and the ethics teacher should both be given exactly the same skepticism. That isn't how the world works, and it isn't how the world should work.
And you are being ridiculous pretending otherwise. People and organisations with a long record of telling frequent absurd lies are treated with more skepticism. Because obviously they are.
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Prestor Jon wrote: No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
Nope, not an argument that's been made by anyone. That's just some crap you've made up.
There is no media that shouldn't be critically judged. No source should be taken at face value. Even when you are convinced that a particular writer is trying his absolute best to be accurate as possible you should still analyse his argument, because his point of view will shape how he presents the situation.
But, this doesn't mean any and all media should be treated equally. Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely.
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nou wrote: I have only one question for you as I don't see an answer to it in any of your previous posts: at what point exactly does perpetually making "honest mistakes" in a given subject become a "forcing false narrative"? Because all I can see on WaPo about the subject I brought up is pushing one, very clearly identifiable agenda and not in any way reporting anything on that matter in an objective way... It's way beyond "having a viewpoint", it's incepting a viewpoint.
I've tried to ignore the nuts and bolts on WaPo because as noted earlier I don't read it that much, and I don't read its foreign policy stuff at all. So I just can't comment about the paper on that issue.
On the general issue of when you go from 'honest mistake' to 'forcing false narrative', it's complex, because there's a lot of points between those two. To use an example that was raised earlier in the thread, a story has gone through the media recently, about an allegation that CNN was scripting the student's questions in the gun forum debate. One of the starting points for this was a claim from the dad of one kid who was withdrawn from the event, he provided an email that seemed to confirm that allegation. CNN then showed the complete email chain, and it revealed that the words 'that he submitted' were deleted from the end of one sentence to change the meaning of the email. The dad then said he deleted that one part of one sentence 'by mistake'.
There's a lot of potential ways a site might have covered that story.
If an organisation got the Dad's email, checked with CNN, confirmed the Dad's email was manipulated to give a false version of events, and then not run the story at all, that'd be good journalism. It would also be good journalism if the news org ran counter stories afterwards, if it saw the false story appear in other media.
If an org got the Dad's email, checked with CNN, and CNN didn't get back by the story deadline and ran the false story, then I think that could be seen as an honest mistake, if the news org ran with a retraction afterwards and gave the 'dad manipulated the email' story as much coverage as the original piece.
If an org didn't bother to check with CNN, that'd be reckless journalism.
If an org didn't bother to check with CNN, and when it was shown the Dad's email was manipulative, then the org didn't bother with a retraction, or gave little or no time to giving the full story, then they'd be a dishonest organisation.
And then, once you figure out where they fit in all those options, then you look at a pattern of behaviour in the org. Is this something they do regularly? And if so, does it always happen to support one set of political opinions? If so, then you've got a someone forcing a narrative over accurate, complete reporting.
And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere. For instance, the WSJ is a Murdoch paper these days, but its actually still okay as long as you stay clear of the opinions section.
So yeah, I hope that gives something of an answer.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/02/28 03:02:28
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2018/02/28 03:05:42
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Luciferian wrote: He is actively engaging in that type of behavior in this thread. He is treating some media sources more leniently and less critically, to the point where he can't even admit that they publish false or misleading material at all except as an honest mistake.
Let's say you've got two kids. One runs a consulting business teaching honesty and ethics, and is widely respected for his forthright, direct approach focusing on truth and integrity. Your second kid is a meth addict, in and out of jail repeatedly for credit fraud. The meth addict comes to you with a business opportunity, asks you to cut a cheque for $10,000 to get the ball rolling. The next week your other son comes to you with a different business opportunity, also asking for $10,000 to get the ball rolling.
You shouldn't just accept either offer without really reviewing it. But you're being absolutely delusional if you think both the meth addict and the ethics teacher should both be given exactly the same skepticism. That isn't how the world works, and it isn't how the world should work.
And you are being ridiculous pretending otherwise. People and organisations with a long record of telling frequent absurd lies are treated with more skepticism. Because obviously they are.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Prestor Jon wrote: No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
Nope, not an argument that's been made by anyone. That's just some crap you've made up.
There is no media that shouldn't be critically judged. No source should be taken at face value. Even when you are convinced that a particular writer is trying his absolute best to be accurate as possible you should still analyse his argument, because his point of view will shape how he presents the situation.
But, this doesn't mean any and all media should be treated equally. Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely.
No it was posted by AlmightyWaltus, partially in your defense and nobody disagreed with it. Media has bias, should be viewed critically and some media is more trustworthy than others.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'm pretty sure you can't find a single place where sebster's said that you shouldn't critically examine some media for the simple reason that he's never said that.
It's a simple exercise of probability: is the Washington Post more likely to publish articles that give a clearer and fairer picture of reality than Alex Jones? The answer is obviously yes. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't critically look at the Washington Post's articles, but it DOES mean that Washington Post generally has a higher quality of journalism than Alex Jones. Trying to equate the two completely ignores the difference in accuracy.
Media companies are manipulative and profit driven. The fact somebody is accepting of the level of manipulation employed by WaPo more so than the manipulation employed by InfoWars doesn’t make WaPo objectively better. Every article WaPo publishes no matter how factually accurate it may be is selected based on its subjective value as perceived by the editors, the content is carefully created, which quotes are used, what adjectives are used, what pictures are paired with it, what narrative is forged, what conclusion is drawn, etc it’s all manipulation geared to generate interest and views to leverage into higher profits and to shape public opinion. Those are the same motivations behind the manipulation done by other media companies whether it’s InfoWars or the NYT or Fox or CNN etc. Different stories will have different ratios of truth:lies or wheat:chaff but they’re all churned out by companies following the same business model and employing the same fungible ethics.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
2018/02/28 03:38:32
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Prestor Jon wrote: No it was posted by AlmightyWaltus, partially in your defense and nobody disagreed with it. Media has bias, should be viewed critically and some media is more trustworthy than others.
Oh dear. For starters, you're trying to walk back your claim and hoping no-one notices. You claimed people said some media was trustworthy, now you've swapped to 'more trustworthy'. Those are not the same thing.
And of course, your summary of AlmightyWalrus post is dreadful. A post that states 'This doesn't mean that we shouldn't critically look at the Washington Post's articles...' cannot in any way be taken as a claim that some media should be treated as trustworthy, and its quite dishonest to claim otherwise.
The fact somebody is accepting of the level of manipulation employed by WaPo more so than the manipulation employed by InfoWars doesn’t make WaPo objectively better.
I can't say this clearly enough - the sentence you just typed is absolute flying rodent gak lunacy.
Every article WaPo publishes no matter how factually accurate it may be is selected based on its subjective value as perceived by the editors, the content is carefully created, which quotes are used, what adjectives are used, what pictures are paired with it, what narrative is forged, what conclusion is drawn, etc it’s all manipulation geared to generate interest and views to leverage into higher profits and to shape public opinion. Those are the same motivations behind the manipulation done by other media companies whether it’s InfoWars or the NYT or Fox or CNN etc. Different stories will have different ratios of truth:lies or wheat:chaff but they’re all churned out by companies following the same business model and employing the same fungible ethics.
This is the very core of everything that is absolutely broken with the pure, unfiltered gak that is 'everything has a bias'. It pretends to be a call for a skepticism, but it is actually just a means to reject news you don't want to hear, and instead just absorb whatever reinforces your opinion.
Yes, there is a viewpoint in every story, that is unavoidable. That doesn't mean every news org holds itself to the same standards of fact checking, doesn't mean every org works to make stories as complete as possible. It doesn't mean every org is equally willing to publish facts and stories that run counter to their overall view of the world.
So treating all orgs equally in terms of facts and completeness is a deliberate pretense, a pretend belief that allows the reader to avoid actually assessing the accuracy and completeness of the information he's been given. It is a game played to avoid honestly looking at the media pieces and asking 'is one of these pieces bullshitting me'.
And of course, people are avoiding that question because if they asked it honestly, they wouldn't like the answer.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2018/02/28 08:47:56
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
2) misrepresenting other users posts is rude. Saying they said something they flat didn't is rude. Future instances of this will be warned.
3) double check your posts for swearing. I don't give a flying feth what you are posting on or how much of a rush you're in. Any swear words that slip through from here get a warning.
Do better
I wish I had time for all the game systems I own, let alone want to own...
2018/02/28 08:50:31
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
sebster wrote: For instance, the WSJ is a Murdoch paper these days, but its actually still okay as long as you stay clear of the opinions section.
I find HuffPo runs into this problem as well. It's reputation comes from the overwhelming bulk of its articles and editorials (and is quite well deserved) but they have a few good writers and some good blogs under their banner, including the only Libertarian who I think actually critically considers the weaknesses and flaws of Libertarianism and tries to come up with reasoned solutions (he tries okay he gets credit ).
LordofHats wrote: I find HuffPo runs into this problem as well. It's reputation comes from the overwhelming bulk of its articles and editorials (and is quite well deserved) but they have a few good writers and some good blogs under their banner, including the only Libertarian who I think actually critically considers the weaknesses and flaws of Libertarianism and tries to come up with reasoned solutions (he tries okay he gets credit ).
Cool. I wouldn't mind some names if you care to give them. PM is you want. I admit I never go there, and if I see links to their stuff I don't click. I've stumbled on to some real crap on their site, but it was ages ago. It might have left me with far too broad an understanding of the site.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/28 09:32:24
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2018/02/28 12:13:33
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
I'd like to state my opposition to the idea that media is driven by profit to the exclusion of all else, because it just isn't true. It's the idea of the rational man writ large, and runs into the same problem as that theory does on an individual level in that it completely ignores things like ideology or altruism, to name a few.
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
2018/02/28 12:33:34
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
LordofHats wrote: I find HuffPo runs into this problem as well. It's reputation comes from the overwhelming bulk of its articles and editorials (and is quite well deserved) but they have a few good writers and some good blogs under their banner, including the only Libertarian who I think actually critically considers the weaknesses and flaws of Libertarianism and tries to come up with reasoned solutions (he tries okay he gets credit ).
Cool. I wouldn't mind some names if you care to give them. PM is you want. I admit I never go there, and if I see links to their stuff I don't click. I've stumbled on to some real crap on their site, but it was ages ago. It might have left me with far too broad an understanding of the site.
Some of the best people who write stuff for HuffPo are the outside contributors. Diane Ravitch is one of my favorite commentators on education, both because she can admit when she is wrong and because she's one of the few sensible policy commentators on the subject. Phil Radford (former executive director of Greenpeace USA) also writes articles from time to time on environmental issues, and I like his approach of directly engaging corporate culture as the most effective way to advocate for better environmental policy even if he's opinions of the political-industrial complex can get... a little crazy. The Libertarian I speak of is The Volokh Conspiracy which I now realize is actually under the Washington Post They both have post in their name okay it's gets confusing at 4 AM XD The place is a blog edited by Libertarian leaning lawyers and law experts (and they are political) but they are least have a certain self-awareness about it all that I find endearing and the blog itself is insightful even when I find the ideology of Libertarianism to be wildly short sighted. Like I said. They get credit for putting in effort.
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I’m not trying to hide or walk back anything. If I wanted people to overlook something I wanted continue to further a discussion about it. It’s Dakka OT it’s not something to take personally or seriously.
Trustworthy doesn’t mean infallible or should be taken at face value at all times. Trustworthy means something you can have confidence in that something is more reliable and honest. The argument was made that some media companies can be relied upon to have acceptable levels of accuracy and journalistic practices.
If my posts came across as looking like I was claiming that posts were made that said media shouldn’t be viewed critically than I worded them poorly.
Media companies exist to manipulate and sway opinion/ideaology and they need to do so in a manner that is profitable enough to keep their business running.
All media is manipulative it tries to persuade you to think or feel a certain way. Some media manipulation is easier to accept than others because it pushes us towards a position we already hold or approve of. I know that I can easily be persuaded by media that is pro gay marriage equality because that is a position I am comfortable with and that I cannot be easily persuaded to agree with the position that the federal govt uses chem trails in the sky to conduct illicit mind control experiments on people because I am predisposed to disbelieve such a claim and it makes me uncomfortable to believe in such a thing.
I’m not making any assertions that some media companies are better than others or better for society than others. I view media companies like fast food restaurants, they come in many flavors, everyone has their favorites, the food is comforting but not very healthy, nobody should eat their regularly or often.
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AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'd like to state my opposition to the idea that media is driven by profit to the exclusion of all else, because it just isn't true. It's the idea of the rational man writ large, and runs into the same problem as that theory does on an individual level in that it completely ignores things like ideology or altruism, to name a few.
I concede that profit isn’t the only motive just a necessary one. Relevance is probably more important to media companies than profit margin as a relevant trend setter can shape and manipulate public opinion which is as important or more important to a media brand than how much money they make. I do think that profit overrides altruism in media, we see media companies go out of business all the time because readership/viewership/web traffic goes down so the company loses relevance and revenue. Although that is really the old media / mainstream media business model. New media like blogs and podcasts can be far more altruistic because the operating costs to produce a podcast or host a blog are so low. The negative with new media is that it is much harder to gain relevance because there is so much content it’s hard to stand out and gain a following.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/28 13:19:01
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
2018/02/28 13:32:38
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Luciferian wrote: He is actively engaging in that type of behavior in this thread. He is treating some media sources more leniently and less critically, to the point where he can't even admit that they publish false or misleading material at all except as an honest mistake.
Let's say you've got two kids. One runs a consulting business teaching honesty and ethics, and is widely respected for his forthright, direct approach focusing on truth and integrity. Your second kid is a meth addict, in and out of jail repeatedly for credit fraud. The meth addict comes to you with a business opportunity, asks you to cut a cheque for $10,000 to get the ball rolling. The next week your other son comes to you with a different business opportunity, also asking for $10,000 to get the ball rolling.
You shouldn't just accept either offer without really reviewing it. But you're being absolutely delusional if you think both the meth addict and the ethics teacher should both be given exactly the same skepticism. That isn't how the world works, and it isn't how the world should work.
And you are being ridiculous pretending otherwise. People and organisations with a long record of telling frequent absurd lies are treated with more skepticism. Because obviously they are.
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Prestor Jon wrote: No, what has been agreed on by all parties here is that all media companies have bias. Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not.
Nope, not an argument that's been made by anyone. That's just some crap you've made up.
There is no media that shouldn't be critically judged. No source should be taken at face value. Even when you are convinced that a particular writer is trying his absolute best to be accurate as possible you should still analyse his argument, because his point of view will shape how he presents the situation.
But, this doesn't mean any and all media should be treated equally. Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely.
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nou wrote: I have only one question for you as I don't see an answer to it in any of your previous posts: at what point exactly does perpetually making "honest mistakes" in a given subject become a "forcing false narrative"? Because all I can see on WaPo about the subject I brought up is pushing one, very clearly identifiable agenda and not in any way reporting anything on that matter in an objective way... It's way beyond "having a viewpoint", it's incepting a viewpoint.
I've tried to ignore the nuts and bolts on WaPo because as noted earlier I don't read it that much, and I don't read its foreign policy stuff at all. So I just can't comment about the paper on that issue.
On the general issue of when you go from 'honest mistake' to 'forcing false narrative', it's complex, because there's a lot of points between those two. To use an example that was raised earlier in the thread, a story has gone through the media recently, about an allegation that CNN was scripting the student's questions in the gun forum debate. One of the starting points for this was a claim from the dad of one kid who was withdrawn from the event, he provided an email that seemed to confirm that allegation. CNN then showed the complete email chain, and it revealed that the words 'that he submitted' were deleted from the end of one sentence to change the meaning of the email. The dad then said he deleted that one part of one sentence 'by mistake'.
There's a lot of potential ways a site might have covered that story.
If an organisation got the Dad's email, checked with CNN, confirmed the Dad's email was manipulated to give a false version of events, and then not run the story at all, that'd be good journalism. It would also be good journalism if the news org ran counter stories afterwards, if it saw the false story appear in other media.
If an org got the Dad's email, checked with CNN, and CNN didn't get back by the story deadline and ran the false story, then I think that could be seen as an honest mistake, if the news org ran with a retraction afterwards and gave the 'dad manipulated the email' story as much coverage as the original piece.
If an org didn't bother to check with CNN, that'd be reckless journalism.
If an org didn't bother to check with CNN, and when it was shown the Dad's email was manipulative, then the org didn't bother with a retraction, or gave little or no time to giving the full story, then they'd be a dishonest organisation.
And then, once you figure out where they fit in all those options, then you look at a pattern of behaviour in the org. Is this something they do regularly? And if so, does it always happen to support one set of political opinions? If so, then you've got a someone forcing a narrative over accurate, complete reporting.
And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere. For instance, the WSJ is a Murdoch paper these days, but its actually still okay as long as you stay clear of the opinions section.
So yeah, I hope that gives something of an answer.
By the logic of this post alone:
WaPo coverage of Polish-Israeli issue is at this point a series (so that meet "on regular/methodical basis" cryteria by my standards) of articles landing between "reckless journalism" and "plain manipulation, dishonest organisation" as you defined them. If I apply your suggestion of "Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely." I then should ignore WaPo entirely, because I have absolutely no means of judging if they are truthfull or manipulative on subjects I know less about than the one I caught them being manipulative on (and by now I have a pretty good view on how much of "liberal viewpoint" this title is). If I were to read on some American internal matters, then reading about them in WaPo is pretty much meaningless as I have to at least tripple the amount of reading on a subject (kind of the most primitive media equivalent of parity check) to even start to have a somewhat unbiased view. Do I have to the same with InfoWars or Alex Jones? Of course I do, so by that metric they all have exact same usefulness untill I could establish a more adequate "bias weight" on all three of those.
"And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere." that is pretty much what I wrote a post earlier in my quick summary of your position. Individual journalist may be trustworthy, entire organisations/titles never are. What you seem to assume is that somehow knowledge about publication history and bias of a given title is well known and cannot be a subject of debate or cannot be twisted according to one's personal viewpoint, which I find quite puzzling. You said earlier, that NYT is not biased because of covering all of the possible angles, including those outside of a spectum of rationality. Such "not sorting at all" is in itself a form of missinformation to an extent, that some years ago BBC discontinued it's practice of "ballancing debates by including representation of every prevailing point of view" because it lead to overrepresenting views like creationism, anti-vaccine movement or climate change denialist as being on equal footing with well established and predictive scientific theories. Because of this, NYT is as unreliable source of information as WaPo is for someone unfamiliar with history of their publications and does not know which journalists writing for NYT are trustworthy. (In a subject that interest me personally, NYT did in fact published pretty one of the most outrageous, one sided and entirely made-up article on Polish-Israeli issue but it is true, that it was not the only angle on this subject presented in NYT).
As to overall editiorial standards deterioration and increase in clickbait sensationalism: we now have only one printed title left in Poland which still practices multi-issue, ongoing debates on a single matter, written by authors of opposite but well established and documented viewpoints in reaction to one another or does "themed" issues in which different but supported viewpoints are presented in an unbiased (but sometimes in necessary simplified or abridged manner). One. And even this title cannot be seen as universally trustworhty as it has strong catholic-conservative bias in "standard subjects" part of their publications. All ad-driven titles have visibly deteriorated in quality in last couple of years due to shift to online publishing being main income source and internet is a "continuous publishing" medium which requires shorter lifespan of articles to generate large enough income. And because of that there is a constant shift towards titles become more of a "blog platforms" than editorial entities, which leads to landscapes of missinformation much in nature of how NYT operates.
To be crystal clear: I do undestand your position of "bias is not a binary property but can be percieved as binary by some people, which in turn makes them vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations" but pretty much no one, including Luciferian, is debating this. From where I stand you pretty much both agree, that there is no universal metric to sort media by and one can only try to stay well informed by constantly contesting everything one reads. But somehow your post leave an impression that you indeed believe, that some titles are more "manipulation free" than others and that this virtue is universally clear to see. It isn't, "central circle" media (according to the chart linked previously) simply use more convoluted ways of misrepresent informations according to their line of business/agenda/viewpoint which makes them more often than not even more dangerous than straight-up propaganda titles as readers who follow only a handfull of titles may stay unaware of their methods longer. This does not mean you personally, as you are aware of that, but for "statistical reader" with an IQ of 100 and 15 minutes a day to follow news reports.
2018/02/28 13:41:31
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
AlmightyWalrus wrote: On the other hand, all we have on the Polish-Israeli coverage in the WaPo is your word, which we shouldn't take blindly either.
But do I expect you to? I use this subject as an example because it is something we all have common acces to, otherwise I would have to operate on abstract qualities only, as I do not know other US news and topics and you have no knowledge about polish media. It is a simple means of my more pronounced participation in such global-related thread as this one which still has to operate on detailed examples. If I knew more about missrepresented internal American issues I would use them, as there most certainly are plenty, as everywhere, and they would indeed provoke a more involved discussion. But I do not follow your politics as closely.
2018/02/28 14:46:58
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
This whole thread is a front for spreading the idea that nothing and no one can be trusted and therefore your "ideas" are just as valid as anyone elses; no matter how crazy!
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2018/02/28 14:55:50
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Easy E wrote: This whole thread is a front for spreading the idea that nothing and no one can be trusted and therefore your "ideas" are just as valid as anyone elses; no matter how crazy!
No, it is pretty much the oposite - "your ideas" if unquestioned by self are probably a result of accumulated media misinformation so you should always cross-check your facts and narratives. There is a very fundamental difference between "no singular media is to be unquestionably trusted" and "entirety of the media is so untrustworthy that you live in an entirely made-up matrix sp you can as well make up everything by yourself".
2018/02/28 18:59:30
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
nou wrote: At what point exactly does perpetually making "honest mistakes" in a given subject become a "forcing false narrative"?
Just to address this specifically; while the reality is obviously complex I've found a pretty good rule of thumb is when a news organization stops publishing retractions or corrections of false claims, it's crossed from normal bias/mistakes into willful deception.
WaPo coverage of Polish-Israeli issue is at this point a series (so that meet "on regular/methodical basis" cryteria by my standards) of articles landing between "reckless journalism" and "plain manipulation, dishonest organisation" as you defined them.
You said earlier in this thread that Polish media itself is a clusterfeth of misinformation and deception. I don't think WaPo and other North American journalism gives enough of a feth about Poland* to actually invest in responsible journalism on the ground in Poland, and so reprint whatever their reporter's contacts feed them. If I was interested in Poland's interal politcs, I wouldn't go to a North American media outelt, even a major one like WaPo for info. I'd look for translated Polish sources.
*Not an attack on Poland. I'm Canadian, and no one outside Canada gives a feth about us unless our dreamy PM is doing something swoon-worthy.
edit: phrasing
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/28 19:08:15
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
2018/02/28 20:39:22
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
WaPo coverage of Polish-Israeli issue is at this point a series (so that meet "on regular/methodical basis" cryteria by my standards) of articles landing between "reckless journalism" and "plain manipulation, dishonest organisation" as you defined them.
You said earlier in this thread that Polish media itself is a clusterfeth of misinformation and deception. I don't think WaPo and other North American journalism gives enough of a feth about Poland* to actually invest in responsible journalism on the ground in Poland, and so reprint whatever their reporter's contacts feed them. If I was interested in Poland's interal politcs, I wouldn't go to a North American media outelt, even a major one like WaPo for info. I'd look for translated Polish sources.
*Not an attack on Poland. I'm Canadian, and no one outside Canada gives a feth about us unless our dreamy PM is doing something swoon-worthy.
edit: phrasing
No offence is taken, we know very well, that no one gives a feth about Poland
And you'll probably end up with the same biased narrative as simply reading WaPo or similiar North American journal, because you would have no means of solving this Polish media clusterfeth yourself. Which is pretty much what I'm talking about in context of sebster's position. But as I've already replied to AlmightyWalrus, I used this subject only as a reference for discussing more "meta" problems with modern journalism. BTW, not having your own abroad journalists on your payroll is one of signs of deterioration of media quality in the last two decades or so.
But just to give you a brief explanation on why I'm checking with American media on this particular matter is that one of the earliest reactions to our "crisis" with Israel were an open letter from a handfull of your congresmen to our government to stop our legislation and then Israel went out seeking your congress support on this matter. So it is not a case of "how do US media report internal polish politics" but me trying to get a view on how this subject is framed in US media in US involvement context, exactly because what you wrote in your post translates to Polish media groups not investing in responsible journalism in the US as well (this goes even deeper here, as fake "voices from abroad" - that is citing articles from your titles (or Western European titles), guest written by our own journalists because your media don't give enough feth about Poland to have their own journalists here, and then reprinting them back in our own titles as a part of "US/German/French/etc public opinion/media is concerned by actions of polish government/party/group/etc" narrative is one of missinformation techniques popular in some media in Poland).
And yes, your dreamy PM's socks were center point of some of our's mainstream media coverage about World Economic Forum in Davos.
2018/03/01 01:31:01
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Honestly in my community Canada is pretty much viewed as a culture of nicer people who is much better off for it. But the weather really sucks so it's kinda a wash.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'd like to state my opposition to the idea that media is driven by profit to the exclusion of all else, because it just isn't true. It's the idea of the rational man writ large, and runs into the same problem as that theory does on an individual level in that it completely ignores things like ideology or altruism, to name a few.
That's a really good point that we shouldn't have left unchallenged as long as we have in this thread. Kudos.
LordofHats wrote: Some of the best people who write stuff for HuffPo are the outside contributors. Diane Ravitch is one of my favorite commentators on education, both because she can admit when she is wrong and because she's one of the few sensible policy commentators on the subject. Phil Radford (former executive director of Greenpeace USA) also writes articles from time to time on environmental issues, and I like his approach of directly engaging corporate culture as the most effective way to advocate for better environmental policy even if he's opinions of the political-industrial complex can get... a little crazy. The Libertarian I speak of is The Volokh Conspiracy which I now realize is actually under the Washington Post They both have post in their name okay it's gets confusing at 4 AM XD The place is a blog edited by Libertarian leaning lawyers and law experts (and they are political) but they are least have a certain self-awareness about it all that I find endearing and the blog itself is insightful even when I find the ideology of Libertarianism to be wildly short sighted. Like I said. They get credit for putting in effort.
Thanks. I'll definitely look up Ravitch's stuff, education is an issue I want to read about more.
Prestor Jon wrote: I’m not trying to hide or walk back anything. If I wanted people to overlook something I wanted continue to further a discussion about it.
It appeared that you shifted from 'trustworthy' to 'more trustworthy'. That is a significant difference in meaning. However that probably wasn't what you were doing.
It’s Dakka OT it’s not something to take personally or seriously.
There's nothing personal meant or intended in telling someone they're shifting their argument. It just is, and needs to be addressed in order for the discussion to move forward. And raising it has helped clarify the point, so its all good. I apologise if I sounded harsh.
Trustworthy doesn’t mean infallible or should be taken at face value at all times. Trustworthy means something you can have confidence in that something is more reliable and honest.
It can mean the former, in the right context. And this is the context you used the word, "Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not."
I took it to mean that you think some people were saying some organisations are completely trustworthy. Because the alternative interpretation would basically boil down to you commenting that people think some media organisations are more trustworthy than others, which I took as a statement so obvious and so non-controversial that it couldn't be what you meant. Having discussed this some more, it does seem that was your intent.
Media companies exist to manipulate and sway opinion/ideaology and they need to do so in a manner that is profitable enough to keep their business running.
All media is manipulative it tries to persuade you to think or feel a certain way. Some media manipulation is easier to accept than others because it pushes us towards a position we already hold or approve of. I know that I can easily be persuaded by media that is pro gay marriage equality because that is a position I am comfortable with and that I cannot be easily persuaded to agree with the position that the federal govt uses chem trails in the sky to conduct illicit mind control experiments on people because I am predisposed to disbelieve such a claim and it makes me uncomfortable to believe in such a thing.
You're mixing up bias and manipulation. The phrase 'all media has a bias' is a statement that all media has a viewpoint, that even when they try to write as objectively as possible, what they say will come from how they understand the world.
Whereas manipulation is when a media source only gives you part of the story, because they want to present a specific slant that matches their political aims.
It is the difference between sub-conscious and conscious filtering. And it is a big fething difference. And some media companies are mostly the former, and some media companies are exclusively the latter, with a lot sitting somewhere in between. And its a problem that so many people try to deny this reality. They deny it by taking up a kind of post-modern cynicism, 'oh everybody is biased', but it's a dishonest position because they're not actually trying to review all media with a critical eye - if they were the first thing they'd note is that there are some really bad media companies that regularly publish some ridiculous nonsense. But they don't notice that, because the actual motivation isn't to apply a critical eye to all media, the motivation is to give themselves cover to ignore the awful problems with their favourite media, by pretending those problems are equal in all media.
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nou wrote: WaPo coverage of Polish-Israeli issue is at this point a series (so that meet "on regular/methodical basis" cryteria by my standards) of articles landing between "reckless journalism" and "plain manipulation, dishonest organisation" as you defined them. If I apply your suggestion of "Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely." I then should ignore WaPo entirely, because I have absolutely no means of judging if they are truthfull or manipulative on subjects I know less about than the one I caught them being manipulative on (and by now I have a pretty good view on how much of "liberal viewpoint" this title is). If I were to read on some American internal matters, then reading about them in WaPo is pretty much meaningless as I have to at least tripple the amount of reading on a subject (kind of the most primitive media equivalent of parity check) to even start to have a somewhat unbiased view. Do I have to the same with InfoWars or Alex Jones? Of course I do, so by that metric they all have exact same usefulness untill I could establish a more adequate "bias weight" on all three of those.
No, that's not even close. First up, note I wrote this "And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere." You've expressly ignored that, because otherwise you wouldn't get to stretch "I think their reporting on Poland is terrible, therefore something, something US domestic politics".
And then you've invented some kind of rule where the only way to assess truthfulness is by past record. Past record is a factor, but it is far from the only factor.
And you seem to have done all this to reach a conclusion where WaPo is listed alongside InfoWars. It's very silly.
Individual journalist may be trustworthy, entire organisations/titles never are.
No organisation or journalist is ever completely foolproof, because no human or human institution is ever perfect. But that doesn't mean thy're all the same.
What you seem to assume is that somehow knowledge about publication history and bias of a given title is well known and cannot be a subject of debate or cannot be twisted according to one's personal viewpoint, which I find quite puzzling.
Of course there's a lot of scope for debate, but there are in which in which that debate can be sensible. It is reasonable to ask if NYT has a sufficient reputation that we should assume that story based on three anonymous sources can be assumed to be likely true, people could reasonably fall on both sides of that debate. It is not reasonable to claim NYT is as unreliable as The Daily Caller.
I've perhaps sounded more definite because I'm arguing for the existence of those bounds, a position a lot of people in this thread a ridiculously arguing against.
You said earlier, that NYT is not biased because of covering all of the possible angles, including those outside of a spectum of rationality.
No, I didn't, I never said NYT wasn't biased. Because as I've said from the very start every media org has a bias. I said that the NYT makes a conscious efforts towards a 'both sides' position, so that they assign equal numbers of journalists to investigate both sides in a political campaign, regardless of whether one side might have more to uncover than another. This position is actually its own form of bias, because it produces a false equivalency in debates where the two sides are not equal, and also tends to restrict published opinion down to only those held by major institutions.
To be crystal clear: I do undestand your position of "bias is not a binary property but can be percieved as binary by some people, which in turn makes them vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations" but pretty much no one, including Luciferian, is debating this. From where I stand you pretty much both agree, that there is no universal metric to sort media by and one can only try to stay well informed by constantly contesting everything one reads.
Not quite. That's pretty much what Luciferian believes. That theory has led him to trying to defend InfoWars which is a pretty good sign there's something wrong with a theory. Instead, my view is that all media has a bias, but that most definitely does not mean all media is equal - some orgs are working to present complete, fact based articles, and while those articles will still impacted by their pov, this places them miles above orgs that are happy to use incomplete and even false facts in order to make sure their story aligns with their politics.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/03/01 04:15:14
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2018/03/01 12:57:59
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'd like to state my opposition to the idea that media is driven by profit to the exclusion of all else, because it just isn't true. It's the idea of the rational man writ large, and runs into the same problem as that theory does on an individual level in that it completely ignores things like ideology or altruism, to name a few.
That's a really good point that we shouldn't have left unchallenged as long as we have in this thread. Kudos.
LordofHats wrote: Some of the best people who write stuff for HuffPo are the outside contributors. Diane Ravitch is one of my favorite commentators on education, both because she can admit when she is wrong and because she's one of the few sensible policy commentators on the subject. Phil Radford (former executive director of Greenpeace USA) also writes articles from time to time on environmental issues, and I like his approach of directly engaging corporate culture as the most effective way to advocate for better environmental policy even if he's opinions of the political-industrial complex can get... a little crazy. The Libertarian I speak of is The Volokh Conspiracy which I now realize is actually under the Washington Post They both have post in their name okay it's gets confusing at 4 AM XD The place is a blog edited by Libertarian leaning lawyers and law experts (and they are political) but they are least have a certain self-awareness about it all that I find endearing and the blog itself is insightful even when I find the ideology of Libertarianism to be wildly short sighted. Like I said. They get credit for putting in effort.
Thanks. I'll definitely look up Ravitch's stuff, education is an issue I want to read about more.
Prestor Jon wrote: I’m not trying to hide or walk back anything. If I wanted people to overlook something I wanted continue to further a discussion about it.
It appeared that you shifted from 'trustworthy' to 'more trustworthy'. That is a significant difference in meaning. However that probably wasn't what you were doing.
It’s Dakka OT it’s not something to take personally or seriously.
There's nothing personal meant or intended in telling someone they're shifting their argument. It just is, and needs to be addressed in order for the discussion to move forward. And raising it has helped clarify the point, so its all good. I apologise if I sounded harsh.
Trustworthy doesn’t mean infallible or should be taken at face value at all times. Trustworthy means something you can have confidence in that something is more reliable and honest.
It can mean the former, in the right context. And this is the context you used the word, "Multiple people in this thread have stated that while all media companies are based some media companies are trustworthy and some media companies are not."
I took it to mean that you think some people were saying some organisations are completely trustworthy. Because the alternative interpretation would basically boil down to you commenting that people think some media organisations are more trustworthy than others, which I took as a statement so obvious and so non-controversial that it couldn't be what you meant. Having discussed this some more, it does seem that was your intent.
Media companies exist to manipulate and sway opinion/ideaology and they need to do so in a manner that is profitable enough to keep their business running.
All media is manipulative it tries to persuade you to think or feel a certain way. Some media manipulation is easier to accept than others because it pushes us towards a position we already hold or approve of. I know that I can easily be persuaded by media that is pro gay marriage equality because that is a position I am comfortable with and that I cannot be easily persuaded to agree with the position that the federal govt uses chem trails in the sky to conduct illicit mind control experiments on people because I am predisposed to disbelieve such a claim and it makes me uncomfortable to believe in such a thing.
You're mixing up bias and manipulation. The phrase 'all media has a bias' is a statement that all media has a viewpoint, that even when they try to write as objectively as possible, what they say will come from how they understand the world.
Whereas manipulation is when a media source only gives you part of the story, because they want to present a specific slant that matches their political aims.
It is the difference between sub-conscious and conscious filtering. And it is a big fething difference. And some media companies are mostly the former, and some media companies are exclusively the latter, with a lot sitting somewhere in between. And its a problem that so many people try to deny this reality. They deny it by taking up a kind of post-modern cynicism, 'oh everybody is biased', but it's a dishonest position because they're not actually trying to review all media with a critical eye - if they were the first thing they'd note is that there are some really bad media companies that regularly publish some ridiculous nonsense. But they don't notice that, because the actual motivation isn't to apply a critical eye to all media, the motivation is to give themselves cover to ignore the awful problems with their favourite media, by pretending those problems are equal in all media.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
nou wrote: WaPo coverage of Polish-Israeli issue is at this point a series (so that meet "on regular/methodical basis" cryteria by my standards) of articles landing between "reckless journalism" and "plain manipulation, dishonest organisation" as you defined them. If I apply your suggestion of "Orgs with a proven record of manipulative and dishonest writing should be treated far more skeptically, and if they're bad enough like InfoWars they should be ignored entirely." I then should ignore WaPo entirely, because I have absolutely no means of judging if they are truthfull or manipulative on subjects I know less about than the one I caught them being manipulative on (and by now I have a pretty good view on how much of "liberal viewpoint" this title is). If I were to read on some American internal matters, then reading about them in WaPo is pretty much meaningless as I have to at least tripple the amount of reading on a subject (kind of the most primitive media equivalent of parity check) to even start to have a somewhat unbiased view. Do I have to the same with InfoWars or Alex Jones? Of course I do, so by that metric they all have exact same usefulness untill I could establish a more adequate "bias weight" on all three of those.
No, that's not even close. First up, note I wrote this "And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere." You've expressly ignored that, because otherwise you wouldn't get to stretch "I think their reporting on Poland is terrible, therefore something, something US domestic politics".
And then you've invented some kind of rule where the only way to assess truthfulness is by past record. Past record is a factor, but it is far from the only factor.
And you seem to have done all this to reach a conclusion where WaPo is listed alongside InfoWars. It's very silly.
Individual journalist may be trustworthy, entire organisations/titles never are.
No organisation or journalist is ever completely foolproof, because no human or human institution is ever perfect. But that doesn't mean thy're all the same.
What you seem to assume is that somehow knowledge about publication history and bias of a given title is well known and cannot be a subject of debate or cannot be twisted according to one's personal viewpoint, which I find quite puzzling.
Of course there's a lot of scope for debate, but there are in which in which that debate can be sensible. It is reasonable to ask if NYT has a sufficient reputation that we should assume that story based on three anonymous sources can be assumed to be likely true, people could reasonably fall on both sides of that debate. It is not reasonable to claim NYT is as unreliable as The Daily Caller.
I've perhaps sounded more definite because I'm arguing for the existence of those bounds, a position a lot of people in this thread a ridiculously arguing against.
You said earlier, that NYT is not biased because of covering all of the possible angles, including those outside of a spectum of rationality.
No, I didn't, I never said NYT wasn't biased. Because as I've said from the very start every media org has a bias. I said that the NYT makes a conscious efforts towards a 'both sides' position, so that they assign equal numbers of journalists to investigate both sides in a political campaign, regardless of whether one side might have more to uncover than another. This position is actually its own form of bias, because it produces a false equivalency in debates where the two sides are not equal, and also tends to restrict published opinion down to only those held by major institutions.
To be crystal clear: I do undestand your position of "bias is not a binary property but can be percieved as binary by some people, which in turn makes them vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations" but pretty much no one, including Luciferian, is debating this. From where I stand you pretty much both agree, that there is no universal metric to sort media by and one can only try to stay well informed by constantly contesting everything one reads.
Not quite. That's pretty much what Luciferian believes. That theory has led him to trying to defend InfoWars which is a pretty good sign there's something wrong with a theory. Instead, my view is that all media has a bias, but that most definitely does not mean all media is equal - some orgs are working to present complete, fact based articles, and while those articles will still impacted by their pov, this places them miles above orgs that are happy to use incomplete and even false facts in order to make sure their story aligns with their politics.
I'll start my answer with an earlier quote from you:
"However, your complaints about the other two news organisations are hollow, and only show your own bias (and how your bias feeds your understanding of media orgs, reinforcing your bias, exactly as I said to you earlier in this thread).
CNN isn't biased because it doesn't have a viewpoint, because it doesn't have any real interest in news at all. In order to give someone a biased version of events, you would have to actually be telling someone something at all.
The NYT is so intent on both sides it bends over backwards to sacrifice actual news just to appeal to every market segment. During the 2016 election the paper directed 20 journalists to investigate Trump's background, and how many to investigate Clinton? 20. Because balance. It didn't matter who had more scandals or bigger scandals, its decision was entirely based on neutrality. Right now it has opinion writers like the climate change denier Bret Stephens and Erik Prince, the Blackwater guy who's tied to Trump in all the money under the table kind of ways. It gives these kinds of people op ed space simply because it wants 'balance'."
This reads as "both CNN and NYT are not biased because" and then two different reasons why those titles should not be treated as biased. If you wanted to express what both you and I wrote in our last posts about NYT type of bias you failed to write it clearly enough... But since you have now expanded on this matter, you and I are on exactly same page on what exact type of skew NYT produces.
"First up, note I wrote this "And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere." You've expressly ignored that, because otherwise you wouldn't get to stretch"
I've literally adressed this AND AGREED paragraph later (and an entire post earlier).
"And then to add one more layer of complexity, you have to note that organisations are complex - they may be biased and unreliable on one matter, and have excellent reporting elsewhere." that is pretty much what I wrote a post earlier in my quick summary of your position. Individual journalist may be trustworthy, entire organisations/titles never are.
You seem so focused on your point of view here, that you can no longer discern when I agree with you; when I agree with you but have something to add; or when I'm in opposition to you... So let me explain one last time, without any abridging, the story behind my experience with WaPo and why it is a good example of "treating all media as biased" (no one here states "equally biased", what I say is "all media are biased sufficiently enough to not be up-frontly trusted":
- up untill a week ago I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about quality of journalism in WaPo. I have never read it before.
- my very first contact with this title is an article, where factual value is exactly as follows: "there is a crisis between Poland and Israel", "the crisis is about a law being passed", "the law is related to IIWW era". That's all. Everything else in that article is missinformation (on the exact wording and scope of the law in question and following conclusions/interpretations of that law; you can verify this by having the law in question translated to english while I can simply go to government site and read the law in question directly), and direct anti-right handwaiving interpretation of reasoning behind the law being passed. I also see that this article is signed by a Polish doctoral student from a very left-wing skewed university, so I have additional information on editorial standards in WaPo.
- but with my previous experience of my history with NYT publications on this subject covering all the possible (and impossible) angles I give WaPo another chance and take my time to read more articles they published on this subject and they are just more of the same. I could link you a more objective article on this even from Jerusalem Post. Also, all articles on this in WaPo utilise the same means of skewing presentation of data and "forging a narrative" which are common to fairly biased or straight up untrustworthy titles in polish media landscape (just a sidenote here - media from all sides of political spectrum utilise those).
- it is now 5:0 agains WaPo objectivism on a subject that I have enough knowledge about to be sure of both facts and existing interpretations landscape. At this point, if I were now to read in WaPo about a topic I have no clue about, be it American internall afairs, Uganda natural history or world population of walrusses I don't have any reson to believe that what is published in WaPo is accurate and non-biased. To verify this, I now have to read at least one other source to cross check facts to have at least weak basis to separate facts from opinions, but usually it takes more sources and more time to verify because you either need to have a pool of even patially skewed articles or a hard data, scientific article. So it would be easiest to verify walrusses population but hardest to verify American internal affairs.
- for WaPo to gain my trust after initial 5:0 score against it would take quite a lot of spot-on, unbiased articles to confirm, that this was just an untypical mistake on their part. No media I know of have such a flawless record so I assume (based on my vast knowledge about polish and european media landscape, you can read more about it in my first post in this thread) that while not all WaPo articles are useless I can only utilise WaPo as an insight to left-leaning perspective on social and political issues untill I can identify individual journalists in WaPo that are trustworthy/objective enough or I'm otherwise convinced that this was just a bad luck me stumbling upon such skewed subject as a first contact. Everything being discussed in this thread about WaPo position in US media landscape reaffirms this conclusion.
Luciferian never did defend InfoWars or Alex Jones informational value. What he wrote exactly is that to construct a believable enough lie one must anchor his narrative on at least some or partial facts for readers to fail their fact-check on and that nearly all media do that to some extent or another in more or less wide spectrum of their coverage. Which you yourself pretty much agree with, the difference between you and Luciferian or myself is your personal threshold of what is "prooven trustowrthy" or "what level of minutiae is being catchy". I added one in-depth case study of intentional and repeated missinformation and forging an artificial narrative from WaPo to illustrate my position, but it is not the only case study possible or existing. It was just coincidential, that I had this Polish-Israeli subject readily available as illustration, as it is simply current news.
Last word - you probably missed or did not fully understood my initial post in this thread: I base my position not on personal opinion build upon following few selected titles on day-to-day basis, but on meta analysis of literally thousands of media titles. I have acces (through my wife's line of work) to tools which can give us the whole media coverage about any given subject in the scope of months or years even, be it UE-funded roadbuilding, polish-german relations, or such "trivial" topics as printed and social media coverage about a single brand of cat food, you name it, she can find it, extract it and analyse it in the most objective way there is (and then I have to listen to some of those boring topics over dinner ). You literally cannot be more informed on media manipulation techniques than she is, as it is her bread and butter to unskew those informations to be usefull for largest companies or government entities to base their PR relations/crisis management/diplomacy upon on or identify advertising strategies adequate to any given title's target audience. You are literally discussing, that the whole huge branch of business and their even bigger corporate clientelle has irrational opinion about all media being skewed and manipulative and that you can have an in-depth, factual knowledge about any social subject only by meta-analysis. I hope this clears our entire previous conversation a bit because I've spent too much time in this thread already to repeat myself once again. Cheers!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think I found a simpler way to characterise difference in our positions, a kind of "glass half full vs half empty" situation. You seem to believe, that most competent meda titles have their truthfull-to-missinforming ratio in orders of 90:10 and that those 10% of misinformation is mostly mistakes and human/process flaws whlie the least reliable media titles have a ratio of 0% facts/100% BS. Luciferian places the bottom line of closer to 1/99 facts-vs-BS while I know that even the most reliable media titles nowadays have truth-to-missinformation ratios closer to 50/50 if you count their entire spectrum of coverage. They may go near 90:10 ratio only in a single, most specialised area if their funding is independent from said area, which pretty much never occurs in mainstream, politically backed/oriented media. Local or technical newspapers are statistically more reliable on their coverage than large, "all-in-one" nationwide titles and there exist particular journalists that can have a near 100% reliable coverage (and number of said journalist decline in recent decades), but that's it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/01 13:48:24
2018/03/01 13:51:32
Subject: Re:Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
Uber_Trooper wrote: I think the requirements for an echoe chamber include a bunch of friends who just say things that confirm your beliefs. of all things, the internet is the last place you want to go to.
No, I think it's perfect. Just because you're talking to people and being expose to other views doesn't say anything about how that information is being used. One thing that really made me stop and think was a video on the horribleness that was Gamergate, where the author didn't endorse either side, but made a point that the argument could never be settled because neither side wanted to win.
And I think you can apply that to a lot of the modern world, or human interaction in general--a lot of things make more sense if you consider that conflict isn't a means, it's an end in itself. You engage in a bit of safe ritual combat with those who disagree with your obviously correct facts, your bias is just necessary to offset their bias, and everyone comes away tingling with sweet righteous anger and a vindication that only idiots could disagree with them.
And of course some media is more trustworthy than others. Declaring all media equally untrustworthy is absurd. The Daily Mail got banned from Wikipedia for being so absurd, and there's even a song about their more ludicrous headlines, and when Wikipedia won't take you there's something wrong cause Wikipedia's standards for source quality are basically "is it in English" and "does it say what we say it says" (and they're not to good with that last one).
Was it this one?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/01 13:54:07
"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
2018/03/01 14:09:56
Subject: Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation
).
They both have post in their name okay it's gets confusing at 4 
