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 godardc wrote:
Countries listed are not perpetrators, but produced the nerve agent. It was to show it could came from nearly everywhere.
I have showed you some facts, where are your heavily pointing facts ?
If not proven guilty, you should treat Russia innocent. If there is an honnest investigation, one day we will know everything. I am just asking for truth, not defending Russia, but I think hysteria and casual leftist hate for Russia led us here.
Again, what are «truthful» sources ? Reporters that point toward Russia ? So you are right because you are right, then ?
I always thought you to be an honnest, if misleaded, person.
I may have been wrong. Do you have an agenda against poor Russia ?

We've been through all this before. Presumption of innocence as a legal principle only applies to criminal prosecutions. It's irrelevant to international relations and skulduggery.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 godardc wrote:

I always thought you to be an honnest, if misleaded, person.
I may have been wrong. Do you have an agenda against poor Russia ?

The issue is that RT is a less than credible source for...well, anything, but particularly things to do with Russia. It;'s like saying that 'Well, here in Der Stürmer it says that Hitler is a great leader for Germany!'

RT is mostly just a mainstream news outlet that gets its news from exactly the same sources all other news outlets in the world. Just take a look at it. Like 80% of the articles are almost exactly the same as the articles you find on virtually all major Western outlets. News is mostly just a copy-paste job. Take the report from Reuters or another news agency, maybe add some background, a few nice pictures et voila. An article is finished.
Now obviously you should not trust RT when it writes about the Russian government, because said government is its employer (although when you compare it to state-owned Russian-language news outlets that are popular in Russia, RT is surprisingly critical at times. It is easily the most independent and critical Russian state media, not that that is saying much). What is more, because RT is Russian it naturally has a pro-Russian bias. Apart from that, RT is pretty normal. It is hardly comparable to Der Stürmer. Also, you should be aware of the owner and nationality of every news outlet, as they are all biased. Not just RT.

Yeah exactly, all news have biais, they all belong to someone somewhere. No agency is perfectly true and neutral. So ...

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 godardc wrote:

I always thought you to be an honnest, if misleaded, person.
I may have been wrong. Do you have an agenda against poor Russia ?

The issue is that RT is a less than credible source for...well, anything, but particularly things to do with Russia. It;'s like saying that 'Well, here in Der Stürmer it says that Hitler is a great leader for Germany!'

RT is mostly just a mainstream news outlet that gets its news from exactly the same sources all other news outlets in the world. Just take a look at it. Like 80% of the articles are almost exactly the same as the articles you find on virtually all major Western outlets. News is mostly just a copy-paste job. Take the report from Reuters or another news agency, maybe add some background, a few nice pictures et voila. An article is finished.
Now obviously you should not trust RT when it writes about the Russian government, because said government is its employer (although when you compare it to state-owned Russian-language news outlets that are popular in Russia, RT is surprisingly critical at times. It is easily the most independent and critical Russian state media, not that that is saying much). What is more, because RT is Russian it naturally has a pro-Russian bias. Apart from that, RT is pretty normal. It is hardly comparable to Der Stürmer. Also, you should be aware of the owner and nationality of every news outlet, as they are all biased. Not just RT.

They take the same news and spin it in their own way however. Picking and choosing sentences from a speech and saying that they mean something that they didn't.

My father watches RT. I've walked in on him and listened to whatever random article came on at the time. They're difficult to stand for more than a few seconds. The level of bias when reporting even the most mundane things is appalling coming from a "credible" news source. That's besides the twisting of the truth and outright lies.

Though as with those who follow stuff like Bright Bart, the watcher think that they're the ones in the right and everyone else is telling lies. People have a distrust of the media, and channels like RT play into that. They tear down things which those viewers don't agree with, and that then allows them to sneak in articles pushing their agenda in other subjects. Till the viewer's gone from watching them as a source of news about their original point of interest, to trusting them as a source on everything.

There's bias in news reporting everywhere. That's not what RT does. That channel is only concerned about pushing the Russian state's agenda. Of course that agenda isn't limited to articles praising the Kremlin. They're fine with backing opposition to their enemies, or throwing shade on them, whatever nets them someone with fringe views who can then be fed into the propaganda machine.

I stopped watching the BBC after their reporting on the Scottish Independence referendum in how they twisted the truth. If I'd been watching Russia Today about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine then I wouldn't have lasted a day with how they went far beyond what the BBC were doing. If you really can't see the extent of their manipulation, or be aware of their tactics then websites which debunk them are freely available. Hell Stop Fake breaks down their lies step by step.

However, once you're in that RT bubble its difficult to get out even if someone's explaining things to you. Once you're in the propaganda machine its built so that people feel comfortable where they are and distrust opposing views (the machine's happy enough to supply you with articles debunking them ...which throws shade on the other side's attempts to explain the real situation). The channels are a product of decades of research on how to manipulate people into following the party line. Its just unfortunate that their tactic includes an element which says those not toeing that line are the ones who are the real sheep. :/

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And tying that to the subject of Putin and Russian politics, I think it would be great if Russia got a Tsar back. Not as the bloody dictators that past Tsars were, but as a constitutional monarch who could watch over the constitution and prevent people like Putin from abusing it. I guess I won't get a lot of support for that idea in Russia though...

Someone like Alexander II would be good, or at least he's remembered as a good ruler in Finland. He officially ended serfdom (though in some places it took a long time before people knew they didn't have to obey the local ruler in all things), aided the slavs in the Balkans against the Turks and gave Finland a great deal of autonomy. Some newfangled ideas like local councils didn't get his support, but in most respects he was a fair and generous ruler, happy to let people run their own lives.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 godardc wrote:

I always thought you to be an honnest, if misleaded, person.
I may have been wrong. Do you have an agenda against poor Russia ?

The issue is that RT is a less than credible source for...well, anything, but particularly things to do with Russia. It;'s like saying that 'Well, here in Der Stürmer it says that Hitler is a great leader for Germany!'

RT is mostly just a mainstream news outlet that gets its news from exactly the same sources all other news outlets in the world. Just take a look at it. Like 80% of the articles are almost exactly the same as the articles you find on virtually all major Western outlets. News is mostly just a copy-paste job. Take the report from Reuters or another news agency, maybe add some background, a few nice pictures et voila. An article is finished.
Now obviously you should not trust RT when it writes about the Russian government, because said government is its employer (although when you compare it to state-owned Russian-language news outlets that are popular in Russia, RT is surprisingly critical at times. It is easily the most independent and critical Russian state media, not that that is saying much). What is more, because RT is Russian it naturally has a pro-Russian bias. Apart from that, RT is pretty normal. It is hardly comparable to Der Stürmer. Also, you should be aware of the owner and nationality of every news outlet, as they are all biased. Not just RT.

Yeah, I feel RT is well disguised, so that it comes across as just another member of the mainstream media. But look at certain topics, and the language and perspective change quite noticeably. You can see the propaganda machine kicking in.

 Haighus wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 godardc wrote:

I always thought you to be an honnest, if misleaded, person.
I may have been wrong. Do you have an agenda against poor Russia ?

The issue is that RT is a less than credible source for...well, anything, but particularly things to do with Russia. It;'s like saying that 'Well, here in Der Stürmer it says that Hitler is a great leader for Germany!'

RT is mostly just a mainstream news outlet that gets its news from exactly the same sources all other news outlets in the world. Just take a look at it. Like 80% of the articles are almost exactly the same as the articles you find on virtually all major Western outlets. News is mostly just a copy-paste job. Take the report from Reuters or another news agency, maybe add some background, a few nice pictures et voila. An article is finished.
Now obviously you should not trust RT when it writes about the Russian government, because said government is its employer (although when you compare it to state-owned Russian-language news outlets that are popular in Russia, RT is surprisingly critical at times. It is easily the most independent and critical Russian state media, not that that is saying much). What is more, because RT is Russian it naturally has a pro-Russian bias. Apart from that, RT is pretty normal. It is hardly comparable to Der Stürmer. Also, you should be aware of the owner and nationality of every news outlet, as they are all biased. Not just RT.

Yeah, I feel RT is well disguised, so that it comes across as just another member of the mainstream media. But look at certain topics, and the language and perspective change quite noticeably. You can see the propaganda machine kicking in.

Yup, that is the whole point of RT. It is fast, it has well written articles about a wide variety of subjects, it promises to tell you more than other media do... Those things draw people in. Then they read an article about how bad the US is. Or an article about Ukraine. And suddenly Russia seems a whole lot less like "the bad guy". Quite the contrary, maybe that Putin guy has a point... That is how propaganda works. Plenty of Western media do the same thing (and Chinese and Iranian and Israeli and pretty much everyone), although not necessarily with a pro-government agenda. They can also push a different political agenda (Like Fox in the US), but every media out there is pushing a political agenda of some sort. It is pretty much impossible to report on political issues without your bias coming out somehow. An outlet like RT just is a particularly strong example, since pushing an agenda is its entire raison d'être, whereas a lot of other media have 'informing people' as their primary goal and their bias and agenda-pushing is just an inevitable consequence of their personal beliefs/political allegiance. Anyways, when reading the news, it is always a good idea to hear it from multiple sources with different political slants. Truth is usually in the middle as they say, and you can only find the middle if you know where the edges are.

Don't normalise a propaganda channel by saying that "the truth's somewhere in the middle". You have the mainstream news, then Russia Today's a dot on the horizon as far as credible news sources go. "My small town newspaper which proclaims that the Earth is flat is equally part of the spectrum of journalism and has just the same amount of integrity!". Outside of the little bubble RT's supporters live in, the rest of the world knows thinks its a joke.

Though as ever with these bloody Russia threads people spend more time arguing with pro-Russian posters who spread nonsense than actually discuss the topic at hand.

Yeah, we have all the fake news media that don't speak about half of what happens in the world and then give you only half of the info on it (like, in France noone ever told that Ukrainian illegitimate governement prohibted to speak Russian in the country, when it was an official language there. Or that they were supported by neo nazis, etc. But it is ok, because they are the good guys fighting the Evil Empire of new URSS).
And then you have good media that, maybe are a bit biaised (but it is not difficult to see through it and to make some researchs) but give you the whole story !
What's the name of the US news agency that apologized for doing Fake News already ?

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Don't normalise a propaganda channel by saying that "the truth's somewhere in the middle". You have the mainstream news, then Russia Today's a dot on the horizon as far as credible news sources go. "My small town newspaper which proclaims that the Earth is flat is equally part of the spectrum of journalism and has just the same amount of integrity!". Outside of the little bubble RT's supporters live in, the rest of the world knows thinks its a joke.

Though as ever with these bloody Russia threads people spend more time arguing with pro-Russian posters who spread nonsense than actually discuss the topic at hand.

I am not normalising RT, just a sentence before that I said it was a propaganda channel. RT is part of the spectrum of journalism, but it is one of the edges that I mentioned. Not the middle. It is worth reading because it tells you a lot about the Russian state's point of view, but it should never be mistaken for an impartial, integer source of news.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
RT is part of the spectrum of journalism, but it is one of the edges that I mentioned. Not the middle. It is worth reading because it tells you a lot about the Russian state's point of view, but it should never be mistaken for an impartial, integer source of news.

And one interesting thing with this is that back when Russia used to be part of the USSR the people knew full well to not trust Pravda. It was 100% government controlled, and people read the news with the intent of identifying which parts were propaganda and which outright lies. The KGB was in fact envious of how easily the governments of the West - with free media - could spread disinformation and rumors through multiple independent news sources with carefully orchestrated "leaks". Ofc Russia has learned this lesson and now uses the Maskirovka doctrine, making sure to throw out multiple baits for any story Kreml would like to deny or obfuscate.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
RT is part of the spectrum of journalism, but it is one of the edges that I mentioned. Not the middle. It is worth reading because it tells you a lot about the Russian state's point of view, but it should never be mistaken for an impartial, integer source of news.

And one interesting thing with this is that back when Russia used to be part of the USSR the people knew full well to not trust Pravda. It was 100% government controlled, and people read the news with the intent of identifying which parts were propaganda and which outright lies. The KGB was in fact envious of how easily the governments of the West - with free media - could spread disinformation and rumors through multiple independent news sources with carefully orchestrated "leaks". Ofc Russia has learned this lesson and now uses the Maskirovka doctrine, making sure to throw out multiple baits for any story Kreml would like to deny or obfuscate.

As the Soviet pun said: In Pravda, truth but no news. In Izvestiya, news but no truth. (Pravda (The Truth) and Izvestiya (The News) were the big Soviet newspapers). Most Russians still distrust the media. For good reasons. Such distrust built up in Soviet times takes a long time to go away again, and most major national media being state-controlled doesn't really help it. Not that they trust independent media any better. Those just tell different lies for the interests of their big business owners.

 godardc wrote:
in France noone ever told that Ukrainian illegitimate governement prohibted to speak Russian in the country, when it was an official language there. Or that they were supported by neo nazis, etc. But it is ok, because they are the good guys fighting the Evil Empire

godardc I hate to let you in on this, but when we examined the Ukraine thing, we found mountains of BS on both sides. Like, for example, it's not prohibited to speak Russian in the Ukraine. They did however make Ukrainian the language taught in schools and that 75% of national TV and 50% of local had to be in Ukrainian. So, again, if that's what RU said, they misrepresented what went on.

RT never told that. That me, roughly speaking, I aologize. They didn't prohibited it, they "drastically reduced it". Is that better ? If Donald suddenly asked for 75% of movies etc in Spanish, and that Spanish was the only language taught in school, what would the English speaking people of the USA think ?

 godardc wrote:
RT never told that.

RT never tells you lots of things, and deliberately pisses in the well of truth on a regular basis.

If you really want to get reasonably unbiased information, read the BBC, Reuters, & the Economist on a regular basis. Then add in the odd sprinkle/browse of the Guardian online, Private Eye (if you like British affairs), the Times, FT, and Vice once a week to get all the little bits. Each has their own angles and biases, but once you stir them all together, you usually get a reasonable approximation of the truth, along with coverage of most international affairs. You'll still miss things and get the odd ommission and inaccuracy, but the more obvious blind spots of any one publication will have been covered by the journalism of the others. They all have a vague commitment to telling the truth on most issues which prevents outright lying or warping of the truth if they can avoid it.

The minute you look at RT, Daily Mail, or Fox News though? You're going the wrong way, because they don't. They're mass media machines deliberately designed to pump out easy to read badly sourced heavily twisted crap to make not particularly educated/well informed people think and perceive the world a certain way; as well as distrust all sources but them.

That's funny, because earlier in this very thread, Wyrmalla told us that BBC was so biaised that he stopped reading it
To each their own, I guess
And I stopped reading when you said that I had to read...Vice.
Vice

 godardc wrote:

Vice

First thing I thought when I saw 'FT' was Fortean Times. Must be all that writing I did for Strange Britain's US section.

 Ketara wrote:

 godardc wrote:
RT never told that.

RT never tells you lots of things, and deliberately pisses in the well of truth on a regular basis.

If you really want to get reasonably unbiased information, read the BBC, Reuters, & the Economist on a regular basis. Then add in the odd sprinkle/browse of the Guardian online, Private Eye (if you like British affairs), the Times, FT, and Vice once a week to get all the little bits. Each has their own angles and biases, but once you stir them all together, you usually get a reasonable approximation of the truth, along with coverage of most international affairs. You'll still miss things and get the odd ommission and inaccuracy, but the more obvious blind spots of any one publication will have been covered by the journalism of the others. They all have a vague commitment to telling the truth on most issues which prevents outright lying or warping of the truth if they can avoid it.

The minute you look at RT, Daily Mail, or Fox News though? You're going the wrong way, because they don't. They're mass media machines deliberately designed to pump out easy to read badly sourced heavily twisted crap to make not particularly educated/well informed people think and perceive the world a certain way; as well as distrust all sources but them.

One big flaw in that media lineup. It is all British. Which is fine when it comes to British news, but which means you are going to be hearing things only from a single, one-sided point of view when it comes to international news. There is plenty of English-language media from other countries, so I'd recommend reading those as well for news that concerns other countries. Like for something to do with Russia, you'd really want to read both the Moscow Times (liberal, independent) and RT (conservative, pro-government) as that way you get the story from both major political angles in present-day Russia (additionally, there is a site called Russia Insider that translates articles from Russian-language media. Be warned that often it is going to be even more extreme than RT is. RT is very mild by Russian standards). Relying on British media for that only introduces unnecessary bias, and there is a LOT of bias in the British media when it comes to Russia. The same goes of course for other countries. It was for example much more informative and interesting to read english-language Spanish media during the Catalan referendum than it was to read international media.
If you want to trust any news, you have to verify. And for international issues you can not do that by relying on media from just a single country. That is my opinion on it at least.

Also, I would say that in general the biggest issue with 'bad media' is not outright lying or warping the truth, as very few media outlets actually do that. Lies usually get found out quickly on the internet, and so unless you want only total nutjobs to read your articles you better not lie. No, the bigger issue is that they tell the truth, but simply leave out all the parts that are inconvenient to them. Related to that is the other big issue, selective reporting, where they only write articles about the things and from the angles, giving an impression that is different from the truth, but not a lie either. It is just not the whole story. Like on RT you will see lots of articles about everything that goes wrong in the US, but you will never see articles on things the US does well. This gives people a very negative impression of the US. And even though those negative things are all true, it is only part of the story because there is lots of positive things that people never get told about. In my opinion, such half-truths are much, much, much more dangerous than lies.

 godardc wrote:
RT never told that. That me, roughly speaking, I aologize. They didn't prohibited it, they "drastically reduced it". Is that better ? If Donald suddenly asked for 75% of movies etc in Spanish, and that Spanish was the only language taught in school, what would the English speaking people of the USA think ?

If Donald did that, the majority of the citizens would go "Hm, that seems illegal" and his die yards would start watching Dora the Explorer. (It's a legit good way to learn and have fun at the same time!)

godardc wrote:That's funny, because earlier in this very thread, Wyrmalla told us that BBC was so biaised that he stopped reading it

You might want to read both him and me more closely. He said that he had a specific bugbear over one issue, namely the Scottish referendum, and I said that all platforms had their own blind spots. That's why you read a variety of sources; in order to cover those.

And I stopped reading when you said that I had to read...Vice.
Vice

Oh dear. So you were actually just looking for a way to dismiss what I said, rather than looking for good advice on how to get a decent spread of media. I apologise, I thought you were actually looking for tips on how to get a reasonably varied/accurate input of information.

If only you paid half the level of dismissal, criticism, and scepticism you seem to have for Vice to.....well, RT!

Iron_Captain wrote:
One big flaw in that media lineup. It is all British.

You might want to look more closely. Reuters is American.

Given that we're dealing with sources in English, there's not much you can do about it being British/American focused. I could point out Le Monde or something, but that's a fat lot of good to someone who doesn't speak French. I'm sure that there are many other good media organisations which write in German, or Dutch or the like, but when it comes to sources written in English? That's a good solid spread. I'm sure others have their favourites, and I'm sure ones exist which I'm not familiar with (probably American ones); but at the end of the day, the goalisn't to ensure 100% accuracy and neutrality of reporting. It's to ensure it to within a reasonable degree.




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 BaronIveagh wrote:

 godardc wrote:

Vice

First thing I thought when I saw 'FT' was Fortean Times. Must be all that writing I did for Strange Britain's US section.

Weirdly enough, the Financial Times has been about the only paper to approach the whole Brexit thing from a relatively neutral and detailed standpoint. Likely because the readers are looking for hard intelligence on business matters, economics, and politics that they can use on a weekly basis in making decisions. They don't want the propaganda, or three pages of editorial and opinions. They want solid intelligence with the minimum of opinion that they can action upon.

The result has been a consistent regular level of analysis and quality reporting on the subject unmatched by any of the other daily brands.

 Ketara wrote:

godardc wrote:That's funny, because earlier in this very thread, Wyrmalla told us that BBC was so biaised that he stopped reading it

You might want to read both him and me more closely. He said that he had a specific bugbear over one issue, namely the Scottish referendum, and I said that all platforms had their own blind spots. That's why you read a variety of sources; in order to cover those.brands.

Yes, its perhaps relevant to also mention that this was around the time that I became of Russia Today. They were just bad on their throwing shade at the British government so I didn't watch them either. Then came their handling of the Russia invasion of Ukraine and I spent the time researching the organisation to find out just how incredulous they were.

No, don't worry: in fact, I am reading several newspapers, but, it just that Vice, Vice...
I think the Skripal case is, with the liberation of Crimea, the time I have had the most difficulty to find honest coverage on an event, and why I rely so much on RT. Usually I can use others. But be assured that the list that was given to me here won't be unused.

Any news about the case by the way ? Any proof ? Anything ? Or will this case be the same as with the plane in Ukraine: no info and suddenly disappearing from the news ?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You are almost sounding like some kind of cult leader leader here.
"Accept the truth, accept the reality! We don't need evidence, we know it to be true!"

Which would be a great argument, if there was no difference at all between a cult leader telling you the UFO is coming to collect all our souls so please drink this Kool Aid, and a professional, independent government authority telling the public they have assessed the likely perpetrator of an assassination attempt.

It is of course no coincidence that you insist on throwing doubt on to every institution equally, no matter it's record of independence and reliability. That's the whole point of maskirovka. Conning people so they don't know what to believe, so they just give up meekly submit.

Anyways, I have learned at school that I need to see evidence before I accept something as reality. Which is a pity, because it means I had to give up my secret childhood hope that dragons are actually real.

At least until Mr Putin tells you otherwise.


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Looks back at the Gaza thread.

I didn't post in the Gaza thread. You might be a little bit confused.


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 godardc wrote:
If not proven guilty, you should treat Russia innocent. If there is an honnest investigation, one day we will know everything. I am just asking for truth, not defending Russia...

Trying to apply a court's standard of evidence to a national security matter is pretty wacky at the best of times, but as I said earlier in the thread in the Litvinenko investigation the UK authorities identified two key suspects and wanted to place them on trial. Russia refused. Of course they did.

So what we have is a group of Russians and Russia boosters who suddenly find a love for judicial standards and processes when it lets them claim some doubt in Russia's actions, but who suddenly go quiet when judicial processes lead to a trial that Russia then prevents from happening. It's pure bs, and we all know it's bs, and it's a waste of time anyone pretending it is any other than bs.


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 godardc wrote:
Yeah exactly, all news have biais, they all belong to someone somewhere. No agency is perfectly true and neutral. So ...

Agencies aren't all perfect. However claiming they are all biased is crap, and it's crap we've been over in this thread before. All agencies have a point of view, a general way of seeing the world. But this isn't the same thing as bias, which involves deliberately construing or misrepresenting the facts in a story to give a wildly misleading version of what happened.

So, for instance, the NYT might report constantly on the soap opera dramas playing out among the denizens of the Trump whitehouse. For some this might be a bad point of view because its anti-Trump. For others it might be a bad point of view because it draws attention away from serious failings of the Trump administration that have real costs, like Puerto Rico or the trade war nonsense. Those are issues of point of view, which is about which stories and which facts should be given priority.

In contrast, Breitbart once did a piece claiming that where refugees were put to work in a yogurt factory, tuberculosis shot up 300%. What the article left out was cases went from 1 to 3, the year before then it was 5 cases, and not one of the cases happened anywhere near where the refugees were settled, nor were did any of the people afflicted know or have contact with any of the resettled refugees. That is an issue of bias, of Breitbart choosing to frame a statement in such a way as to give the reader an impression of events that simply wasn't true.

As to whether RT is more like NYT or Breitbart, well we all know, don't we. Some people might need to say otherwise because they're committed to a certain political faction, but we all know.

 Ketara wrote:

Iron_Captain wrote:
One big flaw in that media lineup. It is all British.

You might want to look more closely. Reuters is American.

Given that we're dealing with sources in English, there's not much you can do about it being British/American focused. I could point out Le Monde or something, but that's a fat lot of good to someone who doesn't speak French. I'm sure that there are many other good media organisations which write in German, or Dutch or the like, but when it comes to sources written in English? That's a good solid spread. I'm sure others have their favourites, and I'm sure ones exist which I'm not familiar with (probably American ones); but at the end of the day, the goalisn't to ensure 100% accuracy and neutrality of reporting. It's to ensure it to within a reasonable degree.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Reuters.
But as I pointed out, not being able to read languages other than English is no longer an excuse for not reading foreign media. Most countries have media outlets that also publish in English nowadays. I mentioned the Moscow Times and El País as examples.



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 sebster wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You are almost sounding like some kind of cult leader leader here.
"Accept the truth, accept the reality! We don't need evidence, we know it to be true!"

Which would be a great argument, if there was no difference at all between a cult leader telling you the UFO is coming to collect all our souls so please drink this Kool Aid, and a professional, independent government authority telling the public they have assessed the likely perpetrator of an assassination attempt.

It is of course no coincidence that you insist on throwing doubt on to every institution equally, no matter it's record of independence and reliability. That's the whole point of maskirovka. Conning people so they don't know what to believe, so they just give up meekly submit.

Anyways, I have learned at school that I need to see evidence before I accept something as reality. Which is a pity, because it means I had to give up my secret childhood hope that dragons are actually real.

At least until Mr Putin tells you otherwise.

Please dude, be reasonable. You seem to think I am some kind of secret Russian government agent. That is ridiculous (but it would be so cool if it were true!). I will freely admit that my father works for the Russian government, but I do not. I am just a random university student who only wishes he got a paycheck from the Kremlin. I am constantly short on money, so a bit extra would be great. But alas, though I have met Putin once as a child, I am pretty sure he has already long forgotten me again, with how many people he meets every day.

And while I do advocate to doubt and distrust every institution, I do not advocate to doubt every institution equally. Read my posts. I am pretty clear about the fact that I think that media like RT is less trustworthy than say the BBC. There, your whole argument falls apart.

 sebster wrote:

Trying to apply a court's standard of evidence to a national security matter is pretty wacky at the best of times, but as I said earlier in the thread in the Litvinenko investigation the UK authorities identified two key suspects and wanted to place them on trial. Russia refused. Of course they did.

Of course they did, yes. Because extraditing citizens is prohibited by the Russian constitution, meaning that a trial like the UK wanted is quite simply impossible even if Russia wanted to cooperate.

 sebster wrote:
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 godardc wrote:
Yeah exactly, all news have biais, they all belong to someone somewhere. No agency is perfectly true and neutral. So ...

Agencies aren't all perfect. However claiming they are all biased is crap, and it's crap we've been over in this thread before. All agencies have a point of view, a general way of seeing the world. But this isn't the same thing as bias, which involves deliberately construing or misrepresenting the facts in a story to give a wildly misleading version of what happened.

So, for instance, the NYT might report constantly on the soap opera dramas playing out among the denizens of the Trump whitehouse. For some this might be a bad point of view because its anti-Trump. For others it might be a bad point of view because it draws attention away from serious failings of the Trump administration that have real costs, like Puerto Rico or the trade war nonsense. Those are issues of point of view, which is about which stories and which facts should be given priority.

In contrast, Breitbart once did a piece claiming that where refugees were put to work in a yogurt factory, tuberculosis shot up 300%. What the article left out was cases went from 1 to 3, the year before then it was 5 cases, and not one of the cases happened anywhere near where the refugees were settled, nor were did any of the people afflicted know or have contact with any of the resettled refugees. That is an issue of bias, of Breitbart choosing to frame a statement in such a way as to give the reader an impression of events that simply wasn't true.

As to whether RT is more like NYT or Breitbart, well we all know, don't we. Some people might need to say otherwise because they're committed to a certain political faction, but we all know.

I think you have a very unique understanding of what 'bias' means, if you don't think that the NYT doesn't have any. If only the dictionaries agreed with you! But yeah, never let reality get in the way of a good argument right?

Bias doesn't have to be deliberate- most bias is accidental and just due to the subconscious influences of the media producer. The deliberate bias is the most dangerous, but basically all reporting has bias unless it just states raw numbers or something with zero interpretation. That doesn't sell well, because the whole point of reporting is parsing data into something palatable for the public. Thus bias is introduced.

 sebster wrote:

I didn't post in the Gaza thread. You might be a little bit confused.

Didn't say you had. Just that, based on the Gaza thread, if you think what you said, you're smoking something.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Didn't say you had. Just that, based on the Gaza thread, if you think what you said, you're smoking something.

If there was some way of interpreting my argument as if I were saying all things said by all people were true or something, then you'd have a great point. But that's a whackadoo crazypants interpretation of what I said, so really I think you should just leave it alone.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Please dude, be reasonable. You seem to think I am some kind of secret Russian government agent.

I don't think that. I never even considered it. I think if you were you would be much better at this.

]And while I do advocate to doubt and distrust every institution, I do not advocate to doubt every institution equally. Read my posts. I am pretty clear about the fact that I think that media like RT is less trustworthy than say the BBC. There, your whole argument falls apart.

If what you just claimed lined up with with arguments you trot out, then you'd have a point. But we all know the arguments you'd made, and they weren't coming from the BBC.

I think you have a very unique understanding of what 'bias' means, if you don't think that the NYT doesn't have any. If only the dictionaries agreed with you! But yeah, never let reality get in the way of a good argument right?

"inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair."

See that last bit there, 'unfair'. That's what seperates having a point of view from being biased.

Now, I know you got pissy when I asked you this before, but I'm gonna ask again and hope maybe this time you might actually reflect for a second. Please stop doing what you're doing. It is absurd. You argue absolute nonsense, it is shown to be such and then you just double down over and over again. You've just ended trying to argue against the plain text definition of a word, just to avoid learning the difference between having a point of view and being biased.

So please stop it. This is a just random internet forum, nothing here matters, but the way we approach debate, and the way we think about issues is how you will do it everywhere. When you're so closed off you'll pretend you don't know the definition of a word available with a 10 second google search, something is badly wrong.

I was a really headstrong kid once, as well. A trick my dad told me was to start any conversation just by asking a question, and then really listening to the answer.

Don't reply if you don't want. I don't care. But just step away, have a think about this.

No, bias does not have to be deliberate. It is inherent to human thinking, and just about every opinion developed by a human has some bias to it. This is usually entirely subconscious, and based upon our cultural context and personal experiences.

I have to deal with a lot of statistics in my work. One of the very first things you learn in statistics is that bias is everywhere in things done by humans. Even the most well-intentioned researchers trying to produce the best quality studies are subject to bias, and therefore the best quality research aims to be as objective as possible to avoid subjective biases affecting the results. As in, researchers trying hard not to be biased cut themselves out of the decision-making process within the study as much as is feasible in order to remove as much bias as possible, because they recognise their own biases are inherent and subconscious even when trying to avoid them.

Now, statistical bias is a bit different and more precise in definition than bias in layman terms, but the core idea is the same- a systematic change in the end result that means the end result does not accurately describe the actual effect. This is universally present, and everytime someone gives their opinion on a topic, they are introducing their own biases on top of the available evidence. That is basically what an opinion is. The more good quality evidence and research they use to back up their opinion, the less it is effected by bias, and the less it is simply opinion, beause good quality research tries hard to minimise bias. Bias is still present, but much less so. At that point, the person's opinion becomes less and less important, as it is a subjective appraisal of the evidence the person has seen superimposed upon the actual evidence, until they are basically just summarising the body of evidence. This is about the most objective a person can be. There is still going to be some subjective opinion on top of the evidence that is influenced by bias, but it is minimised by the quantity of evidence.

The media basically never does this, and you can generally only find such a robust evidence base in scientific fields, although courts also have a very high standard of evidence required in many countries.

The more of the general public that understands that bias is inherent to every opinion made by humans (and not usually deliberate), the better and more critical the world will be. Recognising that bias exists in your own thinking is the first step in challenging and minimising that bias. In fact, what you are asking Iron Captain to do is challenge his subconscious biases, not a deliberate bias.

 Haighus wrote:
No, bias does not have to be deliberate. It is inherent to human thinking, and just about every opinion developed by a human has some bias to it. This is usually entirely subconscious, and based upon our cultural context and personal experiences.

Is that a response to me? If so I think you probably need to go back and read what I said, because I never touched on whether bias was deliberate. It doesn't matter if it is deliberate.

What I did do was differentiate between 'point of view' and 'bias'. You can use different words for each if you like, again it doesn't matter. What does matter is to differentiate between a genuine attempt to give as full and meaningful a report as possible, and an attempt to present the facts in a certain way so as to convince the reader of the author's own view.

The latter is bias, and it doesn't mean the piece is useless, opinion writers have their place, but it does mean you need to read it very carefully, verify its claims and check elsewhere for excluded information. And most importantly if you find outright lies you need to discard that source permanently.

The former, where the attempt was made to give as complete a description as possible will still be limited from the author's point of view. It doesn't become gospel just because the author was trying to accurate above all else. The author will still prioritize some issues differently to another person, he may be entirely unaware of certain facts, or lack a key insight in to how the facts can be more clearly shown. And he may just screw up and make a mistake or two. So while you can put a great deal more faith in a publication attempting this method, you should still read a range of such sources.

Once again, I don't really care what terms get used to describe each of those things. If you want to call both kinds bias, and call them bias and super-mega-bias it doesn't matter. What matters is noting how different those approaches are, and how the difference should change how the reader approaches each source.

 sebster wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
No, bias does not have to be deliberate. It is inherent to human thinking, and just about every opinion developed by a human has some bias to it. This is usually entirely subconscious, and based upon our cultural context and personal experiences.

Is that a response to me? If so I think you probably need to go back and read what I said, because I never touched on whether bias was deliberate. It doesn't matter if it is deliberate.

What I did do was differentiate between 'point of view' and 'bias'. You can use different words for each if you like, again it doesn't matter. What does matter is to differentiate between a genuine attempt to give as full and meaningful a report as possible, and an attempt to present the facts in a certain way so as to convince the reader of the author's own view.

The latter is bias, and it doesn't mean the piece is useless, opinion writers have their place, but it does mean you need to read it very carefully, verify its claims and check elsewhere for excluded information. And most importantly if you find outright lies you need to discard that source permanently.

The former, where the attempt was made to give as complete a description as possible will still be limited from the author's point of view. It doesn't become gospel just because the author was trying to accurate above all else. The author will still prioritize some issues differently to another person, he may be entirely unaware of certain facts, or lack a key insight in to how the facts can be more clearly shown. And he may just screw up and make a mistake or two. So while you can put a great deal more faith in a publication attempting this method, you should still read a range of such sources.

Once again, I don't really care what terms get used to describe each of those things. If you want to call both kinds bias, and call them bias and super-mega-bias it doesn't matter. What matters is noting how different those approaches are, and how the difference should change how the reader approaches each source.

I certainly don't disagree with you final paragraph- recognising where there is overt, intentional bias is important in discrediting that source of information. The point I was making is that bias is not limited to deliberate intentions to mislead, it is simply an effect of human thinking and actions. It can be deliberately induced, but it is present when not deliberate, and it is present in those genuine attempts to give a full description you mention. The difference in the latter is that there is an attmept to minimise bias. The bit where you talk about the author prioritising certain issues more etc is a good example of subconscious bias. It happens to us all. This is what I addressed in my post. You are making a dichotomy that bias is intentional and subconscious influences are not, but both are bias.

The reasonI feel this is important is because it is recognising that human thinking is inherently flawed. Therefore everyone needs to be careful in analysing their thinking and conclusions to avoid this.

In addition, whilst overt, deliberate bias is usually the most dangerous, it is usually also the most obvious. Subconscious bias by the well-intentioned can cause just as much damage if it is not adequately challenged by evidence. Omitting evidence not deemed important to the observer is a good example of this, because that evidence could be very important from a different perspective. The Battle of the Bulge was in large part a surprise due to the subconscious biases of otherwise competent intelligence officers- they had all the information available to predict a major attack on the Allied positions, but they came to different conclusions based on internal beliefs about the German aims and capabilities.

I don't think this actually matters to you- the fact you corroborate using multiple sources of evidence already means you understand the implicit bias in human reporting, you just don't call it bias. The main reason I am calling this out is that people do take sources as gospel, and they don't recognise those small biases that influence the whole. Pointing out that it is all still biased to an extent is important in improving critical thinking, because the word bias is strong and emotive (it is associated heavily with deliberate bias afterall). The challenge is making sure that people understand not all bias is equal, and that sources that try to reduce bias are more trustworthy than those who don't.

Basically, you understand bias, the general public doesn't, and I think using the correct word is important in catching peoples' attention and educating them about the importance of critical thinking. It is just euphemistic to describe subconscious bias as anything other than bias.

Also, if people can recognise the bias is reliable sources, and recognise the methods used to reduce bias, they are better equipped to notice and challenge the bias in terrible sources.

I suppose I am advocating for better education and better critical thinking.