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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
There's always an underlying bias to any news story, even if the bias is to remain "factual and unbiased". Part of the job of news is to take raw facts and interpret them: create a narrative around them so that the audience will be interested.
The issue for discerning consumers of news is how to understand and account for those biases, how to recognize reliable sources, and how to keep an open mind for opinions that one doesn't agree with.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Yeah, Oceania would be proud.
edit: @News is biased: This may be an uncommon view among Americans but in my opinion "bias" isn't strictly a bad thing. Being biased against creationists or climate deniers is a good thing. The key is to make sure that your biases don't blind you to reality.
edited 16th Feb '17 1:34:10 PM by Kostya
Yes, that too. Bias in general is unavoidable, but there are certain forms of bias that contribute to valuable information. For example, the editorial decision to exclude obviously unscientific and/or racist/sexist narratives in a story.
If every story about, say, climate change (what few there are) had a mandatory "but climate science deniers' opinion is..." bit, it would be awful. In fact, many of them do, and the result is that the proven science is disputed by approximately half of the country's population.
edited 16th Feb '17 1:40:24 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"As suggested by the article, the "fake news" rhetoric seems like an extension of the term "Lying Press
", which is associated with the Nazis- although apparently it predated them by several decades among German conservatives.
Besides the fact that if you call something biased news, you are still admitting it's true, which you aren't with "fake news", as per the wikipedia article, there's a lot more animosity in the latter accusation.
Accusations of Liberal (or Conservative) bias are about criticizing the political identification of reporters and/or pointing to bias in the framing of a story.
However, the "fake news"/"lying press" accusation is more in the way of treating everyone in the news media (except for your own favored sources of course) as saboteurs who are enemies of the state.
edited 16th Feb '17 1:42:03 PM by Hodor2
Calling reputable media outlets "purveyors of fake news" is a form of gaslighting that is designed to discredit the entire concept of factual reporting, allowing the people in power to sow inherent doubt about any attempt to report on their activities. It is, as noted, a prelude to a move towards totalitarianism.
edited 16th Feb '17 1:45:05 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Do you have any evidence for that? I mean, independent fact-checkers saying that the Intercept is factually inaccurate or low-quality journalism? Considering that both Greenwald and the Intercept have received multiple journalism awards, I doubt that you could find one, but you're acting like they're on the level of, say, the Young Turks. Of course, that's not to deny that they don't have a particular ideological slant, but that doesn't mean that they are inaccurate, and dismissing a source because you don't like the writer's ideology seems rather lazy to me intellectually.
They also have Trump's inauguration cake, which is being held hostage. There's a campaign at #Trump Cake to determine what the Daily Show will do with it.
The cake, incidentally, is made entirely out of styrofoam save for the slice Mike Pence cut for Trump during the inauguration. Trevor Noah has this to say about it:
“Isn’t this the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s presidency? Think about it. He says there’s a cake, you see the cake, the cake looks just as good as Obama’s cake. ‘I’m gonna replace Obama’s cake with something much better.’ And then, Trump even goes, ‘Look, the cake!’ And then he has some cake, and everyone else is like, ‘Do we get cake?’ And he’s like, ‘No cake for you.’ And then you realize after, this is not a cake. This thing, it’s all Styrofoam. Just like Trump’s administration, this cake is terrible for the environment.”
edited 16th Feb '17 3:22:32 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.CNN are saying that the FBI will not be pursuing charges against Flynn, you know the theory that Comey is comrpamised by Russia is looking more and more likely with each passing day.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHe might well be, we're kinda in Poe's Law territory right now, it's impossible to tell who is working for the Kremlin and who is simply an uber partisan hack who doesn't care about the party being comrpamised by Russia as long as they can have power.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThe Intercept: The problem with The Intercept is that it's been deliberately marketed so as to be inseparable from Greenwald.
And to be blunt, Greenwald is an ass. He has a very obvious hard-on for the Clintons, and his reporting reflects that. Actually, "the establishment" as a whole, with the standard Berner lack of clarity as to what should replace it. Oh, and did I mention that he gets in Twitter fights with everyone who disagrees with him slightly?
Also, he's helping poison the well for younger Democrat voters
.
The attack on his character is entirely intended. He is incapable of removing his personal biases from the stories he writes.
And he believes that Reddit Democrats are censoring him
. You know, the neo-Nazi safe space?
For those not to happy with Rex, good news his position is a sinecure. "Rex" indeed...Out of the loop: Rex Tillerson finds state department sidelined by White House
Senior state department officials who would normally be called to the White House for their views on key policy issues, are not being asked their opinion. They have resorted to asking foreign diplomats, who now have better access to President Trump’s immediate circle of advisers, what new decisions are imminent.
The public voice of the state department has fallen silent. There has not been a daily press briefing, the customary channel for voicing US views and policy on world events, since January.
When he flew to Germany, Tillerson took a small press pool with him but did not give it the opportunity to ask questions. At his first meeting on Thursday with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, journalists were hustled out of the room before Tillerson opened his mouth...When Tillerson emerged, he delivered a very short statement, but refused to take questions.
The new secretary of state’s aversion to press scrutiny may ...reflect the fact that Tillerson’s department has been cut out of the loop when it comes to key decisions.
Neither he nor his staff were consulted on the executive order imposing a travel ban on refugees and nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries...
When Trump decided over a dinner to approve a special forces counter-terrorist raid in Yemen, there was no one from the state department present who would normally have highlighted the dangers of civilian casualties...
Tillerson has had lunch with Trump since taking the job, but he was taken by surprise when the president at the last moment rejected his choice of deputy secretary of state...because [he] had criticised him during the campaign.
...many of the state department senior staff either resigned or were summarily dismissed days before Tillerson arrived in the building, and there is no list of nominees to replace them. Given the time vetting and congressional confirmation takes, Tillerson is now facing many months of working with a severely depleted team of senior staff.
In normal times, the state department is a constant part of an inter-agency policymaking process coordinated by the national security council...[but the] NSC itself is being bypassed on key decisions by a small group of highly ideological advisers around Trump led by his chief strategist, Steve Bannon...
edited 16th Feb '17 4:27:47 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our livesSo I was reading a book about the development of the modern State Department for personal research reasons and my thinking goes thus; a big part of a diplomat's job is conveying the narrative of a country's situation to the Executive branch which goes on to play the major role in how foreign policy is shaped.
Clearly Tannon and Brump are more interested in their own narrative.
Just heard from Fox News twitter that Retired Navy Admiral Robert Harward has turned down Trump as his National Security Advisor to replace Micheal Flynn.
Not linking for obvious reasons.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

I caught some bits of it at lunch. It's hard for me to listen to him without wanting to vomit in my mouth, but he was spouting a bunch of "Obamacare hurts free market competition" BS that makes absolutely zero sense. I have to wonder who he's talking to at this point. The mythical "economic conservative white working class" voter? His corporate sponsors? Die-hard right-Libertarians?
edited 16th Feb '17 1:28:26 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"