Cool Event

Bill C said:

a questionable UCLA study on bias in the news.

Oh dear.

On 11 Jan 2006 06:38:33 -0800, "Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

"I didn't mean it that way, I meant it to parody the lameness of too
much mass media in the US, which just puts back talking points of two
sides of each issue rather than actually trying to find out what is
correct."

I assume you believe that you can trust Dan Rather to do your thinking
for you?

The PROBLEM is that the mass media interjects their own opinions
instead of giving us the facts.

Pretty much disjointed statements that are joined only if you believe
any attempt by mass media to derive the truth will further encapsulate
the result in their own opinions. That is an argument only for not
using the mass media at all. Which, interestingly, is the flip side of
potentially the same argument as JT started with (although JT suggests
he has access to non-mass media that is truthful. I haven't read my
e-version of the USCF news in a while, so I can't make the same
claim.) You can't trust 'em when they don't bother and you can't trust
them when they do.

I suggest reading the wires. Snippets largely devoid of opinion and
incredibly boring after the first half hour. Used to read it at our
local friendly and in-the-news security agency in the 'someone has to
do it and you are currently unassigned' mode. I personally found it to
be incredibly neutral in its complete mind numbing adherence to fact
(the wire, not the agency).

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

Curtis L. Russell said:

I personally found it to
be incredibly neutral in its complete mind numbing adherence to fact

That's what they wanted you to believe.

Curtis L. Russell said:

On 11 Jan 2006 06:38:33 -0800, "Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

"I didn't mean it that way, I meant it to parody the lameness of too
much mass media in the US, which just puts back talking points of two
sides of each issue rather than actually trying to find out what is
correct."

I assume you believe that you can trust Dan Rather to do your thinking
for you?

The PROBLEM is that the mass media interjects their own opinions
instead of giving us the facts.

Pretty much disjointed statements that are joined only if you believe
any attempt by mass media to derive the truth will further encapsulate
the result in their own opinions. That is an argument only for not
using the mass media at all. Which, interestingly, is the flip side of
potentially the same argument as JT started with (although JT suggests
he has access to non-mass media that is truthful. I haven't read my
e-version of the USCF news in a while, so I can't make the same
claim.) You can't trust 'em when they don't bother and you can't trust
them when they do.

I suggest reading the wires. Snippets largely devoid of opinion and
incredibly boring after the first half hour. Used to read it at our
local friendly and in-the-news security agency in the 'someone has to
do it and you are currently unassigned' mode. I personally found it to
be incredibly neutral in its complete mind numbing adherence to fact
(the wire, not the agency).

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

That's pretty much my point Curtis. There are very few, if any
unbiased news sources available to the general public, so to reach
something approximating an accurate view it's a case of sifting through
a lot of different sources with different perspectives. It always
amazes me what facts get omitted from various sources. That IMO is the
most common way of slanting hard news today. It's not that they lie,
but they omit anything inconvenient or bury it deep in the body of the
article, then another source leads with that fact as the headline and
skips various other bits. it's definitely not tied to any specific
ideology either.
I do think that NPR, in particular over the last few years, has done a
very good job of moving to a much more neutral stance with hard news.
They've always been excellent at what they do, now they at least are
close to objective.
Bill C