Media Bias Wars

[DVaut1]

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Which study can quantitatively show that one news source leads to the least amount of misconceptions? And even as ridiculous as such a study would be, it will still lead to misconceptions. It seems like you support the notion that following one news source exclusively will inevetibly lead to misconceptions. I support that notion.

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I support that notion as well, of course. But it wasn't the crux of my post.

I was trying to critique threads that try to prove media bias. More or less, I'm wondering: why bother?

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Which is why I asked the jackass who stated that watching FoxNews led to misconceptions and that's why it's a bone in his throat, if he could name the competitor to FoxNews which led to the least amount of misconceptions.

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I agree, I'm bored with the left and their criticisms of Fox News. And I'm bored with the right critizing the liberal media, whatever their favorite targets are (NYT, CBS, etc.). But for those on both sides to pretend their victims of some media storm which swirls around them and unfairly targets their side to the benefit of the other, well - it's tiresome. My post was merely to say that even if we could successfully prove the media biases that are claimed to exist, it wouldn't matter anyway, because our only recourse is to exercise judgement -- judgement that I'm sure we already exercise.

[Chris Alger]

I don't think either of these questions are important or interesting.

We should jettison the concern about "bias" as something that's bad in itself, something usually shows itself as a right-wing canard, often to the point of self-parody. Bias is inherent in every text. A collection of random, seemingly disconnected facts will appear in an order or emply words and signs that paint a slightly different picture from another random order with slightly different words. But even random facts, moreover, offer almost no means to create a defensible understanding of the world. We need heuristics, logic, education and other tools to categorize, sythesize, discriminate among and generally comprehend the mass of data with which we're inundated. This process inherently creates more "bias," but so what? We need to avoid and guard against demonstrably contradictory, irrational, illogical, and factually-unsupportable ideas. Saying that we should avoid "bias" is like saying we should avoid "understanding."

We should also be wary of using terms like "liberal" or "conservative" as if these defined some sort of spectrum of rational or legitimate attitudes. These terms often ignore or conceal actual relations of power, and can therefore both be used to legitimate or undermine power relations as the writer wishes.

I'll skip to an argumentative conclusion. The sources of information that most effectively shore up power in the U.S. and the west aren't things like Murdoch's empire or rightist press, it's things like elite grad schools and the NY Times. The former are the training camps for those that own and operate the media empires and the latter is the sort of organ on which they actually rely.

[DVaut1]

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We should jettison the concern about "bias" as something that's bad in itself, something usually shows itself as a right-wing canard, often to the point of self-parody.

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I suspect you didn't read the responses; most of the replies have been in favor of just this. That is, abandoning discussions about bias as something we should be overly concerned about, or something that we should even bother to seek to correct.

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We need to avoid and guard against demonstrably contradictory, irrational, illogical, and factually-unsupportable ideas. Saying that we should avoid "bias" is like saying we should avoid "understanding."

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Agreed. Read the responses in this thread by BGC, adios, and myself.

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We should also be wary of using terms like "liberal" or "conservative" as if these defined some sort of spectrum of rational or legitimate attitudes. These terms often ignore or conceal actual relations of power, and can therefore both be used to legitimate or undermine power relations as the writer wishes.

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I think this is a fine topic for another thread; but for what it's worth, I agree that 'conservative' and 'liberal' have been raped of their original meanings, leaving nothing but vapidity in its stead. Having said that, they have colloquial meanings which facilitate political discussions.