Bias and the American Media

Zymotic
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Bias and the American Media

I got the idea for this topic reading over a recent thread about Fox News on another forum,  and the ensuing debate about the biased state of the American media. A few people complained that finding a non-biased news network is impossible and that Fox News is just in the minority of stations that are biased to a conservative worldview. In theory, there are two sides to every tale and they should both be reported as equal, right? The media should do a better job of getting the scoop on both sides of the issue-- this is true for the conservative and liberal channels.

 

Slavery is a debatable topic that comes to mind. News networks are absolutely notorious for reporting anti-slavery topics and never discussing the other side. No pro-slavery people are interviewed or allowed to give comments. The media may report about slave labor camps in third world countries, or sex slave cases in our own country, but they never report about the other side. They never do interviews with the people that benefit from slavery. They have a completely unique story to tell that perhaps could persuade the public towards new ideas.

 

Other countries, especially in the third world, are blind to this bias. We see slavery being defended by the government of small countries all the time! It helps them to be industrious in their time of need, just like when America needed slaves in order to get our country running. There are people that disagree and report so, and they should be allowed to do so (provided they aren't slaves). It keeps their media unbiased on such a crucial issue.

 

This is a bias that seems to be inherent in our media and any anti-slavery reporting we see could be classified as propaganda. We need, non-biased reporting, people!

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The purpose of American news

The purpose of American news media is to entertain and not to educate. I like watching Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann for their humor and their personalities rather than any news they are trying to convey. They are fun to watch and I don't care if they lean to the left. Plus, I'll be honest in saying that I think Rachel Maddow is pretty hot. I can't stand Paul Hannity or Bill O'Reilly.

However, if I truly wanted to be educated about the world around me, I would rather watch BBC News and if I wanted to see a program that truly stimulates the intellect, I watch C-Span. Also, there are several sites on the internet that aim to educate more so than to entertain.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the sarcasm in your thread is similar to whale hunting with the pro-side defending the rights of plankton. The bias and spin in the media(either from the left or the right) completely demolish any objective reporting. Yet, IMO the right-wing news media personalities are the worst culprits.


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I've always found it

I've always found it spectacularly amusing that I've seen far greater quality news on The Daily Show than has ever been observed on CNN in the last 15 years or Fox News ever.

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Vastet wrote:I've always

Vastet wrote:

I've always found it spectacularly amusing that I've seen far greater quality news on The Daily Show than has ever been observed on CNN in the last 15 years or Fox News ever.

I have had this same reaction just so many times...

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Zymotic wrote: I got the

Zymotic wrote:

I got the idea for this topic reading over a recent thread about Fox News on another forum,  and the ensuing debate about the biased state of the American media. A few people complained that finding a non-biased news network is impossible and that Fox News is just in the minority of stations that are biased to a conservative worldview. In theory, there are two sides to every tale and they should both be reported as equal, right? The media should do a better job of getting the scoop on both sides of the issue-- this is true for the conservative and liberal channels.

I have found an article which is both credible (a scientist or researcher at least is an author) and very relevant to that topic. I even wanted to make a separate topic for it, it's more than worth it.
http://yonkerstribune.typepad.com/yonkers_tribune/2009/04/celente-calls-for-revolution-as-the-only-solution.html
Hear! Hear!

 

Zymotic wrote:
Slavery is a debatable topic that comes to mind. News networks are absolutely notorious for reporting anti-slavery topics and never discussing the other side. No pro-slavery people are interviewed or allowed to give comments. The media may report about slave labor camps in third world countries, or sex slave cases in our own country, but they never report about the other side. They never do interviews with the people that benefit from slavery. They have a completely unique story to tell that perhaps could persuade the public towards new ideas.
Excuse me, but slavery is actually a globally widespread phenomenon. As everything, even slavery evolved into more perfect form. Today it is called employment (if an individual is the slave) or IMF money lend. (if a whole Third world country is the slave) The slavery is enforced by the misuse of money and globalization (which are not necessarily bad) by commercialization, which is evil.
So, if the slavery is rampant, it is logical that media will want to turn an attention away from it as much as possible.
 

As for the media as such, I have seen long ago that there is nothing valuable in there. Media are there to entertain, frighten, delude and misinform us. As I already wrote, one mutated chinese duck gets more attention there than 100 millions of people demonstrating together against poverty, with their governments and leaders. That's eloquent.

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 Pffft you have oviously

 Pffft you have oviously never been to the fox news website, fair and unbiased writen right on the first page 

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Luminon, he was being

Luminon, he was being sarcastic.

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Tapey wrote: Pffft you have

Tapey wrote:

 Pffft you have oviously never been to the fox news website, fair and unbiased writen right on the first page 

You're right, I've never been there. So I changed that right now. Man, that was awful. All there is a shitty tabloid from the top to the down. There also immediately opened a page that claimed that my computer contains a viruses and prepared me a download of some antivirus I've never heard of. That's eloquent.

There is a basic thing to be realized. It is, that the news in media are not a positive value, in terms of knowledge. Neither they are neutral, that it doesn't matter whether you watch them or not. They are lies or distractions. Not watching them is a good thing to do and finding your own resources on the internet is even better. There is one version of reality presented to us hierarchically all over the world. We can find a more accurate records of reality by comparing them to the official media. The more harmful the information is to this hierarchical system, the more it is true and the more it is suppressed.

It is a very naive thing to say, that if something would be an important, great truth which would change our lives, that we would automatically find it in our media. If it's not in our TV, then it's either not important or not true. That is an illusion. In fact, we can expect our media to cloud the truth in their very interest, because their interest is to sustain themselves and the system by increasing control over the users of money. The fact that so many people sincerely believes in that is a sad thing and it shows a basic misunderstanding of our so-called civilization and culture.

I have recently been informed of Andreas Clauss, the German financial expert with 20 years of work. 11 before he understood what is it about. He does say in simple, yet financially and lawfully correct terms how does the states and money work and what can we do against it.
It is all very recent, he had an impressive lecture on 16th April and it was in German. I could only understand it because there were Czech subtitles at the Youtube videos. It is so impressive, because it is so true. The world gives a lot of sense, but not always it is a good sense. It's good that experts finds their voice to say that aloud. As mr. Clauss says, the most obvious things must be examined the most closely.
The first part of the lecture is here, for those speaking German.

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Luminon wrote:Tapey

Luminon wrote:

Tapey wrote:

 Pffft you have oviously never been to the fox news website, fair and unbiased writen right on the first page 

You're right, I've never been there. So I changed that right now. Man, that was awful. All there is a shitty tabloid from the top to the down. There also immediately opened a page that claimed that my computer contains a viruses and prepared me a download of some antivirus I've never heard of. That's eloquent.

There is a basic thing to be realized. It is, that the news in media are not a positive value, in terms of knowledge. Neither they are neutral, that it doesn't matter whether you watch them or not. They are lies or distractions. Not watching them is a good thing to do and finding your own resources on the internet is even better. There is one version of reality presented to us hierarchically all over the world. We can find a more accurate records of reality by comparing them to the official media. The more harmful the information is to this hierarchical system, the more it is true and the more it is suppressed.

It is a very naive thing to say, that if something would be an important, great truth which would change our lives, that we would automatically find it in our media. If it's not in our TV, then it's either not important or not true. That is an illusion. In fact, we can expect our media to cloud the truth in their very interest, because their interest is to sustain themselves and the system by increasing control over the users of money. The fact that so many people sincerely believes in that is a sad thing and it shows a basic misunderstanding of our so-called civilization and culture.

I have recently been informed of Andreas Clauss, the German financial expert with 20 years of work. 11 before he understood what is it about. He does say in simple, yet financially and lawfully correct terms how does the states and money work and what can we do against it.
It is all very recent, he had an impressive lecture on 16th April and it was in German. I could only understand it because there were Czech subtitles at the Youtube videos. It is so impressive, because it is so true. The world gives a lot of sense, but not always it is a good sense. It's good that experts finds their voice to say that aloud. As mr. Clauss says, the most obvious things must be examined the most closely.
The first part of the lecture is here, for those speaking German.

Um why is this attached to my post??? Im confused but anyway I going to assume some of it is about that star thing. If it is visable to people more people would of seen it there for the higher the chance it would find its way to main stream media.  And about finding your own sources on the internet can be better but it depends where, remeber the internet is deviod of any form of quality control. In other words no one checks if what they say is true. 

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Quote:immediately opened a

Quote:

immediately opened a page that claimed that my computer contains a viruses and prepared me a download of some antivirus I've never heard of. That's eloquent.

Quote:

. As I already wrote, one mutated chinese duck gets more attention there than 100 millions of people demonstrating together against poverty, with their governments and leaders. That's eloquent.

Um, Luminon?

You might want to look up the word eloquent in the dictionary.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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deludedgod wrote:Um,

deludedgod wrote:

Um, Luminon?

You might want to look up the word eloquent in the dictionary.

Why? It should be appropriate, I think. It's doesn't only have a meaning of 'speech', but alternatively, 'to signify a lot', which is the sense I used. In my dictionary, this meaning is the first from the top.


 
Tapey wrote:

Um why is this attached to my post??? Im confused but anyway I going to assume some of it is about that star thing. If it is visable to people more people would of seen it there for the higher the chance it would find its way to main stream media.  And about finding your own sources on the internet can be better but it depends where, remeber the internet is deviod of any form of quality control. In other words no one checks if what they say is true. 

No, there is nothing about the Star. All I wrote is related to the dependence of media, politics, money and power. I got a bit away from the topic to European affairs, but still, America has the greatest media network and everyone else takes their biased news from there. 

As you write, on the internet there is no quality control, which is true both in good and bad sense. In our official, biased media, it is true only in the bad sense, so that's quite a difference Smiling I don't think that there's such a great problem with verification. Most of the events I read in independent media are official and believable, just not spreaded through the main media channels. But one should choose some reliable independent media, which have already some estabilished tradition, as opposed to some random crazy messages. Searching on the internet for a true, unbiased news requires some effort and often a knowledge of foreign languages. (in my case, English) This is why those who can do it should pass the news further to people around who can't search, because they don't know where, they can't read English, they don't have the internet or are too old to change any of that.

 

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Quote:but alternatively, 'to

Quote:

but alternatively, 'to signify a lot'

Yes, in the context of speech, as in speaking which is very revealing, significant and moving. It comes from eloqui meaning "to speak out". The context in which you are using it would be irrecognizable to a native speaker.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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