Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[viper37]

If it was spelled Ethix maybe kids would pay attention.

I personally think that ethics, you get it or you don't.  No amount of classes, training are going to solve that.

It's like respecting women.  If you need to attend a class to realize that treating women like dirt is wrong, you're too far gone already.

I think it has more to how you were educated, from the youngest age, as to what we can teach you as an adult.

[DGuller]

Ethics instruction seems to work for about 99.999% of the finance students,

If that's true, that sounds very damning of the ethics being taught.

[DGuller]

I personally think that ethics, you get it or you don't.  No amount of classes, training are going to solve that.

It's like respecting women.  If you need to attend a class to realize that treating women like dirt is wrong, you're too far gone already.

I think that's an awful, as well as cynical, take.  If you don't allow for the possibility that people can be naturally clueless, either because they have a blind spot or because they just haven't had the opportunity to think deeply about something, then you're going to be a very bitter person.  I think that goes both for ethics as well as for respecting women.  Sometimes you just have no idea because you haven't thought about it in that way rather than consciously rejected it, and education is a good way to get you to think about things.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think anybody on earth has zero bias. The only question is the extent they are making an honest effort to overcome their bias.

Well, for OAN, Fox News and that other pro-Trump network, the answer would be 0.

But the NYT opinion columns and editorials don't really make any kind of effort to show their far left bias anymore.  The Washington Post seems to have move further left in that last few years too, but overall, it still remains balanced, unlike the NYT that actively seek to expel anyone not "pure" enough.

There are also fringe medias/web sites on the left&far left, quite the equivalent of Fox News.

You'll need to take into account that we ain't talking stricly about US medias here.  French newspaper are notoriously biased to the left, except for Le Figaro.  It's even worst for Quebec.  Traditional right-wing written medias seems to have taken a turn for the woke, lately.

The NYT is "far left"?  Viper, if that content is far left, how do you characterize content that advocates for actual socialism or communism, you know actual far left stuff.

[grumbler]

It's a tad lower than that, but I'll grant you that many people working in finance don't actually have a financial background.

My point is that there's no shortage of unethical financial advisors&general workers, just as there is no shortage of dishonest journalists.  Since we're dealing with human sciences when it comes to journalism, I guess most of them just don't realize how dishonest they can be. 

What argument are you trying to advance with the claim that "there is no shortage of dishonest journalists?"  Shortage means that supply is less than demand.  "No shortage" means that supply at least equals demand.  What is the demand, and how do you know this?  What is the supply, and how do you know this?  If you can't answer those questions, then your point is merely that you like talking out of your ass. The statement about "just don't realize how dishonest they can be" is ironic appearing here.

Trumped statistics are often used to justify their point, or simply looking at the wrong statistics.  Whenever they report on a scientific subject, they, generally, seem at their worst.  Like they don't understand at all what they're all talking about, but they don't really care to understand it.

Reporters getting the details wrong or misunderstanding the implications of the data is an ongoing problem dating back to the first reporter.  While your claim that some reporters  "don't really care to understand it," the flat unqualified statement that "they [reporters in general] don't really care to understand it" fails at even the first glance to be a calm and sane argument.  There are even lists https://prowly.com/magazine/top-science-reporters/ of reporters who can give new discoveries accurate and widespread coverage.  Note that the top science reporters include those from the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ - the very papers people here are accusing of being biased.

[Berkut]

One should do that anyway.

But that is not the narrative that "the mainstream media is all liberal" is trying to create. When you listen to Rush preaching that for the last 30 years, he didn't follow up with an admonition to treat Fox with some healthy skepticism as well.

Rather it is that the media is all a bunch of liars and there is no truth and you should just trust us that Obama is a secret Muslim and Clinton ran a pizza pedo ring and lets go have a chat with Mike Pence down at the Capitol about that stolen election.

You don't get to parrot the basic lie and then act SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY! when people actually believe it and act on it.

The reality is that there is no objective evidence that the mainstream media actually has a liberal bias in any way that means anything at all. If the best you can get from this claim is that one should consume media with skepticism, the claim means nothing since that is true whether the claim about political bias is true or not.

The fact that a statement is used by bad people for bad purposes does not mean the statement is false.

Who's acting shocked about anything?

The evidence that it is false has already been shown - your objection was around saying that Beebs never said anyone should watch Fox news.

1. The statement that the mainstream media is biased towards liberals is false - it is objectively false, and can be show to be so.

2. The *reason* that false claim has become such a right wing trope is not an accident. It is a concscious, deliberate attempt to drive people into radicalized, partisan bullshit like Fox news and OAN and Bretibart. And it has worked.

3. beebs and yourself are acting shocked that someone would possibly connect the "mainstream media is biased against poor conservatives!" and the actual outcomes of that successful narrative, which are things like insurrection and the breakdown in basic trust and a host of associated complete bullshit.

[Admiral Yi]

The evidence that it is false has already been shown - your objection was around saying that Beebs never said anyone should watch Fox news.

1. The statement that the mainstream media is biased towards liberals is false - it is objectively false, and can be show to be so.

2. The *reason* that false claim has become such a right wing trope is not an accident. It is a concscious, deliberate attempt to drive people into radicalized, partisan bullshit like Fox news and OAN and Bretibart. And it has worked.

3. beebs and yourself are acting shocked that someone would possibly connect the "mainstream media is biased against poor conservatives!" and the actual outcomes of that successful narrative, which are things like insurrection and the breakdown in basic trust and a host of associated complete bullshit.

Earlier you had said that bias can not be objectively proved to exist.  Now you are saying it objectively does not.  That seems contradictory to me.

I didn't look at the look at the link you posted "disproving that all MSM is biased liberal," but I can infer from the discussion that followed that you are basing your argument on outlets like The Wall Street Journal being "mainstream" and not liberal.  As Beeb already pointed out, the statement that he and I are defending is not that every single member of the mainstream is liberal, but that a perponderance, including the biggest, highest visibility players, are liberal.

No one is acting shocked about anything.  I am merely pointing out that a discussion of what Rush Limbaugh's motivations were for pushing this narrative, and the consequences of doing so, have absolutely no relevance to the first question, which is do the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN etc. have liberal bias.

[The Minsky Moment]

This is stating the blindingly obvious, but if the concern in dishonesty in journalism, then that would point to placing greater reliance on mainstream media outlets that have meaningful editorial review and accountability as opposed to their insurgent competitors.

[crazy canuck]

This is stating the blindingly obvious, but if the concern in dishonesty in journalism, then that would point to placing greater reliance on mainstream media outlets that have meaningful editorial review and accountability as opposed to their insurgent competitors.

BB's claim is that is where the true evil resides.  All those edumacated people who know stuff being all anti right and stuff.

[DGuller]

This is stating the blindingly obvious, but if the concern in dishonesty in journalism, then that would point to placing greater reliance on mainstream media outlets that have meaningful editorial review and accountability as opposed to their insurgent competitors.

The problem with this post is not that it's blindingly obvious, but rather that it attacks a strawman.

[viper37]

I don't think anybody on earth has zero bias. The only question is the extent they are making an honest effort to overcome their bias.

Well, for OAN, Fox News and that other pro-Trump network, the answer would be 0.

But the NYT opinion columns and editorials don't really make any kind of effort to show their far left bias anymore.  The Washington Post seems to have move further left in that last few years too, but overall, it still remains balanced, unlike the NYT that actively seek to expel anyone not "pure" enough.

There are also fringe medias/web sites on the left&far left, quite the equivalent of Fox News.

You'll need to take into account that we ain't talking stricly about US medias here.  French newspaper are notoriously biased to the left, except for Le Figaro.  It's even worst for Quebec.  Traditional right-wing written medias seems to have taken a turn for the woke, lately.

The NYT is "far left"?  Viper, if that content is far left, how do you characterize content that advocates for actual socialism or communism, you know actual far left stuff.

I characterize such content as fringe medias in the US.  Or "mainstream" for most european newspapers

Let's say it's generally much more left of the center than the Globe&Mail, but it seems to have gone fully on the wokist bandwagon since around the time Trump became President.  Maybe it was a reaction to the extreme right wing shift of some other medias and the US presidency.

[viper37]

BB's claim is that is where the true evil resides.  All those edumacated people who know stuff being all anti right and stuff.

that ain't what he said.  at all.  and you know it perfectly well.

[crazy canuck]

BB's claim is that is where the true evil resides.  All those edumacated people who know stuff being all anti right and stuff.

that ain't what he said.  at all.  and you know it perfectly well.

You are right, he never said edumacated.  But he was making a pitch on behalf of the rural right wing so the shoe fits.

What he did say was "Large national media outlets hire well educated people, often from a fairly limited number of schools, and work in large urban cities.  All of which tends to skew to a certain kind of liberal bias.  But there's nothing monolithic about it, and certainly not organized or conspiratorial."

Can't have those well educated people running around making editorial decisions.  They are never going to be friendly to the far right.  And for good reason. 

[Jacob]

Alright, so for the sake of argument let's say we agree to the proposition that "the mainstream media has a liberal bias". What do we do with that?

I think everyone here agrees that the Trumpist and hard right kookysphere follow up on that with "... so therefore you should disregard anything it says if it's inconvenient" and "... so therefore there's nothing wrong in chosing to believe our obvious lies." And I expect we all disagree with those conclusions.

There's also the conclusion that goes "so if there's a trend towards a liberal bias as a whole across mainstream media, you should strive to correct for that bias by consuming a wide range of credible media." And again I expect that is pretty uncontroversial here on languish?

Is there anything else we should do or other conclusions we can reach if we agree that the mainstream media has a liberal bias? Or is that about it?

[DGuller]

Why do there need to be any conclusions?  I'm personally not a believer in "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions" mindset.  It makes no sense to pretend there is no problem if you have no solution.  Sometimes it's okay to notice that the sky is blue and yet to not also have any solution for that problem readily available.