Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Admiral Yi]

"Otherwise peaceful protests at US Capitol marred by unruly behavior."

[crazy canuck]

To my mind, the issue isn't one of bias. Everyone without exception has their biases - depending on background, upbringing, experiences, etc.

However, I do not believe these factors are totally determinative of outcomes (and in this, I differ from both some progressives, and some conservatives!). The issue is this: can individuals, despite whatever biases they may have, report accurately and without introducing so much distortion that the news as reported by them becomes misleading?

Some can and some can't. Unfortunately, those on the right, who complain the most loudly about "liberal bias" in the media, sought to correct that perceived problem by creating news sources of their own from a right wing POV. This is not inherently problematic (as noted, having a bias isn't in and of itself problematic). However, in most cases, these media sources engaged in more or less deliberate distortion.

Setting out to present information from a particular point of view is not itself problematic.  The decision to be balanced is itself a reflection of liberal democratic values.  And I agree with you that the problem with right wing media is the intention to mislead in order to obtain a political objective - liberal tears.

[Barrister]

Yeah when I call out the MSM for having a liberal bias I'm not calling for any particular response.  I'm not asking for government mandates or rules that need to be applied.  I'm just pointing out the bias.  Most institutions, most people, have a bias of one way or another.

It's just basic media literacy.

[Berkut]

The mainstream media has a bias towards posting reality.

If you define reality as "liberal", then you are correct.

Note: I am not claiming the mainstream media doesn't have serious problems. It does. Liberal bias is not one of them however.

Okay, so what are the problems of the mainstream media?

Completely broken incentives has removed took much adult editorial control and turned a lot of mainstream media into barely better then tabloid click bait.

[Berkut]

All media has bias, it's inescapable. Whether it's defined as liberal, conservative, centrist, nationalist, or pretended to not exist is in the eye of the beholder.

That isn't the question though - the claim is that there is a "mainstream liberal media bias" meaning that there is a systemic specific bias shared by some great portion of the media.

[Razgovory]

"Liberal media bias" is and has always been a political strategy by conservatives.  I think it started in the Nixon administration as a way to deflect criticism of the war in Vietnam and later Watergate.

Just because it's a political strategy doesn't mean there is no substance behind it.  Hitting Trump on his Covid response was a political strategy in 2020, but that doesn't mean that his response wasn't in fact abysmal.

In this case the aim was to convince the American people that the war in Vietnam was going well and that Richard Nixon didn't do anything wrong.  I would say that the political strategy didn't have much substance to it.

[Berkut]

Yeah when I call out the MSM for having a liberal bias I'm not calling for any particular response.  I'm not asking for government mandates or rules that need to be applied.  I'm just pointing out the bias.  Most institutions, most people, have a bias of one way or another.

It's just basic media literacy. It's just basic Fox News speaking points I heard from Tucker Carlson!

FYP

[Berkut]

Saying the media as a whole has a "liberal" bias is a classic definitional fallacy, when presented in this way.

It is like saying the urban areas have a liberal bias, when you define liberal as "not rural".

The conservatives have defined themselves as being anti-fact, anti-science, and anti-society. The media, being a tool of society that in theory at least is about telling us things about what is actually going on (however imperfectly) is only liberal biased if in fact you define liberal as being factual, in favor of science and reality. Then it is in fact biased towards liberalism, but then you can say the same thing about education and science (and of course many conservatives do in fact say exactly that - even Beebs makes that mistake when he points out that journalists, you know....have college degrees and hence are educated and probably did so in a place with universities, like a city).

"The sun rises in the east and sets in the west" is liberal bias if you define conservative as "Jesus says the sun rises in the north and sets in the east, and I am a good conservative so that MUST be true!"

[Berkut]

Just ot be clear - I am not arguing that specific media outlets don't have bias, and those may very well be liberal in their bias.

So even the example he cited (which Jake very neatly eviscerated, well done) doesn't actually speak to his claim anyway. If he was arguing that CNN was biased, then perhaps that might be relevant, but we already knew that (and conceded it in fact) when I posed the ad fontes media link that shows....yep CNN has a liberal bias - it "skews left".

He has a much more serious claim though - not that there are some specifically biased media sources that lean left, but that it is so pervasive that it can be said that overall, the media itself is biased towards liberals. That is simply and clearly not supported by actual data beyond a lot of right wing whining over the last several decades as justification for their embrace of specifically and transparently grossly tribal and jingoistic "media". I don't buy that for a second. Conservatives don't watch Fox because there is no non-right wing alternative. They watch it because it tells them exactly what they want to hear, and they value people telling them what they want to hear more then they value actual information or the truth. If they did not want to hear that, they would not watch Fox, and likely (at this point) would not even call themselves "conservative" anymore.

[crazy canuck]

He has a much more serious claim though - not that there are some specifically biased media sources that lean left, but that it is so pervasive that it can be said that overall, the media itself is biased towards liberals. That is simply and clearly not supported by actual data beyond a lot of right wing whining over the last several decades as justification for their embrace of specifically and transparently grossly tribal and jingoistic "media". I don't buy that for a second. Conservatives don't watch Fox because there is no non-right wing alternative. They watch it because it tells them exactly what they want to hear, and they value people telling them what they want to hear more then they value actual information or the truth. If they did not want to hear that, they would not watch Fox, and likely (at this point) would not even call themselves "conservative" anymore.

But he is correct.  Just not in the way he thinks.  There are the right wing media outlets who make no bones about outright lying and when challenged in court say they are only entertainers that no reasonable person would take seriously.  And then there are the serious media outlets who, by definition, are to the left of the right wing media simply by the fact that they do not intentionally lie.

[grumbler]

The problem with "the MSM have a liberal bias" argument is that it is defended using the "No True Scotsman" fallacy (see, for example, pretty much any Beeb post on the issue).  What is true, I think, is that the kinds of people who go into journalism tend to be the kinds of people who think that problems can be solved, if they are exposed.  Conservatives tend to be much more skeptical that problems can be solved.  So, they see this desire to expose problems as "liberal bias."

[Berkut]

He has a much more serious claim though - not that there are some specifically biased media sources that lean left, but that it is so pervasive that it can be said that overall, the media itself is biased towards liberals. That is simply and clearly not supported by actual data beyond a lot of right wing whining over the last several decades as justification for their embrace of specifically and transparently grossly tribal and jingoistic "media". I don't buy that for a second. Conservatives don't watch Fox because there is no non-right wing alternative. They watch it because it tells them exactly what they want to hear, and they value people telling them what they want to hear more then they value actual information or the truth. If they did not want to hear that, they would not watch Fox, and likely (at this point) would not even call themselves "conservative" anymore.

But he is correct.  Just not in the way he thinks.  There are the right wing media outlets who make no bones about outright lying and when challenged in court say they are only entertainers that no reasonable person would take seriously.  And then there are the serious media outlets who, by definition, are to the left of the right wing media simply by the fact that they do not intentionally lie.

He is correct in exactly the manner I described.

It is a tuatalogical fallacy though. If you define liberal bias as being "not right wing bias" then of course he is correct.

But that isn't what he actually means when he casually tosses the phrase around like Sean Hannity. He doesn't mean there exists media that is not right wing media, and that is not how conservatives use the term, even if they might retreat to that definition when challenged.

[Barrister]

You're right.  How could I be so foolish.  There is clearly no bias on the part of CNN, NYT, CBC and the like.

Please forgive my apostasy on this point.

[garbon]

You're right.  How could I be so foolish.  There is clearly no bias on the part of CNN, NYT, CBC and the like.

Please forgive my apostasy on this point.

Didn't, Berkut, already say that CNN leans liberal?

[Berkut]

You're right.  How could I be so foolish.  There is clearly no bias on the part of CNN, NYT, CBC and the like.

Please forgive my apostasy on this point.

I am quite certain I addressed this attempt already to move the goalposts.

Nobody ever said there was "no bias". That is a new claim now - before it was LIBERAL bias.

And LIBERAL bias pervasive in the mainstream media, which means some significant portion of it, not just a few examples. You seem to lack the courage of your original conviction so much that you are trying to pretend you never said anything at all about "mainstream liberal media bias".

Finally, I posted a reasonably objective, and neutral source of data about this EXACT topic, and you seem reluctant to comment on that....why is that?