Quo Vadis GOP?

[grumbler]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works comes from the Virginia governor's election, won by the absolutely despicable Glenn Youngkin:  Yougkin's most powerfully motivating message was his promise to stop the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia schools so that students would no longer be taught to hate one another.  The news media uniformly* pointed out that no school in Virginia actually teaches critical race theory.  But that was dismissed by his voters because "everyone knows that the media lies." 

There was no issue on which Youngkin wasn't punching a straw man, but he won anyway.  Virginia had a pretty good string of successful governors, Republican and Democrat, but that line has been broken.

*except Fox and those further to the right, though Fox didn't say that it actually WAS being taught.

[Berkut]

Again - why don't you engage in what I am saying, rather than bring up some odd hypothetical / strawman kind of argument?

I have engaged in what you are saying. I am doing so right now.

THe irony is that you have consistently refused to even address any argument I've made.

There is nothing hypothetical about my example - this exact argument has in fact been made.

It is not a strawman - you don't get to ignore an argument by just saying "strawman". If my analogy is not relevant, then tell us why the two situations are in fact different.

Because I'm not going to try and argue / rebut an argument I'm not making.

I think you are not trying to rebut an argument you know you cannot win, but you are not willing to give up your faith in your conservative myth.

Again, my claim is that your argument that "the mainstream media is biased towards liberals" is not different in kind with many other similar claims, and they have serious consequences (many of which I've listed already).

That is the argument *I* am making. I have created no strawman for you.

In fact, I  will steel man your argument. What you should be arguing is "Berkut, you are right - the lack of trust in the media has dire consequences. Which is why the modern media should be a lot more careful to make sure they are not seen as partisan, and make it harder for the crazy fucking conservatives to advance this bullshit narrative that the mainstream media is biased and fake news".

[Berkut]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works comes from the Virginia governor's election, won by the absolutely despicable Glenn Youngkin:  Yougkin's most powerfully motivating message was his promise to stop the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia schools so that students would no longer be taught to hate one another.  The news media uniformly* pointed out that no school in Virginia actually teaches critical race theory.  But that was dismissed by his voters because "everyone knows that the media lies." 

There was no issue on which Youngkin wasn't punching a straw man, but he won anyway.  Virginia had a pretty good string of successful governors, Republican and Democrat, but that line has been broken.

*except Fox and those further to the right, though Fox didn't say that it actually WAS being taught.

Stop frothing grumbler!

[Barrister]

Again - why don't you engage in what I am saying, rather than bring up some odd hypothetical / strawman kind of argument?

I have engaged in what you are saying. I am doing so right now.

THe irony is that you have consistently refused to even address any argument I've made.

There is nothing hypothetical about my example - this exact argument has in fact been made.

It is not a strawman - you don't get to ignore an argument by just saying "strawman". If my analogy is not relevant, then tell us why the two situations are in fact different.

Because I'm not going to try and argue / rebut an argument I'm not making.

I think you are not trying to rebut an argument you know you cannot win, but you are not willing to give up your faith in your conservative myth.

Again, my claim is that your argument that "the mainstream media is biased towards liberals" is not different in kind with many other similar claims, and they have serious consequences (many of which I've listed already).

It is different because one is an argument I am making, and the others are not. 

[viper37]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works

Aknowledging a media's bias is not the same as discrediting it.  The NYT remains a good journal.  But don't try to make me believe it has no bias in how it reports news, how they are titled, and how the columnists and editorialists are chosen.

[Berkut]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works

Aknowledging a media's bias is not the same as discrediting it.  The NYT remains a good journal.  But don't try to make me believe it has no bias in how it reports news, how they are titled, and how the columnists and editorialists are chosen.

That isn't the debate under question though.

The discrediting of the media is not about calling into question the bias of the NYT, it is about calling into question the overall credibility of the "mainstream media" as an entirety. It is making the classic logical fallacy of attributing to the whole the characteristic of a singular example.

Claim: "Climate scientists are not honest about their results!"
Response: "Yes they are! Here are various articles and journals and descriptions about how fact checking and peer review work!"
Counter: "Hah! But look! Here is an example of this one time this climate scientist was wrong, or even actually dishonest!"

Of course, that doesn't hold up to logical scrutiny, but no matter - this isn't actually a battle of logic and rationality, it is a battle of propaganda. And the lazy lie, we all know, works so much better than the careful truth.

"The media is all biased against conservatives!" is easy and trite and people who make the claim have no interest or care about actually evidencing it. They just say it, and hold to it and demand that YOU disprove it.

And if you do, if you provide copious evidence that by its nature is nuanced and never truly definitive, they simply reject it. They take singular examples and extrapolate to the entirety. Like this here - "What about the NYT? THEY are obviously biased!". But of course if you respond with a singular example ("What about the WSJ? They are clearly RIGHT wing biased!" or "What about Reuters? They have an excellent reputation for being incredibly fair!") the response is "Yeah, but those are the exceptions!"

The rules are not the same. But this has always been true of these kinds of claims.

[grumbler]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works

Aknowledging a media's bias is not the same as discrediting it.  The NYT remains a good journal.  But don't try to make me believe it has no bias in how it reports news, how they are titled, and how the columnists and editorialists are chosen.

No one is saying that no reporters, editors, etc are unbiased.  That's a straw man.  What I pointed out was how Youngkin could get major traction using an issue he made up out of whole cloth, in spite of every reputable news source pointing out that it was a strawman argument, because Youngkin voters preferred to believe him over the "biased media."

Saying a reporter or editor is biased is like saying that they breathe oxygen.  It is a mere truism.

[Barrister]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works

Aknowledging a media's bias is not the same as discrediting it.  The NYT remains a good journal.  But don't try to make me believe it has no bias in how it reports news, how they are titled, and how the columnists and editorialists are chosen.

That isn't the debate under question though.

But it is though - because that's all I've been saying.

You just keep trying to attribute OTHER arguments that OTHER conservatives might say to me, and then get frustrated when I won't actually defend those other arguments.

[Berkut]

An interesting example of how well the media discrediting program works

Aknowledging a media's bias is not the same as discrediting it.  The NYT remains a good journal.  But don't try to make me believe it has no bias in how it reports news, how they are titled, and how the columnists and editorialists are chosen.

That isn't the debate under question though.

But it is though - because that's all I've been saying.

You just keep trying to attribute OTHER arguments that OTHER conservatives might say to me, and then get frustrated when I won't actually defend those other arguments.

No, I get frustrated that you won't acknowledge that such other arguments exist and are linked in a pretty obvious direct correlation to the argument you (and others like Rush and Hannity and Fox) have made.

I am not asking you to defend "the media are all liars!". It is very clear you do not think that.

I am asking you to acknowledge that "the media is biased against liberals!" has in fact led to "the media are all liars!" (I actually go further then that - that in fact "the media is biased against liberals" is actually just the dog whistle for "the media are all liars" for most of the people out there pushing that narrative, but I understand that YOU don't personally think that). And then on to what follows from that, specific cases where the successful selling of that claim has resulted in shitty outcomes for actual people.

You want to make a claim (one that you still have never given a single shred of evidence for, btw) and then pretend like it doesn't mean anything beyond its most narrow definition, and you and those how make that claim have no responsibility for it beyond that.

To the extent that is defensible, it is *exactly* as defensible as many other similar claims made under similar circumstances and made with similar agendas. Even the one Yi cited in your support - "You know, the Jews are the ones who asked for Jesus to be executed...."

[Barrister]

But there are lots of arguments that are true that can then be linked or correlated to things that aren't true.

Covid vaccines have rare side effects.  Those rare side effects are frequently cited by anti-vaxxers.  But mentioning those rare side effects does not make one an anti-vaxxer.

Windmills kill a lot of birds.  That fact has been used against windmills by climate-change deniers.  But mentioning that windmills kill birds does not make one a climate-change denier.

I just find the idea that you shouldn't discuss an idea or theory - and in fact you should say the opposite - not because of any inherent flaw in the idea but because it might be used by other people for nefarious purposes to be really, really dangerous.


As for my proof of a general left-wing bias in the mainstream media I present to you:

[Berkut]

That chart shows very clearly that there is no such thing as a left wing bias in the mainstream media. It shows lots and lots of media on both sides of the bias line, and plenty of media in the "no bias" middle, and further shows a direct correlation between lack of bias a quality.

If "bias" means anything it has to mean something other then "it falls a micrometer on one side or the other of the imaginary perfectly non-biased line". That chart has an entire middle section that represents the "not biased" part, and there are a bunch of mainstream media in that section, and then broadly the further you get from that section, the more the quality tends to fall of on BOTH sides. That is not an argument for *liberal* bias in the media, it is an argument that the more bias you ahve either way, the shittier you are as a media company, by and large.

You cannot cite a chart that shows a bunch of media not in the "skews left" category to support your claim that the media overall skews left!

[Barrister]

You cannot cite a chart that shows a bunch of media not in the "skews left" category to support your claim that the media overall skews left!

I just cited a chart that shows virtually all of the media outlets one would call "mainstream" as being left of the middle.

As an aside it's odd that it includes BBC, The Guardian and the Daily Mail, but is otherwise exclusively American.  I would be curious where they'd rank some of the big Canadian news sources, such as the CBC.

[Berkut]

But there are lots of arguments that are true that can then be linked or correlated to things that aren't true.

Covid vaccines have rare side effects.  Those rare side effects are frequently cited by anti-vaxxers.  But mentioning those rare side effects does not make one an anti-vaxxer.

If we are having a discussion about whether people should get vaccinated, and you know that the exaggeration of incredibly rare side effects is the core myth of those who are pushing an anti-vax agenda, and you go into the debate and drop comments like "COVID vaccines have deadly side effects!" without context or nuance or the added explanation of how rare they are, or how immaterial those side effects are compared to the dangers of COVID, then you are an anti-vax asshole probably, and at least a very useful idiot to the anti-vax assholes.

Now, when someone calls you on it, sure, you can retreat to the claim that the statement "Covid vaccines have deadly side effects" is strictly true. And that you mean nothing beyond the bare minimum of the statement.

But if you cannot see what that is problematic, I think you are being rather willfully blind.

Things can be true in their particular, narrow definition of "true" while being used to promote a lie. And when the extent of their utility in the narrowest version of their "truth" is basically zero (which is the case for comments like "The Covid vaccines have deadly side effects" or "The mainstream media is biased against liberals") I think that relevant conversation is about the overall narrative being talked about, rather then the narrow definition nobody cares about except for those who need an excuse for what they have said.

[Berkut]

You cannot cite a chart that shows a bunch of media not in the "skews left" category to support your claim that the media overall skews left!

I just cited a chart that shows virtually all of the media outlets one would call "mainstream" as being left of the middle.

As an aside it's odd that it includes BBC, The Guardian and the Daily Mail, but is otherwise exclusively American.  I would be curious where they'd rank some of the big Canadian news sources, such as the CBC.

There is a middle line, so by definition every single entity on the chart has to be on one side or the other. So that tells us nothing at all.

The chart is very clearly defined as showing actual categories - those are those that are "skew left", "skew right", more extreme versions of those, and "middle". There is a LOT of mainstream media in the "middle" category, and we can see that the BEST media is in fact in that middle category.

You want to cite the chart as evidence, but actually ignore what it is telling you - that the best media is the most unbiased media, and there is plenty of "mainstream" media that is not skewed left or right, and plenty of mainstream media that skews right as well.

The only way to torture this into your narrative is to re-define the categories so that there cannot be any media that is actually objective!

[The Larch]

The first time that chart was posted here I wondered how come news agencies like Reuters and AP, who report things without opinion and matter-of-factly, could be placed to the left of the middle. Maybe the whole graph could do with a bit of realigning its axis.