Obama vs Fox News; does the US media have a left wing bias?

All talk is aimed at impacting how people think and perceive the world around them. So, basically, every word I have ever said was an attempt to brainwash.

Every person is ideological, even if they don't fit into the neat little categories of republican or democrat. Therefore, every word we say is ideological. Therefore, every word we say is propaganda.


The words "brainwash" and "propaganda", as you've defined them, just add a negative connotation to something we all do.

 

That skips over the "automatic thought processes" part that Quix mentioned though, I would think. Similarly, it is possible to have broadcasting that is not ideological. Just because a person HAS an ideology doesn't mean that they can't do something in an unbiased fashion, and it isn't true that just because people have an ideology, that therefore whatever they do is, by necessity, ideological.

They'd be honest? *zing*


As to that list itself, a fair chunk of them remind me of why I tend to hate the media in general.

 

I skipped over "automatic thought processes" because I didn't know what it meant.

 

Automatic thought processes are involuntary cognitive mechanisms that impact how situations and information are processed. You can read more about them in cognitive psychology.

Fallacy: Equivocation - Difference between Descriptive vs. Prescriptive language
Fallacy: Victory by Definition - Humans have sixteen limbs, therefore there are no humans on Earth!

Fallacy: Hasty Generalization - Beware of universal statements, and you are also risking a Fallacy of Equivocation depending on how you are defining "ideological."
Fallacy: Non Sequitur - Having political beliefs =/= expressing them every time we speak.
Fallacy: Victory by Definition - See above.

 

Your students must love you.

 

They do, actually. I have waiting lists for my classes.

 

I do not think that news can, or should, be unbiased. I would rather the reporters be honest about their biases, so we can take those into account when listening to what they have to say.

 

I don't visit TruthOut, and I've only watched MSNBC a few times. I don't like MSNBC, but from what I've seen of it, it's relatively tame compared to Fox News. Fox is simply out and by far the worst offender when it comes to media propaganda.

Furthermore, left-wingers have a strong habit of shooting themselves in the foot. As I've said elsewhere, America is mostly center-right, so people here reflexively repulse the left-wing fringe. But the flip side to that is that they reflexively accept the right-wing fringe and absorb their rhetoric. That's why the extreme right is so much more powerful and even dangerous.

 

But Truthers get banned from Daily Kos. (Though I have a problem with Daily Kos actually showing Jeff Gannon's pr0n pix, the same can be said of Breitbart with Anthony's weiner.)

Go to any conservative website, and if you point out flaws in Limbaugh's theory that the 2007 recession was engineered by Obama as per the playbook of communists [sic] like Saul Alinsky, you will be banned.

 

As long as they admit that they have a conflict of interest at the beginning of each segment discussing her, i don't have a problem with it. Of course, they probably don't do that.

Anyway, I don't view news broadcasts as educational, so their biases really don't affect me. I realize that I'm watching people gossiping about other people and I know what that is worth.

 

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch obtained documents that show the Obama Administration tried to exclude Fox News from at least one interview and then lied about it.

 

The gibbering idiots who listen to Faux News wouldn't listen to the President anyway. So I'm okay with this.

 

Judicial Watch is, and I quote, "a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law".

Okay, how can you be conservative (or liberal) and non-partisan?

 

Because conservatives speak for all Americans, that's how. Haven't you been listening to the Republican Party for the past decade?

 

Because non-partisan just means that you're not tied to a particular party, not that you're not tied to a particular ideology. So, for example, one could be completely non-partisan and simply support any politician that is opposed to abortion, and not care if that person is a Republican or a Democrat.

 

Yup. And, following Palin's advice to Christine O'Donnell, only Fox covered it. Because we know how easy it is to misconstrue someone appearing on MTV and saying how selfish masturbation is, or appearing on Politically Incorrect and confessing to Satanism.