The myths of balanced and biased reporting

Unfortunately, this is a huge subject that would take me forever to write about. I've written about it many times in the past. I'll have to peruse this forum to find my old posts on it and post them here.

It annoys me to no end when someone discounts a news source because it's biased. Either the news is truthful or it's not. If a news source is biased, the viewer should simply be aware of that and realize that there may be more information that's not provided. I'm not making my point very clearly I think.

Let's look at some nonsensical statements made by various people.

A. "I watch Hannity and Colmes. I get both sides of the issues!", spoken by a radio show caller.

Okay, that's totally stupid for several reasons.
1. There are more sides to an issue than 2.
2. There are more political ideologies than 2.
3. In the US, there are more political parties than 2.
4. Getting "both" sides of an issue isn't very meaningful. I illustrate some more below in B and C.
5. The Hannity and Colmes show is designed to make the conservatives look good and the liberals bad. Reasons: (a) Hannity is good looking, Colmes is very ugly (b) In my opinion, Hannity is the best propagandist I have ever seen (c) Many liberals consider Alan Colmes to be a very weak liberal (I do not share that view; I think Colmes does just fine).

B. The news should show the positive side of things in Iraq as well as the negtive side, and show them both equally, to create a fair and balanced approach.

That's moronic. Let's examine why.

Let's look at Iraq. This place has a tremendous amount of violence. There are some foreign soldiers there, attempting to bring order to the country as well as do what they can to rebuild some parts of the country. So, the violence and lack of security is foremost on the minds of the citizens. The citizens recognize some good done by the foreigners but the possibility of death is great in the country.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the negative news of the country far outweighs the good. Creating a "balanced" view of the country, where the good stories and the negative stories are given equal time, is in fact biased and deceitful. It's nothing more than propaganda.

Also, the good done by the soldiers in question is frequently outweighed by other foreign entities, such as the companies contracted by the US government to do the work of fixing the country. Please watch the movie Iraq for Sale for more information on this.

C. Among extremes, the middle ground is the most logical choice. (I'm paraphrasing other people's statements.)

This really just follows from my stuff above.

It's entirely possible for an extreme view to be correct, and the other extreme and the middle ground to be wrong.

Example:
Extreme 1: Police should be a free service for all citizens.
Extreme 2: Police should be entirely privatized, and free for no one.
Middle ground: Police should be free for poor neighborhoods.

Obviously, most poeple would agree that the best answer is the extreme that police should be a free service for everyone.

D. Reporters shouldn't be biased.

I really don't think it's humanly possible for a person to be totally not biased.

E. All reporters show bias.

Maybe. Probably. However:

If a news story is "Company X dumps radioactive waste into river Y!", then that's the story. It's not biased against company X. Some news stories just "are".

If there's a story that says "N number of people died in Iraq last month", then that's the factual story. It's not a bias.


So, I think I have done a fairly poor job of making my point. Good lord, I need to get back to work. I'll have to add more to all of this later. So, to sum up:

1. Truthfulness is the most important part of journalism. Without truth, it's not journalism.
2. Bias is ok in journalism, unless the biased reporter omits important facts in a story, then it becomes deceitful.
3. Commentary and opinion aren't news.

Phlegmak said:

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the negative news of the country far outweighs the good. Creating a "balanced" view of the country, where the good stories and the negative stories are given equal time, is in fact biased and deceitful. It's nothing more than propaganda.

Click to expand...

Excuse me? Do you have documented, proven evidence that bad events in Iraq outnumber and outweight all good events that occur in the country? Or, more than likely, are you just making that assumption?

5. The Hannity and Colmes show is designed to make the conservatives look good and the liberals bad. Reasons: (a) Hannity is good looking, Colmes is very ugly (b) In my opinion, Hannity is the best propagandist I have ever seen (c) Many liberals consider Alan Colmes to be a very weak liberal (I do not share that view; I think Colmes does just fine).

Click to expand...

And I guess you think that 9/11 was caused by George W. Bush, too?

These conspiracy theories about FOX just trying to make liberals look bad by putting an "ugly" liberal in is nothing more than you calling another man ugly. The real "inequity" that you see is the weakness of liberal points when they are shot down by experienced debaters.

There is a bias in news. When many liberals quote stuff from a website, that when you go in it nothing but liberal crap like "Republicans are against all minorities" and "George W. Bush is setting up concentration camps in the midwest", I have every right to disregard the source because it's more than likely a lie.

Phlegmak said:

It annoys me to no end when someone discounts a news source because it's biased. Either the news is truthful or it's not. If a news source is biased, the viewer should simply be aware of that and realize that there may be more information that's not provided. I'm not making my point very clearly I think.

Click to expand...

I think I understand what you're saying. One can compose a treatise entirely of facts without providing and truthful account.

You make some valid points, I want to step back and look at it in an even more general way.

When the 1st amendment to the US Constitution was written, "neutral" reporting was not the norm. Most newspapers had clear slants. That is the kind of press whose freedom the founders were concerned to protect. The multiplicity of press outlets was the key to the sanity of their decision.

Today, the tired veneer of "objectivity" in the older media's reporting is wearing away. It's becoming clear that "neutrality" is actually a subtle bias which translates to not offending anyone powerful enough to rock the press's boat in retaliation. This includes government figures, especially when they are a source of news. They can retaliate by giving the scoop to someone else. Large segments of the press have become timid. This is not good for democracy.

VRWCAgent said:

Excuse me? Do you have documented, proven evidence that bad events in Iraq outnumber and outweight all good events that occur in the country? Or, more than likely, are you just making that assumption?

Click to expand...

I have no statistical evidence, but it is easily inferred.
1. Compare Iraq to California. In both places, schools are painted, the government works to bring food and water to the people, the governments are democratically elected, and both places have violence. However, when living in CA, I had no concept that I would be kidnapped and beheaded. I had no reason to feel that I would die due to terrorists. I had no reason to believe that I would die due to bombs from a foreign government, whether it's done accidentally or purposely. I had no fear that passing ambulances had suicide bombers in them. (See more below.)
2. Iraqis were better off before the war, concerning violence, death by violence, and various civic facilities, like running water.

garric said:

And I guess you think that 9/11 was caused by George W. Bush, too?

Click to expand...

Try to become sane.

These conspiracy theories about FOX just trying to make liberals look bad by putting an "ugly" liberal in is nothing more than you calling another man ugly. The real "inequity" that you see is the weakness of liberal points when they are shot down by experienced debaters.

Click to expand...

It's not a conspiracy theory, obviously. Colmes is ugly and not as good a propagandist as Hannity. Some debaters are better than others, I will grant you that.

There is a bias in news. When many liberals quote stuff from a website, that when you go in it nothing but liberal crap like "Republicans are against all minorities" and "George W. Bush is setting up concentration camps in the midwest", I have every right to disregard the source because it's more than likely a lie.

Click to expand...

When you read something you know is a lie, then it's reasonable to discount the source. It's also reasonable to be skeptical of that source in the future, no matter how truthful are its other stories. See: Bill O'Reilly.

I don't see how those two examples in the paragraph above are representative of liberals. It sounds more like crazed antiRepublican stuff or antiBush stuff, not liberal. Why'd you say it was liberal?

~~~~~~~~~~~

By the way, just for fun, here are the murder rates in CA and Iraq.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm

CA had 2,503 from 36,132,147 dead from murder in 2005.

Iraq has had 49021 in three years of war. That's 16340.3 per year. The population is 26,074,906.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.google.com/search?q=iraq+population&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off

So, that means that 6.93 x 10^-5 % of CA's population died in 2005. For each year of the war in Iraq, Iraq lost 6.27 x 10^-4 % population each year. Obviously, simply by reading the absolute numbers of deaths above, Iraq has lost many more people.

NOTE: I do not believe the report that claims that 655,000 people have died in Iraq. I am using the smallest Iraq death count here, because it's all that I need to prove my point.


By the way, WorldNetDaily (and Fox) have used comparisons to CA to make Iraq look good. Here's WorldNetDaily's article.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47680

Phlegmak said:

Unfortunately, this is a huge subject that would take me forever to write about.

Click to expand...

Maybe more writing should be in order.It is still incomplete.

Let's look at some nonsensical statements made by various people.

A. "I watch Hannity and Colmes. I get both sides of the issues!", spoken by a radio show caller.

Okay, that's totally stupid for several reasons.
1. There are more sides to an issue than 2.
2. There are more political ideologies than 2.
3. In the US, there are more political parties than 2.
4. Getting "both" sides of an issue isn't very meaningful. I illustrate some more below in B and C.
5. The Hannity and Colmes show is designed to make the conservatives look good and the liberals bad. Reasons: (a) Hannity is good looking, Colmes is very ugly (b) In my opinion, Hannity is the best propagandist I have ever seen (c) Many liberals consider Alan Colmes to be a very weak liberal (I do not share that view; I think Colmes does just fine).

B. The news should show the positive side of things in Iraq as well as the negtive side, and show them both equally, to create a fair and balanced approach.

That's moronic. Let's examine why.

Let's look at Iraq. This place has a tremendous amount of violence. There are some foreign soldiers there, attempting to bring order to the country as well as do what they can to rebuild some parts of the country. So, the violence and lack of security is foremost on the minds of the citizens. The citizens recognize some good done by the foreigners but the possibility of death is great in the country.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the negative news of the country far outweighs the good. Creating a "balanced" view of the country, where the good stories and the negative stories are given equal time, is in fact biased and deceitful. It's nothing more than propaganda.

Click to expand...

I like this synopsis but let me add that propaganda is only propaganda if you don't believe it to be true.If one look at a message in writing or hear and see it by auditorily(the sound of the voice,tonality etc.) and performance(hand gestures,facial expression etc.) and is aware on guard of what the sender is promoting,then the purpose of the message becomes clear for you to discredit it or affirm it.

It is not propaganda when you become transfixed into the message by the sender,such as the caller exclaiming ""I watch Hannity and Colmes. I get both sides of the issues!"

E. All reporters show bias.

Maybe. Probably. However:

If a news story is "Company X dumps radioactive waste into river Y!", then that's the story. It's not biased against company X. Some news stories just "are".

Click to expand...

It does indeed leaves the audience who is recieving this message less interferences on how to interpret this said event.

Problem is that some media outlet then goes to another so-called journalist and tell some kind of narrative that is something of a story of a simple event of Company X dumps radioactive waste into a river Y.

If there's a story that says "N number of people died in Iraq last month", then that's the factual story. It's not a bias.

Click to expand...

True.

1. Truthfulness is the most important part of journalism. Without truth, it's not journalism.

Click to expand...

My definition of a journalist is twofold.
1.A person who only report what he or she see or hear.
2.A person comes to the scene and tells an event in a narrative form.

2. Bias is ok in journalism, unless the biased reporter omits important facts in a story, then it becomes deceitful.

Click to expand...

Are you saying that when a story is implemented into the facts that it become biased by the reporter?

3. Commentary and opinion aren't news.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I have to say that why do these commentators and opinion makers call themselves journalists or newsreporter?Is a journalist and a newsreporter the same?

CartesianFart said:

Are you saying that when a story is implemented into the facts that it become biased by the reporter?

Click to expand...

No. Let's look at a simple example of a biased news story that's factual.

George Allen called a young Indian man "macaca".

I'm going to make something up just to make the example get to the point quickly. Let's pretend his opponent was a long time drug user and has admitted to using drugs to the point where he has not committed any felonies. Only misdemeanors.

So, let's say you have a news station that reports only on the negative things about George Allen. However, there is a greater negative story about his opponent which they don't report on.

So, there's no story, nothing's made up, but it's a clear bias.

Aren't statistic great?

Iraq population: 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.)
Iraq Body Count: 54397
Percent killed: .2

Washington DC population: 550,521
Washington DC body count: :195
Percent Killed: 3.54

Dont remind me.. Thats all they talk about on the 10' o clock news around here. Someone gets killed everyday about.

Paradigne said:

Aren't statistic great?

Iraq population: 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.)
Iraq Body Count: 54397
Percent killed: .2

Washington DC population: 550,521
Washington DC body count: :195
Percent Killed: 3.54

Click to expand...

Umm, no. Your Iraq numbers are right, but for Washington DC:
(195 / 550,521) * 100 = 0.0354%

Isn't math great?

Paradigne said:

Aren't statistic great?

Iraq population: 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.)
Iraq Body Count: 54397
Percent killed: .2

Washington DC population: 550,521
Washington DC body count: :195
Percent Killed: 3.54

Click to expand...

Wait a minute. 195 / 550521 = 3.54 x 10^-4, or 0.0354 %.

And:

If you want to compare the worst city in the US to the worst in Iraq, here you go:

(Unfortunately, I can't find statistics for dead Iraqis in Baghdad alone for a year. Here is one month which exceeded Washington DC's deaths for one year:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700768_pf.html

The body count for August of 2006 is 1,536. The Baghdad population is 5,948,800. Extrapolating 1536 to the whole year is 18432. So that's 0.31%. Vastly higher than Washington DC.)

So that's 0.31%. Vastly higher than Washington DC.)

Click to expand...

I thought DC's percentage was 3.54%

If DC had 3 percent of its population killed in a year, then it would have over 15,000 murders.

More on point, it does seem that some news shows try a little too hard to be perfectly "balanced" to the point of giving equal time to a viewpoint nobody supports. But, if they didn't do that, they'd be under attack for bias...and they're under that attack anyway, rightly and wrongly, depending on the case.

There's also the confusion that commentary is a substitute for news. There's less news and more commentary on prime time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just different and is something that observers need to realize.

No matter how much you cut it, anyone that wants to watch an echo chamber of their own designs has the ability to do so nowadays so that anything straying from that chamber is "bias."

All you need to look at is George Will's Op-ed piece on the Bush-Webb confrontation. He selectively quoted the Bush-Webb confrontation and purposely omitted Bush's rudest phrase in the conversation and Webb's two uses of "Mr. President". He did this so he could assert that Webb was a boor. Liberal bias? LMAO.

I love Hannity and Colmes! Good honest reporting. I think the Liberal media has to make up some kind of boogeyman so that people will want something drasticall changed. Since change is the hallmark of lieralism. Thus they would rather blow things out of proportion. Don't get me wrong I'm not stereotyping them, but this seems to be the agenda IMO.

Phlegmak said:

So, let's say you have a news station that reports only on the negative things about George Allen. However, there is a greater negative story about his opponent which they don't report on.

Click to expand...

I don't know if this can be plausible to determine this as bias on the part of the news station since it leaves the word "negative" out of the question on what it really means.

Lets say that if indeed a news station hypothetically only report negative news(whatever you mean in your perspective as being negative) on a particular individual and leaves out on what you measure is more negative on another individual can be a bias of your own making.

It is saying that you are judging the credibility of the news station at being at fault of its own bias of not reporting the other guy negatively or more negatively than what you think should be a silly equal opportunity negative story telling for all person who are subjected to negative news report.It is saying that you are making a claim that this news station is covertly or unconsiously unaware that they are only favoring one guy over another guy in a bias way.There is no factual claim of evidence of the news station of being guilty of biasness or simply ideologically motivated.

So, there's no story, nothing's made up, but it's a clear bias.

Click to expand...

Ha!Are you saying that whenever a news reporter or station that delegate a reporter to report in a narrative of a particular event is not a story but just simple bias?

1. Hannity is fat and Colmes is ugly. But if your opinion is shaped by the looks of the speaker, you might as well get your politics from a model show.

2. If the percentage of good/bad things shown should be equal to the percentage of actual good/bad things that happen, the good news from Iraq should be shown 500 times more often than the bad news (see Paradigne's calculations). That's clearly not the case. The liberal view are raking in the benefits from equal showing of good and bad.

3. Not disagreeing that the middle ground isn't always the best. But most of the time it is.

4. How can you claim that

I really don't think it's humanly possible for a person to be totally not biased.

Click to expand...

and then argue against

E. All reporters show bias.

Click to expand...

?

Red Stranger said:

4. How can you claim that and then argue against ?

Click to expand...

I think he said that it is impossible for a person not to be biased, to some degree, in the first quote.

In the second he said that all reporters show some bias, no matter how small.

The thing that perplex me is that the words negative and positive as in a accusative context against another person in news reporting merely connotes that the person who is doing the accusation is really diverting the attention of people away from his or her own biasness.