Hillary Clinton Warned Audience about President Trump and Nuclear War

[Sommerswerd]

No! Keep using the kool-aid metaphor! Its edgy and fresh and not tired and overused at all! Gogogogo!

EDIT: I used too many "go"s... it was a bit much, had to dial it back... Is this thread RD? Nope, just checking.

 

[metalhead]

No matter what anyone said that's how you were going to take it anyway, so by all means take it straight to the bank.

Not really. The clue was in how you quoted everything in my post but that, even though that provided facts that I rely on for my conclusion. You can't claim bias when someone bases a conclusion on facts, so to continue your little theatrical rant you had to simply pretend that didn't exist.

 

[Samson]

I don't think you understand what bias is or how media works.

I don't think you know what bias means.

The thing is, does anyone? Or at least, can anyone really define un-biased?

I watch Al Jazeera and BBC. They quite clearly have different biases, but I cannot come up with a rational metric by which to say one is more biased than the other. The closest I could come up with is that which is closer to the average position of the population, but that has multiple problems:

• On what axis? Free market / command economy, welfare state / every man for himself, isolationist / interventionist?
• What population? The audience, the potential audience, a countries population, the world population?
• What average? I can see the mode being very different from the median.

The only other way would be some measurable criteria for what stories to cover and no opinion, but the would be very boring to watch.

 

[OldBoomer]

The thing is, does anyone? Or at least, can anyone really define un-biased?

Yes, and all of the legacy media is biased. That's why everyone should read several sources on any topic of significance.

 

[Lexicus]

Or at least, can anyone really define un-biased?

Unbiased = utopia

literally

 

[Samson]

Yes, and all of the legacy media is biased. That's why everyone should read several sources on any topic of significance.

Then what is bias? How do you come to the conclusion that "all of the legacy media is biased"?

I could buy the statement "All information sources are biased", but your statement seems to indicate that there exists non-legacy un-biased sources.

 

[OldBoomer]

Then what is bias? How do you come to the conclusion that "all of the legacy media is biased"?

I could buy the statement "All information sources are biased", but your statement seems to indicate that there exists non-legacy un-biased sources.

Because I compare sources and I catch them outright lying, or misrepresenting the truth all the time. I've also been around the block enough times to realize that media networks are business and all businesses have vested interests. I'll put it this way. There's very few news sources today that only report unbiased objective facts. Most networks mainly air discussion panels and opinion pieces - all of which are biased because they're not objective facts. This has increasingly been the case since the early 2000's.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I don't think this view's necessarily incompatible with mine. Yours sounds more like a systemic analysis while mine relates to the individual media personalities, journalists, and so on.

Gotcha... Although, thinking about it in those terms... something else dawns on me...

The "liberal media" has allowed themselves to get sucked into the FOX News "fair and balanced" paradigm. In other words, they've given up their right/ability to just call lies and BS what they are, in favor of trying to chase the FOXy version of "balance" where "both sides" are given "equal" representation... instead of just correctly calling the Republican position for what it is, for fear of being called "biased".

They are essentially giving priority to some arbitrary at best, (FOX News defined at worst) notion of "balance" as opposed to prioritizing truth.

 

[Samson]

Because I compare sources and I catch them outright lying, or misrepresenting the truth all the time. I've also been around the block enough times to realize that media networks are business and all businesses have vested interests.

Are you saying that the definition of bias is "outright lying, or misrepresenting the truth"? Fair enough, but I would have put it much broader than that. I do not think either the BBC or Al Jazeera do much of that.

 

[Lexicus]

Gotcha... Although, thinking about it in those terms... something else dawns on me...

The "liberal media" has allowed themselves to get sucked into the FOX News "fair and balanced" paradigm. In other words, they've given up their right/ability to just call lies and BS what they are, in favor of trying to chase the FOXy version of "balance" where "both sides" are given "equal" representation... instead of just correctly calling the Republican position for what it is, for fear of being called "biased".

They are essentially giving priority to some arbitrary at best, (FOX News defined at worst) notion of "balance" as opposed to prioritizing truth.

Truth as they see it, anyway. But yes, the right has been "driving the narrative" for, what, forty years now? The left has been bending over backward not to appear biased, the right just doesn't care, with the result that the center is dragged steadily rightward and no one seems to notice...

 

[OldBoomer]

Are you saying that the definition of bias is "outright lying, or misrepresenting the truth"? Fair enough, but I would have put it much broader than that. I do not think either the BBC or Al Jazeera do much of that.

You're being pedantic. Bias is reporting anything that is not objective truth.

BBC and Al Jazeera are both horrible networks.

 

[metalhead]

Hillary Clinton received a higher percentage of negative coverage than Donald Trump.

Somehow, I doubt many amateur media critics would use that to conclude the media was biased against her.

 

[OldBoomer]

Hillary Clinton received a higher percentage of negative coverage than Donald Trump.

Somehow, I doubt many amateur media critics would use that to conclude the media was biased against her.

I would take a long and very hard look at the source of those statistics and how they conducted their study.

 

[metalhead]

Of course you would. Because to you, "objective truth" is based on the source, and not what is being reported.

The "source" is a Harvard University study, by the way.

 

[OldBoomer]

Of course you would. Because to you, "objective truth" is based on the source, and not what is being reported.

Ugh, this is just way too much irony for one day.

 

[Samson]

You're being pedantic. Bias is reporting anything that is not objective truth.

I am not going to apologise for being pedantic when it comes to definitions, I feel you need to be pedantic when you try and define things or else you do not know where the edge cases fall. I can go with your definition, but I would imagine that that falls into the "very boring to watch" category I mentioned ^. I certainly have never come across such an information source.

BBC and Al Jazeera are both horrible networks.

Why? The BBC is the propaganda arm of the UK government, but covers UK issues fairly well. Al Jazeera is heavily biased to the Qatari state POV, but I have not come across any other news channel that gives real global coverage within an order of magnitude of Al Jazeera. I have watched many news channels on 4 continents over the last 10 years.

 

[OldBoomer]

The "source" is a Harvard University study, by the way.

OK, but that really means nothing if they conducted their study in some half-baked manner. What was their criteria for comparing coverage? Because with a quick google search I get what you said, but also the complete opposite as well. Then there's several other studies who all of which have wildly varying results - 71% negative coverage, 91% negative coverage et cetera for the same person.

That tells me one would have to look at how the study was conducted before you could be sure of anything.

 

[Ajidica]

BBC and Al Jazeera are both horrible networks.

Care to give any specific examples of their horrible-ness?
I'll grant that the BBC can be quite lazy in their analysis at times, and that Al Jazeera accepts some decidedly dodgy opinion articles, but on the whole I've found them reliable for basic reporting and analysis.

 

[metalhead]

OK, but that really means nothing if they conducted their study in some half-baked manner. What was their criteria for comparing coverage? Because with a quick google search I get what you said, but also the complete opposite as well. Then there's several other studies who all of which have wildly varying results - 71% negative coverage, 91% negative coverage et cetera for the same person.

That tells me one would have to look at how the study was conducted before you could be sure of anything.

Well, look for yourself.

The Harvard study took a comprehensive look at how the media covered each candidate. They did in part assign positive/negative/neutral to stories, but they also focused on the amount of coverage each candidate got, and what topics the coverage focused on. What they found is that Trump stories focused more on the issues he was talking about, where Clinton stories focused more on things like emails and the Clinton Foundation.

That type of asymmetrical coverage, particularly when you consider Trump was a treasure trove of scandal and dishonesty in his own right - much of which went almost totally uncovered - is simply inexcusable. And certainly tends to disprove any claims that the media was somehow "biased" in Hillary Clinton's favor.

 

[Disgustipated]

How many hours of CNN would you say you watched before reaching that conclusion?

It's the only Network I watch. I don't watch Foxnews at all. Granted I only watch on my breaks at work, but that's at least 30 minutes every day. I don't have a TV at home, but I do read their website every day as well. Nearly every article and piece on television is biased against Trump. Granted Trump brings this upon himself for being stupid. But not everything he does is bad. Our country is actually doing fairly well right now.

Same thing 4 years ago against Romney. They portrayed everything he did as a "gaffe" like he didn't know what he was doing. Compared to Trump, this guy was Einstein, yet CNN portrayed him as a moron. How can you trust a network that negatively portrays people just because of their political affiliation? They are becoming like Foxnews. The difference in the way they portrayed Obama and Romney is staggering.

The clearest sign that Trump has declined mentally is that he used to speak coherently and intelligently, used to be able to form thoughts into entire paragraphs that stuck to one topic. Now, he speaks incoherently, jumps from topic to topic, constantly interjects non-sequiturs into his speech, and generally presents as a person that does not have total control over his mental faculties. It's not "bias" to observe those things and wonder if there is something underlying wrong with him. Perhaps there isn't, but he surely appears to have gone through a pretty steep mental decline from 30 years ago, and he certainly is not of an age where you can just chalk it up to natural aging

Not sure what you are going by. I admit I haven't read his books and articles from the 80's or 90's so I don't know how he was back then. His biggest problem is his outright lies and outrageous comments. But I'm not seeing the incoherent talk you are talking about. Other than that time he used some non word on twitter. Being a lying blowhard isn't the same as being incompetent to be President.