(07-16-2023, 07:59 AM)homebiscuit Wrote:

(07-16-2023, 07:40 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: I disagree with you a little bit.  I think most of the news media is giving you honest facts, but the facts they select for you are influenced by conscious or unconscious biases.  Every reporter or editor has to decide "what is the real story here," and from that, facts are selected to tell you that story.  The "real important story" might be "Trump is a moron," or it might be "Trump is being persecuted unfairly."  And then they select actual honest facts to tell you that story.  There's no getting around it, because reporters don't have unlimited space to tell you every fact and let you sort them out and decide for yourself what the real important stuff is.  

There's nothing dishonest about it most of the time.  The only time it becomes dishonest is when a media organization decides to cater to a specific audience, like Fox News has done for years.  The mainstream media never decided they would cater to liberals, they just have a liberal world view, and their bias comes in from that.  But Fox News was set up specifically to cater to a certain audience, and that to me is dishonest.  Although I would add, I like a lot of the Fox News straight news programs, which often do some very good journalism on interesting and important topics.  

But the bottom line is, most of the news media will give you straight facts.  They're not lying to you.  It's just that they have to omit a lot of facts because they have limited space or limited air time, and that's where the bias comes in.

Carefully selected facts to forward an opinion. If another fact thwarts that opinion, then we won’t report it because we’re, you know, busy and we don’t have a lot of time. 

I understand you want to appear as the level-headed centrist, Marty, but don’t be obtuse. Even those on the left are stifling giggles at your assertion.

Whether I am a levelheaded centrist, or a levelheaded conservative or whatever, I just don't believe there's a grand conspiracy among the news media.  There is bias.  But it's just normal unavoidable bias.  If you were a reporter, you would report things the way you saw them and you would filter the facts to support whatever you think the real story is.  There's nothing dishonest about that.  It's what any reporter has to do.  No reporter can report every single fact.  That's impossible.  So they have to select certain facts to tell what the real story is, as they see it.  

And I'm not trying to appear levelheaded or anything.  I'm just giving you my opinion.  If, in doing that, I appear levelheaded, well, good.  I'm not putting on an act.  These are my real opinions that I post here.

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