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7 years ago (10/14/04)
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29 year-old male from Edmonton, Alberta
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Biased Media? Biased Audience?
So, I'm sitting around, bored, waiting for the registrar's office to open after their lunch break so that I can spend an hour or three on the phone trying to get them to mail me a piece of paper, when I decide to stick my head into the P&CE Blog. Everyone's bestest best unbiased buddy, DeathMage, posted one of his supremely unbiased links about the news media which in no way hints at a global left-wing conspiracy.
If you're wondering how I can say that with a straight face, it's because the article wasn't running around like a headless chicken on fire squacking about global left-wing media conspiracies. I was caught a little off guard, especially since Little Green Footballs is the part of the "blogosphere" (I feel dirty now) that considers Ann Coulter to be a dirty liberal hippy.
For those not inclined to read the article, it basically says that global media coverage is biased against Israel, and that they are so biased because otherwise the Arab world wouldn't buy their news coverage. Now, maybe I'm a little crazy, but this actually sounds halfway reasonable to me. In order to cover news in the Arab world, reporters from AP and Reuters have to be able to get into the Arab world. If they're constantly formulating stories that displease the rather oppressive officials, they're not going to be able to do it without getting shot at, or worse. It may be, on the whole, repugnant, but I fully understand how the ends justify the means (the means here being to make the most money possible).
Things were finally righted (pun intended) when I started reading the comments left by readers, though. Hardly a post was made that wasn't shouting "vast left wing conspiracy!" Now, maybe I'm not in touch with the world of today, but the last time I checked exploiting the world around you for the sake of profiting was a decidedly right-wing trait. On top of that, I'm not really sure how many libruls out there actively support theocracies. Again, that seems to be more of a right-wing thing (though, a different sort of right-wing than pandering for profit). At my first glance, it seemed that, according to the LGF post, the AP and Reuters were markedly behind a vast right-wing conspiracy.
So, just what is the boundry between left and right? I saw a hint about a quarter of the way down the page.
#21
Somebody like Rupert Murdoch or a pro-Israeli millionaire could make a killing setting up a rival service to feed less biased news to the major networks -- assuming, of course, they were actually interested in less bias.
This is something that many have seen in DeathMage in the past: The only bias is that which disagrees with what a given person thinks. "Less biased" really means "closer to my own personal bias". This is made abundantly clear by suggesting that a "pro-Israeli" person is "less biased". I'm left with the distinct impression that someone who was "Israeli Neutral" would, in fact, still be "pro-Arab" here. This leads me to an assumption that isn't fully justified, but which I feel is true none-the-less:
Many people who identify with the lable "conservative" consider anything they disagree with as being "liberal", whether it is or not. They take the word "right" in right-wing to mean "correct", rather than directional, and therefore anything that is not "right" is "left" (i.e. "wrong"). Fundamentalist Islam isn't conservative because it's not correct.
To people who don't discuss politics, but rather slap it on a bumper sticker and scream it out their windows, "liberal" and "conservative" aren't stances they take, but rather badges they wear. This is true no matter what side of centre they sit on, or which way they lean. They don't question their politics any more than they question what's in their Spamburger.
I guess I've always known this, but just thinking about it, and actually sitting down and putting it into words just makes me want to pack my bags and move to Mars. I'm used to dealing with this sort of self-imposed blindness when discussing science, science vs religion, or religion itself, but to actually acknowledge to myself that the majority of people treat everything in life the same way is sort of heart breaking.
There once was a time that I believed in the concept of the unwashed masses. I was angry, and felt that the vast majority of people around me were idiots. Then I went away for university and tried to "better" myself. I saw that the majority of people (around me at the time, anyway) were smarter than that. Someone forgot to tell me that the majority of people at a university don't constitute the majority of people in the world, though.
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| Awards | | | | The Goods | | | Name |
Christopher | | Occupation |
Astrophysics Student | | Birthday |
November 12th, 1982 | | Interests |
Astronomy Science Baseball Hawt Chix0rz | | NIMIETY'S... | | | Music |
If it's not rap I can probably stand to listen to some of it. | | Movies |
BttF LotR Indy... Does How the Grinch Stole Christmas count? | | TV Shows |
The Daily Show The Red Green Show umm... |
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