Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Fair and Balanced

One of my biggest pet peeves is the accusation that the media is liberal. Study after study have proven that this isn't the case, and it's not. Certain places where one gets news probably have a slant, and that's okay. I understand that when I read The Washington Times, I'm going to get ridiculously biased articles like 'Party Trumps Race' for Steele Foes, and if I read The New York Times, I'm probably going to be reading articles that slant the way in favor of issues like gay marriage and reproductive choice. It's the job of the reader or viewer to use some critical thinking, discern the slant, and take from it what one can - regardless of bias. Because there just isn't any such thing as no bias.

In fact, it's scariest when a channel decides to proclaim itself "fair and balanced." You pretty much just know that fairness and balance are fucked when someone has to proclaim themselves fair and balanced.

Case in point - one of the more fascinating examples of media bias I've ever seen. Heck, it's not even bias, it's just a plain old lie. It's really pretty amazing.

5 comments:

Hoodlum said...

I'd rather blame stupidity rather than malice given that Yahoo News reported Dick Cheney was shot during his unfortunate accident.

Epiphany in Baltimore said...

This was a couple days after the incident, though.

PsychoPhil said...

No matter what, we'll all see the media from our viewpoint. You'll think its biased right I'll think its biased left.

In this case, I'll go with the mistake theory. Just take a look at your keyboard. Now if they kept running it all day long it'd be a different story.

Pretty myuch right along the lines of this:

http://images.google.com/images?resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=cnn+cheney+x

PsychoPhil said...

Hmm... looks like blogger might have trimmed the url. If it did, just do a google image search on 'cnn cheney x'

Ally said...

Epiphany, I'm with you on this one. It's like declaring yourself an honest person--when you have to announce it, you immediately lose credibility.