it basically describes the 7 standard biases of news media
Commercial Bias - new-ness - or what sells, rendering something like (let's say) Krellin's post above about WMDs in iraq not news-worthy
Bad News Bias - which is based on the human mind's tendency to pa more attention to bad news (so we can prevent bad things from happening to ourselves)
Status Quo Bias - which assumes things aren't so bad now, thus any change will be terrible.
Access Bias - which is about what information the 'free press' has access to, ie they don't have access unless they are granted it.
Visual Bias - where pictures have a bigger impact than text.
Narrative Bias - where we tend to prefer stories - which is again a cognitive bias held by all humans, it also means that most countries have a creation myth (or story) which diverges greatly from historical truth.
and
Fairness Bias - which is a tendency to present both sides of an arguement fairly - even if the situation is inherently unbalanced.

But i don't explain this nearly aswell as the video.

Orath -- are you saying the WMD story is or should be news-worthy, except for the unfair commercial bias?

No, Krellin, I'm having a mature discussion about bias in the news and media. Would you like to take part?

Orath -- I asked a simple question based upon a reference you made to my post. I'm seeking your fucking opinion, douche. Would you care to unbunch your panties and actually answer the question.

Fair point, your WMD story is not new, thus will not sell well, thus is not news-worthy. That is i think the claim made by the video, have you watched it, maybe you have your own interpretation.

In truth, I find your list of 7 interesting - I tend to agree with the majority of it, and it's pretty much what a lot of conservative news-watchers have been saying for decades now, and liberal news-watchers shout down the conservatives making these assertions and say the media is wholly unbiased, etc blah blah blah.

The fact is, in today's modern media you find not only the same stories, but the same graphics and the *exact same language* used by "independent" news outlets all across the country all the time. Why is this? Because it....visual...narrative...commercial...whatever. They get some catchy news, some catchy catch-phrase (remember when "gravitas" was suddenly all in vogue to describe what Cheney brought to the Bush White House? A word nobody had *ever* used in general public was suddenly used by every damned broadcaster in the nation overnight...), and they are off to the races with it...

Is this "bias"? I would say it is...hard to be unbiased when you aren't even creating your own content, but are just buying stories...the same stories as everyone else...from the exact same sources, regardless of their particular slant, history, etc.

Orath - can't watch the video where I am.

I would say the revelation that Bush may not have lied as told by information found in WikiLeaks while technically "old" news, is not "news" at all....for it to be news, it would have had to have been actually reported to people.

I think it wasn't reported or discussed in the media much because it didn't fit the story that had already been told. The media is one to go back and say, "Uhhhh...remember that story we told you....for months on end...and made such a big deal about?? Well...we were wrong..."

What media outlet does that? They aren't after truth or facts. They are after ratings and advertising dollars.

Actually, Krellin, you'll find that a lot of liberals think that the MSM is incredibly biased. I'm not quite sure where you've got your characterisation from.

MSM...lol....so you found *one* non-Fox News outlet that you think is biased. lol Dude...you are too much.

Remember when Ddan Blather was caught producing a document about Bush that was *proven* to be an outright lie -- because it was produced by a type writer manufactured AFTER the date of the document...and instead of *instantly* yanking him from the air, he stayed on the air for a while...and while still on the air was allowed to tell the American people he *still* thought the document was true even if it was proven to be false....THAT is mind-boggling political bias to allow your head anchor to spew his political attacks as news when they are demonstrated to be lies. This was NBC...

And you know who pretty much took a pass on burying the competition with this fraudulant story? ABC...CBS....they didn't take up the sword and behead NBC as they woudl have done had Fox News been caught in a similar scandal.

Oh...add to that list of no-action yawners...MSNBC, CNN...the only outlet that took umbrage with Rather's lie was Fox News.

So please don't tell me that MSM is the only biased media outlet. They are *ALL* fucking biased.

anyway -- I'm not even sure why you brought up Liberals and MSM, as in this thread I did not make any political references/attacks.

Other bias in the media....Pretty, wealthy white girl goes missing....she gets weeks on the headline news, she'll get her own catchy title for the nightly update on her case, she'll get her own infographic...

Poor black girl goes missing in Detroit...who?????

Missing black kids don't sell. It's expected. It's a boring narrative, but pretty white girls are supposed to live in castles and marry prince charming...they aren't supposed to get kidnapped and raped. And it's good Continuing Bad News story...oh yeah...love that...can't wait until they find her bloody body!!!

"I think it wasn't reported or discussed in the media much because it didn't fit the story that had already been told. The media is one to go back and say, "Uhhhh...remember that story we told you....for months on end...and made such a big deal about?? Well...we were wrong..." "

Yep, that's more on the point of narrative bias, as far as i understand it. That news story had been told, so there was no value in going back.

Also, i don't think these biases are limited, most news sources you find will be influenced by some of these. Perhaps wikileaks is not, though i suspect they're not a news source - more like a primary source for news groups hunt for interesting data...

You explicitly claimed that liberal news-watchers "say the media is wholly unbiased". I was pointing out that this is simply not true.

"Status Quo Bias - which assumes things aren't so bad now, thus any change will be terrible."

Well... most mutations are harmful. Knowing nothing about a change except that it's a change, it's actually reasonable to assume it's going to have a negative effect on whatever currently works. There are more ways to mess up than to improve.

If this baseline is considered a "status quo bias", so be it, but it does seem different than the other ones which are matters of perception of *what is being presented*, rather than predicting impact. Moreover, the "status quo bias", far from dooming us all, it preserves us.

May I just defeine what it is to "Lie"
To "Lie" is to make a statement that is known by the person making the statement,
to be untrue.
so with premeditated intent a person makes a statement they know to be untrue,
that is "telling a lie"
It is possible to make a statement that is untrue, if the person making the statement had no knowledge that their statement was untrue, and in fact believed it to be truthful,
this is not lying.
From what I saw of George W Bush ( the second Bush to be president ) and in particular his speaking "off the cuff" without a prepared text to iterate,
I would regard as most risky, the assumption that George W actually understood what he was saying on most occassions.
So I would not make the claim that G W Bush "lied" about WMD's in Iraq, as that implies GW actually KNEW that what he was saying was untrue.
I'm more inclined to believe that GW was misled ( perhaps willinlgy ) and that he made statements he believed to be true at the time he made them, but that many of his statements have been shown to be not factual and not truthful.

There is a fundamental difference between unknowingly making a statement that is not truthful, and knowingly making a statement that is not truthful;
and as indicated, I have some doubts that GW Bush knew & clearly understood what he was saying on many occassions

Unlike Obama who said "If you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance plan." knowing full well his plan would make many an existing plan invalid and force people to change.

@Draug, was it obama who removed those plans, or the private market who decided they didn't needed to go?

IT was Obama who *outlawed* those plans.

Those plans didn't meet his criterion and the insurance companies were forced, by law, to cancel them.

So that's like asking if it was the governor of Ohio who told patrons in bars they could no longer smoke or the bars themselves. The bars had no choice. The law says no smoking indoors in public places and businesses.

And Obama knew exactly what he was doing as it added millions of folks to the government plan, part of his plan to socialize medicine here in the US. Thank God he is in his second term. Let's hope he doesn't manage to push through a "president for life" bill somehow.

"@Draug, was it obama who removed those plans, or the private market who decided they didn't needed to go? "

Uhhh...Obama signed the law, and the law stated that those plans -- which people purchased, and which met their *personal* needs -- didn't meet Obama's requirements. So yes, Obama is *DIRECTLY* responsible for people being removed from their prior plans.

There is no question about that - it is fact. Period.

Draug - my statement was not directed at you - it was directed at the person that directed that statement at you...

I know, krells. No worries.

Well sometimes you get angry and bark at me, and it makes me tear up.

I only rip you a new asshole when you deserve it, and you know it.

I've actually always wondered where Putin got his bias from. I've never found the news source that gives his viewpoints. Is his material actually original?

Look up Pravda from before the fall of the wall.

Yes, but soviet propaganda doesn't cover recent events, I'm wondering where he gets the soviet viewpoint on those. Is he actually able to produce his own biased viewpoints rather than mirroring an existing source is what I'm wondering.

Look to North Korean news and Chinese news. He loves both countries without hesitation.

Really, all 7 of those Deadly Biases just boil down to "If there is incentive for Part A to skewer X in any way, shape, or form, and that incentive either outweighs the negatives or is non-commensurate with said negatives, skewering will take place."

Which itself is just "People will lie and be willing to accept lies if it the overall result is profit or perceived profit."

Which itself is ultimately "People are desire-pursuing machines, and that's why many of them aren't to be trusted sans regulations by a powerful governing body."

Which itself is just good old-fashioned Hobbesian cynicism...or, as we Hobbesians like to call it, realism.

Which itself is a prime reason I think there's a fatal flaw with our friendly neighborhood Locke/Jefferson/Ron and Rand Paul fans here...

Namely--less power in the hands of the government, a nation of individualized and self-sufficient workers/farmers, and perfect transparency ain't gonna happen, people.

(On a side note--go Hobbes and go big government, because in my experience at least, given the choice between the two, as fuzzy as that choice becomes by the day, I'd still rather give more power to the state and people I supposedly choose than take the Locke route and just trust things will work out nicely with a level of transparency and small government based on a Jeffersonian model that no longer works OR an Ayn Rand-esque rallying cry for big business...because if there's one thing the Big Three self-destructing, Lehman Bros., AIG and Enron has taught us over the years, it's that big business is surely our friend, ESPECIALLY to the little guy, right?)

^And thus the seed for a krellin-esque rant on the goodness of big business was sewn...

I've always preferred a totalitarian regime over an oligarchy of businesses. The power system is too split in the latter and it tends to be unstable. Eventually one business will take the role as the supreme ruler, and if you supported the wrong one you're shit out of luck.

@dD_ShockTrooper

"Eventually one business will take the role as the supreme ruler"

When has that ever happened, except for the fictional Weyland-Yutani corporation of the "Alien(s)" universe?

Think about it, whoever controls the now private military has free reign to demand anything they want, and it's only a matter of time until one such company has a controlling majority of the nation's armed forces.

"Big Three self-destructing, Lehman Bros., AIG and Enron"

Dude, that *is* big government right there. All of those are moral hazard gone crazy because they had a government backstop. Only Lehman ended up getting properly slapped down.

"I've always preferred a totalitarian regime over"--

Unless the next words are "nothing" or "death...and even then I don't know"...nope! :p

He should stop wasting time and abbreviate it to "I've always preferred a totalitarian regime"

Neoliberals are so melodramatic.

Anyway, I don't get my political line from any particular source. Although sometimes I read statements from Solidnet or articles from MLtoday or Lalkar. I follow the line of the Workers Party of Belgium pretty closely.

You're melodramatic as well, Putin33. We're actually quite a bit alike.

" Neoliberals are so melodramatic."

...Said the kettle to the pot...

"Eventually one business will take the role as the supreme ruler"
When has that ever happened, except for the fictional Weyland-Yutani corporation of the "Alien(s)" universe?

tendmote, look at the the De Beers cartel of diamonds. Back in Soviet times, their only competition was communist-supplied diamonds, since they couldn't buy a state-owned company. De Beers just bought most of the Soviet diamonds and stored them to keep the monopoly. How else did they keep their monopoly? By shooting people who opposed them in the back of the head in dark alleys, genocide, and the like.

I just thought it was a given that a free-market capitalistic economy would always move towards oligarchies and monopolies, which is why strong anti-trust laws and pro-competition regulations are so important.

Business get wrecked all the time. It's good that they do. "Big Three self-destructing, Lehman Bros., AIG and Enron" as listed by dD_ShockTrooper are all companies that would go out of business without government assistance. (Some did anyway). I agree there should be anti-trust laws, but companies usually blow themselves up without any help. Remember the "Microsoft Monopoly" from recent years?

De Beers is a cartel, not a business. They control supply and manipulate the market. Don't buy diamonds!

I don't remember listing any companies, or saying anything to that effect, but sure...

Oh sorry dD_ShockTrooper that was obiwanobiwan who had the list, my mistake.