I used to look forward to listen to NPR

Unverified? Seriously? That’s funny.

 

I do care about journalistic integrity and NPR buried the story even though it was true. They should’ve dug deeper but choose to put their proverbial head in the sand and blamed it on “no one else pursued it either” BS. I’m not even that mad about that. More upset about their cheerleading from the sidelines about anything and everything to do with Covid.

 

One of your funnier posts right here.
My kind of humor.

 

I agree that many issues are more clear than others. I do think it’s the others that are the interesting ones. Again, I don’t know much about Maher but if she is indeed pushing extreme left wing talking points, it would be easy to categorize her as extremely left wing (however we are defining that). And I wouldn’t be surprised if she is such. Certainly many accomplished professionals are just so.

The more challenging and interesting issues are the claims about bias, eg questioning the COVID lockdowns. Even if we all come to agree one day that these lockdowns did more harm than good, this in itself doesn’t demonstrate that news organizations should have been contemporaneously questioning the lockdowns before we came to know as much as we do now. It is in fact sometimes the ideas that seem irrational that we one day come to accept over those that originally appeared the most rational, but I don’t think we want to adopt a policy of always advocating the irrational. And what exactly is rational? I have a very right leaning friend who said COVID was no worse than a cold and would not cause more than 10K deaths. Today, I think he views his premonition as correct, even though his death prediction was likely off by two orders of magnitude.

 

Thanks Tampa. I like this advice. Berliner actually suggested the same in his original article. Moreover I like that it is possible for each of us to view the data in totality. Still my overly skeptical instincts force me to tread carefully regarding my own judgements. If right wing people can be seduced by unjustified right wing talking points, why can’t we all be seduced by our own side’s talking points? This is why I advocate the idea of including a larger circle of judges, as CS Peirce wrote that the real is what conception finally results “independent of the vagaries of me and you.” If almost everyone, left or right, comes to view NPR’s treatment of these topics as balanced, so too should I, even if my own eyes detected bias.

 

News organizations jobs are to keep the Govt accountable. To say NPR, and most of the MSM were right in not questioning lockdowns and school closures at the time is truly a remarkable statement. I can't disagree more with you there and don't understand why anyone would want the media carrying the water for the US Govt. And with regard to pretty much all things covid, they did. Isn't it the media's job to hold the people in power accountable? Do you honestly think the media did it's job with covid?

 

There is no story on the laptop that is relevant to Joe Biden’s election. Anyone who didn’t report on it has been validated 100Xs over. There is nothing relevant about Hunter’s dick pics. The fact that you are not satisfied with the amount of mud thrown at Joe over nothing means nothing to journalistic integrity. Journalists were right. Misinformation 100%. Had nothing to do with Joe.

 

Admittedly, I am a professor and this idea of truth of bias is chief among my current intellectual interests.

Thanks OB. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s unreasonable to conclude that NPR has a left-leaning bias. I think most centrists do view this to be the case. I would probably be one of them, if I studied the them more closely. I just want to make sure our judgments have some contact with reality and don’t just reflect our prejudices. There is a poster here who has previously categorized Fox News as left leaning. I agree with you that we should be able to call this view biased without too many reservations. I just want to encourage us to occasionally double check if we are this poster.

There’s a joke about an old man who gets a call from his wife while driving. She says to be careful because the news reported a car driving the wrong way on the freeway. He replies, “One car driving the wrong way? There’s hundreds!”

 

I think if there wasn't a story on the laptop then why did all the news organizations squash it? Let it out there at the time since it was 100% hunter's laptop and yes, at the time, the fbi did in fact know it was biden's laptop. If there is nothing to hide then let it out. Same would apply to trump. But you don't care about being down the middle and have stated how far left you are, so all you are doing is fanning left talking points.

 

What story relevant to Joe Biden was not reported on? What in the nation’s interest was overlooked? No one cares about Hunters dick other than MTG and apparently you.

 

Thanks aging. I think this is a fair criticism. I am definitely on the extreme end of caution when it comes to claiming objectivity, which is undoubtedly, and probably rightly, obnoxious for my Too Hot community mates. Though I do think the risk is real that many of us can find confirmation of our views in online echo chambers, making us believe our perspective is more objective than it is. I am actually thinking of writing a book on this subject, but a book that argues “I don’t know what the hell is going on” might be a tough sell.

 

Yes indeed agman, your solution is indeed the one that I see as the best of our imperfect bunch: look for an overwhelming majority to reach the same conclusion. I would just add one stipulation that this majority includes a diversity of independent viewpoints. If 60% of the senate declares that X is a good idea, I don’t feel as comforted when I learn that they are all Democrats or republicans. Even this doesn’t guarantee truth, but it at least minimizes the chance that our ideas can be totally attributed to ideological bias. The approach also isn’t useful where we cannot come to a solid consensus, and here I would advocate a lessening of confidence.

 

This forum would shut down with more posters like you!! Your takes aren’t hot enough lol.
I enjoy your takes as always.
Thanks Mr Rade!

 

I agree the news should hold the government accountable, and also everyone else. Above all it should be beholden to finding the truth. If the government suggested that the sky is blue, should we accuse NPR of carrying the government’s water for accepting this claim? Of course not, because it is true.

Here again, we’ve come to our central problem, How do we know what is true? I would suggest that one of our foremost thinkers in this arena is Nassim Taleb, who argued strenuously for lockdowns. Now it might be that Taleb was overcome by total irrationality in this case, but if one as intellectually accomplished Nassim Taleb can succumb to such a disease, surely you too are susceptible. Again, I would argue against using retrospective outcomes to judge a priori judgements. Simply winning a round of Russian roulette should not justify the choice to play. Decision making under uncertainty requires that we grapple with all potential outcomes, even though many will never come to pass.

 

You make it seem like it was consensus that lockdowns and school closures were good because some extraordinary thinker agreed with them? The whole point is many people were up in arms about the lockdowns and school closures and most of the media didn’t question the people making those decisions. I’m a little surprised you are rationalizing this.

 

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point. I understood that you were arguing that the lockdowns were obviously folly, and therefore no one should have ever deemed them acceptable. However, perhaps you are making a more nuanced point that even if the lockdowns were the best policy, the news should have reported more on the arguments of their critics. Is that closer to your stance?

 

No one said lock downs were good. That is moronic.

 

Good? Should have said needed. Did anyone from the big 3(NBC, ABC, CBS plus NPR) question the lockdowns and school closures as those decisions were being made? We know the answer already to that question. Now why didn’t they? Oh, there was a pandemic? No shit. Shouldn’t stop the media for questioning the very dubious “science” rational for shutdowns and school closures. You can back in the Covid thread and see that some extremely intelligent scientists disagreed with those moves but were basically ignored. They failed in their jobs. Simple as that.

 

Relevant:

Fox News has destroyed American confidence in itself - Kevin Drum

This week the Economist wrote about the way American trust in institutions has collapsed over the past couple of decades. This is not news.

However, this is a very interesting comparison:



Collapse of trust in government is a purely American phenomenon. Why? Because we have Fox News and the others don't. Oh, they have tabloids and conservative newspapers and so forth, but nothing like Fox News, which makes its living by spreading outrage over the way the country is run.

The power of Fox News is truly spectacular. Outrage sells, and the fact that one of the two major parties amplifies Fox uncritically means it has a surprisingly large influence in setting the agenda for the mainstream media too.

The truth is that US institutions mostly operate about as well as they ever have. But Fox pushes outrage over Dr. Fauci and trust in the CDC plummets. They push outrage over Donald Trump's loss in 2020 and trust in elections plummets. They go all in on CRT and DEI and trust in schools plummets. They push climate denialism and trust in science plummets. They insist that the rest of the news media are liberal pawns and trust in the very institution that explains reality plummets.

Fox and the Conintern with their Maoist worldview makes us stupid and destroys the country