So what’s new in DuhSantistan?

The guidance was terrible. CDC was in bed with the teachers unions.

 

Bernie Sanders a senator has been fact checked 173 times, which is more than anyone you've mentioned thats not a president lol. More than the governors of the largest states in the USA. I'm thinking we should all admit that Politifact is biased in favor of conservatives and move on. We can do this all day, because you can pick and choose what you want to believe, the number of fact checks means nothing.

 

A number of teachers died of Covid. While arguably some of the guidance may have been overkill keep in mind that in 2020 there was a real fear of contracting the virus and it wasn't irrational. Although you're probably also an anti-vaxxer between the vaccination which is very effective at preventing severe cases of Covid and the emergence of Omicron and its subvariants as the dominant form of the disease the disease has become much less serious than it was originally.

 

This seems likely to me too. So what do we do about it? How do we figure out what information is reliable?

 

Desperately searching for something on which to claim victory...

It's a hatchet job against DeSantis! Nope...
Well they were wrong about school closures! Nope...
Ok well they do more fact checking on Republicans! I win!!!

 

Bias need not destroy info's reliability. In fact, a clock that is 5 mins fast is just as reliable as one right on time.

 

Seems that Politifact is probably relatively objective considering that liberals attribute a conservative bias to the fact checker while conservatives attribute a liberal bias.

 

And they cite their sources, so you can see what the decision was based on and disagree with their interpration based on the same primary sources.

 

Being biased reliably is definitely better than being reliably biased

 

Or maybe people who play loose with the facts tend to get fact checked more often. We all know about Trump's inability to tell the truth. DeSantis isn't much better.

 

I like your point. However, your analogy does present a neater system than we often have with media though, as clocks are usually extremely consistent and their degree of bias can be easily measured against a known standard. Unfortunately, neither of these are often going to be the case for us.

So if CNN reports that 300k jobs were lost under Biden, do we apply a specific correction factor, such as “if Biden, subtract 10% of positive value”? Then we assume that 330k jobs were lost in actuality? Or might the bias be represented in story selection? Or confidence in tone? And how did we determine 10% at all?

 

First, I think that the whole bias thing is WAY blown out of proportion. For people with even minimal critical thinking skills, the bias of most journalism should not materially affect the conclusions they draw from an article. I'd say that's the case in your example. I don't really care if it's 270 or 330. Another pt is that UNbiased reporting can greatly degrade the reliability of information. Ex.

Unbiased. Donald Trump reaffirmed today that his daughter, Ivanka has created 15m jobs over the last year.

biased. Donald Trump reaffirmed today that his daughter, Ivanka has created 15m jobs over the last year, & he's a big fat liar as only 2.4m jobs have been created.

Nowadays, it seems people lazily dismiss stuff they don't agree with with CNN LOL or FOX LOL. IMO, the search for & expectation of truly unbiased news is silly & futile.

HST's thoughts:

 

Entice more conservatives to go into journalism.

 

DeStalin is maneuvering to remove another elected progressive prosecutor on pretextual bullshit. Getting really tired of this authoritarian clown.
DeSantis may remove another Florida prosecutor from office

 

Indeed, it might be overblown, but this depends on who you ask, as many claim that “facts have a liberal bias”. I certainly agree that no one wants to accept news they don’t like.

Obviously, sometimes the news is actually good or bad. In your example, I think a better unbiased headline would be “Trump claims his daughter created 15M jobs”, but I think it would be fine to add in “…but the BLS disagrees.”

 

I don’t think this would be a bad thing, but I do wonder how we would know when we’ve done the job. Our assessments of bias have no choice but to be clouded by our own biases. Eg A friend of mine says he loves Tucker Carlson because he isn’t afraid to call out both sides. Now I think I know what he means, but never would this be my first take on Carlson’s approach. So is my friend biased or am I? Or both equally?

 

Coincidentally, I saw an article today that nicely deals with this issue, though it’s solution hardly feels definitive.

Why can't Americans agree on, well, nearly anything? Philosophy has some answers

 

Looks like a good find.

 

And now the families of the victims are speaking out against DeSantis:

Families tell DeSantis, Scott not to make Orlando shooting victims ‘political pawns’
The families of two of the victims in last week’s shooting in Pine Hills criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott for their responses to the killings, adding that neither had reached out to offer condolences a week after the tragedy.

Attorney Mark NeJame, who represents the families of Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons and 9-year-old T’Yonna Major, read a statement to reporters Thursday blasting both Republicans after they sent letters criticizing Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell for not prosecuting Keith Moses, the alleged killer, for misdemeanor marijuana possession in November 2021.

Even if he had been convicted and served the maximum one-year jail sentence, he would have been out of jail “months before the murders happened,” NeJame argued. Worrell told the Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday that the chances Moses would have received that sentence were “slim to none.”
* * *
“Both families are strong and resolute in their conviction not to allow their children to die in vain or for them to be used as political pawns by DeSantis and Scott when the true issue of sane and responsible gun laws is being deflected and avoided by these gun-loving politicians,” NeJame added.