Liberal Media Bias - Ann Coulter Drinking Game Version - Page 3

Well how can you stipulate it is if you don't know what it is that liberally biased means?


v.Is your definition of biased different from most dictionaries?

2.
a. A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
b. An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.
3. A statistical sampling or testing error caused by systematically favoring some outcomes over others.To influence in a particular, typically unfair direction; prejudice.

Is the point to have a discussion or to simply exhaust anyone wanting to read it? Shall we have a discussion of what language we are going to type in, what alphabet we are going to use and which hand we favor in typing and the possible influences and thought shaping properties those will have as well. If there is no common ground for discussion, if every bit of everything is going to be contested, even common word definitions, then there is no point in going through with this. You'll need to play that game with someone else.


So you made the suggestion we look at specific examples just so you could shoot it down but then blame the fact that I went along with it on me? We within these forums do not have several assistants who will sample several news hours each day and go through looking for evidence of bias using similar criteria across all shows with the rotations to ensure limited perceptual bias wanders into the human input side, etc, etc. I can link to studies that have done that and already relinked one.

So now you give me something more "to chew on" why, so that once we have chewed on it, you can simply say it is a hasty generalization, begging the question and really all we did is argue about the parsing.

Pick an end on which to burn this candle. I'm not going to dig into something at your suggest merely to have you say afterwards your own suggestion was fatally flawed and crap reasoning.

If you want to move on to something else, I did happen to link to a Time article at the very beginning of this thread. I linked to an interview of Ann Coulter and the most interesting thing about that, is you talk about context, but you could watch a dozen interviews with her and watch the same bias yield the same result, hostility, challenges about tone/intent, and dozens of dismissals involving her not believing what she writes and that she can't be/doesn't take herself seriously. It is even true across multiple books.

So either we can do this in a limited way, or doing that can't bring us any realizations while having a conversation with each other. Pick your poison and proceed.

Hey guess what, if all three of you interviewed her, I would call it bias because clearly you all have the same political perspective. Your bias might not let you see it or even deal with it professionally as a journalist should, but perhaps you all realize you have the same political orientation and thus the same reaction.

So does the media.

T.V? I'd have to turn off my web-connection. Your sample of statements is provacative but that doesn't make it wrong or worthy of not engaging the ideas. We have a lot of social commentators that straddle different lines. Someone we both enjoyed, George Carlin, many people I know complained he had just gone bitter toward the end and it wasn't comedy, just political ranting. I know I could compile a series of quotes from him just as provocative in ten minutes of material and that was what was great about him. I could do the same for Bill Maher as well.

I really don't care if someone is safe or generic because that doesn't often challenge thinking. I'd rather risk being offended and have my thinking challenged than to sit there and just attempt to enjoy the banality of the safe experience. (Hello Daily Show) I'd rather listen to Bill Maher call us the cowards, even if I disagree with that than just have certain words and ideas be untouchable.


Well than be a partner in this discussion and, in matters where you think your definition might be different than the norms volunteer and explain them as so. Do not expect me to just keep tossing information into the air for you to pick and choose.

We did this already. We agreed to deal with specific examples and then I threw one out there, and you appeared to agree but then discredit the concept. This shouldn't be so one sided, you can volunteer a definition, an example, cite a link, study or whatever you think, just as easily as I can.

Not to be rude, but I've never been the type to just say something is true because I say it is true. (aka the Bible is true because God says so) However I'm not going to sit here and have you demand I define God as I understand it, the Bible as I understand it, religion as I understand it and they have you say, yeah but all that is just bullshit because you really think the Bible is true because God says so or at least that is what I will assert.

Bias is a pretty well understood and defined concept. Do you think I am attempting to apply it in some non-standard form? If that is the case then say so, don't ask me to define it so you can pick at my definition or complain I don't want to write a paper as a baseline to write another paper.


Rush Limbaugh is considered quite funny by those who listen to him. Stewart is as well. I consider mocking the news to be incredibly sad and those who prefer to get their news from a mocking source to be sadder still. I've even teased that Stewart should, by his own criteria, stop hurting America since yelling at each other about current events (ala Crossfire) is just as damaging as mocking current events (Daily Show)

There is a big difference between telling a joke and turning EVERYTHING into a joke. Much like how we all have funny quirks to our families, we have normalcy most of the time so we can laugh at the quirks. If all we could do is riff on all our family memebers all the time, that wouldn't be funny but bitter, angry and sad.

That is the way the shows like Daily Show, and especially the Colbert Report strike me. They aren't guys doing a shtick during a comedy show anymore. They ARE the shtick and it is just sad.

To take it to the example above with Artman and George Carlin, it is fun to kind of explode open or examine our quirks and failings as humans. Laughing at them might allow us to look at them more closely. However when you move to examining failings to just declaring us a failure, and saying the planet could explode, we could all die any no one and no thing would be any better or worse off, that just comes across as bitter, mean and very sad. Still I'd take that over no conversation at all because I hate closed mindedness and censorship.


I never thought of Zappa as a comedian. Perhaps we need a new title for folks who don't mind being thought of as crass and even perhaps insulting in order to challenge our thought-models.


I'm so glad you have "THE TRUTH." Thanks for showing such zealotry in proclaiming it. Thanks for also proving that liberalism is a humanistic religion no different from other religions.

Carlin's Last Show had plenty of politics and was pretty darn dark but again, I don't begrudge the guy. I'm just saying it gets very hard, and might even be a bit harmful to step past, here is the truth I am exploding, and there is no truth and we are all fucked. Carlin was definitely tending toward the latter in his later years. I still miss him too regardless.


Well first many of them are quasi-monopolies in that they own our airwaves and have a certain interesting in continuing that. So in that regard they aren't true competitors but more like an oligarchy that wants to make sure they keep their slice of the pie.

Secondly, how is it against their interests to elect people who claim good intentions, but ultimately get bought off and raise taxes on everyone including possible up and coming competitors? If I were a old media company, I think the thing I would want for example is someone who decides to tax the internet when I own the airwaves. I would of course claim nothing but good societal intentions while being able to beat my competitors with a tax stick.


Why would the definition of liberal bias be any different than the standard definition of bias with liberal as the category measured?


How is it you guys always seem to know who is on where? Damn, I just don't have the time for it. I'm simply saying that there are limits to the effectiveness of satire. An adult who acts like an ungrateful child is funny as a skit. An adult who acts like that all the time isn't funny, it is sad. It is called a shtick for a reason. Life as shtick isn't funny. I'm not saying ban it or whatever, but it is sad rather than funny.


I'm always curious about this notion that just because something is big or has money, it can't be liberal. George Soros, most Ivy's with their endowments, many families that have inherited wealth, we see plenty of liberalism there. You only need to be big enough and have enough guaranteed income to no longer have to sweat market forces and you can be whatever political ideology you desire. It's an easy pattern to spot.




I don't think of it as a leap but a continuation of a clear trend. The reality is that the press is increasingly shallow and lazy. In short bias is easier to hide when you are spending all your time on news, but much harder to hide when you are spending it on analysis. The press reports less and less news and does more and more analysis. The rationales are easy to understand. It is much easier to sit in a room and pontificate than it is to work phones, beats, sources, etc. to generate news. They suck because they keep reporting less and less and because what they are filling that less with, is analysis and that analysis is clearly in the tank.

If we take this outside of the realm of politics, it might be much easier to spot. I know you like music and so do I. Once upon a time we probably remember this thing called MTV and they used to actually play music. Strange but true to imagine I know and as we all know nowadays, they simply don't play music. They suck. They kept slowly removing music and kept adding filler and over time the filler became of one type, reality TV shows.

Today to anyone who likes music, the network is completely unwatchable. Their ratings are in the tank and their solution is.... I think they ordered up something like 14 different reality series this year. I'm sure next year when their ratings and profits are even lower, the solution will be 20 reality series. Why playing some music isn't a choice, I can't figure out, but the trend is clear.

Take music and replace with news. Take reality TV and replace with in the tank analysis and the trend is clear.

From the link....


This is the wrong path. Newsweek and others are going to bleed readers because you read to think and not to be lectured to about what you should already think. You want to have information to form conclusions, not have someone too lazy to get the information inform you of what your conclusion should already be. BTW, if links to folks saying, "Yeah we aren't going for objective and broad, but playing to our "base", playing narrow with informed opinion isn't enough to convince you of the actions taking place, then there isn't a way I'll ever convince you. The mea culpas are right there. They don't think they are at fault yet, but much like MTV ordering more of what is killing their own ratings, news is slitting their own throats because "in the tank" analysis is not information or news.

The solution to the decline this causes is even more of the same. When the ratings and lack of profits come in, the response will be even more talking heads, even less news, more analysis and make it even more opinionated than before. The cause is the cure apparently.

You appear to know what you are looking for better so why don't you go first. Name some of the forms of coding and definitions, apart I guess from the dictionary, that you would want to use.

Hahahahaha.... I love this reasoning. There isn't such a thing as objective and thus there can be no determinatino of bias..........

But damn is that Fox/Faux News a biased bunch of bastards!

You two just busted the irony-meter.


It is possible to report on both groups. You can simply report what happened, what each group wants or on the event itself. You don't have to pick a winner or a loser.

As for what seems correct or wrong, there is a time and place for editorializing and you should label and treat it as such. If the newroom feels that raising taxes for infrastructure is great that is fine for the editorial section.

The labeling, the omissions, the "analysis" that is really editorializing, that isn't even an attempt at objectivity.


If the news is driven by events most of this stuff would come up and sort itself out. Now I can even understand how in the past the media felt the need to be "gatekeepers" when there was limited time and resources. However now they have 24/7 to fill and the real problem is that they still filter the days news down to 15 minutes worth of info that they repeat endlessly and then on top of it they spend hours pontificating on that 15 minutes worth of news.

Is it the job of the media to sort out the information for us and determine the winners or losers or to present it for us to determine for ourselves? Wouldn't you prefer to pick your own winner and loser rather than have the media pick it for you?

To run with your very wrong and infllamatory analogy, wouldn't you prefer the media just present the Democrats, the Dixiecrats that split off from them, and the Republicans and you can determine for yourself who has a valid viewpoint and who is just full of crap?

BTW, to hit on something much earlier mentioned by Mid. I fully support an adversarial press. The issue is when they are hostile to one group, play pattycake with the other, and then claim to just be objective. However there is a difference between challenging a perspective and hitting it with a bunch of loaded questions and false dilemmas. We don't have the former and have plenty of the latter.