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You can't possibly think this. Sometimes it is, but the whole point about bias in the media is that it is not intentional.
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You have this reversed. Sometimes it is unintentional. Most of the time it is intentional. At its inception, it is always intentional. One makes a decision to be for a view or against another.
Journalists and authors debate bias bitterly. One argument often made is that unbiased journalism is impossible, as one's views necessarily bleed into one's work. This is somewhat in line with your argument that bias is unintentional. But I find that unavailing because, if a journalist is doing his job, which is to present facts as objectively as possible, he should be working against that bias and scrubbing even the unintentional appearance of it from his text. Failure to do so betrays a decision to allow the bias to stand -- to "get one's view out there."
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I'm not sure anyone could decipher what you mean here. He said that reporting what Trump says that is clearly and easily proven to be a lie without actually stating that it is a clear lie benefits Trump.
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It's quite easy to avoid the use of a loaded word like "inflated." All one needs write is "Trump stated that the Saudi relationship involves hundreds of billions of dollars. Other sources quote the amount at issue at a 50 billion dollars."
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If you cover Trump like other politicians, hoping that the audience will be able to make up their minds about his many and obvious lies, such a tack is to his advantage because it legitimizes his bullshit in the eyes of many.
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Is it the journalist's job to delegitimize? Or is it his job to report?
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You love to do this. When we talk about impact vs. intent it does not mean that intent is no longer important. I wish you could have two separate ideas float around in your head at the same time.
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I'm not conflating them. Ty is doing so. He is suggesting that because the biased media stories about Trump have the unintended effect of helping Trump, it cannot be said that the media which produces such stories is biased against Trump. This is flatly idiotic. The correct assessment - the only correct assessment - is that most of the media is biased against Trump, but expressing its bias in a counterproductive fashion that often helps Trump.
Again, the bias is intentional. The effect is not. That the effect is something other than what is intended does not undo the reality of what is intended.
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- People are often intentionally biased. That's bad. We all agree on that and therefore we do not need to discuss it.
- Often there is behavior that has a negative impact on people that is not the result of intentional bias. Trying to get people to understand that in these cases, their intention is not what is important is a real feat. It is very difficult to do because people tend to see the issue as a simple good/bad binary. If you are good and you didn't intend it, it doesn't count and will not be discussed.
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I understand the difference between intent and effect. Those two thoughts coexist quite easily in my head, as I noted. In Ty's? Not so well.
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Do you see how both of those concepts can exist and how we can talk about one of them without arguing that the other no longer exists?
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Yes, quite simply. Unless one says something like Ty has here: That the effect of biased media (accidentally helping Trump) somehow undoes the fact that that same media is biased against Trump. That statement does not make sense in any context, anywhere. (He'll dissemble on it and state that he actually made a much different or much more limited point. But whatever point he makes, if it includes the illogic that an effect can undo an intent, he's not making sense.)
TM[/QUOTE]
