LawTalkers - We are all Slave now.

Trump has lied repeatedly and flagrantly about those numbers, for months now. (CNN doesn't tell you that.) Pointing that out is called reporting, not bias, and it's only a sin if you're in the bag for Trump. You certainly are showing your bias.

Wait, you’re not saying he voted for the guy he said ahead of time would be better for the economy??

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

11-25-2018 11:15 AM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519532)

Hitchens wouldn’t have offered opinion as news. That’s the cardinal sin here that you’ll ignore.

Hitchens would’ve gone straight for the jugular. He’d have come right out on the top of the page, as has his friend Andrew Sullivan, and said, “Here is my opinion... Trump is a lying idiot who should be removed from office.”

When you slide the opinion copy into the factual stories, you’re in Foxland. Again, watch Outfoxed to see how it’s bluntly done.

I assume you’re totally cool with the Times, Journal, and WaPo stuffing Opeds into the news pages? I mean, it’s all just reporting, right? Perception is reality, no?

ETA: Everyone sees what you did there, btw, shifting from acknowledging that CNN claimed Trump “inflated” figures to stating CNN was just commenting on their accuracy. It’s all in the drip, drip, drip... the little digs build a bias among the audience so much more effectively than a blunt Hitchens-like OpEd attack.

“Inflated” is also a great word choice. You picture a fat windbag (reminding you he is one), and recall he inflated his fortune. It’s well chosen. The specific words used are also hugely important, as Trump himself has proven with “low energy Jeb.”

The man crush on Hitchens is getting pretty creepy. Can you still with someone living, like Maher?

Tyrone Slothrop

11-25-2018 10:32 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adder (Post 519537)

Wait, you’re not saying he voted for the guy he said ahead of time would be better for the economy??

It's odd that Sebby is so prone to insist on an assumption of good faith on the part of anyone accused of racism, but so prone to assume bias against Trump when reporters report facts.

Tyrone Slothrop

11-26-2018 12:37 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

More bias from ABC News:

Quote:

Kushner, in a bid to symbolically solidify the new alliance between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia while claiming a victory on the president’s first foreign trip to Riyadh, pushed State and Defense officials to inflate the figure with arms exchanges that were aspirational at best, the officials said. Secretary of Defense Mattis supported Kushner’s effort and ultimately endorsed the memorandum, according to a former NSC official familiar with the matter.

“We need to sell them as much as possible,” Kushner told colleagues at a national security council meeting weeks before the May 2017 summit in Saudi Arabia, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.

link

It's just a steady drip of unfairness to Trump and Kushner.

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 02:02 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 519539)

It's odd that Sebby is so prone to insist on an assumption of good faith on the part of anyone accused of racism, but so prone to assume bias against Trump when reporters report facts.

Ha ha... You calling me biased?

I’m just taking the other side of the coin. And I always will. I think this place is half full of shit, so I challenge it. Sometimes effectively, sometimes not.

Given those odds, I’m basically an economist. Half the time, I’m right about you being biased and full of shit. Think of yourself as W, and me as your Krugman.

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 02:09 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 519538)

The man crush on Hitchens is getting pretty creepy. Can you still with someone living, like Maher?

Maher couldn’t hope to insult as effectively or savagely as Hitchens. Taibbi can turn a phrase and make it sting, HST could bludgeon, and Buckley and Vidal could class shame the shit out of an opponent.

But only Hitchens could really eviscerate on the fly in such a manner the subject could never recover. I still can’t hear Jerry Falwell’s name and not think of a matchbox, and giggle.

Maher is more a truth siren. Laudable for different reasons.

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 02:13 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 519536)

Suggesting there’s no media bias against Trump is absurd. This thing can and does coexist with Trump being a liar.

You’re applying a very strange logic here — that these are mutually exclusive phenomena. They aren’t. Drive that notion through that concrete skull of yours and we’ll be able to conduct a useful conversation on this issue. (Or at least an amusing one.)

Tyrone Slothrop

11-26-2018 02:42 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519543)

Y

Suggesting there’s no media bias against Trump is absurd. This thing can and does coexist with Trump being a liar.

You’re applying a very strange logic here — that these are mutually exclusive phenomena. They aren’t. Drive that notion through that concrete skull of yours and we’ll be able to conduct a useful conversation on this issue. (Or at least an amusing one.)

For like the seventh or eighth time, I have never, ever suggested there is no media bias against Trump. Drive that notion through that concrete skull of yours and maybe we’ll be able to conduct a useful conversation on this issue. Moreover, I have never, ever suggested that Trump's being a liar precludes other biases. If you want to play Krugman, you're going to need to up your game considerably.

What I am saying, here, specifically, is that there is no sign of bias against Trump in that particular article.

Indeed, there is a sign of a different sort of media bias that favors Trump, and which he regularly exploits, which is that media assumes that he is not lying, in the face of constant evidence to the contrary, and relays statements that the White House is acting in good faith even though it's impossible to establish that. You keep ignoring this bias, but I would say it's far more important than any political bias on the part of any individual reporter.

Tyrone Slothrop

11-26-2018 02:45 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519541)

Ha ha... You calling me biased?

If there is some principled reason why you are loathe to impute racial bias to pretty much anyone but prone to assume political bias on the part of reporters, I'm all ears. I was merely noting that you don't seem to have a philosophical commitment to assuming good intent.

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 03:32 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 519545)

Is there a principled reason for your mischaracterization here? Because I have never been reluctant to acknowledge racial bias. For the 7000th time:

Trump exhibits racist attitudes. They to some unknown extent inform his decisions.

Many of Trump’s supporters have racist attitudes. This informs their decision to support him.

The only times I am reluctant to see racism at work are the subjective instances in which facts suggest otherwise. Or when people have said all Trump supporters are racist. I do not start by assuming anything. In Charlottesville, the actions were entirely racist. In regard to the media, not all of it is biased against Trump. Just most of it, and in many instances for good reason.

And this conversation was not about a single article. This conversation was about general media bias. I said in almost any space of time, one can find proof of bias. You focused on one story, the biased portion of which was subtle. You claim it proves lack of bias as it is not unquestionably anti-Trump. I told you that it’s these subtle little drips which together form a broad bias. You’ve stalled on that.

Tyrone Slothrop

11-26-2018 03:55 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519546)

The only times I am reluctant to see racism at work are the subjective instances in which facts suggest otherwise.

Quote:

And this conversation was not about a single article. This conversation was about general media bias. I said in almost any space of time, one can find proof of bias. You focused on one story, the biased portion of which was subtle.

I focused on one article, which I picked so that we would have something specific to talk about.

Quote:

You claim it proves lack of bias as it is not unquestionably anti-Trump.

No, I don't believe I said that.

Quote:

I told you that it’s these subtle little drips which together form a broad bias. You’ve stalled on that.

This seems to be hard for you to understand, so let me try again.

Nothing in that article shows any anti-Trump bias.

The one thing you have identified as a sign that the authors are biased is that in the course of relating Trump's gross mischaracterizations about the value of trade with Saudi Arabia, they used the verb "inflated," which you say implies a malign intent for which there is no proof.

As a matter of usage, that's wrong. If you inflate a number, you make it larger. That is what Trump did. The word does not necessarily indicate bad intent.

It's also wrong in the context of this article, where the authors started by doing the opposite of what you complain about -- they accepted and reported as fact the White House's characterization of its own good intent in addressing the Saudi situation. So while you complain that they are biased for impugning the Trump's motives, they actually do the opposite.

You also ignore the broader context, which is that Trump has been telling mistruths about these facts for months now. Ordinarily, when someone tells mistruths in public again and again, is called on it, and keeps at it, we presume that they mean to deceive. You say Trump is too stupid to notice that he is wrong, a view you would surely call biased if expressed by a CNN reporter. Since ABC News is reporting today, per my earlier post, that Jared Kushner intentionally urged the administration of overstate the value of the Saudi arms sales, we can dispense with the notion that Trump just accidentally kept repeating massive falsities without meaning it.

If that one story is indicative -- and on that point, maybe it is, maybe it isn't -- then your claims of bias are frivolous. Separately, I asked you to find me a single example of the bias you attributed to CNN, and you couldn't do it.

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 03:55 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 519544)

Reporting in a biased manner is an intentional act. You cannot say the majority of the media biased against Trump, and working against him, is actually biased in favor of Trump because its biased reporting backfires and winds up aiding Trump.

This board may live in a post-intent world, and on some issues, that seemingly defective approach may, strangely, make sense. This is not one of those instances. Re bias: no intent, no bias. The effect, on which you’re focused, is another question. One strident progressives may school themselves on by googling the “law of unintended consequences.”

sebastian_dangerfield

11-26-2018 04:09 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 519547)

That is one way to put it. Another way to put it is that everything is subjective, and you see the facts suggesting "otherwise" much more than everyone else here. I think you've staked out a principled position that you are disinclined to attribute things to racism absent pretty strong confirmation. I'm not trying to argue with you about it right now, just to point out that your willingness to attribute political bias to members of the media stands in marked contrast.

I focused on one article, which I picked so that we would have something specific to talk about.

No, I don't believe I said that.

This seems to be hard for you to understand, so let me try again.

Nothing in that article shows any anti-Trump bias.

The one thing you have identified as a sign that the authors are biased is that in the course of relating Trump's gross mischaracterizations about the value of trade with Saudi Arabia, they used the verb "inflated," which you say implies a malign intent for which there is no proof.

As a matter of usage, that's wrong. If you inflate a number, you make it larger. That is what Trump did. The word does not necessarily indicate bad intent.

It's also wrong in the context of this article, where the authors started by doing the opposite of what you complain about -- they accepted and reported as fact the White House's characterization of its own good intent in addressing the Saudi situation. So while you complain that they are biased for impugning the Trump's motives, they actually do the opposite.

You also ignore the broader context, which is that Trump has been telling mistruths about these facts for months now. Ordinarily, when someone tells mistruths in public again and again, is called on it, and keeps at it, we presume that they mean to deceive. You say Trump is too stupid to notice that he is wrong, a view you would surely call biased if expressed by a CNN reporter. Since ABC News is reporting today, per my earlier post, that Jared Kushner intentionally urged the administration of overstate the value of the Saudi arms sales, we can dispense with the notion that Trump just accidentally kept repeating massive falsities without meaning it.

If that one story is indicative -- and on that point, maybe it is, maybe it isn't -- then your claims of bias are frivolous. Separately, I asked you to find me a single example of the bias you attributed to CNN, and you couldn't do it.

You’ve arbitrarily limited the scope of the drips to one article. That serves the point you’re trying to make, but comes just off a tad disingenuous.

Unless, of course, you suggest that when I said drips, I meant several subtle drips within one article. Or that I was not arguing that these drips are innumerable, and scattered throughout CNN’s reporting, in the majority of its articles.

You never watched Outfoxed, did you? You should. Back then, Fox cared. It’s cheerleading for war and the GOP was subtle — drip drip drip over a 24 hr. cycle. Now? It’s just bludgeoning Democrats shamelessly. In this regard, it’s a failure, as is, to a lesser extent, MSNBC. But CNN (and WaPo and the Times) are leaking out the bias as good pros at this sort of thing should. Drip drip drip...

ThurgreedMarshall

11-26-2018 04:43 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519548)

Reporting in a biased manner is an intentional act.

You can't possibly think this. Sometimes it is, but the whole point about bias in the media is that it is not intentional.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519548)

You cannot say the majority of the media biased against Trump, and working against him, is actually biased in favor of Trump because its biased reporting backfires and winds up aiding Trump.

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. 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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519548)

This board may live in a post-intent world, and on some issues, that seemingly defective approach may, strangely, make sense.

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.

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.

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?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519548)

This is not one of those instances. Re bias: no intent, no bias.

This is absolutely, completely ridiculous.

TM

Tyrone Slothrop

11-26-2018 05:44 PM

Re: We are all Slave now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 519548)

The media reports with all kinds of biases, some of which help Trump and some of which don't. You insist on focusing, to the exclusion of everything else, on the political leanings of reporters. Other biases that seem important include the bias towards assuming good faith on the part of sources, the bias in favor of official sources and against investigative reporting, media owners' political biases, and on on. It's like you've been conditioned to repeat GOP grievances instead of thinking for yourself.

And your first sentence is just wrong. Bias is not necessarily intentional.

Quote:

This board may live in a post-intent world, and on some issues, that seemingly defective approach may, strangely, make sense. This is not one of those instances. Re bias: no intent, no bias. The effect, on which you’re focused, is another question. One strident progressives may school themselves on by googling the “law of unintended consequences.”

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say, except that you don't have a response to what I keep saying.

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