22 Comments

Just as important as the bias in reporting and commentary is the bias in what's actually covered, for how long and how that information is disseminated. The Hunter Biden story is a great example of MSM attempting to memory hole an issue in favor of their guy with the active collusion of big tech.

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The absence of news is bias too. So let’s all go to our comfy echo chambers and consume..

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Acknowledging viewer/consumer bias is a big point. I wonder how much that fuels the news companies and their adherence to narratives that seem to be continually woven into the coverage of stories.

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All of you crazies now want to go to the time of Bishop Berkeley and exchange private research notes with everyone, After all Rush Limbaugh has said it to the relief of the riff raff on the right that everone has a right to his own subjective truth and there is no called objective truth!! But then there are two questions, number one there are people who went to school of journalism and took up jobs and they report to their different agencies. How can they even think of lying? I mean you know how difficult it is for co-conspirators to lie? Their differences in details could never get covered up. I mean those who on the right have jobs and businesses would understand the need to respect each others jobs. As for the rest of the basket cases they go to church and just depend on handouts and blame the devil for everything!! Senator Kennedy asked Facebook why can't you let people express whatever views they have? As long as some people want to hear them it should be fine!! How come the Trump platform has not been able to get beyond the faint squeaking and squawking that has stirred you to wake up from slumber and blame the news. I think American kids are being prepared by the right to live in Jones Town and Waco. Dreaming about nuking others all the time and singing ballads in memory of Papa Trump who by his own admission had it all till the China virus got him by the balls!! and the Biden punched him again in his weak spot.!! And that was no fake news!!

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There is no objective doubt about anything you've brought forth today. Of course, we are not living in an objective era. Reality seems to have taken a back seat to hysteria, extreme partisanship with corresponding agendas and religious-like fervor with giant leaps of faith required...no...demanded of all. So how do we move past this? Any "golden age" of journalism, if it ever existed, is well behind us. From whence may come our societal " chill pill"? It would be nice if everyone could subscribe to BG Commentary and The Dispatch but of course that will never happen. Now what?

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The problem is that conservatives and right wingers have consistently corroded trust in the idea of “objective facts” for years now, and now we’re seeing the disastrous outcome of that. Bernie I’ve long thought your idea of “bias”, like most conservatives on this issue, to be self-serving and extremely dishonest. Let’s take reporting on global warming. For years, decades even, mainstream media has been reporting on the dangers of global warming, and the facts of it. Not enough in my opinion. But ANYTIME they would you’d get whining from conservatives how BIASED the media is etc, only reporting on “liberal” causes. So much so that they actually had to change the terminology for it from “global warming” to “climate change”, to make people feel more comfortable with the concept I guess. Well as we’re seeing the world literally burn up in 2022, with devastating heat waves and floods and storms causing unprecedented destruction, something we’ve seen for at least the last 10 years, is there any freaking doubt the harm humans have caused to our planet from pollution and overconsumption, or any freaking doubt global warming is a reality that NEEDS to be dealt with? But because of conservatives insistence that ANY reporting on issues they don’t like to hear about is simply “biased”, regardless of how fact based it is, this idea of bias has been planted in the public psyche much to our peril. It is now most likely too late to reverse the effects of global warming because for too many years the reality of it has been dismissed as “liberal bias”. So basically Bernie, while this is only one example, it seems to me that more often than not what you and most conservatives call “liberal bias” is just the media simply reporting facts. Maybe they’re facts you don’t want to hear, but they are still facts.

No the real danger concerning the public’s trust of facts and the media as I see it is how this consistent history of denial and dismissiveness by the right has now led to the mass delusional state that the Republican Party and electorate currently finds itself in where they ACTUALLY think that the person who won the presidency, by 9 million votes, actually didn’t win the election. If that mass denial of something as basic as the outcome of an election doesn’t concern and scare you more than this sensationalized and misguided idea of “media bias” does then I’d suggest you go back and read your history books. Politicians who exploit peoples fear and anger and make them believe something is true that actually isn’t true, like say that the Jews are responsible for all that’s wrong in the world, leads to far greater evil outcomes than a sometimes flawed media that I’d say 95% of the time gets it right does.

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I’m wondering how the perception of journalists can be changed? What is the solution to this problem? As you point out, I’m not sure most consumers want, or even value less biased media coverage. And since clicks and views drive revenue, media companies are incentivized to give consumers what they want. I’m discouraged and fear it can’t be fixed.

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