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Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

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Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#251

Post by Kurtz79 »

bobbygoodlatte wrote: post #195
edem wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your problem with Reddit? Please elaborate because it works fine for me.

I'm not the OP, but I'd argue that Reddit's voting system discourages a diversity of opinions within a given thread or sub-reddit. Although moderators discourage the practice, most Redditors down-vote opinions they disagree with and up-vote those they agree with.

Just like in HN and 90% of forums on the Internet?

The only difference is that Reddit threads tend to be so huge that less popular comments get buried easily.

I believe the issue has more to do with the subreddit structure and user moderation, which make really easy to create one-sided echo chambers.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#252

Post by rdtsc »

circlefavshape wrote: post #210
tgb wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories on the left are prevalent. Anti-vaccination is the obvious one. There's plenty about GMOs and Monsanto. I had a health teacher in highschool who gave us an alternative "food pyramid" the only justification of why it was better being that it had been rejected by congress while the other one was accepted. She was obviously left-leaning and is where I'm getting most of these ideas. Anti nuclear power…

Anti-vaxxers are typically left-wing? Really?? Good lord America, you are so confusing

Yes, interestingly enough from what I've seen. Resorting to stereotypes imagine the everything organic / gluten free / herbal medicine type moms.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#253

Post by [deleted] »

circlefavshape wrote: post #210
tgb wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories on the left are prevalent. Anti-vaccination is the obvious one. There's plenty about GMOs and Monsanto. I had a health teacher in highschool who gave us an alternative "food pyramid" the only justification of why it was better being that it had been rejected by congress while the other one was accepted. She was obviously left-leaning and is where I'm getting most of these ideas. Anti nuclear power…

Anti-vaxxers are typically left-wing? Really?? Good lord America, you are so confusing

[deleted]

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#254

Post by afpx »

systemvanilla wrote: post #129
Dobbs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how NPR and Fox News can be compared in good faith. Yes NPR has a liberal bias, but for the most part it attempts to reasonably source its articles and publish a journalistically accurate news report. Fox News is not a news channel. They have one or two news programs mixed in with "entertainment". Sean Hannity is not news, but entertainment pretending to be news[^1]. [^1]: https://www.dailykos.com/storie…

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

Assuming that's true, do you have any theories on why people who seem to have liberal bias (++) end up pursuing journalism, research, and teaching?

(++): And, I'm not even sure what the colloquial definition of liberal means anymore. It seems like it's a word used to thought-shame people with whom one disagrees.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#255

Post by uncletaco »

mtberatwork wrote: post #239
ew6082 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to distinguish between NPR the human interest/artsy radio station and NPR News. NPR TV news hour is legitimately the most moderate and unbiased TV news left standing, at least when i watched it last (admittedly been a while).

I think you are referring to the PBS NewsHour. (PBS != NPR)

Nah. He's referring to Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Also, this entire conversation is really ignoring how networks like Fox News and NPR work. When they play to their audiences they're not really concerned with biases, they're concerned with playing to their audiences. Each network will probably guarantee its listeners/viewers 2-3 hours of solid reporting per day. For Fox News its when Brett Baier and Shep Smith come on. For NPR its Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

The websites on the other hand do traffic in pushing stories they believe their audience wants to hear, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms and I think all sides of this argument need to acknowledge that hard news happens only a minority of the time and the rest of the time is spent on soft news (infotainment, talk shows, etc.). I think its also important for us to be able to recognize that soft news is almost always going to be biased because its main purpose is to entertain you with information rather than inform you.

Also, NPR sits somewhere between cable and broadcast news. I say that because NPR, like broadcast news channels, has local affiliates all over the country that raise their own funding and do their own reporting. If I'm not mistaken its your local affiliate who chooses what you listen to for news and who buys programs throughout the day.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#256

Post by [deleted] »

afriend4lyfe wrote: post #246
[deleted] wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

>It's actually these anti-government, anti-establishment people usually spreading completely irrational fear. Those groups don't have access to the mainstream channels and platforms to spread their influence like the establishment does. More often than not, that same establishment will paint those groups as the perpetrators of everything that is wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#257

Post by rtpg »

refurb wrote: post #114
rndmize wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this perspective. When CNN gets a story wrong, the right creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong (Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on and on )... nothing happens. Nothing. It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia isn't that bad" before there was enoug…

... nothing happens That because of expectations. Everyone knows Breitbart is hard right. Even conservatives will admit that. Even Breitbart will admit that. CNN like to position itself as the news . You know, the straight shit. When they go off the rails people get pissed because they don't expect CNN to do that.

Can someone point to this massive liberal bias that CNN has besides "being anti-Trump"?

It just feels like people on the right have made liberal mean anti-Trump.... Which seems like a bad definition to stake your own ideology on.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#258

Post by NicoJuicy »

komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

My most appreciated newspaper ( in dutch) is "de tijd", found at http://www.tijd.be/

High quality articles about economics, politics and business related.

Interviews with interesting belgian people, good investigation. It's weird, but i can't relate to much of the online papers with their sometimes hyped articles.

PS. I have the paper subscription, not an online subscription, which is also possible.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#259

Post by rtpg »

afpx wrote: post #254
systemvanilla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

Assuming that's true, do you have any theories on why people who seem to have liberal bias (++) end up pursuing journalism, research, and teaching? (++): And, I'm not even sure what the colloquial definition of liberal means anymore. It seems like it's a word used to thought-shame people with whom one disagrees.

Re the liberal bias definition, this entire comments section has made me feel like this.

Liberal bias is thrown at media outlets that basically do no economic or deep policy coverage in the first place. How do you detect CNNs liberal bias between two pieces on shark week??

And it's total overton window BS too. Loads of NPR listeners will be like "yeeeeees of course there's liberal bias on NPR" but Fox News / Breitbartsters treat their stuff as some sort of objective truth.

/Rant

Trite answer to your question: younger people living in cities tend to be Democrats. Those people end up being reporters in places like DC (95% Democrats).

Why would the nation's capital end up being so democratic? One has to wonder

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#260

Post by dsmithatx »

specialist wrote: post #161
banned1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

"In a world of two echo chambers... it's up to you to make up your mind." Fox News: "We report, you decide." aka gossip. Not to be confused with journalism. If you think Koch funded NPR is liberal, Democracy Now! and Thom Hartmann will make your head explode.

Luckily it's not just a world of two echo chambers and, I don't have to decide between delusions.

Science: We discover great things, you get smarter.

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