171–180 of 964 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly Mormons are 2% of the US population (twice the Muslim %), and I can't think of a single openly Mormon character in any TV show I've ever seen.
Gary on South Park. Of course, that was 18 years ago. There's also a few very minor Mormon characters on The Expanse.
I have been reading daily news for 50 years. When I first started reading the news, it was objective. It portrayed facts with little opinion. Then during the Reagan presidency, I noticed a trend towards liberal bias in the media. This is well documented by MRC.org. To counter this, conservative talk radio was born, and Fox news was created. In the din of infinite media outlets, the major media outlets must stand out…
What I continue to be surprised by is how the left-leaning sources keep denying their liberal bias. Fox news more or less admits to being right-leaning, but CNN is still insisting that they're unbiased, which is almost comical. I think that somehow left-biased types really, honestly, believe they're actually considering both sides of every issue, and just coming to the conclusion that "reality has a liberal bias".
There are no left-leaning major news outlets in the US (the nature of capitalism assures that; you can’t get the kind of capitalist backing for anti-capitalist positions required to be a major media source), only far-right and center-right, and even the center-right ones treat targets to their left much worse than those their right.
And if there was a left-leaning outlet, their bias would be left, not liberal.
> Fox news more or less admits to being right-leaning
Only recently, in the Trump era, did Fox drop “Fair and Balanced” for “Standing Up For What's Right”.
> but CNN is still insisting that they're unbiased
That's because Fox is marketing to people who see themselves as on the Right and CNN is marketing to people who identify as centrist, non-ideological, or above the fray (who are largely the pro-status quo center-right.) Both label according to the identity group they are marketing to.
I am starting to think that it isn't really the "news" but the commentary. Most sites will cover many of the same events. There will be different focuses but a large percentage of the information is the same. But I recently visited my senior citizen parents and got some exposure to Fox News. During their commentary shows they just throw outrage after outrage at the wall and see what sticks. One example was trying to…
Yep. We’re all addicted to “rage-ahol” [1], but it gets eyeballs which means they can charge more for ads.
What’s worse IMHO is that we consume so much “news” that we can do nothing about [2], and I believe that contributes to people feeling quite helpless, and learning that all they can do is nothing.
[1] Homer Simpson https://youtu.be/JKRn2nEw7rY
[2] Fires, car chases, etc. And even if there is, indirectly, something we could do, the reporting never mentions it.
An underrated way to get out of your echo chamber is to actually talk to people in person. I lean fairly conservative, while my wife and her friends are very liberal. Whenever we happen to talk about political topics, most of the time we end up understanding where each other are coming from, even if we still don't agree.
Perhaps your political viewpoints are fairly mild compared to mainstream conservative discourse? It's difficult to have civil discourse with someone who says your identify (or the identify of those you love) should be outlawed or otherwise severely restricted by the state. That's been a core tenet of conservative politics and policy for several years now and I do not have the intellectual tools nor the emotional stre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Christmas doesn’t signify religion in America. And I can’t remember the last time I saw church in a movie that wasn’t a comedy using the setting for a set-up
> Christmas doesn’t signify religion in America Yes it does...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Christmas doesn’t signify religion in America Yes it does...
I grew up going to a school maybe 20% practicing Christian. Everyone celebrated christmas, got and gave gifts, had family dinners around then, etc.
Considering everything I was told about America, I was surprised to see that it is a Christian nation (I expected it to not be because of nominal separation of church and state). Instead, many laws are based on Christianity, leaders invoke the Christian god for justification for actions, and the state has official holidays for Christian events.
Modeling America as a Christian nation led to a more accurate prediction of reality.
This has led to less surprise on my part than most to see that local governments were amenable to bending to Christianity a lot more than others. SF has recently made specific parking laws for churches that close the streets. No such policy exists for synagogues, in comparison. Some were surprised. But I wasn’t. I expect governments at all levels in America to act to privilege Christianity.
After all, in action, America is a Christian nation. In practice, it is indistinguishable from the UK which has a de-jure (and de-facto) state religion.
I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
After quitting reddit I'm often oblivious to clickbait flamebait minutiae that my colleagues all get worked up over.
Also- are there any reputable conservative print news sources?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how only 1% of American film characters are identifiably Muslim ; however, nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious…
"(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])" Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot, and there's a lot of political discussion about them. It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional por…
I'm more interested in them making more of an effort at a good story.
> "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she says, "you don't understand the issue." I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues. (Ironically the search for counterarguments would often strengthen my position because they would turn out to be quite weak. Nevertheless I think that the exercise is important.) I th…
It's a nice quote, but I don't find it accurate for all topics. Should I be trying to figure out how to make passionate arguments for the Q Conspiracy nuttiness? There are lots of antivaxx conspiracy theories that are pretty close to mainstream in parts of the US - should I be trying to figure out how to make a passionate argument for those?
For many of these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part should probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics - "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Christmas isn't Christian
Actually, I would flip this and say that going to church weekly is not a necessary condition for being within Christian sphere of influence. Xmas is most certainly Christian.
... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.
I didn’t grow up believing in Jesus, but I definitely believed in Santa Claus.