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How to Mislead with Facts

consilienceproject.org

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Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#161

Post by croon »

denton-scratch wrote: post #49
croon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very fact of being unbiased, or claiming to be, is quite a big claim and the burden of proof of being unbiased should lie on the side that claims being so. This is a ridiculous claim. You can't prove a negative. If they are being biased, it's on the person making that claim to provide examples/proof. Analogue: "Prove you're not hitting your wife", etc.

Nobody's unbiased. The best you can hope for is a source that wears its biases on its sleeve. Then you can judge how those biases might have influenced information from that source. The least-reliable sources tend to proclaim their "neutrality", i.e. they deliberately conceal their biases.

The best sources I've encountered are the ones where they source their information to some form of verifiable data (not blog/youtube/rag), lay out their reasoning, fix/own mistakes, have clear information about who they are, and their information checks out outside their sphere. Neither of these involve their stating any biases.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#162

Post by CountDrewku »

ncmncm wrote: post #31

The New York Times mastered all this long ago. It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page, some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all. Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire lack of any…

No post body was provided.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#163

Post by CountDrewku »

amelius wrote: post #155
zaphar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most effective form of lying is lying by omission. It's harder to detect, easier to defend as just ignorance, and is perhaps more effective than outright false claims.

Why don't we make a law around it? I'm tired of politicians weaseling themselves out of difficult situations by saying "oh, I forgot about that". It's your job to bring important, relevant information to the table, damn it.

No post body was provided.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#164

Post by croon »

inglor_cz wrote: post #123
croon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my point. Everyone is unbiased until pointed out where/how they are biased. Maybe that is every action of every person on the planet, but in my biased opinion some are clearly less biased than others, and it's not that hard to compare.

This sounds like presumption of innocence in criminal court, but being biased isn't a guilt (and certainly shouldn't carry any penalty), it is, at least in my view, similar to being a left-handed or a right-handed person.

I wasn't focusing on guilt. I pointed out the logical fallacy in you stating the burden of proof was on the fact checker.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#165

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #154
jimmydoreornot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur that the term "shaping public opinion" is more accurate in many cases, but not in others. There are enough stories where the author clearly understood something about the story and attempted to convey something else to the reader for political/cultural effect. For example, not reporting on the race of a black perpetrator but always reporting on the race of a black victim. There is a less activist way of pres…

The most noticeable example of activism at work is the difference in coverage (and condemnation) between January 6th and the CHAZ/CHOP event. While both events included the occupation of a government building, one is seen as an insurrection and the other is more of a protest. I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a…

> I don't want to start a tangent comparing every aspect of the two, but needless to say, there are some big commonalities that are covered in a very different light depending on one's partisan outlook.

The idea that there are "big commonalities" between these two is a claim that only makes sense given a fairly specific worldview.

While I can understand the worldview that identifies the commonalities and thus finds inconsistencies in the way the NYT covered them both, I also happen to have a worldview in which the two incidents are not fundamentally related at all other than under an extremely broad category, so broad that it's not particularly meaningful. Armed with that worldview, I don't find anything inconsistent in the coverage.

Anyway, I'm a European by birth. I don't buy into the nominal American dream of objective news coverage, not in any way shape or form. Journalistic integrity to me has almost nothing to do with whether one's journalism is free from bias. You can argue that the only meaningful definition is the one claimed by a journalism outlet about its own work, and I think that's fair. But I don't really see anywhere that the NYT claims to to have no worldview that informs and structures its work.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#167

Post by mrjangles »

zaphar wrote: post #58
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying. Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a few.

The most effective form of lying is lying by omission. It's harder to detect, easier to defend as just ignorance, and is perhaps more effective than outright false claims.

Far far more effective is lying by implication. This happens almost all the time. The article is written in such a way as to imply something is true; for example talking in such a way that said thing is obviously true and everyone knows it, when in fact it isn't true at all. This allows them to make the reader think something is true without lying, and often without even having the reader question it, and it allows the media to not even have to try to supply evidence at all.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#168

Post by mrjangles »

ksdale wrote: post #130
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying. Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a few.

It's always interesting to me, the mental gymnastics people will do to convince themselves that they're not doing something they believe to be morally wrong. Like, if your intent is to mislead, what do you care if you're technically telling the truth?

It isn't mental gymnastics, the media has two very good and intentional reasons for doing this. Number one is to avoid being sued while still being able to get away with misleading their audience. Number two is that it gives the zealots following their cause to clear their conscience by saying "see this article was factually correct" when, on the rare occasion, someone bothers to call them out on the lie.

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#169

Post by ren_engineer »

ncmncm wrote: post #31

The New York Times mastered all this long ago. It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page, some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all. Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire lack of any…

The NYT won a Pulitzer for helping the Soviets cover up millions starving to death. They've always been a propaganda rag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...

Re: How to Mislead with Facts

#170

Post by bogdanoff_2 »

ouid wrote: post #124

This conversation isn't formal enough to be meaningful. If you want to talk meaningfully about how "facts" are used, you need to be able to invoke any notion at all of propositions and implications. It doesn't matter if your implications are mathematical in nature or scientific in nature or just correlation, facts exist in the structure imposed by implication. And facts without an implication structure are useless .…

Often B is not a well defined statement, but a poorly defined ball of emotions and value judgements.
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