From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 29 2004 - 17:22:06 BST
Platt asked:
>Please tell me you also admit Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Hannity make no
>claims to "objective reporting" but freely and openly reveal their
>conservative point of view whereas in contrast the NY Times and CBS cling
>to their blatantly false claim of being unbiased and under the lie of
>"objectivity" spew their liberal propaganda.
>
>Please . . .
>
>Platt
I do believe that pure objectivity is a myth, yes. In this sense all news
stories should always be critically read and examined. Indeed, critical
thinking is perhaps the one skill most lacking in the citizenry. Certainly
as well, as individuals we tend to gravitate towards media channels that
reconfirm our worldview. While this fracture was problematic in the past, I
believe it is devastating in current times. It has led to, among many other
maladies, the dichotomies we argued about earlier. What we end up with, is
two media channels, one propagandizing conservativism, the other
liberalism, both knowingly distorting the issues to increase their own
power, while claiming to be objective and "balanced", both villainizing the
other and heroifying themselves. Discourse ceases. Critical thinking ends.
The issues cease to be important, labels become everything. Whoever shouts
the loudest is right.
As to your point about these people "openly revealing their conservative
point of view", O'Reilly claims to be an "independent", something any
critical listener would see as a falsehood. So his distortion leaves people
with the idea that he just "reasons" his way to a conservative viewpoint
every time. Pure coincidence, I'm sure. Indeed, the whole "Fair and
Balanced" slogan of Fox is ridiculous. Limbaugh, granted, is open about his
conservative viewpoint, I'll give you that. But what bothers me about the
"right wing bias" is that it bills itself as being an "objective bias".
That is, to be biased towards the right is to be more objective, to be
biased to the left is to be biased towards lies and deceit.
You, Platt, may not believe these biases align this way (we may be
critical-thinking brothers-in-arms), but many, many people I speak with do.
Just earlier this week on the Hannity radio broadcast, a caller said (this
is near verbatim), "thank god there are people like you [hannity] who fight
the liberal media to bring us the truth". Hannity's response, "Thank you,
sir. It's certainly not easy, but someone has to do it". This theme is
repeated over and over again by callers to his, Limbaugh's and O'Reilly's
programs.
This witnesses the death of critical thinking, and the reliance on very
narrow media outlets to provide us with "truth", and the false belief that
"my bias" is somehow a "non-bias", while "others' bias" is deceitful is
dangerous. And the only ones who win? Not us common folk.
Arlo
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Oct 29 2004 - 17:27:28 BST