Remember how Rebekah Jones became a whistleblower and hero by standing up to Florida fudging their covid numbers? Well, it wasn't true.

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tstorm823

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Hey, something I agree with! (Well, aside from CNN being "slightly left", but that is relative.) A caveat: a socialist's hypothetically fairer coverage would almost certainly be more persuasive at shifting viewers left than CNN's blather-- even viewers to the right of CNN. Because CNN, like most mainstream media, is breathtakingly shallow, often shockingly light on detail, and has ideological and financial reasons to ignore relevant facts/stories which might support left-wing arguments.
You mean they have reasons to ignore stories that support some left-wing arguments.
Heh, well, not if they're also biased against the (further, if you must) left. Which they definitely are.
I know people here love the idea of moving the Overton window, and if such an effect is real, you definitely benefit from CNN. They work very hard to make right-wing positions (other than having money) as socially unacceptable as they can.
 
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Seanchaidh

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You mean they have reasons to ignore stories that support some left-wing arguments.
OK.

I know people here love the idea of moving the Overton window, and if such an effect is real, you definitely benefit from CNN.
I question the utility of narrowing the Overton window in both directions. I don't think corporate centrism wins against the further right in the long term.

They work very hard to make right-wing positions (other than having money) as socially unacceptable as they can.
You're not necessarily wrong, but, example?
 

Trunkage

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To the credit of Vox, just in my opinion, the quality of their content has gone up the last few months. They've much more successfully navigated the post-Trump media environment than a place like CNN. I'm sure it has something to do with Vox being generically left and not just the direct mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, but credit to them for some good work.
I used to listen to Vox during Obama's time as they were generally more accurate about him than either left or right MSM
 

tstorm823

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You're not necessarily wrong, but, example?
Taking a look at https://www.cnn.com/politics, at this particular moment, half of the top stories are about the Jan 6 riot, which of course is characterized as the US Capitol insurrection. All but one of those stories, without even reading beyond the headline, are trying to tie Republicans to it. It's a concerted effort to say "look at this bad thing and these bad Republicans who all support this bad thing." CNN does that all the time. But that's Democrats vs Republicans, which I know is the point, and left vs right is a consequence of the partisan nonsense, so let's pick something talking about policy.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/texas-legislature-politics/index.html
Starting with the headline, the bias is already there. "Conservative Agenda Dominates"; There are lots of words they could have used in place of agenda, but they chose the version often used with a negative connotation, "they have an agenda". There are lots of words to describe winning, but they went with "dominates", a decidedly aggressive word. Then to describe the Democratic positions, they describe is as "Hopes", a purely positive word. They could have just as well said "Conservative priorities prevail, despite Democratic challenge in Texas", which would be equally awful in one sense because neither headline is particularly informative, but at least it would take the bias out of it.

And then the article itself, after a lead in about how Democrats had hoped to make gains in Texas, is a piece all about how the Texas legislature is moving to the right. They briefly mention a few policies, abortion restrictions/gun rights/not teaching CRT, never giving any justification for how those policies are any more conservative than they've ever been in Texas. And like, they've got this "shifting to the right" narrative set up before they put down a single word for the article, because they're interviewing people at an event and explicitly asking them if they feel Texas Republicans are going to far to the right. Again, no relative comparison to justify the claim. Interview a Democrat, "We've just swung totally to the right". Stopping for a moment, looking at things done lately in the Texas legislature, skimming past all the bills congratulating or memorializing someone, we've got something about insurance claims from ice storms, a bill letting physical therapists do more without referral, a minor change to the language on filing fees to get on election ballots, publicly recognizing a genocide, a bill regulating pharmacy benefit managers, a thing allowing charity raffles at rodeos, yada yada yada. Not really any reason to see all that as anything other than business as usual, hardly enough to justify "It's been like steamrolling of all these red meat wedge issues and not focused on what we came in here to deal with." But that's what they see as fit to print.

It's not subtle what they're doing there. They characterize Republicans, who generally speaking could not stand more still on most policies, as pushing further to the right. Why? They want the Democrats at the center and Republicans at the fringe. To CNN, the Democratic Party is the center of the overton window, which means half of that window belongs to people left of the Democrats. That's not done to benefit someone like you, but it does, and that's why you do it too. Just like CNN, you push the notion that Democrats are centrists, because you're trying to pull your position into the window of acceptable opinions. The goal is to slide the whole discourse one step to the side, where the right becomes far-right, the center-right Republicans become the right, centrists become center-right, the center-left Democrats become the center, the general left becomes center left, and far-left opinions sneak their way into the window of acceptable discourse. CNN does it because they want Democrats to own the center, but it still benefits the far-left, who get to pretend to be totally reasonable based on the same paradigm.
 

Phoenixmgs

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Well good for you, you're wrong.
That's how bias is rated in America. You don't have to be for say slavery to lean hard right and you don't have to be for leaving absolutely no carbon footprint to be hard left.


1622246849557.png
 

Avnger

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That's how bias is rated in America. You don't have to be for say slavery to lean hard right and you don't have to be for leaving absolutely no carbon footprint to be hard left.


View attachment 3840
Any "bias chart" that ranks Jacobin and CNN as equivalent is either Onion-level satire or made in a laughably inept manner.
 
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tstorm823

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This chart still has issues, but it's not face-value nonsense like the one posted above.
Personally, I've always thought that one was face-value nonsense. The implication that no reporting is both biased and top-grade is dubious, but the implication that nothing is politically neutral and crap quality is face-value nonsense.
 

Seanchaidh

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Propaganda/Original Fact Reporting
Propaganda/Fact Reporting
Propaganda/Complex Analysis OR Mix of Fact Reporting and Analysis
Propaganda/Analysis
Propaganda/Opinion; Fair Persuasion
Propaganda/Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion
etc.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Good lord, who gives a shit? Someone moaned on twitter and acted a bit inconsistently. Who fucking cares?

My only point has been that this thread claimed it had something definitive, but it didn't. And people have been arguing for page after page, insisting she's really untrustworthy blah-blah-blah, as if that's of any relevance. What a lot of nothing.
You're in a thread arguing about it.
She's literally the only source of the claims.
Being inconsistent and unclear is a very big red flag as when such things have happened before precedent has shown people were lying.

The definitive thing here is we should put big red flags round any article saying about false numbers etc that stem from her claims especially those claiming it definitively happened. So yes the definitive here is the pieces claiming definitively something happened have been definitively thrown into doubt or should be for anyone following the evidence and claims so far.
 

Trunkage

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Any "bias chart" that ranks Jacobin and CNN as equivalent is either Onion-level satire or made in a laughably inept manner.
Well, they both are on the 'left'. It's just that CNN are Jacobin are totally different lefts. It's the problem of only using 2 axes. Eg. normal conservative is not really like reactionary conservative.
 

Silvanus

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You're in a thread arguing about it.
She's literally the only source of the claims.
Being inconsistent and unclear is a very big red flag as when such things have happened before precedent has shown people were lying.

The definitive thing here is we should put big red flags round any article saying about false numbers etc that stem from her claims especially those claiming it definitively happened. So yes the definitive here is the pieces claiming definitively something happened have been definitively thrown into doubt or should be for anyone following the evidence and claims so far.
No, I'm not in a thread about whether Jones is untrustworthy or not. I'm in a thread that claims we definitively know she's lying.

And all the rest of the guff about why we shouldn't trust her, why other articles are shit, etc etc, is completely irrelevant to that. We haven't had any definitive proof.

Taking a look at https://www.cnn.com/politics, at this particular moment, half of the top stories are about the Jan 6 riot, which of course is characterized as the US Capitol insurrection. All but one of those stories, without even reading beyond the headline, are trying to tie Republicans to it.
So, no issue so far, then...
 
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bluegate

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Oh lookie here, how quaint.

Someone better report this thread and its insights to whoever decided on that one!
 

Avnger

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Oh lookie here, how quaint.

Someone better report this thread and its insights to whoever decided on that one!
But those 2 hour youtube videos about librulz being DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC couldn't have lied to me. Reality is fake news because it doesn't match my OBJECTIVE feelings!
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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No, I'm not in a thread about whether Jones is untrustworthy or not. I'm in a thread that claims we definitively know she's lying.

And all the rest of the guff about why we shouldn't trust her, why other articles are shit, etc etc, is completely irrelevant to that. We haven't had any definitive proof.



So, no issue so far, then...
Well so far we don't definitively know the story she helped spark should even be considered a story to begin with.
There's also no evidence she is telling the truth as now she's objecting to media reporting the same thing other places have been reporting for a while so not even her word supports the claims anymore lol


Oh lookie here, how quaint.

Someone better report this thread and its insights to whoever decided on that one!
That's based on the claims she's making not on if the claims have truth to them.

Also the claims by her own words don't include being asked to delete data lol
 

Silvanus

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Well so far we don't definitively know the story she helped spark should even be considered a story to begin with.
There's also no evidence she is telling the truth as now she's objecting to media reporting the same thing other places have been reporting for a while so not even her word supports the claims anymore lol
Yep. All of which is irrelevant to my point.
 

Kwak

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Ok so no story needs any actual evidence to claim it's true anymore according to you?

point = "I'm not in a thread about whether Jones is untrustworthy or not. I'm in a thread that claims we definitively know she's lying."


How does that become 'no story needs any actual evidence to claim it's true anymore' in your head when it is explicitly making the opposite point?
 
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