Media outlets and political bias

[stui magpie]

<split from the "Coronavirus II: The Virus Strikes Back" thread. Thanks, David for BBMods.>

[Jezza]

All correct Stui, but "MUH MURDOCH PRESS".

Murdoch lives rent free in leftist brains.

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[eddiesmith]

This coming from a poster who was telling us all how great a certain Age journalist is and speaks the truth in his defence of Andrews

That’s Jon Faine, Victorian Government employee...

Interestingly enough he also in the same article says businesses will go under, but they do every year so it’s not a problem...?

[stui magpie]

[Pies4shaw]

So, a bloke sets himself up as a "media bias analyst" and in 2015 starts a website - next thing, everyone is referring to the site as if it has some verifiable authenticity or merit.

I'm not interested in the underlying discussion about whether this is Andrews' fault or Morrison's (the debate is arid because the issues are, with respect, somewhat more complex than that) - but that, right there, is the whole problem with the internet.

One problem with analyses of purported "media bias" is that they tend to rely heavily upon an assumption that there is some necessary thing called "being even-handed". That is, of course, a complete fallacy - some political positions are fundamentally stupid and do not warrant air-time. So, eg, just because some liar in a public office wants to label Biden as a "socialist" doesn't make that a topic worthy of "even-handed" pubic debate. No matter how often it is said, it remains risible. Any media oganisation that deals with such a proposition in an allegedly "even-handed" way is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

It is precisely that sort of analysis that has led to the resurgence of right-nutter views in mainstream politics. If the media did the right thing and just ignored the idiots - instead of "reporting" what they say and then getting 30 seconds from each "side" as to why a risible proposition is stupid/is the basis for a new world order, we'd all be better off.

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[stui magpie]

OK, so the Age has become right wing and you don't watch 9 News but it must be extreme right because. Your logic is impeccable.

If those delusions keep you warm at night, I'm happy for you, I've no interest in continuing a pointless argument.

[David]

I'll go in to bat for mediabiasfactcheck here – I've been happy to use it before, and I think it's a good basic resource, mostly, though I'd stop short of calling it an authoritative one.

I suspect, in this case, that some of The Guardian's (genuine) sloppiness is being overstated and some of The Herald Sun's understated, and that this might be a result of an international perspective (where The Guardian has a much higher profile and its errors are likely to be amplified). Otherwise, I feel the assessment of bias is fair in each case.

Once we acknowledge these sites' limitations (and clearly this one is a small-time project), they serve an important purpose in this age of fake news and media echo chambers – and it's somewhat inevitable that fact-checkers will make mistakes or fall foul of their own biases. I think mbfc probably could do with either more contributors or maybe more of a willingness to accept when they don't have enough data to fairly assess a publication, particularly an international one (on the ABC News page, for instance, they seem to be using a few cherry-picked op-ed headlines as evidence of publication bias, which seems an elementary mistake). One of Wikipedia's strengths is that there's a large and vibrant editorial community there to keep the site honest, which is adept at noticing errors and oversights and flagging pages that seem like they need more work.

On the broader topic, here's a good piece on some of the pitfalls of fact-checkers:

https://newrepublic.com/article/156039/political-fact-checkers-distort-truth

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Thanks for that David.

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[eddiesmith]

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[eddiesmith]

Was on your favourite Sky News, but there was also mention by Dan thanking him for coming up with the most recent campaign they ran