Re: [WAR]: not about WMD

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 14:49:03 MDT

  • Next message: Brian Atkins: "Re: Trichlorosucrose, was Re: Experiences with Atkins diet"

    Harvey Newstrom wrote:
    > Mike Lorrey wrote,
    >
    >>--- Michael Wiik <mwiik@messagenet.com> wrote:
    >>
    >>>BTW, I also visited Media Research Center's report on media coverage
    >>>at http://www.mediaresearch.org/specialreports/2003/warnews1.
    >
    > asp, ut
    >
    >>>apparently missed the sections where they did comparable analysis
    >
    > to
    >
    >>>FAIR (all I saw was a bunch of opinions and anecdotal evidence).
    >>
    >>Terry Colvin posted MRC's report card on media coverage of the war
    >>right on this list. Fox scored best with a B+. ABC had a D+.
    >
    >
    > The Media Research Center is not a neutral source. It is a conservative
    > group established specifically for, in their own words, "Documenting,
    > Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias." They are against
    > objective news reporting, and praised FOX news for "rejecting the
    > standard liberal idea that objective war news requires an indifference
    > to whether America succeeds or fails."
    >
    > Read that last line again! They reject the idea that objectivity
    > requires the news reporter to be indifferent to the story being reported.
    > They deliberately choose the news that they want to report based
    > on how it makes America appear. They praise FOX for "correctly"
    > (their words) portraying U.S. military efforts as successful, while
    > blasting ABC when it "indulged anti-war protesters with free war
    > time."

    In point of fact, objectivity generally does not require that
    one is uninterested in what one is attempting to be objective
    about. It only requires that respect for the facts overrides
    preference and personal interest. If it requried actual
    indifference then one could not expect to understand the facts
    of anything unless indifferent to it. This clearly would limit
    rationality substantially.

    An objective reporter is one who reports the facts regardless of
       the reporter's preferences in the situation.

    In context the MRC is not interested in objectivity. But they
    were not incorrect to say that indifference is not necessary in
    order to be objective.

    >
    > Their grading system is directly proportional to how well a news
    > agencies sticks to the party line and refrains from presenting dissenting
    > viewpoints. This kind of government-controlled media scares me,
    > no matter whose favorite political party is in power.
    >

    As well it should. Corrupting the information feeds we all
    depend on should in my opinion be a capital offense.

    - samantha

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Apr 28 2003 - 14:52:52 MDT