eglamkowski's Journal: pick-a-bias!

I was going to write today about how journalists always try to tell you not just the news, but how you're supposed to feel about it as well, and maybe I'll do that tomorrow, but then I saw that it's four years since Baghdad fell and I saw the headlines and I'm going to write about that instead.

So we're four years in Iraq. A sampling of headlines from news.google.com:

Thousands mark Saddam's fall

Shiite leader calls for Iraqis to join militia

Timeline: Four years of turmoil

Iraqis call for US forces to leave

Iraqis march in honor of Baghdad's fall

Rally marks anniversary of Baghdad's fall

Sadr-Backed Protests Urge US to Quit Iraq

Iraqis rally in Shiite holy cities for anti-American march

Shiite Cleric Urges Fight Against US

Just imagine a small town person who doesn't have internet access and only reads one or two newspapers. Obviously their view of Iraq would be severely distorted according to which of the headlines above he got. Some of them don't have any suggestion of anti-US sentiment, others have it but it would seem mild or harmless, others make it seem extremely virulent. Frankly, given the current state of what passes for journalism these days, and just how many "reporters" seem to just outright lie and make stuff up, and/or don't bother to do any fact checking (is there any meaningful difference between a reporter intentionally not bothering to fact check and their just outright lying?), I don't know what to believe any more. I don't even feel comfortable with the idea that the truth lies somewhere in between. I just don't know any more.

What do you do for news when ALL of the media outlets can no longer be trusted?

Or do you just give up on the news completely and glide through life blissfully unaware of anything outside your job and family?

A thought

[Shadow Wrought]

Would it be more technically accurate to refer to "the War in Iraq" as "the Occupation of Iraq?" I know Occupation has a far more negative connotation, but would it actually be a more technically accurate description since we are no longer at War with the Sovereign Nation of Iraq, but are still there in a military capacity, and, at least in a de facto sense, in charge?

Re:

[nizo]

Everyone has their own biases; I think an important part of every person's education should point that out (thank you sophomore english teacher!). If everyone did realize this (and suprisingly I think many people don't) the effectiveness of this kind of crap would be greatly diminished.

Re:

[StalinsNotDead]

I don't have biases.

I have prejudices.

Interpolate

[peacefinder]

"What do you do for news when ALL of the media outlets can no longer be trusted?"

If I really want to try to extract the Truth from news, the first thing I try to do is remind myself that it's not actually possible. :-)

After that, I read several sources with a variety of known or presumed biases, and try to separate the claimed facts from spin in each. This ideally leaves me with a small pool of generally-agreed facts - which I consider fairly reliable - and a mess of opinions. I then sort of take an unscien

Re:

[nizo]

So after gathering/parsing the daily news, what do you do with the remaining ten minutes of your day??

Re:

[eglamkowski]

sleep for 5 minutes, eat for 3 minutes and shower in 2 minutes :)

Re:

[peacefinder]

Well, I guess I didn't make it really clear how seldom I do this in a thorough way. Most issues don't strike me as critical enough for me to bother. (The Truth behind Anna Nicole's death? Not my problem.) It only applies if I see the need to really dig into the Truth of some particular news topic. Which, honestly, ain't all that often. (When it does happen you're right that it takes hours and hours of reading, though.)

The rest of the time I am a much more passive (if skeptical) news consumer... although I a

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

You mean you don't get all your news from the Oregonian? ;-)

Re:

[peacefinder]

I don't even get all my comics from the Oregonian anymore.

I might have kept in the habit of reading their website, but that's completely excerable. There's only so many times I'm willing to tell them I'm a 106-year-old woman from Antelope in order to see the second page of an article. :-)

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

Yeah, I've always been kind of curious where 11111, 22222, 33333, 44444, 55555, 66666, 77777, 88888, 99999, 00000, 12345, and 54321 zip codes actually are;-) There's no reason to only give them a single nonsensical datapoint. The sad thing is, Google News does a better job of finding stories on their website than they do. Even when its only a day old!

Easy

[robi2106]

I see what teh NY Times says, and then I look at the opposite of that. The opposite is probably closer to the truth than their version.

Actually I read the Wall Street Journal [slashdot.org]. They get things right almost all the time because they follow the time honored tradition of "following the money" because that is what greedy people do.

jason
(partly in jest..... but not quite).

Re:

[robi2106]

Oops.... forgot that /. mangles urls with out the http reference. Corrected here. [wsj.com]

Jason