What news outlet/resource informs, and doesn't try to influence?

Hmm...no, I didn't say that. I'd like to just hear all of the facts, period. I don't believe that we should make the mistake of crediting any one administration/party when things go right, or lay blame on any one administration/party when things take a turn for the worse. We only delude ourselves into believing that one party is heroic and deserving of being placed upon a pedestal, while the other is a villain, don't you think? Any governmental victories and mistakes are a result of the collective decisions made by Repubs and Democrats, at varying times in history. (my opinion)

News anchors are name calling and using ad homs during their broadcasts, I've noticed. If someone dubs Trump ''an idiot,'' that's not necessarily an objective fact - just one pundit's opinion. (even if I may agree, it doesn't make that stand-alone statement, a fact.)

If any one party is ''bad,'' no one would need to influence my thinking to that end. Unless there is an omission of facts of course, and all of the facts are not available to the public, then I wouldn't be able to make an informed decision.

Who is responsible for ''fake news,'' in your opinion? Do you believe that fake news is even a thing?

 

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Markets cannot regulate themselves. They do "direct" their markets. The alternative is central control.

No, I'm not. You are making a distinction that doesn't need to be made in this case, given the point that I was making. They are both still using central control rather than market control.

Castro hasn't not helped his people by the way.

 

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You are confusing central control of an economy with central regulation of markets and capitalistic endeavor.
Markets don't control themselves - without governmental regulation (or great good fortune in circumstances, which is temporary), they degenerate, stop functioning as "free" or "competitive".

Another alternative is government regulation in defense of established free markets - including breaking up monopolies, trusts, and organized criminal or financial domination, as well as taxing away accumulated wealth beyond a point.

He saved them from the fate of their neighbors - in Haiti, in Central America, etc - and did so under very difficult circumstances, with US organized crime influencing US politics to bring the entire weight of US influence down on him. He survived more than 600 assassination attempts and a full blown embargo enforced by the world's most powerful navy from a base on Cuba itself, while bringing literacy and modern medical care (and competent emergency response, to hurricanes and the like) to the entire population - including black people.
Compare the hurricane response of Cuba to that of US governed Puerto Rico or New Orleans, for example.
Yes, he quickly became a dictator after his overtures to the US were rejected and military assault begun - that was bad. But that was the fate of US favored neighbors as well - and worse: They got the jails and the thug police and the oppression and the corruption and the centrally (corporate) run economy, without the doctors or teachers or clean water.
- - -

Please look up, and remember, the meaning of the term "ad hominem argument". Correct use of that term will occasionally save you from appearing to post rightwing Republican swill (the Republican swillmongers universally and characteristically misuse the term, as you did there).

Meanwhile, consider the real life situation we face in the US: If somebody refuses to dub Trump (or one of his many hired mouths, such as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders) a liar when they lie, they have failed to report objective fact. The New York Times, for example, became famous for the many euphemisms and circumlocutions and weasel words it printed instead of the objective terms "lie", "liar", and so forth.

Similarly with terms such as "racist", "accused rapist", "philanderer", "racketeer", "swindle", and the like.

How would you evaluate the New York Times news reporting in that regard - as a righteous avoidance of "namecalling", or a cowardly refusal to report facts while reporting opinions instead, thereby influencing their readers via biased and inaccurate terminology?

 

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I'm not confusing anything. I'm not arguing about the need for government regulation of a capitalistic economy.

Markets control the flow of goods. Governments regulate the rules and regulations.

Regarding the distinction between left and right wing dictators...there is no distinction as it relates to their control of the economy. It's not market driven in all those cases I listed and that leads to their downfall.

Your arguments for Castro are not good ones. He was a dictator and they would have been better off without his long run even with the positives you listed. Ask all the people whose property he confiscated whether they are better off because of Castro. Your arguments are weak in this particular case. I think that's because you have fixed points that you always want to argue for and you attempt the justify the underlying facts to fit those points.

Capitalism (with all of its problems) is the only system that has changed the status quo for near universal poverty to something more. Let's be real about that.

 

The topic was government regulation and defense of markets, including sufficient taxation of the corporate and wealthy to prevent the damaging growth of wealth inequality.

When you lose track of the argument, your syntax gets muddled.
The issue here is not one of governments regulating regulations, or me somehow "justifying facts" (whatever that means), but of the necessary liberal government regulation and taxation of markets, corporate behavior, and the wealthy.

You mean my observations of the comparative benefits of Castro's insurrection victory and tenure - to most Cubans and the country as a whole - are somehow not accurate?
They are.
Castro is respected, worldwide, even by many of those who (like me) despise his descent into autocratic oppression and police state thuggery, for saving Cuba from the worse fate of those who were defeated by US corporate capitalist interests.
Compare Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc etc etc - more than a dozen examples. Compare the hurricane damages and aftermaths in Cuba with the otherwise similar storm strikes in Puerto Rico or New Orleans, with the recent hit of Yutu in the Marianas, etc.

Cuba has been better off, along with almost everybody living in that country, for decades now. That is demonstrable fact, by any sane measure of wellbeing. Compare Cuba with its neighbors and peers - and realize, face the fact squarely, that this was accomplished while the US exerted its enormous power and influence to make Cuba a ruin and a disaster, regardless of the misery visited upon its people in doing that. Cuba has been handicapped, severely, by the US, and still its governance has proved better and more competent than the governments of its peers.

Only in combination with socialist public infrastructure and heavy liberal government regulation, including onerous taxation and restriction of the corporate and wealthy. Without liberal government and socialist public infrastructure capitalism has inevitably and everywhere produced or maintained servitude/slavery, authoritarian oppression, as in America for two hundred and fifty years.

 

Where has there been a better outcome where capitalism (in whatever form) wasn't present?

The people who most despise Castro are those were able to leave. I don't know who you've been talking to.

 

You both ^^ illustrate the thread topic pretty well. Who to believe? I can have my own opinions based on facts, but if we're honest, the news pundits go back and forth as you two are, and soon the discussion becomes less about the facts, and more opinion.

I read your comments, iceaura. Re: your question about the NY Times...I wouldn't label it ''cowardly'' if a news source refrains from using name calling to drive home a point. I'd consider it noble, because facts should truly stand on their own. No need to ''convert'' viewers/readers with "colorful'' opinions, if you are presenting facts/truth. Do you disagree?

 

Cuba, obviously - that one was ready to hand right here.
But that involved special circumstances - Cuba was essentially under attack for decades, making it difficult to set up competitive markets, and was forced to ally itself with the USSR, which made such markets impossible.
So you are in general correct - capitalism is the easiest and best system in which to set up competitive markets, which are the most efficient and productive way to distribute limited resources whenever they can be set up, so an economy that harbors and fosters capitalist enterprise when possible will have major advantages over one that does not.

But the concomitant socialist enterprises - public infrastructure etc - are also important. The outcomes where they are not present (colonial capitalist setups, such as banana republics, for example) are also bad.

Other people who also despise Castro, of course. There are lots of them.
- - - -

The fact, in this example of the problem, is that Trump is a liar, and most of what he says is lies. That is the fact that stands on its own.

I agree wholeheartedly.
But you seem to have overlooked the situation of the example: that Trump is a liar, and that most of what he says is lies, in fact. That Trump is a swindler is also a fact - legally established in civil court trials and in agreements to avoid trial, which have ordered him to pay damages to his victims; personally established in the terms of his various bankruptcies, in which tradesmen and contractors were legally stiffed by design. These are not "colorful opinions" - they are grey and solidly established facts.

The NYT has been refusing to report these facts and let them stand on their own. Likewise the major media in general. That is what my question concerned.

As things stand, you appear to want not straight news, with the facts reported plainly, but polite news, in which no journalist says anything bad about anybody and "both sides" are always given equal billing.

 

But, the back story of why we should believe he is a liar, needs to be up front, and fact-based. You can watch a 30 minute news segment on CNN, for example, and there will be 5 minutes of facts, and 25 minutes of the spin of those facts, or insulting language about Trump. I'm suggesting that it would be best if we could somehow attain a balance within news reporting, but ratings drive much of the opinionated theatrics, as we know. Trump is a liar, but why should I think that? is my point. Should I think it because the anchor at the moment on CNN is raging about Trump without facts, or should I be able to reach that conclusion on my own, based on the facts of the reporting?

I don't disagree. Unfortunately, the opposite story is being told on Fox News. Actually, Fox News omits the negatives about Trump, in most cases. lol

I wouldn't mind ''polite news,'' as I believe there is a way to convey a powerful message without the need to name call someone. I mean, we can see the different debate styles even on this forum. Some people never resort to name calling, but others use it right away, perhaps because they lack the patience required to drive their points home. I can overlook that on here to a degree, but when it comes to a seemingly well-respected news outlet, they should try to maintain professionalism, as much as possible. That said, if someone wishes to name call a political figure while reporting the facts about said political figure, I wouldn't be offended, or turned off to that news outlet. But, I'd still wonder why they feel the need to insert insults to a fact based story?

If you were to tell me for example, the story of the Holocaust (and I know nothing about it) and what led up to it, I think it wouldn't be hard at all to determine that Hitler was a psychopath. If you start off the story with ''Let me tell you about this psychopath named Hitler...'' you're trying to influence me, before offering me facts or the back story. I'm going to extremes, but my point being that some of these news sources do a poor job of sticking to the facts, and leaving their rage out of their comments.

Let's not forget that many Americans (me included) get their news from Facebook, The View, late night talk show hosts, and amateur youtubers. Those channels are strictly opinion-based, mixed in with some facts, but unfortunately, news networks are starting to resemble them.

 

But that wasn't the issue.
The issue is whether you can recognize unbiased coverage of a bad Party, when you see it.
So far, it appears that you can't. You have chosen to "interpret" every one of my posts as saying something it did not say, for starters, and there is no evidence you are trolling on purpose.

But it is, of course, in the case of Trump (or other Republican Party leadership). It's been right there, in the reporting on their lies, for years. So that's done.

You seem to be unable to recognize unbiased news about bad people doing bad things - you seem to think it's namecalling to report plainly and factually on Trump telling lies, for example. You even described the weasel wording and inaccurately obscure NYT euphemisms as "noble", rather than cowardly and biased.

You are avoiding the question at hand.

Because you have been reading unbiased news reports that have been covering his lying in plain language for years now, and you remember that these reports not only matched the facts at the time but the events that occurred later (such as Trump reversing himself, more evidence coming to light, reality contradicting Trump once again, etc).
If you haven't, you may be in actual doubt - you may even think referring to one of Trump's lies as a lie as "namecalling", say, or "telling you what to think", instead of the simple and unbiased reporting of a fact or event.

That's one way you can tell you have been influenced by a propaganda source, btw - when you doubt plain and simple stuff that has had all of reality confirming it for your entire adult life, because it's "negative" or "insulting".
- - -

Unbiased and coldblooded fact based news coverage of Trump will necessarily include "insulting language about Trump". How did you come to decide that was spin?

Not that I doubt your assessment as posted, technically: CNN does a lot of spinning.
After all, CNN has become famous for biasing and spinning its coverage in favor of Trump and the Republican Party he fairly and accurately represents - mostly by constantly framing issues in "both sides" terms when such a framing is ludicrous, but also in other ways (recall from 2016 the long and live CNN feed of an empty Trump rally podium in one of the Dakotas, with expensive CNN punditry trying to fill the dead air and nothing on the line, while Sanders and was at an actual campaign podium battling for every second of coverage he could get in hotly contested primaries, and Clinton likewise? ) https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2...-jeff-zucker-network-s-obsessive-trump/214693 https://www.politicususa.com/2016/0...-clinton-speech-show-trumps-empty-podium.html https://theslot.jezebel.com/cable-news-chose-to-air-footage-of-trumps-empty-podium-1779601746
In reality-based analytical circles the question is why it took so long for CNN's pro-Republican bias to begin to be recognized by a few individuals in the "respectable" media (including CNN's supposed competition, which a naive but rational person would anticipate jumping on such a flaw) - it dates back twenty years or more, and has been flagrant. It should be common knowledge by now.

The usual answer - the consensus - is that all the US major news media have adopted the Republican Party's "both sides" propaganda meme, in which the "sides" are always identified politically. The "bias" is then measured by comparing the coverage with what the identified political sides are supposed to be trying to push according to the political identities preassigned by the news media. The center between these supposed "sides" is then the position of no bias, and bias consists of distance from that political center. The advantage is that the corporation can then cater to all advertisers, including delivering an audience of gullible rubes to the best paying ones.

As a measure of bias that is of course nonsense. News media are supposed to be covering events, reality, stuff that happened - a bias in a news report should be measured as the distance between the report and the facts on the ground, not the position of some political Party. But removing that bias will often involve "insulting language", especially if a news figure is a bad person or bad Party, doing and saying bad things that hurt people.

 

lol You're putting words in my mouth. I never said that it's name calling to report about Trump's lies, but rather it's name calling to not provide a back story, and dub someone a liar, simply because you dislike a particular political party. (Okay, I added that last part, but it seems common for news outlets to do that.)

Look at you for example, your posts always push forth the idea that the Republican party is for lack of a better word - evil. The Democrats are the heroes, riding in on their white horses to save the day. (Neither is true, really.) So, it seems to me anyway, that your bias causes you to lump all Republicans into the same category. Many Americans think like you do, actually. They are die hard true for their respective party line, and tend to shut down any opposing thoughts that could interfere with their bias. So, they tend to look for news sources that confirm their bias.

I don't 'know' you, but only can judge from your posts, that unless I agree with your views, you will accuse me of ''not understanding.'' I understand more than you may think; I'm merely looking for a news network to stop mudslinging and putting their spin on things, and actually report the facts so that I can make an informed decision as to what I believe about the current political climate. A little bias on the part of the news source is reasonable, maybe expected.

Here are the news sources that I do like:

Huff Post
Al-Jazeera
C-Span
Forbes

I'm going to add Reuters to the list, as well, since it was mentioned in this thread.

 

None of my examples are of anyone except a Republican media rep or politician dubbing someone a liar because they didn't like their Party. None. That situation has not come up in my posting - the posting you are responding to. All my posting has been about news sources refusing to "dub" Republican claims lies despite the plain fact that they are lies.

Notice: you said that in direct response to my posting of the NYT cowardice, which was not the situation you describe but an example of a refusal to call Trump a liar or refer to his claims as "lies" despite the newsworthy fact of his being one and telling lies - thereby failing to report the plain facts and unbiased news.
That example illustrated the issue that comes up immediately in your posting: how do you plan to distinguish namecalling from plain language factual reporting?
You have, so far, not provided any criterion for that except your own ignorance of the facts and/or your objection to language you deem "insulting" for some reason.
Your judgment, in other words, seems to be addled by Republican propaganda - by concealing straight news behind a screen of "namecalling" and "bothsides", it has kept you ignorant, and imposed on you a false frame of "both sides" and "namecalling" - which prevents you from recognizing unbiased news and straight journalism, or even plain statements of fact from ordinary people, for what they are.

Here's an example of you going haywire - saying something ridiculous and contrary to every fact you have on hand - because you are under the influence of the "bothsides" meme:

The Republican Party is as I describe it - in fact. Your term - "evil" - is fair enough, but you derived it from my posting of factually accurate description. Unbiased news.
It's not a "side", it's an aspect of reality.

In other words: you have encountered factual information, straight news with backstory and everything (links and stuff in my posts), about the Republican Party, and have had the opportunity to practice making your own judgment. That's what you claimed to want. It didn't work.

Meanwhile: I have never posted or written anything at all, anywhere, that presented any Democrat at all as any kind of "hero" - much less the Party itself, which I am on record as very much disliking. I despise much of the current Democratic Party, especially its leadership, and all my posts reflect that fact or align with it - for years now, right here on this forum, every post and every thread.

So in this encounter with raw data (my posts, not interpreted or filtered) - much like what you would get from C-Span - what happened to your judgment? How did you come to make a mistake that obvious, that flagrant, and that ludicrous? It wasn't by reading my posts.

You were missing a key factor in your encounter with straight news and simple fact: the journalist, who knows what they are looking at when they watch C-SPAN or read a Forbes article or note the source of the feeds Huffpost aggregates (without paying for - HuffPost does not employ its own journalists, and is devoted to selling ads).

Advice: Figure out how, when, and where, you got that "bothsides" impression that my factual and accurate posting about Republicans was somehow presenting Democrats as heroic saviors, that baseless slander of me you just posted, and mark that source as exactly what you claim to want to avoid - a source that is trying to influence you, rather than inform you.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisanship#In_U.S._politics

 

But that was increasingly false, especially after the watershed election of 1980. The Republican Party increasingly abandoned negotiation and compromise as its agenda and policies became increasingly dysfunctional and impossible to govern by with consent of the governed. The term "bipartisan" quickly took on its current meaning - some Democrats supporting Republican initiatives unconditionally.

 

• To return:
  
  
  That opinion is false. It does not match the facts of the historical record, or the facts of current events. Any news reports that deliver to you all the facts will contradict that opinion. (I have repeatedly recommended - to anyone holding that bizarre "opinion" - that they review the record of the single biggest and least excusable disaster of bad, wrong, and evil American governance since WWI: The military invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
  
  It was a Republican Party doing. Entirely. One "side" did that, and the "other side" (everybody else who knew what was happening) tried to stop them. One side is wholly to blame, and nobody else.)
  
  The question becomes: what will the supposed seeker of straight news think of those straight news reports - the ones that blame one side for its bad behavior.
  
  You said you wanted all the facts;
  
  you also opined that any report featuring "all" the facts would necessarily blame or credit "both sides" (by which you mean both Republicans and Democrats, apparently) for whatever happened - because you hold that to be the case in reality itself, in the real world.
  
  And in this interpretation of what unbiased news looks like, you have accepted as your frame for all of reality a current Republican Party propaganda and campaign meme, designed by media pros to obscure the behavior of the Republican Party and spread the blame for its consequences even unto those who put lives and careers on the line to stop them.
  
  Something has to give.

A news outlet suggestion: "Vice". The take on Vice by those claiming to want straight news and all the facts, but no influencing, should be kind of interesting.

 

I haven't accepted Republican propaganda as my frame for ''all reality''. (Don't be dishonest about my views.) You're not making any sense now, iceaura.

I've avoided coming back to your replies in this thread, but would gladly engage more with you, if you wouldn't go so far out of your way to distort my opinions.

 

The birth of idle elitist Individualism, knowing they could live above the average working class and never be put to the sword for what ever they did to the public at large.

on one hand you have civil society seeking to reduce violence
on the other you have scammers seeking to exploit the non critical outcome for manipulating the system.

yet stuck half way between both worst outcomes you have the american justice system

it appears it is being destroyed from the top down and re-made into something else currently.
what that is looks more like hunger games.
while using the smoke & mirrors of past brainwashing cold war social culture to try and frighten voters to obey old world moral compliance.

the battle lines are clearly drawn between the millennials(modern social culture) & the conservative baby boomers(alt-right extremism & paranoid failing leaderships)

 

Yes, you have. You posted it, right here, in plain text.

Distortion? Look in the mirror.

You do recall your descriptions of my posts, I hope - Dems as "saviors" and "riding in to save the day" and similar utter bullshit. As far as I can tell that kind of bizarre fantasy about other people is where this accusation of "distortion" is coming from - and there's no reason to take anything like that seriously.

Methinks you should desist with these accusations of distortion by others, until you have removed the log from your own eye - and to help you do that, I have identified it for you: it's the "both sides" Republican propaganda meme currently being pushed by all the corporate media. It's your bullshit "opinion" of political and historical and factual reality, explicitly posted by you above.

Until you recognize your own opinions reflected back at you, and take a hard look at them and where they came from, you will remain trapped in the propaganda box of "both sides".

And you don't want that. That's where you got the ridiculous idea that I have been presenting Democrats as heroic saviors; that's where you got the notion that plain news reporting is "namecalling" and trying to "influence" you when it presents a Republican politician as acting badly or the Republican Party as doing wrong without automatically checking the "Dems do it too" box regardless of the reality involved; that's where you got the idea that refusing to call lying "lying" and criminal behavior "criminal" and concentration camps "concentration camps" and torture "torture" and people who do horrible things on purpose as "bad people" of some kind is noble rather than spineless and self-interested; that's where you got the idea that journalists should not "tell you what to think" about stuff you know nothing about and they do, and the equally odd notion that news sources should somehow present you with "all the facts" and allow you to make your own judgment

- a manifestly impossible task for them (your daily paper would be a foot thick), and a judgment you cannot make in any but the specific events and issues you know a lot about already.

Don't be silly, in short - especially: don't post standard Republican propaganda memes in the standard Republican propaganda vocabulary aimed at the standard Republican targets of slander and misrepresentation (the supposedly "liberal" and "left biased" media) and try to tell someone who's been following Republican propaganda for years that that isn't what you just posted.

 

I’m not a Republican nor do I subscribe to Republican views. So, you’re wrong. My assertion that Democrats aren't ''saviors'' doesn't mean I side with Repubs, and I've made that pretty clear.

Quote the exact posts where you’re deriving this from (besides adding your spin to my comments), you won’t be able to so please stop lying. If anything, I posted that I dislike news outlets who ''pander to either side.'' (and other such similar comments) It’s really strange that you feel the need to lie about someone’s position. I read your replies and I’m like - he’s talking about me? I’ve never posted Repub propaganda memes? I don’t know what is scarier - that you post lies about people on SF, or that you believe them.

Either way, you’re just a dishonest debater and I’m done.

 

I'm not wrong about what you have posted here.

When you post standard, stereotypical, Republican Party media propaganda feed bs, word for word, that's what you post.

If you don't recognize it as Republican media feed bs, that is too bad - but it confirms my observation, rather than conflicting with it. There is no other source for that viewpoint and language. It cannot come from consideration of physical reality or actual events or experience of American life and news - it's not there.

The idea that you would, on your own, come up with identical fantasy bs, identically divorced from physical reality, addressing the same issues with the same priorities, expressed in the same language, as what is being pushed by Republican media pros currently inundating the US public discourse with repetition of same, is just not plausible.

Ok:
1) Post #28 in this thread leads with two quotes from you, and two examples of my making the obvious "derivation" - the exact "derivation" from exact quotes you just declared I could not make, and then accused me of lying because I couldn't make it.
2) So does post 20, on this thread.

You throw that word - "lying" - around a lot. So does the rest of the Republican media feed parrot crowd, when their posts are sourced and labeled accordingly. The contrast with their claim to want "all the facts" and not want "PC" language is surprising to the inexperienced; after decades, less so.
3) A few more quotes illustrating your adoption of the Republican propaganda feed's rhetorical approach as well as viewpoint:

Note the "Fox question" technique, so common it has acquired that label - the buried assumption that is the actual claim, the personal accusation, the avoidance of accountability for an invalid claim and personal attack by formatting it as a "question".

Again, same observation.

Here's you distorting my post to set me up as making an argument I was not making, but that fits the Republican propaganda frame:

Here's the Republican media feed's bothsides frame, being used by you to beg the question:

The question it begged - and that you continue to beg - is how a bothsider plans to handle the current reality, in which straight news reporting yields utter condemnation of the Republican Party and every politician still in it, unavoidably, without simultaneously condemning the Democratic Party or any but a few of its politicians.

You have to choose:
you can find straight news with a bit of work and attention, especially some attention to your own biases (and the recommendations here) ;
or you can have news that takes care not to disfavor Republican Party behaviors and agenda too much for comfort, that panders to the bothsider's presumption of blame all around, that employs euphemisms and passive voice constructions that obscure rather than highlight the especially bad - that's more easily found.