NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm just curious to see how many actually believe the media is mostly neutral. :D

Wait...you ACTUALLY THINK that people ACTUALLY THINK that the media is neutral...?

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

You won't find all too many here my friend. And those who do mostly listen to the BBC, which is at least somewhat reliable.

Saying that the media is "mostly neutral" is misleading. Most media sources will have a slant of some kind. However, I believe that when taken as a whole the media is pretty much neutral.

Occasionally reliable, but neutral? There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to politics, and as most things are related in at least some way to politics...:rolleyes:

The media is, for the most part, neutral. Most of the time when someone says it isn't it's because they're trying to write off something they don't agree with that was reported.

"I hate these filthy neutrals, Kif! With enemies, you know where they stand, but with neutrals—who knows. It sickens me." -Zapp Brannigan


Neutral General: "Sir, it's a beige alert."
Neutral President: "If I die, tell my wife…hello."


Neutral President: "All I know is my gut says maybe."

I'm just curious to see how many actually believe the media is mostly neutral. :DDepends on which one. ARD and ZDF generally are, being publicly funded and run by representative groups.

Institutionally the media is rather neutral, but individual instances are very capable of hurting the image of neutrality.

I'm just curious to see how many actually believe the media is mostly neutral. :D

Neutral along what axis? All media have an agenda.

Institutionally the media is rather neutral, but individual instances are very capable of hurting the image of neutrality.

I think that only applies to the BBC (because of a huge amount of programs to rid the BBC of bias) and maybe CNN.

Impart from that, pretty much all Newspapers and networks are biased either to the left or right.

In general the media is neutral. There will always be certain organisations or reporters who have some political stance on some subjects but I say yes in general it is.

I think that only applies to the BBC (because of a huge amount of programs to rid the BBC of bias) and maybe CNN.

Impart from that, pretty much all Newspapers and networks are biased either to the left or right.CNN international maybe. CNN America is atrocious, almost as bad as Fox News.

why would you want a neutral media? the place where the media comes closest to neutrality is in science reporting, where they give equal weight to facts and lies.

why would you want a neutral media?

You should expect the important channels to be impartial when reporting news, people are easily brainwasehd.

You should expect the important channels to be impartial when reporting news, people are easily brainwasehd.

if what you mean by 'impartial' is that they don't lie or allow others to lie without being called on it, sure. if you means letting 'both sides have their say', then hell no.

All media is biased. Even MSNBC and CNN. CNN is just the least biased.

I'm just curious to see how many actually believe the media is mostly neutral. :D
The media is NOT neutral, not by a long shot.

who cares about neutrality? the media exists to sell ads and make money for the owners.

I wish people who stop crying about neautrality/bias and just let people who are too stupid to pick out propaganda live in their own world.

I wish people who stop crying about neautrality/bias and just let people who are too stupid to pick out propaganda live in their own world.

small problem - they actually still live in the same world as me, despite their delusions. worse they can and do hold power and act on the basis of their ignorance.

small problem - they actually still live in the same world as me, despite their delusions. worse they can and do hold power and act on the basis of their ignorance.
You could just learn to smile and call them "Republicans".

The media is in no way neutral. If they have a story to tell, there is NO way it is done completely objectively, some prejudice always creeps into it or there is no story.
Different countries and media networks report things differently, too. The American media is alot more conservative, unlike what the politicians think, than the Canadian, and Fox is much more conservative than CNN.

small problem - they actually still live in the same world as me, despite their delusions. worse they can and do hold power and act on the basis of their ignorance.

That's why society needs to stop lowering the standards for stupid people. I fully support making people take objective tests to get the right to vote.

Media often seems neutral, but it isn't. Certain media can be neutral on the left/right scale, or on the totalitarian/libertarian. But it doesn't mean that it is, for instance, neutral on the international scale. Not even nearly. Media of each country is at least notably biased towards that country; international media is simply biased towards the West as a whole.

I'm just curious to see how many actually believe the media is mostly neutral. :D

Media is neutral. tv and newspapers/mags will show whatever is printed on them.

the personnell who works in media are not neutral. they are those that put the stuff on air and in print. and they cannot be neutral.... no matter how much they want to be.

That's why society needs to stop lowering the standards for stupid people. I fully support making people take objective tests to get the right to vote.
As appealing as that may be, out of my own curiosity, how would one create such a test? Surely it would itself would fall victim of bias, and be yet another tool for those in power to prevent the willing to vote.

That's why society needs to stop lowering the standards for stupid people. I fully support making people take objective tests to get the right to vote.

yeah, and those that get to make and grade the tests would certainly never use such power to advance their own interests...

The Press is neutral.

If stories bashing cons sells papers, they will print it.
If stories bashing libs sells papers, they will print it.

yeah, and those that get to make and grade the tests would certainly never use such power to advance their own interests...

It is possible to utilize a vast system of checks and balances to ensure that doesn't happen.

True, you can put in a lot of checks and balances, but then you just jack up the cost of the excercise. And, for example, the American political system is based on checks and balances, but a lot of people still accuse it of bias.

And propaganda isn't always obvious. When you can't find out the facts for yourself due them being classified, hard to obtain, or simply difficult to measure, someone has the opportunity to spin you an "improved" version of events. For example, someone attacking nuclear power plants could show statistics showing increased disease and radiation levels in the area, and so have a case to say that the plant is bad. Someone defending the place could point out the background radiation levels and the trends in disease for the area, and so have a case to say the the plant is not bad. It all depends on how you look at the question.

A very good example (if a little strange) of how someone can percieve the same information differently depending on what they've been told, is in the example of satanic lyrics in "Stairway to Heaven" (backwards). If you simply listen to it backwards you hear a load of rubbish. If someone tells you what is supposedly being said, then you hear it too. So couldn't someone take some other information with a slightly ambiguous conclusion, and do the same thing? Tell you what, in their view, it shows?

If you averaged all the media outlets I'd say yes, the media are on average roughly neutral. But I'd also call it a bivariate normal distribution (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BivariateNormalDistribution.html).

Anyone who thinks that the media is neutral has a shakey means of appraising bias. Similar to those who think that it is liberal, only they themselves aren't.

Let's imagine the left/right wings as a numberline where 0 is neutral.

Most rightwingers start by assuming that they are 0 or +1 or 2. It doesn't matter how far to the right they are. They almost always assume that they're just "right of center." This way, when they compare the center-right media to their far right views they scream "liberal media bias."

Someone even posted a link to a website that tries to argue a NYT liberal bias, but any sort of critical analysis just shows that the site itself is bias because all it does is link to stories it doesn't like, when demonstrating a bias requires that you keep track of how many stories from the other side also get written.

If you're going to establish a bias in any meaningful sense then you have to have something to compare it to other than yourself. You have to establish what far right and far left actually are in real terms. Not just how much they annoy you. The boiling point of water isn't "ouch." The top speed of a Formula 1 racecare isn't "oh shiiiiiit!" Why should the measure of far right be "fucking fascist" and far left be "pinko-commie bastard?"

I wish people who stop crying about neautrality/bias and just let people who are too stupid to pick out propaganda live in their own world.

Sadly, the rest of us don't have the technology to send them to their own world.

The Press is neutral.

If stories bashing cons sells papers, they will print it.
If stories bashing libs sells papers, they will print it.

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