Where should we get our news?

[removeduser_487563287433]

Why not moral outrage over Mideastern nations policy too?

Because we're meant to be better, Phier. We hold ourselves to higher standards.

[Phier]

Because we're meant to be better, Phier. We hold ourselves to higher standards.

Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden, In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden, The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—
"Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden, Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden, Have done with childish days—
The lightly proffered laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood, through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

[DaVinci]

Let's hear, HH, from where should we get our news? Ontopic reply, please.

Still waiting on HH telling us, from where we should get our news.

[Prodromos]

Regarding the BBC and bias, I used to think the BBC was heavily biased regarding issues in the Middle East, but I now think it's more of a matter of ignorance on the part of their journalists rather than consciously promoting an agenda. A lot of stories are simply reporting what has already been reported in local Middle Eastern media, which the BBC cites as their only source in many cases, but when I read the original source it usually tells a somewhat different story. The issue seems to be the BCC journalists don't really understand the political factions, their agendas, the agendas of the media they cite and and how each these relate to each other, so while translating the original article into their own words they (giving the benefit of the doubt) distort them via the lens of their own ignorance and assumptions. Now you can hardly report on the Middle East without someone shouting bias, but there almost seems to be no pattern to the bias, except a desire to create stories which play to their audience's apparent need for moral outrage.

That's one part of it. Sounds like the L, in Liz Wahl's C.L.U.M.S.Y system for discerning media bias.

Media 101: Reading Between the Lines Part I on Vimeo (7 minutes)

This is a longer video, about Israel-related bias, and I strongly recommend it. The incident involving the toddler at Lightrail is especially sickening.

Media 101: Reading Between the Lines Part II on Vimeo (22 minutes)

[Dr. Croccer]

Obviously Infowars should be the only source for any scholar and gentleman with a wide selection of tinfoil headgear.

Jokes aside, the best thing to do is cross-reference a variety of opposing news sources and make your own conclusions based on that and some own research. Be aware of the biases and try to sift the nuggets of fact from the narrative.

The only mainstream news I'd recommend avoiding like the plague are 'progressive' outlets á la Huff Post/Guardian and most American corporate media, if you want any shred of objectivity and balance. They aren't so much biased as they are living in their own echo chambers and actively push whatever agenda they want regardless of the reality, which the US election has made painfully obvious. They're useful if you want to analyze the mentality of the people making and watching it, rather than the facts. BBC News is still probably the most sober major outlet there is, regardless of some of the more questionable policies of the corporation in other areas. Alternative media like Breitbart obviously have their biases and lack of professionalism, but they make up for it by covering more obscure or controversial stories and generally giving a very different point of view.

That having been said, as someone who's been following the Syrian Civil War mostly by looking at primary sources, it's baffling how out of touch the Western media in general has been. Especially when it comes to Aleppo. It's making RT look like a paragon of journalistic virtue in comparison, and it's a sorry state of affairs when you can get a more accurate and neutral analysis of the conflict by 4chan of all places.

So you believe that they never leaked anything negative for the Republicans because they didn't have those leaks, do you?

I think it has more to do with the fact that Wikileaks was founded 10 years ago and for the last 8 years the US has had a Democrat administration.

Wikileaks definitely has a bias but I would say it has more to do with general opposition to the American political establishment and government. The vast majority of their early leaks did after all concentrate on atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo which spanned both the Bush and Obama administrations. The recent focus on corruption in the Democratic party is hardly surprising either when you consider the fact that the Democrat superdelegate system lends itself a lot better to shady inner party nepotism than the Republican model for primaries, which was made obvious by the party establishment's impotent flailings in the face of en inevitable Trump nomination. Nor is it surprising that there is a lot more focus on Hillary Clinton, who's been a international political and administrative heavyweight for the last decades and clearly had a lot of skeletons in her closet, when the other candidates were political nobodies in comparison. It's indeed doubtful that Wikileaks didn't have help or urging when it came to this, but let's not pretend they had bigger fish to fry when it came to the election. Nor that this somehow invalidates the veracity and importance of that which has been leaked.

[Copperknickers II]

Why not moral outrage over Mideastern nations policy too? In a way its like the hacked email claim by the DNC, where they would have a point if their claims were true.

If you have a lot of dirt on both sides of an issue, and only tell the public of one, that will benefit the other side greatly.

It's not like the BBC present Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey in a favourable light compared to Western powers, I don't think anyone disputes that they are heavily pro-democracy, pro-minority rights, pro-human rights and anti-Islamism. My point was that if the BBC reports something outrageous about the war in Syria, it's because the war in Syria is objectively outrageous to any thinking human being: FUBAR from all possible angles. I don't think the BBC has any particular bias against Western powers, except that we do openly profess to value human rights and self-determination, whereas there is very little hypocrisy in the Saudi or Iranian camps - they claim to be amoral fanatics bent on the destruction of their enemies at all costs, and that is what they are.

Any propaganda they may put out is aimed solely at their respective Muslim sects, we don't even hear about it in the West because they know our own governments will do that job for them. And the BBC is certainly not amenable to the UK-Saudi relationship or even to Obama's Iran Deal, they have covered the war in Yemen more extensively than most Western news networks for example.

Then again we do have a Tory government at the moment - foreign observers seem to think the BBC is a Pravda-style state run broadcaster constrained to publishing only what the government wants it to. Obviously the government does lean on them from time to time but you need only look at the pitched warfare between Downing Street and Broadcasting House at the moment to realise that trying to accuse the BBC of being partisans of Westminster is not a very tenable position. I was listening to a BBC radio documentary the other day about the blatant corruption with regards to the Foreign Office as regards human rights in the Gulf states for British citizens.

Actually the BBC are in the rather strange position right now of being spitting with hatred at literally all of the UK's major political parties: the Tories for being rural and right wing, UKIP for Brexit, Labour because of Corbyn, and of course the toxic situation in Scotland with the SNP. Hence presumably why they insist on portraying the Liberal Democrats and Tim Farron as a kind of latent King Arthur poised to arise and take back the realm of Loegres from the heathens, rather than the washed out lead balloon that they are.

[removeduser_487563287433]

I think it has more to do with the fact that Wikileaks was founded 10 years ago and for the last 8 years the US has had a Democrat administration.

Wikileaks definitely has a bias but I would say it has more to do with general opposition to the American political establishment and government. The vast majority of their early leaks did after all concentrate on atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo which spanned both the Bush and Obama administrations. The recent focus on corruption in the Democratic party is hardly surprising either when you consider the fact that the Democrat superdelegate system lends itself a lot better to shady inner party nepotism than the Republican model for primaries, which was made obvious by the party establishment's impotent flailings in the face of en inevitable Trump nomination. Nor is it surprising that there is a lot more focus on Hillary Clinton, who's been a international political and administrative heavyweight for the last decades and clearly had a lot of skeletons in her closet, when the other candidates were political nobodies in comparison. It's indeed doubtful that Wikileaks didn't have help or urging when it came to this, but let's not pretend they had bigger fish to fry when it came to the election. Nor that this somehow invalidates the veracity and importance of that which has been leaked. [/FONT]

You should read the below article. Wikileaks has gone as far as to help totalitarian dictators discover the real names of dissidents in their countries. And I don't mean as a side-effect. They directly handed over the information:

http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14...ks-russia-ties

[jockmcplop]

I used to think infowars was an insane conspiracy theory website for humans that had completely lost touch with any semblance of reality.
Then I saw this:

SCREWED

And don't even get me started on picklegate. How the MSM in their arrogance somehow get away with failing to report this stuff is beyond me.

[Akrotatos]

Serious internet forums.

Seriously find a serious and well moderated forum. It can work wonders. It is important that there is also a plurality of opinions and not just a forum where single-minded people meet in an echo chamber.

I don't know if it is allowed to post about other forums here so I will refrain but I frequent a really good one to read about political and military issues (most members are veterans or currently serving). There is heavy American bias but a strong Russian presence makes up for it.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Serious internet forums.

Seriously find a serious and well moderated forum. It can work wonders. It is important that there is also a plurality of opinions and not just a forum where single-minded people meet in an echo chamber.

I don't know if it is allowed to post about other forums here so I will refrain but I frequent a really good one to read about political and military issues (most members are veterans or currently serving). There is heavy American bias but a strong Russian presence makes up for it.

I think it's good for the development of a rational mind, good for the development of scrutiny and expanding your horizons, but do you really think having a plurality of views is a good way to get to the truth? We still have (barely) mixed views on this forum, but if you took it as your views you would leave seriously warped.

[Akrotatos]

I think it's good for the development of a rational mind, good for the development of scrutiny and expanding your horizons, but do you really think having a plurality of views is a good way to get to the truth? We still have (barely) mixed views on this forum, but if you took it as your views you would leave seriously warped.

Plurality is the ONLY way to the truth nowadays. If I believed that before, the media coverage of 2016 confirmed it.

[removeduser_487563287433]

That's nonsense. There is not always multiple truths.

[Cope]

do you really think having a plurality of views is a good way to get to the truth?

Yes. If there is no plurality of views then widely accepted fallacies are able to go unchecked and unchallenged. Social progression is partially derived from the challenging of faulty assumptions that support elements of the status quo. A lack of intellectual diversity would inevitably lead to societal stagnation.

That does not mean that views which deviate from standard understandings are necessarily correct. At the very least, however, the demonstration that they are incorrect is beneficial both in eliminating them as explanations and in strengthening the known truth.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Yes. If there is no plurality of views then widely accepted fallacies are able to go unchecked and unchallenged. Social progression is partially derived from the challenging of faulty assumptions that support elements of the status quo. A lack of intellectual diversity would inevitably lead to societal stagnation.

That does not mean that views which deviate from standard understandings are necessarily correct. At the very least, however, the demonstration that they are incorrect is beneficial both in eliminating them as explanations and in strengthening the known truth.

The difference is views need to be based on data. The alt-right does not bother.

[Cope]

The difference is views need to be based on data. The alt-right does not bother.

For a view to be credible, yes it needs to be supported by evidence.

As for the "alt-right", I don't really know who specifically you're referring to. I assume you mean white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, but you'll have to clarify.

[removeduser_487563287433]

I don't think we can clarify, it's such a new and poorly understood thing. But purely off the top of my head I would say it's that fringe body we unfortunately have on this forum in number. These people who generally speaking feel like outsiders for a variety of reasons: poor academic or professional performance, poor sexual performance, extreme right-wing views that they don't realise are extreme right-wing views. These people look at mainstream right-wing politics and don't find it good enough, don't find the tradition of governing for the good of all and just not yourself and your tribe good enough. In other words, the same sort of far-right losers we have seen consistently since the war. People looking to blame their own shortcomings on everything and anything but themselves.

But where I think the alt-right differ from the tradition of the far-right, these pathetic skinheads who are managed by giving them enough rope to hang themselves with is that they're the first generation of far-right losers who are digitally native. They're savvy, they have the internet and know how to use it. They're aware that they can't be seen as far-right, because that's still unacceptable in our society. We still, barely, have living ancestors who defeated fascism. Who saw the concentration camps. Hence - they're alt-right, not far-right. It's why they constantly call me, a fiscal conservative, a social libertarian, a person who has worked in Parliament exclusively for Conservative MPs a "leftist". They need to make the mainstream right look left to prevent themselves from being exposed as far-right. It's why if you corner the alt-right on this forum they won't tell you their views: fkizz at the moment won't tell us what his policy on refugees in Europe is beyond mumbling something about Thomas Malthus. Fkizz knows that if he is honest he will lose the sorely wanted mainstream territory. It's also why they create and spread fake news: they know reality doesn't back them up yet, so they are creating the data they need to not look insane.

So there is is. The alt-right are internet savvy far-rights whose main objective is to make themselves mainstream right by producing fake news and constantly attacking centrists as leftists in order to pretend they're not far-right.

[Cope]

I don't think we can clarify, it's such a new and poorly understood thing. But purely off the top of my head I would say it's that fringe body we unfortunately have on this forum in number. These people who generally speaking feel like outsiders for a variety of reasons: poor academic or professional performance, poor sexual performance, extreme right-wing views that they don't realise are extreme right-wing views. These people look at mainstream right-wing politics and don't find it good enough, don't find the tradition of governing for the good of all and just not yourself and your tribe good enough. In other words, the same sort of far-right losers we have seen consistently since the war. People looking to blame their own shortcomings on everything and anything but themselves.

But where I think the alt-right differ from the tradition of the far-right, these pathetic skinheads who are managed by giving them enough rope to hang themselves with is that they're the first generation of far-right losers who are digitally native. They're savvy, they have the internet and know how to use it. They're aware that they can't be seen as far-right, because that's still unacceptable in our society. We still, barely, have living ancestors who defeated fascism. Who saw the concentration camps. Hence - they're alt-right, not far-right. It's why they constantly call me, a fiscal conservative, a social libertarian, a person who has worked in Parliament exclusively for Conservative MPs a "leftist". They need to make the mainstream right look left to prevent themselves from being exposed as far-right. It's why if you corner the alt-right on this forum they won't tell you their views: fkizz at the moment won't tell us what his policy on refugees in Europe is beyond mumbling something about Thomas Malthus. Fkizz knows that if he is honest he will lose the sorely wanted mainstream territory. It's also why they create and spread fake news: they know reality doesn't back them up yet, so they are creating the data they need to not look insane.

So there is is. The alt-right are internet savvy far-rights whose main objective is to make themselves mainstream right by producing fake news and constantly attacking centrists as leftists in order to pretend they're not far-right.

If your general synopsis of individuals associated with the "alt-right" is that they're lost, ignorant souls who've turned to extremist politics in an effort to "blame their own shortcomings on everything and anything but themselves", I fail to see how insulting and isolating them assists in intellectually disarming their rhetoric. On the contrary, and in all probability, you are merely are encouraging them further. This strikes me as being counter-productive, even if your objective is not to proselytize them.

[removeduser_487563287433]

If your general synopsis of individuals associated with the "alt-right" is that they're lost, ignorant souls who've turned to extremist politics in an effort to "blame their own shortcomings on everything and anything but themselves", I fail to see how insulting and isolating them assists in intellectually disarming their rhetoric. On the contrary, and in all probability, you are merely are encouraging them further. This strikes me as being counter-productive, even if your objective is not to proselytize them.

They must be lost. Who but the lost would throw in their lot with fascists and lies, when even they know they're lies?

[jockmcplop]

The difference is views need to be based on data. The alt-right does not bother.

The problem with this is that there is data to support whatever position you want to go with. You make alot of generalizations about the alt-right but I'll let you into a secret:
Political views can fairly well predicted given a bunch of information about a person. Where do they live? How much money do they have? How close were they to their family growing up? Are they religious?
When we paint the alt-right as the enemy, as a bunch of morons who are just blindly running towards a fascist state, we ignore the very thing we are trying to convince everyone is best. Data, evidence, reasonable dialogue. The alt-right are just people who had a certain set of life experiences and reacted in a specific way.
From what I have mostly seen, it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not evidence is used, its more like a capacity for a type of wish thinking where people are so easily deceived into thinking that the world will be better if everyone just looks after their own base instincts.
There's plenty of data out there to support this view, because wish thinking is powerful.
I'm not saying using data and evidence is bad, but its no longer a useful way to dialogue when there are companies paid to produce data supporting any political position you want to take.
This is why plurality of news from all around the political spectrum is a good way to get news.

[Cope]

They must be lost. Who but the lost would throw in their lot with fascists and lies, when even they know they're lies?

Let us assume that statement to be true. You will not recover such individuals to reason through degradation. Rather, you will reinforce their views.