From: sbrady@afit.af.mil (Stephan P. Brady)
Subject: Re: Liberal Bias Example
Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 01:05:32 GMT

sleator@CS.CMU.EDU (Daniel Sleator) writes:

As Alice would say, things are getting "curiouser and curiouser."

Read on McDuff!

>To the extent that you described the story, this does *not* strike me
>as an example of of a liberal media bias.

>Suppose that the reporter called up 20 economists at major
>universities and that, say, 19 of them expressed "doubt that Bush plan
>will fly".  Then the headline would be entirely appropriate, and the
>article would be accurate.

>Consider a slightly different situation.  Suppose Bush had said "God
>created the earth 5000 years ago, and evolution never happened."
>Would you then expect the reporters to analyze this with a straight
>face, and find an equal number of "experts" to "objectively discuss"
>these claims?

Not hard to do, since a number of "well respected" scientists hold to
similar beliefs, and could hold their own in a truely OBJECTIVE, and
FAIR debate...

>If I got a paper that did that, I'd immediately end my
>subscription to it.  Suppose my paper dismissed these claims as the
>garbage that they are.  This would indicate a certain form of bias,
>since there are many fundamentalist christians who don't agree with
>it.  Perhaps this kind of "bias" should be called "logic bias", bias
>caused by the exercise of thought.

>[By the way, the fact of evolution has been established with as much
>scientific evidence as the fact that the earth orbits the sun.]

Ahhhh,but herein lies the problem.  WE can look at the earth and the
sun, we can hypothesize, and then we can observe as the actual event
continues all around us.  No one has ever observed the creation of life
on Earth, and therefore no one can adequately "prove" it.  Seems
evolution is doomed to suffer its existence as a perpetual theory.
Besides, most GOOD scientists will admit that NO theory can ever be
PROVEN, since all it would take is one exception to disprove it.

You see, it is not the actual positions held that denote bias, it is the
irrational fear, the overwhelming unwillingness, to accept discussion
and debate that causes so many to decry the ramblings of a so often
mis-informed media.

Shall we continue?  If this hasn't been enough fun, READ ON!!

>The Republican convention was so full of bullshit, that it was
>impossible to sit through it and take it seriously.  Reporters were
>thus put in an ackward position.  To ignore the sillyness of of Bush
>taking credit for the cold war victory, the ludicrosity of his claim
>that Clinton raised taxes 128 times while he raised them once, or
>Republicans claiming that the Democrats are against "family values",
>would simply be stupid.  I'm glad that the reporters responded
>appropriately to these glaring falacies.  It's odd indeed to desire
>that reporters turn off their ability to reason when reporting
>stories.

Aha!  Now, you are showing the true mark of bias!  It is one thing to
report the facts surrounding an event, it is another to use
superlatives.  For example, you say "sillyness" and "ludicrosity" and
that the "Democrats...would simply be stupid" (okay, so I exercised some
editorial liscense with that one, at least I left the quote in!).

Using these words here may not be too disasterous.  You, my friend, are
expressing an opinion.  It is when the media taints a story by infusing
such words into the presentation that it becomes more than objective
reporting.


>                                D. Sleator

Now, don't take this personally, it is all meant in the spirit of fun.
Why else would you say the things YOU say?  :)
-- 
sbrady@galaxy.afit.af.mil
"Opinions held on every subject.  While they may not actually reflect the
opinions of my employer, they are a tribute to the freedoms enjoyed under
the First Amendment"
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