Just want to point something out here:

It's OK that they have an agenda. In fact, everyone does! Bias is everywhere. It's for sure present on the cable newscycle. To avoid it is very difficult, time consuming and expensive! It takes large numbers of us considerable periods of time to produce objective material, if it's possible to produce at all.

A lot of people tend to respond to entities with agendas they do not like, for whatever reason --does not matter why, by marginalizing them, or ignoring them, rebutting them (the best of poor options IMHO), and so on.

In most cases, those responses do more harm than good. What happens there is your own biases get amplified, or resonate in ways that you may also feel pretty good about, despite the harm being done; namely, the loss in your ability to make good use of the otherwise fairly high general information value out there being high on the list of subtle harms.

With me so far? Let's take it just a bit farther. Humor me for a moment please. It's worth it. Promise.

A much better response is to evaluate that agenda, or bias, as well as the overall clarity of the presentation.

Biases work two basic ways, one being the entity under examination is truthful, clear and accurate about their biases, whatever they may be. The other way is simply not accurate, or unclear. Bear in mind FOX took a case to court where they won a case where they forced journalists to basically lie. They could do the lie, keep their job, or take a walk. Simple as that. The big players do this. All of them do it. It's legal for them to do. Ethics? I sure don't find any of it ethical at all, but I'm not in charge, nor running a media giant either.

Clarity boils down to whether someone using the information can accurately and consistently and EASILY differentiate fact from opinion. This is the primary factor in play, and it is the one more people understand more poorly, or haven't considered it at all. The secondary way clarity works, and this is far more widely understood and is generally well considered, is whether the language conveys the ideas in high fidelity. Low clarity information generally is a mashup of fact and opinion that is difficult to sort out, and whether it's sorted or not, the whole thing is written with dubious language, making it difficult to understand on a basic level.

Rather than avoid bias, which is generally futile for reasons I've given above, embrace it! Bias is OK. Seriously!

It's also largely unavoidable, and it's only a core problem when it's unknown and or unclear, or deliberately misrepresented. Otherwise, that bias can help put whatever info you are considering into a greater context and that's a value add straight up. Worth it.

You are not wrong to be wary of the data!

I see your comment in grey, meaning some of us balked on the idea of that and who knows why? Maybe they think highly of Cato, or maybe they feel the whole statement is more judgement than value, whatever... It really doesn't matter much, beyond the reduction in value that happens on HN with that sort of thing going on.

But, I wrote this because you aren't wrong to be wary of that data, and some information on why that is has high value. In fact, you should be wary of most any data coming out of think tanks, fast news cycles, and in general anyone not working from original documents and or not linking to them for whatever reason. Sometimes those originals are unavailable, or paywalled, or obtuse, and other times it's nefarious, or low value, in that they are available, but it's simply not done.

Sorry, this ended up being a bit long. I didn't intend for that. Stuff happens. For what it's worth, I didn't just ramble. And I'm not judging or telling you what to do either. Just putting some perspective and my own hard won insight here for consideration.

There are other factors too, like disclosure and how it can hide important conflicts of interest. An easy example might be getting your facts on net neutrality and or opinion on policy about it from mainstream big company media owned by a handful of people. The conflict is easy and obvious, and we've all had great discussions about that topic here, which may get a few minutes when it's peak interest, and nothing at all otherwise. From their point of view, a neutral net carries with it costs and risks as well as enables competition those media giants have spent decades pushing away from their media empires right along with shutting down, owning, marginalizing indie shops all over the place, and I digress! Sorry about that.

Suffice it to say disclosure is a big deal, it's not being done to the degree it should and the problem is widespread and chronic. Conflicts of interest as well as understanding who might be a competing source are both problems we all deal with on a regular basis and there is very little discussion on it, certainly not discussion on par with the importance and scale of the problem.

I tend to lump all this under clarity, just to keep it all simple.

What you want is to understand their biases, ownership, and how clear that all is. Ever wonder about the multiple talking heads deal done all the time, Sunday shows, prime time "news" and other productions being easy examples. They do this for a ton of reasons, but a big one is reduced clarity so that facts and opinion get mangled together leading people to conclusions they are likely to have not arrived at given a higher degree of clarity. These productions can be clear, and sometimes are. You can sort it out by asking yourself whether you found fact and opinion easy to differentiate.

Having thought about these things, sorting fact from opinion, biases become important as context and all that can be framed up and used more effectively in your own reasoning and potential communication!

You can then find other sources and or entertain discussion being far better informed and able to participate in those adding more value than you would generally add otherwise.

From there?

You come to your own conclusions. No joke.

At first, working through these things is a slog. Takes time, energy, isn't always compelling, and we all know the list of reasons why we might avoid doing those things.

...which comes down to trust. Just trusting is a lot easier, and it's why so many of us do that so often.

Your statement implied a low degree of trust related to Cato. Fair enough. I don't trust them either. But, whether we trust them or not isn't the point as much as WHO YOU / WE DO TRUST!

I suggest not doing that to the degree you probably are. Verify more, compare / contrast more. This too takes a bit of work at first, but if you do that work, soon it becomes just part of your process and you won't notice it, but you will notice your own clarity, ability to participate in discussions, and just understand and benefit from whatever information sources you prefer improves considerably.

To that end, humor me just a bit more please!

Let's talk about those sources you do trust. For whatever reason!

I want to challenge that and get you thinking a bit differently. For your benefit. Overall, mine and others too. Start looking for these two concepts:

"there is always two sides to every story."

Nope! There are the facts and there is opinion as to what we think those facts mean. Could be what others think they mean, what you think, me, anyone really. The most common abuse of this idea is to put a reputable source alongside a full bat shit one and then have a debate... That is more entertainment than it is informative.

High clarity sources make the facts easily differentiated from their own editorial / advocacy. They do this so you can take those facts, consider them yourself, consider what they want you to, and when using other sources, see the facts there, find missing ones and in general get informed to a degree beyond whatever intent may be at hand otherwise. Being informed means understanding the facts as well as the various schools of thought out there as to what those facts may mean.

When I was a kid in primary school, my school actually taught this stuff! Identifying bias, clarity, fact, opinion, and we were asked to collect sources, compare, contrast, and talk about what we learned and why it mattered.

This hasn't been done very well for most of us, and a whole lot of us simply do not even get introduced to the topic. My kids didn't see this kind of education, and my grandkids are not either. I've had to do it, and will be doing it again soon once my grandkids are ready for it.

"Always two sides to every story" is toxic.

There are facts, and there are a lot of opinions and frankly, the only reason we see two sides more than not is the media consolidation has also resulted in message consolidation and the highly polarized discussion centered on our two parties.

The other concept to be watching for is whether the bias is truthfully communicated or not.

FOX runs with "Fair and Balanced", or we see others like, "Lean Forward", "News You Can Trust", and so on. None of that crap actually means a damn thing, and it's focus grouped to the nines all intended to imply positives while not actually communicating bias in a concrete way. A great parallel to understand what I mean here is something like the Arco gas company "No Gas Gets Better Mileage" slogan. Of course! No other gas gets worse either, because we've regulated what gas actually is!

Cato sometimes produced great info. They will do it again. They often produce pieces that are clear and appear to have high information value. And they might, but there is usually some bit left out, or a dubious source, or whatever subtle device made sense to them at the time too.

Any of that seem familiar?

Well, we can have this same discussion about CNN, FOX, or MSNBC and arrive at very similar conclusions, and if we did that we would not be wrong about it! Just like bias is everywhere, these basic ideas are in play everywhere.

It's hard to trust right now.

Our mainstream media environment isn't all that reputable by time tested, global standards related to this kind of thing. And we aren't alone. Australia, Europe have similar struggles, and the one thing they have we don't is a multi-party government that makes it all a bit harder to pull off to the degree seen here. One thing that does stand out is media from other nations can often present the same stories with better clarity and a different take because their point of view, bias, is also different, given their position in the world overall forces that kind of thing. I found this out after travelling some to see the world. I was quite surprised to see our politics and news covered very well, while our news here rarely covers foreign news and politics to the same degree.

My advice?

Don't trust so much.

If you find yourself really invested in a narrative, or story, or even some facts, take a little time, seek original documents where you can, try a few different sources, and even a foreign one or two. Just doing that will broaden how you see media and improve your process and that's a big win.

None of us have this stuff right. We all have biases. We all have our faves in the media scene too. That's OK. One of our best tools is simple discussion among peers. Just put it out there and see what others think.

When we can talk among ourselves without judgement, without hating, and just exchange thoughts, we benefit.

If nothing else, that's why I wrote this. Ended up in a place where all this kind of bubbled up with unusual clarity. In my experience, that's always a good time to put down some words and get the value of it all out there for others to consider and benefit from. That's all this is.

Again, you aren't wrong. The why of it may not be as expected. No big deal there. Maybe this helps drag some of the subtle bits out into the light where you can take a look at it all and benefit. Hope so, and I hope you do.

That is what I did intend.

Have a great week.