Do you believe Fox News should be banned/censored?
What about CNN? They are as biased as Fox News.
What about CNN? They are as biased as Fox News.
Yes. Failing that let's do what was done to the cigarette industry -- figure out how to make them legally liable for the death they cause.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
ref: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66643-he-who-knows-only-his...
I don’t have a magic-wand solution to this (and I’d be surprised if such a solution exists), but we’ve just witnessed what happens if you let people argue endlessly in bad faith without consequence, and what happened was not good.
Perhaps your way is the least-bad outcome overall? I wouldn’t know, but you do not appear to have made that argument.
You are absolutely right that CNN is biased. They clearly are not trying to make it seem as though they aren't. The same with Fox, who are equally biased. However, only only of those outlets lets their reporters outright lie.
Now, it may be that I'm looking in the wrong places, but if I were to see lies on CNN in the same way as I see it on Fox, I'll be happy to change my mind, but right now I think it's pretty clear which one needs to be curbed.
Fox also allows comments on their stories. A lot of the real hateful stuff can be found there, and section 230 allows Fox to wash their hands of that. Perhaps Trump was on to something when he was campaigning to have it revoked? (the last part is sarcasm, of course).
Edit note: (this post has been downvoted into oblivion. I honestly have no idea which "side" have been doing the downvoting. I wonder if it's because the downvoters misunderstood what I was saying, or if they did understand and simply disagree)
Sometimes, there just aren't two sides to a story, or more accurately one side is true and the other believes they had the biggest inauguration crowd ever.
The rest of the world clearly sees this. I'll openly admit to being a left-leaning liberal, but even my friends who vote right wing think that Trump is an embarrassment.
They can all do this to each other because they are all guilty of it. Cable news is a tower of partisan propaganda.
Traditional media definitely has flaws, but rejecting them in favor of social media because of it is an absurd and incredibly destructive reaction.
There seems to be some kind of law that the larger a media outlet is, the more partisan it gets. Which is why social media is like the Exxon Valdez crashed into Deepwater Horizon and caught on fire.
On any given day, two different perspectives agreeing to intellectually consider why the other side is objectively incorrect (as in, not just agreeing they are simply different) is a serious undertaking. If you casually take any topic, every single day, and allow people to do the thought experiment that one argument is more valid in a casual manner, you will 100% have to cut corners because you did not seriously approach the task. The most obvious way is you paint an enemy, or the notion of the other, an idea of a threat.
The average person in NYC really has no business having a dinner time objective discussion with someone from Missouri about gun ownership. Really the discussion should come down to ‘we have a lot space and gun culture in Missouri and it’s something we enjoy’, followed by ‘Interesting, it’s not the biggest thing here in NYC actually’. That’s about it.
But if there is an institution, I don’t know, let’s call it a fight club (the media), that says ‘you two at dinner, get ready to fight’, the two contestants will fight in an inexperienced way. Hair pulling, throwing rocks, no real jabs, conditioning, submissions, no fight experience.
It is not a casual ordeal to debate, and this is what the media is making people do.
We are not ready amongst ourselves to debate constitutional law and the rights of man, and the compromises needed to maintain society. It’s a serious thing to enter into that discussion.
The only take away I see in all of this is that there is a market for the un-serious, and there are some serious people (media) interested in that market.
Fox (to say nothing of the absolute swamp that is OANN or Newsmax) are an order of magnitude worse than the so called "left" channels (only in the US would CNN be considered a left wing news channel).
The reason that CNN, etc are "biased" against Trump is because reality is bisaed against Trump. He's just a terrible president, a lousy business man and an awful human.
Again, only in the US would that be considered a controversial statement.
And yes, all the news channels are equally terrible. This is not at all hard to find, but it may be hard to accept.
And only in the US would someone be so insular as to make such a statement :)
The US is still the largest economy in the world. As much as the rest of us would love to turn a blind eye when they elect an incompetent sociopath, unfortunately, we have to deal with his bullshit.
The rest of the world is not a single monolithic group either so I don't see the point of your sweeping generalizations.
signed,
A Brit.
Nonsense. Of course, people’s opinion of internal politics is relevant. If it wasn’t, we’d still have apartheid in South Africa, for example.
And no, the rest of the world is not a single monolithic group, but the vast majority of it (especially in comparable western democracies) thinks trump is a laughing stock.
The good news is that your cognitive function is not permanently lost, it can be quickly recovered by just turning off the TV and reading a book, playing with the dog or going on a long walk.
Yes, keeping up with current events is an important part of being a good citizen but there are quickly diminishing returns on that and it’s never worth sacrificing parts of your life and livelihood for.
I’d encourage speaking for yourself
Kind regards (Part of) The rest of the world
Ahh, the "both sides" argument. No, Fox News and CNN are not the same. The fact that you believe this... I'm not going to try to dissuade you. I don't have that much free time.
You can't very well let the fickle populace decide such important things without a little nudging.
Some examples... Clinton Server Controversy Concluded years later nothing illegal took place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...
Mueller Report Concluded years later collusion did not take place (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/24/attorney-general-william-bar...)
I'm sure millions still believe everything they let these outlets of their choice pump in their brain and get them revved up. For me it's all garbage (political drama) ... not to waste my time on.
In Germany, we have the section §130 StGB in our criminal code: incitement to hatred. While it would be extremely hard if not impossible to get a TV station such as Fox News to be banned here, its hosts/mouthpieces/guests could certainly be sanctioned - up to actual jail time.
Also, our core media codex ("Medienstaatsvertrag") binds all broadcasting stations - radio, TV, streaming - to journalistic integrity and truthful reporting (§§6, 19, 51 MStV).
> What about CNN? They are as biased as Fox News.
I have yet to see a report that CNN broadcasts people that claim that the election was "stolen" or "manipulated". There is a massive difference between biased reporting and openly distributing lies.
Oftentimes that's all it takes. Pick the facts you report. You aren't reporting anything "false", but the truth isn't being depicted.
From what I've heard Fox reports that millions believe there was fraud. Not that there was actual fraud. I haven't fact checked this, because it came from a left leaning source and I believed it.
Not without risking violating the part about "journalistic integrity". Of course there was and will always be some sort of bias (e.g. the tabloid BILD is famous for being on the right wing), but it's nowhere near the scale of Fox News.
You may have missed it being in Germany, but for 3 years CNN, NYT, MSNBC, et al reported 24/7 that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. The Justice Dept spent millions thoroughly investigaing that claim and it turned out to be all lies.
The bipartisan senate intelligence report clearly lays out connections between Trump's campaign and Russian intelligence, see page 27, 178, 527, among many many others:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
You are correct in that the justice department's investigation was flawed, it did not force Trump to answer questions under oath. However, we have Trump's own words: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you find Hillary's emails."
> The Justice Dept spent millions thoroughly investigaing that claim and it turned out to be all lies.
The Mueller investigation paid for itself in civil forfeiture ($42-46m) after convicting Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager of tax fraud, wire fraud and other financial crimes and got convictions of ten defendants. The only reason they did not indict Trump was in deference to a memo that the Justice department cannot indict a sitting president.
This led to the legendary response of ramen guy pointing out that the first amendment says exactly that.