[viridian]

Recently, any time I see someone railing against about one-sided coverage, it sets off alarm bells for where the person themselves is coming from.

To explain, there was a study of partisan bias I once read, wherein a mixed audience is shown some factually neutral piece of media, then asked to rate the bias of the piece along with some other questions. Naturally, the strongest partisans felt it was the most biased against them (something we've seen replicated in dozens of studies), but the more interesting outcome was that they teased out why the partisans felt the media was so biased. The overwhelming argument from both sides was that the media in question lacked additional context that would specifically justify the actions of their own side, even though that was not the focus of the video.

My big take away from this is that if a person is demanding additional, one-directional contextualization, especially if said context seems like it stretches/moves the topic of conversation, I'm probably reading polemic disguised as truth seeking.

[spwa4]

But that is totally unreasonable ... what would you do if I accuse you of child molesting? Let's say I make a video focusing on that. Obviously it's not true, but that doesn't prevent anyone from making such a video.

I think you'll be insisting on additional context and moving the topic of conversation away from child molesting and your involvement therein to, oh, perhaps "fake news".

The sad truth is that it's fundamentally true that the reality on the ground is not a compromise between both sides. There is an actual reality.

[viridian]

Honestly, thinking it through, there's no way I'd engage the public at all on something like that except possibly a singular utterance that no, it didn't happen, ever, not even close, it's a bold faced lie.

Trying to contextualize or talk about fake news or doing anything else feels very shady to me in that context. You do often see this sort of hemming and hawing from people online during these cancellation campaigns, and I cannot even fathom what inspires them to do anything other than directly and aggressively defend themselves.

[xg15]

> what would you do if I accuse you of child molesting? Let's say I make a video focusing on that.

Depends strongly on what you mean of "make a video focusing on that". Is the video just repeating the accusations, without giving any evidence? Is the video a fake? Or does it show actual evidence of child molesting?

I think the moral judgement of this would depend strongly on whether actual molestation has taken place and whether or not the video shows evidence of that.

If it didn't show evidence or the evidence was fake, the case can be dismissed without any additional context and the blame would be on the author of the video for spreading libel.

But if it was true, what kind of context would you expect would change the outcome? "That kid totally deserved it"?

Incidentally, Israelis make the same demand on the world to ignore any "context" for October 7.