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by thwarted 29 days ago
Sometimes a given presentation is called biased but it's not that the reporting is biased but that the actual event is or the source material is biased or lacking. "Dog bites man" is not biased against the dog if they don't or can't get the dog's take. And if they do get the dog's take and the dog wastes everyone's time by ranting/barking about cats and they don't print it, it's not the reporting that's biased, the dog squandered its chance to offer its perspective on the topic at hand.

Sometimes there is no "other side" or the other side offers meaningless contribution. The trend to present oneself as unbiased have often given platforms to voices that are not worthy of having a platform, for whatever reason, and someone needs to make a call, and they should be transparent about it. Are they not giving time because they choose to ignore legitimate and useful information or because giving someone a platform to rehash all the bogus reasons that the moon landing was faked again isn't worth it (to use an extreme example). Moon landing deniers can set up their own web site to push their faked moon landing agenda, they don't need to clutter up everyone else's content with their nonsense in the name of "unbiased reporting".

1 comments

I'm talking about things like say "rent control" (just an example). NPR's and related programs, the core creators arguably believe in it. If they have a segment on it they'll gloss over any evidence that it's a net negative. They'll present it as a solution, talk up how awesome it is through a 20 minute segment with positive words and excited attitudes. "IF" they ask someone about possible negatives they'll kept it short and surround it with questions and attitudes of "don't trust this person" and "dismiss this counter evidence". Then they'll end with some sob story about the people rent control helps.

It's the same for 100s of other topics on which there is strong arguments to be made that the proposal will have the opposite of the intended outcome.