🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@MichaelPorter

> I guess we’ll have to disagree on this one.

Ok certainly nothing wrong with that... ill listen.

> I agree with the general sentiment – a little bias can reinforce itself over time, until you have the highly polarized society that social media algorithms have helped create. So any bias should be examined critically.

Good, yes, agreed so far

> However, I’m *sure* that you’ll have a very hard time finding a news story that is accurate, complete, and unbiased, no matter the source.

Yes absolutely. In fact one reason I am so vocal about it is because very very few news agencies or journalist exist who maintain journalistic integrity. The proper response isnt to accept it, its to call it out when we see it and reward it when we dont, as consumers. Moreover, we should find solutions or ideologies that help ensure journalistic integrity is maximized. Accepting it doesnt do that.

I will tell you what does.. two things really.

1) lack of explicit bias or bias as a feature (like we have here).

2) lack of a for-profit model.

For #1 we discussed this already alot so ill leave that to the rest of the discussion

#2 is important though// Anyone who knows me on here will tell you, im pretty damn capitalistic, I start companies for almost for a living, I very much lean center (left of center, but center) and economically at least I lean right (socially and welfare programs I lean left). So I am the **last** person anyone expects to be anti for-profit... but there are two places I am non-profit all the way, healthcare, and journalism. Because in both these fields maximizing profits is counter to their intended purpose of making healthcare affordable, or journalism faithful to journalistic integrity.

> In short (j/k I talk a lot), I don’t accept the premise that good journalism is devoid of any kind of bias. It is reporting and story-telling by humans, and the intelligent consumer will weigh it appropriately.

This is again a misrepresentation of my stance.. you are disagreeing with somthing I never said.

My criteria is **not** "devoid of any kind of bias".. the criteria is that bias is not baked in as a feature.. that a reasonable attempt is made to eliminate and reduce bias, NOT to intentionally add bias as a feature.

I hope you can see how these are two wildly different things.

@kdorse

@MichaelPorter

Done

@kdorse

@MichaelPorter

> I don’t think it matters what they call *themselves* - Self-assigned names might be useful for clarity, but they don’t necessarily reflect the truth

I agree it doesnt matter too much, other than to reflect on their on mentality maybe. The point isnt that it matters, the point is that it is a **fact** that they call themselves something. If I say "I am a purple unicorn" then it is a **fact** that I think that I am a purple unicorn (it is also a fact that I am not a purple unicorn). So that matters.

What the journalist things they are is **opinion**.. If the journalist things they are far-right then that is the journalists opinion (just like before it is a fact that the journalist has that opinion, but still their opinion). Ergo the journalists opinion, even though it agrees with my own, has no place.

I mean whats the problem.. im not saying this person cant post this stuff.. All I am saying is call it what it is, an place where people post their opinions about the news, and it isnt the news itself.. nothing wrong with being an opinion based editorial, just dont lie and call it news.

> We are allowed to label groups despite their own preferences. “Far-right” is accurate, and succinct. It is a useful shorthand for all the views and policies that you would have the author explicitly list (probably to the detriment of the writing quality).

Of **course** you are able to label them as far right, just dont lie about it and call it news when your doing an opinion piece, thats all. If this were labeled clearly as an opinion piece I'd have no complaints.

@kdorse

@cobratbq I want to add something that might help you understand the expiernce...

First is the fact that there is a noticable delay between your breath and your boyancy change. This is just momentum, the force due to boyancy is light so takes a while for you to move or to reverse momentum.

Second, your body wants to control both your rate and volume of breathing based on your CO2... forcably trying to change your breathing for reasons of boyancy means you sometimes have to hold your breath when you want to take a breath and vice versa... The longer you do this the more the effects build up and can feel a bit like suffocating if you are particularly bad at your timing.

Now when you combine those two you constantly are wanting to do one thing, needing to do another, and any reaction (like avoiding something you are about to hit into) needs to be planned several seconds ahead....

Combine all that and, well, its a lot to coordinate and still have it feel natural... Eventually you become very aware and its all so easy, you just think ahead automatically and react... but you need to spend a lot of time int he water doing it before it is automatic.

@MichaelPorter

> I’m back. This will be long.

No worries, you seem to be polite and arguing in good faith I think... So please take all the space you need.

> The main argument you’re making is that having a bias precludes producing responsible journalism.

I am not saying that at all, though I can see why you might think that as what I am saying is subtly but critically different.

What I am saying is that when you **intentionally** encode bias into your news as a feature... which is what you do when you label news as "for progressives" and choose intentionally loaded language.. only then does it preclude responsible journalism. A person who is simply biased but goes out of their way to do their best that those biases dont influence their reporting, in those cases they can be very responsible. But that not what we have here, we have a news agency who prides itself on being biased and offers it as a feature, intentionally.

> But if they publish a story that states facts, gives sources, and exposes information that is important to me (as this is, I live in the city that attracts these occupations), then that is valuable journalism.

Should be... but when there is intentional bias encoded as a feature when they do it then you are getting that information with intentional brain washing.. words matter, and when the news is presented with highly loaded and opinionated language sprinkled throughout the feed your hate, you wind up walking away a worse person, even if facts are sprinkled with it, you are effected by the news by being a worse human being, you just got some facts as you got it... It also means that almost always facts that are counter to the agenda wont ever reach the spotlight. So while you get facts, you get incomplete facts designed to persuade you to a conclusion rather than to inform you fairly.

> (You’re taking a hard line for objectivity, but there is no such thing. We’re all hairless apes constructing our own realities out of extremely limited sensory data with a brain that likes to make up stories so we can find food and mates, and avoid danger.)

There is a huge difference between people being flawed and being unable to achieve perfect objectability vs intentionally being bias and baking that into your news as a feature rather than an accidental effect.

> The rest of this seems to be differing opinions on the meaning of terms.

Not about the meaning of terms at all, its about the use of loaded language indenting to show intentional bias.

> “PressProgess”: This is a progressive journalism outfit. The name fits.

Yes the name fits, and makes quite clear they have the intention of being biased.. that bias is the goal, not a side effect.. thats the problem.. the fact that the name fits is exactly why they have no journalistic integrity.

> Try convincing any new organization trying to attract subscribers that they will succeed with an unexciting, straight-down-the-middle name and they will laugh you out of the boardroom. “18% Grey News! Not too dark, not too light. Perfect and featureless!”

You are absolutely right.. delivering news with journalistic integrity wont succeed.. That is exactly the problem. I dont blame them for selling out and becoming a propaganda machine, any business man would, its the same reason Fox news exists, its just good business.... This is exactly why for-profit news should already have you suspicious fromt he get go.. you cant maximize profit and actually have journalistic integrity, because thats not what people want.

This is exactly why the few good objective news agencies are all non-profit agencies... because they can focus on doing good journalism, not how popular they are.

@kdorse

@MichaelPorter

I see i had an accidental paste int he middle of my post, im going to delete and repost.. please reattach this comment as I dont want you to be silenced, i want the comment to be visible for others (i will also respond once I read it).

@kdorse

@cobratbq Not natural at all.. new divers take quite a few dives before they get their boyancy control in check... For me as an expiernced diver at the top of the expertise scale, yes its very natural for me and i can do back flips and blow bubble rings, and go through very narrow openings with sharp edges comfortably... but it took many years and many hundreds of dives to get to that point.

Even now when i dont dive for a year I need to spend a little time in a pool or shallow water on my first dive just remembering my skills.. They come back quickly, but they really do take some practice.

@cobratbq Yup in the end its all about density... thats why as a scuba diver when im neutral if i breath in I go up, I exhale I go down.. I dive caves and often control my breath to control my movement.

@cobratbq

Its actually simple to understand... Fat floats, pour oil on water or put a stick of butter in water and see...

Muscle sinks and is denser than water.

The fatter you are the harder it is to sink... I am fat, I do not sink.

@MichaelPorter

If by "I'm done" do you mean you are disengaging with the conversation (in which case I wont bother reading your posts since I dotn engage in one way conversations)... or do you simply mean your done with your series of comments and will await my response? If it is the later I will be happy to continue reading and comment if youd like.

@kdorse

@MichaelPorter

> “Far-right” vs. “Anti-LGBT”: “Far-right” is a political position. “Anti-LGBT” is bigotry included within that position. These people are both.

Far right is a political position, yes, and anti-LGBT is something else, yes... But these people do **not** self proclaim as far-right.. they list a bunch of positions... it is the journalist who decided to litter the piece with their position and not just lavbel their position as right, but far-right. While I agree, it is far-right, I also recognize that is an opinion, and carries with it the loaded language of extremism and hate.. things I agree the group represents, but there is no place for a journalist to be littering their opinion on someones political position in a piece... If they self-proclaimed themselves as far-0right sure.. but to attach that label to a group is your opinion, and has no place in good journalism, even if i agree with that opinion.

> You would prefer that the author call them anti-LGBT, but this is only part of their platform. Besides, I’m sure a lot of them would claim that they *aren’t* anti-LGBT, just anti-groomer or anti-pedophile (they’re definitely anti-2SLGBTQQIA+). So it’s not as informative as calling them far-right.

I was only being sussinct.. What I prefer is the author list the views they state they have and leave it at that... any **opinion** about if their views are left, right far or otherwise should be for the reader to form not the journalist

@kdorse

@cobratbq Which one? I knew this fact for a very long time, but I was reminded of it by a veritassium video i recently watched.