Media Bias

[Brian Peacock]

Does Project Vertitas' record to date make them a reliable, let alone a legal, honest, and decent objective source?

I know, I know. I'm shooting the messenger, but saying you chose images of someone jogging or in aviators hardly makes you a propagandist--what images should they have chosen instead?--and I doubt that the overwhelming majority of the US electorate voted for the Democrat ticket because of some flattering images of the candidate. Unflattering images of Trump didn't stop him getting elected did they?



And besides, apparently it's fine for FOX etc to show flattering images and say nice things about Trump, so this isn't so much an accusation of an unduly systematic effort to propagate or win support for Biden but really just another complaint that CNN backed the 'wrong' candidate, again.

[L'Emmerdeur]

C'mon, man. CNN totally won the election for Biden, and that one technical director was responsible for a lot of it. Behind the scenes though. Maybe if he got to know you a bit better he might get you inside to see things and meet people.

[Cunt]

Yeah, man.'Cause defending CNN directly would take courage, care and detail.

But just throwing vague shade on the facts which keep burbling up out of the corporate media cesspool won't change the stench.

[L'Emmerdeur]

'Defending' CNN directly would take some fool who was committed to defending CNN. Throwing vague shade at people by implying they're cowardly, careless, and sloppy doesn't disguise an obvious devotion to a shitty wannabe muckraker with an established record of dishonesty.

[Hermit]

Media are biased? You don't say!



The only difference between media outlets is that some are more upfront about it (often literally) than others.











The US is an exception in that it has the only unbiased news provider in the world - Sky News.

[JimC]

Yeah, but the evil left-liberal media are much worse than the above examples because they use a dreadful, vicious technique called subtlety!

[Seabass]

So Cunt's got no problem with Trump and all the Fox News hosts chatting it up on the phone every night, but he does have a problem with CNN using an unflattering picture of Trump? Is that what's happening here? And all this while he claims to be a lefty and sports a George Carlin avatar?

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, man.'Cause defending CNN directly would take courage, care and detail.

But just throwing vague shade on the facts which keep burbling up out of the corporate media cesspool won't change the stench.

What images should CNN have chosen instead?

[Hermit]

So Cunt's got no problem with Trump and all the Fox News hosts chatting it up on the phone every night, but he does have a problem with CNN using an unflattering picture of Trump? Is that what's happening here? And all this while he claims to be a lefty and sports a George Carlin avatar?

Carlin was more of a libertarian than a lefty.

[Seabass]

So Cunt's got no problem with Trump and all the Fox News hosts chatting it up on the phone every night, but he does have a problem with CNN using an unflattering picture of Trump? Is that what's happening here? And all this while he claims to be a lefty and sports a George Carlin avatar?

Carlin was more of a libertarian than a lefty.

Nope. You could say he was anti-establishment, and he made fun of politicians of all stripes, and he bashed both of our political parties, but he was definitely on the left side of the political spectrum. His comedy was pretty much built on savaging conservatives.

[Hermit]

So Cunt's got no problem with Trump and all the Fox News hosts chatting it up on the phone every night, but he does have a problem with CNN using an unflattering picture of Trump? Is that what's happening here? And all this while he claims to be a lefty and sports a George Carlin avatar?

Carlin was more of a libertarian than a lefty.

Nope. You could say he was anti-establishment, and he made fun of politicians of all stripes, and he bashed both of our political parties, but he was definitely on the left side of the political spectrum. His comedy was pretty much built on savaging conservatives.

Carlin was rather more savage about the common people than conservatives.

"I was on a talk show recently, and the host asked me, "What do you think about the dope problem?" I said, "Definitely, I feel we have too many dopes.""

"I don't think we should be governing ourselves. What we need is a king, and every now and then if the king’s not doing a good job, we kill him."

"We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: "save the planet." What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We don't care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract, they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me."

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'"

"If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created."

"Everything's been sanitized now and cleaned up. First with these fucking Christians. You just start with them. You know. I'm so, you know. That's just one, wait a minute now. Yeah, you know. Let's not leave out these PC campus liberal assholes. I mean they're just as fucking bad from a different direction."

"People are fucking nuts. This country is full of nitwits and assholes. You ever notice that? Nitwits, assholes, fuckups, scumbags, jerkoffs, and dipshits. And they all vote."

"Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that."


I have yet to become acquainted with someone's output so relentlessly negative and lacking in empathy about the common people who can be described as a lefty. Carlin's attitude is in stark contrast to that of the palaeontologist of non-overlapping magisteria fame, who said: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

[Seabass]

Meh. The guy was in comedy for five decades. You can't really judge him based on a handful of quotes. I could go and dig up a bunch of quotes that show him to be more left leaning, but I'm not really interested in arguing about it.

[Cunt]

'Defending' CNN directly would take some fool who was committed to defending CNN. Throwing vague shade at people by implying they're cowardly, careless, and sloppy doesn't disguise an obvious devotion to a shitty wannabe muckraker with an established record of dishonesty.

I also enjoyed his 'wall of retractions' or whatever it's called.

It's more convincing than your rant, but I don't expect you'll say anything clear enough to win yourself a spot on it.

CNN is a propaganda outlet. Their Russia 'nothing burger' tricked a bunch of rubes into distrusting an election. They may have done other shit-smearing campaigns.

As to Carlin, he blamed wars on the individual soldiers. At first I thought he was shitting on the soldiers, but later thought he was treating them more honorably.

It can be viewed different ways, depending on which 'side' on an issue you were on. That's what used to make a good comic - making BOTH sides laugh.

Now polite clapter is mostly on menu.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I also enjoyed his 'wall of retractions' or whatever it's called.

It's more convincing than your rant, but I don't expect you'll say anything clear enough to win yourself a spot on it.

CNN is a propaganda outlet. Their Russia 'nothing burger' tricked a bunch of rubes into distrusting an election. They may have done other shit-smearing campaigns.

As to Carlin, he blamed wars on the individual soldiers. At first I thought he was shitting on the soldiers, but later thought he was treating them more honorably.

It can be viewed different ways, depending on which 'side' on an issue you were on. That's what used to make a good comic - making BOTH sides laugh.

Now polite clapter is mostly on menu.

If anything that I've written is 'unclear' to you, you have only to point out the ambiguity you're struggling with. I'll do my best to put it in terms that should be difficult to mistake. Which part of 'shitty wannabe muckraker with an established record of dishonesty' did you find unclear?

It takes a unique perspective to believe that distrust in the election was all down to CNN and their reporting.

[L'Emmerdeur]

In regard to the 2016 election, if you're attempting to bring that into the discussion, the facts speak for themselves. Democratic politicians did some grandstanding about protesting the results. I think perhaps two of them got up and bayed inanities.

The strong majority of the Democratic electorate in general noted that once again a Republican candidate had soundly lost the popular vote but had won the election, and acknowledged the legitimacy of the election.

The US government noted that there had been a number of coordinated operations undertaken by the Russian government and their puppet organisations (the 'Internet Research Agency' in particular) to interfere in the US election with the intention of helping Donald Trump get elected. The US government did not deign to speculate publicly on extent to which the Russian operations had actually influenced the election.

I think that CNN reported on all of these events. Most of CNN's reporting on the Russian interference came after the election. There are a couple of assertions that can be addressed here.

First, the assertion that there was widespread distrust of the results of the 2016 election. That a majority of the population (or of Democratic voters, if you'd prefer) believed that the results of the election were illegitimate. In fact, after the election approximately 1/3 of Democratic voters believed the results were illegitimate (between 23% and 33%). We could compare that to the 65% of Republicans who believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate, but it's not relevant here.

So after the election approximately one third of the Democratic voters believed the results were illegitimate.

That's significant, and if it could be shown to be the result of CNN's reporting (2nd assertion) then my chortling in bemusement would look rather sillier than it already does.

Though I was able to find the above statistics without too much difficulty, I was unable to find anything about the influence of CNN on the opinions of voters, Democratic or Republican. Your apparent certainty on the topic implies that you have evidence. Or perhaps it's something you extracted from your own fundament which so impressed you that you felt compelled to share it. Previous experience leads one to favour the latter.