And I’d like to know how Milum is so certain that completely balanced representation exists on the Internet to the degree that any deviation from 50/50 coverage in a search engine represents bias. Hell, for all we know, 75% of the Internet is liberal, and if Yahoo presents 75% liberal links then it’s spot on, right? Maybe the Internet is 99 44/100% liberal and Yahoo’s 75% liberal coverage is a dreadful conservative slant.
I don’t want to see Milum’s personal statistics, I want to see the control group.
Of course the back of a Dollar Bill has liberal bias! It has to balance the front of the Dollar Bill (“In God We Trust”)!
See - no bias, overall. Just make sure to put all the bills in your wallet with their backs facing left…
I see. So if AP reported that the CEO of YAHOO was having group sex with Howard Dean and Carrottop, Yahoo News would blindly post the story without reservation or editing. Um yah, ok.
And THIS, boys and girls is why we should choose our username wisely.
I imagine friend Lefty is offering a droll homage to Ursula LeGuinn, thus simultaneously announcing intelligence and good taste in the matter of science fiction.
Well, yes, if they’re just running off of an AP wire service, automated news-gatherer, or third-party service. Even if they do manually select which stories to run, your example is irrelevant. A legitimate story about the First Lady’s comments on a controversial issue is a bit different than total BS (something the AP does not usually produce).
A question: Do you have a problem with the story appearing on Yahoo? If so, why?
Yahoo doesnt employ any editors for its news content, that would be a stupid waste of money. Thats partly what theyre paying the news provider a lump sum a month for.
In the financial news section, if an article came out that Yahoo was laying off 25% of its workforce, the article would appear in Yahoo. And thats where many of their employees would find out about it. And thats why, even if they wanted to waste the time and money sifting the news feed, then applying rules to every story and headline for mentions of Yahoo, it would be hard to find a developer to do it.
Poor swordsman. Self-deprecating humor is an essential tool: it allows you to back sheepishly away from a stupid position you take (such as your idiotic suggestion above that Yahoo is twisting headlines) while maintaining good grace.
Incidentally, it also lets you choose from a wider variety of usernames, but that’s less important.
When you get shot down, the graceful thing to do is to acknowledge it and move on, not to shrill ever more absurd arguments.
And elucidator, a fellow fan of great SF, got the reference just right :).
And I’ll tell you another thing, sometimes the Internet is a poor mode of communication
because the inevetible unavoidable time lapses can cause information transfers between correspondents to becomes disjointed.
In other words I apologize for not being able to bring my analysis
of Yahoo’s headline reporting to this thread Tuesday night as I promised.
I dutifully completed my computed example of Yahoo’s indiscretions that night but was unable to pull up Straight Dope to post and so my research was regrettably lost. then Wednesday night I came home late from a meeting and was tired and almost drunk.
What a shame because Thursday morning’s headlines on Yahoo are poor pickings.
But anyway I’ll do my best to demostrate my very simple process for determining
Yahoo’s bias.
_______** Ratings**
_______________________________bias left____bias right____bonus points.
• Dean ends campaign vows to back nominee 10______X_______3
• Bush economic team under fire ____9______X 7
• Cyprus reunification talks begin___________X______8 ______ X
• New ‘NetSky’ worm spreads via email
• Pet projects weigh down energy bill
• Exercise need not be painful study says
• Doctors find 350 coins in patient’s belly
So as you can clearly see for 2-19-04 Yahoo scored 29 to 8 or a Liberal bias rating of 78%.
Note: Bonus points were given in the top rated headline because of the inclusion of
the phrase “vows to help nominee”. Poor form. In the second headline listed bonus points were given because no mention was made of the report that today unemployment claims were the lowest in the last two months.
Usually Yahoo’s liberal ratings are several points higher. as I said it was a slow day for
WHAT? You didn’t show us a process at all, you just showed us some numbers. You didn’t show that you’d read the least bit of this thread – where’s your evidence that Yahoo didn’t just draw these headlines directly from AP?
Milum, what you did has nothing whatsoever to do with science. I am appalled yet amused that you think a scientific survey would contain “bonus points.”
Did you give a gold star to the headline about Cyprus? Draw a frownie face on top of it?
But I’m having trouble believing your intellectual laziness or corruption. Surely you can see that if anyone is to blame here (and I’m not the least bit saying anyone is to blame), it’s AP, not Yahoo.
Very good, Milum. Glad to see you could finally be arsed to contribute to your own thread. Now, if you don’t mind, please explain for the assembled multitude just how your “system” comes up with results any different from the ratings I assigned in my last post here, and which I pulled straight from my ass?
Please explain how this headline rates a 10 on the scale of raging liberal bias. Dean ends campaign; a simple unshaded fact. vows to back nominee, another straight reporting of fact. Where is the bias? Was it because they didn’t say, Tax-and-spend Liberal Weenie Dean Slinks Out of Dem Infighting, Vows to Bash Bush to the Bitter End? Would that be fair and balanced in your mind?
Fear Itself worked on making the Dean headline more fair. Here is my attempt on the rest of them (although it admittedly makes them a bit wordy:
“Bush economic team under fire from Communistic Democrats who don’t honor President for pulling the economy out from the Clinton depression”
“Cyprus reunification talks begin, in further demonstration of Bush’s successful foreign policy”
“New ‘NetSky’ worm spreads via email…Many suspect a welfare-using minority Democrat”
“Pet projects inserted by spineless Democrats weigh down President’s glorious energy bill”
“Exercise need not be painful if liberals weren’t trying to force Americans into giving up their glorious SUVs with tougher CAFE standards” (Okay, that one is a bit of a stretch…I’m open to further suggestions.)
“Doctors Find 350 coins in wealthy patient’s belly. IRS gestapo likely to confiscate 345 of them in taxes.”
And in case you can’t (or won’t) explain how you arrived at the conclusion that some headlines contained a liberal bias, can you point to the news highlights of the day that you think should have been covered by Yahoo? Obviously you feel either that the news is either being filtered or slanted in favor of a liberal viewpoint—so where’s all the actual news we’re missing out on?
“Bush Says For Nineteenth Time That He Got Honorable Discharge, So There”
“Chaney Celebrates Being Still Alive After Three Years”
“American Military Has Heroes In It, Though We Don’t Have Anything Specifically Heroic To Report At Press Time”
“Democrats Still Arguing About Something While Republican-Controlled Congress Fails To Look Faintly Smug”
“390 Consecutive Days Of Pretzel-Eating Safety For President”
“Treasonous Republican Flunky Takes Fall For Something Bush Honestly Had Nothing To Do With”
“Boy, That Clinton, He’s Still A Big Liar, Huh?: A Retrospective”
“Teaching Children To Understand Quadrillions, The Debt And You”
Obviously, “Vows to fight on” is much more powerful than “Vows to back nominee”, so we’ll double the bonus points to 6.
The second one is identical, so we’ll leave the scores.
On the third, “Agree to End Division” just doesn’t sound as positive and upbeat as “Reunification”, so we’ll drop this score to a 6 for the right. (By the way, how in the hell is this “Right leaning?” Is Kofi a “friend of George?” He’s the guy who did all the work.)
Based on this assessment, it’s OBVIOUS that Fox News is even craftier with the liberal bias than Yahoo. Those damned pinkos.
I won’t bother with a matrix here because all the stories score a perfect 11 on the Librometer.
Bremer gives assurance on Iraq hand off
Obvious lefty propaganda about the U.S. occupation chief cutting off the hand of an Iraqi. Americans urged to leave Haiti
Jeeze, we haven’t even invaded yet, and the liberal media is demanding that we leave. Former Enron CEO Skilling pleads innocent
A fair-and-balanced headline would have plainly stated that “Skilling is innocent.” Frist may make 2008 White House run
An objective report would have noted that Frist will run only if liberals are successful in blocking a constitutional amendment to allow Bush to name himself president-for-life. Atoll nation Tuvalu imperiled by rising tides
“Rising tide of capitalists,” is what is implied in this leftwing screed. Study says empathy may cause real pain
Story means Bill Clinton was right when he said he felt our pain. Couples shy away from 9/11 wedding date
The story doesn’t give the reason couples aren’t marrying on Sept. 11; that’s because they’re true patriots who are honoring the day by waving flags and writing checks to the GOP.
Seriously, I thought there might be a preponderance of ‘liberal’ news maybe because there’s a Democrat national primary going on. But that might just be my wacky right-wing conservative opinion.
