Well, you start by going into a wine bar and then it just escalates . . .
You did pretty well, all things considered.
I think (says he name dropping) from the couple of times I got to meet him, that would have made Michael laugh.
Indeed - my aunt is a firm Daily Hate reader too. I take great pleasure in ridiculing her for it whenever possible. Sure, I have no problem with people holding contrary positions to me, I’d just like those reasons to be based on slightly more solid thinking than “ZOMG IMMIGRANTS!!!”.
That’s what sends me bananas as well. Hold whatever views you like but at least have the nuts to back it up with evidence.
What are the facts? where is the evidence? let me see it, feel it and smell it. Then I’ll come to a decision, and guess what? It might involve me changing my mind…the horror!
If you base your political allegiances on a slightly more adult version of “my dad says…” Then you deserve scorn.
But for many people “I read it in the paper” is a valid source of facts. Plenty of people have changed their minds for the worse about immigrants etc because they’ve seen facts and evidence in the paper.
I know, but you forgot to write the above as “facts” and “evidence”.
Unfortunately the British public are largely ignorant about statistics how the press misuse them. I think if had a chance to add anything to our schools syllabus (syllabi?)then it would be this, a critical examination of stats in the popular media.
Or just some more general critical reasoning. I’ve worked on government communications and have had to deal with some of the crap papers churn out - stories that present correct fact in ways that are misleading and draw you to incorrect conclusions. It doesn’t help, of course, that government responds in kind so that it’s quite hard to know what the real story is.
I would though like to see people more able to look at a piece of writing and evaluate it in terms what is fact vs opinion, be able to understand how stats and figures work (e.g. there has been a 5% increase in crime does not mean crime has gone up by five percentage points - even people in my own press office couldn’t get this one straight!) and being finally being able to read a piece and come to a conclusion yourself rather than simply swallow whole the agenda of the author.
Our press is extremely biased and spotting when you’re being led to an opinion by your nose shouldn’t be difficult, and you should be wary when it happens too.
It’s not as easy as all that. The biases of the likes of the Mail and the Mirror are blatant, the Times and the Sun are clearly Murdoch’s mouthpieces, but those of the BBC are a whole different question.
Are you insinuating that the BBC isn’t 100% unbiased and impartial? I’ve never heard something so ludicrous. I bid you good day sir!
What would you say is the least biased – or, what is not quite the same thing, the most reliable – media outlet in the UK?
All the better media outlets - the broadsheets, BBC, ITN, Channel 4 - are pretty reliable. But they all have their biases in different areas. So you look at a news item from several angles to get a better picture.
There’s no such thing as completely unbiased news - simply deciding what facts to include or omit is a bias, even if you don’t think of it as one. Joking aside the BBC is very good at trying to be neutral on things but as Quartz says the key really is to consider the same information from different sources and form an opinion based on your own thinking. Otherwise you’re still just regurgitating what you heard on the news, and regurgitating the BBC ultimately isn’t much better than regurgitating Fox news if there is no critical evaluation in between.
I’d agree that the BBC is very good source of unbiased news.
Always unbiased? who can say. But all stripes of the political spectrum accuse it of bias in one form or another so that is normally a good indicator of neutrality.
On a program by program basis I’d reckon any bias comes from individual editors rather than corporate interference.