What exactly do you mean? We are talking about fact reporting, not their opinion pieces, right? The BBC has one of the best reputations, up there with ARD, ZDF and ARTE. They all deliver news and documentaries of the best quality. I haven’t seen the political magazines of the BBC, so I can’t comment on that.
I point out cultural or group biases when I see them.
This is surprisingly ineffective. Two reasons:
- If you do it bluntly, you just piss people off.
- If you do it tactfully, it doesn’t register at all.
Could it be that our culture of bias - pick your flavor of news, talk, etc., but only as long as it’s red meat with hot sauce - has made us biased towards bias itself? Do we feel it’s a source of conviction and caring, and that moderation is ineffectual and has no character?
I feel it is my obligation no matter how hard the blow back for people to speak their minds. Some of the greatest men of the previous century did and paid for it with their lives. I miss that kind of unrestricted candor, devoid of political correctness and the herd mentality. I don’t think censorship has any place in a free society.
I’m old school and I remember when I used to watch great men speak from greatness. Everyone watched the president when he was on television because he said something worth listening to that included us, The American people. Now I can’t bear to listen to it. I don’t trust it and I have very little confidence in it. At least before the media take over we got to see what was going on in the world with transparency. The Viet Nam war was raging and it was on the news every night. It was shown. It was real.
When we as a nation make a mistake it is the obligation of the people to correct the mistake. To overcome group think someone has to have the courage to speak the truth with courage and conviction.
I don’t doubt for a minute that one reason public figures are so seldom assassinated today is that speaking with such conviction is no longer in fashion.
It will be 50 years, easily, before we get an admission that, say, the Iraq war was wrong and the nation should make amends. Because until then there will be countless so-called patriots (veterans and chickenhawks alike) who would be happy to answer such speech in blood.
Unfortunately these statements are not as straightforwardly false as the researchers would like us to believe.
There were, in fact, some WMDs found in Iraq post-invasion. Tax revenues were higher some years after the Bush tax cuts than before. Federal funding accounts for a great deal of research in things like stem cells, and the Bush ban on federal funding did shut off a lot of stem cell research.
This has nothing to do with political orientation - a Pew poll was done on Obama voters, and found that a strong majority incorrectly identified several false assertions against McCain as true. (A similar poll of McCain voters found the opposite - a majority of the McCain voters could tell what statements were false.)
And when y’all figure out how to combat confirmation bias, let me know, and I will understand how to deal with statements like this-
Regards,
Shodan
Since you believe the BBC, perhaps you will believe them when they tell you the BBC is biased
If the OP is interested in a rational discussion of issues leading to agreement and clarity rather than making yourself feel better by winning a debate, then the first step is to agree on some facts and then talk about how your values and judgements leads you to some conclusion. In this way you can engage someone without threatening their identity. Do so in a friendly, non-confrontational manner. Watch Milton Friedman talk to Donahue on you tube for a great example of the art of persuasive speaking.