Of Media Bias, Liberal vs. Conservative (Or "Who's Kidding Who?")

Please bear with and/or forgive the rambling nature. No, I am not returning to regular blogging. This is a very uniquely specialized post made specifically to act as a very long comment which I would have otherwise had to post in multiple pieces over at...

"Steve Salerno's SHAMblog: Trumpnost. Or, confessions of a semi-repentant Trump-aholic".

Not sure this is completely coherent. Perhaps I'm out of practice.... Sorry, I wish I was able to concisely make my points, but the more frustrated and aggravated I am about something, the more I ramble and repeat myself. Obviously I'm ***extremely*** aggravated in general about this sort of issue and its relation to the ongoing fiasco of a campaign....

<Sigh>



Where to start?

I don't regularly watch CNN or Fox News. Never have, but I have been exposed to them on occasion. I follow political news on the internet (believe it or not, typically by following selected political fact-checking sites, including Snopes), but I also try to actually pay most attention to **credible** major news sources... NBC, ABC, CBS, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, to name but a six-fingered handful sampling... Media which have built their prized reputations for good and accurate journalism by actually caring about facts and evidence. Are they perfect? No, of course not. Have there been occasional unethical or biased scandal incidents over many, many, many years? I wouldn't doubt it. But I'll still take such organizations and sites and their occasional issues¹ over the hardcore conservative media sites that have been around for all of about 5 years and, if you check their "About Us" pages or just take a momentary glimpse at the their various headlined pieces, you'll see that not only are **they** biased, but they openly tell you so and are actually PROUD OF IT! And they have the nerve to endlessly harp on the liberal bias of the media?!?!?! Simply not reporting things with a conservative bias does not automatically equate to liberal bias. I'm sorry, but it doesn't.

[ ¹ Just as, analogously, if I'm ever in trouble or danger, I'll be calling 911 for the police, despite the occasional trigger-happy "bad apple" on the force. But then again, I'm not African-American.... ]

Plus it's not like I only ever go to ***one*** of those sources I cited as examples of those I generally trust. I also google (oh wait, I guess Google is inherently liberally biased too) to see who else, if anyone, is reporting on something and try to get a sense of what they're saying. I check to see if they're reporting the same facts or providing different info which might allow for other interpretations of particular stories.

One should ***NEVER*** rely on just **one** source or just one **class** of sources, i.e. liberal or conservative. If all you ever do is rely on obviously heavily conservative or liberal media, then of course you're going to get the impression that **other** media and sites outside of your normal travels are **obviously** biased. (Why, they don't automatically see things as **I** do! The nerve!)

Me, I will gladly accept reporting from any source at either end of the political/philosophical spectrum so long as they actually report **facts** and refer to **evidence** from sources that can be verified (or at least transparently identified and presented) and corroborated by other news sources (beyond simply saying that "XYZ is reporting that...."). If they can't back up what they're saying by citing credible sources and if it's not being widely corroborated in other places, then I have almost no interest because why should I believe any of it...? I mean... Yeah, thousands of media people and hundreds of media organizations are reporting the same general agreed upon details about something, but this one rinky-dink site which has been around for all of about 5 years has been reporting some horrible miscarriage of justice or some widespread government cover-up conspiracy for much of that time and yet no one else has ever come along and explored it, corroborated it, found there to be **something** there? Maybe because there's nothing there. It's not **that** complicated or hard to see the logic or illogic of some of these wild claims of bias and organizations being sinisterly coerced or bought off.
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Now a representative personal anecdote...

One friend on fb posted this link:

SNOPES Caught Lying for Hillary...AGAIN. Loses All Credibility -- Silence Is Consent.

Here are my thoughts...

Sorry, but am I expected to take seriously a site which lists on Google blurbs as "Silence is Consent | Conservative, Hard Hitting News, Politics & Humor"? Gee, is there **any** indication whatsoever that ***THEY*** are perhaps biased the **opposite** way? (Spoiler alert! There is actually much evidence that they are indeed the ones who are most biased.)

Is there any reason for me to believe that they are in any way (even despite their obvious conservative affiliations) playing fair and balanced, objectively looking at actual facts which can be proven or corroborated in any way elsewhere? Am I supposed to just magically be inspired to trust their word and the "truth" of their commentary re Snopes because **they** say so? Well, if I were hardcore conservative, I might, but I'm a lifetime independent voter (who at one time even leaned **heavily** conservative/Republican) and I try to make up my mind about news stories based on credible and factual news reporting (not mere rumors and innuendo, no matter how much I may **want** to believe something). Now I'll grant you, it can sometimes be difficult to discern "credible" news sources, especially when they are previously unheard of websites... but it's also usually ridiculously **easy** to spot NON-credible and **obviously** biased sources if one just does even a tiny bit of poking around. As mentioned above, many of them just openly **TELL** you they're biased.

Take a look at their "About us" page: "If you are fed up with the way this country is being run into the ground, ‘bookmark’ this website and ‘LIKE’ our Facebook page. You now have a place to voice your opinions and share relevant news. Our country is under attack from far left, radical Liberals, Progressives/Communists, Marxists and Socialists. Please share this page with 'like minded' friends so we all can work together towards taking this country back and preserving the Constitution of the United States of America...." (Etc. You get the idea.)

And they have a page listing "Friends of SIC", a huge list of ridiculously, shamefully, blatantly obvious (and one might even say **notorious**) conservative people/sites such as:

All the Right Snark, Ann Coulter, Atlas Shrugs, Breitbart[dot]com, Chicks on the Right, Conservapedia, Dennis Miller, Drudge Report, Fox News, Left of the Mark, Legal Insurrection, Liberal Logic 101, The Lonely Conservative, Michelle Obama’s Mirror, NewsBusters, Reagan Coalition, Reaganite Republican, Right Side News, The Other McCain, Washington Times, et al...

I actually dare anyone to try to find even one of those "friends" sites which **doesn't** indicate in some explicit way on their "About us" pages or by the overwhelming nature of their own pieces that they are unashamedly hardcore conservative. It can't be done. (I looked. Fox News is the closest you'll get.)

And a page which that particular SIC anti-Snopes piece links to as "proof" of something (I'm not really sure what since it doesn't even mention Snopes) is...

Clinton Campaign Admit They Pay An Army Of Online Trolls

...where that site has as a general category topic on its main subject bar: "Conspiracies." Well, I'm sorry, but that right there tells me they're likely a bunch of loony tin-foil hat wearers! One can't link to a site like that and think it counts as proof of anything! I'm sorry, it just isn't. (They don't seem to have an "About us" page.)

The SIC piece goes on to quote Ethics Alarms (which I never heard of) as further evidence against Snopes. Of course, SIC conveniently omits linking to any particular EA piece which has anything to do with Snopes, so I had to search the EA site myself to find this: Unethical Website Of The Month: Bye-Bye Snopes...You’re Dead To Me Now [UPDATED 10/12/2016]. That item then refers to a FactCheck.org item, Clinton’s 1975 Rape Case, and compares it to Snopes' finding.

The only thing that FactCheck.org piece verifies is that Hillary "...laughed when recalling unusual aspects of the case." Which, if she was laughing about having gotten a known child rapist freed, would obviously be pretty scuzzy... Yes, Donald Trump or Pope/Catholic priest scuzzy, even. But that's not what they found...
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LENGTHY QUOTE OF FACTCHECK.ORG:

In 2014, the Washington Free Beacon published the audio of an interview that Arkansas reporter Roy Reed conducted with Clinton in the 1980s. In the interview, Clinton recalls some unusual details of the rape case, and she can be heard laughing in three instances, beginning with a joke she makes about the accuracy of polygraphs.

Clinton: Of course he claimed he didn’t. All this stuff. He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. [laughs]

At another point, Clinton said the prosecutor balked at turning over evidence, forcing her to go to the judge to obtain it.

Clinton: So I got an order to see the evidence and the prosecutor didn’t want me to see the evidence. I had to go to Maupin Cummings and convince Maupin that yes indeed I had a right to see the evidence [laughs] before it was presented.

Clinton then said that the evidence she obtained was a pair of the accused’s underwear with a hole in it. Clinton told Reed that investigators had cut out a piece of the underwear and sent the sample to a crime lab to be tested, and the only evidence that remained was the underwear with a hole in it.

Clinton took the remaining evidence to a forensic expert in Brooklyn, New York, and the expert told her that the material on the underwear wasn’t enough to test. “He said, you know, ‘You can’t prove anything,'” Clinton recalled the expert telling her.

Clinton: I wrote all that stuff and I handed it to Mahlon Gibson, and I said, “Well this guy’s ready to come up from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice.” [laughs]

The emails we have received about this case contain some misinformation. Some have claimed, for example, that Clinton volunteered for the case and the accused rapist was found not guilty. That’s not accurate, as we just explained. But Clinton did laugh in the retelling of some unusual aspects of the rape case, and we leave it to others to decide whether her laughter was appropriate or not.
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So as for the instances of laughter, as FactCheck.org says, that can be left "...to others to decide whether her laughter was appropriate or not." I, for one, can easily see her laughing about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of polygraph tests. I can also see her laughing as she makes the statement about viewing the evidence as she seems to be speaking sarcastically, making the point that, well, of course she has a right to see the evidence. She also seems to be probably speaking sarcastically in the third instance too, though I confess I'm not sure I quite get the inference fully. The point is, though, that in none of those instances was she in any way laughing (joyously, maniacally, or evilly cackling?) at how she managed to get a scuzzball child rapist freed, which always seems to be the strong implication of all the "fair and balanced" reports from the conservative media re Hillary's long-ago work on the case. In fact, the FactCheck.org item pretty much agrees with what Snopes found as far as I can see with perhaps some tiny wiggle room on the issue of the laughter.

The whole EA piece seems to me to be a long meandering exercise in innuendo, trickster wording, and technical semantic parsing of lesser details. Jack Marshall is the only name I can find affiliated with the EA blog. The particular piece does not list an "author" so I have to assume the author is probably Mr. Marshall himself (especially since he seems to be the only responder to commenters). Speaking of which, if one looks through the comments, one will see responses of a more off-the-cuff nature by Mr. Marshall responding to commenters where he refers to one commenter, Bob, as "Tool Bob" for daring to disagree with his anti-Snopes analysis and later says to him: "Be quiet, Bob, you corrupted fool, and let me talk to the honest readers..." Another commenter named Steve also dares to disagree and gets quickly banned with an explicit declaration of such from Mr. Marshall. To someone else he generally lumps such commenters together with: "Do you knee-jerk idiots read anything before you write this crap?"

Oh, but of course one commenter who relates an unverifiable email exchange they supposedly had with Snopes as "evidence" of their bias gets a quick "Thanks for this. It’s pretty damning..." No skepticism, just quick acceptance of the new "evidence." Mr. Marshall is laughably transparent (and pretty darned unethical, I would say) in **his** bias.

In the main text portion of the piece, Mr. Marshall says: "In July, we learned that the trend was no aberration. Snopes apparently felt that the inspiring Facebook post by officer Jay Stalien needed to be discredited, ***so it had LaCapria write this***, which suggested by the inherent innuendo of presenting such a post on a hoax-exposure site that readers should be skeptical. The Stalien post expressed anti-Black Lives Matter sentiments. And Kim couldn’t prove that Stalien exists...."

"So it had LaCapria write this"? Apparently he just **knows** that Ms. LaCapria was **ordered** to reach a certain preordained conclusion by the higher-ups at Snopes. It couldn't possibly be that she examined the evidence and found it wanting in any way, could it? Where is his proof of this "inherent innuendo" which **he** employs right there in the same sentence where he claims that is what Snopes does?

Does any of that sound like the product of the mind of an "ethics expert?" Or of an unbiased person? Or even of a decent human being?

Oh, and the apparent "proof" that Snopes is liberally biased according to SIC?...

Correct The Record’s “Barrier Breakers” project admitted in a press release that it pays people to pretend to be Clinton supporters, and claims that thousands of unsuspecting social media users have already been “addressed” by the PAC’s mercenary social media warriors – with the promise that many more will be “corrected” in the near future. Given that Snopes entered the political fact checking game around the same time, and began publishing more political articles than ever before; most of which display a clear Clinton bias – it is legitimate to ask if Snopes is also on the Correct The Record payroll (this totally discredit them...forever in my book)

OK, let's dig into that... First of all, if Correct the Record really did admit something like that, why doesn't the SIC piece link directly to **that** press release (or to some archived version of it)? And why would anything like that even **be** admitted in a "press release"? Press releases are for bragging about positive things, not admitting negative or shady stuff. I strongly suspect that if any such press release ever existed it said nothing of the sort as far as "admitting" anything.

Second, the writer seems to be questioning the timing of when Snopes started doing political fact checks vs the alleged press release "admission." Um, OK. And...? The writer even says "...it is legitimate to ask if Snopes is also on the Correct The Record payroll (this totally discredit them... forever in my book)." OK. Maybe it **might** be legitimate to question that... But so what? Saying it is legitimate to question something is not proof of squat. It's not even mere circumstantial evidence. It is just raw rumor and innuendo. If they have facts proving it, then show us! Otherwise, they have no business making baseless accusations.

<Sigh>
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OK, moving slightly away from the specific microcosmic issue of Snopes bias and back to the larger issue of general liberal media bias...

As is easily shown by that "Friends of SIC" page there is a huge network of conservative sites and media out there openly spinning things in a heavily conservative light. You can hear any number of conservative radio talk show hosts and stations all across the country at any hour of any day and they blatantly and proudly **tell** you they are politically conservative (aka biased) with almost every sentence, every breath! But yet somehow their followers just automatically believe that **those** sources are naturally to be trusted simply **because** of that. (Just as Trump supposedly just "tells it like it is"? I'm sorry, but being painfully and politically incorrectly blunt does not necessarily equate to speaking truth. Sometimes it's just indicative of being an obnoxious, lying a-hole.) In essence, the belief, or closed mindset going in beforehand (so it seems to me), is that "only my conservative views are correct and anything that doesn't match up with those views, with my conservative narrative of things, is, by tautological definition, untrue or even deliberate lies. Therefore... Liberal bias!" The mind is made up first, then the facts which best fit that mindset are deliberately and consciously chosen. (As Snopes is falsely, or unprovenly, accused of doing.) Facts which don't fit are discarded, ignored, denied, trashed, as a product of the "liberal media." Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but beliefs and opinions need to follow from the evidence, not vice versa. (Trump can deny saying and doing things all he wants, but when there's video/audio/photographic proof of him saying/doing the very things—even on his own twitter feed!—that he's denying, what are we to think? [And I'm not even talking about the sex stuff!] He regularly does this and **has** done this for the past year! It's beyond **beginning** to form a pattern, it's become a pathology of lies.)

There's a big difference between believing something is true simply because it agrees with your own implicit bias to begin with vs believing something is true because there's actual verifiable evidence that anyone can reference for themselves. Evidence deals in specific dates, documents, video, audio, public events, etc. Saying that it is "legitimate to question something" does not in any way constitute real evidence. It was legitimate at one time to question if the Earth was flat or round. Evidence proved it once and for all (except to a few random looney-toons people). Evidence is what matters. I see none whatsoever in the SIC anti-Snopes piece and related links. (Though I freely admit, there's only so far I can go down the rabbit hole.)

Such pieces may be good enough for the conservative faithful (who already believe and eagerly lap them up, sharing them around as if they **prove** something), but I need more. Point me to something with actual evidence and I will then consider that evidence. But in addition to considering the evidence, one must also, as the old saying goes, consider the source.
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And please don't get me wrong... There's a 180° vice versa side to this whole scenario whereby some liberals only check with and believe outright **really** liberally biased (and proud of it!) sources and immediately discount anything which comes from a neutral or conservative source. It does indeed cut both ways. But my perception of late (perhaps due only to my **particular** friends and relatives) is that the conservative side of such things is waaaaaay more widespread, malignant, and dangerous. (I actually can conceive of a day when civil war could break out in this country and that's such a repugnant thought! I don't make such a statement lightly. I'm just not sure if it will be over primarily political, ethnic, or religious reasons.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again and I'll say it until I'm blue and purple and about to pass out from lack of oxygen... One cannot spend all their time consulting news sources and websites which they already **know** going in are going to share their own chosen political biases, telling them pretty much only what they want to hear in the first place, and expect to see anything approaching reality, let alone anything that might convince someone of an opposing or skeptical/critical mindset of anything. The hardcore media and sites on both sides simply preach to their respective choirs and amplify their followers' steadfastness, entrenching them even further (if that's possible) in their views. I don't understand how that serves anyone right or provides any useful benefit to anyone (other than those in power on their respective sides).

Imo, people who typically whine about the so-called liberal bias in the mainstream media are deeply confusing other valid viewpoints that don't happen to agree with their own worldview (or their own unrecognized bias) for liberal bias. Just because someone doesn't automatically and 100% agree with your opinion, that doesn't mean there's bias.

And if the "mainstream media" **is** liberally biased, well, did the conservative media ever stop to think that maybe the fact that they all split off from the mainstream media to form their own huge in-bred cannibalistic conservative media conglomerates might have something to do with that? I've travelled up and down the east coast from NJ to the deep deep south and to Western Ohio and there has never been a place where I could escape from the "Obama's evil!" crowd of Rush, Hannity, and whoever. They're accessible just about 24/7 anywhere. And don't seriously try to tell me that **they** don't (just as much and more) cozy up to **their** own pet candidates and do everything they can to help present them in a good light while excoriating the evil ones on the other side of the political aisle!

Imo, the conservative media, especially the sites online, act as an echo chamber amplifying their views (right or wrong doesn't seem to matter) endlessly round and round the conservative networks. They cite ***each other's*** blogs and articles as if they "prove" something. "See! See! We told you Hillary is evil!, it says so here on this **other** conservative blog!, And this one!" Etc., Etc... At a certain point, I can't tell who started the disinformation ball rolling, but it just keeps playing loop-de-loop endlessly as the faithful share it back and forth to each other on social media. No facts or evidence necessary. Actually, even counter facts and evidence seem only to strengthen their collective resolve. (Don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.)

I have gotten so damned sick and tired of this endless whining by Republicans about the horrible liberally biased "mainstream media." I see and hear this all the time from conservative friends and family on facebook. And it drives me crazy because (for some reason) I expect so much better of and from them and feel that they should too. If people abandon all logic and reason for the sake of an emotional stake in some cause, how can you hope to possibly make them see that maybe that cause is not all it's cracked up to be? You can't point them to fact checkers because they've already decided the fact checkers are biased. Mainstream media? Nope. Biased too. Who's **not** biased? "Why, the ones I regularly consult, of course." How do you know **they're** not biased? "Well, they agree with me." Round and round and dizzyingly round.

From very early on, Trump has railed against the "liberal" media being against him and taking him out of context or some such nonsense. It doesn't matter that there's ample evidence that he's simply denying the undeniable truth, truth which can be verified by examining his very own words and actions on video or his twtter feed. Deny, deny, deny, accuse the media of liberal bias. It's terrible how everyone's so unfairly against Trump, even to the point of using his very own words to prove he's lying or just doesn't know what the bleep he's saying. (I'm still not clear on how they manage to get footage of him saying/doing things he never said/did.)

Trump and his supporters make lame excuse after lame excuse for his own failure, shortcomings, and general jerkiness (and I don't only mean like when he made fun of that disabled reporter). Possibly the lamest excuse I heard was in defense of "locker room talk." "Oh, they were only words, he didn't mean any of that." Trump himself said essentially this (though I forget the exact phrasing). Hmmm, so up until then your excuse for things was that the media is liberally biased and **they** lie just to unfairly attack you. But now, all of a sudden, **your** defense is, "Oh, it was only empty bragging,"... so essentially... You were lying!.

And it's also liberal bias, I guess, when about a quarter of incumbent congressional Republicans come out and say they can no longer support Trump, some very few even indicating they'll vote for Hillary. (Though now some of the spineless weasels are backtracking and claiming, "Well, I never said I wouldn't actually vote for him, only that his words and conduct were reprehensible and unacceptable." Uh huh. Sure. Whatever you say.)

This next bit is obviously just my own personal opinion as I get near to wrapping this up... I am so fed up that I have personally vowed (not that it should mean anything to anyone) to never vote for another Republican again until they start showing evidence of sanity and having functioning brains. I hate that they have so long been in bed with the NRA and the Christian right, supporting the certifiably looney Wayne LaPierres and Kim Davises of the world. It makes sense though. Those groups are also massively persecuted. Obama and Hillary want to take away all their precious guns and Christians aren't allowed to discriminate against blacks and gays in their public places of business. It's terrible! The NRA confuses enacting tougher gun laws and requirements (especially for the really big guns) for "They're coming to take all my guns away!" And the Christians confuse not getting their way all the time and being able to force **others** to bow to **their** religion with being persecuted. Some in the conservative crowd would eagerly repeal the constitutional bit about separation of church and state, whereas I would prefer to repeal the alleged right of private individuals to own guns. Yes, that's right... Obama and Hillary don't want to take away all your guns... ***I*** do! Hey, just telling it like it is... <hrug> The answer to all our problems is not God & guns, God & guns, God & guns, even more God & guns! "Thou shalt not kill, but ah needs mah guns!"

And another thing... Why do you think it is that these right-wing nutjobs who go around proclaiming that God has "chosen" this candidate or "anointed" that candidate never ever once see God as being on the side of a Democrat? Hmmmm... Could it be that maybe God isn't choosing these Republicans, but that **they** are and then ascribing that choice to God since they're best buds and all that? It's only natural that God would agree with what **they** think. And they've gotten very used to running around proclaiming what God likes and wants or whom God is against and will smite.

Sorry, I may have gone a bit looney from all the election nonsense too. I've had it with conservative Republicans who can't think for themselves. They're just mindless parrots. (Again, more so than any similar parrots I see on the liberal Democratic side of the spectrum, but that could just be sampling bias as a result of the particular friends and family ***I*** know. <shrug>
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Please note: Nowhere in here do I ever once say anything hinting that Hillary is a great choice or even a good choice solely according to her own merits. I am not trying to convince anyone of that. (But for me, compared to Trump, she's a no-shred-of-doubt-about-it choice. I have never been so literally scared and appalled by a presidential candidate's erratic behavior as I am by Trump's. And people actually ***want*** him to have his finger on the war buttons?!

I am related to an elderly married couple... **He** simply comes right out and says he'd never vote for a woman. Not that he'd never vote for Hillary, but that he'd never vote for a woman! **She** has said she can't vote for Hillary because "she lies." I, of course, told her that Trump has been quantifiably found to be significantly lying around 71% of the time that Politifact checks his statements compared to Hillary's 27%—which by istelf is certainly not a good percentage! She dismisses that and says that, well, Trump is good at business. I pointed out that he's had 6 bankruptcies on his business record [and this was **before** the bit about him allegedly claiming a near-billion-dollar loss one year, allowing him to, again allegedly, pay zero federal income tax for about two decades]. She responds, "Well, he knows when to get out." I said, "But this is ***our country*** we're talking about! He can't just 'get out' without leaving us in shambles" should it come to that. They're both still voting for Trump, they have the signs and everything. (Trump was apparently dead on when he joked that he could literally kill someone and people would still vote for him.)

My point is that just the same as many people simply choose not to believe Snopes or other more pointedly political fact checkers (if anything they just reflexively go the other way from the fact checkers), I don't believe any of these conservative pieces about liberal media bias, at least not anywhere close to the extent that is implied anyway. And yet, as I say, the types of hardcore conservative sites which complain of liberal media bias **clearly** indicate their own (Proud!) bias right up front and all over. Snopes and other such sites don't do anything like that because their livelihoods depend largely on their reputations for fairness, transparency, accuracy, and even willingness to completely change as more facts may come out about something (which I've seen them do). Snopes and other fact checkers have even run occasional pieces which verify and back up conservative claims, even—GASP!—Trump's claims (or clear him of some negative claim against him). Again, I've seen them for myself. But the people who **need** to see that, don't... because they refuse to look, just assuming bias. Oh well, I guess those are just the exceptions that "prove" the rule anyway, right? Except that old saw simply is not true... Exceptions **don't** prove a rule! By their very nature of being exceptions, they **dis**prove a rule. "I before E except after C?" That's just WEIRD!