"liberal media"

[kahleefornia]

I was thinking, while watching Brian Williams on TDS...do you think that "the media" is liberal, because they actually go out and see things first hand? Instead of staying home and listening to someone else tell them how things are?

I've had discussions with Republicans, where their arguments, if done in an intelligent manner, would seem to make sense in theory, if not obviously not effective in practice. But reporters would be able to easily cut through that - "look - these people are starving, trapped, crippled, they've had no help for days", vs "oh, they're all fine, it's not so bad, and anyways, why didn't they just swim themselves out to safety?"

Was I slow to figure this out?

[Selatius]

1. Seeking out info. isn't necessarily liberal in an economic/social sense

Observation and information gathering is more about empiricism that about socio-economic ideology.

[kahleefornia]

3. My idea is more

that information gathering will lead to a "liberal" mindset rather than a conservative one. In a crude, but true, analogy, someone who is conservative will accept that the earth is flat, because that is what they've been told. Someone who personally investigates, and then has personal, first-hand observations of the interaction between earth, sun and other planets, will decide "Hey...even though this is new and progressive, I have to go with what I see."

A conservative might say "Well, those people should have gotten jobs so they wouldn't be poor." This makes perfect sense. Until you find out that they physically or mentally can't work, there are no jobs to be had, etc.

[Selatius]

4. OK, I'll buy that

The thing is that if major decisions are to be made, it should be made with evidence to support why such a decision was made the way it was made. Decisions should be made with respect to the evidence at hand, not despite that evidence. Too often, decisions are made based on ideology than on empiricism.

[Joebert]

2. I prefer a different term.

BEFORE Katrina hit, I said we had NO media.

I'd get into arguments with people who said we had a Liberal media still.

This was always easy to debunk. I would simply ask:

1: Liberals generally are the opposite of Republicans? True/False?
2: Bush is a Republican? True / False?
3: If Liberals didn't like Republicans, and therefore Bush, wouldn't we see daily stories about every single thing he did wrong? Made up or not?
4: If there are never any stories about Bush doing something wrong, is it possible that we have NO media, rather than a Liberal media?

After those 4 questions, they find out that there is not a Liberal media.

After Katrina hit, the media will all be labelled Liberal because they're reporting what is happening. Which in this case is real bad. And real bad for Republicans.