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Refraction Registered: 10/15/02 Posts: 4,773 Loc: London UK Last seen: 25 days, 14 hours |
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Well said.
-------------------- Always Smi2le
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Fred's son Registered: 10/18/00 Posts: 12,949 Loc: Dominican Republ Last seen: 9 years, 17 days |
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EchoVortex writes:
And which facts do PBS viewers and NPR listeners take to exist which do not in fact exist? Give me a specific example, and show proof to back it up. As you are well aware, until a poll is taken, I can give you no specific example other than those given in the poll referred to in your first post in the thread. However, if you are willing to accept the results of the poll you posted as accurate, it can't have escaped your notice that Quote:We therefore already know that roughly one out of four PBS viewers/NPR listeners holds at least one "fact" to be true which is not. Is it your contention that the percentage would be lower if asked different questions? How can you know that? You're conflating the PBS/NPR audience with a few members of this forum... I know that some members of this forum watch PBS (hell, I sometimes do when I am on vacation in Canada) and listen to NPR -- or at least claim to do so. There have been numerous recent references here to PBS specials. ...I suppose because they're all supposedly "liberal" and therefore supposedly share precisely the same beliefs. A shared subset of beliefs is what defines someone as either "Conservative" or "Liberal". A lower percentage of self-declared Liberals watch FOX news than of self-declared Conservatives, and fewer Cons listen to NPR than Libs. Clearly not every Libbie believes every single thing that another randomly selected Libbie does, however. But to pretend that Libbies (or PBS viewers) are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact simply because they are Libbies (or PBS viewers) is absurd. All I point out is that an individual's personal philosophy makes him more prone to accept some ideas (and "facts") with less critical examination than other ideas or "facts". Surely this concept can't be a new one to you. No polls have been conducted outside of Baghdad... So sorry, that is incorrect. The first polls we saw linked in this forum a month or so ago in fact excluded Baghdad, and came under fire from some here who claimed they were irrelevant because they only surveyed "the boonies" where things were going well. I am not going to search for those posts again, but the first widely reported poll covered three areas -- Basra, Mosul, and I'm sorry I forget the third area. The numbers supporting the invasion were higher there than in the recent Baghdad polls. ...and the handful carried out in Baghdad were not conducted according to the same standards possible in countries with functioning communications systems. Some would argue that the polls conducted by phone are less accurate because the sample size is so much smaller (normally a bit less than a thousand people) than was the case for the Baghdad polls. You may question the validity of the polls, but they are all we have to work with. For what it's worth, I have always mistrusted public opinion polls myself. The statisticians claim they are accurate within a few percentage points, but I have a hard time understanding how a sample of a thousand people in a country of 280 million (such as the US), all of whom have different regional perspectives, can be that accurate. I will admit that I am a layman in this area, however -- the statisticians' claims may in fact be valid. Furthermore, the three questions addressed in the original study are far, far more relevant than the ones the author proposes because they cut straight to the heart of the justifications given for the war in the first place. Wait a minute, wait a minute! First you say "It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support. Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story," now you try to dismiss the alternate set of questions because they are in your opinion far, far less "relevant"? Which is it? If this is strictly about misperceptions of fact, not about pro-war or anti-war, why is one "fact" more relevant than another "fact"? Finally, let me observe that no causal relationship has been demonstrated here. This study in no way shows that the people who hold misperceptions received them from FOX News. The author of the op-ed himself admits that when he says, "Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed." Do FOX viewers form their worldview solely from FOX? Nope. They read newspapers, magazines, discuss things with their buddies (who are usually pretty like-minded or they wouldn't be buddies), have drunken dialogues at bars with total strangers, etc. To illustrate this even further, neither the author of the op-ed piece nor any poster to this forum has provided an instance of FOX News claiming: 1) the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. 2) the weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. 3) most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Since Fox News never reported any of the three above, does it not stand to reason that the respondents got those misperceptions elsewhere? Note again that it was not merely the FOX viewers who held these views -- fully "sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge." You claim the e-mail reprinted by Andrew Sullivan was nothing but excess verbiage. I say the post from Myerson was nothing more than excess verbiage. I don't know about you, but I didn't need to see that poll to know that right-leaning people tend to watch right-leaning news programs, and left-leaning people tend to watch left-leaning news programs. And of course, neither the Right nor the Left are free from their own misperceptions. pinky
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illusion ![]() Registered: 04/18/02 Posts: 3,040 Loc: there |
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yeah all news sources are biased.
so how about this: Fox news is more biased than PBS or NPR? is that fair and balanced? as for that email, I'd agree that it's excess verbiage. the questions he proposes for his poll are not really relevant and they don't deal with verifiable facts. let's examine the statements in the original article: 1. we have uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda 2. we have found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 3. most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one) now the questions from the email: Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent? a matter of opinion. although President Bush never actually used the words "imminent threat" to describe Iraq, whether he made that claim (through various methods) is open to debate. Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion? I've seen polls both ways so I can't answer this. this is the worst question of the four. what exactly does he mean by this? does he mean did the Iraqis support it before the war? after the war? how can you take an accurate poll about how Iraqis feel about the invasion when the occupation continues? I doubt people there feel free to speak their minds. again, this question is open to debate and not really relevent in determining if a certain news source is biased. Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein? also open to debate, the US didn't sell significant quantities of weapons, but selling anthrax cultures can be considered "significant". Was the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the war staged? yet another question without a simple yes or no answer. I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people. if NPR listeners get these questions "wrong" in a hypothetical poll, they would merely be expressing their opinions, whereas the the FOX news viewers were wrong on statements of FACT.
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Fred's son Registered: 10/18/00 Posts: 12,949 Loc: Dominican Republ Last seen: 9 years, 17 days |
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A lot of what you raise is useless speculation anyway, since none of us know the exact wording of the questions, or even the form in which the questions were phrased. For example, is each presented as a "true" or "false" decision, or is it phrased as "Is it your opinion that...."? The answers will be different depending on the phrasing.
all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one) As can the four supplied by the e-mail writer, and numerous others which would serve the same purpose. By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few. a matter of opinion. although President Bush never actually used the words "imminent threat" to describe Iraq, whether he made that claim (through various methods) is open to debate. Oh, please. He never made the claim. He in fact made the opposite claim -- that the time to act is before the threat becomes imminent. This is not open to debate. It can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no". If you are going to start hemming and hawing around the issue and opening it up to "various methods", let's apply the same standards to the three questions in the survey, shall we? For example, 1. we have uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda It is a known fact that documents were discovered in one of the Baghdad ministries (by a reporter from the Toronto Star) which outline plans to invite bin Laden himself for discussions with Iraq's head honchos. It is a known fact that al Qaeda members were in Iraq, as were other terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abua Abbas. Is it not likely that some people responding to the poll skimmed the question and overlooked the "close working relationship" qualifier in the question, just as so many people obviously overlooked Bush's phrase of "before it becomes imminent"? Of course it is likely. We have seen demonstrated on a daily basis in this forum alone how frequently people misread things. It is unfortunate that the poll doesn't give a breakdown by question of the percentages of people answering them. My guess is that that one in particular is the one most prone to interpretation. how can you take an accurate poll about how Iraqis feel about the invasion when the occupation continues? I doubt people there feel free to speak their minds. Oh, please. You have read the article -- people were shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds. This was so unusual an occurence to the pollsters that they saw fit to emphasize it. And you can't seriously pretend to believe that people are less likely to give honest answers to a Gallup pollster today than they were while the Ba'athists were in power. Once again, we are stymied by the question of how accurate polls really are -- but if we apply that to this instance then we must also apply it to whatever polls purport to show the majority of people in other countries opposed the war. Note how sloppily phrased that question is, by the way "most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein". Depending on how one selects "other countries", that statement can be either true or false. It should have been phrased "most people in the world backed the US war against Saddam Hussein", and even then it ignores the fact that other countries were involved -- most notably the UK and Australia. also open to debate, the US didn't sell significant quantities of weapons, but selling anthrax cultures can be considered "significant". Not open to debate. We are talking "quantities", here. The US sold almost none. As for selling anthrax cultures, anthrax was less "significant" than any other weapon Iraq possessed, wasn't it, since Hussein never used any before allegedly destroying whatever he once had. He did however use lots and lots of Soviet tanks and artillery and French helicopters and Chinese rockets. I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people. Oh, please. This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE. This is not "staging", the way Michael Moore stages incidents in his mockumentaries, this is adding "sizzle to the steak". If there is no steak, you can't add sizzle to it no matter what your camera angles are. if NPR listeners get these questions "wrong" in a hypothetical poll, they would merely be expressing their opinions, whereas the the FOX news viewers were wrong on statements of FACT. Again, we don't know that. First of all, as I have shown, we have no way of knowing if the "correct" answer for at least one of the three questions is fact at all. Secondly, without knowing the exact phrasing of the questions asked, we can't know if the respondents knew they were expected to pass judgements on "facts" or merely to state their opinion. Thirdly, if an NPR listener was to claim the toppling was staged (it wasn't), that Bush had said Hussein's threat was imminent (he didn't), that the US sold significant quantities of arms to Iraq (they didn't) and that a majority of Iraqis opposed the invasion (they didn't), then that NPR listener would be as wrong on the "facts" as the respondents to the poll being discussed here. pinky
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Errorist Registered: 03/06/02 Posts: 27,587 Loc: To the limit! Last seen: 1 hour, 24 minutes |
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The purpose of a news organization is to disseminate facts. We may therefore conclude that Fox either a) broadcasts incorrect information, b) broadcasts information with a distorted emphasis, or c) broadcasts correct information but their viewers either don't understand the English language or are too mentally incompetent to make sense of what is being said.
Sounds like you believe what you want to believe. -------------------- Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ (•_•) <) )~ ANTIFA / \ \(•_•) ( (> SUPER / \ (•_•) <) )> SOLDIERS / \
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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We therefore already know that roughly one out of four PBS viewers/NPR listeners holds at least one "fact" to be true which is not. Is it your contention that the percentage would be lower if asked different questions? How can you know that?
It did not escape my attention that 23% of the PBS/NPR audience got one of the questions wrong, and it was never my intention to claim that they never get anything wrong. I should have phrased my question in the form: "which questions would the PBS/NPR audience get wrong more often than Fox viewers?" although I thought that would have been obvious given the context of your contention that such questions exist. Given the great gap between Fox and PBS/NPR audiences (80% vs. 23% for one misconception; 45% versus merely 4% for all three), you're going to have a hard time convincing me without solid proof that there is ANY question of fact on which the PBS/NPR audience will perform worse overall than the Fox audience. I know that some members of this forum watch PBS (hell, I sometimes do when I am on vacation in Canada) and listen to NPR -- or at least claim to do so. There have been numerous recent references here to PBS specials. Fallacy of the unrepresentative sample. You assume that a subset of the PBS/NPR audience represents the whole audience. You may or may not know this, but a large portion of the PBS/NPR audience is made up of Republicans and other conservatives, generally of the New England/William F. Buckley mold. They find it's the only place on television and radio where they can get really good financial news coverage. And last time I checked, the majority of public broadcasting viewers/listeners are not magic mushroom users. A shared subset of beliefs is what defines someone as either "Conservative" or "Liberal". A lower percentage of self-declared Liberals watch FOX news than of self-declared Conservatives, and fewer Cons listen to NPR than Libs. Clearly not every Libbie believes every single thing that another randomly selected Libbie does, however. But to pretend that Libbies (or PBS viewers) are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact simply because they are Libbies (or PBS viewers) is absurd. I never said that PBS viewers or liberals are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact. I was merely emphasizing the fact, and doing so admittedly with some glee, that the PBS/NPR audience (which, I reiterate, includes more than a small percentage of conservatives), according to all of the evidence presently available, holds certain incorrect beliefs by a far smaller percentage than Fox viewers. All I point out is that an individual's personal philosophy makes him more prone to accept some ideas (and "facts") with less critical examination than other ideas or "facts". Surely this concept can't be a new one to you. And all I point out is that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear, and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance. So sorry, that is incorrect. The first polls we saw linked in this forum a month or so ago in fact excluded Baghdad, and came under fire from some here who claimed they were irrelevant because they only surveyed "the boonies" where things were going well. I am not going to search for those posts again, but the first widely reported poll covered three areas -- Basra, Mosul, and I'm sorry I forget the third area. The numbers supporting the invasion were higher there than in the recent Baghdad polls. I have yet to see a nationwide poll of Iraq in which the sample is specifically chosen to be representative of the entire population. There are formulas that statisticians choose in order to make sure that even a sample of a thousand people is in fact representative, but such formulas are usable only when you can access just about anybody through their telephone. Choosing enthusiastic "volunteers" for polls is bad practice, which is why it surprises me that Gallup made such a fuss about emphasizing that fact. Until full services are restored and a truly scientific poll can be taken, the answer is undetermined. My guess is that once everything is returned to normal, the majority of Iraqis will adopt the position that "all's well that ends well" and say that say they're glad the invasion happened. Of course this will not take into account the families of the thousands who died, but I guess that's beside the point. For the time being, however, the question is still an unknown, and for the e-mail author to assume that it IS a known demonstrates that he or she is misinformed. Wait a minute, wait a minute! First you say "It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support. Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story," now you try to dismiss the alternate set of questions because they are in your opinion far, far less "relevant"? Which is it? The author of the e-mail asserted that the questions posed were chosen as some kind of liberal plot to make Fox viewers look bad. I was merely pointing out that the questions chosen were the most relevant regarding the justification for going to war. They are the questions that a non-committed or neutral investigator would choose to ask. Furthermore, neither you NOR the author can demonstrate that the PBS/NPR audience would get those other four questions wrong by a higher percentage than Fox viewers. Finally, let me observe that no causal relationship has been demonstrated here. This study in no way shows that the people who hold misperceptions received them from FOX News. The author of the op-ed himself admits that when he says, "Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed." Ah, yes, one of your favorite tactics: selective quotation. The author raises the possibility of pre-sorting by ideology because he's going to demolish it in the next few sentences. I will reprint them here since you neglected to do so: But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who watch PBS believed this to be the case. I repeat: some conservatives DO watch PBS as their primary news source, just as many liberals get most of their news from CBS or CNN. This is not a question of liberals getting the facts right more often than conservatives, it is a question of the relative quality of different news outlets. Do FOX viewers form their worldview solely from FOX? Nope. They read newspapers, magazines, discuss things with their buddies (who are usually pretty like-minded or they wouldn't be buddies), have drunken dialogues at bars with total strangers, etc. The survey asked what the respondents' primary news source was. And your point can be applied to CBS, CNN, ABC, and PBS viewers as well: they also get their news from a variety of sources. The conclusion, then, must be that the variety of news sources that the PBS/NPR audience chooses is more reliable across the board. To illustrate this even further, neither the author of the op-ed piece nor any poster to this forum has provided an instance of FOX News claiming: 1) the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. 2) the weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. 3) most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Since Fox News never reported any of the three above, does it not stand to reason that the respondents got those misperceptions elsewhere? Note again that it was not merely the FOX viewers who held these views -- fully "sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge." One can misinform through omission. For example, Fox can air some Bush administration official mentioning Saddam and al Qaeda in the same breath (which happened quite often) and then just let it pass without comment, whereas PBS will have some sort of roundtable discussion where journalists will discuss what evidence exists of a link between the two. Another thing that Fox does is report that some truck or lab or vial or something has been found and is undergoing analysis, but then they NEGLECT to broadcast a follow-up story making clear that it was just a false alarm. The same kind of lying by omission can apply to not broadcasting that people in other countries opposed the war. Of course FOX will avoid broadcasting patent lies that they can be called on and possible sued over. So they lie by omission instead. Finally, if a full 60% of respondents held one of those false beliefs, all that proves is that this notion of the "liberal" media is a myth. A truly liberal media would be pounding home those facts with such enthusastic energy and repetitiveness that NOBODY would be capable of thinking that weapons had been found or that a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda had been proven. You claim the e-mail reprinted by Andrew Sullivan was nothing but excess verbiage. I say the post from Myerson was nothing more than excess verbiage. I don't know about you, but I didn't need to see that poll to know that right-leaning people tend to watch right-leaning news programs, and left-leaning people tend to watch left-leaning news programs. And of course, neither the Right nor the Left are free from their own misperceptions. I repeat: many conservatives also watch PBS, because it gives in-depth coverage and patient analysis that commercial news media do not. I know there's no way that you'll accept that publicly-funded broadcasting can actually do a better job at some things than the flagship of an uber-Capitalist like Rupert Murdoch, but your misperceptions are not my concern.
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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Quote: Sounds like you're incapable of constructing an actual argument. Your "drive-by shooting" style of debate doesn't impress me very much.
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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I'll let InfidelGod handle the bulk of this since it is addressed to him, but there are a couple of things I can't let pass without comment:
By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few. I've been to China, and I know for a fact that the Chinese people despise and mistrust the US government as much as they do their own. They dislike their own government but they do not see the US government as their friends at all. There is no way on earth that they would support an American invasion of another country. The only population I can even remotely imagine supporting this war before it happened, other than the US, is Israel. Unless you can show me evidence that highly populous nations such as China, India, Russia, Indonesia, etc. actually supported this operation, it's a pretty safe assumption that most of the people of the world were against it. Oh, please. This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE. This is not "staging", the way Michael Moore stages incidents in his mockumentaries, this is adding "sizzle to the steak". If there is no steak, you can't add sizzle to it no matter what your camera angles are. Oh, I see. So the fact that a majority of producers uses this technique makes it okay. You're the last person I would have expected to see using this line of argument. Please explain why it is acceptable and okay to make a crowd look ten, twenty times larger than it actually is. Please explain why it is okay to "add sizzle to the steak." Please explain what was stopping the producers from giving us ONE, just ONE wide angle shot of the plaza that would have shown that it was NEARLY EMPTY. Please explain why it is okay to distort and misrepresent fact. And please don't say, "it's okay because everybody else does it."
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Stranger Registered: 02/25/01 Posts: 9,134 |
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I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people.
There's also the fact that several members of the crowd were the same people flown into Iraq by the US the week before the statue fell. -------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
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Refraction Registered: 10/15/02 Posts: 4,773 Loc: London UK Last seen: 25 days, 14 hours |
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Yeah, that fact does kind of point to a little bit of stage management doesnt it? I wonder if they got them from Rent a rabble...
-------------------- Always Smi2le
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Errorist Registered: 03/06/02 Posts: 27,587 Loc: To the limit! Last seen: 1 hour, 24 minutes |
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I can't say I'm much impressed by your endless jibber-jabber of thousands of words that in the end fail to have any meaning.
-------------------- Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ (•_•) <) )~ ANTIFA / \ \(•_•) ( (> SUPER / \ (•_•) <) )> SOLDIERS / \
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Stranger Registered: 02/25/01 Posts: 9,134 |
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It's called debate baby. As opposed to your tiresome one-line posts that have no meaning whatsoever.
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
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Errorist Registered: 03/06/02 Posts: 27,587 Loc: To the limit! Last seen: 1 hour, 24 minutes |
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Like that one?
More words plz. -------------------- Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ (•_•) <) )~ ANTIFA / \ \(•_•) ( (> SUPER / \ (•_•) <) )> SOLDIERS / \
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Fred's son Registered: 10/18/00 Posts: 12,949 Loc: Dominican Republ Last seen: 9 years, 17 days |
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EchoVortex writes:
Given the great gap between Fox and PBS/NPR audiences (80% vs. 23% for one misconception; 45% versus merely 4% for all three), you're going to have a hard time convincing me without solid proof that there is ANY question of fact on which the PBS/NPR audience will perform worse overall than the Fox audience. Without another poll, this is true. Unfortunately, I know of no way to convince someone to take a poll with the four example questions suggested by Sullivan's e-mail correspondent, so we'll never know, will we? Fallacy of the unrepresentative sample. You assume that a subset of the PBS/NPR audience represents the whole audience. Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions. You may or may not know this, but a large portion of the PBS/NPR audience is made up of Republicans and other conservatives, generally of the New England/William F. Buckley mold. And Libbies don't watch FOX News? Judging from the invective directed towards FOX by Libbies who frequent this forum, I would have to conclude that many do. Is it your contention that only mushroom-eating Libbies watch FOX News? I was merely emphasizing the fact, and doing so admittedly with some glee, that the PBS/NPR audience (which, I reiterate, includes more than a small percentage of conservatives), according to all of the evidence presently available, holds certain incorrect beliefs by a far smaller percentage than Fox viewers. And the point Sullivan's e-mail correspondent was making is that the numbers would be different if the polled group had been asked to comment on different incorrect beliefs. And all I point out is that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear... and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance. Ah. You see (adjectives aside), that is the exact point I was making. The point you were making was that -- Quote: Which is it? The author of the op-ed piece in your first post of the thread claims (of FOX News): "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." What I am saying (and now you are saying also) is that the reverse is true -- the more you get things wrong, the more likely you are to watch (FOX News). ...and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance. I have never watched FOX News, so I am curious as to what specific techniques they use to get people to suspend belief, as opposed to the techniques used by other TV news shows. Do they emphasize certain words through their tone of voice? Do they use inappropriate facial expressions? Or do they tell only one side of the story, such as (for example) the network news shows which never mention the successes in Iraq, just the failures? I have yet to see a nationwide poll of Iraq in which the sample is specifically chosen to be representative of the entire population. And I have yet to see any poll, nationwide or otherwise, from China, the Ukraine, Israel, Uganda, Thailand, etc. There are formulas that statisticians choose in order to make sure that even a sample of a thousand people is in fact representative, but such formulas are usable only when you can access just about anybody through their telephone. Hmm. Whenever the pollsters bother to mention their methodology at all, the only thing they ever write is that it is a "random sample". If some kind of formula is in fact used to determine who is called and who is not, that is the furthest thing from "random" I can think of offhand. Either the pollsters are misrepresenting their methodology or you are. Whom shall I believe? While it may be a while before a national survey of Iraq can be done, it is a fact that polls have been taken in the four most heavily-populated areas of Iraq. That's what we have to work with at the moment. Until full services are restored and a truly scientific poll can be taken, the answer is undetermined. How many people in China have telephones? When may I rely on a public opinion poll taken in China? I was merely pointing out that the questions chosen were the most relevant regarding the justification for going to war. They are the questions that a non-committed or neutral investigator would choose to ask. But you were arguing that the whole thing was about matters of fact, not pro-war or anti-war. If it is about fact, why must it be those three questions and no others? For that matter, why does it have to be about Iraq at all? Why couldn't there have been questions on other current events? As for them being the questions that mattered to the exclusion of all others, that's nonsense. How about a question asking if Iraq was in breach of the ceasefire agreement? That was certainly one of the reasons given for going to war. Furthermore, neither you NOR the author can demonstrate that the PBS/NPR audience would get those other four questions wrong by a higher percentage than Fox viewers. Without a poll, no. I think it safe to say that no poll with those four questions will ever be asked. Ah, yes, one of your favorite tactics: selective quotation. The author raises the possibility of pre-sorting by ideology because he's going to demolish it in the next few sentences. I will reprint them here since you neglected to do so: I presumed that people had read your post, including the sentences following my cut and paste. If not, they could certainly re-read it. Nothing "selective" about it at all. Now let's examine the "demolition" the author performs -- Quote: They claim that people who say they will vote for Bush next election are "of like mind"? On what do they base this assumption? Since when does one's choice of presidential candidate determine one's state of mind? Some will vote for Bush because they always vote Republican. Some (like Luvdemshrooms) will vote for Bush because they can't stand the thought of a Harold Kucinich or a Howard Dean in the White House. Some will vote for Bush because they approved of his tax cuts. And some who say they will vote for Bush now will vote for someone else when they get inside the voting booth. I repeat: some conservatives DO watch PBS as their primary news source, just as many liberals get most of their news from CBS or CNN. This is not a question of liberals getting the facts right more often than conservatives, it is a question of the relative quality of different news outlets. Is it? I thought we had agreed that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear. The survey asked what the respondents' primary news source was. And your point can be applied to CBS, CNN, ABC, and PBS viewers as well: they also get their news from a variety of sources. Agreed. The conclusion, then, must be that the variety of news sources that the PBS/NPR audience chooses is more reliable across the board. Agreed. How does that demonstrate a causal relationship between watching FOX News as your primary media source and holding incorrect notions? Of course FOX will avoid broadcasting patent lies that they can be called on and possible sued over. So they lie by omission instead. And this makes them different from the network news shows who omit positive news from Iraq in what way, exactly? I know there's no way that you'll accept that publicly-funded broadcasting can actually do a better job at some things than the flagship of an uber-Capitalist like Rupert Murdoch, but your misperceptions are not my concern. Where on earth did you pull that cheap shot out of? I have never watched FOX News. I have on occasion looked at the FOX News website, so keep your assumptions of my "misperceptions" to yourself. I don't doubt that PBS has the possibility to do decent in-depth analyses of current events, but that is not what the poll was about, was it? It was about where people primarily get their NEWS -- not their commentary. For that matter, does PBS even DO a nightly news show? I've been to China, and I know for a fact that the Chinese people despise and mistrust the US government as much as they do their own. They dislike their own government but they do not see the US government as their friends at all. There is no way on earth that they would support an American invasion of another country. Sorry, but I'm afraid your speculation is not acceptable. It is you who insists we accept only statistically rigorous nationwide polls performed by telephone. Unless you can show me evidence that highly populous nations such as China, India, Russia, Indonesia, etc. actually supported this operation, it's a pretty safe assumption that most of the people of the world were against it. See above. Why are your assumptions unbacked by telephone polls to be assigned a greater weight than my assumptions? This whole thread is about facts and misperceptions of facts, not about your opinion of a "pretty safe assumption". And it is not my place to provide you evidence, it is the place of the pollsters in Myerson's article to back their "fact" that such was the case. Burden of proof. Oh, I see. So the fact that a majority of producers uses this technique makes it okay. Nope. It means it wasn't staged. The action may have been recorded in a more dramatic way than would have seemed the case to one actually on the scene as it occurred, but the action took place nonetheless. It wasn't created by those filming it, it was merely recorded by them. We can discuss for pages and pages whether or not their recording of the event could have been handled differently, but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged. Please explain why it is okay to "add sizzle to the steak." Please explain what was stopping the producers from giving us ONE, just ONE wide angle shot of the plaza that would have shown that it was NEARLY EMPTY. Please explain why it is okay to distort and misrepresent fact. And please don't say, "it's okay because everybody else does it." *Shrugs* I never said it was okay. I merely pointed out that it is no different whatsoever from what happens at every demonstration I have ever attended. That's the way news segment producers handle these things -- ALL of them. pinky
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions.
Wrong. They do not just choose any old subset. See the following link on the polling methodology of ABC News, which is representative of most reputable polling bodies: ABC News Polling Methodology And Libbies don't watch FOX News? Judging from the invective directed towards FOX by Libbie If they direct invective at it, it should be obvious that they watch it more out of morbid curiosity than as a source of information. And the point Sullivan's e-mail correspondent was making is that the numbers would be different if the polled group had been asked to comment on different incorrect beliefs. With nothing other than his opinion to back it up. You know the one about how opinions are like assholes, right? Which is it? The author of the op-ed piece in your first post of the thread claims (of FOX News): "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." What I am saying (and now you are saying also) is that the reverse is true -- the more you get things wrong, the more likely you are to watch (FOX News). Why can't it be both? It seems to be more of a feedback loop than anything else. Guillible, uncritical people watch FOX News, FOX News broadcasts distorted news, guillible, biased people find their misperceptions subtly or overtly reinforced by a news organization that uses the laughably incorrect slogan "fair and balanced" and tune in in larger numbers, thereby encouraging FOX news to continue using that formula, and so on. I have never watched FOX News, so I am curious as to what specific techniques they use to get people to suspend belief, as opposed to the techniques used by other TV news shows. Do they emphasize certain words through their tone of voice? Do they use inappropriate facial expressions? Or do they tell only one side of the story, such as (for example) the network news shows which never mention the successes in Iraq, just the failures? They do all of the above, in addition to draping themselves in populist "patriotism". Hmm. Whenever the pollsters bother to mention their methodology at all, the only thing they ever write is that it is a "random sample". If some kind of formula is in fact used to determine who is called and who is not, that is the furthest thing from "random" I can think of offhand. Either the pollsters are misrepresenting their methodology or you are. Whom shall I believe? While it may be a while before a national survey of Iraq can be done, it is a fact that polls have been taken in the four most heavily-populated areas of Iraq. That's what we have to work with at the moment. Maybe if you bothered to look, you would see that pollsters often explain their methodology in great detail. I refer you once again to the ABC News link, and to the various steps that they take to ensure that the polled sample is relatively representative in terms of region, age, sex, race, education, and income. The methodologies of the polls conducted in Iraq do not even come close to the rigor of the methods used on a daily basis in the United States. They claim that people who say they will vote for Bush next election are "of like mind"? On what do they base this assumption? Since when does one's choice of presidential candidate determine one's state of mind? Some will vote for Bush because they always vote Republican. Some (like Luvdemshrooms) will vote for Bush because they can't stand the thought of a Harold Kucinich or a Howard Dean in the White House. Some will vote for Bush because they approved of his tax cuts. And some who say they will vote for Bush now will vote for someone else when they get inside the voting booth. They may not be of like mind on every single particular, but they are more of like mind than somebody who is going to vote for Kerry, Clark, or Dean. Just as you and luvdemshrooms are more of like mind with one another than either of you is with me, even though you are not of exactly the same mind. These are rough approximations to be sure, but are generally more useful than paralyzing hair-splitting. And this makes them different from the network news shows who omit positive news from Iraq in what way, exactly? Please tell me what positive news from Iraq the networks of have omitted. What, that the electricity is up and running? That was on the networks. What else? Agreed. How does that demonstrate a causal relationship between watching FOX News as your primary media source and holding incorrect notions? Does it prove a definitive causal link? No. Is it highly suggestive of a causal link? Yes. I refer you again to the original article: "Misperceptions can also be the result of inattention, of course. If you nod off for just a nanosecond in the middle of Tom Brokaw intoning, "U.S. inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction today," you could think we'd just uncovered Hussein's nuclear arsenal. So the wily researchers also controlled for intensity of viewership, and concluded that, "in the case of those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly increases the likelihood of misperceptions." Particularly when that news includes hyping every false lead in Iraq as the certain prelude to uncovering a massive WMD cache." In other words, the MORE attention that FOX viewers paid to FOX news, the MORE likely they were to get the facts wrong. Not defitive proof, but still highly suggestive of a direct causal relationship. I don't doubt that PBS has the possibility to do decent in-depth analyses of current events, but that is not what the poll was about, was it? It was about where people primarily get their NEWS -- not their commentary. For that matter, does PBS even DO a nightly news show? Yes, the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Sorry, but I'm afraid your speculation is not acceptable. It is you who insists we accept only statistically rigorous nationwide polls performed by telephone. Fair enough. However, I have yet to see a rigorous poll from any country other than the US showing that the majority of the population supported the war. Without even a single other country leaning in that direction, to suggest that the majority of the world supported the war is not only unacceptable, it is being willfully wrong. Nope. It means it wasn't staged. The action may have been recorded in a more dramatic way than would have seemed the case to one actually on the scene as it occurred, but the action took place nonetheless. It wasn't created by those filming it, it was merely recorded by them. We can discuss for pages and pages whether or not their recording of the event could have been handled differently, but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged. I never said it was staged. I said it was misrepresented and distorted. And I'm absolutely correct in saying so. *Shrugs* I never said it was okay. I merely pointed out that it is no different whatsoever from what happens at every demonstration I have ever attended. That's the way news segment producers handle these things -- ALL of them. OK, there you go with the semantic gymnastics again. Yes, you never used the word "okay", but the entire thrust of your argument was that it WAS okay. And no, you are absolutely wrong: ALL news segment producers do NOT handle these things that way. The footage shown in many countries outside of the US showed the entire plaza. And even if they ALL handled things that way, so what? What does that prove? It was distortion, misrepresentation, and lying by omission. It was and is indefensible whenever and wherever it is done. End of story.
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Fred's son Registered: 10/18/00 Posts: 12,949 Loc: Dominican Republ Last seen: 9 years, 17 days |
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EchoVortex writes:
You know the one about how opinions are like assholes, right? And what is your opinion on the likely results of a properly-conducted poll in China regarding the deposing by force of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq? The e-mail writer's contention is that certain commonly-held misperceptions are not equally distributed throughout the populace as a whole. Joe Sixpack's personal prejudices determine the likelihood that he might recognize proposition A as a falsehood, but think proposition B was true. Yet Bob Student, with an entirely different set of personal prejudices, might accept A as true and recognize B as false. You and I might recognize both A and B as false, while Conrad Conspiracy Theorist might accept both A and B as true. In essence, the e-mail writer points out the obvious -- one's personal prejudices (or prejudgments or predilections or whatever term you feel comfortable with) influence quite a few things in one's life, not excluding the choice of literature one reads or the kind of news program one watches. You appear to believe that the e-mail writer's contention is incorrect. I believe it is correct. Nothing either of us can say will convince the other to change his mind. If the polling organization ever gets around to repeating the poll with a different set of questions, we'll know for sure, won't we? Guillible, uncritical people watch FOX News, FOX News broadcasts distorted news... Is it your opinion that FOX News broadcasts distorted news? They do all of the above, in addition to draping themselves in populist "patriotism". And this makes them different from Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw or Connie Chung how, exactly? Maybe if you bothered to look, you would see that pollsters often explain their methodology in great detail. I refer you once again to the ABC News link, and to the various steps that they take to ensure that the polled sample is relatively representative in terms of region, age, sex, race, education, and income. Very interesting link. So in fact, despite the brief disclaimer sometimes included in the poll results, there is really nothing random about the surveys at all. That thousand people is broken down into dozens of subgroups, then weighted 75-25 for sex, then the results are massaged according to some unspecified algorithm. I can see now why they don't bother to include that entire disclaimer at the end of each report -- it would be longer than the report itself and hardly anyone would read it anyway. Yes, you never used the word "okay", but the entire thrust of your argument was that it WAS okay. Nope. The entire thrust of my argument was that it wasn't staged. It wasn't. The event happened. ALL news segment producers do NOT handle these things that way. The footage shown in many countries outside of the US showed the entire plaza. Sorry. I should have made it clear that I had only attended demonstrations in Canada (and one in the US). I have no idea how news segment producers outside of North America handle it, since I have no direct experience there. pinky
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illusion ![]() Registered: 04/18/02 Posts: 3,040 Loc: there |
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For example, is each presented as a "true" or "false" decision, or is it phrased as "Is it your opinion that...."? The answers will be different depending on the phrasing
so you're saying that if the FOX news viewers had answered that "it is my opinion that WMD has been found in Iraq", somehow that would make them correct in expressing their opinion? I'm sorry, those questions are pretty specific and deal with facts. no room for opinions in those questions, unlike the questions from the emailer. all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one) As can the four supplied by the e-mail writer, and numerous others which would serve the same purpose wrong. those four questions cannot be answered with a true or false. if you want to try it go ahead. try this one: Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion? give me a true or false and no bullshit polls. By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few. you're saying that unless we get poll results from every country in the world, we can't know for certain that most of the world didn't support the invasion of Iraq? you're really stretching here. everyone knows that most of the world was against it. it's not some huge misperception. it's fact. the UN was against it. even in the countries that supported the war, there were many people against it. Oh, please. He never made the claim. He in fact made the opposite claim -- that the time to act is before the threat becomes imminent. This is not open to debate. It can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" yes, we all read what he said in the State of the Union address. he also said that Iraq could have a nuke in six months and a bunch of other quotes that suggested that Iraq was an imminent threat. now if the question was "Did President Bush specifically say before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?" then THAT would be answerable with a yes or no and I'm sure that many people, including FOX news viewers, would get this one wrong. but my point was that it is debateable whether or not Bush made the claim that Iraq was an imminent threat. let's apply the same standards to the three questions in the survey, shall we? For example you're hardly applying the "same standards". I raised my doubts about those four questions based on what any reasonable person would think. a reasonable person would not think that Iraq had a "close working relationship" with al qaida based on the laughable evidence you give: It is a known fact that documents were discovered in one of the Baghdad ministries (by a reporter from the Toronto Star) which outline plans to invite bin Laden himself for discussions with Iraq's head honchos oh my god! they found a document that "outlined plans" to invite bin Laden! yeah they must have been real close. btw, do you know about the connections bin Laden had with the US government in his mujahadeen days? It is a known fact that al Qaeda members were in Iraq, as were other terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abua Abbas this "evidence" is really getting ridiculous. it is also a known fact that al qaida members were in the US. does this mean that the US had a close working relationship with al qaida? I'm sorry man but those three questions are not open to this kind of interpretation. you either get it right or you get it wrong. unlike the four questions posed by the emailer, which can be debated. Oh, please. You have read the article -- people were shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds. This was so unusual an occurence to the pollsters that they saw fit to emphasize it. I don't think that the words of those "shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds" are representative of the country as a whole. do you? I don't think any poll taken in Iraq now can be considered accurate, and so the question: "Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?" is meaningless. it's just that the emailer seems so sure that there is a "right" answer to this question. clearly you can see that a question like this cannot possibly have the kind of clear answer that you can get with the three questions asked in the original poll. And you can't seriously pretend to believe that people are less likely to give honest answers to a Gallup pollster today than they were while the Ba'athists were in power. huh? I said no such thing. I only said that an accurate poll is not possible right now. Not open to debate. We are talking "quantities", here. The US sold almost none. lol. so you're saying that because we didn't sell a massive "quantity" of anthrax that it's not significant? the question was "Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?" and as Colin Powell pointed out at his speech at the UN, a small amount of anthrax is a "significant amount". we're not comparing weapons pound for pound here. and besides, I don't think the average PBS viewer would get this one "wrong" either way. As for selling anthrax cultures, anthrax was less "significant" than any other weapon Iraq possessed, wasn't it, since Hussein never used any before allegedly destroying whatever he once had I don't get what you're saying here. are you saying that because Hussein never used the anthrax, it wasn't significant? it doesn't really matter anyway. I'm not saying that the US sold a significant amount of weapons. again, all I'm saying is that the question of whether the US sold significant amounts of arms is open to debate, as are the other questions posed by the emailer. This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE so what's your point? it's not staged because everyone else does it too? that's pretty weak. Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions. not to point out the obvious, but polls by definition take a representative sample, NOT a subset. it would be ridiculous to take a poll of a "subset" to gauge the whole. taking a poll of the subset of liberals who do mushrooms wouldn't exactly give us an accurate result. I have never watched FOX News wait a minute, you've never watched FOX news?? so you must really know what you're talking about. how can you know if its biased or not? I don't know if you're really in touch with the average FOX news viewer, but they're an intellectually unimpressive lot and it really isn't surprising that they're also the most misinformed. I doubt you'd be defending FOX news if you actually watched it once in a while. but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged. no one is saying that the event never happened. is your definition of "staged" something that didn't happen and was computer generated or something of that sort? according to Websters: 2stage (v): 1 : to produce (as a play) on a stage 2 : to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect seems to fit the description. but again, all I'm saying is that it's debatable (reasonably) whether or not it was staged. the emailer might have a point about people holding different views having different misperceptions. but he sure chose some poor examples to try to prove his point that PBS viewers are as misinformed as FOX news viewers. I have no doubt that liberals have some misperceptions of their own, but I'd bet that it's nowhere near as bad as those held by FOX news viewers. you should really watch FOX news sometime. if you're somewhat media savvy, you'll see right through the BS, and you'll understand why those who get their news from FOX are the most misinformed.
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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In essence, the e-mail writer points out the obvious -- one's personal prejudices (or prejudgments or predilections or whatever term you feel comfortable with) influence quite a few things in one's life, not excluding the choice of literature one reads or the kind of news program one watches.
The statement as given above is reasonable. That's not, however, how the e-mail writer put it. He tried to contend that there was parity or equality in terms of the misinformation held to be true by Fox viewers and PBS viewers. The evidence so far indicates that there is a very lopsided disparity, with the Fox viewers significantly more misinformed than PBS viewers. If you and the e-mail author think this is because the study designers are part of some liberal cabal (he certainly does; I don't know about you), then I suggest you write to them directly and share your concerns, urging them to design a test that asks a broader range of questions. Is it your opinion that FOX News broadcasts distorted news? Those who pay closest attention to Fox News are the most misinformed. For me to believe they distort the news is more than a mere opinion: at least I have something, even though it is not definitive proof, to back it up, whereas the e-mail author has absolutely nothing. And this makes them different from Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw or Connie Chung how, exactly? Well, for starters, none of those three people actually said on the air after the fall of Baghdad: "Those of you who opposed the war were wrong then, and you're despicable now" or something along those lines, which is what one Fox anchor said. Very interesting link. So in fact, despite the brief disclaimer sometimes included in the poll results, there is really nothing random about the surveys at all. That thousand people is broken down into dozens of subgroups, then weighted 75-25 for sex, then the results are massaged according to some unspecified algorithm. I can see now why they don't bother to include that entire disclaimer at the end of each report -- it would be longer than the report itself and hardly anyone would read it anyway. They are random insofar as they don't have some guy or group of people deciding whom to call and thereby skewing the results. The population is broken down into segments and numbers are randomly dialed; the results of that random selection are then weighted to make the results more representative. Nope. The entire thrust of my argument was that it wasn't staged. It wasn't. The event happened. If that was the thrust, you certainly expended a larger number of words trying to make misrepresentation seem normal and acceptable.
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(hard) member Registered: 02/06/02 Posts: 859 Last seen: 15 years, 4 months |
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Here is the exact quote, from a Fox anchor named Neil Cavuto, in a statement addressed to the French, Germans, Russians and "all those who opposed the liberation of Iraq":
" Now you want in. When for so long the masses have been kept out. You are as crass as you are cunning. As phony as you are pathetic. I ask you to look at their faces. Then look at your own. See the triumph of the human spirit and the coalition soldiers who fought and died for it. Then your own pathetic selves, who even now can't come close to appreciating it. Or even understanding it. You were sickening then. You're sickening now. " Fox News This is the level of discourse on Fox News. And you wonder why their viewers fuck up the facts?
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umask 077(nonefo ![]() Registered: 09/06/02 Posts: 3,095 Loc: Jacksonville,FL Last seen: 18 years, 4 months |
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I think Fox is distorted just because of all the goofy ass comments they make after reporting a story. Just report the godamn thing and STFU-I'll form my own opinions on the matter. No other news outlet does this as blatantly as Fox.
It's all about the tone. Even if there was a mainstream liberal news source that did this I would be saying the same thing. -------------------- People think that if you just say the word "hallucinations" it explains everything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can't explain will just go away.It's just a word,it doesn't explain anything... Douglas Adams
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