Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] Global Warming

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Mar 2007, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> > I think that this is unfair on your part.  I do admit that I always 
> > look for bias, and as I have told you before, I see it all over the 
> > media, both in the so called liberal media, and on Fox News.
> >
> > But this article in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle 
> > manages to be 100% correct and 100% totally misleading.  I cannot 
> > believe other than it is completely deliberate.
>
>
> Now that I know more about the situation, I do feel partially misled.  I 
> will say this on their behalf:  I don't think they were trying to 
> mislead readers. 

I think that they were deliberately misleading their readers, because 
the lack of truth was so artfully executed.  By any statistic, this 
article is unbiased.  By any measure of technical truth, it is totally 
true.  But by any measure of what real truth is, it gives a completely 
false impression.

But look, most of the stories I read in the media are about things I 
know nothing about.  But the two important stories that I do know 
something about, the media have totally screwed up.

Now I do see signs of this kind of distortion in the media, but that is 
only me reading between the lines.  I must admit that I have no web page 
like mediamatters that collects the date and reports on these huge 
misstatements of fact.  But I have a strong feeling that if someone were 
to put such a web page together, that there would be a lot, lot more of 
these inaccuracies.

> I don't think they have any reason to do so.

But I have noticed with you that motive is an important issue, that it 
constitutes for you about maybe 75% of the truth.  If you see a motive, 
you tend to assume that they did it.  If you cannot figure out a motive, 
you assume that no misdeed was done.  But my experience is that lairs 
think so differently than we do that very often we completely miss the 
real motive.

> In fact, 
> you could argue that it was a conservative bias, because they were 
> suggesting that the Bush Administration had changed and there was less 
> need for strident anti-warming protest.

They were arguing for a split in the Bush Administration - a split that 
they manifestly did not prove or even find a hint of proof.

> Anyway, I think they found that little part of the long document and 
> focused in on it because that was the biggest news in the whole thing. 
> It was the interesting part.  It said that recent warming cannot be 
> explained without considering human influence.  Of course they had to 
> say something about that!

So.  How does this make them better than Fox News, then?

> > And it is even written carefully so that it won't contribute to any 
> > statistics that will show that the New York Times has a liberal bias. 
> > Perhaps there are other facts that will show that I am mistaken in my 
> > accusations, but as of this moment I suspect that this article is 
> > extremely dishonest, perhaps beyond anything else I have ever seen, 
> > and certainly far worse than the accusations against O'Reilly on the 
> > mediamatters web page you gave us a few days ago.
>
>
> I really don't see where you're getting that.  When a 159-page report 
> comes out and they ahve to write a 2-page article about it, they are 
> going to cover the interesting parts.  They are trying to sell papers.
>
> I doubt they have much investment in altering public opinion and I think 
> they care a *lot* more about selling papers.

How does this make them better than Fox News?

> Mike
>
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