Study Finds Google Is More Trusted Than Traditional Media 155
According to a study by market research company Zogby International, people trust Google, Apple, and Microsoft more than the traditional media. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter scored lowest on the trust scale, but still soundly beat the media. From the article: "The traditional media received little sympathy from the public, with only eight percent of all adults and six percent of young adults saying they trusted them."
What about /.?? (Score:2)
Ah no love?
Re:What about /.?? (Score:5, Funny)
I trust slashdot posters even less than I trust market research companies.
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For me, it’s the other way around. I learn more from these comments here, than from all the tech news sources combined.
Wow, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't trust the propaganda arms of massive multinational corporations?! I'm shocked!
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What's remarkable is that the survey says people don't trust the "propaganda" of multinational corporations but they do trust a multinational corporation that keeps a record of basically everything they do on the Internet.
Media bias exists but it's really just a convenient excuse. News media's real problem is that it regularly can confront you with information you didn't want to know or strongly disagree with, even though you need to know itif you're going to be a functioning citizen. Google only tells yo
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The only trust the propaganda arms of small groups and individual people. ;)
It’s what viral marketing is for.
So I wouldn’t be surprised, if the future would hold a flood of blogs & co, looking like they are made by individuals, while in reality they are made by big corporations. (I bet money, that Elsevier already does this.)
Umm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Trust them about what ? And who the hell is Zogby ?
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Trust them about what ? And who the hell is Zogby ?
It's a place that sells chicken.
Traditional Media...LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Traditional Media...LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
The fairness doctrine is not really a good idea. It reinforces the whole two party system, which is never good. On the other hand, bringing back restrictions on corporate ownership of networks and market share restrictions, and preventing foreign interests from owning broadcasting (over public airwaves, no restrictions on cable/networks of course) is a good way to start undoing the damage. Check the correlation between who profits from the sathe sale of a book and who owns the shows those books are promoted on and you'll notice some not-so-surprising correlations.
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No kidding.
The decline in trust for media correlates almost directly with the removal of media ownership rules - proscriptions on owning both a newspaper and TV station in the same town, proscriptions on ownership of multiple TV stations in the same city, limitations on the number of radio stations ownable in the same city, etc.
This is a natural outgrowth, unfortunately, of our fucked-up view on corporations in general. I'm not going to go with the wack-job "all corporations are evil" line, but at the same
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Or they can rebrand themselves as part of the entertainment industry, just as what WWF/WWE did.
Re:Traditional Media...LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
shouldn't that be a sign to the powers that be ...
Except that TPTB are even less trusted than the media.
do you honestly believe our country could be more divided ...
If you don't think it could be worse, that's just a limit to your powers of imagination.
Re:Traditional Media...LOL (Score:5, Funny)
That's right! Our public doesn't believe in a controlled, manipulated mainstream press, so the answer must be MORE control and manipulation!
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So, actually, the country was more corporate controlled when the Fairness Doctrine was in force (although it was more united).
That's nice to know. (Score:4, Interesting)
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There are already enough reasons to write them off [fivethirtyeight.com]
Re:That's nice to know. (Score:4, Interesting)
I participate in Zogby surveys, and I haven't even watched traditional news media in years. I trust Google News more, because it doesn't present a single point of information on a subject. I get a representative article, and then a link that gives me the details - "all 11,002 articles" on the subject. I can drill down as far as I want. Traditional media is a single point of view, with a single agenda; why would anyone trust them any more than a Wikipedia article with no citations?
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I trust Google News more, because it doesn't present a single point of information on a subject.
That's because it's just a news aggregator. It's like saying you trust a newspaper stand more than Fox News because the newspaper stand offers you lots of different points of view. Apples and Oranges. The comparison just doesn't make any sense. Not that I'm blaming you, I just think the whole damn "survey" is a badly conceived pile of nonsense.
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You seem to be unaware that Google News is nothing but a search engine (of sorts) for traditional news media.
Which I suspect you probably don't do all that often, as if you do y
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Notice how Zogby's survey only mentions "the media" and not specific companies. With the most noticeable of the media being television news and not the new york times. This is a wide class of companies with very different goals.
Apple, microsoft and google are engineering companies that create products with a function. Usually that function is achieved with minimal hick ups. News is very often opinionated and wrong.
PS might this be an online poll?
A very wise man once said (Score:4, Informative)
Beware the Government/Media complex.
Say bad things about your master and you're no longer invited to the evening parties.
Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
News media has always been heavily biased one way or another. There's nothing wrong with this. The problem comes with the source of the bias. It used to be small news outlets trying to stick it to the community's most apparent "bad guys" like big business or the government. They were small and independent. However now, the largest and most influential companies in the world are the owners of the mainstream news media. Disney or Murdoch or it doesn't matter, most people know by now that the companies funding mainstream media are doing it for profit only, and have only that interest in mind. If you see something seemingly controversial on the news it's only because that organization feels everyone agrees (or at least, everyone they think watches their show.)
However, I find it worrying that people trust google. They are just as rabidly chomping at the bit of profit as Disney or NBC, or whatever. They don't have an altruistic plank in their yachts. They pretend to "not be evil" but regularly exert their dominance in public exposure via the web to piss all over other markets in an effort to clear a path for their own business strategy. They make things "free" so nobody can compete in conventional terms, forcing them into advertising revenue or similar structures and guess who has a huge monopoly on advertising online? Yeah... so before you go suckling the teet of google or similar companies, remember what it is they are after in the end.
That said, it's still more understandable to view a source like google as more trustworthy, but the problem is that google does not report on the news, they only repeat it from the other, less trusted sources, so it's sort of pointless to compare them.
When it comes to trusting information, it is acceptable to think the official source will be more truthful, even if occasionally they are not. News media gets a pass for some reason, maybe citing bad information, but authoritative organizations get panned for any lies, even accidental unimportant ones. So when an organization like MS or Apple or Google lies about something, it's either well known right away or it's well hidden, and the latter is much more common in my experience.
Not trusting social networking sites ... well that's just a surprisingly, unusually rational position to hold by the general public. Personally I "trust" twitter itself more than facebook, but trust the information less. I trust facebook to constantly try to screw me the way I described google doing it, subversively, for their own profit, under the guise of helping. Just see the constant quiet changes made to their privacy policies as cases where they didn't get away with it. Twitter is easier to trust just because they don't promise anything. You can protect your tweets, but that's about it. You can block followers but you know your tweets and most info is public. Twitter hasn't changed these policies, there is barely anything to change anyway. When I use twitter, I feel it's very obvious what my privacy expectations are. However, the information coming via twitter is less trustworthy than overhearing gabby women at the local mall. It's the same thing, really, except with infinitely more anonymity to hide your lies and innuendo behind.
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Social networks depend on who you follow - they're just a medium, not the content producers.
I mean, I trust each message to come from the real sender, so the trust I deposit in each message is dependent on him/her, not on the social network itself.
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News media has always been heavily biased one way or another. There's nothing wrong with this.
Exactly. People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view. A truely neutral newspaper or programme would likely be seen as baised to the left by right-wing groups, and biased to the right by left-wing groups. In England if the Daily Mail isn't blaming Diana's death on the latest super-terrorist group then the middle-classes would have to find another target for their quiet anger.
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People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view.
This is almost certainly true and it disturbs me greatly... I've never understood the desire that most people seem to have to be told what they already know/believe. I want to be constantly told things that I DON'T know or believe. That gives me a chance to argue, debate, and ultimately learn (either reinforcing or weakening my current viewpoint, or perhaps even turning it around completely if presented with strong enough evidence).
"The Media", huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.
Liberals hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "Faux News" and all the other anti-facts news organizations they've been trained to hate.
Conservatives hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "The Liberal Media", which seems to mean anything OTHER than Fox News.
Is anyone surprised that everyone hates a loaded word? Why not just ask if people trust "Terrorists"?
Re:"The Media", huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
"The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.
I simplify it even more.
Look at the approval ratings for 'congress'. They've been dipping into the single digits lately. Yet ask people about their representative/senator, it's pretty much guaranteed to be at least double that of 'congress'.
Ask about Fox News, NBC, CNN, BBC, etc... You'll get higher numbers.
Hmm... how about marketing research? (Score:2)
Does marketing research count as traditional media?
There are different studies (Score:3, Informative)
There are different studies: In Finland, young people trust newspapers far more than anything in the internet. 78 % say they trust newspapers, while 18 % say they trust internet.
This is a study ordered by Finnish Newspapers Association and made by major independent research company.
Bad google translation here [google.com].
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There's a HUGE difference between 'anything in the internet' and 'internet'.
I don't trust 'the internet' as a whole one bit. Still, there are specific sites I place a large amount of trust in.
I trust wikipedia, for example, about as much as I would an encyclopedia or public school textbook. Good for getting links and figures for internet arguments. Not so much for a college thesis, but a good point to start.
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There are different studies: In Finland, young people trust newspapers far more than anything in the internet. 78 % say they trust newspapers, while 18 % say they trust internet.
This is a study ordered by Finnish Newspapers Association and made by major independent research company.
Bad google translation here [google.com].
Emphasis mine to highlight a potential problem with this study.
Weaning your self from Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Blasphemy you say! I've actually been actively weaning myself from Google recently. My stance is that you have all your data hostage unless you maintain active backups with a remote host (Google).
What have you done? What do you recommend? How do you become more self sufficient? Google are getting to big to be benevolent: they own Recaptcha, so even if you block Analytics, they have additional analytics from that.
They know who you are, where you live, what you think, who you're communicating with, where you're trying to go, what websites you're a member of, what you're trying to find out, what you're buying, what news you've been exposed to.
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They know who you are,
By name and number only, not personality.
where you live,
So does anyone with a phone book. I really don't care. I don't expect Google or anyone else to come kick in my door anytime soon.
what you think
No, they really don't. If they think they do, they are terribly mistaken. If anyone thinks they can know what a person thinks, based purely by their actions on the internet, they are seriously underestimating the process of thinking within the human mind.
who you're communicating with
Correction, they know who I am communicating with on the internet. That's very diff
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I am definitely privacy conscious. If paranoid means 'more concerned about privacy than you are' then yes.
As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.
Ad for streetview, check your home address. I felt uncomfortable with my home being there. Car, windows, etc. Maybe you don't, fair enough.
You refer to the UK. Check 192.com, see if your name, ad
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As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.
But why exactly is this a problem for you?
I'm all for privacy where it makes sense (it's probably a bad thing if people can actively see that I'm not at home, know my home address, and that I recently purchased a huge flat-screen TV); but I see absolutely no reason to worry that Google knows what I've been watching on YouTube recently, or searching for, or what websites I've been visiting.
Similar thing to wandering around naked in my apartment with the curtains open (as I often do first thing in the morning
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Walking around the house in the nude does give you a great sense of freedom. I've unfortunately looked into windows while on trains and buses and seen the same... I do it to. Actually, I may even be naked now, while typing this very message.
I'll try explain myself further. My concern about your video viewing history is that it reveals a lot of information about you. It reveals more than just a web search would, take a look at AOL Stalker [aolstalker.com]. The point is not that other individuals can see it (although that's t
Twitter (Score:2, Insightful)
It's pretty transparent and as honest as the people who post on it..
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People aren't very transparent, nor honest.
I bloody well hope this is a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't people trust twitter/social media? Because even the most Idols addled mind can figure out that a news source with absolutely no accountability or even traceability is totally and utterly worthless.
Twitter: A fly is in my room.
Judge this. You can't. It is is a claim but you don't know who claims it, if the person who started the account is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another inse
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> Like how Turkey so upset about Israel killing Turks crossing into Israeli waters
The flotilla was still in international waters.
Who told you they were in Israeli waters? Why did you believe them?
Subtle distinction (Score:2)
More trusted or less distrusted?
Makes no sense (Score:3, Interesting)
How can I locate these people who trust Microsoft? (Score:2, Funny)
B to the S (Score:2, Insightful)
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the public is a teenage girl (Score:2, Insightful)
traditional media is her fuddy duddy middle aged father who has her best interests at heart, but she hates him
the web is her shiny new teenage boyfriend, who she's gaga over, but he's devoid of concern for her well-being and just wants to get in her pants
misplaced trust due lack of experience, that's all this study means
visit us again in 10 years, when as a jaded, betrayed, defiled, used, cynical, heartbroken 20 something chick, she looks at her dad/ traditional media in a new light
there's no shortcut to re
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traditional media is her fuddy duddy middle aged father who has her best interests at heart, but she hates him
the web is her shiny new teenage boyfriend, who she's gaga over, but he's devoid of concern for her well-being and just wants to get in her pants
misplaced trust due lack of experience, that's all this study means
FYI, traditional media has been getting in her pants since she hit puberty, and only pretends to care about her wellfare. No wonder she's got no sense of boundary. Teenage boyfriend is starting to sound a lot better now considering he might grow up, but Papa has proven himself to be evil.
in what way is traditional media evil? (Score:2)
because its biased?
ALL media is biased, always was, and always will be. so by your definition of evil, everyone is evil, and always was, and always will be
so, just like a teenager's basis for hating their parents, your basis for finding traditional media to be evil is in error. someday you'll grow up, and realize the reasons for hating your parents/ traditional media are trumped up, hysterical, and pointless
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Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Its that they've been caught, not once but several times, reporting stories they knew or should have known were false, as fact, because the stories in question supported that bias.
Spin real news according to your bias, and I'll listen and filter accordingly. Lie to me outright, and I'll never trust you again.
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Its that they've been caught, not once but several times, reporting stories they knew or should have known were false, as fact, because the stories in question supported that bias.
It is more than that, in addition to reporting stories that they should have known were false (for example, the story about John McCain having an affair during the last election cycle), they have ignored other stories that had more evidence behind them (for example the story about John Edwards having an affair in about the same time frame) that turned out to be true, but didn't support their bias. I use these two stories because I don't have to do any research to be sure that my recollection of the details
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The distrust of the media comes from a an inherent distrust of capitalism. The news media exist to sell advertisements and make money, so they report crap that will do just that.
This is why PBS and NPR are head-and-shoulders above any cable or network news agency.
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That pretty much killed all sympathy for the traditional media for me. If I hadn't been fortunate enough to be cynical AND not trust traditional media, I would have been manipulated by fear and anger by what felt like most of the rest of America - which was itself a media-created exaggeration. There were so many dissenting voices, simply ignored.
I mean, tens of thousands march on a street to protest the
trust google? (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised... (Score:3, Informative)
...if those who distrust traditional media the most trust Fox News the most. Sort of like how every Fox News broadcast belittles the mainstream media when they themselves are the #1 mainstream media outlets in America.
Flame away.
Poll presents a meaningless comparison (Score:2)
It makes no sense to compare trust of "the Media" (a collection of independent institutions) to trust of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter as individual institutions.
This is much the same mistake that is commonly made when people pretend that approval ratings of the President are directly comparable to approval ratings of the Congress, such that one can draw meaningful conclusions from the latter being less than the former at any point in time.
That anyone thinks this is newsworthy as anything
This is what happens... (Score:2)
This is what happens when you feel that every story needs "balance" and you give idiots with false information voice whenever they have an opposing agenda and/or a press release. The media walks a fine line distinguishing between legitimate dissent and encouraging stupidity. In the last few decades, it has become lazy, has abrogated its responsibility as fact checker, and has moved heavily into the "encouraging stupidity" side. Publish enough untruths and people stop trusting you. QED.
Depends what they mean by "traditional media" (Score:2)
PLUEASSSS! (Score:2)
I wouldn't trust Google either.... I only trust information from the Alternative media anymore!
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Informative)
Given the aforementioned, the specific numbers hardly paint the picture the summary provides.
I recommend you go over and look at the original report [zogby.com] yourselves, it makes some really odd choices – for instance lumping together “trust a little” and “not at all.” Similarly "The Media" represents some monolithic entity - which is also primed against given the pervasive creation and politicization of the catagory of "mainstream media" - whilst Twitter, Google, and Apple somehow deserve their own catagories.
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Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what your point wrt Enderle is. There are several predictions in that article, all of which are correct, but with some caveats.
Apparently, Enderle said that Apple would switch to Intel chips by the end of 2003. He also said it would use Windows. He was wrong about the year (it was 2006), but Apple computers now run Windows as an option, and they are Intel chips.
Enderle predicted Apple would make smaller, cheaper ipods based on flash memory. Right on all counts.
He predicted that Apple would make an ipod that played video. Right again.
Obviously, he was wrong about the timelines on most (all?) of these, but overall, I'd say that's a pretty impressive record. I certainly wouldn't have called the ipod moving to flash in 2003; at least, not for a long while. I also wouldn't have called Apple moving to x86. He was two years early on the first one and three on the second.
Anyway, I don't think you were trying to imply that this poll is something that's insulted by short-sighted blogs, but is just a little ahead of its time. Maybe you meant it's the Fox News of polling?
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Insightful)
My point, which you've handily illustrated, is that even though Enderle and Zogby usually spout complete bullshit, there are still many apologists suffering from chronic cognitive dissonance who queue up to use them as reliable sources because their random guesses are right half of the time.
Note carefully that Enderle wasn't "predicting" Apples' future strategy, he was talking about what they were just about to announce, and was wrong on every count. By that measure of success, I could predict that Ford's are about to announce a flying car, and in 50 years or so, I'll look like a frikkin' genius.
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me crazy, but a poll with such generic ideas of trust seems almost as useless as a poll about which type of tree people trust the most. Damn, those Nordic Pines look a bit shifty...
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Well...the poll is clearly trusting its readers to be able to glean the rather obvious context of "trust" from the question.
We're asking how much we trust news outlets, google, apple, and Microsoft to tell us the truth.
And I have to say, the news seems to have done a fantastic job at indoctrinating us with their crap.
Looking through this thread, I don't see a single article that differentiates between "bias" and "lies."
If we're going to talk about semantics, that's a lot more important. There must be a lin
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Well...the poll is clearly trusting its readers to be able to glean the rather obvious context of "trust" from the question.
We're asking how much we trust news outlets, google, apple, and Microsoft to tell us the truth.
If that's the case then people don't seem to be doing a very good job of gleaning the meaning* of the poll. They really, honestly expect huge transnational corporations to tell us the truth more than the media at large?
I agree with your point that it's semantics, expectations and bias vs. lies that put all this into context. However, I doubt most people actually thought that much about it. I suspect that most would be willing to take the stupid poll at face value.
* As you read this I'm already taking
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thank you both for pointing out what should be obvious to all.
I wonder though if your understanding of "given task" being "making money" is identical to that of those surveyed. I think there could be many commonly-held but incomparable views. When talking about Apple, I think of "developing good products" or "pricing products so they're accessible". With Google I'm sure many are concerned with "protects my privacy". With Microsoft (or RIAA), I think "practice fair business".
Unless the survey specificall
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Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, the study sounds almost as flawed as the summary of it. Trusting Google more than traditional media is almost completely a non-sequitur. Google isn't of itself a source of news. There's Google News that aggregates articles from news sites, but Google doesn't have its own news bureau. The comparison between Google and "traditional media" implies that people were ranking Google as a news provider against traditional news sources, where in actuality that wasn't the comparison at all.
You see to me this actually makes perfect sense and is an entirely expected result.
If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "hon
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If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.
I agree with this... Which is why I like Google News... But I don't know why they'd include Apple and Microsoft in the poll. What do either of those companies have to do with news media?
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News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.
Really? Search for something non-contentious like, say, "Iraq". Almost all top reports are from the usual well-known list of mainstream news agencies and publishers (often Murdoch / government owned) - plus, of course, al "fill them with ex-Western media guys and let them carry on so we can pretend we don't have a news monopoly" Jazeera.
"Honest" would be links to stories from people who haven't been filtered through a million layers of military and foreign office smokescreening, e.g. reports from *shock* Ir
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Personally, based on Nate Silver's opinion of Zogby, Zogby has moved up in my estimation. If Nate Silver was able to get a following from the DailyKos, he has to be a complete leftwing nutjob, who says things that support the pre-conceived ideas of other left wing nutjobs.
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If you're judging Nate Silver on anything except his demonstrated track record of statistics knowledge, you're an idiot.
The reason he can criticize Zogby is that he is better than Zogby.
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I trust microsoft to scam, try to build monopolies, try to kill opposing software - even if it is better, try to steal opposing software, lie under oath in court. I trust these things implicitly.
I also trust that they have good support*, their products work well enough (but are overpriced unless you are getting a deal through your company). *sometimes you have to agree to pay the support fee but when you do, all the stops come out- they had 5 people on the line including a couple deep level developers to s
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Interesting)
Bias isn't a reason not to trust a media source -- assuming you know they are biased. I completely trust Murduch's outlets, because I know they are biased and can read through it. That doesn't mean I agree with them, just that I know I can rely on the info to be biased in a certain way, and thus have an indication of truth, at the very least.
It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:5, Insightful)
It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.
Actually, it's not hard to read through the BBC's bias once you realise where it comes from. Because of the way it is set up and regulated, it is in a near permanent state of fear of being accused of bias, which means that it tends to give disproportionate prominence to the views of those most likely to complain. That means that somebody who says the Earth is flat gets equal time to somebody who says that it's round (exaggerating here, but that's the mechanism at work). Once you realise that, it's usually not hard to tell which views are those of people who know what's going on and which views are the screwballs'. What you can be pretty sure of with the BBC is that they don't make their news stories up, because the regulators come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Unlike the press, which invents news with impunity.
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite but they genuinely do balance based on complaints.
In an interview I remember one BBC producer saying they try to end up with piles of complaint letters of similar size for each side of contentious issues.
So old nutters who send a lot of complaint letters do get overrepresented but the BBC isn't all that bad overall.
It's quite common to get lots of letters from both side complaining that a particular show was biased towards the other side.
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As far as an off the cuff, is that such a bad metric? I mean, assuming you could somehow balance against the vocality of each side?
A viewer will have a view that his heavily skewed towards their beliefs (hence how socialist US media is when viewed by a hard right-winger, except for Fox News which is fascist to the leftists out there). If the liberals all complain about your conservative bias and the conservatives all complain about your liberal bias with regards to the same piece, shouldn't that imply you
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Not really because flat earthers are such a tiny minority.
You'd get a pile of complaints from the sane majority and a few from the flat earthers.
It's main problem is that it tends to reflect the views of the majority more than the real situations.
The biases will more closely resemble the biases of the majority.
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It's main problem is that it tends to reflect the views of the majority more than the real situations. The biases will more closely resemble the biases of the majority.
Not necessarily. Here in the states its pretty easy for an activist minority to out-speak an apathetic majority. Or at least that's what is sounds like on the unbiased media. (We don't argue about the earth being round much, but they routinely give equal time to scientific studies and famous people claiming they are false.)
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As far as an off the cuff, is that such a bad metric?
YES.
The media should be reporting whatever they can figure out is true. It is not a place to let people just show up and assert things. That is not reporting.
Reporting is finding out what's true, and telling people that. Yes, they then give the guys a chance to respond, but there's a major difference between that and what they do. What they should be doing is portraying the actual facts as true, and then letting people talk about those facts.
Instea
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In my experience, the further to the right of right-wing your politics are, the more likely you are to distrust the BBC, call them socialist, anti-Semitic, what have you.
Re:The elephant in the summery (Score:4, Interesting)
I tend to disagree. A consistently biased news source is one that deliberately attempts to mislead its users. The trouble is that you don't necessarily know what the bias is on any particular subnject, or when that bias changes. All you know is that the data is unlikely to be reliable as presented.
As such, the rational thing to do is distrust the baised source.
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Wrong. They don’t try to “mislead” users. They want to push their sense of reality. You just did the exact same thing right now. And I’m also doing it in this exact moment. :)
The reason we see strongly different opinions that way, is because they don’t fit our own sense of reality.
It’s a fight of mindsets over resources (minds), which in psychology is seen as so similar to life-forms fighting over resources (food, land), that there is a whole field working on analyzing th
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Bah! Fox News went to court to establish their legal right to knowingly broadcast lies as news. Point to a factual error in my post.
There's a meme going around that having an opinion is the same thing as having a bias. I don't subscribe to that at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Conceeding the point for a moment, bias is not an absolute quantity. It's like security in that regard. Any security system can be cracked, but that doesn't mean they're all equally insecure. Leave your valuables unguarded in the street is not a rational strategy for securing them.
Similarly some news sources are much less reliable than others. When we say "biased" we generally mean a source that deliberate seeks to mislead, rather than one tha
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What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?
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What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?
ISTM that "balanced" and "biased" in this context are direct contradictions. But I could be wrong.
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What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?
What you fail to realize is that when fox news started using it's fair and balanced slogan was when cBS NBC ABC all claimed to be unbiased but clearly were, I have always thought of it as a jab at the other media outlets' bias.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is true, if the facts are being reported from a different perspective, perhaps with a slightly different emphasis. The problem with Fox News (I can't speak for RM's other companies), is that they have too many activists who don't care what the facts are. I used to watch Fox News, because I wanted to have my opinion challenged, but there were just a few too many times when I would have to go to my computer to fact-check the talking point that had gone unchallenged the past week, or to simply hear the ot
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Funny that, cause I've tried to watch Rachel Maddow and Keith Oberman for the same reasons. I didn't bother to fact check, because their arguments always seem to be self-contradictory. Of course, they'd always bring in an "expert" that completely agreed with their premises, and then call themselves informed. You always see someone with opposing viewpoints in the Fox panels, but I swear they hunt far and wide for the stupidest people they can find.
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THIS right here is exactly what I wanted to say. :)
Why do people still fall for the illusion that there could be something without bias. It’s a straight-out physical impossibility. And for us humans even more impossible, since nearly all our “knowledge” relies on what we heard from others. Or have you checked for yourself if you survive jumping from a 10 story building? Of course not.
Spin/bias is just the effect of the inner reality model of the people. Which itself is based on their previ
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No, he doesn't take it to a whole new level, he takes it to a level, and that irks the left - "that's OUR thing."
Turnabout IS fair play. Get over it, pointdexter :)
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No, he doesn't take it to a whole new level, he takes it to a level, and that irks the left - "that's OUR thing."
Riiiiight...
Out there, all by themselves on the far right wing of American journalism, and their obvious and unapologetic bias is really only "a perception problem" of "the left". Please...