A pervasive trend in political discussions (and hoping to move forward)

[LC]

1) In the global warming debate, the liberals fail to admit that it is almost impossible to come up with a scientifically rigorous predictive model that confirms that global warming is caused by man made CO2

2) In the sexism debates, the (some) liberals fail to admit that there are biological differences between men and women that contribute to the population disparity in a particular industry.

3) In the racism debates, the liberals fail to admit that a few left-wing organizations such as Black Live Matters and Antifa have hate and racist elements as its doctrines.

I mean, I would consider myself socially liberal and I admit all these things. But frankly I think they are used as red herrings by "conservatives" to dismiss the arguments being made.

[vox]

My belief is that the political divide is hard to bridge because events get instantaneously filtered between drastically different news and media lenses for liberals and conservatives. I would be curious if people were willing to share what news sources they follow and believe to be credible.

I'll start. I get most of my political news from the New York Times, Politico, The Hill, Bloomberg Politics, and The New Yorker. The political reporters that I follow on twitter are Maggie Haberman, Robert Costa, Alex Burns, Katy Tur, John Harwood, Andrew Kaczynski, and Jonathan Swan.

[rukawa]

The trend I notice is that people engage in far more thoughtful intelligent argument on the investment threads than the political threads with some exceptions. In fact our political threads very much resemble our worst investment threads (e.g. Valeant).

The only person I have ever seen who is respected by both left and right on Global Warming is the blog Science of Doom. Lately however he has been becoming more and more skeptical of AGW. Anyways there was this magical moment when he somehow was immensely respected by both sides of the debate.

I have been thinking a lot about how he managed to accomplish this incredible magic and I would say he mostly did it by sticking closely to the facts and avoiding judgement that could not be supported by facts or numbers.

Saying: "AGW is bullshit" vs "Currently Estimates of warming from models are showing greater warming than what is actually observed, especially in the mid-Troposphere."

To me the most interesting thing is how intelligent posters on investment threads somehow appear to become much less thoughtful on political threads. I pretty sure I'm guilty of this but I have difficulty in observing myself. The one exception to this is Packer who appears relatively thoughtful on both threads. But some posters are literally completely different people.

[rkbabang]

My belief is that the political divide is hard to bridge because events get instantaneously filtered between drastically different news and media lenses for liberals and conservatives. I would be curious if people were willing to share what news sources they follow and believe to be credible.

I'll start. I get most of my political news from the New York Times, Politico, The Hill, Bloomberg Politics, and The New Yorker. The political reporters that I follow on twitter are Maggie Haberman, Robert Costa, Alex Burns, Katy Tur, John Harwood, Andrew Kaczynski, and Jonathan Swan.

I get my news from all over the place: NYT, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA times, I read my local paper The Union Leader, bloomberg, forbes, CNN, FOX NEWS, .....

The problem is that I don't like any of them.  They are all biased one way or the other and none of them share my biases.   I tend to get angry reading/watching all of them and I don't fully trust any of them.

[Bluffy]

"Since when do liberals want forced sharing of resources (heavy taxation), restricting gun laws, strong limitation of free speech? It might be me, but I though it was sort of by definition that liberals want individuals to have as much freedom as possible, which means stuff like free markets and a limited government and no limitation of free speech...."

In which country do you live in??? You seem to mix liberals and the others. Then when you combine liberals with a mainstream media which is trying to shut up anything opposed to its beliefs then yes, they are also opposed to free speech.

Cardboard

Hey Cardboard,
I think Hielko is German. We have it the other way around in Germany, meaning liberal = republican and vice versa. I know that the comparison is somewhat flawed when you really want to have a deep discussion about the differences, but I think that at least explains the confusion!

[onyx1]

The problem is that I don't like any of them.  They are all biased one way or the other and none of them share my biases.   I tend to get angry reading/watching all of them and I don't fully trust any of them.

+1   The media is 100% agenda driven.  The joke is watching them try to act like evenhanded purveyors of truth.

[vox]

+1   The media is 100% agenda driven.  The joke is watching them try to act like evenhanded purveyors of truth.

Where do you get your news from if it's not the media? You can't possibly be traveling across the country at the scene of each breaking event.

[onyx1]

+1   The media is 100% agenda driven.  The joke is watching them try to act like evenhanded purveyors of truth.

Where do you get your news from if it's not the media? You can't possibly be traveling across the country at the scene of each breaking event.

Fox, MSNBC, WSJ, Yahoo, and Drudge Report links to scores of media sites.  CNN for the eye-roll or a laugh.  All require an active agenda bias filter.

[Schwab711]

What would unbiased media look like? Is it even sustainable for a single outlet?

The editorial stuff is how you differentiate yourself. Honestly, that's the value-added portion of a media outlet. Listening to folks who immerse themselves in news and provide some opinion. If you find yourself upset about some journalist or news anchor that doesn't seem to base their opinion on facts then factually prove them wrong to yourself. It will only make you better. The other option is to just ignore them. They are generally free services.

As a thought experiment, lets pretend that all editorial comments within an article are removed and only facts are listed. Then there would still be room for bias based on the order of the facts, the sentence structure, the adjectives/nouns used, and so on.
* People predictably retain listed information (first fact, last fact, and middle fact - generally)
* Sentence structure can influence how facts are internally interpreted
* Adjectives, while maybe technically correct, can also predictably influence interpretation

For more info, ask Scott Hall how to get people to click on or respond to some message at a higher rate than other people saying the same exact thing in a different way.

[rukawa]

What would unbiased media look like? Is it even sustainable for a single outlet?

The WSJ with the exception of the editorial and opinion sections.

The problem is that I don't like any of them.  They are all biased one way or the other and none of them share my biases.   I tend to get angry reading/watching all of them and I don't fully trust any of them.

I rarely find that with WSJ. My bigger concern with them is that the quality of their news coverage appears to be declining...especially the in-depth articles.

I also like the Economist. The National Post (Canadian) is fairly right wing but intelligent. My bigger problem is not bias, its thoughtlessness, limited investigation etc. I wouldn't have a problem with an extremely biased paper as long as they were smart and I learned something. For instance, Rolling Stone is often excellent but definitely liberal.