Comment on Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker not?
14th_cylon@lemm.ee 1 month agoBut I pay attention and weigh and analyze and review and question, which beats the shit out of slavishly believing whatever I read.
and you do all that based on facts. you can analyze, review and question facts and then form an opinion, but first step is to be able to trust the facts you read and that is where the rating of the source may be useful (if you are not familiar with said source).
unless “using your own brain” is euphemism for discarding facts which doesn’t fit your opinion, then you indeed don’t need to know anything about trustworthiness of the source 😂
Rottcodd@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No - actually I do the bulk of it based on presentation.
“Facts” fall into two categories - ones that can be independently verified, which are generally reported accurately regardless of bias, and ones that cannot be independently verified, which should be treated as mere possibilities, the likelihood of which can generally be at least better judged by the rest of the article. In neither case are the nominal facts particularly relevant.
Rather, if for instance the article has an incendiary title, a buried lede and a lot of emotive language, that clearly implies bias, regardless of the nominal facts.
That still doesn’t mean or even imply that it’s factually incorrect, and to the contrary, the odds are that it’s technically not - most journalists at least possess the basic skill of framing things such that they’re not technically untrue. If nothing else, they can always fall back on the tried and true, “According to informed sources…” phrasing. That phrase can then be followed by literally anything, and in order to be true, all it requires is that somebody who might colorably be called an “informed source” said it.
The assertion itself doesn’t have to be true, because they’re not reporting that it’s true. They’re just reporting that someone said that it’s true.
So again, nominal facts aren’t really the issue. Bias is better recognized by technique, and that’s something that any attentive reader can learn to recognize.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Double facepalm.