Entry 527, on 2007-05-07 at 16:49:06 (Rating 3, Comments)
I always enjoy listening to the "Quick Hitts" podcast. Dave Hitt produces an entertaining and thoughtful commentary on many different topics, and although I often disagree with him, I continue listening both for the entertainment value and for the exposure to a view which is often contrary to mine.
Contrary views were the topic of a recent Quick Hitts podcast and it was an idea I agreed with totally. The idea discussed was media bias. Dave seemed to think that most American (and other) media is left biased, which doesn't necessarily make much sense considering they are all owned by large corporations. He gave a few examples, but its easy to find specific examples to support any theory. An overview, with some actual statistical analysis, would be a better method to establish bias.
So he showed his own bias in the types of examples he gave, but he correctly pointed out that left and right are relative. They could easily be leftish compared to his libertarian political views, but still to the right of a more left-leaning person like me.
The key thing to remember with any information source is to look at the other side. With the Internet this is fairly easy because we all have instant access to thousands, and often millions, of sites on just about any topic. People expect web sites to be biased so its just a matter of identifying the bias and also referring to a second site with opposite bias. The problem is that many people presume non-Internet sources aren't biased, which is clearly untrue.
Wikipedia does contain some biased information, but its generally marked as suspect in the header. Blogs are a great source of information from many different perspectives but too many are totally subjective and poorly researched. Alternative web sites like Aljazeera, the Arab news service, are great for a different view of Middle Eastern events, an area where western bias is substantial.
So I do try to see both sides of every story. I'm a very skeptical person, and I'm fairly sure that there is no truth in pseudo-science and superstition, such as UFOs, astrology, religion, ESP, etc, but I have read a reasonable amount of information supporting these views. I know about the alternative evidence, I just don't find it very compelling.
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