Authority is given far too much weight in modern rhetoric. The only real point is if the citation is credible or, in fact, authoritative - which is often the very crux of the problem and the origin of all controversies concerning the citation of authorities.
At the same time, many people believe things that are highly improbable and utterly lacking in meaningful objective consensus. Many persons also lack the fundamental ability to reason. In short, most folks are simply not able to arrive at simple and obvious conclusions about ordinary matters by ordinary means. A good example is the belief in a superior being that guides human life or organized creation absent even a single mote of evidence for such a being. Such a belief is hideously illogical, and at its root violates a fundamental notion known as the Law of Parsimony.
You can't really fix stupid. And Americans in particular are aggressively stupid inasmuch as they perfectly mean to be ignorant and prejudiced in a variety of absurd ways because they feel they have some weird cultural right to behave that way. It is absolutely ignorance as a shield or worn as a badge of honor.
Don't nation bash
Last edited by Darsithis; 2017-05-29 at 07:26 PM.
Some people don't like the angle or news that is being reported with a site like Breitbart and claim it's less official.
Where as the BiasedBC with it's much larger output and professionalism can get away with it's bias and misinformation.
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To be fair, blogs and YouTube videos can be reasonably accurate reviews of material. If they make a strong case and LINK all their sources (which themselves are reputable), they're good conversation pieces/starters. Howeever, the key word there was sources. Blogs and YouTube videos automatically cannot be sources, as they have no journalistic backing behind them. The only exceptions being pseudo-blogs and YouTube videos from news organizations, but those usually have actual articles that they're anchored to.
I personally disregard Breitbart due to the frequent misinforming and unabashedly pro-curent administration face they've put on. For the same reason I'm wary (not disregarding) of Fox News. And MSNBC. And HuffPo is right out just like Breitbart. They are all technically credible sources (including Breitbart, when there's journalistic integrity involved), but you have to be ready to really look at what's in the article. You can't just see a few lines and quote them and say "this proves my point." At the same time, you can't do that and say "this article proves the site is terrible." Someone mentioned a breadth of sources on a single topic, and that's the best way to go about things.
To the question in the OP, it is perfectly fine to argue/say why a source is bad. It isn't fine to attack the poster unless they only over post blogs and get aggressive about those sources being dismissed. Even if they post Breitbart or HuffPo constantly doesn't fit that category. However, if you are posting inherantly biased, though credible sources on a constant basis, expect people to start dismissing everything you have to say as it looks like you, as a person, aren't interested in discussing, but only shoving your point of view on someone else.
If Fox News hadn't entered the arena, strong policialization of the news wouldn't have been quite as much of a thing. But a market for a niche was seen, and then we got "the mainstream media" as an enemy to be argued against. And then it needed a counterpart on the other side. And then a more partisan angle was possible. And then people who liked the partisan angles started acting like the others were terrible because they didn't share a viewpoint. It's BS. As long as they have actual reporting, actual sourcing, actual citing, and can back up their claims with all of the above, then it's VALID, though slant easly makes it hard to stomach.
Finally, anyone who says BBC is biased, fake news, or anything similar should just go and reevaluate what their education was. As many have said, it's possibly the most-respected of sources for how unbiased it is, and its integrity is incredible. CNN was there a long time ago. Now it's not. If people think it's too left, then maybe they should also look at where they themselves are on the spectrum, and what it is that makes an objectively low-bias news organization too left-leaning for them.
The problem is that people rely on one source, or at best 1 or 2 from within the same cadre. If all you're getting news from is an aggregate source too, you're likely only getting one part of a story, or just one side. Granted, it can be tough to find multiple sources that corroborate information with one another, especially with all the spin. In which case, fuck the "news" sources and go right to the docs in question.
Read the releases.
Read the data.
Read the legislation.
and so on...
"News" shouldn't just be your only go-to when it comes to finding out what's going on. News should be a prompt for a person to seek out more information for news that interests them.
You could always read the rules yourself. A wild idea. But no, nothing in them makes calling Breitbart a dumpster fire of a source an infractable offense.
I don't know what the problem is either, but the desired solution starts with "s" and ends with "afe space".
Yup. Especially Associated Press. What's next, Reuters is fake news too?
If it's RT, Alex Jones, or some "FreedomEagle.com" site that is a very corner of the web type site and obviously biased web site that most people have never heard of, or a random Facebook posting that anyone can make up (and more often than not are made up) I see no problem questioning those.
People that have taken the whole Fake News thing and applied it to reputable news sources that have proven histories like Reuters, AP, and other major news outlets, that's a whole different ball of wax that just hurts my head. There are news outlets that are leaning in their writing (NBC to the left, Fox to the right), but 99.9% of the facts they are reporting are true events that have actually happened, and they put out corrections in the rare cases where they get them wrong. The Washington Post broke the Watergate scandal, which was a real event that happened even though the Nixon administration lied and denied it as long as they could, and did everything they could to cover it up. Even then the WashPo didn't reveal their sources, and it was very much proven that the Watergate scandal Nixon denied absolutely happened. I don't understand people at all that have fallen into the all MSM is lying and fake news camp. That seems like people that simply aren't thinking for themselves, haven't studied history, and are easily manipulated.
As a side note I also think it's fair game to point out when people mis-apply a story to generalize a false conclusion. That seems to happen a lot on here. Like, "here's a story about a single super-liberal far-left comment made by a college professor or student, so by association all college students and professors are super-liberals".
"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." Paradox of tolerance