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  #21  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 1:10 AM
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Neutral vs balanced vs objective

The problem when it comes to media bias is that people often use heuristic shortcuts that aren't very accurate. Obviously we're all familiar with the people who complain when the media says anything that they don't personally like or agree with and write it off as bias to avoid changing their minds. But there's also a very common and perhaps more insidious form of audience bias that I refer to as "balance" or "neutrality" bias. They assume that anytime there is a disagreement between different media sources, that all takes are equally biased and that the truth is somewhere in the middle or some aggregate between the sources. It's a bias because it makes an a priori assumption about the accuracy of the reports without actually assessing them individually on their own merits.

The opposite of biased reporting is objective reporting. Objective reporting is simply doing one's best to gather pertinent facts and report the truth about them regardless of one's personal interest in the topic. That means reporting the un-spun findings whether or not the facts match your expectations, will make you or cost you money, or lead to conflict with those whom your report cover or affects. But balanced or neutral reporting doesn't do this. It says that one must either present both sides as equal and not state that either side is right or wrong in a particular story or not have too many stories that are critical of one side versus another. But objective reporting doesn't care about that and simply reports as factually as possible regardless of who would agrees / disagrees or likes / dislikes it. But that's very difficult to do with a profit motive involved.

It's also difficult because when you have opposing sides who disagree with one another, the disagreement should be limited to values or opinions about the importance of facts rather than the facts themselves. For instance, given the facts of the matter, side A thinks we should do X and side B thinks we should do Y. But in reality, people often reject facts that they don't feel will forward their position. For example, if side A likes driving instead of using active transportation or public transit, they may outright deny the environmental benefits and fiscal efficiencies of the latter and simply say that driving is actually better for the environment and is more cost-effective. But if the media were to report on this disagreement and affirm the actual facts, side A would then call the media biased and claim that they were parroting talking points for side B. Then they'd call the media fake news or some such. And that's a big problem because then if the media actually does make a factual error or is in some way biased against side B in the future, when side B calls them out for it the audience is tempted to just say, "Well every side whines when the media says anything they don't like. So they're both just equal and opposite sides of the same thing." When of course the correct thing to do would be to look at the specific details of each situation and determine which side is correct.

So the strategy of using a variety of news sources as a way to protect oneself from media bias doesn't on its own work because if you don't have strong critical thinking and analytical skills you aren't going to know which if any reporting is actually correct. And even worse, you can adopt a sort of postmodernist cynicism which assumes that there's no such thing as correct and that the only thing that exists is different perspectives. Biases are sometimes very subtle making them hard for anyone to detect. Someone without strong analytical abilities isn't likely to even recognize the subtle differences between sources. Especially since the audience often has stronger biases than even heavily biased media sources. So for most people, unless they're consuming blatant mis-information, they can achieve more by addressing their own biases rather than externalizing the problem by worrying about the media.

What's worse is that people who believe in the whole "balance" fallacy can be deceived when companies apply it strategically. A company that wants to appear objective may criticize its "side" for something that it doesn't consider particularly important in order to give itself cover for their ideological slant on topics that actually are important to them. For instance, organization with a corporatist stance may report critically on a right-learning political party's regressive social policies to prove that they aren't beholden to the right. Yet at the same time they're very biased against labour and use anti-worker framing when covering union-related stories. But because they've proven their neutrality, people assume any anti-left stances are justified and are less likely to accuse them of having a right leaning or corporatist bias. In reality, as a profit-seeking corporation they just have a vested interest in opposing unions while they don't care about social issues.

The takeaway is that there's simply no substitute for strong critical thinking and analytical skills. Someone with these skills can analyze and point out biases and omissions in the reporting of a story without seeing any other media reporting. Yet someone without those skills is likely to still succumb to media biases. They may even use their experience with multiple sources as fuel for false conclusions. If they used to just watch source A which is generally correct and then start watching source B which says very different (and less correct) things, they're likely to incorporate some of source B since they think greater "balance" means greater objectivity. I remember one landmark study from the US that showed how people who only consume media from a blatantly biased source are actually less informed than people who consume no news at all. So if blatantly biased news sources actually increase one's ignorance, it's hard to imagine how including such a source in one's media diet could cause a net increase in knowledge beyond what the other sources offer.

Not that there can't be any value in exposure to alternate perspectives. It can reduce polarization by help one understand other views and empathize with those who hold them. But that's information about what other media consumers think about news stories rather than the news stories themselves. It's still useful information about the world, but people who are truly open to understanding and empathizing with other views aren't usually the ones in need of such lessons.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 1:40 AM
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse View Post
... I remember one landmark study from the US that showed how people who only consume media from a blatantly biased source are actually less informed than people who consume no news at all. So if blatantly biased news sources actually increase one's ignorance, it's hard to imagine how including such a source in one's media diet could cause a net increase in knowledge beyond what the other sources offer.

Not that there can't be any value in exposure to alternate perspectives. It can reduce polarization by help one understand other views and empathize with those who hold them. But that's information about what other media consumers think about news stories rather than the news stories themselves. It's still useful information about the world, but people who are truly open to understanding and empathizing with other views aren't usually the ones in need of such lessons.
I like your post here. I agree with the point, put simply; garbage in, garbage out; it does not increase awareness in terms of real factual information, overall values, or objectivity, so one must assume there might be some other kind of payback, like entertainment, as with balancing your regular healthy diet with a few Big Macs now and then. Another question is; is it correct to assume that any of these problems or deficiencies have been improved, mitigated, or solved, with internet / non-mainstream / social / youtuber / independent media?
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  #23  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 5:56 AM
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CBC News is so Toronto-centric that it's almost comical. Today CBCNEWS devoted a full hour of live airtime for the Earth shattering event of Mississauga and Brampton parting company. Somehow if White Rock joined Surrey or Dartmouth left Halifax, I don't just don't think it would get quite as much coverage.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 7:01 AM
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Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
CBC News is so Toronto-centric that it's almost comical. Today CBCNEWS devoted a full hour of live airtime for the Earth shattering event of Mississauga and Brampton parting company. Somehow if White Rock joined Surrey or Dartmouth left Halifax, I don't just don't think it would get quite as much coverage.
Just when I figure out what "Peel" actually is, there won't be any more Peel.

Canadian internet "news" is similar. I get tired of seeing headlines on my feed referring to Toronto stories, without them saying that it's Toronto, just saying "city" (so . . . what city?).
Toronto is 2,000 miles away, the distance of London UK to Syria. Sometimes it's not even Toronto, but not here either, which is just as bad.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 7:46 AM
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How many municipalities in Canada have 1.4 million people? White Rock has less than 3 percent of the population of Mississauga. Anyone who believes that White Rock deserves the same amount of media attention as Mississauga is only showing their own bias.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 8:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
How many municipalities in Canada have 1.4 million people? White Rock has less than 3 percent of the population of Mississauga. Anyone who believes that White Rock deserves the same amount of media attention as Mississauga is only showing their own bias.
True, but he does have a point; when Dartmouth merged with Halifax so many years ago (1996), I did not know about it until I joined this forum. If Burnaby were to merge with Vancouver (recommended by me ) I expect it would be covered by CBC, but who knows?
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  #27  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 9:04 AM
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Halifax and Dartmouth were part of a wave of amalgamations of lower tier municipalities in Canada. And this is completely the opposite of that movement, breaking up an upper tier municipality to create three new single tier municipalities. Two of these future single tier municipalities are currently the seventh and ninth largest cities in Canada, one of them larger than Vancouver, and combined they are larger than Calgary. If the City of Calgary were to be broken up into 3 separate single tier municipalities, you think the CBC wouldn't talk about that? This is going to have a big effect on a lot of people and there are a lot of question marks.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 9:15 AM
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
Halifax and Dartmouth were part of a wave of amalgamations of lower tier municipalities in Canada. And this is completely the opposite of that movement, breaking up an upper tier municipality to create three new single tier municipalities. Two of these future single tier municipalities are currently the seventh and ninth largest cities in Canada, one of them larger than Vancouver, and combined they are larger than Calgary. If the City of Calgary were to be broken up into 3 separate single tier municipalities, you think the CBC wouldn't talk about that? This is going to have a big effect on a lot of people and there are a lot of question marks.
Oh I was being slightly facetious, it sounds like Peel Region held powers similar to the GVRD, except only for three municipalities, and perhaps it's a step backwards. That doesn't counter the fact that we do get a lot of "local", often enigmatically presented, Toronto news.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 11:38 AM
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Peel region is equivalent to a county. The GTA suburbs are divided into 4 of these counties at the moment, and each one contains various cities/towns. Schools, garbage, police and certain roads are managed by the county. This is irrelevant to the rest of the country though.

Last edited by LightingGuy; May 19, 2023 at 11:54 AM.
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  #30  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 12:45 PM
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I remember hearing about the suburban Montreal de-amalgamations in national news, which I found very interesting.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 1:03 PM
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I remember hearing about the suburban Montreal de-amalgamations in national news, which I found very interesting.
The Quebec de-merger issue with respect to these municipalities had a language politics angle, as most of them were anglophone enclaves that did not want to be part of larger predominantly francophone cities.

The national media loves that kind of stuff.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 1:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
How many municipalities in Canada have 1.4 million people? White Rock has less than 3 percent of the population of Mississauga. Anyone who believes that White Rock deserves the same amount of media attention as Mississauga is only showing their own bias.
Peel Region also has 3.5% of Canada's entire population. In terms of the CBC's market ("Anglo-Canada"), Peel Region makes up 4.5% of it.

Is it worth an hour of daytime coverage (if indeed that's what it was)? I dunno.

But it's definitely worth talking about on the national news.

Plus it's a story of interest for the entire GTA which has an even greater share of the population.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 2:03 PM
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Peel Region also has 3.5% of Canada's entire population. In terms of the CBC's market ("Anglo-Canada"), Peel Region makes up 4.5% of it.

Is it worth an hour of daytime coverage (if indeed that's what it was)? I dunno.

But it's definitely worth talking about on the national news.

Plus it's a story of interest for the entire GTA which has an even greater share of the population.
It's still a local story to the GTA. IMO of course.
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  #34  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 2:16 PM
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Just on the question of bias... in the mid-20th century, newspapers provided a lot of services (e.g. classifieds, jobs listings etc.) that encouraged them to seek the broadest possible readership, as of course did print advertisements for mass-market products. Subscription fees and newsstand prices barely covered distribution. This favoured a middle-of-the-road approach that ideally would leave no significant of the population feeling too left out. Of course, there was still a degree of branding, and a paper could be the working man's paper or the cerebral paper or whatever, but all of them needed to gather multiple constituencies in order to provide these key non-editorial services.

Now, online advertising never pulled in a fraction of what print did, and has been been a subset of social media anyway since 2010 or earlier. The classifieds are at craigslist and the want ads are on LinkedIn. What you need now are eyeballs and a tribe, and this favours a flashy, combative, in-group/out-group style of coverage.

It's very similar with visual media, what with the differences between the capital investment needed for even a small, local network vs. YouTube or TikTok or Liveleak.

Like 90% of this is structural rather than because we (this is more commonly phrased as "they", i.e. the out-group) have become a certain way.

It was the same in the late 19th century. The consensus society was an epiphenomenon of a lot of mid-20th century commercial and ownership structures.
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  #35  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 2:20 PM
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Just on the question of bias... in the mid-20th century, newspapers provided a lot of services (e.g. classifieds, jobs listings etc.) that encouraged them to seek the broadest possible readership, as of course did print advertisements for mass-market products. Subscription fees and newsstand prices barely covered distribution. This favoured a middle-of-the-road approach that ideally would leave no significant of the population feeling too left out. Of course, there was still a degree of branding, and a paper could be the working man's paper or the cerebral paper or whatever, but all of them needed to gather multiple constituencies in order to provide these key non-editorial services.

Now, online advertising never pulled in a fraction of what print did, and has been been a subset of social media anyway since 2010 or earlier. The classifieds are at craigslist and the want ads are on LinkedIn. What you need now are eyeballs and a tribe, and this favours a flashy, combative, in-group/out-group style of coverage.

It's very similar with visual media, what with the differences between the capital investment needed for even a small, local network vs. YouTube or TikTok or Liveleak.

Like 90% of this is structural rather than because we (this is more commonly phrased as "they", i.e. the out-group) have become a certain way.

It was the same in the late 19th century. The consensus society was an epiphenomenon of a lot of mid-20th century commercial and ownership structures.
This is an excellent observation! Never thought about it his way but it makes a lot of sense.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 2:25 PM
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rather than because we (this is more commonly phrased as "they", i.e. the out-group) have become a certain way.


Or I guess we have, but the causality is flipped -- we're downstream of our cultural engines and their incentives, not the other way around.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 2:31 PM
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It's still a local story to the GTA. IMO of course.
I don't dispute that the national anglo media can be Toronto-centric and the franco media can be Montreal-centric, but I also think there are people who just don't want to hear anything about other parts of the country that could be construed as "local".

Right now the top stories on the CBC News site are all about the Alberta election. Technically irrelevant to 90% of the country.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 3:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Architype View Post
I get tired of seeing headlines on my feed referring to Toronto stories, without them saying that it's Toronto, just saying "city" (so . . . what city?).
Even worse to me is when Toronto is referenced as "the city"

I hear it mostly from residents. People I know have said things like "Are you coming into the city this weekend?" or "Let me know next time you'll be in the city." More recently I have been asked "Why don't you move into the city?"

Yeah, because there is only one.

This isn't Highlander!

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  #39  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 3:45 PM
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San Francisco and New York use that too.
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  #40  
Old Posted May 19, 2023, 3:48 PM
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Hell, that's pretty normal just about anywhere. Go to Winkler, Manitoba and people will say that about Winnipeg.
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