Leftist Censorship?

[muttly]

As one of Dr. Wolfe's students I am really angered by this whole 'tempest in a teapot'. In fact, the people commenting negatively toward Dr. Wolfe (below) show why she is absolutely correct in this matter. Their views have been skewed by bad reporting. We were told, in-class, that she did not want us using biased sources, and mentioned some extreme left, and extreme right, as well as special interest "news" organizations as examples.

She further explained that, if we could make a good argument for using one of these sources (as several people in class have) that she would permit it. She just wanted us to explore a variety of sources, rather than simply accepting a single perspective.

She has NOT (as TV9 claims), "lifted any limitation on research sources", because there was no real limitation to begin with.

The "upset students and parents", are one set of parents who happen to be the extremely conservative and politically influential parents of one student who is failing. So rather than talk to her or anyone else at the University, they are trying to discredit her.

All of this is hardly surprising, WWVA is a Fox radio affiliate, and Bloomquist only has a show because of he spreads offensive lies and half-truths (Look at his comments about coal miners from last April).

What is sad is that WTOV is being so ignorant as to accept for face value what Bloomquist said. This is what happens with yellow journalists on a slow news day, I suppose

Lets take a closer look at the comments from unbiased who posted them in the section under the story.Lets call unbiased a her for sake of redundancy. She calls herself unbiased and that is fine ,but lets examine if her comments actually sound unbiased. First she gives an account of Ms Wolfe offering the students to give a good argument to presumably use Fox News as a reference.. Some of the students ,according to her persuaded Ms Wolfe to use Fox News. First point : Ms Wolfe is a political science professor yet she singles out The Onion and Fox News as not legitimate news sources, but does not single out any of the the left leaning news sources for their bias. Very narrow minded professor for someone who has majored in that field.
Lets get on to ""unbiased". She claims that there is only one set of parents and according to her, labels them as "extremely conservative". Apparently her "unbiased" nature enables to decipher how conservative the parents are and they are "extreme". Unbiased apparently also knows the student that complained has a failing grade. Did unbiased do some hard hitting journalism and find out the student's actual current grade in the class to come to this conclusion? She also mentioned that the "only reason" Bloomquist has a show is because he spreads half truths and offensive lies. Hmmm. unbiased sounds like she has a bias.

 

[cheri1122]

Muttly: which part of the following is too hard for you to grasp?

We were told, in-class, that she did not want us using biased sources, and mentioned some extreme left, and extreme right, as well as special interest "news" organizations as examples.


If you find the Fox News piece more credible, then you either have no experience with college professors, or you just really, really want to believe it. Or both.

 

[muttly]

No, I don't have a link to a story or a video. If I did I would have posted it instead of saying that I distinctly remember it.

That's your guess because you want to defend this as an innocent mistake or as somehow otherwise being fair and balanced. Smith did not credit or mention Savage in any way in his broadcast. He simply stated the same thing that Savage had stated on Savage's show the previous day, without referencing Savage at all. He stated it as a fact.

I've already acknowledged that the print article is different than the on-air broadcasts. Ticky tacky is singling out one or two of the several examples I posted that offer up plausible explanations for innocent mistakes, while ignoring the examples that don't, and then try to paint broad brush of innocent mistakes onto an entire body of work that indicates anything but innocent mistakes.

Like I said, if all of these are innocent mistakes, then it's an awful of of them, and reeks of incompetence. Do you trust incompetence? I don't. And if it's not incompetence, it's intentional. Your call.

Even if you completely dismiss the examples you are fixated on as being completely out of bounds and totally incorrect on my part, it doesn't excuse the rest of the examples I posted, or the rest of their body of work.

I just requested a link so I could give a complete answer to subjects YOU brought up. Would like to see the context for myself that is all. I didn't necessarily single out and ignore the rest. You gave a few examples and to go back and find links and examine them all for myself instead of relying on what you recalled would give me a better understanding. I couldn't find some of them. Regarding Shepard Smith, I highly doubt he would use Savage as a source and not comment perhaps negatively toward him. He is by most accounts a liberal on Fox News( How can that be?) I've heard him repeatedly make negative comments about certain 'conservatives" or republicans or their views in the past.
Yes I would call them examples of incompetence,but I wouldn't call them lies, like you claimed a few times in the prior post. Do I trust incompetence ? No. Are they more competent than most new organizations? Probably so. I could give you a million examples of other news organizations incompetence. Check out MRC sometimes or Newsbusters. Countless examples of bias or incompetence all day, every day, from supposed 'reputable" news agencies. Most of them probably Ms Wolfe doesn't make her cringe either. Fancy that , the one she has a problem with is the conservative leaning one. And this is what this thread is about. The singling out of one news organization by a political science professor ,who doesn't have enough of an objective mind to see the problems in the other news organizations.

 

[muttly]

Muttly: which part of the following is too hard for you to grasp?

We were told, in-class, that she did not want us using biased sources, and mentioned some extreme left, and extreme right, as well as special interest "news" organizations as examples.


If you find the Fox News piece more credible, then you either have no experience with college professors, or you just really, really want to believe it. Or both.

Context is important Cheri. The statement by the professor given by "unbiased": She doesn't want the students to use biased sources. Which ones would those be Cheri? BTW in my previous post, does unbiased, in some of her statements, come across bias? Yes or no?

 

[cheri1122]

Context is important Cheri. The statement by the professor given by "unbiased": She doesn't want the students to use biased sources. Which ones would those be Cheri? BTW in my previous post, does unbiased, in some of her statements, come across bias? Yes or no?

So the part you can't grasp is the 'extreme left & special interest "news" organizations', huh? Eyes just glazed right over that part.....

The only bias I read in Unbiased's explanation is the one pertaining to correcting misinformation, for those who prefer to learn what actually occurred.
Leaves you out, looks like.

 

[muttly]

Fox News is missing a golden opportunity to hire you for their PR department.

Yes, I assert that the Ron Paul footage was a lie. Not based on that one isolated incident, but based on their body of work and on their established pattern of lying about stories to push an agenda. It could very well be that the Ron Paul incident was, in fact, an isolated incident and an innocent mistake. But that's the problem when you're caught lying too many times - people think you're lying even when you're not. You cry wolf one time too many and no one listens.

Newsprint does front page corrections with a teeny tiny correction a day or more later buried inside their pages. Unsubstantiated and/or false allegations that get corrected never get the same headlines as the allegations. The same holds true for broadcast media, where many minutes may be spent on an untruth, and the correction gets a few seconds at most. There have been several cases where Fox News has spent hours intentionally broadcasting a distortion of the truth, and less than one minute on the apology.

The violent riots in Russia are a prime example, where they not only used video from riots in Greece to show what was going on in Russia (which was no violence), but the voice reporting described exactly what the video was showing. That's not a mistake of using the wrong video - the audio and video were intentionally edited to tell that story, and it was a lie. They broadcast that several times a day for at least two days. They spent all of 10 seconds on one broadcast to apologize. That's pretty flagrant. You think something needs to be flagrant enough that no one would notice. I'm not sure how flagrance would go unnoticed, but assuming I understand what you mean, Fox News doesn't care that it gets noticed. Otherwise they would make every effort to ensure the same mistakes don't keep happening over and over again.

A certain percentage of the viewers, a large one judging by the ratings, either don't notice or don't care. They like the lies and distortions, because they keep tuning in and continue to label Fox News as their most trusted news source. Fox makes a mistake apologies with a wink and a nod and then goes right back to the same ol' same ol'.

It's the body of work, the pattern of all of these "innocent mistakes" and how all of these "mistakes" seem to be in error slanted against the left that is the problem. An even more disturbing problem is the large percentage of the population who doesn't even see it as a problem.

Why would they hire me for PR work? I already agreed that some of their editing has been sloppy sometimes.They are still better than most. I'm only giving possible counter arguments to some of the issues you raised. Would prefer links though. You seemed to be the one compelled to "recall" instances where Fox News made mistakes. I only initially mentioned Fox News because they were condemned by Professor Wolfe. I'm merely questioning your reasoning for saying in the Ron Paul video that they out and out lied. Please offer a shred of evidence that they purposely did so in this instance. Again the topic at hand is the professor who decided that Fox News lacked credibility as a News organization, so much so as to not use them, yet did not single out one left leaning news organization.

 

[Turtle]

I just requested a link so I could give a complete answer to subjects YOU brought up. Would like to see the context for myself that is all.

You're still fixated on trying to come up with plausible justifications as mistakes for these individual examples instead of being able to see the overall picture of the patterns of their body of work. You're trying to excuse it by saying other news outlets also make mistakes.

All you have to do is open your eyes and see the bias, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. If you agree with it, that's fine, but there's no need to pretend, much less assert, that it doesn't exist, because it does. There is also no need to pretend, or assert, that that bias doesn't manifest itself in distortions of the truth, because it does. That's what a bias is.

 

[cheri1122]

Again the topic at hand is the professor who decided that Fox News lacked credibility as a News organization, so much so as to not use them,

Wrong.

yet did not single out one left leaning news organization.

Wrong again.

Really, Muttly, if you can't see where you're wrong here, you have no business arguing with grownups.

 

[muttly]

So the part you can't grasp is the 'extreme left & special interest "news" organizations', huh? Eyes just glazed right over that part.....

The only bias I read in Unbiased's explanation is the one pertaining to correcting misinformation, for those who prefer to learn what actually occurred.
Leaves you out, looks like.

Unbiased portends or pretends to be an unbiased journalist student, yet she shows her bias by 1, stating that the parents are "extreme" conservatives. 2. claiming she knows the kids failing grade in class. 3. claims the "only" reason Bloomquist has a show is because he spreads half truths and lies. Check,check,and check. Bias ,bias ,bias. Not unbiased.

 

[Turtle]

Why would they hire me for PR work?

Because you can make excuses for everything they do and see nothing inherently wrong with what they do.

I already agreed that some of their editing has been sloppy sometimes.They are still better than most.

Excellent example. Thank you. You've spun, in fine professional fashion, "intentional distortions and lies" into "sometimes sloppy editing". Well done! The fact that they are better or worse than others is irrelevant, but it does make a fine fallacy.

I'm only giving possible counter arguments to some of the issues you raised.

Spoken like a true PR professional.

Would prefer links though. You seemed to be the one compelled to "recall" instances where Fox News made mistakes.

You're hung up on an example where everything rests on my own personal recollections instead of something that gives you a concrete method of concocting a plausible excuse. Fine, forget that example and go with the ones you can verify online, like the Greece riot video, or the one where the managing editor admitted on camera that he intentionally distorted facts about Obama being a socialist and where he sent out emailed marching order on taking that biased angle on the Obama stories.

I only initially mentioned Fox News because they were condemned by Professor Wolfe.

And did so using Fox News ratings to make your argument. That's why I posted what I did about the poll results.

I'm merely questioning your reasoning for saying in the Ron Paul video that they out and out lied. Please offer a shred of evidence that they purposely did so in this instance.

What are looking for here, a link to where someone at Fox News stated unequivocally, "We lied about the Ron Paul video"? That doesn't exist. But if you look at their patterns of behavior, it doesn't look good. If you also note that they used video from one event and the audio from another, and edited them together as if they were a single video source, which in an overt, intentional act, i.e., purposely done, then that should be more than enough evidence to convince even the most ardent supporter of what happened. They lied, and did so intentionally. There is no plausible reason for whoever edited that piece to have both the old and the new audio, and both the old and the new video loaded up in the editor at the same time. None. They would have had to make the effort to go into the archives and dig up the old video, and load it into the editor with the new video, separate out the audio streams, and then recombine the wrong audio and video by mistake, and have that audio miraculously be in sync with the video. That is something that can only be done on purpose. It simply can't happen by accident.

Again the topic at hand is the professor who decided that Fox News lacked credibility as a News organization, so much so as to not use them, yet did not single out one left leaning news organization.

Yes, but it's a topic shown to be one with a false premise, where the teacher did not, in fact, single out Fox News while leaving out left-leaning organizations. But you prefer the distortion, apparently, as you're hangin' tough on that one.

 

[Turtle]

Unbiased portends or pretends to be an unbiased journalist student, yet she shows her bias by 1, stating that the parents are "extreme" conservatives. 2. claiming she knows the kids failing grade in class. 3. claims the "only" reason Bloomquist has a show is because he spreads half truths and lies. Check,check,and check. Bias ,bias ,bias. Not unbiased.

That's also a logical fallacy. Discrediting what was said based on, or attempting to, discredit who said it. The poster may be biased or unbiased, but it has makes no difference on whether or not her statements are true.

 

[muttly]

You're still fixated on trying to come up with plausible justifications as mistakes for these individual examples instead of being able to see the overall picture of the patterns of their body of work. You're trying to excuse it by saying other news outlets also make mistakes.

All you have to do is open your eyes and see the bias, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. If you agree with it, that's fine, but there's no need to pretend, much less assert, that it doesn't exist, because it does. There is also no need to pretend, or assert, that that bias doesn't manifest itself in distortions of the truth, because it does. That's what a bias is.

Turtle, I already know that Fox News leans right in their news. I'm not excusing them in the least when they make mistakes. I was just objectively trying to answer some of the issues you brought up. The reason for Fox's very existence and why they came to fruition is because of the liberal bias that permeated the other news agencies. So much so that they omitted stories and only reported one side. Ms Wolfe's claim is that she didn't want any unbiased news references to be used ,and singled out Fox News as not to be used. No problem with MNBC? Really? I would have the same problem if a conservative professor omitted MSNBC from their sources. Even the fact they are the closest thing to a state run news organization and continuously dabbles in despicable race baiting on a daily basis.

 

[cheri1122]

Unbiased portends or pretends to be an unbiased journalist student, yet she shows her bias by 1, stating that the parents are "extreme" conservatives. 2. claiming she knows the kids failing grade in class. 3. claims the "only" reason Bloomquist has a show is because he spreads half truths and lies. Check,check,and check. Bias ,bias ,bias. Not unbiased.

Whether the representation of the other student as failing and parents as conservative is true or not [and I knew such things about some of my fellow students, so it may well be true] or the remarks about Bloomquist is totally irrelevant. Unbiased could call herself Alfred E Nuemann and it wouldn't make any difference: the point is Professor Wolfe offered multiple examples of biased sources from both right and left, and allowed them if the student could justify it.
She did NOT single out Fox News, nor did she prohibit using it under any circumstances, as the OP [and you] allege.

I have to go take some aspirin now. Lots of it.

 

[muttly]

That's also a logical fallacy. Discrediting what was said based on, or attempting to, discredit who said it. The poster may be biased or unbiased, but it has makes no difference on whether or not her statements are true.

Are they true? It matters because Cheri is asking me to take them at face value as the truth?

 

[muttly]

Whether the representation of the other student as failing and parents as conservative is true or not [and I knew such things about some of my fellow students, so it may well be true] or the remarks about Bloomquist is totally irrelevant. Unbiased could call herself Alfred E Nuemann and it wouldn't make any difference: the point is Professor Wolfe offered multiple examples of biased sources from both right and left, and allowed them if the student could justify it.
She did NOT single out Fox News, nor did she prohibit using it under any circumstances, as the OP [and you] allege.

I have to go take some aspirin now. Lots of it.

And your source is "unbiased". Refer to #54.

 

[cheri1122]

My source is also unchallenged - not a single commenter has spoken up to refute the description of what actually was said & done in Professor Wolfe's class. That's a lot more proof than anything Fox News has got, lol.

 

[muttly]

Because you can make excuses for everything they do and see nothing inherently wrong with what they do.

Excellent example. Thank you. You've spun, in fine professional fashion, "intentional distortions and lies" into "sometimes sloppy editing". Well done! The fact that they are better or worse than others is irrelevant, but it does make a fine fallacy.

Spoken like a true PR professional.

You're hung up on an example where everything rests on my own personal recollections instead of something that gives you a concrete method of concocting a plausible excuse. Fine, forget that example and go with the ones you can verify online, like the Greece riot video, or the one where the managing editor admitted on camera that he intentionally distorted facts about Obama being a socialist and where he sent out emailed marching order on taking that biased angle on the Obama stories.

And did so using Fox News ratings to make your argument. That's why I posted what I did about the poll results.

What are looking for here, a link to where someone at Fox News stated unequivocally, "We lied about the Ron Paul video"? That doesn't exist. But if you look at their patterns of behavior, it doesn't look good. If you also note that they used video from one event and the audio from another, and edited them together as if they were a single video source, which in an overt, intentional act, i.e., purposely done, then that should be more than enough evidence to convince even the most ardent supporter of what happened. They lied, and did so intentionally. There is no plausible reason for whoever edited that piece to have both the old and the new audio, and both the old and the new video loaded up in the editor at the same time. None. They would have had to make the effort to go into the archives and dig up the old video, and load it into the editor with the new video, separate out the audio streams, and then recombine the wrong audio and video by mistake, and have that audio miraculously be in sync with the video. That is something that can only be done on purpose. It simply can't happen by accident.

Yes, but it's a topic shown to be one with a false premise, where the teacher did not, in fact, single out Fox News while leaving out left-leaning organizations. But you prefer the distortion, apparently, as you're hangin' tough on that one.

I'll get back on the above when I have more time. And your source for the last paragraph is?

 

[muttly]

My source is also unchallenged - not a single commenter has spoken up to refute the description of what actually was said & done in Professor Wolfe's class. That's a lot more proof than anything Fox News has got, lol.

Keep carrying the torch for "unbiased".

 

[RLENT]

Muttly,

You may wish to consider diversifying your portfolio to spread the risk ... since it appears you're a little too heavily invested in one sector ...

Perhaps you can treat us all to a "plausible explanation" as to how the video and audio from two different year's CPAC conventions (one of which would have been archival) innocently wound up on the same editing timeline ...

 

[cheri1122]

I strongly suspect that portfolio won't support much spreading - just sayin.