Bag's Rants

Media Bias.

One complaint I heard about blogs was that the writer has a bias before he writes an article. He then selects his stories to support his bias and then writes to emphasize that bias.

Wow! What an insightful view. My comment on that was that newspapers have almost as much of a personal bias as the blogs. Each newspaper seems to have at it's core a view of the world and it selects stories to reflect that view. Some of them are so biased it is clear what their views are and others a bit more subtle. Plus, people actually believe things in newspapers, including the implications, are indisputably correct.

Here is one I spotted in the Daily Mail about a kid having a seizure playing a computer game. The article told a story with a subtle smack against violent computer games but at the same time missed the main story. The implication from the story was that it was only a violent computer game that caused his seizure. Because, he had been to discos and played games before but not had a seizure. Bit like saying it was my go fast stripes that caused the car crash because I had driven for years before I had them put on without a crash. The best bit was the game was for 15 or over, at which age the risk of seizures is reduced, and the parents were teachers. The same people teaching our kids, poorly, I may add. It seems they made a decision to allow him to play the game and when it went wrong now want to blame someone else. Instead of accepting responsibility they, like everyone else, want someone else to be at fault. Definitely, a sign of our times. Not my fault. Perhaps if the story had emphasised that others may be more careful of the games their kids have.

In one way they guy saying blogs have a bias was right. Some blog writers have a view on the world that verges on 'hate' and, even with some of our newspapers, the writings would never make it into print. Because of this blogs are taken less seriously than mainstream media. It's not to say there is not a place for blogs as the 'torture memos' show. However, when blogs start getting reported as sources in the mainstream media we will soon see the blog writers getting sued. To be treated seriously comes at a price. I don't want that, do you?

posted by Bag @ 10:06 am