So yeah, quick question for those of you who think the "liberal media" makes perfectly plausible stuff up to scare us all:

Why do you think they do this?

This is a good question, provided I'm reading it correctly (I suspect I'm not one of the people it's aimed at, being liberal myself).

I'd hazard a guess that non-liberals assume the "scare stories" are concocted to serve the agenda of liberals. Much in the same way that a liberal assumes that conservative media concocts "scare stories" to serve the agenda of conservatives.

It's exactly the same thing on both sides, really. And most people who take a side thinks their side is absolutely right, and anything contradictory must be wrong, and there must be an ulterior motive involved, etc.

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Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

You say "most people", but we're both, I think, fairly typical liberals. Do you believe that the "other side" makes up scare stories?

attention seeking, which is typical of the psychological types drawn to leftist politics

Hugz.


Seriously though, why would you lie to scare the public? People are a lot more critical of the media in times of crisis, whether that crisis is real or imagined. What does anyone gain from inventing a crisis, compared to what they gain from downplaying it?

Well, yes and no. Maybe. But I probably have to clarify my own view a little, b/c what I wrote before is more of a generalisation on behalf society at large.

Personally, I don't think anyone really "makes up" scare stories with deliberate intent to frighten people into their way of thinking, and thus consent for their agenda, if they should have one. Either "side" presumably really believes in what they put out there. So maybe it isn't so much a deliberate lie or concoction as it is a biased POV or "truth" (I use "truth" pretty loosely there). I think people generally view the "other side" with suspicion, and will have opposing beliefs, so will always tend towards the most sceptical view of what's being said. And then they might miss the fact that what was said wasn't necessarily concocted with the specific aim of scaring people.

I'm not really clear on how I feel about whether the media has an agenda. Unconsciously, probably. Consciously, probably not, or at least not all of the time. I imagine they just lean towards the side of an issue that they agree with, and aren't really *trying* to win people over to their side.

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Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

C'mon Oph, you know the answer to this one!

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

It makes sense for the media to have some kind of liberal bias, especially in a more right-wing country, because the right-wing tend to be the ones who are likely to shut down their paper and stick them all in the cells. Remember ZTed's comments in that thread about the media freedom chart? How patriotic is any journalist going to be, really?

... no, actually, I don't. I'm often told that I do, and assured that I'm smart for knowing it.

duh. weapons of mass destruction. reds under the bed. jews run the world

I'd argue that in those cases they're only reporting on/agreeing with existing prejudices. I don't think they control people that way. If people didn't want to believe those things, the media wouldn't have any reason to print them.

Well if you're talking purely about the media, and not individuals, the benefit in playing up a story to a big sensation, as opposed to playing it down, probably lies squarely in selling more papers or getting more viewers. The more passionate you can get people to be, whether in outrage or in consent, the more they're likely to notice the next update to that story and want to tune in. That's not to say there's no other agenda involved, however.

As for individuals, it's definitely a bit different.

There are some issues that, try as I may, I cannot work out the benefit of potentially lying about them. Take global warming: where's the benefit in lying about that? "The liberals want to restrict our freedom to do whatever we like" isn't really a good enough explanation. And I haven't got anything else that springs to mind. Where's the agenda in it? Is Al Gore being paid money from alternative energy companies to talk up their cause? Doubtful.

Take even immigration: liberals tend to be reasonably okay with it. Again, where's the agenda in that? I can't see one.

Idk. Does anyone see what I'm trying to get at? Is this essentially what the initial question was about: what do non-liberals think the liberals' agenda is in their "scare stories"? B/c if so, I don't know the answer to that any more than you do. And I'd like to know too. Maybe someone will come in here and enlighten us.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

as with the liberal media. they don't write science papers about climate change, they report them. the bias is in what you choose to report as well as any op-ed

I was going to use this as an example, but I got tied up in my previous point of whether bias is intended or not.

That's sort of held up as an example as a blatant lie on the part of the gov'ts, and the point I wanted to make earlier about it but forgot was that perhaps the gov'ts maybe believed in it initially? Thus, it might not have been so much a deliberate scare story. But given events since then, yeah, you'd think they'd have withdrawn when they realised they were wrong, but then they just produced further "reasons" for being in Iraq (Saddam is a tyrant, they need democracy, general unrest needs to be settled, etc), and that obviously gives the game away that the WMD was a crock.

But I do remember at the time when we initially went into Iraq, the Mirror of all newspapers was playing a count of days that we'd been there with no sign of WMD, and I think that might have been right from the start. That's cynicism at play in the worst possible way. With hindsight, of course, we can see that their criticism had been valid all along, but at the time they just went right ahead and assumed that there was an ulterior motive. No matter how biased you are, and how useful questioning things can be, questioning everything like that from the absolute outset isn't really better than a conservative person saying "global warming is a farce b/c I don't agree with it."

But I suppose, the example of the Mirror's coverage that I use is a little flawed, b/c of the previous Gulf war having taken place. So maybe I'm expecting naivety, which isn't exactly a good thing either.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

i actually didnt think people existed who actually believed that until i went to some meeting on saturday. happily, they were shouted down

As I understand it, they believed it because it was convenient. They didn't have anything conclusive, so they went with something that allowed them to act rather than not.

Happily maybe, but it's kind of unfortunate now that we come to ask what their opinions are.

haha, know they offered them without being asked. they also shouted down someone for using 'overly academic and therefore exclusionary language' and thought that the stockwell shooting was a conspiracy. fun times.