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Comment by mturmon

5 years ago

I find this unpersuasive.

The level of control/conformity on canonical Western media was such that, for most topics of daily news, thinking about the bias of the reporter was not a first-order concern.

For some topics (let's say, hot-button US-vs-USSR things, or race issues in the US), the bias of the source was of course important, anywhere.

But for, say, reporting inflation, unemployment, or the wheat harvest, whether NBC news or the Washington Post was biased wasn't critical in the same way it would have been in the USSR.

Basically, my argument is that the difference in degree is still a worthwhile difference.

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mturmon

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hindsightbias  5 years ago

While a segment of HN commenters could go on for hours about U-3 or U-6 unemployment numbers, the politicization of such, there is no real difference with most media consumers. Truth largely settles along a binary choice of the mainstream alternatives. Within those strains, views are very self-congruent. Perhaps that’s coincidence, or there are only two real truths, but I’ll defer to PG’s writings on that.

The real difference is that those in the east were predisposed to be suspicious, whereas in the west that disposition or curiousity is not a thing.

  • blaser-waffle  5 years ago

    There are plenty of real truths, it's not strictly binary.

    But it's in Pepsi's and Coke's best interest to have you think it's only those two.

elgfare  5 years ago

Bias can be reflected in which stats are reported at all. There's also the framing of the numbers and the conclusions stated or implied.