Tom Plate's "Let's lay down our right to bear arms"

[Titan6]

I think suggesting that the media was ever fair and unbiased at any point in this country's history is comical at best. Editors, owners and various governments have always slanted and editied articles to their way of thinking in this country. Show me any unbiased media organization that ever existed at the National level.

Suggesting that the media could be fair and unbiased is an equally futile enterprise.

News accounts would read something like:

''All the candidates went to Omaha today and discussed their political point of view.'' - The End

The difference is these days more people are aware of where writers and editors stand on issues by having access to more information. This has revealed a lot of bad liars in recent years and so now writers are more upfront. I prefer it this way rather than having to guess where the media outlet is coming from.

The other good news is tha there are newer independent web based reporting enterprises which without much editorial oversight are much harder for any certain power element to control. Since most offer a writer history, profile and bio you can get a much clearer picture.

 

[Robert Hairless]

Grizzly Adams:

Robert sometimes I have to read your posts a couple of times to get full jest of what you are saying, but I have to say that I agree with most of what you do say.

I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes I have to read them a couple of times myself to figure out what they mean, but I usually agree with them too.

Titan6:

Nope, I never suggested "that the media was ever fair and unbiased at any point in this country's history," and that wasn't the point of what I did say. My specific point focused on what Tom Plate said, and he didn't suggest that the media was ever fair and unbiased at any point in this country's history either. Neither he nor I suggested that the Internet or anywhere else on Earth is fair and unbiased.

With those decks cleared, I hope forever but I suspect not, there's a huge gap between being "fair and unbiased" and being "unfair and biased." That's not a paradox or anything particularly clever. Most people who participate in discussions here, for example, have their own point of view and advocate it strongly. We all see things with our eyes, which is the only way we can see them. That's not being "fair and unbiased" but it's also not being "unfair and biased."

An obvious example of being "unfair and biased" is one I gave in the original post. When a journalist does a story about an event that never happened and uses that imaginary event to sell a social agenda, that's unfair and it demonstrates that the writer's bias motivates his work. He should be thrown out of the sport and blacklisted forever--even if I happen to share his bias. Journalists have done such things.

Perhaps a less obvious example of a journalist who was "unfair and biased" was Dan Rather when he reported obviously forged documents that impugned George W. Bush. The very moment I glanced at a photo of one of those documents on the Internet I knew they were forged because I recognized the machine used to produce them. I owned one. So, I think, did Mr. Rather because they were common in his business at the same time I used it. I think better of Dan Rather than to believe he is a bloody awful incompetent with less experience than I have, so the best face to put on the situation is that he didn't care whether the "evidence" was real. Another possibility is that he knew it wasn't and didn't care about that either. No matter what the explanation, Mr. Rather was unfair in employing forged documents to attack someone and was biased to the extent that he would do such a thing. Understand that Dan Rather didn't have to like George Bush and, for all I care, could have hated him with a passion. Doesn't matter. He could still be trustworthy and we could take into account his bias. What matters is that Mr. Rather stopped being trustworthy that instant: he proved himself "unfair and biased."

So the point is not that I lament the ideal newspaper that never existed and couldn't possibly exist, but I do lament the kind of newspaper that did exist even if you don't know it. That kind of newspaper could be trusted on the facts and was clear to distinguish between news and editorial. You won't like hearing it but the New-York Times was such a newspaper once, and during much of my own lifetime too. There were several others with integrity then as well. Of course there were still others--lots of them--that had little or no integrity, but that's not the kind Mr. Plate or I had in mind. Now, though, I don't know of any newspaper that is worth having except as wrappers for garbage. He doesn't agree. But he's wrong, and I thought I'd given a pretty good explanation of why I thought he was wrong.

Laments about the eternal corruption of the world get old after a while. They don't do me much good anyway because this world is the only one I have, and even though I see things wrong with it I really do like it. I'm a compromising kind of guy, I guess.

 

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

Some people will never understand that what rights they have are solely derived from how far they are willing to go to keep them, regardless of what a piece of paper thousands of miles away says.

The 2nd Amendment is not what grants you the right to bear arms, it is only acknowledging that such a right exists.

 

[Robert Hairless]

Excellent point, Dr. Peter, even if it's not the subject of this discussion and is unrelated to it. Most of us were talking about Tom Plate's article, not about whether the Second Amendment gives or guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.

 

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

The thing is that people such as "Tom Plate" don't understand such a concept. They believe their right to the press comes from a piece of a paper, ironically a circular argument.

 

[jrfoxx]

ANY news source, owned by ANYONE,looking to turn a profit has ALWAYS been biased, IMHO.Which pretty much means ANY newspaper, book, tv news, etc in history.The closet to not unbiased, but un-proft-mtivated, would be he early days of the press, and currnt internet blogs, and they were/are still biased, just biased only by human nature (which can never be eliminated) as oposed to money.

 

[1911Tuner]

Au Contraire' Mr. Plate. I'd say that the keeping and bearing of arms is needed in today's society more than any other point in history, aside from the American Revolution.