Media Bias

Look it up on Wikipedia. It's worth a skim, though admittedly it's tough to slog through.

Anyway, after I got done reading/skimming/skipping bits and pieces of it, I remembered something. Wait! Wikipedia could be biased too. So I learned on NPR, as they were studying a reactionary group, Conservapedia.

No, I don't really think Wikipedia is biased maliciously, and any bias is one that we all share. Conservapedia, however, is hilariously biased (read the name). At least, it's amusing until I realize this is real, and someone actually thought this.

Read its descriptions of Republicans and Democrats.

1. The Republicans have an ideology section and the Democrats don't. "The outstanding difference between the mind set and political ideals of the Republicans and that of the Democrats is that the Republican Party tends to emphasize more the ideal that societal health is rooted in personal responsibility and actions." Complete the thought. Democrats apparently don't stand for personal responsibility at all. Or actions.
2. The other sections are also more lengthy for the Republicans.
3. It jabs at the number of Democratic presidents. Alright. But then look at the Republican Party article. The section, "Presidential Dominance," more specifically. "In terms of winning presidential elections, the Republican Party has been the most successful political party in U.S. history. Since the American Civil War, Grover Cleveland is the only non-incumbent Democrat who has won the office of President of the United States under "ordinary" circumstances (meaning no third party, no Great Depression, no disputed count in Illinois, no assassination of the previous president, no Watergate)." Gee, I guess Vietnam, the economic conditions in 1980, and other circumstances are ordinary. Republicans get elected by merit, and Democrats... by circumstance, when really, they are all affected by ample amounts of both.

... there's more. But let's move on to Harry Potter. Admittedly, except for a fixation on whether the book passes the Christian test, there doesn't seem to be too much wrong here.

And, if you're wanting more, just type in things that you know will be controversial. It's interesting to read, because it actually promotes itself as a skewed source, one that reports from a certain perspective, but it seems to allow this because it views itself as the dominant or true perspective, pro-American and pro-Christian and therefore right. There is no attempt for balanced information, for weighing all sides of the issue. They've picked a side and they're sticking to it. Description and criticism are not separate but integrated. They don't have the benefit of numbers for varied perspectives, but they don't need it for that so much as they need a quantity of articles they do not yet have.

Wikipedia spins its wheels trying to be unbiased, balanced, and neutral, and their efforts are dismissed as failing. Conservapedia responds by denying the possibility of neutrality. There is no other valid view for them. There is only the homogenous, and the incongruous. They don't have to worry over their being right. Such arrogance...