"i'm not clicking your link because I don't agree with its ideology.", page 1

Most of us have seen or been in these situations on ATS before:

******

Me: Yesterday was Tuesday. That means today must be Wednesday, right?
Poster X: Prove it. Link or it didn't happen.
Me: [sigh] OK, here's a link to a news site. They always have today's date on the top:
www.foxnews.com...
Poster X: No way, Fox News is unreliable. They lie. I'm not clicking that. Fail.
Me: [exasperated]: It's just the freaking day of the week. I'm not asking you to march in lockstep with their editorial page. Even if they lie about some things, this is a basic and easily verifiable fact that can be confirmed using any number of sources.
Poster X: Fine, then give me another source. If Fox says today is Wednesday, that means it probably isn't.
Me (rolling my eyes): OK, here's a link to today's Huffington Post, a liberal source. Note the date. Same as on the Fox source:
www.huffingtonpost.com...
Happy now?
Poster X: kthanksbai.
Poster Y (entering the conversation): Waitaminute, now I don't believe you because you posted a liberal source.
Me: nnnnnnggaaaaaaaahhh! (smashes face against keyboard).



*****

Too often do people on ATS use the ideology of a source or a link as an excuse to avoid thinking or engaging with a topic. Yes, Fox lies sometimes and has a conservative slant in general. Yes, Huffington Post is a "liberal rag" with a largely liberal slant. But this doesn't mean *everything* posted at these sources is a lie. I've seen people refuse to believe something like a disaster or a big fire actually happened, just because the link posted is to a news source that jars with their ideology. I'm talking about the basic fact it occurred, not the spin or interpretation. This is just plain pigheaded stupidity, folks!

Don't be lazy and stupid. The evil link is not going to poison you. You are a big boy or a big girl, surely you have the ability to separate what is basic, objective fact from what is spin and opinion at a questionable source, at least in most cases, right? Or are you so brain-dead and insecure in your own views that you can't even trust yourself to read critically?

Not everything at Fox is a lie. Not everything at Huffpo is a lie. Not everything at a site ending in ".gov" is government propaganda. Don't use the source as an excuse for not thinking. If you truly mistrust a basic fact from Source A, use Source B that you trust to verify it...rather than demanding the person who posted the first link do so. Grow up.

Rant over.

reply to post by silent thunder

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I don't know. I kinda see the point being made sometimes. Although outright dismissing it without an alternate source isn't really fair.

Take for example something from Natural News, like "Vaccine make millions die."

Then you find the actual article cited by the NN article and it's "Death rather assessed in vaccine recipients."

If you post the second un biased source of the article, or even the same story from another news source to question it... I don't see anything wrong with that, and it's probably how the debate should be handled.

reply to post by silent thunder

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S&F OP. Like my momma always told me, "There is always two sides to the story, and the truth usually lies somewhere in between.".

My mother never really said that, but I wish she would have........

reply to post by silent thunder

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Attacking source is a disinfo tactic and a fallacy - but one that sometimes has merit. The one source I will always attack - and try like Hell never to source myself is blog sites masquerading as news outlets. Brietbart comes to mind here. It's not that op-ed isn't a valid thing, in and of itself - but it is hard to glean facts from opinion.

To me the real fascination is that media outlets tend to be driving this phenomenon on purpose! When you look at the history of TV news and ponder it, the fact that they are alienating any potential viewers is just staggering. I mean it was not so long ago that news divisions as networks had to fight just to stay on the air because they didn't draw the advertising revenue that other programming did.

My personal approach is simple. Regardless of source - even if it's a blog - I try to trace it back to the original source and then utilize that as the basis for my rebuttal post. If no other source exists and the OP is not based upon a highly reliable source (an AP story for example) I'll happily point that out as well - especially if the OP is based upon an op-ed or blog site.

Having said all of that - your premise is correct. We are being trained to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to news. Everyone is editorializing to the extreme - thus watering down the value of the information. Rather than throw out the sources? It's preferable to point out which parts are editorialized and which seem to be rooted in fact. This is the path to a meaningful discussion of the issues.

~Heff

reply to post by FissionSurplus

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Alex Jones threads do tend to end up with me just stating my opinion of Alex Jones.

reply to post by silent thunder

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That's like saying... "I know this guy is a serial killer, but I'm still going to go on a hike with him. Just because he killed the last 10 people that went on a hike with him doesn't mean that he will kill me."

Once a liar... always a liar... Fox, MSNBC, etc... they all lie or embelish or spin information. Your example of the date is too simplistic for this topic, because a subject like "the date" is very easy to use to get your point across. When you remove the date and insert a relevant economic or political topic it is very easy to not click on the link of a known liar or the link of a site that you know spins news in the opposite way that you think. Reading news from a site that is known to be contrary to your ideology is a waste of time, because the reader will be cynical from the start, and that is OK.

reply to post by OptimusSubprime

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I have to agree. I will not trust anything even slightly political I read on HuffPo. They just cannot be trusted at all imo. I will trust "People's News Daily" and "Al-Jazera" before I trust HuffPo. If I read them at all, it is just to try and understand their slant so That I can rail against it.

ETA: Not that Fox is all that much better, they are only slightly more believable on political topics.

reply to post by silent thunder

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Huffington Post and Fox News are both terrible sources of information.

I don't have the patience to sit here and explain, I just thought I'd point out that people avoid sources that provide news with a blatant agenda no matter what their stance on the political spectrum is.

Get unbiased news or GTFO, because biased news is worthless.

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