AIM?

RealMiniDriver wrote: If you want to piss off a conservative, don't tell him what he wants to hear. If you want to piss off a liberal, don't tell him the what he wants to hear.

Fixed that for you.

bravenrace wrote:

Xceler8x wrote: Politifact. They seem to do a pretty good job of parsing the truth out while working very hard to be unbiased. http://www.politifact.com/

Thanks, that is what I'm looking for. To all those pointing out the right-bias of AIM, I think I stated that in my original post. My question is whether or not their reporting is truthful. It is possible for an organization to be biased one way or the other and still report the truth. I just don't know if anyone actually does, and if so, who is it? Thanks again Xcel, I'll check them out.

Politifact.com is run by the notoriously liberal Tampa Bay Times.

phaze1todd wrote:

bravenrace wrote:

Xceler8x wrote: Politifact. They seem to do a pretty good job of parsing the truth out while working very hard to be unbiased. http://www.politifact.com/

Thanks, that is what I'm looking for. To all those pointing out the right-bias of AIM, I think I stated that in my original post. My question is whether or not their reporting is truthful. It is possible for an organization to be biased one way or the other and still report the truth. I just don't know if anyone actually does, and if so, who is it? Thanks again Xcel, I'll check them out.

Politifact.com is run by the notoriously liberal Tampa Bay Times.

Well crap.

The thing is, reporting can be truthful while still having a bias to it. That's the rub - you want some sort of iron clad black and white truth but there is no such thing in a world with 6 billion people in it and thousands of different belief systems and more chaos than any quantum physicist can hope to understand. Once you get more complex than simply stating facts (like "it's 100 degrees out today") and start interpreting it (like "it's 100 degrees out today and it might be due to global warming"), there is no way that 100% of people will agree with it.

dculberson wrote: Once you get more complex than simply stating facts (like "it's 100 degrees out today") and start interpreting it (like "it's 100 degrees out today and it might be due to global warming"), there is no way that 100% of people will agree with it.

Which is, in fact, precisely why the news media should stick to reporting facts, and stop deliberately blurring the line between journalism and editorial.

I remember watching the news as a kid, when the reporters would get done telling the factual story, they would pause, say a disclaimer, and then give an editorial. There was often even a graphic in the background that said "EDITORIAL". They were at great pains to separate the facts from the opinions.

That doesn't happen any more. In fact, they go out of their way to make sure it doesn't happen. That's why I never watch the news of any kind.

I was really hoping the first reply would be "FIRE!"

American Indian Movement?

There's a name, I've not heard of in a long time.....

Advanced Idea Mechanics?

dculberson wrote: The thing is, reporting can be truthful while still having a bias to it. That's the rub - you want some sort of iron clad black and white truth but there is no such thing in a world with 6 billion people in it and thousands of different belief systems and more chaos than any quantum physicist can hope to understand. Once you get more complex than simply stating facts (like "it's 100 degrees out today") and start interpreting it (like "it's 100 degrees out today and it might be due to global warming"), there is no way that 100% of people will agree with it.

That was well put.

Another example: The sky is blue is factual. What shade of blue could cause people to debate.

Politifact is good about trying to point out truths in subjects but does seem to pick a few more subjects that sound really bad for Repubs with a few sprinkles of bad things from the Dems like they watered their lawn during a drought or something.

I totally thought of AIM dashes as well.

I find Politifact to be a bunch of crap. In the local editions each of the "facts" checked is just done by the editors of that regions local paper. I.E. in the Milwaukee edition the facts are checked by the editors of the Journal Sentinel. They have shown their disdain for conservatives quite a bit in the past.

For example, during the recall election of our Govenor one of the statements they rated him on was when he said that there was a recall effort put into place before he was ever sworn into office. Politifact rated that as a lie even though 20 min. of Googling and Whois searches showed evidence to the contrary and supported the Govenors statement. When Politifact was called out their response was that none of the evidence was linked directly to those conducting the "official" recall drive and only belonged to "fringe" members.

Be liberal or be consevative, I don't care. Just don't tell me you're independent when you clearly have an agenda.

alfadriver wrote:

Duke wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: According to the great gods of wikipedia - Despite AIM's assertion of political neutrality, it is frequently described by the mainstream media and other media watchdog groups as a conservative organization

Where's the surprise there? Although I will not vouch for AIM in any way at all, anything that is not *notably* leftist is described as "conservative" by the MSM, who themselves are pervasively liberal.

It's all in the perspective of how you hear it. For instance, I see NPR as very balanced, and much media pandering to the bill payers (aka- conservative). Fox is noteably bad, but IMHO the worst of the worst is ESPN- in how they cover what they are entertaining at the same time.

I listen to NPR every day. They CAN be balanced at times, but they give a lot of air time to liberal pet causes. I mean, they give that socialist Robert Reich a regular spot for crissakes. Today he was demanding that the government mandate 3 week vacations for everybody.

I thought this was going to be about AIM-9 air to air missiles.

That's not true...I really thought it was about the instant messaging thingy from the birth of the internet.

Bias is inherent in anything produced by a thinking human other than a straight retelling of facts like someone already pointed out. To make a news story whether on TV, print, or on the web, there has to be some interpretation and thought put into it and that means there will be some bias. The hardest part is sorting through what is reported to determine what is the truth and what is interpretation of facts. I find that most news stories have a slant in some way or another. Some are intentional, some may be caused by misleading sources, and some may just happen because thinking people have opinions.

Toothpaste.