Is your news biased?
 

I watch a lot of international news; Canadian Broadcasting Company, Japan's NHK, and the UK's ITV in addition to the American news networks FOX, MSNBC, and CNN and even occasionally the local news channels.

What news channels do you watch and do you think any of them are any less biased toward a particular viewpoint than the others?

I give CBC a lot of credibility.

And Al-Jazeera, despite being obviously pro-arab seems to suprisingly report half-decent.

It's hard to tell in this crazy world.

Whenever I go abroad I watch CNN or FOX and if you don't watch or read any other news they seem so unbiased and genuine. Then when I get back to the UK I find out all the little extremely important details that CNN and FOX *forgot* to tell me.

I've only ever watched US and UK news channels but of the two the US ones seem really fucked up.

Are there still people in the world who think Fox isn't biased?

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hardly..... after all we are biased as well, so it aint easy to tell

Do you think CBC is unbiased?

BBC World seems to be the best of a bad bunch here (Fox, CNN, Sky)

Do you think they are even close to as biased as Fox, assuming you think they are biased?

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I just watch GFY now. It's completely unbiased. You get the full range of views, unedited and uncensored.

All news is heavily biased in a number of ways. The difference between the less biased and the more biased is that while the more biased are outright propaganda, the less biased could maybe be considered news.

Of course, I think FOX is biased. Don't insult me. FOX is as far tilted to the American right as CNN used to be tilted to the American left. I wrote about this half a year ago telling you all you'd soon graduate from CNN-bashing to FOX-bashing. Welcome. Furthermore, FOX has a stable of articulate intelligent conservative newscasters with bookdeals and radio shows. They're a machine.

Obviously CBC is biased. Every bit as biased. I imagine it would be very evident to an American and especially a conservative American but much more difficult to notice if not. You NEVER see a story on CBC that is pro-right wing America (pro-Bush), for example. The American right is often described with epithets such as "the conservative right wing Republicans" just like many FOX broadcasters label the American left as "liberal left wingers". I can't tell you how many stories I see that portray Americans in a negative light. While a show like "Good Morning America" interviews cosmopolitan New Yorkers on their way to their jobs at investment banks and publishing houses for their "people on the street" segments, CBC tends to have god-conjuring American hillbillies talking about the moral decline of society. An interview last night showed a number of Canadians saying things like "Well, you always have to worry about the Americans retaliating against us" as if American Abrams tanks are going to be rolling across the border to attack it's NAFTA partner over some social policy.

I don't find it surprising that you think your news is less biased than others. Al Jazeera viewers think of their news as the least biased. The Japanese think theirs is unbiased. Americans think there news is unbiased. Idiots all.

Is there even such a thing as a neutral viewpoint? No story can be told in its entirety. There is not enough time. Every news story involves selecting portions of the full story and discarding others. The usual selection criteria is to include the part of the story that is most relevant to it's audience.

I don't think there is. Language itself is value-laden, there is no way to describe a situation that only gives the facts. What makes matters worse is that the facts themselves are subjective.

Two statements, both true, about the same event:

"In an act of terrorism, thousands of innocent civilians were killed. The terrorists used a suicide mission to cause great destruction."

"In an act of resistance, a great success was achieved. Through great self-sacrifice, the partizans managed to inflict significant damage to their opponents' economical infrastructure."

Agreed on that.

The best one can do it to absorb news from as many alternate sources as possible; television, newspapers, internet, books.
That being said, it's really not that difficult for the most part to watch FOX, CNN, CBC, BBC or any other news story and self-filter.

I mostly watch television news to see how news is being portrayed. I like to see how the stories are told. I find it entertaining. I'd much rather read news than watch it. The news content is reduced in the television format. The information to time ratio is too low. They speak too slowly. Cool pictures though and nice background noise.

That's a great example.

Kosovo had "freedom fighters". Chechnya had "rebels" and "militants".