#press bias

[tweetingukpolitics]

[filosofablogger]

The Press Is "Light" On Fairness

Why does the press keep claiming that Kamala Harris is “light on policy”?  How so?  She was tossed into the ring a few short weeks ago and since then has been kept busy choosing a running mate, planning a campaign, making public appearances, and preparing for/speaking at the Democratic National Convention that took place last week.  PLUS, she IS still the Vice President of the Biden…

[originalleftist]

Naturally, of course, the news coverage I've seen tends to be along the lines of "Teamsters don't endorse anyone, this is a disaster for Democrats".

So on the Teamsters, it seems that Harris has been endorsed by

International Brotherhood of Teamsters Black Caucus

Teamsters Joint Council 7 (north and central California and Northern Nevada)

Teamsters Joint Council 42 (Southern California, Southern Nevada, Hawaii, Gaum, and Saipan)

Joint Council 28 (Washington, Alaska, and the Idaho Panhandle)

Joint Council 40 (Western Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia)

Joint Council 43 (Michigan)

Teamsters Local 186 (Santa Babara and Ventura Counties California)

Local 237 (public employees in NYC and Long Island)

Local 572 (Los Angeles area)

Local 623 (Philadelphia)

Local 769 (Southern Florida)

so Teamster Union organizations representing hundreds of thousands of members have endorsed Harris-Walz

[desoax]

Bayer's Essure was a metal and polyester coiled device that was put into women's fallopian tubes to block the pathway between sperm and egg. After it was approved for sale in the United States, women began to complain that it caused allergic reactions and chronic pelvic pain and led to hysterectomy. In some cases it was lethal. Although eventually the FDA required a black box warning on the packaging, a Freedom of Information inquiry revealed that the company had 32,000 complaints about the device that had not been sent on to the FDA. Eventually, more than 39,000 women sued Bayer or hired lawyers over their use of Essure. In 2020, with no admission of wrongdoing, the company settled claims against it for $1.6 billion. In other instances, the authors pointed out, adverse event reports were made to the FDA but not shared with the public. Silicone breast implants were not allowed from 1992 to 2006, and when newer materials became available for implants, the public and doctors assumed they were not risky–even though there were no long-term studies of the effects of those materials when implanted in the breasts. However, as concerns grew, "safety advocates began meeting with the FDA in 2015. In 2018, the agency revealed that the adverse event reports existed but were not made public, despite the mandatory reporting requirement. During a public meeting in 2019, the FDA acknowledged that the agency had received over 300,000 breast implant adverse event reports–20 times more than they had previously admitted publicly. After this meeting, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb promised release of all AE reports collected through 'alternative summary reporting,' most of which were released in June 2019."

Sex Cells: the Fight to Overcome Bias and Discrimination in Women's Healthcare, by Phyllis E. Greenberger, MSW

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Luke Rosiak

More than 80 media outlets with forced to issue a correction after running an Associated Press story that alleged that 40,000 civilians had been killed in the Gaza Strip.

An August 18 AP story said that Vice President Kamala Harris had been “vocal” about the need to protect civilians in the Israel-Hamas war, and that the “civilian death toll has now exceeded 40,000.”

But “not even Hamas has alleged that more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed in the war between Israel and the terror organization,” according to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), which monitors Arab media.

“While the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported over 40,000 total deaths among Gaza’s residents, its data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israeli sources, meanwhile, estimate that over 17,000 of those killed are Hamas combatants,” it said.

AP appended a correction to its story on August 19.

The outlet also revised the article’s text to say “More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the territory’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says, but how many are civilians is unknown. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants in the war.”

Media outlets who carried the wire service’s article also issued corrections.

But CAMERA said that NBC affiliates in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York had still not made the correction three days after being notified.

[eretzyisrael]

In her interviews aired on December 29 on Israeli channels 12 and 13, Schem emphasized that she had been forced to make the video, and that the medical “treatment” in it was a mere show.

She said she didn’t receive any painkillers for her arm injury, and that she had to change bandages by herself throughout her time in captivity.

Yet both Newsweek and The Guardian, which echoed her Hamas-controlled narrative, chose to ignore her story as a free person. Since the outlets didn’t think this merited an update to their original pieces, whoever reads those stories will still gets the false impression that Hamas treats its hostages humanely.

Other media outlets that covered Schem’s hostage video made the right decision to report on her interviews with Israeli channels.

But some outlets, while detailing her harrowing account, either distorted what she had said about her fear of being raped, or omitted it altogether.

AP reported that Schem said she was afraid that her captor “might try to harm her,” when she actually used the word “rape:”

The New York Times did not mention her saying it at all, but it should have highlighted it, especially after the publication of the newspaper’s investigative piece regarding Hamas’ sexual violence during its October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

In her interviews, Schem made several points that deserved to be mentioned — from her injury, to her starvation and constant fear in captivity.

But in light of recent criticism over the blindness to Hamas’ sexual violence, her comments about fear of rape deserved special attention — as they indeed received from Reuters.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

regarding common tropes about ganon's writing in fics, I am kind of always taken aback a little anytime ganondorf uses degrading sexist terms in fics and such. Because to me, even his most evil interpretations would probably have no reason to have negative associations with women who have sex a lot, unless he picked it up from elsewhere (like there's some room for it to be interesting psychologically speaking if that's directly addressed, but it never is). I'm not sure why the gerudos would ever cultivate these kind of misogynistic ideas in their own culture, or why Ganondorf would spontaneously decide to form any essentialist ideas he may potentially develop on the basis of promiscuity, of all things. And, if he would pick that up from Hyrule... why would he, why this, and how does that map out with him remaining proudly gerudo in most iterations if he sees any non-married woman getting funky in a negative way?

it's kind of a very small thing, but it does kind of beckons a lot of questions regarding worldbuilding and psychology and it tends to take me out of fics a little, because it's always kind of assumed and never investigated

[8ightisfate]

[remcocoa]

.

[maaxverstappen]

i cant believe how massively the lando/max incident has absolutely spiralled in the media and online. it was for the lead in what is shaping up to be an exciting season, i get it, but surely this reaction is way out of proportion? why are there 86 journalism think pieces on max's racing abilities and lando's winning capabilities? it was a single incident and an overal sloppy race. seriously?

[jangillman]

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[shoshiwrites]

*hears BoB theme* is this my favorite theme

*hears TP theme* is this my favorite theme

*hears MotA theme* is this my-

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Morgan Stephens at Daily Kos:

How dare Fox News let Vice President Kamala Harris appear on the right-leaning network and then allow some panelists to—gasp—praise her performance? That’s grounds for a predictable Donald Trump social media tirade.  After the Democratic presidential nominee’s contentious Wednesday interview with host Bret Baier where she slammed Trump as “dangerous” and “unfit to serve,” the GOP nominee slapped a pouty post on his Truth Social site.  “If I win and, I hope for the Country’s sake that I do, and this Radical Left Moron, Kamala, doesn’t get a chance to run the Country, it is DESPITE Fox, not because of them!” Trump declared. Who is going to tell him that the press does not exist to help him win elections?  These objections are especially rich coming from someone still spewing threats against CBS' “60 Minutes” following the show’s interview with Harris. In his addled opinion, Fox News should be boosting him—but how dare a news show “help” his opponent?

“60 MINUTES SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY TAKEN OFF THE AIR—ELECTION INTERFERENCE. CBS SHOULD LOSE ITS LICENSE,” Trump wailed on his Truth Social site  Thursday. He has falsely claimed that the show’s editing of Harris’ answer to a question amounted to a campaign finance violation. Who is going to tell him that promotional videos can be stylized and cut differently than what ends up on the final broadcast? Even the conservative law firm that filed a complaint against CBS with the Federal Communications Commission admits news producers have the editorial authority to clip interviews however they deem fit.  “Under this commission’s long-standing precedent, CBS retains the right to exercise news judgment when editing its material,” the filing said. “And that kind of editing is normal in the context of a news magazine style show like “Sixty Minutes.” But the Fourth Estate’s rights matter very little to Trump. Just like the strongmen and dictators he loves to take care of and write love letters to, Trump has a history of threatening journalists and news organizations who challenge or criticize him. He also likes to sling personal insults and publicly demean reporters who ask questions based on facts.

Crybaby Donald Trump is mad that his supposed sacred space of Fox “News” has Democratic/Never-Trump voices on the network.

[uwmspeccoll]

Livy’s Admittedly Biased History of Early Rome

Throughout all of written history there has been one commonality in all works of this kind. Due to the nature of humans, we all have preferences and experiences that make up biases, and thus every text about history is biased. It doesn’t matter whether the events were recorded at the moment of their occurrence or thousands of years after the fact. Even works with multiple authors are not free of bias due to differing views, but rather have multiple different biases. There is no way to remove bias for historical sources, so the question now is how do historians provide the reader with a clear recreation of past events?

On of the oldest solutions I have found comes from the 1st century BCE Roman historian Livy. The copy found in our library, titled Livy: The History of Early Rome, is a 1960 Limited Editions Club production, with a translation by Aubrey de Selincourt and illustrations by Raffaele Scorzelli, printed in Verona at the famed Officina Bodoni by Giovanni Mardersteig in an edition of 1500 copies signed by Mardersteig and Scorzelli . Despite the legendary tales of rivers protecting generals and consuls battling dragons, Livy is still able to provide the reader with an acceptable history due to what he says at the beginning of his work. In the first few pages of this lengthy read, Livy plainly tells the reader about his bias, stating that he believes Rome is the greatest civilization to have ever existed. This is then followed by both a hope that this view will not affect his writings and an instruction to remember this hope.

Livy’s histories do fall into the land of fiction at various points, yet with that instruction, readers have the ability to understand why they are present and hopefully can better interpret the events behind the legend.

View more of my Classics posts.

-- LauraJean, Special Collections Undergraduate Classics Intern

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

AP’s ubiquitous photographers — the prolific bunch churns out 1.2 million images annually — also don’t manage to capture the shocking scene of Pasternak’s home defaced with what amounts to a murder threat. Instead, the cadre of photojournalists suffice with an image of the German consulate, which was vandalized with red paint, apparently applied in an abstract arrangement, sans red triangles. Like Marcelo’s article, the photograph’s caption also paints over the pro-Hamas imagery, referring to a random splashing of color:

Red paint covers portions of the entrance to the German consulate building, Wednesday, June 12, 2024, in New York. Pro-Palestinian protesters have vandalized locations associated with the Brooklyn Museum and United Nations in New York City, throwing red paint across their entrances in opposition to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. (AP Photo/Sophie Rosenbaum)

Not only does the caption neglect to note the Hamas-linked graphic, it also ignores that the “locations associated with the Brooklyn Museum” were private homes.

It’s not just Hamas graphics which are subjected to AP’s scrubbing. A pro-Hamas organization also gets sanitized. Here’s how AP’s Marcelo whitewashes the pro-Hamas Within Our Lifetime group:

The protest group Within Our Lifetime and other organizers of that demonstration said the museum is “deeply invested in and complicit” in Israel’s military actions in Gaza through its leadership, trustees, corporate sponsors and donors — a claim museum officials have denied.

He says not a word about the organization’s support for Hamas. According to ADL, Within Our Lifetime

has hosted or co-sponsored at least 78 anti-Israel rallies many of which included explicit support for violence against Israeli civilians by U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations  Hamas, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hezbollah, the Houthis and affiliated individuals such as Leila Khaled and Hamas’ military wing spokesperson Abu Obaida. WOL also expressed enthusiastic support for Iran’s unprecedented April 13 drone-and-missile attack on Israel. 

Marcelo similarly sluices down Within Our Lifetime’s horrifying and deep embrace of terror at the demonstration outside the Nova Festival massacre last week. His censored account states:

The paint attacks came the same week that Within Our Lifetime organized a large demonstration outside a New York City exhibition memorializing victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival. The group called it “Zionist propaganda” and dismissed the music festival, where hundreds died, as “a rave next to a concentration camp.”

AP spares its readers from the most disturbing aspects from the event. As Times of Israel reported:

 On June 11, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the antisemitism of the pro-Hamas crowd outside the Nova Festival exhibit, twice citing those most heinous lines:

What was even worse, or at least adding salt into the wounds was that just a day or two after I visited the exhibit, protestors gathered outside the exhibit chanting repugnant antisemitic phrases, donning banners that read “Long Live October 7th” and “The Zionists are not Jews and not humans.” How low can you go ? Having visited the exhibit and seeing those young people and then knowing and seeing on film what happened to them at the vicious hands of Hamas, and then having people come outside and protest and say “Long Live October 7th” and “The Zionists are not Jews and not humans.” How repugnant. How despicable. How terribly unnerving that humanity could sink that low.

And yet, at this low point for humanity, AP has relegated these repugnant slogans glorifying mass murder to the dustbin of history.