If You Agree With It, It Isn't Propaganda, Right?

[st_rev]

You say "Ever notice that you almost never see a photo of Cheney where he isn't sneering?"h*** says "he looks like someone's cranky granddad asleep in front of the game

Comments

Wrong bias, sorry

[nihilistic_kid]

The media doesn't select for sneering pics, viewers fail to remember non-sneering pics. Or, in your case, the "sneering Cheney" idea lets you go on about media bias while congratulating yourself, so you blindly accept it.

Heck, even parodic pictures of Cheney don't depend on the sneer.

Re: Wrong bias, sorry

[st_rev]

Those mind-reading classes paid off, I see!

[nihilistic_kid]

Nah, my sausage-making classes. I can't even imagine how a unity of effort that can be described as the media SUBTLY CHOOS[ING] A PRE-DETERMINED CHARACTERIZATION could even come to pass, after having, you know, been doing this for a living for a decade.

You could though, cuz you is a sucka.

[st_rev]

No unity of effort, just Chomsky in reverse.

AND NO YOU ARE ALSO U STINK

[nihilistic_kid]

Chomsky's propaganda model is ALSO full of it, for the same reason...not even reversed! Unity of effort is required to do what he and you say happens via mystical magic...and that assumes that it's actually happening, which my pics show it ain't.

See, this sort of thing makes Dick smile:

more mystical magic

[nihilistic_kid]

Note the ghostly Aunt Clara from Bewitched in the reflection on the right!

Re: more mystical magic

[st_rev]

GASP

Re: more mystical magic

[jhvilas]

I originally sided w/Rev's general idea that (to summarize) Cheney usually looks cranky. (FWIW, I think Bush usually looks mildly stupid, too.) On hearing Spimby's statement about the strokes, I felt a little bad -- OK, maybe he does look odd, and there's a reason for it. I don't think Bush is stupid either, at least not any more so than most of Capitol Hill

Re: more mystical magic

[st_rev]

I will warn you now of the dangers of debating politics and sociology with nihilistic_kid, who is a) an extraordinary smart and well-informed person and b) a master of inflammatory and distracting rhetoric. Getting past b) to a) is somewhat difficult.

Re: more mystical magic

[nihilistic_kid]

Lots of media images of politicians are candids, so they can be wonky.

Others are carefully managed by the politicians' staffs, so look crisp and nice.

That's the way it goes. The ones you remember reveal the confirmation bias within the viewer, not the bias within the media.

Re: more mystical magic

[jhvilas]

I imagine I do have a bias; I imagine most people have bias of some sort. But the presence or absence of bias on my part does not prove or disprove bias on the part of others.

To state it more bluntly, the media does have a bias -- that of selling media. I don't feel I need to demonstrate that bias.

It's also (of course) difficult to talk about a group as having habits, biases, or the like, since it's a group of people who differ. But we're doing it anyway. :)

Re: more mystical magic

[nihilistic_kid]

Yes, but when you get more specific, like suggesting that the media have a bias against showing attractive pictures of politicians, I'm going to expect to see a content analysis of media outlets over some period of time that proves that.

If you don't have that, I don't believe it.

Re: more mystical magic

[jhvilas]

I don't think I was suggesting the media have a bias against showing attractive pictures of politicians. I was suggesting the media have a bias toward selling media. E.g.: The initial Clinton/Gore campaign, in which the media ate up that crap with Clinton and Gore playing catch with a football. I also don't think finding pictures of Cheney smiling is "content analysis" of media outlets, but I'm glad to see them.

You said:

[nihilistic_kid]

Maybe the media is biased against printing nice-looking pictures of politicians.

Forgive me for reading your first post and assuming you meant it.

I also don't think finding pictures of Cheney smiling is "content analysis" of media outlets

Why not? I mean, is there a reason other than you not knowing what content analysis entails? Determining relative frequency/emphasis of some message, text, image or other phenomena is pretty much it.

Re: You said:

[jhvilas]

You don't have to apologize: I think my statement was somewhat rhetorical. I think the media will likely print attractive pictures of politicians when they think it might benefit themselves. E.g.: the Clinton/Gore football stuff I mentioned, or any picture of porn star "Mary Carey" running for governor of California (when Schwarzenegger was elected). One could argue Carey wasn't a politician; one could also argue that neither was Ronald Reagan nor Fred Thompson

[nihilistic_kid]

Maybe it does, or maybe it doesn't, but why are my biases (the biases of a single arbitrary person) more substantial to you than the biases of a group of similar individuals selected for similar jobs?

Well, to be blunt, it's because I know what I'm talking about. You're blinded by your theory-spinning: you start off with some axioms (everyone has a bias), throw in a dash of bias, which you call intuition (politicians look "gruff" in the papers, which is rather different than just sneering, incidentally), come up with something that sounds plausible (selection for journalists leads to similarity in action), and declare it a fact.

I start with the facts, which includes an intimate knowledge of how journalists and editors are trained and what factors go into choosing photos - and novelty is a major factor - and then go from there to develop a theory: Rev was experincing confirmation bias. (He now agrees with that, btw.) Incidentally, I didn't have to pick and choose my Cheney photos, I just plucked stuff off the front page of images