I'm not going to find tit for tat examples of the left media lying and knowing they were lying. They're out there but I'm not here to delineate some sort of line that proves one side is "worse" than the other. I'm here to say they are both biased and yes both lie. A definite and willful distortion of the truth is lying and both sides do it. I'm not here to rah rah rah for either of them. I find both sides of this media war "deplorables".
Do you think this sort of political discussion - which side lies more - can ever find any real objective arbiter that both sides would accept as such? For sure, no one wants to come here and do heavy lifting on statistics, fact checks, independent press audits, ad infinitum. Most people have some sort of gut feel they go with, or they point to the judgment call of their favored pundit or pundits. Or they just listen to NPR and try to discern some patterns in the info flood.
I live in a state full of conservatives (Thune is one of my senators), so I know some who are just decent honest people whose guiding principle is that federal level governance doesn't work well, and less is generally more. They find news feeds that feed that ideology, and ignore those that don't. I would ask them, and you: do you think that approach will take you into a bubble (or an information silo, as some call it)? Does it make sense to put down the National Review on occasion, and pick up The Guardian, or Mother Jones? Or should we all just read straight news, like AP?
I'm a regular here, so I am glad to see people coming over from sports threads, and maybe toss in some perspectives that fall between Redstateward and Josh, on the conservative end. It could be fun to examine some underlying assumptions we have about government, capitalism, freedom, and the dignity of individuals.
I do watch both news. And I try to filter out what is right and what may be questionable as anyone should be doing. Both sides are strongly biased IMO. FOX embellishes to the max. CNN and the other national media outlets embellish as well. But their primary forte is simply not reporting on some news stories at all. Thus they can't be accused of embellishing if they simply don't report it at all. It's all tactics.
My hope has been that someone or "someones" would come along an attempt some actual healing in this country. But nobody in the country seems very interested in that. Both sides seem so entrenched that any hope of dialog is fantasy at this juncture. We've seem to have become a nation of nonwaivering uncomprovising hate. On both sides.
I was encouraged by the taping of the Chicago Aldermen and their lamentations of the destructions in their precincts.
I've heard this complaint that "they" just don't cover some news stories at all, most recently from Kid.
But I've yet to find a story I was told that they had not covered that they had not, in fact, covered! So, what stories do you have in mind?
That's one piece.
The second one is your careful recasting to "embellish."
Cap, Fox LIES. They don't just embellish, they make up shit wholesale. Not as much as OANN does, to be sure, but they do. This is why their viewers know less than the folks who know nothing.
And... they are better than they used to be, which is part of why Trump is so angry with them.
But the gap between making up shit to undermine those with whom you disagree and "embellishing" is pretty substantial.
Ditto what Sinclair does. No so-called liberal media network has told all of its members that their local news teams
must make X declaration. Sinclair has and more than once.
It's a false equivalence, for all that there are
individuals who are as venal on the left as Hannity is on the right.