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Bias in the media

Posted by Curt Hibbs Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:58:00 GMT

I don’t usually post on topics that are not related to software development, but I often lament over the fact that so much of our news reports are one sided.

Did you know that almost a week ago, 60 world renowned scientists wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister requesting a rational examination of the science of global warming? I try to following the global warming debate pretty closely and I never heard about this until Dave posted about it.

Wow, you’ve really got to be on the lookout for this stuff. The media just doesn’t report it. It’s not in my local newspaper. It’s not in the national newspapers or news magazines. I haven’t heard a single word about it uttered on the radio. Most TV news never even mentions this stuff. How are we to stay informed if we don’t spend inordinate amounts of time digging through the web to find out what’s going on.

I just searched Google News and I only found two reports:

A comment posted to Dave’s blog article listed three Canadian reports.

Why would the mainstream media see this as not worth reporting?

On a related note, let me ask you: do you have news sources that you trust to give you balanced coverage? If so, then please share it with us.

8 comments

Comments

  1. Justin said about 8 hours later:

    I don’t really understand your point about bias. Every. Single. Article. written about global warming in the US media quotes politicians (of both stripes) as saying that “we just don’t know enough” and “we need to do more research” and whatever. The positions espoused in this letter get plenty of coverage.

    And the REAL reason our media didn’t cover this story? Its from Canada. And doesn’t involve hockey. Or beer.

  2. David said about 17 hours later:

    The research was partially funded by Exxon Mobil. Do I need to say more.

  3. James said about 17 hours later:

    “On a related note, let me ask you: do you have news sources that you trust to give you balanced coverage?”

    Of course not. I expect all sources to be biased, and probably in ways too subtle to notice. So I try to get news from a variety of sources (Drudge report, al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, some others); if I see enough sources claiming roughly the same thing, then I suspect there may be some truth involved.

    And, just to make this coding related, this is probably a good strategy for software developers. Don’t just read your favorite bloggers who write about your favorite language or framework. Poke around and make an effort to see what people with different needs, desires, and perspectives have to say about their prefered tools.

  4. Eric Burke said about 21 hours later:

    http://sciam.com/

    I believe the mainstream media gives far too little coverage of just how alarmed mainstream scientists are regarding global warming.

  5. Dan Lewis said about 22 hours later:

    Unbiased media is kind of a contradiction. Sensationalism sells. So the bias is towards alarmism. This is a perfect example.

  6. Curt Hibbs said about 23 hours later:

    I understand all of this about the realities of the media. Like James, I have a penchant for checking media outlets from contries other than the US to see how things are being viewed from other perspectives.

    On global warming, specifically, I agree that there is much to be alarmed about, but I also think that we know far too little to make intelligent choices on where to most effectively apply our resources.

    I’m reminded of the MTBE debacle in California (because I lived there are the time). Its a complicated story with many subplots. But the simple storyline is that MTBE was added to gasoline for the purpose of reducing air pollution, but it turned out to have a neglible effect on air polllution while simultaneously causing serious ground water pollution. Now billions are being spent on cleanup and MTBE is being removed from gasoline.

    My point is that I’d hate to see billions spent to address global warming only to find out we did the wrong thing and, even worse, stopped looking at the problem because we thought we had it under control.

    A notable success story was reversing the depletion of the ozone layer, precisely because we had a good handle on the causes and mechanisms (granted that this is a much simpler problem than global warming).

    Another reality: politicians are often happy just to take action, any action, regardless of whether or not it is effective or prudent.

  7. Matt Wynne said 3 days later:

    Hey Curt, you might want to check out ‘The Weather Makers’ by Tim Flannery.

    http://www.theweathermakers.com/

    I went to see him talk last night in Vancouver – very impressive. He has a firm grasp of the situation we’re in and what the options are for how to get out of it.

  8. Curt Hisbbs said 4 days later:

    Matt, thanks for the recommendation… it looks really good (I just bought the book)!

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