Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule

Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by askyourmother on Saturday April 16, 2016 @03:07AM (#11509633)

All news sites carry a bias - all of them. Often main stream media in the home country wants/has to tow the line and omit details or not carry stories that might upset local authority.

So, to say a story is bunk because it appears in RT as a source demonstrates a wilful ignorance, or incredible naiveté.

I trust/distrust all media sources in equal measure, but the fun thing is that by reading a lot of them at the same time across the globe, you can more easily see the biases, and get to the root of the stories.

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by peteretep on Saturday April 16, 2016 @04:12AM (#11509786)

    > to say a story is bunk because it appears in RT as a
    > source demonstrates a wilful ignorance, or incredible
    > naiveté

I didn't. I said an argument that relies upon RT due to the story not being carried elswhere is "bunk".

    > All news sites carry a bias

But few are sanctioned by Ofcom for regularly broadcasting "materially misleading" content, called out by all manner of former employees for being propaganda machines, or widely derided by virtually every other serious media outlet. Attempting to cover that with a general statement of all media bias - having substantially misrepresented (or just not properly read) the comment you're replying to - "demonstrates a wilful ignorance, or incredible naiveté".

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by hamstergene on Saturday April 16, 2016 @07:56AM (#11510260)

    All news sites carry a bias - all of them.

A little off-topic, is there a name for this kind of rhetoric? I've seen it used a lot, for example:

- When pointed to government corruption they would reply "all the other governments have corruption too", implying there's no difference.

- When asked about low level of life, they would reply something like "15% of your own people are living below the poverty line", implying nothing out of normal is going on.

It's like, one guy has his boot covered in shit and the second is covered in it fully, the first says "you have problem of being in shit" and the second responds "you have that problem too (pointing to his boot) so it's ok".

This argument basically implies something like "we must not discriminate on the grounds of this problem because it is normal for everyone to have it", avoiding the possibly disadvantageous discussion of what is level of the problem and whether this level is normal.

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by pionar on Saturday April 16, 2016 @09:34AM (#11510530)

It's called "Tu quoque"[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by halter73 on Saturday April 16, 2016 @02:14PM (#11511638)

When applied directly to the Soviet Union or Russia it's sometimes called whataboutism [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by vdaniuk on Saturday April 16, 2016 @04:01AM (#11509762)

So, to say "I trust/distrust all media sources in equal measure" demonstrates a wilful ignorance, or incredible naiveté.

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Re:Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule by Pyxl101 on Saturday April 16, 2016 @01:31PM (#11511451)

The phrase you're looking for is "toe the line", having the sense of standing with your toes behind a line on the ground.

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