I'm a Pepsi guy. It always annoys me when someone offers me a Pepsi and then gives me Coke. I can tell, and I don't drink it.

People don't get my attitude. "How can you even tell the difference?" they say. "It's pretty much the same!"

This is because when your favorite soda is Mountain Dew, you can barely tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. They're both a heck of a lot different from Mtn Dew, and there's only the tiniest difference between Pepsi and Coke when you contrast with Fanta, Mtn Dew, Sprite, 7Up, etc.

(I'm not making this up merely as an argument - the above is my reality, and yes, people do say that to me).

When you get accustomed to good quality journalism (which WaPo isn't), the differences between CNN and Fox are miniscule. When you consider all the news topics out there, and all the diverse perspectives on them out there, you'll see that CNN and Fox more or less cover the same tiny fraction of topics. Sure, if your world consists of only that tiny fraction, then the differences between CNN and Fox seem stark.

I think a more concise way to put it is: If you assign 100% to the universal set of topics/opinions, then perhaps Fox is at 2% and CNN at 3%. Sure, CNN is 50% better than Fox, but from a whole picture standpoint it's really only a 1% delta between the two.

LOL.

I don't have time to compile the numerous examples of CNN maliciously, cynically, and shamelessly to their users, so I'll just post my favorite example:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787749117502119936?lang...

Chris Cuomo looking into the camera, and telling America it is illegal for them to go to wikileaks. But it's ok, the media is exempted from that and they'll make sure to tell you ALL of the important information you need to know.

Sorry, but give me a break. Not only do they lie, they try to scare you into not informing yourself.

I don't disagree with your CNN comment, but the severity, consistency and magnitude of F-NEWS's lies doesn't compete with anyone tbh. They're on their own category.

Exactly - I'm not sure how anyone can say with a straight face that the Dijon-mustard-tan-suit-latte-salute network has ever been anything but the #1 producer of bullshit on TV.

Fair. I should have clarified that I wasn’t nominating CNN for first place. But just because they are not the worst doesn’t mean you can let your guard down while watching CNN. In a way it’s more dangerous at least for people like me. I can watch Fox News to see what the other side is saying, but I roll my eyes enough to remind myself to take everything with a big grain of salt. It’s easier to be lulled into being less skeptical while watching CNN, MSNBC, etc.

Do you think the Red Sox are not like the Yankees?

They're just different teams playing the same game.

Fans always defend their team and vilify the other. Always. With every dispute they're able to convince themselves it's the other side that are the cheaters. They can't both be right, but yet each side feels equally certain of their position.

"I'm the most correct because I don't care about anything and trivialize important matters to just differences of opinion!"

>They can't both be right

But that also doesn't mean, as you and so many imply with these kind of statements, that both sides are wrong. It can be the case that one side is, in fact, correct, or less at fault than the other.

It's a fallacy that in a dispute both sides are always equally wrong, or that the answer is always exactly in the middle.

Yes, that's not what I was implying though (or at least didn't mean to). I meant they can't both be right all the time. The point being that fans think their side is always right and the other always wrong. When the reality is their side is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

Certainly in any specific dispute one may be correct. Or both partially correct. Or both wrong. And one may be better or worse than the other in sum.

On the contrary, not only is this type of "both sideism" incredibly harmful to healthy political discourse (because it discourages engagement and breeds cynicism), both sides are not in fact equal, or even similar.

There are always bad apples, but you just need to look at how they are treated (e.g. whether they are rewarded or punished).

Dismissing it as "both sideism" just allows mediocrity to thrive. On both sides, as it happens. It's an endless loop of "they're the problem, not us". Deflecting any responsibility and avoiding self-reflection. Nothing changes or improves as a result.

Why not demand better on all fronts? None of the aforementioned media are doing grade A work.

CNN's website spent weeks running the "you should be more worried about the flu" lie.

I'm not an American and far from Trumps target audience but the CNN is bad as Fox. I have them both on TV. It truly is a kettle and pot situation, I believe so many Americans have grown so deeply into either culture that unfortunately you can't comprehend it anymore.

Every single journalist in the video Paul Graham linked was on Fox News/Fox Business.

The video appears that it was put together by the folks at The Daily Show. You really think they went looking for clips from the "other side?"

Is the a similar video with other news stations and their similarly incorrect reporting?

Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg

Should be easy to do if it's as equivalent as you're assuming, no?

Late-night satire shows are not politically unbiased, nor do they attempt to be. They cater to their audience, the same way those who they satirize do.

Right, but I expressed my opinion on your political divide and newspapers, not PG's links.

The NYC health commissioner was saying to go outside and take the subway Feb 7th, 4 days after Trump's China ban went into effect.

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1243539189020401664?s...

Literally everyone was saying it's not as bad as the Flu. I don't see why we're playing the blame game in the peak of things.

I could definitely tell you WHO (China) is to blame, but now isn't the time.

Also:

https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1245478539018805251?s=20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/31/how-our-br...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/europe/coronavirus-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-1...

https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1225937322694381568

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/122367623706063667...

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/124526211463933952...

https://i.imgur.com/43n4HWK.png

I'm curious as to why you think China is to blame for American politicians ignoring precautions and prioritizing their own wealth over the well-being of their citizens?

Because China covered it up and misled the experts.

Actually, China was thought to have covered it up because the whistleblower originally sent a message[1] to a WeChat group of his, telling group members that 7 people from the wet markets had been diagnosed with SARS. The government had no idea what it was and I'm sure nobody in the world knew what it was at the time, hence how it's a novel virus.

[1]: https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/jvumSxUR3OrjfcgXFibaich6y6Z6...

You're leaving out a lot of details and what a spin that was.

The Chinese government was informed and chose to cover it up.

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro...

https://nypost.com/2020/02/29/china-officials-knew-of-corona...

https://www.vox.com/2020/2/10/21124881/coronavirus-outbreak-...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...

Thanks for the links. It seems that the response went along the following timeline according to my understanding:

  1. Dec. 30 - Doctors from the first few cases have analyzed the samples and discover how similar the new virus is to SARS. Officials tell them not to spread information to the public about the virus.

  2. Dec. 31 - China tells WHO about new virus (not that they know much at this point)

  3. Jan. 1 - Provincial health committee orders provincial labs to destroy samples, samples are transported to larger state facility to do testing there. The reason for this is due to the samples being considered "highly pathogenic microorganisms", and that only approved facilities should test it. (I'm guessing due to the risk of acting on the sample and contracting it?)

  4. Jan. 2nd - State approved facilities map the genetic sequence but an official national statement doesn't get made until a week later, Jan. 9th.

So from lab work, until international statement, that's two weeks. During that time, wouldn't it make sense for the doctors and researchers to keep their results hidden until it can be verified lest they risk causing unwarranted panic? Considering how carriers of COVID19 can be asymptomatic [1], it does take time for verification to be done on whatever discovery a nation makes on the world stage. In hindsight, it's easy to say that they should have jumped the gun and done exactly that on whatever communications platform were available to them. However, had COVID-19 turn out to be a minor disease, that'd mark the end of all their careers.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/health/coronavirus-asymptomat...

The parts that matter are Jan 11th to the 30th.

> Jan. 11–17: Important prescheduled CCP meeting held in Wuhan. During that time, the Wuhan Health Commission insists there are no new cases.

> Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus."

> Jan. 20: The first case announced in South Korea. Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response, announces the virus can be passed between people.

> Jan. 23: Wuhan and three other cities are put on lockdown. Right around this time, approximately 5 million people leave the city without being screened for the illness.

> Jan. 24–30: China celebrates the Lunar New Year holiday. Hundreds of millions of people are in transit around the country as they visit relatives.

Where in this timeline do you see evidence that information their healthcare system had suggesting how severe COVID-19 was, was being intentionally covered up? I just see how unfortunate it is that they realized COVID-19's severity too late, else the Wuhan residents who left prior to the lockdown would not have been able to travel as freely as they did.

They knew how bad it was and downplayed it until it spread to the world.

Dr. Birx confirmed that they misled the experts:

https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1245138898772045824?...

> I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as that this was serious but smaller than anyone expected,

> Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.

I think that shows exactly that China didn't realize how bad this was. For example, from the NPR link:

Jan 18: Wuhan hosts a holiday banquet for 40,000 attendees, despite reports of a contagious viral pneumonia.

We've seen similar things in so many countries - people don't understand how bad it is until lots of people start dying. China put 21 million people on lock-down when there were only 619 confirmed cases - compare that to elsewhere.

China notified the WHO on December 31. Anything after that date should be blamed on China.

If you want to argue really hard, then January 23 when the Wuhan quarantine was announced is the last possible date that a country could argue that China was covering up the extent. At that date countries like Australia started screening passengers (and by 31 Jan had announced isolation requirements for travellers from China).

Could that be caused by the fact that compilation authors are clearly on Dem side? Trump's travel ban was called racist by whom?

(I'm also an outsider.)