I might report that "a woman is suing McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself". That is an unbiased fact. And it implants a story of runaway litigiousness. If I also report that "McDonalds was warned many times about the temperature of its coffee and even sure once already and the woman sustained 3rd degree burns" the story becomes one of corporate malfeasance.
Compound this further. I now state that the woman won millions of dollars, you may be tilting back toward over litigiousness. But if I report that she only sought damages and the jury awarded her punitive damages of its own accord the we're back to corporate malfeasance.
Even if you want to focus on an ethical argument I'm not sure how to create a standard to compare them. Who is worse, Fox News who wears their bias on their sleeve or the New York Times who constantly hold themselves out as remarkable while piping all kinds of military and intelligence propaganda through to their readers. Who is worse? The organization that just outright supported Bush or the one that claimed to be a check and then held the illegal NSA spying story through an election?
IMO it's best not to choose which is better or worse. It's better to know how to read through both.
Another interesting point you brought up: how long a go should we look? Is today’s NYT still culpable for mistakes made nearly 20 years ago? (Not defending them, as I’m sure there are more recent examples. But when has enough time passed?)
When we have a great number of people who say things like “but that’s from xyz source so it’s bunk”, without examining the underlying facts or lack of facts, I’d have to say the answer to your question is Yes.
PS I’m willing to examine news from any source and employ discernment.
Someone once told me that you need bias in the news to create an adversarial system. Those that are biased towards some other viewpoint will be the only ones that dig deep to expose the problems of that other viewpoint. If everyone was neutral, there would be more motivation to present what happened rather than call foul.
I'm not sure I completely agree with this, but it did nudge my perspective.
the fact people don't even notice, or choose to ignore the bias in mainstream media is beyond me.
That's if you are using the commonly received connotation of conservative, rather than trying to rewrite reality.
My $0.02.
I'm more curious to ask "why" people no longer trust the Government?
The real failure is that we've locked down society, destroyed the economy, and hastily thrown together an election so rife with problems that it's led to an environment where millions of people do not trust the outcome. The same leaders implementing the lockdowns are meanwhile dictating orders from tropical resorts or caught breaking their own rules in blatant shows of hypocrisy.
The States have not done an adequate job quelling election fraud suspicions and as a result the President and his supporters no longer believe the result. Can you blame them? Is blaming them productive? It fails to address the problem and it won't go away. Calling them white supremascists, nationalists, fasicsts, racists, and the other explicatives that have been used for the past four years is only going to further divide this nation and have the opposite intended outcome.
Did the media single out and target the people supporting, promoting, and engaging in the 3+ months of left-wing riots this past summer? Most of the media pundits now calling this latest event an insurrection, were previously condoning and explaining away "mostly peaceful" protests as multiple cities burned, as violent agitators stormed the Federal Courthouse in Portland for over 100 days, threw bombs, lit fires, burned cars, killed people (chop/chaz/portland), and more. And let's not pretend that had Trump won the election, Antifa and other left-wing groups wouldn't be over a month in of the same thing.
The level of hypocrisy and disconnect is so startling it's scary. What I see is a total lack of understanding across the spectrum, a total failure to acknowledge both sides and apply standards consistently and unequivocally, a total failure of communication and decency. I'm not sure how the country moves in a positive direction.
Just saying, there was little surprising yesterday to anyone who has taken time to talk to these conspiracy theorists and seen the level of fear they choose to live in and surround themselves with, though it is deeply sad.
Your "explanation" contains a contradiction, so you're not off to a great start here. If the economy or corporations are directed by government dictate, they don't really own anything in a meaningful sense. In this arrangement they are more like managers than owners. If you disagree, ask yourself if any corporation really has another option other to comply if one of their decisions is countermanded by the state.
There is a reason it is named after the Fasces, a symbol of authority borne by a Lictor through the streets of Rome ahead of Tribunes and other officials with authority (okay, granted that this term and symbolism is decidedly Italian, fascism will always feature symbols distinct to each nation). The essence of fascism is power. A fascist believes this power comes from unity (another reason the Fasces is a chosen symbol, as it contains a bundle of sticks that when bound together cannot be easily broken) and so the subordination of the individual and every institution to state power is the cornerstone of their policy.
You seem to misrepresent the primacy of economics in fascist ideology, perhaps confusing this with Syndicalism, which Mussolini was involved with early in his political career. Fascism is something else. While it incorporates the subordination of the economy to the state, above this it values ethics of action, a willingness to commit violence against its enemies, courage, and obedience to authority. It is inherently anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian. It will not tolerate internal rivals or dissent. It always features a leader who rules as dictator and to my knowledge has never succeeded in a stable transfer of power once that leader dies.
It has often been linked to the Romantic period as so much of fascist ideology is based on emotion, feeling, symbolic mysticism, and the irrational. It's politics can be seen as a reaction to the ultra-rational basis from which Communism claims to descend.
Being an economist, I wrote what felt natural and accept your kind and pointed correction.
Your lack of understanding or stubbornness aside, if your grandfather fought actual fascists it is doubtful he defined the term.
All that is immaterial, of course, to your current incorrect claim that Fox News somehow became liberal recently, which I can only assume is established in your view by the idea that Trump presently dislikes them.
(Also, those of us who have "showdead" turned on can see your posts, even after they're flagged. That's how I knew you were repeating yourself.)
That said, any bias (including corporate influence) is worse than an agnostic information reporting machine (which C-SPAN or the BBC approach best).
I agree that education is becoming a major dividing line, but in my opinion that's because the "left" is moving towards elitism, whereas the "right" is slowly embracing populism. "Only dummies vote for the others" is just a snobby way of saying "we lost the working class".