The majority of podcasts I've listened to have an obvious political bias, even the ones I would deem mostly objective clearly show some of the hosts biases. I've actually stopped listening to some because of this. ('Reply All' and 'Rich Dad Radio Show', for example, at opposite ends of the spectrum.)

If you know of a podcast that purely, subjectively presents news, I'd love to hear it!

My assumption is that with the increasing polarization, many shows followed their audiences to the poles. It feels rare these days for someone to not stake out a stance on some culture war battle, whether subtly or not.

It's honestly weird that Joe Rogan feel like one of the least biased popular programs to listen to out there, or the least biased in a consistent direction at least. You also get a lot of off the wall crazy shit on there, but honestly someone willing to have enough of an open mind to have people on like that not just to make fun of is a nice change of pace, even if the things are ridiculous, given how entrenched everyone else is in their positions.

So while "Pod Save America" for example is biased, I still believe their takes on what is happening at the federal level are informative and thought-provoking.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/04/05/more-th...

And the politicians in red states are conspicuously making efforts to restrict voters, in ways that they know are more likely to apply to voters who oppose them, going well beyond just voter ID:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

So no, it's not just the OP's internalized bias. It's a simple, objective fact that they are attempting to make it harder for their opponents to win elections, based on an objectively false narrative.

I will bend over backwards to try to reach a common point from which to move forward and share a country together. I want to be aware of my own biases and the places where I disagree with the people who share some of my views. But that simply cannot happen in an environment like this, and nothing I do can change that.

It's what they are saying, in public. The large number of them saying so doesn't make it less true, only much scarier. It would seem impossible that so much of the country should be so objectively deluded, but it's literally their own words.

The left presents the issue as:

- People already verify themselves

- Voter fraud doesn't happen

- This is used to disenfranchise voters by making it harder because poor people are less likely to have a valid ID.

The right presents this as:

- No proof is required in many jurisdictions

- There are instances of voter fraud, and while few, there may be a lot we don't see

- Voting is important, so we should take it seriously and require people prove their identity to vote

The problem is that both of these sides are entirely true. Namely, verify != proof, and people talk past each other on this, and selective omission of the other side's valid points lets people believe the other side is irrational or wants it in bad faith (Republican operatives may want to make it harder for certain groups of people to vote, but from what I've seen Republican citizens do not).

The respective parties have no interest in bringing people to consensus on this issue because right now it's one that activates the bases of the respective parties. It's a way to take moderates that might be tempted to vote against the party line or for the other side for select positions and people that they respect and radicalize them by papering over the real positions of those people with the twisted narrative put forth by the media that caters to that side.

People are for the most part rational and compassionate and don't want to hurt each other. But people are also easily misled into believing things because of curated information presented when they don't have counterexamples that they trust or first hand experience to the contrary, and those beliefs cause what is considered rational and compassionate to differ from person to person. We shouldn't hate or dislike the people on the other side, they are just like us. We should engage them usefully, and the first step of engaging usefully is accepting that we're like them also in that we're presented with curated facts, so we should be open to their points when we engage and accept them in good faith.

Some will claim it, or say it's a myth, and if anyone points out those few cases, they'll say it's statistically insignificant to the point of not being something we should worry about.

It is strictly incorrect, but colloquially accepted as okay to say, which is yet another thing argued about from each side.

I suspect that you thinking you haven't seen it is likely because you're interpreting their intent and not reading the words strictly, or they followed up to clarify and that's the part you remember, because it's common to see. The problem is that the other side remembers the first claim or the strict interpretation of the statement, so both come away thinking they were correct, one in that the statement was "true", the other that the person was not being "truthful".

Even if voter fraud were a problem (it isn't), they're not even pretending that these measures have anything to do with it. And that makes it incredibly clear that they don't believe that voter fraud is the reason for any of it.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state

https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_ID_in_California

For a non-citizen to vote in CA, they either need to lie about their identity or lie about their citizenship. They are not "allowed to vote".

Here's the crux: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/873878423/voting-and-election...

Higher ID requirements increase security, but also improve republican result b/c democratic voters are less likely to have certain IDs (I think). As a result this can be spun either way as Republicans restricting voters, or Democrats opposing countermeasures to fraud.

Personally I don't know, I think I'd focus on Democrat behaviour; Given they just got off the back of Russia-gate, and accusing a foreign superpower of interfering in the election, they should also theoretically have a stake in voter fraud. I'd expect them to be focusing more on driving their demographics to acquire ID, rather than loosening requirements. Mail-in voting is a hard one though.

As an aside - I'm unconvinced by reports that voter fraud are low. No evidence of fraud isn't evidence of no fraud, and too many news articles or "explainers" seem to focus on lack of evidence versus a secure and airtight verification process.

consider https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/nonc... :

  election officials .. referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting.. In other words, improper noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those jurisdictions.

  Forty of the jurisdictions .. reported no known incidents of noncitizen voting..

  In the ten counties with the largest populations of noncitizens in 2016, only one reported any instances of noncitizen voting..

  In .. the states where Trump claimed the problem of noncitizen voting was especially acute — no official we spoke with identified an incident of noncitizen voting in 2016

You say "no evidence of $x != evidence of (not x)" which is true in theory, but let's step into reality: "No evidence, despite systems built to detect evidence".

You act as if people aren't already on the lookout for fraud, or that systems are not already resistant to them.

I was talking about vote fraud, but that's not necessarily an individual act.

> despite systems built to detect evidence

Which systems? Where are they described?

Because "no evidence" isn't relevant. If it was, no one would care about Trumps taxes; and the IRS would happily decrease reporting requirements, and work on an honour system.

The mechanism by which the ruling powers of the nation are decided is pretty important, so the requirement on "time, money, and political capital" is not at un unreasonable - it isn't important if "we treated every problem like this.." because every problem is not equally as important.

The fact is there are huge incentives to cheat, and undeveloped nations across the world are characterised by unfair elections, it's not unreasonable, then, to place importance on the veracity of the election process, more than just a glib "there's no evidence that this is a serious problem".

> I care more about the process being abstractly and theoretically perfect than the people these rule changes would actually effect

fairness is dictated by the rules you dismiss as "abstract and theoretical". You talks about "facts" and what "we know", but that is the very issue - what we don't know. It's convenient to discount the value of what we don't know when the current worldview favours your opinion. I don't know anything about undetected fraud, and neither do you; neither of us know how much a problem this is, or who/how it affects people. The only solution is an airtight process, and you seem to dismiss that, worse still, attempting to characterise me as unsympathetic for placing value on such a thing.

The US is the richest country in the world, and it's government richer than most nations of the world. Why should it lack the resources to secure the most significant process in the nation, while poorer corporations (mastercard, veritas etc), and even the military can secure their own, lesser processes much better.

Yes, I dismiss your desire for an airtight process, because I think it's security theater, whose actual outcomes would be massive and largely detrimental relative to the actual desired outcomes.

Signing ballots with 4096-bit RSA? If you think that wouldn't prevent fraud, I disagree - dismiss without basis iyw.

(Ignoring RSA tangent, making all concert-goers go through an X-Ray to screen for weapons and drugs would catch more weapons and drugs than the current pat down/bag check process does. It would undeniably increase the security of the venue, while slowing down entry, exposing concertgoers to X-Rays, and IMO providing more annoyance than actual extra security)

It seems that you think, for voting, that's a fine trade-off. I do not.

edit: not disagreeing that signed tickets would prevent fraud. Disagreeing that it would be worth, say, an additional $5 fee on the tickets, plus slower more expensive readers to verify that they're signed correctly, plus plus plus etc etc. My entire argument here is based on the net utility of additional security measures, not whether or not those measures provide additional security.

The only thing you referred to that was process related (versus physical security) was use of encryption keys. Why not talk about the pros/cons of that?

> It seems that you think, for voting, that's a fine trade-off

With respect to x-ray screens? Not at all, nor did I say such a thing. Nor do I think all things that could be described as "security" are exactly equivalent to each other, such that you can mention x-ray scans, and the argument automatically extends to RSA keys.

I just don't see how an average person concerned with being deported is willing to risk exposing themselves by registering with the state government, especially in the last 8 years of ICE really pushing the limits on what they can do.

And I pity those who don't take the time to create their own philosophical defense of their beliefs, and only parrot what Fox News tells them to think.

When I start getting into a heated discussion, I like to turn away from arguing about specific people (too much) and say "What do you want this country to be? What matters to you?" and the discussion becomes a lot more enlightening.

So yeah, if someone really believes that the poor deserve to die because said person, making $60k a year, thinks that taxing the ultra-wealthy is unethical, I'm gonna have some problems with your character.

For someone who extols “philosophical defenses of beliefs”, you certainly make use of shitty straw men to do so. I suppose you didn’t say anything about the quality of the philosophy.

It's quotes like this that make it hard for non-Americans like myself to take American political discourse seriously. To me, takes like this are at a similar effort level to the "Obama is a socialist!" cries heard in the 2008 election. Yawn.

https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=breaking%20all%20norms%2...

So, are you a bot? Or are you just not thinking independently? I strongly suggest spending less time on social media. You’ll find that both sides of the political spectrum are just people, like you and me. Not “monsters” as the news would like you to believe.

I think plenty on my own. Like many humans, I occasionally use terms in vogue to get the point across. You must not work in technology or communications. (see how asinine that sounds?)

I'll forgive you for not seeing my other comment in the thread, but to be clear, my beef is with the political establishment on the right. My feelings toward "normal human beings" who are conservative are much more varied.

The Republican party as an organization at the federal level is indisputably a less patriotic, more malicious organization than the Democratic party, which has its own problems of infighting, horse-trading, and "everyday" corruption.

But instead of posting the latest trove of articles describing McConnell threatening SCOTUS appointments again, or Trump trying to use the Justice Department to investigate debunked claims of voter fraud for his own benefit, or the million other datapoints about how awful the GOP leadership is - please, continue calling me a bot.

I suggest checking out right-wing Twitter/corporate news to see how they're using the same words ("unpatriotic", "malicious") in the exact same way to describe the democrats. The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. It's not black and white, evil vs. good. At least not in the real world.

Just because they say it too doesn't make the correct side less correct.

There are plenty of other hosts that do a much better job than Rogan (David French & Yascha Mounk). Rogan does indeed have a slant, it just doesn't fit into the most stereotypical red v blue one.

Podcasts are by no means "The Truth", but at least they are not on the mainstream narrative script and they often don't have a purely political focus. As long as they aren't solely discussing the mainstream news narrative or reacting to it, they can be very interesting. I think Bret Weinstein can be pretty interesting as far as media criticism goes. The Other Life podcast[1] is an example of a podcast that's very disconnected from the mainstream narratives and feels like I'm sitting in a cafe in the 90s drinking coffee with a bunch of intellectual weirdos. Maybe not your cup of tea, or coffee, but it's better than listening to the mainstream news and filling myself with that garbage.

[1]https://otherlife.transistor.fm/episodes

Not the Sandy Hook stuff? Surely that's got to be at least in the running.

Look at global warming: Either it is man-made or not, either it is a problem for our future or not. There's no objective middle ground. Sure, one could simply have news that say "there is a drougth in the center of the US, stronger than other droughts in the last 50 years", without any context. But even this is not objective, because omitting the context of global warming already skews the message.

Or let's use a real historical example: The Soviet Union's invasion into Poland in 1939. Without any context, the SU is clearly the agressor. But with the context of Polands invasion into the SU in 1919 things suddenly look different. And with the additional context of Russia annecting polish territory in the 18th century it looks different again and so on and so on. There clearly is no way to communicate this objectively (i.e. in this case, pro-Russia people could ask why I'd stop here and not with some polish-lithuanian action before the 18th century).

Why? You can’t explain all the things (even if you’re backed with true data) in one article – that would take a library. A drought by itself doesn’t skew anything, but maybe your intent is more that just that.

The Soviet Union's invasion into Poland in 1939

This is a circular problem. Either do not call it “invasion” or do and so be it. The fact that some monkey punched some other in year 40000 BC has nothing to do with active political contracts. I will not even downvote you on the internet if I find out that our gggps shot at each other in ww1/2, it’s irrelevant now. Most of these people are dead. If you want to remain neutral (nearest to “objective”, which isn’t a thing in case of a physical land), call it a conflict based on historical events and let a reader investigate, discuss and decide who is right and who is wrong, if any, if they ever want that decision. Maybe most people don’t really give a genuine fuck about who is right (if that was a bet, I’d go all in with it).

I would even read political news then. Modern “good boys bad boys” or “oh see you see what you done” stories only make me laugh or facepalm. I’m a reader, not a puppet. No surprise younger people only want tiktok and clothes.

For that, we not only have to know the what, but also the why behind a news item. We have to know the relationships between things.

So while we can't indeed can't explain everything completely, that doesn't mean we can't explain anything.

In hindsight the drought/global warming example is bad because there can indeed be another reason for the ocurrence, but even telling multiple possible reasons (e.g. by asking an expert) makes the news item more insightful than any context at all.

> This is a circular problem.

Yes, that was my point! There is no arbitrary threshold where we could stop referring to things happening in the past and get unbiased news.

Or yet another example: The current debate around minimum wage increases. The news could simply state the positions of the two parties, and the current nominal number of $7.25. But that wouldn't make this unbiased, because the $7.25 at inception had a different purchasing power than now. And a different ratio to GPD per capita. Thus omitting this context skews the news item towards the side that is against an increase. But adding the context favors the side that is for the increase.

I see it as a source of events that then can be discussed with actual people around you to create a world view. This way an information either misses you completely or you relate to a trusted group that has it. In a world where news are complete, there is nothing to discuss, because authoritative (or not, it’s hard to check) sources already said everything. This swithces discussion from learning all the details to taking the presented details. This is a problem known as “what’s not being said”, and personally I see it everywhere now. I.e. if we disagreed on an interpretation, it was you versus me (both at least knowing each other). With context-ed news it’s your sources versus my sources, which we both are unable to really check adequately, because it’s a recursive problem. That induces beliefs instead of thinking. I believe that context should be left vague at least. If there are questions, press should formulate them, not answer.

The press is never unbiased - look at newspapers from the 50s or 60s which had strong anti-communist propaganda. Everything has a slant - I don't understand where the obsession with "unbiasedness" came from.

The only question that matters (in a democracy or anywhere with a free press) is - does the media hold people in positions of power (whether political-power, wealth-power or celebrity-power) accountable for their misdeeds or not. Bias is only a problem when it interferes [directly] with this purpose.

That said, push any ideology far enough and they all start to disagree with objective reality. That doesn’t mean accurate information is somehow slanted or facts are somehow political because objective reality doesn’t care, it just is. If every day you list the ~9,250 Americans that died yesterday you’re going to cover mostly natural causes but also plenty of hot button issues for both sides of the isle.

Ideally, the goal would be to minimize bias, however I see the opposite many times, and I see it actually as a result of reduced revenue for people that make news.

We, the public at large, responded to information that evokes emotion (especially outrage). We rewarded it with clicks, translating into money for the people that collect and curate it for us. And that is what we get now. We get information, that has been compressed, and while factual many times, it is without the necessary context to come to an appropriate conclusion.

I think the antidote to this might be consumers rewarding publishers and journalists that wait before publishing. They wait so that there is time for the relevant facts to be gathered, there is time for the editors and journalists to write and edit properly. And, to still keep in mind, that it is still insanely difficult to provide all of the context needed about a situation to have an inexperienced person come to a proper conclusion. As one should know if they have ever read an article about a field they are intimately familiar with and have spent thousands of hours in.

Facts relating to events aren’t news their just facts.

> The distillation of facts down to what is and is not relevant itself will introduce some level of bias.

You can come up with the threshold for what’s news long before individual stories show up. It’s filtering based on political context that’s the problem not simply filtering. Aka, decide ahead of time that a president being impeached is news that’s fine. However, if your coverage depends on their party affiliation that’s a problem.

> provide all of the context needed about a situation to have an inexperienced person come to a proper conclusion.

I don’t see why people need to be making conclusions from the news. A Twitter account tweeting any earthquake over 7.0 is fine on it’s own.

Personally I would prefer reporters to stick with known accurate information rather than what whoever they spoke with believed to be accurate context. Shootouts between drug dealers could be over territory, or just about anything else. Unless they spoke with the people actually involved it’s all supposition.

It seems like the lack of context gets used to skew peoples perception of an issue just as often as false information, for example classifying gang violence and robberies as "mass shootings" without giving any other details. This can be applied to just about any topic out there. It's easier to leave out details and use esoteric language, than it is to lie about what happened. People can at-least deduce bias/flaws given enough narrative, and a track record of inaccurate context damages an organization's reputation.

Most shootings that look like ‘gang in gang’ are probably ‘gang on gang’ violence. But, that doesn’t mean a specific shooting was actually ‘gang on gang’ violence. Gang members also shoot people for personal reasons unrelated to being a gang member. And they also get shot for reasons unrelated to being a gang member. If the assumption is it’s always ‘gang in gang’ and it’s always reported as such then that’s a lot of biased and often incorrect information being reported as fact.

It’s not uncommon for gang members to just go out and randomly shoot stuff the same way young rednecks shoot at road signs. The difference is gang members in cites are vastly more likely to randomly hit someone due to population density.

> Look at global warming: Either it is man-made or not, either it is a problem for our future or not. There's no objective middle ground. Sure, one could simply have news that say "there is a drougth in the center of the US, stronger than other droughts in the last 50 years", without any context. But even this is not objective, because omitting the context of global warming already skews the message.

There is an objectivity here: scientific consensus, aka naked provable facts. And climate change is proven to be man-made, and it is proven that if humanity does nothing to curb CO2 emissions it will spiral out of control.

Objectivity in news as a result means to not give those who go against scientific consensus any platform.

There aren't many (any, really) quality guarantees on non-podcast media anyway. It isn't like they get any negative feedback when they lie or make mistakes. Viewers can't even withdraw support for specific known liars on a channel. It is unclear why a podcast would be at a structural disadvantage to any other media source, and probably higher reputational stakes.

i started tuning in less, but i still do.

Who did see it coming? Are there any media outlets that reliability predicted financial crises?

Mike Sherlock for one. He’s gotten dumb but he was on point on this.

Then, there's a very important tool in forming editorial slant - omitting reporting on inconvenient facts. Italy and Spain, the putatively sluggish laggards strangled by overly strict labor protection laws, have somehow overtaken the allegedly dynamic UK in labor productivity. Ireland, the purported economic wonder, have a household disposable income (a fairly good metric of material standards of living), lower than Italy and much lower than France. We keep hearing about the importance of education, competitiveness, R&D and ease of doing business, yet somehow Finland, which tops the rankings, is in year 14 of it's economic stagnation. Have you heard any of this from The Economist?

It is behind all those on a per capita basis, but that's the mean, not the median. I infer that this means Ireland has less income inequality.

(Ireland's economic wonder was growth from the 90s through to the early 2000s, largely via foreign direct investment, incentivized by low corporate tax rates. This structurally inflates GDP and makes the country look artificially good on international comparisons, but this is fairly well known, I believe. Irish economic commentary often uses GNI instead, and in fact the Irish central bank replaced GDP with GNI for its own measurements of the economy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_gross_national_income.)

Not like I am a big fan of the CCP, but give the devil its due from time to time, or at least figure out how the magic tricks work.

The Govt of India has basically stated that Economist peddled baseless allegations and if look deeper you will see it is wrong and in deliberate bad faith.

https://www.opindia.com/2021/06/goi-rebuts-economist-report-...

quit indulging in ad hominem arguments.

From the OpIndia article:

- "A few weeks back, controversial left-wing US media outlet New York Times had come up with imaginary numbers..." (hyperbole, ad-hominem)

- "The low death rate in the country has become a major concern for the western press, who are trying hard to depict India in a bad light." (Are they? Why? Is the "western press" working in concert on this project?)

- "However, the entire analysis done in the article was based on ‘estimates’ based on randomly selected numbers" (So the allegation is that the researcher and/or the Economist selected numbers randomly to represent the Covid death toll in India?)

- "[...] it seems like the Indian government has finally decided to take on the misinformation warfare being propagated by a certain section of western media" (Does this seem like an unbiased presentation of facts?)

The implication, as far as I can tell, is that "western media" is seeking to embarrass the current leaders of Indian government out of pure spite. However, to my eyes, a more believable story is that the government of India is embarrassed by the high Covid death tolls and would like to adjust the numbers downward.

From a story in NPR:

> FRAYER: There is another reason why India's coronavirus numbers may be skewed - hubris. In early March, India's health minister declared the pandemic over, but cases were actually creeping up, and some politicians didn't want to ruin the narrative. Dr. A. Velumani runs a nationwide chain of medical labs. He told local media his labs have come under pressure from local politicians to manipulate coronavirus tests and report fewer positive results. [^1]

We saw this very same narrative play out here in the United States under the Trump administration, and just like in the OpIndia story, when confronted with evidence they had mishandled the response to the pandemic, the government responded, "Fake news! They're out to get me!"

The New York Times article mentioned in the OpIndia piece [^2] also seems to be in good faith, explaining how they arrived at their estimates in great detail.

To summarize: when I put on my critical-thinking cap, what I see is the Economist, the New York Times, and NPR presenting good-faith, easy-to-believe arguments that the death toll in India is higher than reported by the Indian government, and OpIndia presenting the difficult-to-believe argument that it isn't, but that western media wants to depict the government of India in a bad light for unknown reasons.

[^1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/992122467/indias-real-death-t...

[^2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/25/world/asia/in...

claim was it is true and nothing fake there, so you did a strawman there. Since that is true, it shows economist as acting in bad faith in best case scenario.

Opindia is reporting on Govt of India rebutting the Economists argument. These are not opindia arguments, they are paraphrasing GoI's. So the below part you quoted is a paraphrase of GoI

> "However, the entire analysis done in the article was based on ‘estimates’ based on randomly selected numbers"

See actual press release here

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1726521 and the twitter post here https://twitter.com/drharshvardhan/status/140367805453529088...

I am reproducing part that shows Economist acted at the least in bad faith and you have continued on same basis by claiming that you checked out their research and back it over the actual data given out by experts in field of health and agency that collates the actual data

***

The unsound analysis of the said article is based on extrapolation of data without any epidemiological evidence.

Studies which are used by the magazine as an estimate of excess mortality are not validated tools for determining mortality rate of any country or region.

The so called “evidence” cited by the magazine is a study supposedly done by Christopher Laffler of Virginia Commonwealth University. An internet search of research studies in scientific database such Pubmed, Research Gate, etc., did not locate this study and the detailed methodology of this study has not been provided by the magazine.

Another evidence given is the study done in Telengana based on insurance claims. Again, there is no peer reviewed scientific data available on suchstudy.

Two other studies relied upon are those done by Psephology groups namely “Prashnam” and “C-Voter” who are well versed in conducting, predicting and analysing poll results. They were never ever associated with public health research. Even in their own area of work of psephology, their methodologies for predicting poll results have been wide off the mark many times.

By their own submission, the magazine states that ‘such estimates have been extrapolated from patchy and often unreliable local government data, from company records and from analyses of such things as obituaries’.

Union Government has been transparent in its approach to COVID data management. As early as May 2020, to avoid inconsistency in number of deaths being reported, Indian Council of Medical Research has issued ‘Guidance for appropriate recording of COVID-19 related deaths in India’ for correct recording of all deaths as per ICD-10 codes recommended by WHO for mortality coding. States and UTs have been urged through formal communications, multiple video conferences and through deployment of Central teams for correct recording of deaths in accordance with laid down guidelines.

***

> In early March, India's health minister declared the pandemic over,

NPR has not given any source for this claim and if you look at the Minister's twitter timeline for the period , it shows the opposite.

https://twitter.com/drharshvardhan

Or check out the timeline of the ministry he heads

https://twitter.com/MoHFW_INDIA

All proof there shows that he & ministry was calling for people to be careful, warning about increasing cases, updating on vaccines & health protocols. Not the actions of someone who declared it is over.

So that is a explicit lie/untruth from NPR and your comments also show that you find it easier to believe that India is hiding deaths at unimaginable rates than India has done exceedingly well given its challenges.

Other publications which carried out the same news

https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/extrapo...

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/reports-o...

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-unsoun...

> An internet search of research studies in scientific database such Pubmed, Research Gate, etc., did not locate this study and the detailed methodology of this study has not been provided by the magazine.

It's here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352170008_Prelimina...

>> There's a lot of indicators of bad faith in the OpIndia article, but I don't see any in the Economist article.

> claim was it is true and nothing fake there, so you did a strawman there

...sorry, the claim is that what is true? I'm not following you on that one. For me to have "done a strawman" means I would have asserted you were making an argument that you weren't making. As I understand it, you said the Economist was making claims in "deliberate bad faith", and presented an article to rebut the Economist's claims. It appeared to me that was exactly backward. I don't see how that qualifies as anything close to a strawman.

>> In early March, India's health minister declared the pandemic over,

> NPR has not given any source for this claim and if you look at the Minister's twitter timeline for the period, it shows the opposite.

I think they're talking about this: https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-india-...

...which I admit isn't the same as "declaring it over" but which could arguably be considered wrong. Which is fine; I'm wrong all the time, as is every other human. Acknowledging when you're wrong is one of the requirements of arguing in good faith. Wrongness doesn't imply incompetence, but failure to admit and correct mistakes does.

Anyway, I have zero interest in "making India look bad", and I wish the people of India well, as I'm sure you do. Here is all I am saying:

* I don't see "deliberate bad faith" in the Economist article, and I see an above-and-beyond effort by the New York Times to explain their methodology

* I have seen with my own eyes members of the government of the United States play down the impact of pandemic out of short-sighted self interest, and so it is easy for me to believe another government would do that

* The arguments made in the official press release linked above strike me as overly defensive and don't offer anything more than "no, that's not true" with no additional evidence provided

* And once again, I wish the people of India well, and I hope the government of India acts in the best interest of its citizens with competence, pragmatism, honesty, and efficiency.

In any case, best of luck to you! I hope we can both think critically about the information we consume.

** True, the official death toll has fallen steadily for the past month, to half its peak of over 4,000 a day in mid-May. But evidence continues to accumulate that the government’s numbers represent a disturbingly small fraction of the real figure. This discrepancy does not just mean that the true level of India’s suffering has been glossed over. It has made the crisis worse, for instance by causing authorities to underestimate demand for oxygen and drugs.

News organisations including The Economist, as well as independent epidemiologists, have speculated that India has suffered perhaps five-to-seven times more “excess deaths” than the official number of covid-19 fatalities, currently just over 355,000. ***

The GoI press release has said that the methodology used by Christopher Leffler is not used anywhere else to estimate deaths.

You disagree and back it. Can you point out where this is accepted practice.

Using occam's razor. If cases & Deaths as 5-7 times, then this would be easily detectable, especially as the second wave dies down as per official figures.

So at peak the cases were 350,000 per day officially, as per economist it is over 2 million. This week the cases are 65k, so then it must be 380k cases as per economist. Same for deaths, officially 500 deaths and should be 3000 deaths as per economist.

Where are all these invisible cases & deaths?

If as per economist there were all these 5-7 times extra cases/deaths, the need for O2 would be far greater. There has been no crisi on that side for weeks now. Only for a 2 week period did capital Delhi have shortage due to the mismanagement of the state govt there that was pulled up by the courts.

So you are willing to consider opinion polling and patchy insurance claims( in a country that has minimal insurance coverage) that compared India with US figures over official figures that are collated by heath authorities.

It is far more believable that US media that has persistently painted India in negative light wants to continue the practice even when there are reasons to state facts as is and risk India being shown in a positive light.

I have already give you one data point where NPR pushed a untruth that you conceded. That was not even bad faith, direct fakery.

Is this how one thinks critically?

I have no problem if you want to believe fake news but lets drop the charade that you have no option other than trusting Economist or that they have a good track record. Information is easy to get in this day and age.

It is your laziness that lets such media spread fake news by appealing to your biases.

https://shootingthemessenger.blog/2020/08/10/the-economist-d...

The author of that blog also got a byline in articles in Buzzfeed News [1] and The Guardian [2] about the same thing happening at the Daily Telegraph.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/coron...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/14/daily-telegrap...

There is still value to be gotten out of the magazine but if you're looking for accuracy or truth that can be relied on then I think that ship sailed a long time ago. "Thankfully" the internet has allowed everybody to finally realise that.

I also see a lot of genuine local grassroots stuff that makes my blood boil (NIMBYism), so I don’t really attach a moral credit to those qualities.