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.