That's every LWT. The whole infotainment genre does it but IMO that show is one of the worst in terms of fairness despite being very well made. It's hard to make a funny video about how obvious a complex issue is while not being very one sided.

Totally agree. My worry is this outlet is trusted (and presented) as factual, with jokes on top of facts, instead of what it actually is.

I don't mind the way they do it too much. Most episodes are framed in "this is done well, sometimes, but these are some of the problems".

I've grown so weary of this reflexive desire on the part of a certain kind of person who feels any news source or factual content that clearly has an ideological bent or a certain lean on an issue is therefore inherently less credible. 100% unbiased reporting is simply not possible. As a person, a journalist brings a lifetime of bias, experiences and yes even prejudices into their work, they can't not. I follow plenty of journalists with whom I agree with on pretty much anything and plenty with whom I have numerous disagreements, but I follow them because they report the facts as they exist in reality, yes, with their given view layered over top.

Part of good media literacy is being able to discern the facts from the opinion on the part of the reporter. In this case: Yes, it's clear that the LWT team skews pretty liberal, and because of that, they and I are going to disagree on a lot. But you really don't need to spin the fact that numerous groups of extremely christian parents are providing home schooling that borders on (and sometimes crosses into) child abuse. The way children are treated as parents property in this country is fucking disgusting. This is not simply "someone's child" this is what will eventually become a person, a person who will have to work to earn a living the same as the rest of us, a person who will have to reckon with global politics and issues, a person who will have to file taxes and send out their water bill, I could go on for the rest of the day listing off things they will almost certainly have to do, and NONE of them, not a single, sodding, fucking, solitary one of those things, is going to be helped by Jesus.

My wife grew up in an extremely religious household (not fundamentalist thankfully, but very evangelical all the same) and they completely and utterly failed her in terms of preparing her for the real world, in ways too numerous to name here. She learned a whole lot about Jesus though! Not that it did her much because she's an atheist now, and I basically have to run the logistics of the household because she can't do math.

This is among many reasons for my continued slide further from Atheist to Anti-Theist.

For every one of your wife there's another who did just fine. Given that the majority of universities up until just recently were religious, I find it difficult to understand your conflation of religion with ignorance. Are there extremists? Of course... but overall, the idea that just because something is religious it's less educational is... bad. I mean, before public schools in America (and still in Canada), Catholic parochial schooling was the largest school system, and still is the largest private one.

A religious school system is still required to adhere to a modicum of technical standards for the various studies, and what makes home schooling both worse and dangerous is how incredibly unregulated it is. See the above itinerary as described in the LWT piece: nothing but bible readings and chores. This is not how you raise capable people, this is how you raise house servants.

> As a person, a journalist brings a lifetime of bias, experiences and yes even prejudices into their work, they can't not.

The point is they're not trying to not.

> This is not simply "someone's child" this is what will eventually become a person

No; they're already a person. They're also someone's child.

> and NONE of them, not a single, sodding, fucking, solitary one of those things, is going to be helped by Jesus.

This hyper-emotional take seems unrelated to the discussion. I hope things get better, though.

> The point is they're not trying to not.

And my point is I think the act of trying to not is overrated.

> This hyper-emotional take seems unrelated to the discussion. I hope things get better, though.

I'm not afraid of my feelings. The notion of children being raised with nothing but their sky friend's manual is terrifying. We are already in the midst of the fallout of a society largely run by people who think the Rapture is coming soon and that the world was created by god six thousand years ago. The effects on long term planning, problem solving, addressing social ills cannot be overstated when the leadership of so many nations is convinced that God is gonna show up sometime in the next 30 years and pack up humanity like a train set, and therefore there's no point in mitigating the effects of climate change, or taking care of people who refuse to take their magical bullshit seriously and/or respect their bigotries as anything other than what they are.

If that doesn't make you emotional to think about, I think that's a you problem.

> I'm not afraid of my feelings.

That would be very odd indeed. Quite an odd thing to claim, though.

> The notion of children being raised with nothing but their sky friend's manual is terrifying. We are already in the midst of the fallout of a society largely run by people who think the Rapture is coming soon and that the world was created by god six thousand years ago. The effects on long term planning, problem solving, addressing social ills cannot be overstated when the leadership of so many nations is convinced that God is gonna show up sometime in the next 30 years and pack up humanity like a train set, and therefore there's no point in mitigating the effects of climate change, or taking care of people who refuse to take their magical bullshit seriously and/or respect their bigotries as anything other than what they are.

This is just raw prejudice and negativity. More people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 100 years that in the previous 10000, and to a standard higher than that of kings and queens of a couple of hundred years ago. We cooperate and interoperate more; we stand our ground together against evils in the world; we fight poverty and hunger more than anyone ever could've dreamed of in history.

> If that doesn't make you emotional to think about, I think that's a you problem.

This is a non sequitur. One can feel emotions without going on hyper-emotional rants.

> This is just raw prejudice and negativity. More people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 100 years that in the previous 10000, and to a standard higher than that of kings and queens of a couple of hundred years ago. We cooperate and interoperate more; we stand our ground together against evils in the world; we fight poverty and hunger more than anyone ever could've dreamed of in history.

Absolutely correct, and none of that is achieved by people raised on a strict diet of Jesus. How many borderline illiterate people from the Appalachians are revolutionizing our world? I am not saying people not born of means are incapable of changing the world (beyond the ways in which the world has ensured it anyway) in fact I am mourning, I am mourning the loss of so much human potential, sacrificed on the altar of this anti-social libertarian experiment within which a child is completely unable to advocate for themselves, their desires, and their being until they turn the magic age of 18, at which point they are thrust into the adult world, whether they have been prepared for it or not in the care of people who are not held accountable to performing that task, and if they fail to perform, they will be cast out, they will starve, they will die.

You're damn right I'm prejudiced against these people. I have seen firsthand the hell they inflict upon their children in the course of following their bullshit ideology. I've listened to hours of their intellectually bankrupt and dishonest defenses of ancient texts they insist are the best foundation for a child's learning, texts full of rape, murder, slavery, torture, all performed in the name of a narcissistic unbeing who demands complete obedience to his arbitrary commands, while demonstrating no measurable effect on the world and insisting he is the only truly righteous force. And his followers in turn wield this book as a weapon against the marginalized worldwide, waging an endless war on everyone different from them, based on nothing but their own bigotry.

My only disappointment in being Atheist is I'm fairly certain there is no hell for these people who so desperately deserve it.