Quote:
Originally Posted by elly63
I would say that's fairly close to the truth except for the part about indulging conservative narratives.. Why you often see conservative leaning people perturbed by coverage is because of what they see as a lack of fairness. CBC has always had a "liberal" leaning but it was tolerable because the coverage seemed fair. The same applies to left leaning people who use Fox News as a pejorative and roll their eyes. The news division has some very good journalists and the commentators (like other outlets) are just that. You have to distinguish between the two.
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I realize what you meant, but when conservatives say "lack of fairness" what it actually tends to amount to is someone not indulging conservative narratives. They believe their perspective is correct and therefore it's unfair for someone to say otherwise even if their perspective is verifiably incorrect. They expect an outlet to "both sides" an issue when the actual facts of the issue clearly support a conclusion they don't like. Or increasingly, to not even "both sides" it and just give them the angle they want.
And it's definitely not like when people call out Fox News for partisanship or factual inaccuracies because the actual facts matter. The issue isn't whether two groups each claim a certain news outlet has factual inaccuracies. It's whether or not the outlets in question actually have factual inaccuracies. And Fox News is notorious for blurring the lines between their news reporting and their commentary. Not that everything the news personnel say is incorrect. Just that there are enough inaccuracies to make it unreliable.
That's been known for a good decade now after
a well-known study was conducted of various
news viewers in the US. It's asked them a series of questions on current events while controlling for other variables such as party affiliation and the use of other news sources. While the results varied, Fox News viewers were uniquely poorly informed to the point that they were less knowledgeable than people who watch no news at all. And notably, also less knowledgeable than viewers of any of the other outlets including ones accused of being liberal. While MSNBC also didn't do well (though better than Fox) NPR did the best despite it regularly being maligned as having a left-leaning bias.
So no, the "same thing" most certainly does not apply.