Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Objective? Even sided? You must be joking!

What have been bothering me and many other on the blogosphere, is that the media in general is politically biased, including the titles that claim to be, or considered objective.
The bias is often so obvious, that I wonder how the hell those titles manage to keep their reputation as objective.

I have noticed some of the most common "techniques" that the media uses in creating a biased article report etc.
  • Putting on the same moral ground two sides that no descent, self-respecting man with common sense would. Therefore misleading the non competent target audience that constitute most of the public.
  • Telling half truths or putting the emphasis on only one side of the issue. The most common use of this technique is to make a big headline like "X sues Y for z" while only at the end of the report/article the audience/reader would find the crucial circumstances that would put the issue into the right perspective.
  • Deliberate use of words discriminating one side over another.
  • To air/print unconfirmed damaging information, and when it turns out to be incorrect to publicize a hardly noticeable confirmation of the opposite. Just if you would print a big headline on the front page saying "X accused in doing Y" while the notice that the person X was completely exonerated would be printed somewhere in tiny add in the middle end of the paper, somewhere nobody would notice.
Most of the techniques are legally proof and nevertheless they don't smell right.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Sony is proving Cory Doctorow right again

When Cory Doctorow in his Microsoft DRM speech said that DRM is bad for business and gave Sony as an example, he didn't know how right he would be. Reading peoples responses from different sources over the internet, I see that many are deeply disappointed by Sony's actions and are going to refrain from buying Sony's products in the future. It's not just the music CD's, but their electronics and computer divisions are going to suffer from the consequences of this affair. And not just them. Quoting one of the blogs: "Nobody would want to pull a "Sony" now".