Adam Clark's List: Bias and Perspective

"Why does liberal media bias exist in the first place? What would you suggest as a way that a) journalists could be more aware of their own bias and limit it in their reporting; or b) the profession of journalism could attract a more unbiased (or merely more representative) cohort?"

Study finds we need bias and interpretation in our news or we need to cultivate greater critical thinking. http://j.mp/fdAJpE #ibtok

In The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain, Tali Sharot argues that we have a neurobiological basis for imagining a positive future. "Humans," she writes, "do not hold a positivity bias on account of having read too many self-help books. Rather, optimism may be so essential to our survival that it is hardwired into our most complex organ, the brain."

"A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:"

"The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about."

"In their book “Scorecasting”, Toby Mascowitz, an economist, and Jon Wertheim, a journalist, make the provocative argument that home-field advantage, regardless of the sport in question, is caused entirely by biased referees. Umpires in baseball are more likely to call a strike on a close pitch if the visitors are batting. Football referees grant more extra time when the home team is trailing than when it is ahead."

"Let's say Mrs. Smith is teaching a science class and has to give a grade to Charles, who has piercings on his face, a bizarre haircut, wears clothes she finds hideous, and has an unpleasant personality. She recognizes that none of these should influence the grade he gets in the science class: that is supposed to be a measure of his knowledge and ability in science only. If she judges his performance on class participation, she will find it very hard to exclude her bias, since he annoys her whenever he participates, whether his science knowledge is valid or not. If he makes a minor error in terminology she takes it as a sign of ignorance, while if Ryan, a neat and polite boy she likes, makes a similar mistake, she treats it as a triviality. The same can be true of their answers on essay tests."

But while bias has been experimentally demonstrated, it’s hard to study in the real world: Just as it’s hard to isolate a single environmental pollutant’s effect on human health, it’s been near impossible to isolate gender as a variable in the real world and watch how it affects a person’s day-to-day experience. 

Until now. Trans people are bringing entirely new ways of approaching the discussion. Because trans people are now staying in the same careers (and sometimes the very same jobs) after they change genders, they are uniquely qualified to discuss the difference between how men and women experience the workplace. Their experience is as close to the scientific method as we can get: By isolating and manipulating gender as a variable and holding all other variables—skill, career, personality, talent—constant, these individuals reveal exactly the way one’s outward appearance of gender affects day-to-day interactions. If we truly want to understand women at work, we should listen carefully to trans men and trans women: They can tell us more about gender in the workplace than just about anyone.

As networks and publications try and fill the 24-hour news cycle, it's hard to tell truth from fiction someone created to have something to talk about for the next half hour to half year. Unfortunately for us, the viewers and readers, that is the media telling untruths in its most harmless form.

As you'll see below, there might be more sinister motives to the way the media tells a story. If true, this is pretty scary stuff.