Tag Archives: Bias

Commentary

Should the Republican candidates agree to debate on left-wing news channels?

Leave a comment

From moderate Republican Hugh Hewitt writing in the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

One week from today, the first debate featuring all but two of the key GOP contenders for the presidency will occur.

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum will participate in the debate on the campus of St. Anselm College, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT on Monday, June 13.

Incredibly, once again, GOP primary voters will only get to see their would-be nominees through a lens ground by traditional media. The event is being sponsored by CNN, local television station WMUR and the New Hampshire Union Leader.

CNN Chief National Correspondent John King will moderate the debate, with reporters from the local outlets. No doubt these are fine journalists, but like King, they will almost certainly carry with them all the biases and predispositions of the mainstream media.

If Dr. Charles Xavier could leave his X-Men films to read the minds of these and other journalists, how many do you suspect he would find who support a right-to-life amendment, oppose same-sex marriage, are eager to slash the corporate tax rate?

We all know this built-in bias exists, but still the candidates (except Sarah) agree to play by rules dictated by media that is overwhelmingly opposed to their election.

Expect the standard stunt questions on abortion in the event of rape or incest, weapons of mass destruction, evolution, global warming, or any of a dozen other dog whistles to the left designed to create the moment that replicates across the Web, that seeks to wound prospects by defining the GOP field as outside the mainstream.

They will do so even as the panel glides over the issues of national security of the United States and the woeful economic conditions in the land that ought to dominate. Imagine FDR participating in debates in 1931 and being asked about anything but the Depression and the adequacy of Hoover’s response to it.

I often disagree with Hugh Hewitt, especially on his backing of Mitt Romney and Harriet Miers, but he’s right about this.
News

Ben Shapiro interviews Hollywood producers about their liberal bias

Leave a comment
Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro

I spotted this book review of the new book “Primetime Propaganda, The True Hollywood Story Of How The Left Took Over Your  TV” by Ben Shapiro, posted on Newsbusters.

Excerpt:

[The book’s title] may sound like an overblown title, but if you read Ben Shapiro’s new book, “Primetime Propaganda, The True Hollywood Story Of How The Left Took Over Your  TV,” you will see it isn’t overblown in the least. Ben doesn’t just speculate here. He goes to the source.

He interviews the movers and the shakers of Hollywood who admit their own bias and their own agenda… this fascinating book takes us into the minds of the people who bring television into our home. They clearly state how they want to influence our kids with their political views.

I sat down to read Ben’s book thinking it wouldn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but I was wrong. This book isn’t just about looking at the actual shows that are influencing our kids, it takes us backstage in the industry and gives us a glimpse of the people who create these shows and why. First and foremost, there is a blacklisting in Hollywood regarding conservatives. They as much as admit it in Ben’s interviews.

[…]Ben gives us all the details of the presidents of the networks, the producers, and  the writers, and how they were determined to systematically bring liberal views to television family shows. But most disturbing to me is Ben’s account of how they infused liberal messages into children’s television. Ben met with the producer of Captain Planet and The Planeteers, a cartoon with a far left environmental message. He asked the producer whether he thought Captain Planet promoted a politicized point of view. The producer responded by asking what other point of view would their be?

And I noticed that Ari has been posting some of the interviews on RuthBlog.

Here’s is the most popular one:

And another:

And this one has really bad language, so watch out for the F-word if you click the link.

Personal application

This book and these interviews confirm to me why I shouldn’t have a television in my apartment. I only watch Special Report with Bret Baier if I am in the gym, or Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace if I am at my parents’ house visiting. I would watch the Canadian Sun News Network if I were in Canada, because I hear that Theo Caldwell says very frank things like this and this. I am shocked that Canadians talk like that about moral issues.

I rarely watch movies at all, except maybe one a year.

Here’s my list of movies that I do find useful:

  • Rules of Engagement (Samuel L. Jackson)
  • Bella
  • Henry V (Kenneth Brannagh)
  • The Lives of Others
  • United 93
  • Taken (Liam Neeson)
  • Cinderella Man
  • The Blind Side
  • Cyrano de Bergerac (Gerard Depardieu)
  • Amazing Grace (Ioan Gruffudd)
  • Gettysburg
  • We Were Soldiers
  • Stand and Deliver
  • Blackhawk Down
  • The Pursuit of Happyness
  • High Noon (Gary Cooper)
  • The Long Walk

I also like older TV shows like Danger Man. Here is an episode on Youtube: clip1, clip2, clip3. And even some newer stuff like Band of Brothers is worth watching. (Check this out this well-known battle: clip1 and clip2 and you can read the history here. I would love it if there were more good television shows and movies, but there aren’t, and I’m not going to let my need to be entertained cause me to watch things that are designed to manipulate me.

Commentary

Can evolutionary biologists be objective about evolution?

2 Comments

From Evolution News, and article by Casey Luskin.

Excerpt:

What I am suggesting is that the public packaging of Darwinian theory has become intensely political, and that would-be critics face certain pressures.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what evolutionists themselves are saying.

Consider the words of philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini in their book What Darwin Got Wrong:

We’ve been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn’t say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal is to bring Science into disrepute.

(Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin God Wrong, p. xx (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Likewise, theoretical biologist Günter Thieβen wrote in Theory in Biosciences:

It is dangerous to raise attention to the fact that there is no satisfying explanation for macroevolution. One easily becomes a target of orthodox evolutionary biology and a false friend of proponents of non-scientific concepts.

(Günter Theißen, “The Proper Place of Hopeful Monsters in Evolutionary Biology,” Theory in Biosciences, Vol. 124: 349-369 (2006).)

Again, philosopher and biologist John Dupré writes in American Scientist:

The enduring debates with creationists have also undoubtedly tended to discourage admission that major conceptual issues about evolution remain unresolved.

(John Dupré, “The Conditions for Existence,” American Scientist)

Such words are not harbingers of some kind of a mass conspiracy to hide problems with evolution from the public. No such conspiracy exists. But they do show evidence of the hyper-political nature of this debate, where scientists feel political pressure to avoid lending credence to those they call “creationists.”

It’s important to point that what materialists mean by “science” is presuming materialism and then carrying on a charade of investigating the world and discovering that materialism did it. They can’t be open to agent causation, because their religion doesn’t allow it.

Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion

Imagine a materialist CIO who thought that code was written by large numbers of monkeys pounding at keyboards instead of by engineers. He would be firing all the software engineers and replacing them with monkeys in order to generate better code. And he would call this method of generating new code “science”. It’s the scientific way of generating new information, he would say, and using software engineers to generate new code isn’t “science”. It’s what he learned at UC Berkeley and UW Madison! His professors of biology swear that it is true!

It seems to me that there are incentives in place that make it impossible for Darwinists to discuss their materialistic religion honestly. They feel pressured to distort the evidence in the public square, and there are political pressures on them to distort the evidence in order to avoid being censured by their employers and colleagues. When questions about the evidence for Darwinism come up, they have to rally around their religion and chant the creeds that comfort them. There can be no questioning of their faith in the presupposition of materialism.