NPR is biased !

Re: Another halftruth

What spin? That's an AP story that list nine people who have been indicted and six of them were in Republican admins.

 

The article in question is not an exercise in confirmation bias. I will admit at the outset that I did not wade through all 32 pages of the paper, but instead looked at the beginning which describes the initial setup of the research.

The authors did not go searching for a conclusion by looking to NPR and Fox viewers. The study appears to have been randomized, and then looked at where respondents got their "news" as a follow-up.

It's possible that if all of the Bush Admin's claims about the lead-up to the war had come true, the NPR crowd would appear to harbor the misconceptions. However, that is not the case. We aren't talking about flipping coins here. DTech seems to be arguing it's heads versus tails.

There was a guy who used to walk around downtown SF wearing a sandwich board ranting about the coming invasion of aliens, and how all recent US presidents were aliens in human form. If I were so inclined, I might walk around with my own sandwich board, or set-up a news show, internet site etc. arguing just as vehemently that the other guy was full of it. Subscribers to either side could be described, I suppose, as partisans, or even zealots. The fact remains, however, that one side will generally be thought to provide more reliable news - news that conforms, generally, to what most of us accept as closer to impartial.

I don't think the goal of the paper is to conclude that NPR listeners are radicals, or that Fox viewers are reactionaries. It does seem to show where the more reliable news seems to be coming from, and it's not Fox news. I don't think that's a surprise to most people. Given the recent indictment of Scooter, it sure seems like a lot of lies and bending of the truth are emanating from the White House.

Yes, if the world were suddenly turned on its head, life would look, well, upside down. That isn't the case. We aren't flipping coins; we're humans making decisions and forming opinions based on what other humans are saying, doing, and writing.

In my decidedly unscientific opinion, NPR provides a much more reasoned view of the world compared to Fox. No surprise there. If you want to hypothesize about a world were hammers fall up when dropped, then go ahead. We don't live in such a world, and claims of confirmation bias don't really get you out of the mess you're in. People who believe in the trash coming from Fox are increasingly looking like defenders of the guy with the sandwich board and believers of aliens raining down from above. How do you hang on to those views when the very people that Fox believes and defends are indicted one by one? The boat's on fire - time to jump.

 

NPR uses public money, FOX News does not.

 

Which is why NPR bothers me and I simply ignore Fox. I will say this for NPR: where I live there isn't ANY other source for substantive news on the radio, and the local affiliate-consortium of NPR stations runs the Beeb late night. So I'm not an NPR hater. But even when I was much more sympathetic to the political left than I now am, NPR's bias was pretty obvious, to the point that a Socialist (yup, Socialist Party not generic) acquaintance of mine in Mwaki [Milwaukee to us nonresidents of the place] called it Radio Havana.

 

Re: No burden at all...

Perhaps if the high schooler went somewhere that taught any research that goes against the conservative” mindset" has to be bias. You never met the challenge of showing true bias in the paper! You do argue that their representation of some data is misleading...but that is not itself indicative of confirmation bias. The hypothesis of the paper is not such that any one media outlet is going to have more or less bias than another. The paper did set out to find the difference in bias per individual media outlet. It could have just as likely found CBS had the most bias and NBC the least. Where is your evidence of Bias? You keep stating it yet offer no concrete evidence. I would understand the argument if the polling questions for example were bias, yet I see no evidence of that. You also stated that the NPR audience didn't believe that WMD's or in an AL-queda/iraq link...That I find the most Ironic argument considering even the Democrats backed the aggression in Iraq initially. I must also point out that is your opinion not fact! Unless there is data showing that NPR listeners believed this somewhere.

I think it is you who need to rethink your previous posts..you hide your ignorance by insulting people..It is you sir, who needs to further educate himself in academic research and grow up! If you don't like the results of a study it doesn't make the study invalid!

In case you are interested..here is a quick defination of confirmation bias but I suggest you read further, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

jawellnofine

Before you, young man, tell anyone else to educate himself, you might wish to learn how to spell. Definitely. You might also wish to learn the rules of English capitalisation relating to Bias and iraq. A capital idea!

 

Re: jawellnofine

Now that is constructive! Your point is well taken. I shall make a concerted effort to better spell and use proper capitalisation(-zation in the US).

No guarantees

 

I did read the paper....

I did read the paper and it is a textbook case of bias. You take a topic, wmd and the war in Iraq after it has been determined the WMD was not present as believed by one group. Then you ask groups group of people who previously didn't believe it existed (NPR listeners) and group who did (Fox listeners) who still believes it did or may have existed. Then you are surprised that some of the believers are still unconvinced? That is a textbook case of confirmation bias. You would get the same response on proof Jesus existed if you query atheist and Christians. The Christieans would believe wholeheartedly and while some of the athiests would have been converted some would still not believe it. The only way this paper would have any validity in the point it is trying to make is if it used a neutral topic or used non-neutral topics from both sides of the political spectrum. Again, this is basic research theory here. I should not have to point this out to people on this board.....

 

And I should not have to point out that there are plenty of people who are neither Christians nor atheists who believe that Jesus existed.

The question of the existence of Jesus is not the same as the question of his religious or theological significance.

And this post is not about religion or about theology, but about logic.

 

Re: I did read the paper....

Again, I must point out this only your opinion. You can not conclusively prove what you are saying. If there were data pointing to the claims you make then you would be absolutely correct. Unfortunately there is no data on who believed what before the conflict. To argue confirmation bias now one would have to show that NPR listeners on average believed there were no WMD's and that there was no Al-Qaeda link. We have no evidence of this. What evidence we do have is the congressional vote on the matter that shows before the war (regardless of Media outlet) both Democrats and Republicans in congress supported the aggression.

I could just as easily say that all NPR listeners believed there was WMD's in Iraq. I have no data to point to either so my argument would be as weak as yours. Which is why I would never try and argue the point!

 

Re: I did read the paper....

No. You keep describing the process as if they targeted NPR and Fox viewers specifically in the selection process. The selection process was random. The determination of where they got their news came later. Big diference.

Question: since you claim there is confimation bias, how would you redesign the study to eliminate it?

 

No....

This post has degenerated to confirmation. My example was one that many on this board can relate to.....

 

Re: Re: I did read the paper....

I never described it that way at all. Point out where I said that was how they were targeted? I am referring to them as representatives of the opposite ends of the political spectrum. How the respondents were selected is immaterial to the influence of confirmation bias.

I already referenced how to test his hypothesis. He could compare it to a neutral topic and/or have some data from prior to the nonexistent finding on WMD to compare it to. As it is, it is weak, except to people like Rivers that is.

I notice there is no defense of this paper from other well known liberals on this board. Perchance they may even agree that the NPR is non-biased but at the same time recognize the poor research being used to back it up?....

 

Re: Re: No burden at all...

Yawn, your little reference should have been enough to prove my point to you. Apparently you cannot understand your own readings. Here is one little snippet very pertinent to the topic.

"Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis."

Lets keep it simple, respondents who did not believe WMD existed would be completely open to any news (no matter how poor) it does not exist. Respondents who did believe it existed would require a higher threshold to change their mind and would be more amenable to rebuttal evidence that it may have existed but was destroyed or hidden, etc.

Come on man, this is simple stuff here. Get with it....

 

Go Right to the Source and Ask...

DTechBA...The accusation of confirmation bias in the study is an important one, I would challenge the authors if you think you can prove that the study is flawed since it was published by what seems to be a well regarded journal. Also, let's look at the Board of Directors, an esteemed group of scholars from mainly Ivy League or comparable schools. It would be odd if none of these scholars or their peers, research assistants, etc. "discovered", reported and corrected what you claim is such an obvious case of confirmation bias....

http://www.psqonline.org/

The authors are...
http://www.pipa.org/about.html

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Steven Kull, Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues. He directs the PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll which conducts ongoing surveys of the US public, plays a central role in the BBC World Service Poll of global opinion and is directing a major study of social support of anti-American terrorism in Islamic countries. His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Public Opinion Quarterly, Harpers, The Washington Post and other publications. His most recent book, co-authored with I.M. Destler, is Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism, (Brookings). He regularly appears in the US and international media and gives briefings for the US Congress, the State Department, NATO, the UN and the EC. He is a faculty member of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Clay Ramsay, COPA Research Director and CISSM fellow, has been with COPA since 1992. With a background in history and psychology, he has focused on the study of ideology and mass psychology. He received his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University, has taught at Oberlin College, and is the author of The Ideology of the Great Fear (Johns Hopkins).

Evan Scot Lewis, is a Research Associate at PIPA. He received his Bachelors Degree at the University of Colorado and his Masters Degree at The American University. As a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Maryland, his research interests have focused on international relations, political economy, and the politics of land use management in Colorado and Maryland. He was a Harrison Fellow and has taught at both the University of Maryland and George Washington University.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I would use this email address first to contact them....

[email protected]

 

Re: Go Right to the Source and Ask...

Why bother, there are 2 possibilities:

a. They are screaming liberals out to buttress their own beliefs. If so, challenging them would be a waste of time.

b. They say it is just a paper based on an ongoing larger study which may overcome some of the faults in the paper. I have prepared 2 of those myself on my dissertation studies. Difference is I always state they are preliminary possibly misleading findings.

A lot of so-called "academic papers" are really stuff thrown together to pad a CV. It's all part of the perish or publish mentality......