Stand Alone Pages on 'Musings of an Old Curmudgeon'

27 December 2018

Is The Media Biased?

Mr Holdsworth looks at the media. My answer to his question is 'Seriously? Of course they're biased!' How can anyone watch TV, read popular magazines, etc. without seeing the atheist, secular humanist bias of all the MSM?

His introduction:

In my last video I made the argument that the media has been conditioning society to shift our values away from objective morals to more relativistic or subjective ones. The reason for this is that if we don’t rely on consistent values for judging a need for some purchase, then it’s easier to sell us things through advertising. So for example, if I believe in an objective moral virtue like prudence (or wisdom), then I’m going to exercise it when someone tries to sell me something. I’m going to ask myself if that particular something is necessary or if it provides a value that I need in my life. But if my values are shaped by priorities like fitting in or being cool, then all you have to do is convince me that the product is cool and since that’s basically arbitrary and a standard that is set by the media, then they’ll find themselves in a position in which their job is much easier. And since the media’s primary source of revenue is advertising, we can conclude that the interests of advertisers are going to be the interests of our media conglomerates and those same interests will find their way into our news coverage and our entertainment. And this helps to explain why being cool or hip is the thing that motivates all of our cultural influences. Since the media is the most significant sculptor of modern culture, we don’t have to look far to get a sense of the source of our new obsession, which was uncommon in eras that preceded modern media. So, knowing that the media is interested in promoting subjective or relativist moral values, I thought it would be interesting to consider if those same priorities can create political biases in the media.


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