| ▲ | davidw 4 hours ago |
| After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that. |
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| ▲ | robomc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| yeah imagine thinking biden was too old and infirm |
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| ▲ | gmadsen 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What is “both sides” about that article? |
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| ▲ | narism 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just because Fox News crowed about it doesn’t mean it’s bad journalism. Arguably toeing the party line is what resulted in Democrats being in that situation (fielding a weaker candidate against Trump) in the first place. |
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| ▲ | davidw 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Framing someone who supports democracy vs someone who tried to overturn a free and fair election as a 'weaker' candidate is kind of the problem though. In any sane world, you'd support a literal corpse over a guy who does not want there to be free and fair elections. | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > In any sane world, you'd support a literal corpse over a guy who does not want there to be free and fair elections. No, you’d be serious about picking the best candidate you’ve got to stand up against the formidable foe. If all you’ve got is a corpse you might as well not bother. | |
| ▲ | jrowen 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not really just framing though, it was reality. An election is a popularity contest, not a morality detector. Everybody knew Biden was (by then) a wet noodle that could not hold his own against Trump. | |
| ▲ | narism 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You’ll find no disagreement from me that January 6th should, at the very least, have resulted in a ban from serving in public office, but we don’t live there. Which corpse would you rather have, one rank with Biden admin inflation/immigration concerns, or perhaps a bit fresher one? |
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| ▲ | akoboldfrying 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For me personally, seeing the phrase "both sides" used pejoratively is a red flag telling me I don't need to read any further. When people disagree about something, hearing from both sides is important. Can this ideal of openmindedness be cynically abused by strawmanning one side while steelmanning the other? Yes, but in that case the appropriate response is to criticise the specific ways that one or both sides were misrepresented -- which is also the appropriate response to a piece that only presents one side, and does it badly. Muttering about "both sides" never adds anything to an argument. All it does is signal a deep commitment to remaining entrenched in your current position. |
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| ▲ | mattclarkdotnet 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem is the assumption that in most debates there are sides to be taken, and that there are 2 of them. It leads to shoddy journalism where "balance" means finding someone to debate another, regardless of the bizarreness of their position. In the real world there are many perspectives on a given issue, and a lot to be learned by everyone through open discussion. "Both sides" mentality discourages this, and also tends to give too much airtime to extreme views. | |
| ▲ | davidw 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This explains the problem with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance It's fine if you're talking about something where there are a broad spectrum of fairly reasonable policy positions. It's not fine when you have a TV segment that's like "here's Christina, an astrophysicist from Stanford, explaining how we measure the circumference of the earth, and up next we'll have Bob from the flat earth society" | | |
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| ▲ | next_xibalba 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wait, what? People were offended by that? It seemed an apt cover in light of the situation. For those unaware, the economist ran this [1] image after Biden’s historically disastrous debate in ‘24 (as a result of Biden’s age based senility being on full display after months of party and media complicity). [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/07/04/why-biden-must-... |
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| ▲ | zimpenfish 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think people were probably offended by the lack of such covers relating to Trump's diminished mental acuity when it was on display for all to see in the brief period of 2015-present. (Not just The Economist, mind; almost every MSM outlet has mostly ignored Trump's mental inadequacy from the moment he came down the escalator. If they'd reported on it honestly from the start, there would be no Trump presidencies.) | |
| ▲ | SanjayMehta 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I missed that as my subscription ran out in 2017. Hilarious. Would have framed that cover. |
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| ▲ | aaron695 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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