If you’re wondering about the lack of posts recently: for the last 2\u00bd weeks I’ve been travelling on a research trip to Boston and Canada (to Waterloo, Montreal, and Vancouver).\u00a0 The sashimi in Vancouver is out of this world, by the way.<\/p>\n
Mostly I’ve been cramming my head with physics, but I did spare some time to read reports about the horrible news regarding the Boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 spectators and injured many more.\u00a0 This was after I had already left, so don’t press me for eyewitness accounts of traumatized civilians.<\/p>\n
I also read the news regarding the lack of news covering Kermit Gosnell’s “abortion” “clinic”, in which poorly trained and unlicensed “doctors” murdered hundreds of babies (i.e. viable infants outside of their mothers) and allowed women to die due to malpractice and unsanitary conditions, which the Pennsylvania government received complaints about for decades but failed to stop. This, apparently, is not news so far as the mainstream national media is concerned, but due to the untiring efforts of St. Mollie at GetReligion<\/a>, at least the media’s failure to cover it is now news.<\/p>\n Apparently the journalists are worried that anti-abortion* activists will make hay out of this story, and so therefore advocacy of “women’s rights” must, paradoxically, include suppressing stories in which\u2014even from the pro-abortion* viewpoint\u2014the rights of women to safe health care were most certainly violated.<\/p>\n One has to tread cautiously when making accusations of media bias, since it’s so easy to be biased oneself in making those accusations.\u00a0 As a moderate Republican who lives and works among academics in California, I would normally feel rather embarrassed to complain about this, since people would look at me as though I were one of those <\/em>conservatives, who thinks that Fox News is a straight news source but everyone else is commie pinkos.<\/p>\n (Even though my political opinions are not the same as those around me, I worry sometimes about whether they have been influenced by the desire to look reasonable to other people when I explain them.\u00a0 Compared to the historical range of opinion, any given time in America there is only a narrow range of acceptable opinions, and this range is even narrower in academia.\u00a0 There’s much less incredulity when my position is some sort of libertarianish compromise…)<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the fact that Fox News is tilted to the right doesn’t change the fact that the mainstream newsmedia is <\/em>clearly left-leaning on certain particular cultural issues, as I think GetReligion<\/a> has abundantly demonstrated.\u00a0 I think the media tries to be fair when covering presidential election politics, but it wears its opinions on its sleeve when covering hotbutton social issues.<\/p>\n One also has to be careful in defining what one means by bias.\u00a0 There is nothing inherently wrong with: 1) media reporting issues which are more likely to be of interest <\/em>to their constituents (e.g. spending more time on one party’s primary election), or 2) straight-up advocacy or editorializing for ones preferred position.<\/p>\n These should be distinguished from 1′) concealing relevant facts which ought to be of interest <\/em>in order to give a partisan slant on reality, and 2′) advocacy pieces which pretend to be straight news coverage, but are not.<\/p>\n In this case the news media has been caught out in a clear example of (1′).\u00a0 The sooner they correct their mistake, the quicker they can get to a world where conservative complaints of media bias really are crankish.<\/p>\n In the meantime, let us pray for those who died in these atrocities, for their families and friends, and for the twisted souls of the those who murdered them\u2014that they would receive their rightful justice, and that God would grant them repentance, “so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6<\/a>).<\/p>\n (*) Footnote: I refuse to use the terms pro-life and pro-choice on this blog, since I regard both of them as mealy-mouthed euphemisms.\u00a0 There was once a time when real men and women were willing to state their opinions plainly, even if it meant they had to be “anti-” something, or actually mention the name of the thing they are supporting\/opposing.\u00a0 (I can respect the term “pro-life” when it is used as a catch-all term for “anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, and anti-death-penalty”, since in this case an abstraction is useful.\u00a0 Although I do support the death penalty myself.)<\/em><\/p>\n The term “pro-choice” is even more Orwellian, since it completely sweeps under the rug the nature of the choice being made, using a term so vague that it could just as well apply to e.g. school vouchers.\u00a0 <\/strong>Every decision to do anything can be characterized as a choice;\u00a0 the term avoids grappling with the fact that this choice involves killing one’s own flesh and blood.\u00a0 The usual argument against the term “pro-abortion” is that the proponents do not advocate that all<\/strong> women terminate their pregnancies.\u00a0 But that’s silly, because almost nobody wants that.\u00a0 Imagine if people who supported the death penalty refused the label because “we don’t believe that everyone<\/strong> should be executed, so we prefer the term “pro-justice”.\u00a0 Clarity is sacrificed in order to gain cheap points. If you’re wondering about the lack of posts recently: for the last 2\u00bd weeks I’ve been travelling on a research trip to Boston and Canada (to Waterloo, Montreal, and Vancouver).\u00a0 The sashimi in Vancouver is out of this world, by … Continue reading
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"