Heh, nice work. But I am not sure it was bad faith. It is consistent with bad faith, but there is another alternative explanation. Confirmation bias. I'd guess it never occurred to the Media Matters analyst to even check other outlets to do a comparison. I'd guess he found a pattern that fit his cynical view of Fox, and ran with it, without considering alternatives. I think it was Heinlein who said something like never attribute to malice that which is equally explained by incompetence. It does not make it any better, or the story any less pernicious. Of course, I do not have evidence that it is confirmation bias rather than bad faith. And I am not sure how one might tease them out in this type of situation.
Yes....great point! There is undoubtedly a confirmation bias component to this but I think the "running it without considering alternatives" idea leaves out two crucial facts. First, Media Matters does best (financially speaking) when it makes FOX News look its worst. They are, in other words, strongly incentivized against considering alternative explanations (which, in my view, is the essence of a "good faith" approach). As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Of course, this is not entirely inconsistent with a confirmation bias explanation but I think it starts to hint at a slightly different dynamic.
Second, Media Matters has been doing this 2004. If they were acting in "good faith," they would have institutionalized an approach to doing media analysis at this point that identifies trends across news outlets (with the hopes of identifying what truly makes FOX News's coverage unique).
I suppose what made this interesting to me was that it reminded me so much of some recent trends in academia (empirical analyses purporting to demonstrate the moral shortcomings of those on the right but failing to consider even the most obvious alternative explanations that would cast the behavior in question in an entirely different light).
Point taken, however. I should have mentioned confirmation bias!
Heh, nice work. But I am not sure it was bad faith. It is consistent with bad faith, but there is another alternative explanation. Confirmation bias. I'd guess it never occurred to the Media Matters analyst to even check other outlets to do a comparison. I'd guess he found a pattern that fit his cynical view of Fox, and ran with it, without considering alternatives. I think it was Heinlein who said something like never attribute to malice that which is equally explained by incompetence. It does not make it any better, or the story any less pernicious. Of course, I do not have evidence that it is confirmation bias rather than bad faith. And I am not sure how one might tease them out in this type of situation.
Yes....great point! There is undoubtedly a confirmation bias component to this but I think the "running it without considering alternatives" idea leaves out two crucial facts. First, Media Matters does best (financially speaking) when it makes FOX News look its worst. They are, in other words, strongly incentivized against considering alternative explanations (which, in my view, is the essence of a "good faith" approach). As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Of course, this is not entirely inconsistent with a confirmation bias explanation but I think it starts to hint at a slightly different dynamic.
Second, Media Matters has been doing this 2004. If they were acting in "good faith," they would have institutionalized an approach to doing media analysis at this point that identifies trends across news outlets (with the hopes of identifying what truly makes FOX News's coverage unique).
I suppose what made this interesting to me was that it reminded me so much of some recent trends in academia (empirical analyses purporting to demonstrate the moral shortcomings of those on the right but failing to consider even the most obvious alternative explanations that would cast the behavior in question in an entirely different light).
Point taken, however. I should have mentioned confirmation bias!