Political Forum Civility

I recently made the mistake of commenting on a post over at NewsBusters. I asked for someone to provide evidence for a statement they made and provided links to PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org articles indicating that their statement was false. It turned out that they were making a more general comment than I was refuting with my links, but the initial reaction of the individual was to call me a jerk and question my intelligence. Other responders accused PolitiFact and FactCheck of being liberally biased or accused me of being someone who I assume was kicked off the forums in the past.

I spent a good two hours researching my responses to everything, which probably doesn't surprise anyone who has read some of my past entries, especially this one. No one else did much in the way of research that I could see. They spent most of their time calling each other names, insulting various people's intelligences, and/or making vague statements and insisting that they are obviously true. It was quite maddening. However, this got me thinking about how to improve the system.

It seems to me that the entire situation, or at least my involvement in it, could have been avoided if the original statement in question had been backed up with evidence to begin with. And wouldn't it be nice if every forum post was thoroughly evidenced? When it takes half an hour to research a response, it is very unlikely that you'll make said response include a personal attack. Why is that? Because it wouldn't fit in with the tone of a research paper. The other forum members would have also spent half an hour researching each of their comments, so there would be a shared experience and the understanding and empathy that goes along with that. Finally, it's very difficult to sustain anger for thirty minutes of reading about policy. Thus, I think the discourse would start, and remain, civil.

Then, with all these informative links being included, perhaps something could get resolved. First, the validity of various links and/or the arguments therein could be established. One pattern that would emerge pretty quickly is that people bring up the same articles as evidence over and over again. Some would be agreed to be accurate, and others would be shown to be flawed. The forum could be tied to a database of links and their truthiness rating. The comments would then have the links color coded using some well-established and meaningful color code. The only problem remaining is how to decide on the truthfulness of the links. Which, of course, is a huge problem, as evidenced by people dismissing PolitiFact and FactCheck as biased. (I am not saying for certain that they aren't, but no one has yet shown me solid evidence that they are.)

So, anyone have any other ideas on how to keep online political (or other) discussion civil and informative? Perhaps more importantly, does anyone have any idea on how we can at least agree on the facts?

Dangerous Fox vs Invaluable Olbermann and Maddow: Part II

In my last entry, I went over the negative sides of the implication that the White House was incorrect in calling Fox News dangerous while praising Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow as invaluable was false. I looked at a sample of NewsBusters articles on Rachel Maddow, and listed the arguments Media Matters made for Fox News being dangerous. The Fox News part stands on its own. Unfortunately, in order to make a decision on Rachel Maddow, you'll have to combine these two posts and weigh the NewsBusters articles against her videos below. For Keith Olbermann, I have only listed a few videos, which can't be weighed against any NewsBusters articles. As I mentioned on Monday, their search feature was removed. It has since reappeared, so perhaps I will write a Part III, but probably not. If you have good examples of Olbermann being less than invaluable, share them in the comments of Part I!

• Maddow exposes ridiculousness of Liz Cheney's ad about the "Al Qaeda Seven"
• Maddow on GOP blocking successful jobs program
• Maddow exposes James O'Keefe as a dishonest journalist, if you can call him that
• Maddow covers the BP oil spill
• Maddow explains Obama Nobel Peace Prize and Obama Derangement Syndrome
• Maddow highlights how politics can be interesting thanks to Anthony Weiner
• Maddow's segment on a homosexual cure's influence in Uganda [and her interview with Richard Cohen the next day]
• Olbermann discusses "Ground Zero Mosque"
• Olbermann on Shirley Sherrod and those responsible, including the White House
• Olbermann highlights teen charged $2700 for saving drowning person
• Olbermann apologizes for going over the top, featuring The Daily Show

I found at least a few of the above videos invaluable, personally. This is by no means an exhaustive list of good segments. It is much harder to browse video clips than blog posts, currently. It also doesn't include (many) segments that show them being vindictive, save that last one. Anyway, do you have other favorite clips from The Rachel Maddow Show or Countdown with Keith Olbermann? Share them below in the comments!

Dangerous Fox vs Invaluable Olbermann and Maddow: Part I

As I mentioned in my post on looking for conservative facts, I've been reading the NewsBusters blog. They've taken issue with Barack Obama calling Fox News dangerous while White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton called Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow invaluable. I decided to investigate a bit. First, let's look at what each side has to say about the other.

I'll start with NewsBusters' articles about Rachel Maddow, since I was already at the site. NewsBusters' search is done using a Google custom search, so this is effectively random stories. Because of this randomness, I wanted a good sample size, so this is approximately two pages worth:

• Maddow guest rationalizes Fort Hood shooter's actions
• Maddow repeats allegations from Olbermann interview as fact
• Maddow is vulgar for using "tea bagging" to describe Tea Party
• Maddow misleadingly claims to be a talk radio show host after leaving her program, but still being rebroadcast on the radio
• Maddow falsely claims Supreme Court struck down Arizona campaign finance equalizer and that she unfairly attacked Sharron Angle for opposing the fluoridation of drinking water
• Maddow gets paid a lot for rebroadcast rights to her show, and is apparently late on delivering for a book deal
• Maddow is incorrect in saying democrats aren't unified enough
• Maddow unfairly/hypocritically criticizes John Stossel for opining on Fox and advocating for conservative issues
• Beck claims Maddow lied when she said he claimed snow storms disprove global warming [I have to note here that Maddow responded with even more evidence]
• Maddow is more liberal than Ann Coulter
• Maddow is hypocritical in calling Fox News "not a news station" for promoting Tea Party protests while she and Olbermann promoted free clinics to pressure senators
• Maddow didn't fully understand what Dick Armey was referring to
• Maddow guest proposes that Biden be set free to say things Obama can't
• Maddow is liberal despite what Pelosi says, as evidenced by Maddow's softball interview of Pelosi
• Maddow is not helping the tone of politics
• Maddow distorts Jindal's comments on hurricane Katrina response
• Maddow complains that NewsBusters article was intimidating [actually, Maddow was saying that the PR firm Shirley & Banister was trying to intimidate - not NewsBusters directly, though they were a willing participant]
• Maddow plans to link McVeigh and current-day right-wing extremists
• Maddow isn't called liberal enough in Washington Post article

So, Rachel Maddow is liberal, possibly distorts a fact on her show every once in awhile, is liberal, makes lots of money, is liberal, possibly hypocritical, and is liberal. This is what NewsBusters has to say about Rachel Maddow at random times. I have to say that I wasn't too terribly impressed. NB's recent site redesign does not include a search box anymore, and this post is very long (for me) already. Consequently, I'll be skipping Keith Olbermann articles. It should be noted that Keith Olbermann is probably a more divisive figure, though.

Contrast that to what MediaMatters has to say about Fox News. MediaMatters has wonderful search functionality, and they regularly do issue-summary articles, so I didn't have to do a random sampling at all.

• MediaMatters agrees that Fox is Dangerous
• Fox News features race-baiting, birtherism, religious smears
• Fox News is anti-immigrant, using derogatory rhetoric, fear mongering, and falsehoods
• Fox's history of attacking Islam
• Fox is central to the "Ground Zero Mosque" manufactured story with biased coverage
• Fox's inaccurate economic coverage, including a war on the poor
• Fox is known to make up news, which links to this summary of Fox problems from 2009
• Fox is a GOP microphone, with more examples listed here, and
• Fox's parent company donated directly to GOP organizations
• Fox has a history of violent rhetoric, especially Glenn Beck, as further evidenced by
• Beck referencing Nazis 202 times, Hitler 147 times, fascism 193 times, Goebbels 24 times, socialism 802 times

Fox's dangerousness is pretty well documented by MediaMatters. It's a rare day when most every major program on Fox doesn't have an article or blog post on it. Most of those entries are related, showing a long history of coordinated efforts at presenting their agenda, often with disputed facts and other problems.

With the negative stuff out of the way, I'll explore the other half of the argument in my next entry: Does Maddow (and/or Olbermann) provide any sort of invaluable service? In the meantime, please comment below if you have more and/or better examples of Maddow (or Olbermann) being bad, or of Fox being dangerous. If you disagree with my characterization of any of these links, or the opinions therein, then please enlighten me!

Health Care Reform: Federal Funding of Abortions

I realize I'm a bit late to this party, but while researching for another blog post, I read this article accusing Maddow of lying about abortion funding over at NewsBusters.

Count me as a fan of the cite-the-page-numbers trick as well. I'm especially enamored of what's in the section of the Senate health bill immediately preceding the one cited by Maddow (follow this link for the bill; see page 2,071) The section is titled as follows, with capitalized letters in the original -- "ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS ALLOWED".

As in, public funding for abortions. Once again, a la Maddow -- public funding for abortions. A third time, in case she still misses it -- P-U-B-L-I-C F-U-N-D-I-N-G F-O-R A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N-S.

Gee, where would Congressman Stupak get that impression?

Who knows, maybe the section cited by Maddow trumps the one I'm referring to. The bill is written in such dense legalese that only high clergy of the courts would be able to decipher it and they wouldn't agree on the language either. [emphasis removed because copy/and paste doesn't keep boldness and I didn't want to add "[emphasis in original]" editor's notes]

I went ahead and visited the pdf link and went to page 2070-2071:

(A) IN GENERAL. — Notwithstanding any other provision of this title (or any amendment made by this title) —
    (i) nothing in this title (or any amendment made by this title), shall be construed to require a qualified health plan to provide coverage of services described in subparagraph (B)(i) or (B)(ii) as part of its essential health benefits for any plan year; and
    (ii) subject to subsection (a), the issuer of a qualified health plan shall determine whether or not the plan provides coverage of services described in subparagraph (B)(i) or (B)(ii) as part of such benefits for the plan year.
(B) ABORTION SERVICES.—
    (i) ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS PROHIBITED.—
The services described in this clause are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is not permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved.
    (ii) ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS ALLOWED.—
The services described in this clause are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved.

I'm not a "high clergy of the court" but I think I deciphered it without much trouble. Paragraph (A)(i) states that abortion coverage is not required by any health plan. Paragraph (A)(ii) says that the plan issuer has the responsibility of determining what abortion coverage is included in the plan. This has consequences in the next section which describes how payment for such coverage must be separately accounted for such that no Federal funds are used for abortion coverage - unless specifically allowed. What does it mean for abortions to be allowed/prohibited from using Federal funds? That is described in the next two paragraphs. Rather, it is referenced in those paragraphs. This legislation does not alter the existing abortion funding laws. It just states that when determining how abortions are classified for funding purposes, the law as stated six months prior to the plan year shall be used. This gives time for lawyers to go over existing law, brochures to be printed and distributed, etc. It makes perfect sense to me.

So, Rachel Maddow was much more correct in her analysis than NewsBusters was. For those curious, current Federal abortion funding is based mostly on the Hyde Amendment. This allowed federal funding for abortions only in the case of rape, incest, or life endangerment. Others, more credible than I, have also verified that the health reform legislation did not increase federal funding of abortion.

Looking For Conservative Facts

I like reading most of the articles on Media Matters for America. They have a nice format where they will outline the claim(s) of some conservative, then detail some facts in rebuttal. In addition to factual errors, they'll discuss biased reporting, misleading on-screen graphics, or anything else they take issue with. There is apparently enough misinformation out there for them to write several research articles and several blog posts a day.

The blog posts, incidentally, are less fun to read. They often use name calling in their arguments and are lighter on the facts. It's where the quicker and smaller updates happen, though, so I still give them a read most of the time.

Media Matters is definitely a liberal website. For example, almost all of their articles are debunking claims made on Fox News. I don't think this is a complete picture of the world. I'd really like to hear conservatives countering liberal reporting with supporting facts.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find those facts. The closest thing I've been able to find is the Media Research Center. Mostly, their articles are just reporting that some reporting was done, and we are supposed to recognize the liberal bias - somehow. They rarely counter with facts, which is a bit disappointing. There's also NewsBusters.org (a project of the Media Research Center), but that has the same problem of being light on facts.

Maybe that's just the way things are, currently. Perhaps liberals have facts to back up their positions - or at least tear down the opposition, and conservatives just complain that reporting they don't like is liberal. But there have to be some facts somewhere, right?

Amazingly enough, the best source I've found for "liberal-media" bashing is The Daily Show. However, most of their media bashing is showing the ridiculousness of the reporting and not usually an issue with the facts or arguments. Except when they cover Fox News.

FactCheck.org is useful in fact checking politicians, but they rarely cover the media directly, so they are usually only active around election time. They do an excellent job of remaining impartial, though. FiveThirtyEight does an excellent job of discussing political bias in polls, among other things, but this only helps indirectly. I know that Rasmussen tends to favor conservatives, so Fox News uses it a lot, but there aren't always matching polls from other institutions readily available to compare to.

Which is another problem entirely - facts themselves are often biased. People choose the poll with the results they want to report. Conservative think tanks will make certain assumptions in their studies to yield facts that support the conservative point of view. I imagine there are probably some liberal think tanks that are similarly biased in their studies, but there doesn't appear to be anyone calling them out on it. So, I humbly ask for help. Where do you go when you want to be informed (with facts) on the conservative side of things, and how can you trust those facts?