Liberal indoctrination in universities?

tatripp · May 17, 2019

First off, I am conservative. There is clear liberal bias at universities (especially public). I attended a state school in California and studied English. Most teachers, while super liberal, were at least very open to discussion. I almost never felt that I had to hide my opinions to get a good grade in class. I actually didn't mind their extreme liberal bias as long as they allowed counter opinions and taught their subject. I only had one teacher in undergrad who would not let me voice my opinion (even though I wasn't being obnoxious). I actually think university made me a better conservative. None of my liberal peers really had to think through any of it. My beliefs were constantly challenged, and I had to actually use reason to come to my conclusions.
My teaching credential was another story. That was complete indoctrination. One teacher was even teaching how we should be relativists (truth is relative) and everyone in class drank the KoolAid except for one other guy. I had to bite my tongue in each of those classes.

I also want to say that some majors are going to differ in their liberal bias. Math and science are going to be less political than the humanities. Gender and cultural studies are probably going to be indoctrination mills.

Superbronx · May 17, 2019

notimp said:
But they are, I dont know what might have happened in the US there, but the owners of much of the newspapers in my part of the world are conservatives, the owners of many if not most weekly political newspapers are as well. So to infer, that there is no conservative media out there ("we dont get to read breitbart on outside of breitbart?"), to me is just insane.
(And thats a bias that usually trickles down through corporate culture - so there is something to it there.)

I mean, the newspaper business has sucked as a business venture for years, so most owners tried to diversify as much as possible - and papers were dying left and right, and they are consolidated, and they now are under insane pressures. (I mean do you realize what it means, to have to file a story in half an hour instead of one or two days?). Maybe most conservative media owners simply exited the business? I dont know, you tell me. Its not an issue, where I am from.

Now, if you are insane enough to actually look for something like breitbart in conventional news, I'd say that you are a freaking victim. And if you dont trust media anymore, because a channel makes fun of your president, you are stil a dumb backwards, fool without an ability to differentiate, so tell me - which one is it.

There is still Bloomberg, the Economist is still out there, the Wall street journal certainly isnt left leaning. NBC afaik at least historically was center right.

Do some research for fracks sake - maybe start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_States#Conservative_bias

And if you are still complaining, that you dont hear breitbart stories on TV, the problem is you.

Now that said - if most of newsmedia is reporting on trending topics, and "whats popular with people" you can scratch that - because, thats low effort readings stuff off a newsfeed. Thats not even reporting, thats childplay - but then, the entire landscape has shiftet that way, because of time pressures (whose first on a story gets all the click money) - and thats consumers fault.

Newspapers newer took you for the idiotic fools, that you actually are. You will be surprised to find out the 10 shocking reasons.

I was primarily referring to television news networks in the states. Some of them in the past were closer to center but not today. Again, I believe if one were to research he would see that those who own those particular media outlets are left leaning. It has been some time since I investigated. I think 5 years or more.
Also I wasn't aware that some papers are conservative owned in the UK and possibly the states but with all of the more easily accessible, lazy man options for news today, how many people actually pick up a paper anymore? Unless they go the digital subscription route. Most people are so lazy and have the attention span of a child suffering from attention deficit disorder, they can barely keep their eyes on their facebook feed long enough to read that drivel.

Thank you for the advice, I shall indeed do some research into news papers but I am skeptical to say the least.

notimp · May 17, 2019

And all I tried to do over the past couple of postings is to pretty much tell people, that if they want to get their news from TV, that there is something inherently stupid to that. Less stupid than getting news from facebook, but still.

To give you some perspective.

Where I am from we have one national TV news network thats financed by the public, and wowed to be impartial. In essence though, political pressures through steering committees have always been there (not in a dictatorship - kind of way, but still), and all other news stations are privately owned, and basically followed the "people are stupid" model established by german private TV media in the early 1980s.

Some of them try to play in the news market, but always from a "lets make this ultra simple and stupid for you" angle.

So what should I say? We still have "the news", which coincidentally is attacked by the right wing (who's now in office), all the time for any piece of investigative questioning they do. Because the Trump model of telling people that media is the source of all evil, was so fucking successful all over the world, that any right wing party has picked it up all of a sudden.

Which hasnt changed the style of their reporting very much. But all right wingers says it has - and are now much more "fork and pickaxes -mob" about it, that when they still believed, that they shouldnt voice their moronic anti humanist sentiments in public.

And on top of that, I still learned by heart, that any real reporting - only comes from news papers, and maybe one out of 20 radio channels - thats also publicly financed - while 90% of people around me are never consuming that. At least not for anything that isnt their gossip headlines.

Do you hear me complain, that its so hard to get balanced reporting nowadays?

I know its hard to turn off the TV, but...

I mean, start watching the BBC (same publically financed model as in my country (served as the blueprint for many TV stations across europe)) if you must. At least that way you'll get a foreign angle, and also wont miss the most important developments, if you are from the US.

Its not hard.

BTW: Even John Oliver did a snippet in his weekly show, way back when they picked up on newspapers dying, that they - the show - get all their reporting from newspapers. Because - of course they do. Everyone else is presenting those stories second hand, usually - because its harder to carry around an entire production crew (today one person mainly - great podcast quality), care about shot, presentation, framing, sound, word pieces, live inserts, interview partners, AND do research (today one person mainly). So maybe stop complaining, that you dont have the right TV stations to watch anymore.

Because, in mass - we understand, that if you have a choice you still much rather prefer autoplay on youtube. Again - this is an issue that was caused by consumers - and that no one else is going to fix for them - because the economics arent there.

The Guardian (english left leaning newspaper), got into the positive revenue zone recently. Which was almost a miracle - because they - like everyone booked losses for years. And they did it with a deeper focus on opinion piece pandering to an audience that wants that. They became less of a quality paper. Now as long as it finances their actual in field reporting - by all means they should do it - but your complaining is entirely misplaced - no one told you you should hang out at breitbart, infowars, idiotic facebook groups, podcasts that promised you the "edgy angle" - or share f*cking fake news with your friends. At the same time you shared mirals of the US president made out of sausage - you all just did. Now you dont like your TV stations anymore. Well, cry me a river.

Then read some more of Trumps tweets, because someone certainly does. (If you want to get your news directly from the administration in office, you are kind of stupid as well. At least while at the same time complaining, that journalism isnt questioning gouvenrments enough these days.)

TV always goes, with whats out there, and somewhat easy to transport visually. I dont know why this should lead to much more of a liberal bias than in the past. In my country it didnt (in the US it might have) - but we certainly have our rightwingers complain, that it did. Because they simply copy what works, which is teaparty rhetorics leading into Trump.

Maybe also, because society shifted more to the right, and they didnt.

Questions?

Superbronx · May 17, 2019

notimp said:
Trump model of telling people that media is the source of all evil, was so fucking successful all over the world, that any right wing party has picked it up all of a sudden.

Lol you made laugh so hard I almost choked!

Yes I agree with you, if you are only going to sit and watch television news you deserve to be deceived but I also think that people need someone to wake them from their stupor. Tell them to get their nose out of their TV.
Your point about newspapers sounds very reasonable and a valid option. So anyhow, thank you, many things to consider from your posts in this thread.

Question : Anyone ever told you how long winded you are? Lol

What does the average temp member do? Sit at their PC all day doing nothing but reading the forums, deciding what interests them and replying plus constantly reading articles and fact checking? Oh my, there's never enough time in my day for such pursuits.

notimp · May 17, 2019

Not even 'deserve to be deceived' but simply - they take whats out there, usually without any additional research, condense it down to a 20 second voice clip with images (if you are not CNN), and have a TV anchor in a suit read it for you. (Older people love their blue eyes.) Then have correspondance networks, that position a journalist in front of the Eiffel tower, then read a news agency report. The quality of that is what it is. Seldomly its more than that.

What it served as in the past though is to be "the news", as in everything you needed for your watercooler moments. If we are talking about news business internals, and about how news gets produced, thats stuff, that maybe 90% of people arent interested in at all. All most people cared for, was to get what happend in the day in a 5-15 minute segment, when siting on the couch. Much of the details they instantly forgot (because news as a format doesnt provide a timeline context - and its hard to be on top of everything).

Now one thing happened, and that is higher visibility of fringe news networks. (No gatekeeper ("this is the news") anymore - people share what they like). Filterbubbles (in the extreme).

So people have those Watercooler moments, and all of a sudden realize, that the other person tells them something that sounds entirely different, than what they heard.

Something happened, something is strange - something is not they way its supposed to... (People who are most into sharing fake news stories, according to the factchecking networks? Older folks. (Without the - wait, something on the internet isn't true? Background.)) that worries people.

Then here comes the a little bit out there right (which at that point is politically rising, but dont have their people in news outlets yet), and starts to tell most of their folks, that the fake mainstream media only is telling lies. And guess what. Confirmation bias. This is what I've read in the stuff I like to read anyhow... Real conflict with whats presented in mainstream media. I am right, because of 4/5 stars I bought it, so it must be great.

And a rallying call to change something, and identify "your people":

Thats it pretty much.

By some stroke of luck, you caught out the mainstream media actually defending themselves, while using the word fake news (we are not fake news), which psychologically doesnt work (you dont hear the dont, and instead hear the fake news again).

And everytime they became self reflective ("maybe we were too much on the administrations line on this one...") you hit them even more - while they were loosing money - and you guys discovered alternative media for the first time. Because it came in your facebook feeds. (And facebook was taking much of the ad revenues.)

Now if you'd understood that it always was there, and so where entities like infowars (just not nearly as big), different story.

But literally, the media environment (income structure) was crumbling, while the public was bashing and hitting it - for little to no reason. (They didn't shift as fast to the right as the rest of society in europe, and probably the US thats correct.)

As a result you now have more concentrations, more mogul owned enterprises, more clickbait, less real journalism.

Hm.. Well.

Sorry?

chaoskagami · May 17, 2019

notimp said:
Thank you for your response. Its just everytime that i read something like that, I think religion..

Good news for you: That's not what I was intending.

In the 1600s or so the church served a purpose; educating the common folk, providing medicine, teaching morals etc. But we now have hospitals, educational facilities, and I'd like to think most people know right from wrong. The point is, religion is a historical relic and political tool. Nothing more. With all the scandals occurring in organized religion, I'm actually convinced it's more harmful to the human race than helpful at this point.

I'm not saying, that they are necessarily wrong - I'm just saying, that their actual arguments could be better. Now. Stuff like global warming can be tackled at summits, and when it comes to "fairer" taxation on certain classes or asset groups, I'll never believe, that those will become a thing. Politics has become too tame to tackle any structural economic issues.

(And the field where they 'might do' (somthing something, about something climate change), again - doesnt argue about this politicly or economically, but more so from another doctrine that includes "saving the world". So I'm at an automatic distance again.)

There should be more equal taxation, but that's neither here nor there. The USA would have to stop being an oligarchy first.

The truth is, the problem isn't the wealth gap. The problem is that these people at the top have effectively removed their money from circulation. If they would spend it, the problem of the wealth gap would be alleviated. It's not that 1% has 99% of the wealth that's the issue. It's that 99% of the wealth is fixed and removed from the circulation.

As for climate change, it's a fact that we need to make changes such as switching to non-carbon-emission energy sources. If we don't, we're going to render the Earth unlivable in a couple hundred years. Generations after us do in fact matter. It is not however, a "save the world" type of bullshit. It's a need for gradual improvement of how we do things so the human race doesn't have to make environment-controlled domes to live in.

Also, thank you for being pleasant to discuss with. I'm sick of ad hominem.

Regarding your later posts, Television news is the absolute worst place to get anything (aside from facebook.) Most of those newscasters don't even have any form of journalism degree, and sometimes even the person providing the script to them doesn't have one and is simply writing what the higher ups want them to.

Clydefrosch said:
the difference between todays journalist and past journalists is, that they weren't all under pressure to sell papers every single day at every single time. also there used to be more people filling one paper, now fewer people have to fill that same space. and there used to be pieces that were in the works for weeks too. now no matter how huge the incident may be, you need to have something out within minutes. so you throw 3 sentences on a website and keep expanding from there.

but that doesn't change that they were always biased one way or another. because no one is not biased. no one can be neutral. no text has ever been written neutrally. it's literally impossible.

As someone whose mother was an "old" journalist, I'd like to point out this is wholly correct. A lot of modern "journalism" is really just regurgitating what the higher ups tell you to, and iterating off available information on the internet. Not chasing stories and investigating on your own.

osaka35 said:
Having a diverse opinions is important, but it's not a diversity thing if someone is only contributing bad information into the pool. Folks have got to be open to correcting their bad information, or else they just hide behind "but my opinion!". If it's a you vs them thing, then you've already lost. It's got to be a "what're the problems, what're the goals, how do we measure success, and what are our options for getting there together" or we're boned. "Informed diversity" is far more important than "all voices are equal, regardless of the how factual they are".

This. More people than ever on both sides are stuck in an echo chamber where any opinion that isn't theirs is wrong. What they fail to realize is that opinions are only valid so long as the basis for them is sound. False information is something to be corrected, not spread.

Liberal indoctrination in universities?

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

G̷̘̫̍̈́̊̓̈l̴̙͔̞͠i̵̳͊ţ̸̙͇͒̓c̵̬̪̯̥̳͒͌̚h̵̹̭͛̒̊̽̚

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum