General News Reporters openly side against Indiana law

What did you want to have happen? The reporters should have used quotes?

 

Reporters are people, and are allowed to have opinions as well. There has been plenty of factual reporting on the law already, so now they are showing their opinions on it. The mass media is an important tool in making sure that laws like these fail. Having these organizations on our side helps us a ton in the battle against anti-LGBT laws.

 

From the article the OP cited above, the following extract is to be noted:

The above suggests that the federal 1993 RFRA that Clinton signed and the one that was just signed last week in Indiana are essentially the same. They are not the same in two very important ways:

1) After the Supreme court Hobby Lobby case, where a corporation can somehow hold a religious belief, the Indiana law also now defines a "person" as:

2) the original RFRA was to address a complaint between a plaintiff and the government, not between individuals, the Indiana RFRA can leave the government out of it.

The article you cited does nothing to clarify the distinctions above, so I would have to ask: how biased is that?

 

Accusing reporters of bias based on an article from the Washington examiner is an amusing spectacle. The entire enterprise is founded on pushing the views of its owner, the very conservative and expressly anti lgbt, Philip Anschutz.

He was a driving force behind colorados amendment 2, for Petes sake.

 

Um. You do realize that attempting to conflate private enterprises with Communism (at least that seems to be what you are doing with the 'comrade' wording) is something of a positional oxymoron, right?

And if you want a truly massive example of a corporation delivering biased news coverage, while simultaneously strutting its conservative, 'all-American' street cred, you'd be hard pressed to beat Fox News...

Todd

 

It is anti gay sentiment which is the inspiration for and denial of rights to gays the purpose of this law. I think there does need to be a distinction between news and opinion but I think it's pretty much factual to call the law anti gay.

Maybe the article should make a better case for why it isn't an anti gay law then they'd sound more credible whinging about how it is being mischaracterised. But that would obviously be quite hard..

 

The law is factually anti-gay and was motivated by anti-gay positions and pushed by anti-gay lobbyists and enacted by anti-gay politicians.

This law doesn't need to say "and then we kill all the fags" to be anti-gay any more than Jim Crow laws didn't have to expressly spell out that they targeted black people to be anti black people.

 

Yes, and this law targets gays. But it doesn't say "this is to get the fags" just like Jim crow laws didn't say "this is to get the niggers". It's not "biased" to point out the effects of the law.

You are arguing that calling this law anti gay is somehow an example of scandalous media bias. I think the actual fact that it's anti gay is germane to assessing the coverage of the law.

 

Giving each side a level playing field when they are not level is not accurate reporting. It gives a false equivalence. One side is talking out of their backside and one side is making sensible points.

 

The role of reporters is to make commentary and decipher what might be incomprehensible for the public, not dish out canned press releases without criticism. They pick apart lies, bring context to individual points and cut through misleading statements that would be given a free pass without relentless journalism.

Neutrality is not about passing a message; that gives the upper hand to whoever is spewing such drivel. Good journalism is about analysing that message and displaying what it most likely is intended to mean, what it sets out to do.

 

As I recall, Republicans spent a lot of time screaming about how Obamacare would cause the End of Days, the destruction of civilization, and much else, none of which has happened (or did I miss a memo?).

Their whining about 'unelected bureaucrats controlling your healthcare' is utter nonsense. I work in the benefits industry (second cousin to the insurance industry) and nobody in either is elected (or accountable to the general public) in any way.

As far as 'keeping your insurance if you like it', insurance companies have been killing policies and denying coverage for nearly as long as I've been alive (possibly longer). Indeed, it was that very tendency on the part of some insurance companies that helped drive the push to some form of government healthcare. Acting as though this is somehow a new thing or a surprise is silly, at best. I would also be fascinated to know how many of these people actually ever tried to use their insurance for anything.

The Repubs also failed to ever explain why it is, if 'socialized medicine' is the gateway to all civil rights being revoked, that virtually every other industrialized democracy on the planet has some form of it - yet somehow you never hear about how horrible things are living under such awful and freedom destroying oppression. Actually, perhaps we could ask people here:

For those EC members who live in a country suffering under the yoke of having your medical care taken care of or regulated by the government - how do you get through each day? Do the death squads come at random, or are they on a regular schedule? Have you ever thought of trying to escape to the US? If not, why not?

Todd

 

The reference to US healthcare reform is pretty feeble. The topic is whether or not the media are, as a matter of journalistic ethics, required to behave as though what counts as anti-gay is controversial. Should the press be required to use scare quotes when they call something anti-gay? No, unless they are quoting someone.

As a matter of ethics, they are required to label activities that are discriminatory as they are: discriminatory.

I would regard it as a stain on any political philosophy if it acknowleges that reasonable people can disagree on matters of sexual ethics. Reasonable people absolutely cannot disagree about such matters.

~ Adrienne