[Eco] BS on the BS

[Jonathan Grabert]

Heh, yeah, P&T's show is never about being a balanced look at the issues.  It's presenting their opinion (which, usually, is a good opinion).  However, the issues they take on are generally conventional wisdom issues.  Things that a significant portion of the population believes.  The show is about debunking those notions.  They're generally things about which a lot has already been published, so there's little need to present the "other side."  They usually are the other side.

So, yeah, the show is totally biased, and I think they're pretty up front about that.  :-)

Jonathan
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ginohn 
  To: rick at punk.net ; Eco Foundation Discussion List 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 12:08 PM
  Subject: Re: [Eco] BS on the BS


  On Jan 30, 2007, at 3:12 AM, Rick Castello wrote:


    [John Cooper wrote:]


      BTW, Penn Jillette is also a research

      fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank which

      publishes policy papers and press releases to further their agenda.)




         <snip>




         While I've heard the term conservative used as a dirty curse

         word before (and liberal!), I've never heard the word libertarian

         used with such distaste before!




  These were not meant as dirty curse words, I only repeated this phrase to point out how P&T's sources are all from one corner of the issue. I would be just as alarmed (and I hope I would have used similar wording, though it seems to have backfired) if all their data came from left-wing policy institutes that exist to further their own agenda. Sorry that I didn't make that clear.



  I actually agree with many of the Cato Institute's policies. I wouldn't be surprised if some people think of me as a social libertarian. I didn't mean those phrases to look defamatory, just repetitive, to get my point across. I was hoping for a few chuckles, really. Guess I failed in the message.


  Perhaps my mistake while watching P&T's show was in assuming that it included an attempt to gather data in an unbiased fashion. I realize now that they are actually just, um, having fun entertaining people with their show, and trying to spread their own gree-grees. At least they got me looking closely at the arguments for and against recycling, and investigation is a good thing. 


  If P&T had been more clear up front, and told their audience that practically all their support for their argument against recycling were going to come from political policy institutes, I would feel less swindled in the end. The fact that I had to dig for their sources, and that they gathered those sources from a small bandpass in the political spectrum indicates to me that P&T knew what they doing, and didn't want the viewers to catch on before they were sucked in to P&T's meme.


  :-j








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