[Winstonm]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...rack-Obama.html

Quote

Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Ms Dunn said "the reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party".

She said the White House would not be a "passive bystander" as opponents try to "tear down the president and his presidency."

"We will push back," she said.

[kenberg]

As a teenager I bought a book on tennis. The advice was: The answer to power is spin, the answer to spin is power. To update this a bit, the answer to spin is a straightforward explanation of intent that will stand up to analysis. Some people (birthers for example) are beyond the reach of rational thought. Hopefully, most people can appreciate a steady approach that looks even better when subjected to scrutiny. If this is not the case, we are doomed. Having government by the people only makes sense if you are willing to put a reasonable amount of trust in people.

[luke warm]

was ms. dunn speaking of anything in particular, or just fox news in general?

[jdonn]

kenberg, on Oct 13 2009, 08:53 AM, said:

As a teenager I bought a book on tennis. The advice was: The answer to power is spin, the answer to spin is power.

How could those both possibly be true?

[kenberg]

Surely they can both be true, if understood as I am sure they were intended. If a player is a spin player, don't try to outspin him, ram it down his throat. If a player is powerful, keep him offguard by spinning. The advice does not predict who will win but rather what your best approach is. And so it is in the matter at hand. If Obama tries to outspin Fox, he will end by making himself as bad a source of information as they are. If people come to believe that what he says is actually what is true he may well prevail. No guarantees, but surely it his best approach. Right now I would say that he is seen as giving extremely good, or at least extremely strong speeches. If what he says in these speeches plays out to be true, he will do very well. I would say the jury is still out.

[nigel_k]

I haven't watched US network TV for ages though it always seemed to me that people like Dan Rather had at least as much left-wing bias as Fox has right-wing bias. I did see just the other day Wolf Blitzer thought it was a good use of his show to 'fact-check' a Saturday Night Live comedy skit because it made fun of Obama. Which seems an odd thing to do without political motives. Then you have the major papers, especially the New York Times which I think any fair-minded person can see favours the Democrats. Anyway I'm not sure completely centrist media is desirable or even possible.

[jdonn]

kenberg, on Oct 13 2009, 03:19 PM, said:

Surely they can both be true, if understood as I am sure they were intended. If a player is a spin player, don't try to outspin him, ram it down his throat. If a player is powerful, keep him offguard by spinning.

I still think they can't both be true. If you are spinning and I'm hitting with power we can't both be using the best strategy for us. That's like saying if I switch to being a spin player and you remain as a spin player we will both do worse than before, but of course that's impossible since if one of us does worse then the other does better.

Normally I would apologize for a hijack, but in a discussion about Fox News I feel no guilt.

[awm]

In answer to Josh's post, I think they can both be true.

The idea would be something like:

(1) If the two players use the same strategy, then the player who is better at that strategy will almost always win.

(2) If the two players use different strategies, then the result is fairly random.

Thus it follows that if I am a better spinner and you are better at hitting for power, we should each play to our strength. Switching strategies would cause either of us to lose.

If you're better at both aspects of the game, then you want us to be playing the same strategy and I want us to be playing different strategies. Then we may get into randomized choices or some sort of adaptive/predictive technique over multiple rallies.

The trick is to view a "spin player" as a player who is very good at spinning rather than as a player who just happens to be spinning on a particular shot. I think this is the way the advice was intended.

[Jlall]

jdonn are you being serious?!

[Jlall]

awm, on Oct 13 2009, 03:52 PM, said:

In answer to Josh's post, I think they can both be true.

The idea would be something like:

(1) If the two players use the same strategy, then the player who is better at that strategy will almost always win.

(2) If the two players use different strategies, then the result is fairly random.

Thus it follows that if I am a better spinner and you are better at hitting for power, we should each play to our strength. Switching strategies would cause either of us to lose.

If you're better at both aspects of the game, then you want us to be playing the same strategy and I want us to be playing different strategies. Then we may get into randomized choices or some sort of adaptive/predictive technique over multiple rallies.

The trick is to view a "spin player" as a player who is very good at spinning rather than as a player who just happens to be spinning on a particular shot. I think this is the way the advice was intended.

Why can't it just be something simple like this.

One player hits first. They must choose to hit either power or spin.

In reply, the best reply to power is spin. The best reply to spin is power. Then the cycle begins since they are the best reply to each other.

Replying to spin with spin puts you at a disadvantage since the first spin shot has the advantage in that match. Likewise replying to power with power puts you at a disadvantage since the first power shot has the advantage.

This is not contradictory at all or even tricky.

[Jlall]

jdonn, on Oct 13 2009, 03:27 PM, said:

kenberg, on Oct 13 2009, 03:19 PM, said:

Surely they can both be true, if understood as I am sure they were intended. If a player is a spin player, don't try to outspin him, ram it down his throat. If a player is powerful, keep him offguard by spinning.

I still think they can't both be true. If you are spinning and I'm hitting with power we can't both be using the best strategy for us. That's like saying if I switch to being a spin player and you remain as a spin player we will both do worse than before, but of course that's impossible since if one of us does worse then the other does better.

Normally I would apologize for a hijack, but in a discussion about Fox News I feel no guilt.

If you spin as an opening shot, and spin as a countershot and I do the same then whoever is better wins.

However, if you are choosing to spin as an opening shot and spin as a countershot, and I am spinning as an opening shot and using power as a countershot (since you are spinning as an opener), I am using a better strategy than you and will have an edge in that area.

If you switch to spinning in response to my spin, and opening with power, I can switch to a spin countershot and again I have an edge in that area.

So all you are doing by spinning as a countershot to my spin is giving me an edge because it's a worse strategy. I am still adjusting to your opening shots whatever you do.

In addition if I spin and then you spin as a countershot I am now going to switch to power as a countercountershot. Again I have the edge.

If we are both playing optimally then I will open with either power or spin, and you reply the opposite and i reply the opposite etc etc and neither of us has an edge and the better overall player will win. If one deviates from this they are giving the other player an edge.

edit: and obviously the only time it would be right to deviate from this strateg and give them an edge is if you are MUCH better at either power or spin, or if they are much weaker at one. In the first case their real edge is actually being more versatile than you manifesting like this, in the second case you are exploiting their weakness giving yourself an edge. But this shows that if everything is equal it can easily be optimal to return power with spin and spin with power.

[jjbrr]

Federer could be the best tennis player of all time imo

[crazy4hoop]

Seems like all these news channels, especially the ones on cable, seem to just tell their audiences want they want to hear rather than just report the news and let the viewer decide. Anyone not guilty of this? Maybe PBS with the McNeil/Lehrer news hour or whatever the name is? Maybe BBC America? Any ideas out there as to who is good at reporting without a slant? I sure don't have any.

[awm]

It does seem like the old-school reporters used to do more fact-checking. They would try report what was actually going on in the world, although obviously it's impossible to totally keep from interjecting opinions on that.

The difference is that now, an awful lot of the news cycle is contained by "he said -- she said" type stories. The news is that Sarah Palin said health care reform will include death panels, or that the whitehouse denied the allegation of death panels. The reporters do very little investigation as to whether the death panel charge is actually true -- it's just a story about who said what to whom.

Basically, they give some amount of time to each side of the argument. Which side gets more time has a lot to do with the biases of the station and the reporter. Very little time is taken actually discussing the underlying truths or dismissing the crazy side for being crazy. It's just a faceoff.

These days fact-checking is left to sites like factcheck.org and politifact.org. Probably the people working at these sites have some political bias too, but they are trying to just determine the truth. On the rare occasions that mainstream news cares about the truth, they frequently just reference these sites.

Often the problem is that in the past, everyone had more or less the same set of facts and they argued about what to do based on those facts. Now the right and the left are not working from the same set of facts. No wonder the arguments become increasingly shrill.

[jdonn]

I was serious, but I admit now what I wrote seems stupid for several reasons that I won't bother admitting to.

I agree with what the White House says about Fox News, but I really don't agree with what they are doing. I think it only empowers the station and its followers.

[Gerben42]

I think it's extremely hard to do unbiased reporting in a country as divided as the United States. Not only is it hard, in the current fast world the viewers expect news all the time, and that leaves less and less time for fact checking. So I'm not surprised about this.

By the way, currently a similar thing is happening in Germany where the liberal and the christian democrat parties are on one side and the two socialist parties are on the other side, with a 5th green party somewhere between the two fires but with their own unrealistic ideas as well.

Personally I am very happy about the election results in Germany but the socialist, left and green parties seem to fear the worst for the next 4 years and in fact they even tried an American-style election campaign, trying to make people afraid of a liberal-christian democrat government.

[mike777]

no matter how divided the usa is......basic reporting should be basically easy.....simple.

Not any harder than....1700's...better than....1800's and 1900's.

[mike777]

btw.....Americans ...me ...have no idea what Europe means by:


1) socialist party
2) green party
3) Liberal party

usa does not understand...demo party from rep. party....


I mean everyone in America against pollution....nazis.....fascists......

In america...everyone for helping the starving poor

[jjbrr]

mike777, on Oct 14 2009, 02:31 AM, said:

In america...everyone for helping the starving poor

what? was this sarcasm?

[luke warm]

jjbrr, on Oct 14 2009, 09:28 AM, said:

mike777, on Oct 14 2009, 02:31 AM, said:

In america...everyone for helping the starving poor

what? was this sarcasm?

mike can speak for himself, but i think he was serious... i don't know anybody who is *not* for helping the starving poor (or young, or old, or anyone else)