• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Ed One more Sanford thread: Rush L. - Obama made him do it...

For you to be right, it would be the most poorly executed conspiracy on earth.
You're the only one asserting conspiracy in this thread. I see no conspiracy at all. I do see a pattern of behavior and draw a conclusion from it that you disagree with. Great. As I and others have noted, this conclusion is sooo easy to blow away yet you seem to be unwilling or unable to do it. I'm happy to admit to confirmation bias if you'll just give me enough evidence to do so.
 
Why don't you stick yours on your keyboard and offer up some evidence for your position? I have no doubt that a caption maker may occasionally try to tweak people by making intentional "typos". However, that would be beyond the realm of skeptical inquiry since it would require psychic powers.

Please provide some evidence of this great conspiracy you see though. How many "disgraced" republicans has Fox gotten the D/R wrong on versus the number of disgraced republicans it has broken news on? I see Arlen Specter and John McCain listed as part of the pattern, but neither or these men were being scandalized at the time.

They got Sanford wrong. Did they get Ensign wrong? What is the wrong/right count?

Um, did you miss the crap ton of links? People posted them, people referred to them, and you yourself talked about them.

Why don't you offer up some evidence for your position. I told you what it would look like, right up above. It's NOT OCCURING. Believe me, Fox News LOVES Democrat scandals, and there's been a few. Where's Blagojevich being labeled (R)? Sandy Berger? Gary Condit? Ted Kennedy?

You have years and years and years of Fox News to pull from. And... it's... not... there.

And I ALSO provided the other option, finding other news sources doing similar things.

You can't do that. I mean we had miles of news about Blagojevich. God only knows how much. And... I don't see him with an (R). Huh.

So knock yourself out. Cry, make up bad lyrics, complain about persecution and conspiracy theorists. But you ain't gonna be providing the evidence I asked for, because it's not there. Double checking this stuff is second nature to media outlets.
 
Um, did you miss the crap ton of links? People posted them, people referred to them, and you yourself talked about them.

Why don't you offer up some evidence for your position. I told you what it would look like, right up above. It's NOT OCCURING. Believe me, Fox News LOVES Democrat scandals, and there's been a few. Where's Blagojevich being labeled (R)? Sandy Berger? Gary Condit? Ted Kennedy?

You have years and years and years of Fox News to pull from. And... it's... not... there.

And I ALSO provided the other option, finding other news sources doing similar things.

You can't do that. I mean we had miles of news about Blagojevich. God only knows how much. And... I don't see him with an (R). Huh.

So knock yourself out. Cry, make up bad lyrics, complain about persecution and conspiracy theorists. But you ain't gonna be providing the evidence I asked for, because it's not there. Double checking this stuff is second nature to media outlets.

It is your claim. I just called you on not having any evidence to back it up. I don't have a claim.

If you need more info on how skeptical inquiry works, feel free to PM me.
 
The only claim I can see on this issue is that Fox News occasionally screws up the party in their ticker line, and that when they do, it is most often to label a Republican (often a controversial Republican) as a Democrat. There have been several examples (i.e. evidence) of this posted. As such, this claim remains unrefuted, as there have been, thus far, no examples provided of instances when Fox News mislabels a controversial Democrat as a Republican.

I don't claim that Fox does this on purpose, but the evidence (so far) clearly shows that they are more likely to err in one direction than another. It's not that big a deal.
 
This reminds me of one of my favorite entries on FSTDT:

Look, this really doesn't surprise me after finding out the truth about the whole Foley scandal. We've seen this kind of behavior before from their party, we know what they're capable of. Lord knows that Clinton was an embarrassment to their party, and so was Gerry Studds. Heck, he was even elected again after his scandal. But it looks like they've learned their lesson after these two mistakes, and forced Foley to resign.

Foley was just the beginning. I predict that within the next few weeks we will see more ousted democrats because of their deviant behavior. The American people will not tolerate it, nor do our children deserve this kind of half-handed leadership. We can do better. The question now is, do we allow these injustices to continue happening? We know of the dangers of homosexuality and liberalism, but why do we keep electing these people in the hopes that we will get something different? This is just one more reason why I support homosexuals be registered to the sex offenders list...yet they continue to get special treatment and avoid the hassles that other known sexual deviants have to go through.

My heart goes out to Dennis Hasert. He should be awarded for the courage it took to oust Foley. But whatever, no good deed goes unpunished. He ousted a pedophile and just because that pedophile happened to be a democrat, we see them all flocking to Foley's defense. Demanding that Hasert resign.
 
As of yet, I have only seen the 7 cases (linked to earlier) where the incorrect R -> D switch has been made.

Assuming that there are only 7 instances of such occurrences on FOX, and that these are genuine mistakes, then the likeliest scenario is when there have been 3 R->D switches, and 4 D->R switches. Or 4 R->D switches, and 3 D->R switches.

So, assuming that:

1 - There are only 7 such erroneous switches; and

2 - These switches are arbitrary,

The likelihood of all 7 being R->D switches is calculated by:

C(7,0) / C(7,3)

which is 1/35 (≈ 0.02857)

(That is, the chances of all switches being in the same direction is 1/35 times as likely as a roughly equal number of switches in each direction - which is what we would expect if these errors were arbitrary.)

This probability is slightly more unlikely than getting heads on 5 consecutive tosses.

Note: For comparative purposes, if there were 8 such erroneous switches, 7 being R->D and 1 being D->R (or vice versa), then the corresponding likelihood would be: C(8,1) / C(8,4) which is 4/35 (≈ 0.1143)

Now 1/35 is a pretty small probability, but I would still be hesitant claiming that these were not arbitrary mistakes, since I personally don't see any benefit that FOX can attain from such changes. Unless it is some sort of inside joke or prank at the FOX news studio.
 
Ah, yes. That is one where I "struggled" for less than 20 minutes, which included time to read the link and compose a reply that pointed out that your "omitted context" was from an entirely different episode, which they also covered.


This is off topic anyway. If you ever come up with evidence for your claim, let me know.
 
Thanks for the calculation, photon. But the pattern (for me anyway) is not just the R/D switch alone but also that it seems to happen when an R is having trouble keeping his fly up (or her in the case of Cheneworth). To include that you'd have to make some assumptions on how many congresscritters are doing the nasty and what the probability of them getting caught. Because these estimates are so dicey, you could probably get whatever result you wanted. But it would certainly be less than 1/35.
 
Ah, yes. That is one where I "struggled" for less than 20 minutes, which included time to read the link and compose a reply that pointed out that your "omitted context" was from an entirely different episode, which they also covered.


This is off topic anyway. If you ever come up with evidence for your claim, let me know.

Your refusal to concede does not mean evidence was not provided.
 
Your refusal to concede does not mean evidence was not provided.
But apparently we've all missed it.

Please, will you do it again?

The question is this. Can you show that Fox have identified a scandalous Democrat (Blagojevich comes to mind) as a Republican; or can you show that non-Fox channels have mixed up (D) and (R) under the same circumstances?

Now, I think that Fox might be a victim of cherry-picking and "counting the hits", but let's see it be shown. Can you even pick one cherry from the other side of the tree?
 
I don't think anyone here is saying that Fox news is the vanguard of a massive conspiracy and their mislabeling of republicans and democrats is the proof. A pattern does not equal causation but a pattern is still a pattern none the less.

I don't know what percentage of the time they mislabel politicians but that it is always republicans in trouble labeled as democrats is, at the very least, evidence of mass stupidity within that organization.

Do any of the fox news defenders have a similar pattern in other news networks? Something to show that this pattern is not unique.
 
coprlinx, I'm waiting for your evidence, as well.

Also, McCain was not Fox's talking head's preferred candidate during the primaries, and when Spector and McCain were both labeled "D," they were not going along with the right wing's message.

Innocent typo? If a similar pattern of D under scandal => R could be found at Fox, or D agreeing with the right => R, then it would be more likely. Convince us.
 
It is your claim. I just called you on not having any evidence to back it up. I don't have a claim.

If you need more info on how skeptical inquiry works, feel free to PM me.

#3. #16. #23.

You've had ample time to review it. Skeptical inquiry, in corplinx land, apparently consists of ignoring the evidence then asking why there's no evidence that you haven't ignored.

But, wow, you do have the parrot thing down well. Can you do "Polly want a cracker?"
 
FOUND ONE!

Only it's CNN and there doesn't appear to be any negative connotations.

It was an easy mistake to make. In the 2006 election, Michael Steele was actively trying to trick people into thinking he was a Democrat, as Republicans were not popular at the time.

Here is a sign that was produced by his campaign, ostensibly for Democrats who were eager to cross party lines to vote for Michael Steele.
 

Attachments

  • steele-sign-democrat-blog.jpg
    steele-sign-democrat-blog.jpg
    20.8 KB · Views: 4
Oh, sure. Easily debunked evidence was certainly provided. Why would I concede your point when nothing you have provided shows your claim to be true?

You didn't debunk it. You just dismissed it because you won't concede that MMfA omits context that runs counter to the point they are trying to make.
 
You didn't debunk it. You just dismissed it because you won't concede that MMfA omits context that runs counter to the point they are trying to make.
uh, you need to re-read that thread. Not only was the "context" you are referring to provided by MM, you linked to it. Which is irrelevant, because your "context" was not contemporary to the item they were covering. Even more telling is that you failed to convince anyone of your point.

There is a fundamental problem with declaring yourself the winner of of a debate before you even hear a response to your point. You shut down any possibility that you might be wrong. That's called faith.



eta: But this old argument doesn't matter. It's a red herring. The question is whether or not Fox News' accidents are indeed accidents. Skeptic asserted that the errors go in both directions, but there is no evidence of that. Further, these accidents do not follow the randomness one would expect from simple, unintentional human error. It only seems to happen "R" to "D" and only when the person in question is doing something against the Republican grain, be it scandal or policy.

So, corp, you assert that this is a typo, a simple case of human error (again) on Fox News' part. Can you support that claim? By what mechanism would the human error be limited to a certain set of conditions like this?
 
Last edited:

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom