evidence

I had a conversation with the roommate last night. He was surprised that liberals thought the main stream media was conservative, while he always believed it was left leaning. The interesting part was his argument: he appealed to Ted Turner and Warren Buffett. Two liberal-ish guys who own a bunch of media. Why interest would they have in a right-leaning media?

Think about that. What kind of argument is that? It's not a very good one, that's what kind it is. It's all speculative and deeply dependent on a naive, simplistic understanding of motivation and individual psychology. So I asked my roommate, how often he actually watches the news. Never, he said.

I don't think he got my point. Whatever one makes of the mainstream media, however much one's own biases and temperaments might skew interpretation, the first step towards a knowledge claim seems to involve evidence gathering. Especially relevant evidence; but even these evidences of ownership, however tangentially relevant, are just two facts. Actually being a regular news consumer seems to provide more, direct evidence.