"grazy" ??? not familiar with that one...

By grazy I mean the extreme paranoias that some vocal demonstrators have (death panels, anti-socialist paranoia). There are a lot of demonstrators with well-thought and logical objections but these extreme ones are the most visible ones as too often is the case. At least this is the case when occasionally surfing the web for information about what's going on there...

My view of the media coverage given to the demonstrations may be biased since I'm more interested in how these fringe groups and how they form and strengthen their opinions and their world view than the health care reform itself. Naturally, I look for different articles and blogs etc. than people who have a personal interest in the actual debate since my interest is in trying to understand a way of thinking and media culture that is somewhat different to the one here.

Well, it slips off the tongue easier than "wears-a-tinfoil-hat"...

So, as evidence that Fox News doesn't really report news: unofficial estimates (DC local authorities no longer to official estimates due to politicisation) of the 9/12 "Tea Party" protest were around 70,000. Fox News has been claiming (and continues to claim) numbers in excess of 1 million. While I am willing to accept that the 70,000 number might be off, I doubt it is off by over 24 times (Glenn Beck has been allowed to claim 1.7 million, was backed up by the anchors, and has not had to rescind on the number).

This is only one of many examples of Fox News blatantly reporting untruths that has caused so many people that don't watch Fox News to dismiss those that do as tragically un- and misinformed on a plethora of issues. "Fox News says" is a sure way to get your information dismissed in circles I frequent.

Apparently, that's not an uncommon misconception, although many have backed off of the millions claim. Apparently part of the issue was an completely inaccurate photo. Based on the description, the photo (which was taken in 1997) had almost 1 million people in it. The tea party event was significantly smaller.

On 14 Sep, Fox was only claiming tens of thousands in this article. They may be using other numbers elsewhere but I'm not sure where.

On the air. I saw it myself. He cited the "University of ... I don't remember."

Have some video.

Its disturbing how often I see videos of Beck doing things like that. I may have to watch his show sometime and see what the attraction is.

He's a tubby white dude. What's not to like?

Politicized crowd estimates are my turf. This happens every single year in Hong Kong. Every single year. Protest organizers claim 530,000, police claim 250,000. Organizers claim 80,000. Police claim 30,000. University estimates lie somewhere in the middle, but closer to the police estimate. There is fudging. There is dodgy methodology. Some people count how many times the football pitch at the start of the procession gets filled up, some count the people passing a midway point, some only count those who reach the finishing point.

But the thing is, in so many years of conflicting figures, nobody's figures have ever diverged as widely as 70,000 and 1.7 million.

I have personally been in DC for an event nearly two million people attended- Obama's inauguration. It was a madhouse; vast swarming legions poured into the city from all directions, every accomodation anywhere near Washington was charging heavily inflated prices, public transport was dangerously overloaded, and there were probably thousands of cops and soldiers on the streets controlling traffic. And that was for an event people had had months to plan for, with the full and active support of local government.

And if it weren't for that level of crowd control, people would have died, crushed in crowds that stampeded in the wrong direction after someone got lost, falling off subway platforms, and so on. I should know; I had an alarming moment of worry that I'd end up falling onto subway tracks myself.

So when someone says that a million and a half people went to Washington for the health care protest, I'd say it's time to ask them to produce the bodies. Because I know they didn't have the kind of crowd control an event like that would require; if they did I suspect that some of the crazier black helicopter types would have taken it as a sign that Obama's Nazi Commie Secret Police were cracking down and started shooting.

What would you guys recommend as unbiased news sources? I generally have to look for different takes on a story from at least 3 different sources to anything that looks like a "balanced" view...

I think the most unbiased news source is the BBC and it is one of my preferred sources. I also tend to read the WAPO, Guardian, NYT and whatever news aggregators throw my way (I tend to use Fark.com and Huffpo). Many newspapers don't do their own reporting, so for some stories you won't really get much variation to what Reuters or AP is selling. in many cases I prfer blogs - particularly Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Matt Yglesias at Think Progress, Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com and the bloggers at Obsidian Wings and Anonymous Liberal.

Oh, yeah, BBC is good. I've had less luck with NYT, though -- occasionally their stories will leave out facts I consider fairly important, and need to track down elsewhere. Is a blog called "Anonymous Liberal" balanced? I'll check it out... thanks for the suggestions!

Anonymous Liberal is a liberal, obviously! He's an infrequent poster but his posts are always worth reading as he is a lawyer who de-constructs the dumber things said about the law. He's like a legal Nate Silver. Another site that occurs is Daily Beast - which hosts a range of centrist posters from right of centre posters like Megan McCain and William Buckley Jr to right of centre posters like Matt Yglesias. Along with the New Majority site and the Daily Dish are my fave sites for right of centre thinking (Andrew Sullivan is a right winger or Tory, as I understand the term, as we are both British, even if he breaks from neo-Republican orthodoxy on many issues).

I think it's very difficult to pick one new source as unbiased - you do need to look round different sources to get an accurate view of what's going on. You need different sources for different topics as well - I use euobserver.com for news about the EU, for example, because you get detail that's missing in most general news sources. It's run by very anti-EU types, though, so I ignore most of the opinion pieces and you sometimes need to investigate the details of legislation they describe directly at the source.

Basically, if you want a proper understanding of what's going on in the world, you need far more time on your hands than any of us have. I miss being a student when I could just sit on the internet for 9 hours a day.