You know, half the reason I browse voat is that I can see an unfiltered opinion. It's the same reason I like 8chan and 4chan... 4chan not so much these days, as they're much heavier into censorship than they ever used to be.
But occasionally, I like to visit the mainstream, liberal news sites like CNN or yahoo or MSNBC, so I can find the same news stories that I find here and see how the differences are.
....And the differences are staggering. A little bit of bias in any direction would be understandable and acceptable, but this is obscene. It's like reading about two different events altogether when I research this Oregon crisis. I must reiterate that if it was just rhetoric from either side, that'd be acceptable to me. I understand the desire to point your side, the left, the right, or whatever agenda you want into a more positive light. But after reading both sides, I'm now genuinely confused as to the actual facts of the case because one (or more likely, both) sides are actively spreading disinformation. Some discrepancies between news agencies reporting should be expected, but these are drastic.
I can say for certainty that a fire started in 2001, and another one in 2006. A judge looked at the facts of the case, and decided not to prosecute them too hard. Then in a rare move, an appeals court took over the case and decided that the men should serve 5 years in jail, even though they had already been sentenced previously. Now there is an insurrection going on in which an armed militia has stormed a federal building with the intent of occupying it for years/permanently.
Where it gets dubious is the claims that some firefighters were in danger, I've seen some right wing outlets that had some startling evidence pointing to how no firefighters were in danger (they showed how the comments accredited from someone in the BLM asserting as much had been disproven by the actual person stating affirmatively that they had never said anything of the sort), whereas on the left I'm seeing claims that firefighters were put into danger, and that one was even physically threatened by the father and son. Now, since the right was producing evidence on that front, and the left wasn't giving out a name of this firefighter or really any evidence, I'm inclined to believe the right on that point of interest. But that's a really big point of interest by itself--that's a dramatic bit of news reporting oversight. One is claiming, with evidence, that the claims are unsubstantiated and the other is asserting claims with no apparent basis in fact.
The right wing news outlets claim that the controlled burns set by the father/son were actually a success in both 2001 and 2006, and helped save their property. The left claims that hiding poaching was the reason for the 2001 burn....again, I'm not seeing any evidence presented there, so I'm hesitant to believe those claims, especially in light of some of the other ones. Granted however, if all the evidence was burned successfully, then there wouldn't be much to present. It's an odd set of circumstances.
In 2006 there was allegedly a different wildfire rushing towards their property, and a controlled burn was done in order to prevent that fire from getting worse. From my limited knowledge of how controlled burns work, this is actually deceptively sensible. A common man might look at that like "you set a fire to prevent a fire? How fucking stupid are you?" But the reality is, burning away all the brush, deadwood, and fallen leaves before a wildfire approaches, leaves nothing left to burn in that area and can help contain the actual wildfire quicker. This is where it gets dubious again though, with some claims that around 122-130 acres of federal land burned up too and the father/son are responsible for terrorism for that, or that the land didn't burn at all. It seems to me an investigative news reporter should ask the question of how much land was burned in the wildfire itself, how much federal land burned during that particular fire, and how devastating it was or was not for the region... but none, on any of the sites that I perused, answered that question of mine. A compare and contrast of the wildfire burn versus the controlled burn would be monumental in scale for understanding whether or not it was important to do.
Furthermore, things I would expect news journalists to be doing but don't seem to be, is talking to an expert about controlled burns. Why you do them, when you do them, and whether or not they thought it had been done properly in these cases. From my perspective, people who live off the land for their entire lives probably have a much better idea than I on whether or not they did something right to protect their land. If we're going to imprison them for 5 years, after they had already had a trial and served time, maybe a separate trial at least would be in order. I get where the conservatives are coming from when they call that government overreach.
When it comes down to it, if I get a speeding ticket, pay the ticket, and take care of it, the government shouldn't come back 3 years later and suspend my driver's license because of it. That's essentially my problem with the government in this instance. They had a trial, did what they were supposed to do, then a judge decided "Fuck that, let's put them into jail now for a crime they had already served on without a fresh trial." That reeks of bullshit to me. That's not justice. They can't try him again due to double jeopardy laws, and they don't seem to have any new evidence to bring forth to try them with again to subvert that, just a new judge's interpretation of the same laws on the books for the same crime committed and already had punishment administered for.
Coming around full circle, I don't want biased news any more. Facts are facts, and those are what I want. I don't want some asshole interpreting facts before deciding what I'm allowed to read about the facts or not because certain facts don't support a certain agenda. I feel nothing but jealousy when I think of not too long ago, people had news media that they could genuinely trust and believe. I studied this story through tons of outlets, and I'm left far more confused than when I didn't know anything about it.
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[–] 33degree 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Since William Cooper was taken out, all we have left is Alex Jones. Give the show a chance. You just might like it.