this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year olds he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.

The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method to develop a methodology to support his assessments.

If you're going to discredit a source, please try to do the legwork of actually discrediting it. A guy with a Bachelors in Physiology and being "fascinated with politics since high school (a long time ago)" cannot be considered a reliable source, nevermind one who claims to follow the "scientific method" which he, presumably, learned while studying to become an occupational therapist or through his 20-year journey of reading political news.

If you have photos of this man, any record of interviews with him, records that support his credibility/the incorporation of his company, records of his job in occupational rehabilitation, details about his team, or anything else, please feel free to share them. Please do not confuse him with Dave E. Van Zandt (Princeton BA Sociology, Yale JD, London School of Economics PhD, ex-managing editor of the Yale Law Journal, ex-Dean of Northeastern's School of Law, ex-President of The New School).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There's no reason a random dude with a bachelor's in physiology can't be good at media criticism. It's not like the big nerds that go into journalism or join think tanks are beacons of truth. Media criticism is about flexing your skeptical and investigative muscles and being highly informed about the topics in question so that you can do the hardest thing in it: identify what was left out, what was neglected, and what articles were not written instead of what is before you.

That said, this particular random dude physiology major is not good at media criticism.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Thing is, even if he is good at media criticism, there's no stakes for him. Nobody knows who he is, what he looks like, he has nothing on the line, and his credibility in his primary occupation cannot be harmed if he is wrong.

Nevermind that he lacks the credentials nor any legitimate scientific expertise, and yet claims that his Bachelor's in Physiology was sufficiently advanced to teach him everything he needs to know about the scientific process.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (4 children)

A site or source has to earn the credit before it can be discredited.

You can attack the one making the critique all you want and it doesn’t establish actual credibility for the original source. The grayzone’s weaknesses in misleading coverage and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes is well noted in academic journals and other sources cited the references on their Wikipedia page.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Citing Wikipedia? Lmao

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago

Buddy nobody is impressed with your media criticism process of regurgitating Media Bias Fact Check and Wikipedia. It's actually an announcement that you have no familiarity with any of this and don't know how to critically consume media yourself. Ironically you're going to mislead yourself by simply uncritically accepting what is written in those two websites.

Rather than searching around for someone else to tell you what to think about The Gray Zone, why not critically engage with the content? What do they cite? What topic are they discussing? Do you know anything about it? To what are they responding? Are their criticisms valid?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)