Quote from: myrkul on July 30, 2011, 07:30:25 PM

This just creates incentive for consumers to find unbiased news sources, and for news sources to be unbiased. Of course, the flaw here is that the people have to know they need unbiased sources, which puts incentive on the both news sources and the consumers of the news sources, to get the word out.

The problem is that all the problems with obtaining accurate information in general also apply to obtaining accurate information about the bias of news sources. If your source of news falsely tells you that the other news sources are less trustworthy and the people around you agree, how do you know this is wrong? What's more, if they're good they can create social pressure to trust that news source and emotional investment in it to the point that evidence they're unreliable is just rationalised away by their followers. (Usual rationalization: "All the other news organisations must be just as biased, so I may as well stick with the one that's just been proven to lie through their teeth".)

Quote from: myrkul on July 30, 2011, 07:30:25 PM

Bigotry is another issue entirely, and IMO, a self correcting one. If indeed the brown guy has better qualifications than the white guy, then the bigot is setting himself up to fail to his competitor, who hires based on qualifications, not skin color or accent.

That's one of the evils thing about bigotry: it isn't self-correcting like that. In most circumstances it's not just important to hire someone that's well-qualified but someone who's perceived to be well-qualified by others, so ignoring race and hiring the most well-qualified person is potentially setting yourself up to fail.