I wonder why the FCC's fairness doctrine is rarely brought up in articles like this. They used to enforce certain standards whereby news being broadcast on the public airwaves had to be both relevant to the public interest, and presented without overt bias. Then, under Reagan, they just stopped doing that, and to me that's when an already imperfect news industry started to really go off the rails.
It sounds hopelessly naive in 2021, when suggesting that the press can even attempt to be objective marks you as a rube. Yet it seems like enforcing some expectation of fairness would be an improvement over having none at all. It may not be possible to actually be objective, but in the same way that we can't stop people from killing or robbing each other, we still insist on asking them very nicely not to, and holding them to account when we catch them at it. Most would say it's better to have some pretense of civilization than to just give up trying: why have we given up trying?
I'd even suggest that removing the standard of fairness allowed a different set of ethics to fill the vacuum: good journalism is attention-grabbing and serves the ideological base that forms your revenue stream. You could see this happening with the cable news explosion in the 80s, but it went supernova with the internet, and the changing economics of the post-Facebook era.
Clearly, the FCC can't control the global internet, and broadcast television and radio is not much of a factor anymore. So, any modern equivalent to the fairness doctrine would likely have to come from aggregators like Facebook, Google, Reddit, etc., which may seem impossible because it's at odds with their business model. But, I'm hopeful because there is a history of industries adopting their own standards before they have more restrictive ones imposed on them by regulation.
I would be in favor of reclaiming some words like "News" with regulatory controls. Just like the FDA doesn't allow someone to label their product as "Organic" without meeting certain standards, I would argue that we should enforce some basic standards in order to label yourself as "News" or "Media Organization." It would be a slippery slope to navigate with the first amendment and the internet but there is a large group of citizens that will believe anything if it was on TV and came from the "News."
This seems like the best approach. No doubt people will continue to kick and scream about their first amendment rights being infringed upon but as long as they're not actually banned from talking it seems perfectly constitutional.
There's a thing that happened with the Canada subreddit. It used to be kind of an interesting sub where youd get neat Canada-wide local stories (mostly Ontario) that were genrally pleasant. It was a nice place to visit after being inundated with American politics. Then, sometime in the early 10s and it gradually became very partisan and political. Which, to clarify, means it got substantially worse.
It, like the comment sections on Canadian news websites, leaned heavily to the right. So a group got together and made alt Canada subreddit that leaned heavily left called OnGuardForThee.
Originally, I thought it would be helpful to compare the two subs to get something closer to the middle but instead all that happened was I got twice as much screaming hot garbage.
I unsubbed from both and now individually sub to all the Canadian town I can find. It's better now. There's so much less anger.
A lot of "local" subreddits started declining around 2015. It's like all the local news website commenters discovered their local subreddits and started posting there.
A lot of investor-relations style astroturfing began in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
We did some threat tracking for certain organizations as a result of the growing extreme rhetoric in some of these communities and with social media aggregation tools it became very clear that there are a lot of paid political shill accounts.
Facebook's toxic communities are far more grass-roots in comparison. They're also, at least in the cases of the files I was on, a lot more violent, and a lot more volatile. Surveiled Facebook groups looked a lot more like Parler than brigaded reddit subs.
I almost think it was these local news sites trying themselves to post on these subreddits. Looking at the histories of the people who actually post articles on a local subreddit, all they do pretty much is post articles. Who even does that? Either someone with some sort of complex to share every article they read on reddit, or an intern who is paid to post the article on social media and reddit is on that list. Even the LA Fire Department is active on reddit now. It's mainstream, and commercialized.
That slippery slope is a byproduct of their subreddit social mechanic combined with a polarized political climate.
If the sub leans 60/40 one way, the minority group will see all their posts being downvoted, and gradually leave. As more leave, the downvote pressure on the remaining few gets more intense, and they leave too, until you're left with a veritable echo chamber.
It's interesting to see how you've characterized what happened in r/canada. I think it is itself an example of polarization.
r/canada used to be great, as you said, but it didn't become polarized in a right vs. left manner. The moderators were self-admitted alt/far-right people who were pushing a particular agenda.
When the country as a whole votes left at a consistent 65-70%, then r/canada simply no longer represents the Canadian viewpoint. r/canada used to give center-right viewpoints attention at about the same rate as the support they got in elections. The push from right-wing mods to move to an even or greater split doesn't reflect the political reality of Canada.
r/OnGuardForThee is now a far more accurate representation of the political landscape of Canada where 70% of people vote center-left to left.
I am starting to think that it isn't really the "news" but the commentary. Most sites will cover many of the same events. There will be different focuses but a large percentage of the information is the same.
But I recently visited my senior citizen parents and got some exposure to Fox News. During their commentary shows they just throw outrage after outrage at the wall and see what sticks. One example was trying to stir up a controversy over not covid testing people crossing the board illegally. Another was a rich part of Atlanta trying to break away from Atlanta and they were blaming it all on defund the police and black lives matter.
> During their commentary shows they just throw outrage after outrage at the wall and see what sticks.
Yep. We’re all addicted to “rage-ahol” [1], but it gets eyeballs which means they can charge more for ads.
What’s worse IMHO is that we consume so much “news” that we can do nothing about [2], and I believe that contributes to people feeling quite helpless, and learning that all they can do is nothing.
I live in one of the (upper?) middle class parts of Atlanta and I really hope they don't do that. Crime rates are up in a bad way, and the city can be pretty mismanaged, but taking your ball and going home isn't a real option. It's just going to hurt the city that will still be right next door, and that has your sports (some of it, Braves are gone), museums and culture, restaurants, a lot of work spaces and shopping, etc. You can't just wall it off and you do take part in it, so stay, keep paying your share, and fight to make it better. It'll be worse than when people outside the perimeter vote down taxes to cover transportation infrastructure and refuse mass transit, but are the ones commuting into and through town increasing the burden on the transit system. We're all in this together, so let's try to work together to improve it.
In general, I agree with you, but in the case of Atlanta and Fulton county that narrative is in conflict with repeated poor management. Lots of cities have incorporated over the past 20 years and ended up with better services and lower taxes. Part of that is due to siphoning off funds that would help worse off, but most is just due to more efficient management.
I used to not support the idea of reforming Milton county, but it makes more sense as Fulton funds are focused on Atlanta and away from the tax base. Especially with stupid stuff like no Atlanta police chief for a year, etc. And no Marta in north Fulton. And minimal court services, etc.
I live also live in one of the (upper?) northern burbs of Atlanta. I had to handle some property tax stuff and it was kafkaesque in how out of touch and poorly managed it is. Driving an hour to downtown atlanta to meet with an assessor who has never been to my town. Then meeting with a board of “peers” that also don’t even know the town where I live, listen to my arguments, ask no questions and then rubber stamp the county.
I’m not sure how to fix this and it’s so appealing to just give up and work on local stuff.
Something else to keep in mind is that liberal/conservative is a false dichotomy. We have at least four major cultures in the USA - some scholars put it as high as eleven - and they each have differing core values.
This accounts for much of the infighting we see in political parties and the various factions that arise.
I'm not so much a progressive Democrat as I am a member of "Yankeedom," as Colin Woodard dubs it.
> "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she says, "you don't understand the issue."
I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
(Ironically the search for counterarguments would often strengthen my position because they would turn out to be quite weak. Nevertheless I think that the exercise is important.)
I think the words "well-reasoned opinion" describe it well: try to see what part of your opinion is fact, which experts you trusted for that, and what part is morality and ethics.
The issue with this standard is it can only be applied to situations where you're making decisions about the fates of other people - where you don't have skin in the game. It would be ridiculous to, for example, require that all trans people possess in-depth knowledge of TERF arguments against the validity of their identity (along with counter-arguments) before accepting that they understand their own identity. So sure, subject the lofty peanut gallery to this standard. If you're actually personally affected by a political issue it's usually pretty easy to figure out where you stand on it.
I think I see what you are trying to argue and let me say, with as much respect as this comment box allows me to convey, that I completely disagree.
First of all, if you have skin in the game then it becomes even more important to try to understand the opposition's arguments in order to convince them to join your cause and to prevent others from joining the other side.
As for your example, I am convinced that trans people have a battle to fight for greater acceptance in most (all?) societies. But I would still insist that they have only earned the right to call someone, or something, trans-exclusionary, if they have given careful thought to the argumentation and the positions actually taken.
Sometimes this is easy: if someone says "trans women are not women" then in my mind that is not even a coherent position (define "woman"). But if someone says "most trans women have not had the same childhood experiences as cis women" then that is (to me at least) a statement of fact. Calling the latter statement trans-exclusionary is not what I would call a well-reasoned opinion.
> It would be ridiculous to, for example, require that all trans people possess in-depth knowledge of TERF arguments against the validity of their identity
Is it though? If you want to convince someone of something, you have to understand the opposing viewpoints well. Many rational viewpoints labeled TERF don't "infringe on the validity of [trans people's] identity." For example, trans women competing against women in sports. You wouldn't convince anyone by straw manning one side by saying that people who oppose trans women competing against women are all simply transphobic; you would say that they believe that trans women have a physical advantage over non-trans women in sports.
>> "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she says, "you don't understand the issue."
> I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
There's a difference between "understand" and "make a passionate argument for" a given position. It's become standard for just about any ideological position to claim that anyone who disagrees "doesn't really understand" and to primarily use extreme emotions paired with unverifiable claims. At what point does one "understand" in these conditions?
The idea that most issues today have two reasonable sides arguing is itself an ideology. Often there's not even one reasonable position.
> I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
It's a nice quote, but I don't find it accurate for all topics. Should I be trying to figure out how to make passionate arguments for the Q Conspiracy nuttiness? There are lots of antivaxx conspiracy theories that are pretty close to mainstream in parts of the US - should I be trying to figure out how to make a passionate argument for those?
For many of these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part should probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics - "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"
It's not accurate for all topics. Can you make a passionate argument for a flat Earth? One that isn't rooted in ignorance or denial of something basic?
So obviously there are some topics in which you can understand the issue well, but still not be able to make a credible defense of the other side.
Now, the point of the exercise is valid. We should always be approaching an issue from the perspective of "What am I missing?" or "How am I wrong?"
Of course, bad faith debaters will ask this of you while not doing it themselves. Or they will do so only superficially. They won't actually try to disprove themselves.
Which makes discussing things with such people exhausting.
I don't know that you should absolutely not have an opinion without understanding the other side, but if you don't spend at least a little bit of time understanding what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories you will struggle to understand over half the population of the US.
Most of the main tenets of QAnon are recycled conspiracy theories that predate Q, which is why the "X% of people believe in QAnon" headlines that have been going around recently are so misleading.
Epistemic forensics is necessary for an awful lot of things people believe (true or false) given that for many things personal experience is insufficient to uncover the truth, and for any single truth, only a tiny fraction of the population is making direct observations at scale.
The vast majority of people do not have the time to even research for an informed opinion. Not to mention for any hotbed issue, being able to differentiate between the actual factual reports and opinionated bullshit is next to impossible on the modern internet unless you are a domain expert who can sniff this stuff out.
But lots of times people will make an argument for the other side, then poke holes in it, aka a straw man. So it's pretty annoying to hear "people on the other side argue X but that's wrong because Y" as a demonstration of one's enlightenment.
I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues:
They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across.
In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not mention the other side or present a very simplified or exaggerated view and provide an opposing viewpoint.
They cover the same thing differently depending on which party is in power. The border crisis is a good example of this.
All of these make it real hard to compare viewpoints with a proper reference frame and even treatment. Eventually I just gave up and read Politico, Bloomberg and FiveThrityEight now. They seem to be used by pros from both sides and mostly report on what's "happening" rather than provide opinion. I can then form my own opinions.
I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how only 1% of American film characters are identifiably Muslim; however, nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious and important points of context, but the article doesn't even broach them.
(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])
Worse, this seems to be increasingly prevalent in the academy as well. Indeed, the study cited in the article (from University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative) also doesn't mention these points of context and the paper is pretty overtly propagandist.
"(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])"
Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot, and there's a lot of political discussion about them.
It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?
Interestingly Mormons are 2% of the US population (twice the Muslim %), and I can't think of a single openly Mormon character in any TV show I've ever seen.
Good catch. As someone who works with data for a living I know that just about all stats need context to be meaningful. I notice a lot of stats in news given without context as you have noted.
When analyzing data typically the first thing you do is take out the outliers and then focus on the remaining data. News outlets do the opposite, the take the outlier and make it the headline story and ignore the other 99% of the data.
When they present those percentages does that apply only to Hollywood films, or films world-wide? And do foreign films represent their own populations proportionally, should we and they calculate national proportions or global proportions?
christianity, islam, hinduism, along with the eastern constellation of buddhism/confucianism are the 4 world religions. people of color are roughly 4/5 of the world population. even while christianity and white folks are the majority in the US, it makes sense numerically to have these other aspects of humanity well represented, in addition to white and/or christian. what's puzzling is the outsized representation of jews/judaism (also roughly 1%) in american media considering the stark underrepresentation of black, brown, and asian folks, who account for nearly half of the population (and growing).
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things
Yeah, this is a key thing to realize. People seem to think that Fox News, for example, just trots out falsehoods all the time, but if you skim the news, I'd say very little is actually factually incorrect. It's more about the story selection, who they choose to interview to get the quote, how they contextualize (or don't) statistics, etc.
But once you realize that, you realize it can apply to, e.g. WaPo, which many Republicans say is very left-biased, while many Democrats say it's neutral.
I think an amusing non-partisan example of how story selection biases viewpoints is the so-called "Summer of the Shark"[0] where for whatever reason shark attacks became a part of the summer's zeitgeist and got extensively covered. Meanwhile, shark attacks weren't at any particularly elevated level, contrary to what many people ended up believing.
Fox New's actual news coverage is mostly truthful. But a huge amount of their airtime is opinion pieces and media personalities who spout BS all day. Tucker Carlson is probably the most notorious. Plus they have Republican politicians calling in and showing up constantly, and they're allowed to say whatever they want.
It’s extremely easy to construct a biased, opinion-manipulating political hit site composed entirely of truthful statements.
Proof by politically-neutral analogy: imagine a newspaper that published an article every time a roulette wheel stopped on 6, but never for any other number.
The google vs DuckDuckGo search results for the same exact phrase "list of conservatives banned by twitter" yield utterly different results. None of the admittedly right wing websites are even listed in the google results for that search. The only site in common on the first page is Forbes, but even then the two articles are different even though they came out the same exact day.
If you use google, you'd think that twitter isn't censoring conservatives. If you use duckduckgo, you'll think that they do.
Their articles mostly follow a dialectical format -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, with about a third of the article spent on each one. I don't know of any other publication whose house style is so rigorous in this.
It's also highly editorialized, but very open and transparent about the positions it takes -- any bias they have is in the open, but is in the final synthesis after they've treated both sides.
It also doesn't fall neatly into any liberal/conservative divide. It tends to be socially progressive yet only interested in solutions that can be practically implemented, pro-free market but deeply concerned about externalities and the environment, pro-democracy but with hard-headed realpolitik.
Plus probably half of what each weekly issue covers is news you won't find in any other American publication, at least -- it's a global publication and one of the best ways to simply learn about the entire world's political and economic news.
I don't recommend using the Economist as your only source for international news. It's very deeply ideological in a way that is almost invisible if you can't easily compare it to a known truth.
It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the free market, and it paints non-market solutions as infeasible, even though they often work and are implementable. But this is invisible ideology and very easy to mistake for pragmatism, because a pure pragmatist will certainly appreciate many market solutions.
The final synthesis is not after having treated both sides. It's after having treated two sides, which are editorially chosen.
As far as dialectics it would be much more interesting if they could dialectically analyze their own internal contradictions between democracy and interventionist realpolitik, or between free-market fundamentalism and concern about externalities. But it doesn't really grapple with those, which is a sign that it's only applying dialectical thinking in convenient ways.
In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for foreign reporting where you don't have bearings.
I like their articles, but I can’t recommend the Economist after attempting to cancel my subscription the last time I had one. It took me over an hour of digging through the website, and then phone calls where they tried to up-sell me, side-sell me, every-way-sell me on discounts and different packages no matter how many times I said I just wanted to cancel my account. It’s possibly the worst experience I’ve ever had cancelling something.
100% agree, but the problem I have with the economist is that it requires serious mental commitment to engage with their articles. The meat of the story is buried deep. The only times I find myself capable of reading are when I'm traveling or commuting.
The issues come weekly with really interesting topical stories, so I always add them to my reading todo list, but they just pile up so fast.
This past year and 1/2 of WFH life meant, I now have about 50 issues to go through LOL.
I have been reading the economist for a while now and im curious if you have felt a decline in quality or maybe its just my differing in opinion from recent articles.
Mostly i feel more articles coming up that are worded in a way to convince the reader or a certain point without any data. This is something i never really noticed in the past.
I was listening to all of The Economist's podcasts on Spotify until recently. I found their bias grew and grew over time until it was just too annoying to listen. I think they realized their target market was yuppie (lean strongly left) and made the (correct) business decision to cater to them exclusively.
There are some benefits to the Economist, such as the ones you mentioned but I don't know that I could recommend it, at least without a secondary source for what you're reading there.
I stopped reading it about 10 years ago for a few reasons. During the housing crisis the coverage wasn't as deep as it should have been and I would read articles that were nothing more than "nationalizing banks is bad" without explaining why.
Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad. During the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position and willingness to deal. I used to get it from a library a few towns over so I would be 3-4 weeks behind. One time I was reading an article where Charles Grassley was being made out to be principled and respected and I'm laughing because he had recently endorsed the death panel nonsense.
I really, really wish I could recommend the WSJ, however they declined pretty heavily after Murdoch bought them. The number of long form articles declined and I was seeing less journalism and more ideological fluff in the non-editorial sections.
The Economist certainly doesn't break down easily on the American political spectrum, but in the more coherent language of higher level policy, the Economist is almost 100% liberal.
I agree its a well put together publication, but a socialist (for instance) would argue it is deeply ideological.
"They dont talk about or even cover the same things" - this is the number one fake news tactic in play. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's a 2x2 matrix -
If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats, and you'll almost never see Fox News write an article critical about Republicans. So you end up without much overlap between the two.
They'll only report on the same things when those common things are important enough / loud enough to where they can't ignore it, or when they're able to put their own political interpretation on it when telling the viewer what to think.
Not only that, they go out of their way to police the topics in forums and social media.
Mentioning the wrong topics gets people labelled as pushing "talking points" or "conspiracy theories" with total disregard to the factual reality behind. It doesn't serve the partisan narrative and that's all one needs to know. Insisting will get your suspended, muted, banned or deboosted/shadowbanned.
>For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats, and you'll almost never see Fox News write an article critical about Republicans. So you end up without much overlap between the two.
Except for everything Democrats and Republicans agree upon.
Which is a lot.
There's a massive amount Americans miss because thet witness very lively debate on very circumscribed topics.
Slightly OT but it's disheartening to see the overton window at work when people call Democrats "left". It's like the frame of reference has shifted so far to one side that "slightly progressive corporate-run party" vs "socially conservative corporate-run party" is framed as "left vs right".
I don't mind that kind of bias, if your 2x2 matrix was right -- that each of them reports everything good about their side and everything bad about the other side. If that were true, you could sum them up and have a pretty balanced total news source.
The problem with Fox News and CNN is the biased attitude. They report everything good as amazing and everything bad as horrible. The anchors are "performing" the news, telling you with their tone, body language and vocal intonations how disgusted you should be or how much you should be rejoicing. This phenomenon has infiltrated the NYT and WSJ as well, and I've stopped reading both.
Except for stuff responding to new Trump-era revelations, they don't seem to have much current criticism of Republicans not buried within criticism of how Democrats deal with them, representing their actual bias in critical opinion coverage, in that it focuses on people currently in power.
(When Republicans held the White House and the Senate, they had more direct criticism of Republicans.)
I cannot recommend the show and podcast 'Breaking Points', by Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball enough. They are top notch journalists who formerly hosted a daily news show called 'Rising' on The Hill, but left recently in order to be more independent and free of advertiser influence (censorship).
While they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. They cut through much of the partisan, mainstream BS - and get to the heart of many issues, all while debating ea. other in a civilized way.
agree. recently discovered them, very impressed.
I think their new show has some kinks to work out and a bit more modernization of the graphics to put it back on par with how things they were doing were presented with their spots through "the Hill."
Which I hope stay online to show how they are professional.
I also hope their new show gets the graphics and tech to catch up quickly, as they are a refreshing source of truths that need to be told, and I'd like others to be able to watch and feel the same without being distracted and wondering if the new/current as of June 21 make them amateurs with uninformed opinions - instead of the professionals with the history and knowledge that some of us have become aware of.
So glad to see them doing real and truth - we need more.
When I caught part of on TV the other night with Sharyl Attkisson
) I had a similar - jaw drop - OMG someone is telling the truth and they are on the air and not in a mysterious car accident! This is amazing.
EX-CNN aparrently(?) - maybe it's going to be a new movement of like ex-X-cult - no longer beholden to Y -
Perhaps old media is not just losing but started to be lost.
I want a browser extension to highlight individual reporters and info about past biases - as it's too hard to pin a portal as being one way or the other, when there are shills mixed in with regular reporters and editors all mucking up everything it seems.
If you like podcasts, try Left, Right & Center by KCRW. Their sister show All the Presidents' Lawyers is pretty good too, but what I like about LR&C is that it really does show multiple sides without a constant yelling fest. Sure there are the occasional "you don't really believe that do you?" moments, but it's largely civil.
I unsubscribed from that newsletter a few months ago when I realized it was just perpetuating the problem by reporting on "both sides", even in cases where there wasn't much worth talking about on either "side". It's interesting if you would like to understand what propaganda the elites in each political party would like their base to digest, but it's not very interesting if you just want to see what actually happened on a particular day.
Someone on Hacker News a while back recommended the Wikipedia current events portal[0] and I have to say this feels like a more efficient way to consume the news. It feels less tied to trending topics and manufactured drama, and is more centered on what actually happened in the world that was especially notable on a particular day.
I feel like a lot of "news" that's reported in the American political media is just ideological argument, which after you've read the same argument for the nth time doesn't come across as very interesting any more.
I've been a subscriber to Tangle for a while now and I love his takes on the news.
He operates just a little to the right of my own political persuasions, but even when I disagree with him, it's a respectful disagreement. Isaac's positions are nuanced, well-reasonsed and kind.
That newsletter is exactly what we all wish political debate in the US was like.
I tried this for a while and then gave up and read no news whatsoever. For important issues, I’ll hear about it from friends and family in person. In the few situations where I wanted to learn more, it was such a slog to search and filter through garbage to find even the most simple facts (eg, what’s contained in recent us covid stimulus package) it’s just reinforced my decision that putting in routine work just to keep up on events isn’t worth it.
I highly recommend experimenting with turning off the news completely for a time. You quickly find that the vast majority of "Breaking News!" that gets shoveled out simply isn't that important for most people, and is there mainly to feed a news addiction.
Alternatively, use the Internet Archives to read news from this date from 2-5 few years ago. You'll probably find that most aren't worth reading, which gives you a good sense of how important the news you read today will seem in just a few years.
I read all those but consider them fairly partisan, at this point, e.g. they have to satisfy their clientele. I add Reuters and a few others like that to the mix but even that is difficult. Sometimes you have to search within the website to find coverage for specific stories and it's buried deeper down.
I think the idea that media can be neutral is pretty unrealistic anyway. Even non-profits like PBS or government orgs like VOA will have their slant so it'll always require the extra work.
IMO Comparing viewpoints isn’t as important as simply popping you out of the bubble. The key is to distrust the media more than you distrust the “other side”.
Exactly. The reality is there almost always exists more than two viewpoints. Maybe it's not done deliberately, but this false dilemma may be a big reason the echo chamber effect is so powerful. I'll also acknowledge it's difficult to find reputable sources which present more than two viewpoints.
I used to do what you did(just read a bunch of major publications from differing political orientations) but also found issue with not being able to compare different perspectives easily.
I'm a bit disappointed that outlets like NTY, or Associated Press for cryin out loud, are branded as "Left". Disappointing that actual Left-wing discourse is so outside currently acceptable Overton window.
I tried this, too and realized similar things. I then decided that I do not really care (at least not that much) about understanding which way each source wants to spin things. I instead want information about the world to form my own opinions.
I started reading international news. That is, focus on publications outside country X when reading about X.
Reports from Sweden, Korea, Russia and UK (thanks google translate!) translated into English, awkward wording and all, plus a minimal dose of CNN and Fox works better for me than a mix of American media. Just my 2c.
I might even wrap it up as a convenient page or app.
Right. Because of these news sources are BUSINESSES. Their job is to manage their own "image" to keep people around for the advertisers. Like it or not (me, not) this is a much easier way to grok what's going on with them. Their priority is viewers -- mostly retaining them. So you keep with the general idea that "you should tell the truth" by choosing which truths to tell, and then perhaps "gambling" by once in a while doing something outrageous that will excite the base.
I would suggest reading some sources outside the US. Specifically, I would recommend the Economist. While the Economist has a very distinct view, it does provide a little higher level, distanced view of US and world politics.
It has highlighted to me some biases from some of the sources I follow on a day by day basis (NYT, Washington Post).
Bonus points for the Economist, because you also get coverage and analysis of events across the world many of which get almost 0 coverage in US press.
just watch C-SPAN and cut out the crap; then compare coverage of the same speech or event or whatever. All of the media will pick out single words from an hours-long talk and invent their own context, ignoring the rest of the hour
Our tech ingests articles from different publishers, groups them into topics based on the story they are covering, then analyze and score them based on how informative they are and present curated articles as best perspectives from left/right/center.
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things,
This is a big issue. But at the same time - it's not clear to me what the solution when every side is pushing hype rather than news. How do you publish an "opposing take" on something the other side is publishing that isn't real in the first place? It's not ideal to even acknowledge lies.
You can't always even get supportive viewpoints of some policies. If some policy is too unpopular with the base, they seem to just get very quiet about it, or discuss it in very general terms.
Maybe they don't cover the same things because the "things" are like their flags they are using to signal each other. It's like two different gangs using different symbolism to communicate with their own members. They don't need to talk to the other side, they need to instead rally their own side.
Maybe study each side like you're studying a gang. Get to know the symbolism and language.
Bloomberg and Politico are great. Also recommend TheHill and RealClearPolitics.
There’s a growing number of writers on sub stack covering the same issue from different sides. Often this is formulated as a response of rebuttal to the left-leaning media’s coverage of the issue, but that’s fine because you still get both sides of the story if you read things in conjunction.
>All of these make it real hard to compare viewpoints with a proper reference frame and even treatment.
The thing I look for in good political writing isn't objectivity, which is mostly fictional, but an honest centering of perspective. This has two parts to me - a clear declaration about what the author thinks is the right answer and a commitment to making sure any opposing viewpoints are given as the holders of them would give them before being attacked. Like...I do think the US Republican party is not serious about many of their stated concerns, but I think it's easiest to see that when you contrast their stated views with their mostly political action.
This can get a little distasteful with racist or other hateful views, but there's no need to go into detail with the views of the groups you are writing against. You just need to describe them in a way they can recognize before you tear them apart.
So I guess I do not think good writing requires even treatment - it just requires demonstrating that you have understood what your opponents have said before you move to disagree with it. So, so, so much writing in US politics takes place between commentators who, for all appearances, have no real understanding of what their opponents want or why they might want it.
Here’s a simple one: Last year, when anti-asian crimes were on the rise, the NYTimes dutifully reported the crimes.
But repeatedly omitted details like ethnicity or name, until a white attacker made the news.
For those earlier details, the rag the NY Post (conservative and borderline tabloid) was the paper to go to.
Eventually—as in many months after—the NY Times stated covering the full details because the problem was too obvious. Even then the Ny Times uses every opportunity to downplay the issue.
I’m sure conservative journalists are just as biased in their own way.
I've done something similar. If you look at what, say, the National Review thinks is important on a given day, and compare that to what the NYTimes is reporting on, it's pretty clear that we're not merely disagreeing about a particular set of facts, we're living on different planets.
> I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico.
Those are the sources you tried to balance with? Every one of those is a fringe hard-leaning source, except maybe Wapo which can't be trusted because it's owned by Bezos. You need to seek more moderate sources to begin with.
Ground News handles aggregating and showing each source that is discussing the same topic event. It has become the first site I go to for news and from there I can easily access virtually everything else while knowing what the perspective that I'm stepping into is in advance.
From my observation they (at least Fox News) do report on all the same things, they just made the articles not fitting their agenda buried deep in their websites, and on their TV channel they don't report it, or just quickly mention it on their non opinion segments.
"They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across."
I've noticed this as well. Going from WaPo to Breitbart (or vice versa) is like going to an alternate world. When they are talking about the same thing often they are doing so in a belittling manner (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/11/13/safety-pin-ant...). I feel like the tone taken by MSM outlets like WaPo and the NYT has become harsher and more condescending, but it could just be me paying closer attention to it.
Bias by exclusion doesn't get talked about as much as it should. One way you can tell when a media establishment doesn't like something is that they do what they can to ignore it. During the Dem primaries it had become a meme in some left wing communities the length the MSM was going to ignore Bernie and his popularity. Another popular example is how Noam Chomsky is largely shunned by the MSM.
On Facebook it’s even worse. I’d you follow every political party plus some popular figures on every side during an election, you get nothing but extremism from every side. Literal right wing nazis as well as “burn it all down” leftists, at least a few years ago before I deleted my account.
In my experience, the biggest contributor to the echo chambers is a lack of memory.
I do not think people's memories are bad, but rather they willfully ignore the other party's position, never learned it in the first place, or are justifying it because their party is in power. This is what centrists frequently get mocked at "both sides" about. They aren't saying "oh both sides are trying to stage an insurrection" they are saying "both sides are not going to let immigrants across the border" (but it'll be generalized to everything being both sided).
I think the way to cure this is also the way to make parties better. Criticism. We should always critique our parties to make them better. Unless you believe they are perfect already and getting direct commands from god, it is deserving of criticism. But we've encouraged a culture where criticism isn't (effectively) allowed. It is allowed by certain people who speak in a certain way, but not for the average person. (e.g. if you are speaking to someone you don't know that well and politics are brought up and you criticize something x party recently did it will be presumed you are of the opposing side). I believe part of this is because we are comparing politicians and parties rather than judging them independently (this is also why I'm a big supporter of Cardinal voting as opposed to the common Ordinal propositions).
This is essentially the root of whataboutism. The classic example is one I had my parents many times over the last decade. I suggest Trump should be investigated for his connections to Epstein given his frequent contact. And my dad would be like "but what about Clinton!" and my response has always been "yeah, him too." Because it isn't about parties, it is about the crime that was potentially committed. If something is bad, then it is bad if the other party does it or if your party does it. Tribes don't matter. The whataboutism is just a distraction technique.
I started to pay really close attention to political news back in 2015/2016. There was this crazy phenomenon during the Trump administration where both sides felt like the other side was living in an alternate reality.
The truth is that news sources for each side presented completely different stories. While one side got a certain story, the other side was completely silent. So you had two groups of people who had two different sets of unrelated stories, and very rarely did they overlap. The media did an amazing job of putting each group into their own silo, making it impossible to discuss anything between groups or for any positive Trump news to ever be known to a large percentage of the population.
It's difficult because you're so drastically limiting your sources (to ones that are all low-quality IMO). Every time you read an article and care about the topic, just.... Google it. There are a thousand and one independent sources, Twitter threads, etc etc etc. I don't consider myself to truly understand any binary debate unless I've heard an intelligent argument on both sides; it's just not my experience that any interesting discussion has a side that's literally meaningless (though I'm perhaps begging the question by not finding eg Pizzagate "interesting").
When I was living in Canada, I managed to get myself to caucuses of Christy Clarke though I wasn't even a citizen. Still have few photos of me in a $20 Chinese suit feeling very odd in the setting of the Vancouver club.
It's amazing how much scoop you can get on both the establishment, and the opposition from first hands.
Just ask, politicians are talkative types. You are blessed with living in a country where you don't end on the bottom of a lake for asking politician a wrong question.
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives.
https://ground.news has an interface that highlights which news outlets with what general bias are covering which stories, which is sometimes fun to take a look at
Fivethirtyeight is not even remotely bipartisan. It’s hard to forget Nate’s role in spreading propaganda polls last election cycle and his reaction afterwards when it was clear they were all fake.
I don't always agree with them ideologically, but I find it valuable to hear a perspective on US politics & media from outside the usual Right/Center-Right binary.
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives
I remember seeing Twitter chatter from the right re: the Fauci email dump, and so I went on various liberal outlets to try to get the left-wing perspective, and it was complete crickets.
Especially when it's something I can't just read and form an opinion on myself (Fauci's email dump was absolutely massive), I depend on journalists to accurately summarize and contextualize primary sources. And it's really hard to get a straight take when one side won't even bother to write a "this is a nothingburger, here's why" article.
Was it massive? My impression was that it was exactly what you'd expect - basically a nothingburger, a few interesting tidbits, most of the sensational stuff was taken out of context and/or already known and/or flatly misrepresented.
What are some things that we should have taken away from the Fauci emails that the broader left/centrist medias missed?
Google News gives you precisely this portfolio of vendors. Why would anyone subscribe to a single news vendor? I'd also advise adding WION, Al Jazeera, Axios, and The Guardian + BBC.
Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC, etc. are all left of center by US standards, especially the Guardian (which is way left).
Some center-right outlets that are still worth reading* (and I say this as a raging leftist):
The Hill, National Review, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, The Economist
*(as in they provide both informational "what's happening" and insightful analysis without venturing into flat out fake news... as long as you avoid their editorials and comments)
I suppose those are "classically conservative" news outlets, as in "small government but with a general respect for evidence-based governance, science, and the truth". I don't know of any reputable populist-right/alt-right outlets. I don't know if there even IS a reputable populist-right/alt-right movement to begin with, but that's another discussion.
Side note: Google News (as of a year or two ago, when they revamped their algorithms) unfortunately now also gives you a bunch of worthless blogs and fake news (the literal kind) outlets. I have hundreds of sources in my "never show this source" blacklist and even then it's barely usable. That said, it's still a useful way to see different takes on the same topic. Their grouping algorithm is a lot better than their vetting algorithm. Some of those sources should just not show up for anyone.
The Guardian and the BBC basically represent the same political faction as say the New York Times and CNN in the USA, except obviously with more focus on UK stories. You can even see the overlap when they report on stories from the other country.
I identify pretty closely with one side. But certainly there are Outrage Machines on both sides, a network of media and personalities hyping up the latest calumny that the other side committed, for views and clicks. These machines can't slow down -- even if the other side has been quiet lately, all those people need something to do and talk about. They'll find something.
Have you considered not “identifying”? Just choose your opinions on issues a la carte. Or even don’t have an opinion on a bunch of issues.
I started doing that and now I’m kind of politically homeless but oh well. I do notice that I can talk to either side now which is cool and no one automatically puts up their defenses.
I went the other way: I started by outright refusing to label or identify myself politically and picking opinions a la carte, and over time most of my opinions on the things I care most about tended to converge on one political ideology, so I've started to generally identify with that ideology as a result. There's notable exceptions, which I do keep in mind, but they tend to be just exceptions.
(Of course, even then it's not simple. There's also party infighting, subparties, etc, so even if my opinion on "what the issue is" lines up, my opinion on "what the solution is" might not.)
Edit: another complication is strength of conviction. For example, standard American left/right dichotomy comes with very strong conviction about guns. I have very very weak conviction about guns. Even though I tend to agree with my ideologies' opinion on what should be done about gun control, I don't really care that much either way whether there's no gun control or super strict gun control. So while I do "identify" as my ideology here, there's clearly a disconnect from the mainstream form of it.
I don't think that makes sense unless you are particularly apathetic.
Like sure, neither of the major parties in America matches all of my opinions exactly but I still have strong opinions on a number of things, and they tend to align with a particular party.
I imagine this is the position most Americans find themselves in.
It's challenging to not identify with one "side" when the other side loudly and proudly support policies that directly harm (or would harm) many people you care about. It's natural to band together when under attack, and in fact it's really difficult not to.
Speaking personally... I did this until a good friend pointed out that while I identified as independent, I basically agreed with most conservative view points. I come by my views honestly. My typical response goes like this .. I hear about something presented on the local news in a very fact based way. I form an opinion. Then I read others opinions and 9/10 times I match with the conservatives.
I mean sometimes I fit with the far left (for example, mother Jones had a great article on private prisons a while ago), but for the most part I'm a conservative.
Anyway, my friend pointed out it's disingenuous to basically always end up with conservative views and claim to be independent because you want the brownie points. And he's right.
Well, I think I'm like most people in that I think one side is okay, but the other is absolutely evil. Definitely don't agree with my side on everything, and they're far from perfect, but I feel I have to support them because the alternative would be a genuine threat to the country.
One thing a lot of people miss is that there is a profit motive here. You can make money, sometimes a lot of money, by building a huge social media following being a political outrage merchant. You can find examples of people doing this on all sides, especially at the extremes where outrage and other powerful negative emotions can most easily be stirred up.
All the outrage over "cancel culture" is not about censorship. Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech, and that is not (at least in the USA) happening much. What the outrage is about is money. While you can still speak elsewhere or on your own web site, being kicked off the majors makes it hard to monetize that speech.
Deplatforming really knocked the wind out of a burgeoning outrage-for-profit industry that had some influencers making millions by being controversy and outrage trolls on social media.
Not really. Like a recent cancel attempt was Scott Cawthon, creator of the game series Five Nights at Freddy's. His crime? Voting for trump.
No really, that's it. His games weren't political, and while he was open about who he was, he pretty much seemed to be inoffensive in practice. But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so, and as far as i know he was definitely not trolling them or being any form of negative person apart from supporting people they disliked.
I can understand not wanting to support legit offensive personalities, but increasingly it will be used as a weapon to enforce proper thought.
You can't really get used to siccing the tiger of cancel culture on people, because it gets really tempting to sic it on anyone. Homophobia for example is a useful concept to make people think about why they disagree with legalizing gay marriage, or their attitudes about alternative sexualities. But it also can and has been used as a club to silence enemies or any disagreement whatsoever.
You have to keep things civil and restrained because once unrestrained, like the tiger, it can be used on and go after anyone.
I think that two things can be true at the same time: there are people piling on rage about “cancel culture” to gain following/money; cancel culture is real and a bad thing.
Similar to how I think that racism is bad and systemic and must be eliminated and there are people who make a good living on raging about stuff. People building on a cause doesnt mean that the cause is bad.
>Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech, and that is not (at least in the USA) happening much.
>cen·sor (sĕn′sər)
>1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and *to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.*
Yep. Look at it this way: the same Republicans who whine about cancel culture went ahead and stripped one of their own, Liz Cheney, of her committee positions merely for the crime of daring to oppose Trump. That should tell you all you need to know about their hypocrisy.
Deplatforming targeted one side of the political tribal war much more than the other, it was not just some politically neutral phenomenon that only targeted grifters.
I think this is missing the darker point, which is that the main stream media along with the political parties that support them, are the the echo chamber. It’s not that we are caught in an echo chamber, rather it’s the information from mass media corporations that has created the echo chamber. If anything, to break out so to speak, is perhaps as easy as simply turning off all news, and paying more attention directly to what politicians are saying.
> I think this is missing the darker point, which is that the main stream media along with the political parties that support them, are the the echo chamber.
They are part of the echo chamber. They aren't the echo chamber. Social media does a fantastic job of demonstrating that people naturally construct their own echo chambers. We tend to judge the main stream media & polities without appreciating a context where they don't exist. It's increasingly clear that for all their ills, they do deliver, albeit in a flawed and limited degree, on their espoused objectives.
They're terrible, except as compared to all the alternatives.
Better to pay attention to what politicians are doing rather than what they are saying. Take a look at who donates to their campaigns, how they vote, and who they hang out with on a regular basis.
Readit News
It sounds hopelessly naive in 2021, when suggesting that the press can even attempt to be objective marks you as a rube. Yet it seems like enforcing some expectation of fairness would be an improvement over having none at all. It may not be possible to actually be objective, but in the same way that we can't stop people from killing or robbing each other, we still insist on asking them very nicely not to, and holding them to account when we catch them at it. Most would say it's better to have some pretense of civilization than to just give up trying: why have we given up trying?
I'd even suggest that removing the standard of fairness allowed a different set of ethics to fill the vacuum: good journalism is attention-grabbing and serves the ideological base that forms your revenue stream. You could see this happening with the cable news explosion in the 80s, but it went supernova with the internet, and the changing economics of the post-Facebook era.
Clearly, the FCC can't control the global internet, and broadcast television and radio is not much of a factor anymore. So, any modern equivalent to the fairness doctrine would likely have to come from aggregators like Facebook, Google, Reddit, etc., which may seem impossible because it's at odds with their business model. But, I'm hopeful because there is a history of industries adopting their own standards before they have more restrictive ones imposed on them by regulation.
It, like the comment sections on Canadian news websites, leaned heavily to the right. So a group got together and made alt Canada subreddit that leaned heavily left called OnGuardForThee.
Originally, I thought it would be helpful to compare the two subs to get something closer to the middle but instead all that happened was I got twice as much screaming hot garbage.
I unsubbed from both and now individually sub to all the Canadian town I can find. It's better now. There's so much less anger.
We did some threat tracking for certain organizations as a result of the growing extreme rhetoric in some of these communities and with social media aggregation tools it became very clear that there are a lot of paid political shill accounts.
Facebook's toxic communities are far more grass-roots in comparison. They're also, at least in the cases of the files I was on, a lot more violent, and a lot more volatile. Surveiled Facebook groups looked a lot more like Parler than brigaded reddit subs.
If the sub leans 60/40 one way, the minority group will see all their posts being downvoted, and gradually leave. As more leave, the downvote pressure on the remaining few gets more intense, and they leave too, until you're left with a veritable echo chamber.
r/canada used to be great, as you said, but it didn't become polarized in a right vs. left manner. The moderators were self-admitted alt/far-right people who were pushing a particular agenda.
When the country as a whole votes left at a consistent 65-70%, then r/canada simply no longer represents the Canadian viewpoint. r/canada used to give center-right viewpoints attention at about the same rate as the support they got in elections. The push from right-wing mods to move to an even or greater split doesn't reflect the political reality of Canada.
r/OnGuardForThee is now a far more accurate representation of the political landscape of Canada where 70% of people vote center-left to left.
I just checked the top posts for last week and it looks pretty... non-partisan? Certainly better than something /r/all.
https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/top/?t=week
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But I recently visited my senior citizen parents and got some exposure to Fox News. During their commentary shows they just throw outrage after outrage at the wall and see what sticks. One example was trying to stir up a controversy over not covid testing people crossing the board illegally. Another was a rich part of Atlanta trying to break away from Atlanta and they were blaming it all on defund the police and black lives matter.
Yep. We’re all addicted to “rage-ahol” [1], but it gets eyeballs which means they can charge more for ads.
What’s worse IMHO is that we consume so much “news” that we can do nothing about [2], and I believe that contributes to people feeling quite helpless, and learning that all they can do is nothing.
[1] Homer Simpson https://youtu.be/JKRn2nEw7rY
[2] Fires, car chases, etc. And even if there is, indirectly, something we could do, the reporting never mentions it.
I used to not support the idea of reforming Milton county, but it makes more sense as Fulton funds are focused on Atlanta and away from the tax base. Especially with stupid stuff like no Atlanta police chief for a year, etc. And no Marta in north Fulton. And minimal court services, etc.
I live also live in one of the (upper?) northern burbs of Atlanta. I had to handle some property tax stuff and it was kafkaesque in how out of touch and poorly managed it is. Driving an hour to downtown atlanta to meet with an assessor who has never been to my town. Then meeting with a board of “peers” that also don’t even know the town where I live, listen to my arguments, ask no questions and then rubber stamp the county.
I’m not sure how to fix this and it’s so appealing to just give up and work on local stuff.
Dead Comment
This accounts for much of the infighting we see in political parties and the various factions that arise.
I'm not so much a progressive Democrat as I am a member of "Yankeedom," as Colin Woodard dubs it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-...
I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
(Ironically the search for counterarguments would often strengthen my position because they would turn out to be quite weak. Nevertheless I think that the exercise is important.)
I think the words "well-reasoned opinion" describe it well: try to see what part of your opinion is fact, which experts you trusted for that, and what part is morality and ethics.
First of all, if you have skin in the game then it becomes even more important to try to understand the opposition's arguments in order to convince them to join your cause and to prevent others from joining the other side.
As for your example, I am convinced that trans people have a battle to fight for greater acceptance in most (all?) societies. But I would still insist that they have only earned the right to call someone, or something, trans-exclusionary, if they have given careful thought to the argumentation and the positions actually taken.
Sometimes this is easy: if someone says "trans women are not women" then in my mind that is not even a coherent position (define "woman"). But if someone says "most trans women have not had the same childhood experiences as cis women" then that is (to me at least) a statement of fact. Calling the latter statement trans-exclusionary is not what I would call a well-reasoned opinion.
Is it though? If you want to convince someone of something, you have to understand the opposing viewpoints well. Many rational viewpoints labeled TERF don't "infringe on the validity of [trans people's] identity." For example, trans women competing against women in sports. You wouldn't convince anyone by straw manning one side by saying that people who oppose trans women competing against women are all simply transphobic; you would say that they believe that trans women have a physical advantage over non-trans women in sports.
> I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
There's a difference between "understand" and "make a passionate argument for" a given position. It's become standard for just about any ideological position to claim that anyone who disagrees "doesn't really understand" and to primarily use extreme emotions paired with unverifiable claims. At what point does one "understand" in these conditions?
The idea that most issues today have two reasonable sides arguing is itself an ideology. Often there's not even one reasonable position.
It's a nice quote, but I don't find it accurate for all topics. Should I be trying to figure out how to make passionate arguments for the Q Conspiracy nuttiness? There are lots of antivaxx conspiracy theories that are pretty close to mainstream in parts of the US - should I be trying to figure out how to make a passionate argument for those?
For many of these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part should probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics - "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"
So obviously there are some topics in which you can understand the issue well, but still not be able to make a credible defense of the other side.
Now, the point of the exercise is valid. We should always be approaching an issue from the perspective of "What am I missing?" or "How am I wrong?"
Of course, bad faith debaters will ask this of you while not doing it themselves. Or they will do so only superficially. They won't actually try to disprove themselves.
Which makes discussing things with such people exhausting.
Most of the main tenets of QAnon are recycled conspiracy theories that predate Q, which is why the "X% of people believe in QAnon" headlines that have been going around recently are so misleading.
Epistemic forensics is necessary for an awful lot of things people believe (true or false) given that for many things personal experience is insufficient to uncover the truth, and for any single truth, only a tiny fraction of the population is making direct observations at scale.
They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across.
In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not mention the other side or present a very simplified or exaggerated view and provide an opposing viewpoint.
They cover the same thing differently depending on which party is in power. The border crisis is a good example of this.
All of these make it real hard to compare viewpoints with a proper reference frame and even treatment. Eventually I just gave up and read Politico, Bloomberg and FiveThrityEight now. They seem to be used by pros from both sides and mostly report on what's "happening" rather than provide opinion. I can then form my own opinions.
(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])
Worse, this seems to be increasingly prevalent in the academy as well. Indeed, the study cited in the article (from University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative) also doesn't mention these points of context and the paper is pretty overtly propagandist.
[0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/movie-characters-muslim-riz-a...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
[2]: http://decentfilms.com/articles/hollywood-religion-problem
Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot, and there's a lot of political discussion about them.
It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?
When analyzing data typically the first thing you do is take out the outliers and then focus on the remaining data. News outlets do the opposite, the take the outlier and make it the headline story and ignore the other 99% of the data.
If one goes to the desert, they should not expect to see maple trees.
Yeah, this is a key thing to realize. People seem to think that Fox News, for example, just trots out falsehoods all the time, but if you skim the news, I'd say very little is actually factually incorrect. It's more about the story selection, who they choose to interview to get the quote, how they contextualize (or don't) statistics, etc.
But once you realize that, you realize it can apply to, e.g. WaPo, which many Republicans say is very left-biased, while many Democrats say it's neutral.
I think an amusing non-partisan example of how story selection biases viewpoints is the so-called "Summer of the Shark"[0] where for whatever reason shark attacks became a part of the summer's zeitgeist and got extensively covered. Meanwhile, shark attacks weren't at any particularly elevated level, contrary to what many people ended up believing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_the_Shark
This is why we need more than just fact checkers.
It’s extremely easy to construct a biased, opinion-manipulating political hit site composed entirely of truthful statements.
Proof by politically-neutral analogy: imagine a newspaper that published an article every time a roulette wheel stopped on 6, but never for any other number.
Last week in English news it headlined an anti masker/antivax March in London which the BBC didn't mention at all.
The google vs DuckDuckGo search results for the same exact phrase "list of conservatives banned by twitter" yield utterly different results. None of the admittedly right wing websites are even listed in the google results for that search. The only site in common on the first page is Forbes, but even then the two articles are different even though they came out the same exact day.
If you use google, you'd think that twitter isn't censoring conservatives. If you use duckduckgo, you'll think that they do.
Their articles mostly follow a dialectical format -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, with about a third of the article spent on each one. I don't know of any other publication whose house style is so rigorous in this.
It's also highly editorialized, but very open and transparent about the positions it takes -- any bias they have is in the open, but is in the final synthesis after they've treated both sides.
It also doesn't fall neatly into any liberal/conservative divide. It tends to be socially progressive yet only interested in solutions that can be practically implemented, pro-free market but deeply concerned about externalities and the environment, pro-democracy but with hard-headed realpolitik.
Plus probably half of what each weekly issue covers is news you won't find in any other American publication, at least -- it's a global publication and one of the best ways to simply learn about the entire world's political and economic news.
It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the free market, and it paints non-market solutions as infeasible, even though they often work and are implementable. But this is invisible ideology and very easy to mistake for pragmatism, because a pure pragmatist will certainly appreciate many market solutions.
The final synthesis is not after having treated both sides. It's after having treated two sides, which are editorially chosen.
As far as dialectics it would be much more interesting if they could dialectically analyze their own internal contradictions between democracy and interventionist realpolitik, or between free-market fundamentalism and concern about externalities. But it doesn't really grapple with those, which is a sign that it's only applying dialectical thinking in convenient ways.
In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for foreign reporting where you don't have bearings.
The issues come weekly with really interesting topical stories, so I always add them to my reading todo list, but they just pile up so fast.
This past year and 1/2 of WFH life meant, I now have about 50 issues to go through LOL.
Mostly i feel more articles coming up that are worded in a way to convince the reader or a certain point without any data. This is something i never really noticed in the past.
It might just be me though.
I stopped reading it about 10 years ago for a few reasons. During the housing crisis the coverage wasn't as deep as it should have been and I would read articles that were nothing more than "nationalizing banks is bad" without explaining why.
Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad. During the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position and willingness to deal. I used to get it from a library a few towns over so I would be 3-4 weeks behind. One time I was reading an article where Charles Grassley was being made out to be principled and respected and I'm laughing because he had recently endorsed the death panel nonsense.
I really, really wish I could recommend the WSJ, however they declined pretty heavily after Murdoch bought them. The number of long form articles declined and I was seeing less journalism and more ideological fluff in the non-editorial sections.
I agree its a well put together publication, but a socialist (for instance) would argue it is deeply ideological.
If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats, and you'll almost never see Fox News write an article critical about Republicans. So you end up without much overlap between the two.
They'll only report on the same things when those common things are important enough / loud enough to where they can't ignore it, or when they're able to put their own political interpretation on it when telling the viewer what to think.
Mentioning the wrong topics gets people labelled as pushing "talking points" or "conspiracy theories" with total disregard to the factual reality behind. It doesn't serve the partisan narrative and that's all one needs to know. Insisting will get your suspended, muted, banned or deboosted/shadowbanned.
Except for everything Democrats and Republicans agree upon.
Which is a lot.
There's a massive amount Americans miss because thet witness very lively debate on very circumscribed topics.
I can name one CNN reporter right off the bat who does and his post is nearly always in the headline section for the topic being covered:
Chris Cillizza
Find me the same thing on Fox and I will accept your arguement.
The problem with Fox News and CNN is the biased attitude. They report everything good as amazing and everything bad as horrible. The anchors are "performing" the news, telling you with their tone, body language and vocal intonations how disgusted you should be or how much you should be rejoicing. This phenomenon has infiltrated the NYT and WSJ as well, and I've stopped reading both.
Not true at all. Here's one critical about Democrats as being too beholden to progressives: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...
Here’s one critical about the current Democratic VP largely for being too concerned with (and ultimately ineffective at) undercutting Republican talking points. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...
And that's just one day.
Except for stuff responding to new Trump-era revelations, they don't seem to have much current criticism of Republicans not buried within criticism of how Democrats deal with them, representing their actual bias in critical opinion coverage, in that it focuses on people currently in power.
(When Republicans held the White House and the Senate, they had more direct criticism of Republicans.)
While they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. They cut through much of the partisan, mainstream BS - and get to the heart of many issues, all while debating ea. other in a civilized way.
https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-k...
It is INCREDIBLY refreshing, if you've fallen into the rut of mainstream internet or tv news.
https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels
Which I hope stay online to show how they are professional. I also hope their new show gets the graphics and tech to catch up quickly, as they are a refreshing source of truths that need to be told, and I'd like others to be able to watch and feel the same without being distracted and wondering if the new/current as of June 21 make them amateurs with uninformed opinions - instead of the professionals with the history and knowledge that some of us have become aware of.
So glad to see them doing real and truth - we need more.
When I caught part of on TV the other night with Sharyl Attkisson
( eg https://youtu.be/ol-6AwoPLH4?t=947
) I had a similar - jaw drop - OMG someone is telling the truth and they are on the air and not in a mysterious car accident! This is amazing.
EX-CNN aparrently(?) - maybe it's going to be a new movement of like ex-X-cult - no longer beholden to Y -
Perhaps old media is not just losing but started to be lost.
I want a browser extension to highlight individual reporters and info about past biases - as it's too hard to pin a portal as being one way or the other, when there are shills mixed in with regular reporters and editors all mucking up everything it seems.
https://www.readtangle.com/
Someone on Hacker News a while back recommended the Wikipedia current events portal[0] and I have to say this feels like a more efficient way to consume the news. It feels less tied to trending topics and manufactured drama, and is more centered on what actually happened in the world that was especially notable on a particular day.
I feel like a lot of "news" that's reported in the American political media is just ideological argument, which after you've read the same argument for the nth time doesn't come across as very interesting any more.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
He operates just a little to the right of my own political persuasions, but even when I disagree with him, it's a respectful disagreement. Isaac's positions are nuanced, well-reasonsed and kind.
That newsletter is exactly what we all wish political debate in the US was like.
Rage makes more ad money than facts.
Alternatively, use the Internet Archives to read news from this date from 2-5 few years ago. You'll probably find that most aren't worth reading, which gives you a good sense of how important the news you read today will seem in just a few years.
I think the idea that media can be neutral is pretty unrealistic anyway. Even non-profits like PBS or government orgs like VOA will have their slant so it'll always require the extra work.
I used to do what you did(just read a bunch of major publications from differing political orientations) but also found issue with not being able to compare different perspectives easily.
I started reading international news. That is, focus on publications outside country X when reading about X.
Reports from Sweden, Korea, Russia and UK (thanks google translate!) translated into English, awkward wording and all, plus a minimal dose of CNN and Fox works better for me than a mix of American media. Just my 2c.
I might even wrap it up as a convenient page or app.
Is it some fake news site, or some radio personality's take? Or is it some twitter spat / spam?
I don't think 'the other side' is all that simple to cover / has an obvious quantity to include with every news article.
It has highlighted to me some biases from some of the sources I follow on a day by day basis (NYT, Washington Post).
Bonus points for the Economist, because you also get coverage and analysis of events across the world many of which get almost 0 coverage in US press.
Our tech ingests articles from different publishers, groups them into topics based on the story they are covering, then analyze and score them based on how informative they are and present curated articles as best perspectives from left/right/center.
All of this automated and running continuously on our website : https://www.thefactual.com/news and also in our app : iOS (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-factual/id1537259360) and Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=group.thefactu...)
Do check us out.
This is a big issue. But at the same time - it's not clear to me what the solution when every side is pushing hype rather than news. How do you publish an "opposing take" on something the other side is publishing that isn't real in the first place? It's not ideal to even acknowledge lies.
After quitting reddit I'm often oblivious to clickbait flamebait minutiae that my colleagues all get worked up over.
Also- are there any reputable conservative print news sources?
Maybe study each side like you're studying a gang. Get to know the symbolism and language.
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There’s a growing number of writers on sub stack covering the same issue from different sides. Often this is formulated as a response of rebuttal to the left-leaning media’s coverage of the issue, but that’s fine because you still get both sides of the story if you read things in conjunction.
The thing I look for in good political writing isn't objectivity, which is mostly fictional, but an honest centering of perspective. This has two parts to me - a clear declaration about what the author thinks is the right answer and a commitment to making sure any opposing viewpoints are given as the holders of them would give them before being attacked. Like...I do think the US Republican party is not serious about many of their stated concerns, but I think it's easiest to see that when you contrast their stated views with their mostly political action.
This can get a little distasteful with racist or other hateful views, but there's no need to go into detail with the views of the groups you are writing against. You just need to describe them in a way they can recognize before you tear them apart.
So I guess I do not think good writing requires even treatment - it just requires demonstrating that you have understood what your opponents have said before you move to disagree with it. So, so, so much writing in US politics takes place between commentators who, for all appearances, have no real understanding of what their opponents want or why they might want it.
Here’s a simple one: Last year, when anti-asian crimes were on the rise, the NYTimes dutifully reported the crimes.
But repeatedly omitted details like ethnicity or name, until a white attacker made the news.
For those earlier details, the rag the NY Post (conservative and borderline tabloid) was the paper to go to.
Eventually—as in many months after—the NY Times stated covering the full details because the problem was too obvious. Even then the Ny Times uses every opportunity to downplay the issue.
I’m sure conservative journalists are just as biased in their own way.
Those are the sources you tried to balance with? Every one of those is a fringe hard-leaning source, except maybe Wapo which can't be trusted because it's owned by Bezos. You need to seek more moderate sources to begin with.
Shout out to Annafi– how are you all doing there?!
[1] https://www.theflipside.io/
I've noticed this as well. Going from WaPo to Breitbart (or vice versa) is like going to an alternate world. When they are talking about the same thing often they are doing so in a belittling manner (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/11/13/safety-pin-ant...). I feel like the tone taken by MSM outlets like WaPo and the NYT has become harsher and more condescending, but it could just be me paying closer attention to it.
Bias by exclusion doesn't get talked about as much as it should. One way you can tell when a media establishment doesn't like something is that they do what they can to ignore it. During the Dem primaries it had become a meme in some left wing communities the length the MSM was going to ignore Bernie and his popularity. Another popular example is how Noam Chomsky is largely shunned by the MSM.
With a pillow...
Until they go away.
They compare similar headlines and also show you what you might have missed because one side doesn't even surface the headline
Edit: this article is about allsides, if you read it
The coverage/focus is the perspective.
In my experience, the biggest contributor to the echo chambers is a lack of memory.
I do not think people's memories are bad, but rather they willfully ignore the other party's position, never learned it in the first place, or are justifying it because their party is in power. This is what centrists frequently get mocked at "both sides" about. They aren't saying "oh both sides are trying to stage an insurrection" they are saying "both sides are not going to let immigrants across the border" (but it'll be generalized to everything being both sided).
I think the way to cure this is also the way to make parties better. Criticism. We should always critique our parties to make them better. Unless you believe they are perfect already and getting direct commands from god, it is deserving of criticism. But we've encouraged a culture where criticism isn't (effectively) allowed. It is allowed by certain people who speak in a certain way, but not for the average person. (e.g. if you are speaking to someone you don't know that well and politics are brought up and you criticize something x party recently did it will be presumed you are of the opposing side). I believe part of this is because we are comparing politicians and parties rather than judging them independently (this is also why I'm a big supporter of Cardinal voting as opposed to the common Ordinal propositions).
This is essentially the root of whataboutism. The classic example is one I had my parents many times over the last decade. I suggest Trump should be investigated for his connections to Epstein given his frequent contact. And my dad would be like "but what about Clinton!" and my response has always been "yeah, him too." Because it isn't about parties, it is about the crime that was potentially committed. If something is bad, then it is bad if the other party does it or if your party does it. Tribes don't matter. The whataboutism is just a distraction technique.
TLDR: Don't forget the past. Criticize everyone. Stop saying "what about...".
The truth is that news sources for each side presented completely different stories. While one side got a certain story, the other side was completely silent. So you had two groups of people who had two different sets of unrelated stories, and very rarely did they overlap. The media did an amazing job of putting each group into their own silo, making it impossible to discuss anything between groups or for any positive Trump news to ever be known to a large percentage of the population.
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Some examples: Persuasion, The Dispatch, The Bulwark, and an assortment of substacks.
I get my news from Reuters with a sprinkling of fox/nytimes/reddit thrown in
It's amazing how much scoop you can get on both the establishment, and the opposition from first hands.
Just ask, politicians are talkative types. You are blessed with living in a country where you don't end on the bottom of a lake for asking politician a wrong question.
https://ground.news has an interface that highlights which news outlets with what general bias are covering which stories, which is sometimes fun to take a look at
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Check out Counterspin, from the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).[1]
They monitor mainstream media and critique it from a left-wing perspective.
[1] - https://fair.org/counterspin/
I don't always agree with them ideologically, but I find it valuable to hear a perspective on US politics & media from outside the usual Right/Center-Right binary.
I remember seeing Twitter chatter from the right re: the Fauci email dump, and so I went on various liberal outlets to try to get the left-wing perspective, and it was complete crickets.
Especially when it's something I can't just read and form an opinion on myself (Fauci's email dump was absolutely massive), I depend on journalists to accurately summarize and contextualize primary sources. And it's really hard to get a straight take when one side won't even bother to write a "this is a nothingburger, here's why" article.
https://www.readtangle.com/p/dr-anthony-fauci-emails-coronav...
What are some things that we should have taken away from the Fauci emails that the broader left/centrist medias missed?
Gets tiring responding to the rights lies.
Dead Comment
Some center-right outlets that are still worth reading* (and I say this as a raging leftist):
The Hill, National Review, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, The Economist
*(as in they provide both informational "what's happening" and insightful analysis without venturing into flat out fake news... as long as you avoid their editorials and comments)
I suppose those are "classically conservative" news outlets, as in "small government but with a general respect for evidence-based governance, science, and the truth". I don't know of any reputable populist-right/alt-right outlets. I don't know if there even IS a reputable populist-right/alt-right movement to begin with, but that's another discussion.
Side note: Google News (as of a year or two ago, when they revamped their algorithms) unfortunately now also gives you a bunch of worthless blogs and fake news (the literal kind) outlets. I have hundreds of sources in my "never show this source" blacklist and even then it's barely usable. That said, it's still a useful way to see different takes on the same topic. Their grouping algorithm is a lot better than their vetting algorithm. Some of those sources should just not show up for anyone.
I started doing that and now I’m kind of politically homeless but oh well. I do notice that I can talk to either side now which is cool and no one automatically puts up their defenses.
(Of course, even then it's not simple. There's also party infighting, subparties, etc, so even if my opinion on "what the issue is" lines up, my opinion on "what the solution is" might not.)
Edit: another complication is strength of conviction. For example, standard American left/right dichotomy comes with very strong conviction about guns. I have very very weak conviction about guns. Even though I tend to agree with my ideologies' opinion on what should be done about gun control, I don't really care that much either way whether there's no gun control or super strict gun control. So while I do "identify" as my ideology here, there's clearly a disconnect from the mainstream form of it.
Like sure, neither of the major parties in America matches all of my opinions exactly but I still have strong opinions on a number of things, and they tend to align with a particular party.
I imagine this is the position most Americans find themselves in.
I mean sometimes I fit with the far left (for example, mother Jones had a great article on private prisons a while ago), but for the most part I'm a conservative.
Anyway, my friend pointed out it's disingenuous to basically always end up with conservative views and claim to be independent because you want the brownie points. And he's right.
All the outrage over "cancel culture" is not about censorship. Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech, and that is not (at least in the USA) happening much. What the outrage is about is money. While you can still speak elsewhere or on your own web site, being kicked off the majors makes it hard to monetize that speech.
Deplatforming really knocked the wind out of a burgeoning outrage-for-profit industry that had some influencers making millions by being controversy and outrage trolls on social media.
No really, that's it. His games weren't political, and while he was open about who he was, he pretty much seemed to be inoffensive in practice. But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so, and as far as i know he was definitely not trolling them or being any form of negative person apart from supporting people they disliked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/nybyo1...
I can understand not wanting to support legit offensive personalities, but increasingly it will be used as a weapon to enforce proper thought.
You can't really get used to siccing the tiger of cancel culture on people, because it gets really tempting to sic it on anyone. Homophobia for example is a useful concept to make people think about why they disagree with legalizing gay marriage, or their attitudes about alternative sexualities. But it also can and has been used as a club to silence enemies or any disagreement whatsoever.
You have to keep things civil and restrained because once unrestrained, like the tiger, it can be used on and go after anyone.
Similar to how I think that racism is bad and systemic and must be eliminated and there are people who make a good living on raging about stuff. People building on a cause doesnt mean that the cause is bad.
I think you have summarised both the nature of the US "information economy" and the state of political discourse in the US.
>cen·sor (sĕn′sər)
>1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and *to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.*
Being authorized by twitter to do it on twitter is still censorship. A simple non-political example: censor bars on nudity in media, literally labelled 'censored': https://duckduckgo.com/?q=censored&iax=images&ia=images
The mental gymnastics to excuse censorship by private entities when it's done to the "correct" targets or for the "correct" reasons is infuriating.
Censorship is censorship. It doesn't matter who is doing it.
Since when? You're attempting to give default context to a word that has none.
Somehow, api, I doubt that you'd be attempting that redefinition if Facebook, Twitter, etc. were silencing people and organizations of the Left.
edit: I guess I hit a nerve, lol
They are part of the echo chamber. They aren't the echo chamber. Social media does a fantastic job of demonstrating that people naturally construct their own echo chambers. We tend to judge the main stream media & polities without appreciating a context where they don't exist. It's increasingly clear that for all their ills, they do deliver, albeit in a flawed and limited degree, on their espoused objectives.
They're terrible, except as compared to all the alternatives.