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Comment by jordanpg | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the prominent center, center-left, and leftish new outlets (NYT, WSJ, Economist, WP, etc.) have some bias in their writing. However, most of the authors and staff at those organizations are extremely professional and take their mandate to report and analyze very seriously. To me, this is self-evident 95% of the time. To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle. Opinion is labeled as such. Pointing to specific counter-examples is like identifying NASA with the failures of the Challenger -- it completely misses the forest for the trees.

What there is not is a serious right-leaning counter-weight to this, and that is the vacuum into which the manifestly untrue and unserious outlets stream. Why this is true is an interesting and controversial discussion in its own right.

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I think the main problem is that we conflate the political spectrum (what are the responsibilities of the State?) and the epistemological spectrum (how do we determine what is true and not?). The "Western World", for better and worse, is a product of the Enlightenment, and as a result is irreducibly leftist in its epistemology: modern democracy depends on a belief that a citizenry armed with the scientific method and rational discourse can rule themselves without resorting to the authority of a king or a holy book.

The Right Wing (in the US, our Republican Party) is less identifiable by its right-wing policies as it is by its right-wing epistemology: they reject all scientific evidence for climate change, biological and geological history, medicine, etc. For the religious, this manifests itself in the old epistemology that says the Bible is the sole source of all Truth. For the non-religious, this tends to manifest itself as total nihilism, which is expressed in the more heartless strains of Libertarian Objectivism; for these people, might equals right and society is a zero-sum game where the only truth is winning and losing.

And this epistemological divide is the one that is tearing us apart. When you say there's no serious right-leaning counter-weight to (the NYT et al.), what you mean is that there is no serious news outlet that doesn't hold the Enlightenment values. And when you put it in this light, it's an obvious statement, isn't it? Politically speaking, the WSJ and the Economist can very much be considered right of center (leaving aside that the median center has moved right over the last 40 years), but they are still rooted in Enlightenment science and rationalism.

Point is, although the political right wing is currently the main base of the epistemological right wing, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. And the problem with saying we need more right-wing voices in mainstream media is that there are so few of them who meet the basic epistemological requirements; when they do, they are often rejected by the broader right wing for being too far left!

That's a very convenient and self-congratulatory view of things. Science denialism happens on both the left and the right.

The book Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar's Search for Justice, by Alice Dreger gives a good survey of the terrain.

>>That's a very convenient and self-congratulatory view of things. Science denialism happens on both the left and the right.

Sure, but the left treats its science deniers with equal levels of disdain and does its best to marginalize them. The right cheers its science deniers on and elects them to government positions.

The right has religion. The left has post-modernism. One says science is false, the other says science does not matter. The end result is roughly the same.

>Sure, but the left treats its science deniers with equal levels of disdain and does its best to marginalize them.

I haven't seen any significant scorn directed towards post-modernist views from NYT, WaPo and co. At least not in the last several years. In fact, they seem to implicitly welcome those views.

> The right has religion. The left has post-modernism. One says science is false, the other says science does not matter.

Neither does religion in general statement that science is false, not does post-modernism in general say that science doesn't matter. Some religious views may either deny science generally or, more often, deny only that science that conflicts with the religion's axiomatic beliefs (which implies that the religion have axiomatic beliefs in the domain to which science applies, which not all do.)

And while post-modernism may, depending on the particular flavor, deny either the fundamental existence of or the accessibility of an objective root truth, it has no fundamental conflict with the utilitarian argument for empiricism and science (it conflicts essentially with the quasi-religious belief that science extends beyond being a useful means of predicting future experiences to being something that ultimately tells the root truth of the universe, but that belief is not essential to science.)

Thank you for illustrating my point by conflating the political spectrum with the epistemological spectrum. :)

As for "self-congratulatory", I was responding to the old chestnut that mainstream media is too far to the left. Next time we talk about GMOs and anti-vaxxers, I'll have a chance to chastise the people who are more likely to be on my side of the political spectrum.

I would put it differently. I think the episemological divide (or at least one of them) is between pre- and post-Hegelian views. Post-Hegel, real truth (in the old sense) is gone, and all that's left is a repeated cycle of dialectic.

What we're left with is that "truth" is only true within a society or group; I can have my truth that's true for me, and demand that you respect it. (I was going to say that this is what we're left with on part of the left, but on reflection the behavior you're complaining about on the right fits this pattern as well.)

> they reject all scientific evidence for climate change

I stumbled across this earlier in the week (http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yco...) and found it interesting to see the difference in answers under "BELIEFS" (scroll past the map).

70% agree "Global warming is happening"

53% agree "Global warming is caused mostly by human activity"

49% agree that "Most scientists think global warming is happening"

71% strongly agree that they "Trust climate scientists"

What struck me the most was gap between the credibility of climate scientists and the two more heavily politicized topics of whether humans are driving climate change and whether there is agreement by scientists on it happening. How can ~ 70% of people agree it is happening and trust the scientists but only ~50% believe the outcome of the research?!

One what basis do you expect consistency from humans? If ever there was an unexamined assumption, that's it.

I don't expect it but I think it's a great illustration of the gap between reality and political belief (something we likely all suffer from to some degree).

"To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle. Opinion is labeled as such. Pointing to specific counter-examples is like identifying NASA with the failures of the Challenger -- it completely misses the forest for the trees."

Are you serious? You broadly profess the journalistic integrity of multiple institutions that have been embroiled in ethics scandals and then preemptively disallow any responses as missing the point. What a disingenuous and absurd statement.

Forgive my nearsightedness, but I would argue that a prominent newspaper has serious problems, far past "slight and subtle" bias, when its own writers are secretly giving drafts and veto power to a political campaign [0]. Keep in mind I'm not defending right-leaning publications, either. They have their own set of problems. But this ironic, constant claim that left-leaning publications are above reproach or criticism is laughable. We, the readers, must always keep them honest through our own honest critiques and feedback.

[0] http://nypost.com/2016/10/11/the-new-york-times-abandoned-it... - first that popped up in Google

Are you seriously citing the New York Post to make a point about media bias and integrity? I read the nypost for fun but it's barely a real newspaper, and to the extent that it is it's extremely biased and unprofessional.

FOX News literally circulates a memo, every day, that guides its treatment of political subjects.

That they have a primary goal of pushing an agenda is made manifest by FOX's abrupt termination of coverage of a meeting between President Obama and the GOP when it began to show Obama in a sympathetic light. Name one example of another mainstream media outlet being this institutionally cynical.

https://mediamatters.org/research/2010/01/30/fox-cuts-away-f...

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/kja25r/the-daily-show-with-jon...

CNN feeding the debate questions, in advance, to one campaign but not the other? Or do you not count CNN as mainstream?

So, that's institutional?

Below are examples of MSNBC & CNN being just as consciously cynical in pushing their agenda. If you're honestly curious I recommend checking NewsBusters as often as checking MediaMatters.

MSNBC cropped video of the only man open carrying an AR-15 outside one of Obama's townhalls to hide his race (he was black), and then used the cropped footage to immediately launch into a discussion on whether armed protestors were "racially motivated". http://www.mediaite.com/tv/busted-msnbc-caught-dishonestly-e...

CNN's Chris Cuomo falsely told viewers that it was illegal for regular citizens to go online and view the Wikileaks documents, and that is was only legal for CNN to view them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-beYBLrkNAg

CNN also abruptly terminates interviews and silences microphones when guests calmly start providing different opinions or news from what they want their guests to offer.

Terminating Congressman Collins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbA5RE9eK08

Compilation of many other CNN cuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYRN8Clddw

They even silenced Bernie Sanders for a minute after he made a brief joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSBBaM1GCyY

All of those look to be accidental. Can you show a bias in technical errors that's partisan in nature? When Fox cut it was deliberate.

New York Post is a tabloid. Please don't cite them to support arguments about journalistic integrity.

I'd disagree pretty strongly with this. Here's a couple of NYT examples: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/international-students...

After reading this article, do you think colleges overall are seeing a significant drop in international applicants, a significant increase, or it stayed about the same?

Or here's another example: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/upshot/free-market-for...

After reading this article, what do you think about the general views of economists on school vouchers?

Here is another example: "A Sea of Charter Schools in Detroit Leaves Students Adrift" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/for-detroits-children-...

According to NYT: "half the charters perform only as well, or worse than, Detroit’s traditional public schools."

According to data from the cited study: Half the charters perform significantly better, around half no significant difference, a small percentage (1% in reading, 7% in math) perform significantly worse.

See: https://jaypgreene.com/2016/06/29/nyt-hatchet-job-on-charter...

Yet another: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/how-the-mo...

Give that a read and try to work out when and why Honduras became the most dangerous place on Earth. The entire piece overlooks the fact that the danger is a recent issue, and the American role in propping up the government that made it happen. It's less clear-cut than bad stats, but it got them called out by a bunch of neutral groups for white-washing a major coup.

What about these examples is indicative of damning bias on the NYTs part? And what are the countervailing data sources that you're cross referencing against to know that they're being misleading?

The countervailing data sources are the very sources cited by the articles.

For example, the actual study cited by the first article says 39% of colleges expect a decrease in international enrollments, 35% expect an increase, and the remainder expect it to be about the same. Weirdly the 35% doesn't appear in the article.

I have to disagree with you. Before we 'cut the cable' my wife used to watch MSNBC and last year it seemed like their nightly news hours were mostly the opinion of the show's host, couched as news.

I do agree with the way papers like the NYT has separate 'opinion' sections or labels articles as being and editor's opinion - way better than how MSNBC put forth opinion as hard news.

OP did not include MSNBC in that list. They are obviously the left equivalent of Fox News. Their opinion shows run in the prime time.

I thought that was generally known of both, but maybe it's not known on either side and people tuning in to Fox and MSNBC both think they are getting unbiased news in the evenings.

The 7-11 block on MSNBC is unabashedly opinionated. They aren't even trying to be subtle about it.

Its is not just "some bias". Its every single day accessing to WaPo or NYT and have two dozens articles and news about Trump with negative connotation. As a non American, I just got tired of this. I dont feel the need to access to the mainstream portals anymore. It just began to be boring. There is an ongoing coup in Venezuela, with illegal arrests but somehow the very same Russian - Trump news remains more important.

> Its is not just "some bias". Its every single day accessing to WaPo or NYT and have two dozens articles and news about Trump with negative connotation.

The existence of news articles that convey a negative impression of a person or organization, regardless of quantity, does not, in and of itself, indicate any bias, either in selection or presentation.

> There is an ongoing coup in Venezuela, with illegal arrests but somehow the very same Russian - Trump news remains more important.

The Washington Post and New York Times are US newspapers. The President of the US, and his close associates, involvement with Russian government is more important news for them than the auto-coup in Venezuela for the same reason that that auto-coup is more important in Venezuela than the Russia-Trump issue.

You're right that the existence and quantity of news does not necessarily indicate bias, however, bias is found not just in news that is reported but also in what news is reported versus what news is not reported. I personally find this to be where most of the egregious media bias is. For instance, if the media chooses to not cover left-wing initiated violence at a protest, but heavily cover right-wing initiated violence at a protest, that is still bias, even if the reporting about the right-wing violence is accurate.

It's a much more insidious bias too because its harder to point out. You will have to use non-mainstream sources as they are the only ones doing the covering, and the fact that they are not mainstream will be used to hand waive away the complaints.

I wonder if it's just impossible to find serious right-leaning journalists that aren't full right wing, since journalism is already heavily liberal, full of institutional bias, and few people are willing to work for peanuts.

Does full right wing even have a coherent meaning?

edit: Which I realize now is poor phrasing. When I say "coherent", I'm not talking about right wing ideologies being coherent or not, I'm asking if there is actually a bundle of beliefs that have extremes that can meaningfully be taken together. Some ideologies embrace national defense, others are less concerned with it, others consider it at odds with personal rights, and so on.

I'd consider the responsible center-right newspaper to be the Wall Street Journal. As for news/opinion magazines, there's Commentary, The American Spectator, National Review, The Weekly Standard. I'd consider U.S. News & World Report to be an establishment conservative outlet, too.

Perhaps the Economist? They seem generally professional and intellectually honest, but posit everything from a right/Capitalist perspective.

The Economist is a bit unique in that their "classic liberalism" editorial viewpoint doesn't neatly fit into America's current tribal division; in America I've heard it called both "right-wing" and "left-wing" as a result.

Such shows a danger of trying to pigeonhole every editorial stance into "left" and "right" categories. It would be nice if we expanded beyond these somewhat artificial opinion collectives.

I lean to the left, but I enjoy the writings of McArdle: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/megan-mcardle who is solidly libertarian. She tries to argue her point logically, and in cases where I still disagree with her, I can respect her perspective.

Here in the UK, we have the Spectator magazine, whose writers are very professional and generally support a conservative position.

WSJ is at least center-right.

That's true, but their opinion/editorial pages are extreme right-leaning, they're different teams.

“Extreme right”?

Some proportionality would be good. “Extreme” when used in the context of political ideology implies some form of totalitarianism; i.e., Nazism, Fascism (extreme right), Stalinism, Maoism (extreme left).

The WSJ, from the little of it I read, tends to adopt generally classical liberal or libertarian positions; i.e, moderately right-leaning economically, moderately liberal on social issues, generally in favour of more liberty across the board, and thus opposed to authoritarianism.

There's a valid debate to be had about the merits of these positions, but to describe the WSJ as “extreme right” does an injustice to the many who've suffered and died – and who continue to do so to this day – due to genuinely extreme political ideologies.

I basically do not take issue with your dissection of terms here.

However I have seen another bit of your logic elsewhere and strongly disagree with it: the idea that mislabelling (or even correctly labelling) something "does an injustice" or "is a disservice" or "would be offensive to" people who died in the past at the hands of someone/something. We only have an obligation to make the lives of current and future people better: people who have died because of hatred would surely appreciate us doing our best to combat hatred in the modern world.

I'm not sure I see where the disagreement is.

I agree that making life better for people today and in the future is what matters most. And I think an important step in doing that is to heed the lessons of history, which includes having sympathy for the suffering of those who've gone before.

Sure, we're agreeing. I just take issue with the idea that it is possible to do an injustice against the dead over word choice. I probably jumped too quick, though, and maybe shouldn't have commented. Sorry if any of this came off as combative!

Fair enough :) I see what you're getting st, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Sorry for late reply, but I totally did not mean the word "extreme" like you are talking about. I meant extreme as in, my expectations for a newspaper opinion section with the heft of the WSJ should contain wisdom and NOT be mostly a cheer-leader for one side of the political spectrum.

I've heard its newsroom is even more liberal that the NYT, but it's very professional so it's hard to tell.

Its news coverage is inarguably center-right (since it caters to a primarily business audience), but its opinion pieces are quite liberal.

> but its opinion pieces are quite liberal

The WSJ? What are you talking about? It's opinion pages are famously conservative.

It's owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp of "fair and balanced" Fox News fame.

"To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle." This is a delusion. NYT has a bad record in reporting data. One easy example: "Amid ‘Trump Effect’ Fear, 40% of Colleges See Dip in Foreign Applicants". https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/international-students...

Quote from the original report: "39% of responding institutions reported a decline in international applications, 35% reported an increase, and 26% reported no change in applicant numbers. " http://www.aacrao.org/docs/default-source/TrendTopic/Immigra...

I think it would be pleasant to some bigger far-left papers rather than liberal or conservative papers. All the ones you named are liberal papers.

Yeah "left" is not the way I would describe papers that dishonestly hyped the invasion of Iraq etc. For readers-by: try Jacobin or Dissent

Current Affairs also.

Where were these news outlets professionalism in the pewdiepie fiasco? They were manufacturing it, that's where.

I think you're romanticizing these outlets, they're no different than any other private organization whose purpose is to make money and power.

>> Yes, the prominent center, center-left, and leftish new outlets (NYT, WSJ, Economist, WP, etc.) have some bias in their writing. However, most of the authors and staff at those organizations are extremely professional and take their mandate to report and analyze very seriously. To me, this is self-evident 95% of the time.

Lets investigate this claim - news article from today's NYT interspersed with some critique...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/world/europe/serbia-prepa...

> BELGRADE, Serbia ? When he was Serbia?s information minister in the late 1990s, Aleksandar Vucic censored journalists, forced media critics out of business and served as chief propagandist for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian strongman reviled for the atrocities that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Apparently these are established facts. I have not done sufficient research to critique either way. The overall picture is fairly negative, I'm sure you will concur.

> Today Mr. Vucic is the prime minister of Serbia, having been elected in 2014 as a reformer on promises to lead Serbia into a democratic future and membership in the European Union. He has renounced the extreme nationalist views of his past.

Apparently also established facts. The juxtaposition is somewhat cynical, indicating a hypocrisy. How does this juxtaposition narrative match similar stories of currently elected politicians who were once part of regiemes deemed 'bad', and what criteria are used to label them as such?

> Western leaders rely on him as a partner to maintain calm within the Serbian min orities in Kosovo and Bosnia, to support their migration policies and to keep su fficient distance from Russia ? even though Russia?s president, Vladimir V. Puti n, has professed his support for Mr. Vucic.

More summary facts, also implying that the Serbian minorities are instigators in ethnic troubles in various areas, and the other groups are victims of same. Sets up a false dichotomy between distance from Putin and Putins endorsement. Is that same dichotomy applied to WSJ treatment of Russia-China relations? If not, what geopolitical bias might relate to such a inconsistency in reportage?

> However, Serbian journalists who have reported critically on Mr. Vucic say that little has really changed. They say that tactics of harassment and intimidation have made it almost impossible to do fair-minded journalism.

"Some Say"... (I will give them that this is a transition paragraph)

> Stevan Dojcinovic is the editor of the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, a nonprofit organization that does online investigative journalism. He is 31, wit h a steely personality, a short scruffy beard and metal piercings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organized_Crime_and_Corruption... " Radu and Sullivan realized more cross-border investigative reporting was needed and started OCCRP with a grant from the United Nations Democracy Fund. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Democracy_Fund " UNDEF supports projects that strengthen the voice of civil society, promote human rights, and encourage the participation of all groups in democratic processes. The large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations -- both in the transition and consolidation phases of democratization "

No direct insight on the OCCRP organization, however it appears to be externally funded through an organization with a distinct philosophical and socioeconomic perspective, which, is not to disagree that there is likely much corruption here which should be studied.

Relatedly, I wonder how much the UNDF funds research into US lobbying and campaign finance corruption, or have we already 'consolidated as a democracy'?

> He was investigating the undeclared assets of Mr. Vucic?s family last year when his picture appeared on the front page of The Informer, a popular pro-Vucic tabl oid in Serbia, five times in one month. Some of the photographs and personal inf ormation could only have been obtained from government surveillance, Mr. Dojcino vic says.

Definately cause for concern I'd say, were it me. Though I nearly digested the summary dismissal of this outlet as 'pro regime' without even questioning it. Where does the WSJ editorial staff post it's guidelines for evaluating news sources as such, and what is it basing this critique on?

> Other articles accused Mr. Dojcinovic of working alternately for organized crime , the businessman and philanthropist George Soros and Western intelligence agenc ies, without explaining how he managed to juggle working for all three at the sa me time.

This presumes this is not possible?

Here's a scenario: oligarchs funding preferred organized crime groups and social organizations on behalf of state security apparatuses in order to create political networks with which to exert local political influence, the same as it has been since the dawn of time? You know, the same thing the NYT is accusing Putin of using Russian oligarchs to do with the FSB, the Russian mob and 'pro russia' groups?

Stopping here, but I think I've made my point:

Sorry man, if you read between the lines, the emperor has no clothes.

And yes, this goes for all news sources - Xinhua, RT, Al Jazeera, BBC, etc.

And for the record I have no distinct conclusion about this topic, not being informed enough to make a call.

I do agree with you that more 'reputable' reporters do their best - however that 'best' is more often than not couched in the socio-political and philosphical biases which they, their editorial staff, owners, and dominant national culture share.

> However, most of the authors and staff at those organizations are extremely professional and take their mandate to report and analyze very seriously. To me, this is self-evident 95% of the time. To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle.

You clearly haven't read their pieces on India - though I suppose this is a symptom of something more insidious.

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