Hacker News Reader

Comment by clarkmoody | Hacker News Reader

I love the idea of trying a new business model for news delivery, especially one centered around facts.

I seriously hope this project can overcome the prevalent, subtle biases in media. For instance, every single headline from the recent French election mentioned "far-right" Le Pen without also mentioning any ideological affiliation of the other candidates. Painting your opponent as an extremist is an effective political tactic, and "far-right" certainly sounds extreme. Were most media outlets opposed to Le Pen, hence the extreme label? Why not label any other candidates?

I'm not necessarily optimistic about the prospects for unbiased news, but I will be watching this project as it progresses.

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They call her "far-right" because that's what she is. The party is called "Front National", after all – "Front" as in war. They don't mind the label. It's simply a description of fact, with the possible caveat that some of their economic ideas aren't that different from those on the far left.

The media also regularly labels the other candidates, and nobody is complaining about them any more than Clinton complained when someone said she was left of Trump, politically.

Example from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/world/europe/emmanuel-mac...

"[...]Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to go to a runoff to determine the next president, official returns showed. One is a political novice, the other a far-right firebrand "

"Mr. Macron, a former investment banker, abandoned traditional parties a year ago to form his own movement with an eclectic blend of left and right policies."

"[...] the mainstream right candidate François Fillon had nearly 20 percent, and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had 19.6 percent."

As to why she is labeled "extreme", Wikipedia says:

- She favours a "radical change of politics in order to drastically reduce upstream the influx of illegal immigrants towards France"

- She supported a referendum on whether to reinstate capital punishment in France

- "But I openly admit that, to some extent, I admire Vladimir Putin."

- "I do not believe that there was an illegal annexation: there was a referendum, the citizens of Crimea wanted to join Russia."

- Denouncing "the US supremacy", she "refused the idea that France slavishly followed the USA in this new stalemate"

Why do they even need to label certain candidates? To me it just looks like propaganda, or some sort of group signalling.

It's subconsciously saying the following: "Hey don't trust this one candidate because we don't like that sort of thing and have attached a warning every time her name is mentioned. The other candidates are fine, even the extreme far left one, so no label needed - maybe we will add one for them on a rare occasion."

I'm almost certain this sort of propaganda is the reason why the public spew hatred at certain candidates, yet often cannot back up that hatred in relation to their policies or behavour. Just so you know, I'm not backing a political figure here, just pointing out what I notice when I read news websites - particularly the big outlets.

They are labelling the extreme-left candidate the "extreme-left candidate", so any narrative derived from the "extreme-right" label happens entirely in the reader's head.

Note that we're talking about the foreign press (from the French perspective) here. They certainly have a motive to want le Pen to lose, but they don't have much power in that regard.

It's also not a secret conspiracy to stop her because it's not a secret. The slice of society journalists inhabit (i. e. having a university degree, having lived abroad, having studied history) is scared to death of what a FN would entail, such as the certain death of the European Union.

Again, you're operating from a wrong understanding of both "journalism" and "objectivity". If some holocaust denier holds an event, it's their job to call them out, not to report "both sides of the debate" in some sort of fake balance.

Why should it be a journalist job to call out a holocaust denier?

Shouldn't they just report who is holding the even and what views they hold? I think most of the problem here is conflating journalists with advocates.

Front is also used by the left - Front Popular - and I think they were trying to play with that back when they named the party. It doesn't mean "war" in this context, it simply means a common side to face something else. It is frequently used when two or more parties join together temporarily.

Radical relates to root, not extremism. Extremist might be the opposite of radical, depending on the context.

There's nothing in your list that suggests extremist positions.

Far-right has a general negative connotation, so it is not the same than saying Clinton is left of Trump.

Le Pen is right of most in some areas, left of most in others. THAT is the description no one would complain about.

every single headline from the recent French election mentioned "far-right" Le Pen without also mentioning any ideological affiliation of the other candidates

That's not true. Every publication I've seen about the election results are talking about right-wing Le Pen versus centrist Macron.

They also called Mélanchon "far-left"...

Well, Mélenchon is far-left. Left is Parti Socialiste. Right is Les Républicains. Far-right is Front National.

These are the French definitions of Left and Right, and probably have nothing to do with other countries'. Based on these definitions, the Democrats are Right and Republicans are Far-right.

Whether they are good definitions, I can't say. But Mélenchon is definitely not plain Left, or Center.

Sounds a bit rhetorical. How information is "far-right" and "far-left"? Not much other than to expose a fallacious single-dimension scale.

How about terms like "left-socialist" or "right-nationalist"?

When your position is to defend a woman who doubts the French fascist government rounded up jews, your argument is probably knackered from the start.

She didn't doubt any of that. That is just false.

She was asked whether "France" was "responsible" for said round up. She said she thought not.

The reason being that France was under occupation and shouldn't therefore be considered an independent country.

In other words, the real France was represented by de Gaulle in exile in London and the Resistance, rather than Pétain in Vichy and the occupation-sanctioned government - which was who did the rounding up.

So, she didn't doubt the French "fascist" government rounded up Jews. She said that precisely because the "fascist" government was not legitimate, France as a country ought not to be considered responsible for that government's actions.

When someone dismisses an entire argument based on the other's political leaning, their own arguments should only be afforded the same courtesy they were willing to extend to their opponents.

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