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Comment by banned1 | Hacker News Reader

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth.

In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind. You have to visit all sites and KNOW that you are getting the one sided alternative facts that best support their specific agenda. Then you MUST realize the world is never really Black and White, and MUST come to your own informed conclusions.

Every site has their own goodness. I find interesting articles in each of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Braitbart, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, etc. etc., but you have to sift through 99% of one-sided junk.

View on HN

I don't understand this perspective. When CNN gets a story wrong, the right creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong (Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on and on)... nothing happens. Nothing. It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia isn't that bad" before there was enough of an outcry for him to be fired. It truly frustrates me when I see people pushing this "oh both sides are just as bad, but one is left and one is right". No. They are not.

And it isn't hard to see the direct effects this is having, now. When the governor of Texas calls out the national guard to keep an eye on the US Army doing training exercises, because of right-wing conspiracy insanity that has hit the mainstream, we are having problems. When President Trump can claim that Obama is the founder of Isis and people just eat it up, we are having problems. For God's sake, the man had his press secretary go out on Day One of his presidency and lie about crowd sizes. He spouts bullshit about crime statistics in Sweden and for months, Breitbart suddenly has constant articles about how immigrants are causing everything wrong in Sweden ever (I particularly remember an article with an image of a mangled child, with the claim this was caused by immigrants, only for word to come out later it was a dog attack).

The "mainstream media" (and I use the term in quotes because all the biggest radio shows are right-wing, fox is the biggest cable channel and the WSJ is the biggest paper aside from USA Today) is like a dog chasing a car, towing a pro-business line and chasing after whatever will give them the most eyeballs at the moment. But at least they aren't a goddamn propaganda force for the left, marching in lock-step and feeding off each other the way the right media does.

> When CNN gets a story wrong, the right creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong (Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on and on)... nothing happens. Nothing.

We see this in Australian media too, and I'm guessing everywhere else in the world is seeing it becoming more prevalent too. There's a real elitism around "what you are allowed to say"...

But they are! At least that's how it is perceived by the other side, and that's how you understand that perspective.

For a large number of people, truth is in the eye of the beholder. If a story confirms your preconceived biases, the journalist got it right and is telling the truth. If it opposes your beliefs, it's factually wrong. Truth is like relativity: There is no aether, no privileged reference frame.

When one believes, for example, with all of their soul and being, that climate change isn't happening, or that vaccines are good for you, then any reporting on the "facts" is ridiculous conspiracy, no matter how measurable it is. It's those greedy ivory tower elite, at it again! Reports about the falseness of climate change and the dangers of vaccinations are the lone voice of truth shining through.

You could write a report that you believe has zero bias. All observable facts. It will be seen as ridiculous, biased conspiracy by some people out there.

Maybe it's because defining what the "truth" is is complicated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

The way humanity uses that word can sometimes be complicated, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that truth is:

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

Good one.

But what happens when you have two competing truths?

You discover that "truth" is the wrong word to describe at least one of them.

There are two truths: 1) People need jobs today 2) Coal drives global warming

Which one do you act on today?

Those are the type of discussions people in decision making roles are wrestling with, which may be a different perspective than that of arm-chair decision making like the one we do here in this thread.

A truth being inconvenient in combination with a different truth... doesn't make it any less true.

You don't need to decide between them. They're both true, regardless of your policy choices.

> There are two truths: 1) People need jobs today 2) Coal drives global warming

> Which one do you act on today?

The two competing options seem to be:

(1) both, or (2) neither, using denial of the second as a empty gesture toward addressing the first.

Doesn't really seem to be a fundamental conflict between them.

... nothing happens

That because of expectations. Everyone knows Breitbart is hard right. Even conservatives will admit that. Even Breitbart will admit that.

CNN like to position itself as the news. You know, the straight shit. When they go off the rails people get pissed because they don't expect CNN to do that.

I stopped watching CNN during election night when the table was full of people who at least once said "we" when they intended to say "the Democrats".

They hire political consultants to do the commentary for those election-night shows. They outnumber the journalists pretty overwhelmingly, that's just the way it works.

In defense of CNN, Democratic consultant James Carville was the first person on any of those shows - I was scanning pretty heavily - to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton was really hosed. Nobody else, even on Fox, seemed to believe it.

I stopped watching CNN as well because the bias was all too blatant and here I was all these years thinking that it was unbiased or at least tried to be balanced.

Marc Andreessen (whom I consider one of the smartest people I like to learn from) touches on this media issue here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZhBVBBBNs0

Even Marc is deeply conflicted when it comes to this particular issue. I think Marc is a partially closeted rightist and it's understandable because he works in California which is largely leftist. If you've followed Marc on Twitter(when he used to post) and on is interviews, you'll notice he'll be deeply inclined towards rightist views (he'll mention Venezuela as a cautionary tale) but not even he had the courage to support the republican party during the last election. The only person I know who had the chutzpah to come out, so to speak, was Peter Thiel and I respect him deeply for this.

That said, even Thiel is human after all; he was supposed to attend the PFS(a conference led by one of the best right leaning economists of our times - Hans-Hermann Hoppe) last year but cancelled as it had begun to draw unwanted attention.

> Marc is a partially closeted rightist

Closeted?

Ambiguous. Please let me know what's not clear and I'll respond.

Can someone point to this massive liberal bias that CNN has besides "being anti-Trump"?

It just feels like people on the right have made liberal mean anti-Trump.... Which seems like a bad definition to stake your own ideology on.

I recommend this article to you about the failure and death of journalism.

https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2016/08/21/american-jo...

The truth is, there's actually a huge amount of centrist in the USA. Those centrists are reasonable people. They'll hear you out, think, analyze and make up their mind. They'll accept compromise, and they'll try hard to see if maybe there's truth to consider, even if most things said appears exaggerated, or ridiculous.

And then there's unreasonable people. They don't want to think, or consider options.

In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people clustered on the right.

Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well. Maybe CNN forgot to consider an option, so they reconsider. Fox news doesn't, they're not trying to be reasonable.

So what's happening currently is all reasonable people on the left is trying to give a chance to the minority of reasonable people on the right. While the bigger chunk of unreasonable people on the right are trying to avoid all reasoning about alternative options.

In that sense, its normal for most reasonable news source to appear tied to the left. And most unreasonable news source to appear tied to the right.

> In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people clustered on the right.

I don't think it's fair to generalize 330 million people like this.

Certainly it feels like there are more reality-denying theories peddled by right wing media, but that could be for a variety of reasons, not limited to:

1. Right wing media is louder in their publicizing of these issues

2. Your media sources are more liberal and you view right wing media outlets as "unreasonable"

I am not American, but I have American friends. You cannot generalize political beliefs into who is reasonable or unreasonable in all their beliefs. Politics is a spectrum, and right now in America you have the loudest people screaming from the extreme right and (IMHO) the centre left. If you identify as more liberal, you're far more inclined to view this coverage as "reasonable" compared to more right leaning coverage.

> Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well.

No, this is the current media situation in America. In other countries this kind of propaganda from both sides of the political spectrum is not as prominent, and it's far easier to have a rational and reasonable debate about political issues.

You can draw your own conclusions about America, but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning people are unreasonable. It's a big world, and this most certainly is not the case in other countries.

I'd argue it's also not the case in America. American media has just been hijacked by the most loud, extreme group of people (from both sides) because the executives have figured out this style of coverage earns more money.

From an outside view, American news media has basically turned into The Jerry Springer Show. It's trashy and devoid of almost any meaningful content, but people watch it to be entertained.

> but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning people are unreasonable

Nor that even MOST right leaning people are unreasonable. It's all a matter of vantage point.

Edit: grammar

I don't think it's a matter of vintage point. It's all about intention. You can work to be more reasonable if you choose to. You can teach people to be more reasonable. Its a skill, a quality that everyone healthy can choose to practice or not.

I don't even know what right or left leaning imply. That whole categorization is a joke. Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to get it. Only after that's been cleared up can we start discussing meaningfully.

What I do know though is that in the media, in the USA, in 2017 (it hasn't always been this way), most unreasonable people making noise associsate themselves with the right and like to associate reasonable people with the left.

> That whole categorization is a joke

It's a very serious distinction. One which wars have been fought over many times over (from the french revolution to the cold war). To trivialize it is more than naive.

> Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to get it

There are many things I personally want but underlying it all is the idea of non-egalitarianism. I want structure in any society where merit and hard-work are given the utmost priority. Why do I want it? Because it is the most natural and most proven way to create proper incentive structures for the best outcome for other humans and myself.

How will I get it? First of all, remove most, if not all, government involvement in citizens' affairs. Allow for free markets to prevail and for the best ideas and the best people to rise to the top. I will take aristocracy over democracy any day. Democracy has become a tool that's been used to take away the liberties of individuals in the guise of freedom and equality.

The American right and the French revolution right are competly different things, which is another good reason for me to believe the categorization is a joke. They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details, they naturally lead to partisanship.

From what you said, we could have a reasonable conversation, but you sound more libertarian then the current American right. Here lies the issue of affiliation. You sound reasonable, but if you affiliate yourself with breitbart, fox news, and the rest of the leading right, you're associating yourself with a lot of unreasonable people in position of power. And since you've mentioned soviet communism and german fascism before, you might know that's exactly how reasonable people got tricked in the past also.

> The American right and the French revolution right are competly different things

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is-th...

I'd point you to that and say I'd only support your statement in so far as saying part of the American right is not as pro-liberty as it ought to be - this is in reference to neoconservatism and similar ideologies.

> They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details

They're shorthand and I think they're useful when you're genuine about discussion but want a quick way to understand where an argument is coming from. If you're disingenuous about conversation, it doesn't matter whether labels are used or not, you simply cannot self-regulate your bias to give room for discourse is all I'm saying.

> It's all about intention. You can work to be more reasonable if you choose to. You can teach people to be more reasonable. Its a skill, a quality that everyone healthy can choose to practice or not.

This applies to people on the left and the right. Choosing not to compromise on anything is as aspect of someone's personality which is independent of their political beliefs. You cannot unequivocally state that this mentality only applies to people on the right.

> I don't even know what right or left leaning imply. That whole categorization is a joke.

It's mostly because America has a two party system that you get a massive amount of political spectrum concentrated under the categories of "Democrat" and "Republican"

Go abroad and look at how many parties other countries have in politics:

Canada: Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Green, Bloc Québécois

UK: Conservative, Labour, LibDem, SNP, DUP, Green

France: En Marche!, National Front, Republicans, La France Insoumise, Socialist Party, ...

Germany: CDU/CSU, SPD, Die Linke, Green, FDP, AfD

I tried to be explicit about saying USA more then once, specifically because what I'm saying is not about other countries in the world, and wouldn't apply.

Certain countries have vastly different distributions, with most unreasonable people on the left instead. Others have an equal split, etc.

Oh, and I actually feel like you can very easilly model politics with two categories of reasonable and unreasonable. It's a much better model then the right vs left one.

To be fair, the entire political spectrum in America is far right of anything in any other developed country. And so I agree with you, not all right-leaning people are unreasonable, take the US Democratic party, who I am to the left of but I consider reasonable. They are right-leaning -- they are a pro-business centrist conservative party. Democrats are so conservative they do not even support universal healthcare. Imagine in your country if the left wing party proudly campaigned to deny healthcare to the poor, but the right wing campaigned to deny healthcare to even more poor people and to give that money to the ultrawealthy. We have an actual left wing and its policy positions are popular if you take polls but there is almost no political representation of it or platform for it in traditional media.

It's tempting to pull out "both sides" rhetoric because reasonable people sympathize with others and try to see things from their point of view and assume since they believe something, there must be a grain of truth to it so they always feel like they should compromise. The problem is unreasonable people (or simply malicious ones) will take advantage of this impulse every single time and have been for decades. "But both sides!" is the climate that guarantees it's going to be impossible to have a rational or reasonable debate about political issues -- approaching a political debate assuming a compromise is inevitable and the other side is just as reasonable as you are is just accepting defeat before a single word is spoken. In this context, if both parties approach it with good faith debate can happen, but if not (as is our current situation) whoever is the most extreme always wins.

> if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most reasonable people are clustered with the left.

I hope you realize there's nothing reasonable about this statement. IMO, most times when the right has been considered to be unreasonable, so to speak, it has been a response to the left taking things too far. And yes, this includes WWII; there is no Hitler without communism.

This is not to validate nor justify any extremists' actions but rather to illustrate that even when you are supposedly trying to appear centrist, you really aren't and what's worse is that you don't realize it. When this type of thing happens, you end up with bad outcomes. If you're going to be reasonable, also realize you're biased as I am (rightist).

Bringing this back to the topic at hand, it doesn't really matter if the left is going "too far", but rather whether the consumers of right-wing media think they are going too far based on the lies they are being fed. And at that point they'll "correct" with a new holocaust or civil war or whatever the very, very rich people who have the most to lose will support to protect their wealth.

> it doesn't really matter if the left is going "too far", but rather whether the consumers of right-wing media think they are going too far based on the lies they are being fed

But it does. That's exactly the point. It's a pendulum of sorts. A symbiosis where one cannot exist without the other in equal proportion. For any 'reasonable' discourse to happen there must be the acknowledgement of this fact; right or left, you come to the table biased. The one-sided blame game won't work because all it does is exacerbate the situation.

> very, very rich people who have the most to lose will support to protect their wealth.

Here's a fallacy that was debunked in the election. If the very rich are 1%-ers then how is it that so many sound-minded individuals chose Trump? The math doesn't support your statement.

> at that point they'll "correct" with a new holocaust

Seriously ?

It's the pendulum I spoke of earlier at play.

Love your HN bio BTW. Too funny.

Your question is a bit cryptic. But yes, I believe tragedies on the scale of the the holocaust and the american civil war are a regular occurrence in human history and we've not seen the last of them yet. I think conservative estimates of climate change related deaths are already in that ballpark.

The death toll for the Iraq war was about a million dead for example, and likely only happened due to the influences described in the article, taking advantage of 9/11 (e.g. the surveys showing that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe Iraq perpetrated 9/11 than people who watched no news at all).

> Fox News viewers were more likely to believe Iraq perpetrated 9/11 than people who watched no news at all

They can be forgiven that considering that W perpetuated that lie as readily as the news outlets.

When left goes "too far", we have Mao's China or USSR. Or it OK as long as left thinks it's not "too far"?

CNN's Trump/Russia coverage has been ridiculous, theyre running that story 33% of the time 24 hours a day, and nobody has or will be fired for that. Unless their ratings sink so far that upper management needs to be changed.

Do you not think that covering the (admitted!) collusion between a presidential candidate and a foreign power warrants that coverage?

How was this admitted? You're probably misusing the word collusion. There's no evidence of collusion yet, and there's barely evidence of the Russia hacks. Those intelligence agencies are relying on the investigation that CrowdStrike did. They were the only ones with access to the compromised servers. It's not like they all took a look themselves and came to the same conclusion. It's been consistently exaggerated and misrepresented by the media because they have a bias.

> How was this admitted?

When Don Jr. tweeted out the emails specifically inviting him and other Trump campaign staff to a meeting in Trump Tower (fairly good chance Don Sr. was there too) with a Russian government connected lawyer to get dirt on the Clinton campaign.

> compromised servers

I think you're only talking about the DNC hacks? Where this is now a much wider scope and context due to their own admittances.

The Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has closer ties to Fusion GPS, the people who came up with that "dossier" with the whole golden shower blackmail conspiracy theory, than she does the Russian government. The worst you can reliably take away from that meeting is that they decided to take a meeting with someone who claimed to be a Russian government lawyer with information on Clinton. Plus, there's more evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with the Ukrainian government against Trump than there is evidence of Trump colluding with the Russian government.

And yes, I was referring to the DNC hacks.

> they decided to take a meeting with someone who claimed to be a Russian government lawyer with information on Clinton

Even if you want to claim that's all that happened, that is -still- collusion ("secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy in order to deceive others") in the midst of a presidential campaign.

> there's more evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding

Oh please.

I'm not sure how NPR and Fox News can be compared in good faith. Yes NPR has a liberal bias, but for the most part it attempts to reasonably source its articles and publish a journalistically accurate news report.

Fox News is not a news channel. They have one or two news programs mixed in with "entertainment". Sean Hannity is not news, but entertainment pretending to be news[^1].

[^1]: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/14/1620475/-Fox-News...

Is DailyKos the pinnacle of Liberal unbiased sources?

It's up to you to find the goodness in the article.

> Every site has their own goodness. I find interesting articles in each of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Braitbart, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, etc. etc., but you have to sift through 99% of one-sided junk.

Not a clue. Never read them before. I simply linked them because they were the first result to come up with sources to Fox Media's own words.

> ...for the most part it attempts to reasonably source its articles and publish a journalistically accurate news report.

FoxNews is basically tabloid media, shark attack and child abduction stories and all.

NPR just does a terrible job of explaining other points of view. In some ways that's more dangerous. It is this kind of journalistic failure (a failure to earnestly explain people) that lets tabloid media seem relatively credible to people who feel like they're not being explained well.

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case.

The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of people and perspectives they choose to give a platform to.

I'm honestly surprised that anybody would expect NPR to be neutral or defend it as such. Their entire staff is extremely liberal. The idea that there would be a media organization staffed almost exclusively by liberals that put out totally unbiased journalism sounds like pure fantasy to me.

I think journalism in general will always tend to have a liberal bias, because the type of person who ends up in that career tends to be a liberal. It's similar to what's happening in academics. For whatever reason, liberals are just more likely to end up as teachers and TAs and professors and deans etc. Academics and journalism are both, to a certain extent and to varying degrees, nation-wide liberal echo-chambers.

Where are the liberal insane Sean Hannitys or O'reilly's? Not on NPR. Can I trust NPR will blindly support Democrats? No, they're friendly but still critical.

NPR is a news station that leans left - and you're right, most people that seek the truth also lean left for some reason.

But the left has nothing like "Fox News". There are no liberal infotainment channels that spread propaganda so blindly and unashamedly as Fox News.

Drawing parallels between any news station and "Fox News" is an insult.

The way NPR does the lean is quite interesting in that it's not usually obvious.

When they slant something what they will do is either pick someone on the opposite side of something who is off the rails or ineloquent. Or, when the opposition has an argument, they often will challenge the argument. When they have the side they agree with on, rather than challenge they tend to ask supporting questions.

That said, Greene and another do make an attempt at being fair while still showing their side, as opposed to Hinohosa or McEvers, for example.

> When they slant something what they will do is either pick someone on the opposite side of something who is off the rails or ineloquent. Or, when the opposition has an argument, they often will challenge the argument. When they have the side they agree with on, rather than challenge they tend to ask supporting questions.

This is the modus operandi of NPR and Fox News (and increasingly, every news source). These tactics allow them to masquerade as journalism and maintain a patina of credibility, because they can engage in it without ever exposing a compact-enough unit of dishonesty that people can point to and discredit them with.

People seem to understand that there's a difference between a news article and an opinion piece, but not enough people understand that the curation and editorial process itself is another opportunity for an opinion piece (and one that doesn't necessarily produce opinion pieces or factual inaccuracies as its output).

I don't know Fox News or NPR, but as an outsider, you're clearly just spouting a load of nonsense.

exposing a compact-enough unit of dishonesty

I used to rotate right, left and centerist papers back in the day, but the insanity you're peddling is clearly just trying to undermine journalism itself, rather than attack a particular point of view.

This is just the same crap the Trump's doing, dressed up in big words. Tar it all with the same brush, undermine it all, leave everyone believing there's no truth anywhere. Where today's left-leaning news is calm and fairly unbiased and today's right-leaning news is proper loony. And that hasn't always been the way, in case you're wondering, the roles have reversed.

All, unsurprisingly, from a green account.

NPR may lean 'left', but it tries to be journalism (Fox News is entertainment and propaganda); if you want to find something like the Fox News of the left, check DemocracyNow, or ThinkProgress

Often, it's more activism masked as journalism.

That's horse shit. I listen to npr a lot, and yes, they have narratives. Of all the happening in the world, there is daily a story about someone who happens to be overcoming the adversity of homosexuality, or being of color (not colored).

But that choice in coverage does not compare to calling editorial entertainment news, or flat out lying to their listeners.

The big difference is when I really think NPR screws up a story, or is too far left, I write them and feel like someone might listen on the other end. Good luck with that on Fox.

We need to distinguish between NPR the human interest/artsy radio station and NPR News. NPR TV news hour is legitimately the most moderate and unbiased TV news left standing, at least when i watched it last (admittedly been a while).

The tone may be unbiased, but the implied narratives and selection of stories is not.

I don't really see the problem with that, though, as long as you're aware of it as you listen to it.

There's just no right wing counter to NPR, and to compare it to Fox News or Breitbart is complete nonesense.

I'd love to find a media outlet with real journalistic integrity that draws the narrative from a right wing perspective but it just doesn't seem to exist. They seem to either go the route of tabloid style news coverage or indulge way too many conspiracy theories to even take serious.

> ...There's just no right wing counter to NPR

Basically every right wing magazine and journal had a podcast of some sort. Usually several. Find worthwhile writers for The National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Federalist Society, and Ricochet. Then find them on podcasts, either as hosts or guests.

I think you are referring to the PBS NewsHour. (PBS != NPR)

Nah. He's referring to Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Also, this entire conversation is really ignoring how networks like Fox News and NPR work. When they play to their audiences they're not really concerned with biases, they're concerned with playing to their audiences. Each network will probably guarantee its listeners/viewers 2-3 hours of solid reporting per day. For Fox News its when Brett Baier and Shep Smith come on. For NPR its Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

The websites on the other hand do traffic in pushing stories they believe their audience wants to hear, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms and I think all sides of this argument need to acknowledge that hard news happens only a minority of the time and the rest of the time is spent on soft news (infotainment, talk shows, etc.). I think its also important for us to be able to recognize that soft news is almost always going to be biased because its main purpose is to entertain you with information rather than inform you.

Also, NPR sits somewhere between cable and broadcast news. I say that because NPR, like broadcast news channels, has local affiliates all over the country that raise their own funding and do their own reporting. If I'm not mistaken its your local affiliate who chooses what you listen to for news and who buys programs throughout the day.

I think you're referring to Chris Wallace and Shep Smith. Not Brett Baier.

I'm very much referring to Brett Baier. He's hosted Special Report with minimal controversy over the last 8-9 years. I would add Chris Wallace in if not for the fact that his primary hosting duty is Fox News Sunday, which is Fox's Meet The Press competitor and a talk show.

Assuming that's true, do you have any theories on why people who seem to have liberal bias (++) end up pursuing journalism, research, and teaching?

(++): And, I'm not even sure what the colloquial definition of liberal means anymore. It seems like it's a word used to thought-shame people with whom one disagrees.

Re the liberal bias definition, this entire comments section has made me feel like this.

Liberal bias is thrown at media outlets that basically do no economic or deep policy coverage in the first place. How do you detect CNNs liberal bias between two pieces on shark week??

And it's total overton window BS too. Loads of NPR listeners will be like "yeeeeees of course there's liberal bias on NPR" but Fox News / Breitbartsters treat their stuff as some sort of objective truth.

/Rant

Trite answer to your question: younger people living in cities tend to be Democrats. Those people end up being reporters in places like DC (95% Democrats).

Why would the nation's capital end up being so democratic? One has to wonder

As a right-of-center person I find NPR's news coverage to be really reasonable. Whenever I hear someone earnestly categorize it as the left wing version of Fox "News" I take it as a evidence that the person has never actually listened to NPR.

That's really disappointing that you list an outlet like Breitbart with all the other reputable publications you name in an otherwise well formed argument.

What a sad state of affairs when we've legitimized a publication that identifies itself as central to the political movement that's brought together the xenophobes of our society.

It's a good point. Thanks for making it. I do read everything, including fringe publications. In the continuum of publications, everybody will find their tolerance for unacceptable to be different.

Thanks for your honest comment. I did think about your point before including it.

Edit: and i am sorry for offending you.

Oh - I'm not offended at all - it's just disappointing that it's many people's observation that the bias of historically reputable media outlets allow it to be lumped in the same category as a fringe publication. I don't think there's anything wrong with learning from or reading a fringe publication.

Breitbart is unfortunately no longer "fringe". They have a US Alexa rank of 69, comparable to the 57 for Fox News.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/breitbart.com

> ...the xenophobes of our society

I'll argue that there are "xenophobes" on the left, it's just that they consider middle America the foreign land. They identify more closely with formally educated people from other countries than Americans who enjoy hunting, processed food, revival churches, etc. The bitter clingers, deplorables, etc.

Increasingly it feels like, at least to me, the last group it is socially acceptable to harshly generalize is rural Americans.

I agree. Another group that is socially acceptable to generalize is "whoever does not think like me and my bubble people." (noting that my statement applies to both bubbles)

CNN is more pro-status-quo/pro-Third Way than "left" in the traditional sense. They're markets-and-welfare nationalists really, but in the original, less frightening sense of "nationalist". I read Reason and The Economist plus additional assorted liberal media. It's still bad but at least there's variety without having to sift through as much crap.

> HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber)

HN is one of those places where everyone thinks that there are plenty of "the other side" here. There are plenty of fiscal and social conservatives on this site. Probably the only sector of the conservative world that isn't well-represented here are war hawks.

I dunno, what about super nationalist white supremacists? Don't really find them here either.

Why would they not be here? They are here just like "SJWs" are here. Does technology, or this website, somehow imply a barrier to any group to join it in conversation? I would say that you will find each and all interests groups represented to some extent here. Just because you don't hear them here does not mean they are not here. They may just choose to keep their views quiet here because it is well known that the HN community at large would rather kick them out than engage in discourse. We know the HN community, because it's highly San Francisco-centric, are highly sensitive and establishes that this forum be a safe space

They're definitely here. I've had HN users insist that I, as a Jew, should be deported to Israel.

I'd second this. There was recently a long thread concerning Reddit and r/the_donald and those ranks certainly showed up.

You can catch a few in this thread.

They exist, and you don't know it. Just as a middle easterner who wants death to gay people, a gay christian fundamentalist, and a black kkk member.

Yes, I jest. Sorta. That's what I love about HN, typically. It has a very diverse community that typically leaves religion and politics at the door. And even if we all met, we may kill each other, we get along here in the sake of tech and interesting sciences.

> It has a very diverse community that typically leaves religion and politics at the door.

The fact that it leaves religion at the door means it's not as inclusive as it thinks it is.

Just because a discussion contains a religious component doesn't mean it's argumentative or something.

> ...we get along here in the sake of tech and interesting sciences.

Honestly, the earnest religious are a minority in this kind of context. They're explicitly encouraged to keep that part of them closeted in this context (and, frankly, most other contexts too). I think "we get along" isn't exactly accurate with that in mind.

People are, on a small scale, afraid of religious people. Especially "unrelated, unnecessary" controversy spawning from religious points of view.

I could say that the growth is fear correlates (as described in the article) with decreased engagement in organized religion. How would that go over? Would people appreciate a new kind of thought and a new diverse perspective? Or would they groan and roll their eyes?

I don't agree completely. Being inclusive doesn't require or include tolerance and catering to identity politics. If the site became that way, I'd leave in a heartbeat. In fact, if I know your sexual preference, religion, or political slant here - I already know more than I want to know about you, even if they align with me. And I mean here, on HN, not in real life relations of course.

There are many religious people here. I won't name names, though I do remember them. Mostly proud Christians, as identified by their bios and or websites.

Religious people tend to keep their heads down in STEM communities anyway, because if they make too much noise, they'll be asked to provide evidence, which is antithetical to the very premise of religions. It's a STEM-community thing, not an HN thing.

> I could say that the growth is fear correlates (as described in the article) with decreased engagement in organized religion. How would that go over? Would people appreciate a new kind of thought and a new diverse perspective? Or would they groan and roll their eyes?

Well, you're begging the question there by framing that concept as 'new diverse perspective'. It's not that at all, but a tired, conservative perspective. The idea that people have lost their way because they've lost their faith and are now suffering for it is not even remotely new or diverse. So you would get groans and eye-rolls, which you would interpret as being against 'new, diverse', but which was actually against beating a tired old nag.

"In a world of two echo chambers... it's up to you to make up your mind."

Fox News: "We report, you decide."

aka gossip. Not to be confused with journalism.

If you think Koch funded NPR is liberal, Democracy Now! and Thom Hartmann will make your head explode.

Luckily it's not just a world of two echo chambers and, I don't have to decide between delusions.

Science: We discover great things, you get smarter.

There is just Yes and No.

The default answer to most every question is No, aka status quo. Change occurs when a temporary coalition of Yes is formed around a hot issue. aka the Politics of Attention. Looks like punctuated equilibrium from the outside. Sometimes that change is progress, eg extending the franchise, more fairness, better accountability.

The partisanship in media, culture, politics, etc. maps very loosely to Yes and No, if at all.

From an European perspective this is an echo chamber of right-wing news.

NPR and Fox are such that you can still select a decent subset. Sometimes (less often) NYT and Breitbart have decent neutral content.

Fox doesn't try to push the tradcon agenda on every show, so you can just choose not to watch the O'reillys and such. Then there are things that they can't really mess up, like uncut interviews with specific people. I think Tucker Carlson, regardless of his opinions and how they jive with you, does a great job of giving his interviewees enough rope to hang themselves.

These days I tune in to Dave Rubin's Rubin Report for neutral interviews with people of widely varying opinions. For pop culture style "news" with less fear-mongering, there's always Phillip DeFranco. There are quite a few interesting political commentators with various viewpoints on YouTube. I've been watching styxhexenhammer666 recently, he seems to have a good predictive grasp on global politics centered around the U.S., he's often right.

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