Show HN: A tool to compare news from liberal and conservative sources

The times are, of course, a changing. Almost all newspapers in the UK at least have, today a really low circulation number. They are widely available, but hardly anyone buys them anymore. The Guardian, for example only sells 156 thousand copies.

You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission, although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying attention.

The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <- Yes, this is a real article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage.

I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't think this should be excused.

To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, more insidious and damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how "erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today, this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So. Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.

I hope that's something that can be fixed though, because I do love the idea of this site...

The biggest difference between them and Breitbart is the subtlty - they do a good job looking smart and give lip service to opposing viewpoints. They also have much better reporters, designers and editors. All that actually serves to make their bias more dangerous though.

If you think Breitbart is too far right to be mainstream, check the identity of the guy in the White House and think again.

If you think the Guardian is too far left to be mainstream then check the identity of the previous guy in the White House.