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Comment by r00fus | Hacker News Reader

We’re accurate” isn’t an edge, because most people consider news accurate and authoritative. “We’re fair” doesn’t matter, because the people that think news is inherently 4biased have a (probably biased) news source that they consider unbiased. 4

I think/hope you might be mistaken here. People used to think UX wasn't a feature people would pay for, and Apple proved them wrong.

The existing "Wikipedia = relatively unbiased, and accurate" brand might make a big difference if WikiTribune can deliver.

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An awful lot of people aren't at all interested in accurate. They want the biased news source that doesn't bother reporting things that will piss them off, and blows the things they like out of proportion. Any sources that don't do this are just fake news, biased, unreliable, etc...

You have papers with excellent track records for accurate reporting getting blasted as fake news constantly.

> You have papers with excellent track records for accurate reporting getting blasted as fake news constantly.

TBH same paper can have a track record of accurate reporting in some things, and be wildly biased, inaccurate and unreliable in other things. It is easy to find ones that are all-around bad, it's not hard to find ones that are good at something and bad at something, but finding ones that are universally good... that's challenging. I wonder which ones you think have excellent record, never reporting anything bad or inaccurate.

> inaccurate and unreliable in other things

They aren't often though, because they stake their reputation on being accurate.

Bias is harmful, but I think the WaPo and NYT are a much more acceptable level of bias then say, Fox.

Acceptable for those that agree with them, sure. Ask somebody who does not. And there is very little penalty for them for being inaccurate or biased if inaccuracy and bias aligns with biases of their audience, which are pretty clearly partisan. Do you know many Democrats that would stop reading NYT because they were hitting too hard on Trump or reported some news with anti-Republican bias? I don't think there are too many such people.

I wouldn't call the criterion for a good paper "never reports anything inaccurate" as news are written by humans and humans are fallible, but rather "is able to admit mistakes and will put effort into clarifying rather than covering them". Also I would criticise the term "not reporting anything bad" - that could also be interpreted as not reporting anything that could speak against the government, for example. Instead I would recommend "acts according to some set of morals" as a criterion - in Germany we have a "Press Code" that every journalist learns and that is also being observed by the German Press Council. Another note: I think there cannot exist such a thing as the one perfect paper, because there does not exist one perfect opinion or viewpoint. The purpose of a good paper is to bring that into account: To picture different, maybe yet unseen perspectives on a problem. A set of high quality papers with different focuses existing alongside each other is a good thing for the same reason.

One paper that does a great job in my opinion is "Die Zeit". I am not familiar with the American media landscape and thus a equivalent, however.

The same source can be blasted as fake news and regarded as credible by different audiences. You don't need to please everybody to have a viable media enterprise.

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