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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> and of course its general direction has a leftist slant (and why should it not?)

Because when you go into every news story already convinced that the left are in the right in a given situation then your reporting is compromised.

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No paper is strictly objective and it's not supposed to be.

I think that's completely fine as long as the direction is clear and the reporting is accurate.

On the other side of the spectrum we would have, for example, The Wall Street Journal.

While I personally believe that some of their opinion writers are even worse than some of The Guardian's opinion writers there's no doubt that The Journal delivers some stellar world class journalism.

Or would you apply a different standard there?

I think people can at least try not to bring their bias to work, or failing that actively declare that your reporting is designed to campaign for a particular politics. The Guardian doesn’t even attempt that.

They approach reporting like an angry anonymous Twitter account.

There is no such thing as impartial journalism. You have to select and interpret events. You cannot but do so from a particular perspective. The Guardian does a far better job than most newspapers at upholding accuracy in their writing. They don't lie to or manipulate their readers.

While there is some good writing and occasionally rigorous journalism on the Guardian, I won't accept the claim they don't manipulate their readers, I won't say they lie explicitly but they certainly remove context and omit when it is convenient to a certain editorial position. The timing and number of very tenuous anti-semitism claims against the Labour leader, for one.

How come for example the Times manages to include opinion pieces by views across the political spectrum and the Guardian doesn’t? The Guardian don’t even pretend to be trying.

'Trying' to do what? If you accept that a paper cannot be impartial, then what ought they be trying to do? It seems to me, from what you said, that you wish for them to be as plural as possible. Perhaps that's one virtue.

But there's nothing illegitimate about a paper having a particular political persuasion. Every paper does. What they should be judged by - holding politics equal - is the vocational standards of journalism: sobriety, rigour, accuracy, style, and a refusal to appeal to the worst in humans. I would say the Guardian does very well on all these counts. You say that it doesn't declare its politics, but it does: you only have to read their editorials. Not that it's a secret; everyone knows.

As for The Times, I can't speak with any authority. I don't read it, because it's behind a paywall. I know they're a centre-right paper who sometimes publish those on the centre-left. But my sense is that the former massively outnumber the latter, and that they rarely if ever publish social democrats and socialists.

The graph in this study fits, broadly, with my intuitions:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/0...

Are you talking about general opinion pieces or the Times regular columnists? The Guardian does have a pretty diverse Comment section [1]. As far as the regular columnists go, it's true they don't really have a right-wing Owen Jones, but for instance, Matthew d'Ancona is conservative, and Larry Eliott is a Lexiteer.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree

>How come for example the Times manages to include opinion pieces by views across the political spectrum and the Guardian doesn’t?

This is partisan in of itself

Now I'm curious: What paper do you read that doesn't have a bias? I'm in the US, but looking for different perspectives.

I think all journalism is biased, but there’s a difference between regretting it and trying to hold it back, and wallowing in it like the Guardian does.

For example the Times publishes pieces from the left and right viewpoints. The Guardian doesn’t even pretend to be interested in multiple views.

What? The Guardian's comment section has a huge range of opinions.

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