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Comment by Doubl | Hacker News Reader

Yes but they have their own agendas. I think I have seen one comment piece that was from a pro brexit point of view over the last three years. During the Irish abortion referendum run up, it was the same. It was as though the right to have an abortion was self evidently as much a human right as free speech. The guardian overall is too black and white for me.

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Ironically, sitting where I do (in the London bubble), it feels pretty uncontroversial to me that the right to have an abortion is self evident, whereas free speech is not clear at all--the competing interests of the individual and society have to be balanced. So, for me, the Guardian reflects the perspective it is embedded in rather than having an agenda which is pushed e.g. because of a wealthy proprietor.

Is that not like saying it suffers from groupthink? Because I do feel there's a consensus of opinion among their writers on most topics. You see a greater range of views in the times and the daily telegraph which are owned by wealthy proprietors as has long been common in the industry.

They publish opinion pieces from people holding quite different views.

I haven't noticed that, quite the opposite is my impression.

That is also my impression. Especially on social issues, so much of what they publish is shamelessly ideological. I get that we can't completely eliminate bias, but I have no use for a publication that makes no attempt.

This is such an interesting topic. You find them "shamelessly ideological" probably because you don't agree with some of their commentaries. It's a fair point, but objectively, it doesn't say much about the quality their journalism.

Here is a concrete example; no reputable news outlet would publish an opinion piece by a creationist in an attempt to be fair or unbiased, and I guess most people here on HN would agree with that. But it gets more interesting. Ideology can be so powerful and deep-seated that becomes virtually invisible, but it's hard to argue that it's not there.

if it's ideological, it's not really journalism, is it? It's opinion. We're long past the days of A.M. Rosenthal and Walter Cronkite, where journalists actively exercised restraint in injecting their personal biases into the stories they were covering. This isn't surprising, because facts without opinions just don't sell that well in our modern attention economy.

https://www.newsweek.com/new-biography-cbs-newsman-walter-cr... specifically mentions him injecting his personal bias into stories (Vietnam, Goldwater, Nixon), etc.

It’s not hard to distinguish between someone who is trying to be neutral and objective and someone who is pushing an agenda. It’s one thing to accidentally let some bias slip in and quite another to advocate openly for your worldview. Notably, the Guardian behaves as a participant in (rather than observer of) a debate, and not even a good faith participant, only misrepresenting their opponents’ views if not overtly engaging in libel. Also, when your own ideology is not dominant, you become quite aware of your own biases because you have to in order to engage productively with the dominant ideology (turns out viewpoint diversity is actually pretty important).

So what you're saying is, that The Guardian is pushing an anti-creationist agenda? Why are they not representing creationists in good faith? Every time they have an article on evolution, the Guardian must also push an article on creationism in order to ensure that they are not pushing an agenda.

I think you’re responding to the wrong person. I didn’t say anything that remotely resembles this...

The parent poster brought up an example of news outlets not publishing Creationist opinions. You claimed that The Guardian is not engaging in good faith by being a participant in a debate rather than an observer.

My counterpoint was a simple ask: Is The Guardian therefore not behaving in good faith if for example they choose to not publish opinions by Creationists, or if they don't give equal weighting to Creationists whenever a discussion about say, evolution appears.

My post had nothing to do with creationists nor were they a principle feature of the thread. I’m not really interested in this tangent. If creationism is a metaphor for pseudoscience in general, then my beef is that the Guardian publishes it exclusively and gives comparatively little time to evidence-based positions. Or more accurately, it talks about evidence-based positions deceptively and in bad faith, cherry picking and gas lighting. This is all pretty abstract and I don’t especially care to debate it in depth (not here, anyway)—if someone disagrees with my characterization, that’s fine—my position doesn’t require everyone everywhere to agree with me at all costs.

Can you explain to me what evidence-based positions The Guardian gaslights or engages with in bad faith?

Ditto. My impression is also that the Guardian is shamelessly ideological.

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