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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

There are obvious cases of deceptive media, where things are simply made up, but the most invidious ones are just "differential spin" and very hard to pin down.

The recent Harry/Megan fiasco has provided a great set of examples on how the same action can be reported as a positive or negative depending on the paper's preferred spin: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markl...

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I saw a side by side of an opinion editor of the WaPo. Last year she was saying how important the Iowa caucuses were. This year she said how unimportant they are.

The same person, diametric takes on the same subject. The only difference is I guess her preferred candidate didn’t do as well...

Not taking any side here, but something is only as important as the results it provides. If this year's caucus didn't really provide any good results, it's possible that 2016's was very important but 2020's was not.

A less political example: there was a time when E3 was the most important week for the video game industry. It's far less important now.

I don't know much about the Iowa caucus, but it's entirely possible for something to be very important historically and also be irrelevant today.

mc32 wasn't talking about 2016 vs 2020. It was 2019 vs 2020.

Right, but was there an Iowa presidential caucus in 2019?

No, that first article was written in 2019.

The charitable interpretation is to include the other difference, which is time. People change their opinions.

And they change them at such convenient times! I recall pieces in the same publication as to why we have the electoral college, why it is a good idea, and so forth. That suddenly changed. The timing is coincidental, and at times I think that charitability requires too much suspension of disbelief.

Most of this looks like the twenty-four hour news cycle wanting a lock on credibility and deciding who gets to sit at the table. It's a shame, because that would have been a good discussion to have, but they've made their reputations so ... poor.

There's a whole subreddit for this with the American media

https://www.reddit.com/r/newscontradictions/top/?sort=top&t=...

That subreddit isn't really about the same phenomenon. It mostly focuses on the outlets in question publishing op-ed pieces from different authors rather than a partisan or parochial sort of spin attaching to a given outlet (although the sub itself pretty obviously leans pro-Trump).

This article and looking through the examples was one of the more interesting (and specific) descriptions of what's happening with them w.r.t. the British media.

I see why they're in Vancouver.

Goodness! The avocado one was two stories fewer than eighteen months apart. It almost looks like they were intending to get caught.

More that they don't care if they get caught. You could run diametrically opposing articles a week apart and not expect the readership to care enough to stop buying the paper.

Several papers run opposite stories locally: DMG Media (owners of the Mail) notoriously did this with the HPV vaccine. Irish Mail were in favour, UK Daily Mail were against, on the same day.

The Sun vs Scottish Sun is another repeat offender.

Sounds a bit like A/B testing with public opinion.

Or catering to two different groups. Like selling arms to both sides.

I would say they are Red-teaming (any relation to red-tops is unintentional). They already know their audience, so they strive to reduce the unknowns or false-positives.

A common one (enough that it's a joke) is that red wine (or dark chocolate) either prevents or causes cancer (or heart disease).

I can't recall which paper (in the UK), but there was one that run both stories (whichever consumable it was both caused and prevented whichever disease it was) on the same day, same publication!

Because it's not even about spin, it's just 'content' getting written and published and read. I'm not sure what the (actual) newspaper equivalent phrase is for 'generating clicks', but that's all it is.

Ah, you need https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ ! It is of course the Mail. These days they too rely on clicks a lot; the "reach" of the online version is more than the print version. https://www.newsworks.org.uk/daily-mail

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