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Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

Unbiased news does not exist. To get a good appreciation for the real "ground truth", one must accept bias exists and seek several opinions on a given issue, from different outlets or sources.

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Sure, I think I would be happier trying to find a pay for a news source that focuses more on synthesizing information. Obviously there is no unbiased anything (#1 of my list is explaining exactly that). What I'm looking for are sources that intentionally try to get all sides of the issue, what are those sources? Obviously reading NPR/Forbes/Guardian are not really those kinds of sources in many cases.

The problem with getting "all sides of the issue" is that that process itself is highly susceptible to bias. If there was an article about vaccines, should the news organization solicit opinions from antivaxxers? These are mostly uneducated fools who reject scientific consensus because it makes them feel a modicum of control, not because their anti-vaccine stance has any medical or societal merit whatsoever. Where does the value in seeking "all sides of the issue" come from?

I think for me the all sides thing is more so to hear all the opinions, even if invalid. For example, if I want to learn about a philosophical or scientific topic I like that I can go to Wikipedia and see all the different sides of it just to even know what positions people have on the topic at all.

To use your example, I think it is important to know that antivaxxers exist and what their arguments are. This way you dont get surprised when certain events happen that were inconceivable based on your bubble. Fundamentally, the purpose of (non-editorial) news should not be to convince you. It should be to shine a light on things as they are and the converstations ppl in the real world are having.

Absolutely this. "I'm looking for unbiased news" is a standard line by people who do not read the news.

I'm sorry if my point wasn't clear, I'm looking for as close to non-biased as possible. As I layed out in my numbered list I'm completely aware that there are no unbiased sources. To claim I don't read the news is just attacking and not really helpful to my legitimate desire to find news sources that aren't just pundits of organized interests.

Okay, then I'm really not sure what you are trying to say. It sounds to me like, you have tried a bunch of news sources, and none of them are as unbiased as you would like, so you would prefer the news not exist at all than exist in this state.

Or maybe you are saying, you don't want to pay for the news unless it matches your expectations -- but you DO want the rest of us to pay for it so it continues to exist?

I would say, like I said, that wikipedia has been my go to and what I support because it has a HUGE reference list for each article. My question is simple where are the news sources that list as many sides of an issue and list all their sources that they pull from?

I don't know where you are getting this notion that I want others to pay for something so then I can deem if it's worthy for me to pay for...

I mean, I'm with you 100%. I don't know why the news doesn't do a better job of presenting both sides of the story. I get around this by getting news from a lot of sources. It doesn't take very long either. My morning news intake:

- minnesota public radio (my local) - economist news briefing - the journal (from WSJ) - WSJ tech news briefing - up first (NPR) - the daily (nytimes).

I would LOVE to add a more conservative one into the mix here. I'm just saying, there's a difference between people updating wikipedia vs people who have a full time job that involves covering the news, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is worth paying for. FWIW I also pay for wikipedia. But I also pay for nytimes, washington post, and the star tribune.

Agreed, unbiased news is an purple unicorn. Unbiased news is a person who has never had a racist thought in their life.

Sure there are different degrees of bias, some sources are definitely biased to the point of being far to much work to see through the bias, but others reliably have decent articles amongst their less decent ones. And who’s to say that the articles I feel are decent aren’t just the ones that most alight with my biased views.

Unbiased news is not physically possible. Holding out for it is to hold out for something that is literally impossible to happen.

With apologies for gently calling bullshit on this, you're basically saying the following list does not exist. Or you're saying it has "center bias," which is kind of like saying a court has "bias towards its decision". Or you're saying this domain is biased, even though it seems balanced (I've looked into it), an accusation that would of course require evidence:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/

There is an objective truth. The closest you come to that, the less biased you are. Not sure what the problem with understanding this is. Values may differ, and you may be including that in your definition of "bias" (for example, WSJ may come at news from a business perspective), but I would personally NOT include values into a definition of "bias" because that then makes "bias" conveniently impossible to define objectively!

>There is an objective truth

When it comes to the issues that "news" covers for the most part, this is highly debatable (and debated) claim.

There are facts that you can state, but even then, there is the choice about which ones to mention and which ones to leave out. Or even which ones to state first.

With your example you can still be misrepresenting the truth, which is essentially deception aka “lying”

If there's more than 1 fact, there has to be an order to presenting them. If that's lying, how can there be truth?

Oh please. It would be in degrees. You can minimize those degrees. Or you can maximize them to the highest level that the intelligence of readers can tolerate. Which seems to be exactly what is occurring in the media today.

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