Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

I get the point you're making, but when such a tenured and large scale organization is subject to increasing ideological bias, couldn't we also cast the entire 'fact collection' activity as being in support of that bias? Who's to know if the facts are being selectively reported, or stitched together to tell one narrative instead of the whole truth? A similar argument applies to academia - biased researchers will selectively explore certain angles or tell certain stories, and the sheen of academia (the trust given to it) causes the results to be accepted even if they are incorrect.

View on HN

> when such a tenured and large scale organization is subject to increasing ideological bias

Every new organization has an editorial line, within its own Overton Window, both of which can shift over time. So it's not a new thing. Even being centrist is a bias.

What's the alternative? What is the best source of information available to the public?

It's easy to take potshots, show me a news source that's better.

The absence of a better news source doesn't mean we should be blind to its faults.

Sure, but the grandparent doesn't say "I read the NYT but here are some flaws..." or "The Houston Chronicle is better because..." it says the entire enterprise has been directed "in support of bias".

I am arguing against being blind to the news source's virtues. If we don't want to be blind to the world we have to pick our poison(s).

Fair enough. I find that Wall Street journal, Reuters, and NPR all do better jobs (in roughly that order) with respect to reigning-in their biases than the NYT.

WSJ? They do a better job at disguising their right-wing biases as reporting facts. I used to resd it daily 10-20 years ago but now I need to read it very carefully.

WSJ isn’t perfect, but they aren’t “right-wing”, and they at least try to mask their biases, which makes them markedly better than NYT, WashPo, etc in my opinion.

> WSJ isn’t perfect, but they aren’t “right-wing”

WSJ was solid right in the editorial but pretty neutral in news (though clear ideological bias was creeping in in the last decade or so) back before News Corp bought it out to augment their right-wing propaganda empire.

Now, it's definitely more high-brow and less in-your-face, beat-you-over-the-head with unsubtle propaganda than, say, FOX News, but it's just as clearly directed at the same ends.

Financial times.

That's a great choice. I am curious if as an FT reader do you really hate the NYT or do you think FT is better but if it wasn't available NYT is readable.

I don't hate NYT, I think it's compromised and diminished in quality but they still put out good content every once in a while.

The incident with Scott Alexander of SSC left a particularly bad taste in my mouth.

If FT wasn't available, I'd pay for Substack newsletters from trusted authorities.

As a long-time subscriber I recommend very strongly against putting all your eggs in this basket. They are good on certain topics but have major blind spots. See my comments elsewhere in this thread.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com