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Comment by samspenc | Hacker News Reader

This is a good question: should news media like NYT report news without any political biases? Or is it OK for them to pick a side while reporting (progressive, liberal vs conservative etc).

If it is OK for media to report news with a bias, then will that accelerate the echo chambers across the political spectrum where news media only report on angles they favor?

Just wanted to raise this for discussion.

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We all have bias and there is no point in denying it. But that shouldn't stop people in professions like journalism aiming for independence and neutrality. People can be honest and intellectually honest, follow the evidence and logic impartially, in spite of their biases. The problem comes where they see their role as something different; then they become propagandists and political partisans who hide behind their supposed impartiality.

The problem is when one side lies a hell of a lot more than the other. Just look at the present situation where the US President is claiming to have won an election that he has very clearly lost.

If newspapers try to push back on those lies they get accused of being biased. At that point it is a very thin line between publishing the truth, and pushing one side of the story.

So if all sides lie the same amount, things are OK? I don't understand your argument.

People in media will usually tell you that there's no such thing as unbiased reporting; even the act of choosing which stories are important enough to report is a biased act.

However, I must say that I'm not subscribed to any newspapers, and the main reason I've chosen to do so is that newspapers can:

- Work for political and business moguls by offering crowd manipulation as a service

- Work for ad buyers by trying to optimise engagement

- Work for subscribed readers by trying their best to provide quality information

Any of those is a valid business I guess, but I'm only interested in the latter. And newspapers try to sell me the third option without dropping the others. It's true that if something's free you are the product, but in this case they're trying to both make me the product and make me pay. Not cool.

You could consider donating to a nonprofit news org like ProPublica, then.

Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something.

> Also you are throwing out the baby with the bath water, just because news is funded by the rich doesn't mean every little mundane article they publish is biased. Oftentimes the facts are there, but the analysis or framing is biased. It's still probably more accurate than trying to get all your news via Twitter or something.

What would the baby be in this case?

News are not fundamentally important to me, at least not to the point where I'd want to get them regardless of quality. The absolute crushing majority of news I read don't require or cause any action on my part.

Of course I'd like to be informed of current events, developments in politics or international news; but no information is better than wrong information - my alternative would never be social media, it's just the absence of general news.

My views might seem extremely pessimistic, but they're rooted in two facts:

1 - I am yet to see any piece of news related to my area of expertise where information is accurate. I should assume that it's the same for all areas, and mine isn't a weird exception.

2 - I am the son of a journalist, and happen to have close friends that work daily with press. Insider views on the journalism business can rapidly turn you into a cynic.

Other positions aside, I’ve found most rational people have a natural distaste for hypocrisy/double standards, especially when it’s institutionalized.

I read Tom Cotton’s op ed about civil unrest in the US and then Regina Ip’s op ed about similar issues in Hong Kong. I’m struggling to understand why anyone would think Cotton’s piece needs the post-publication disclaimer and the other does not. A clear double standard seems to be present.

Can you explain why you think that illustrates a double standard? What principle do you think the NYT is purporting to hold but is applying inconsistently in these two cases?

I haven't read either article (because I'm not a subscriber), but I gather that the former is advocating using the US military to put down civil unrest in the US, and the other is defending the actions of Hong Kong police to put down civil unrest in Hong Kong.

If you suppose the principle being applied is very broad, something like "no support of any state action against civil unrest should ever be published," then that principle does seem to be applied inconsistently. But that seems very unlikely to be the principle NYT is purporting to have.

Other comments are saying there is no such thing as news without bias, which is true. But I think your question is still meaningful, since news organizations can either try to recognize and correct for their biases or lean into them.

It seems like the NYT's decision to print Senator Cotton's conservative opinion piece was a poorly executed attempt to compensate for their prevailing liberal bias. It's a good idea, but I think they should solicit articles that might actually be convincing to the paper's reader base rather than easily-attacked incendiary pieces with glaring factual errors.

Opinion pieces are a special case, though. For non-opinion articles, I'd prefer that papers strive to lay out the facts as objectively as they can and leave the conclusions to the readers. Their bias will still show up in which stories they choose to promote, which is why I think it's important to get news from at least a few different sources with different biases. I use the opinion section as a rough guide to identifying a paper's editorial biases. Although it may contain articles that diverge from the paper's views, there is usually a clear trend.

It is impossible to report news without bias. Instead, publications and journalists should strive to be honest about what their biases are, and to do what they can to correct for them.

Perfect unbiasedness is impossible.

But there is a huge difference between those who try to be unbiased, and those who don't.

BTW, what are good examples of journalists being honest about their biases?

Opinion: i like it when journalists state their bias and their opinion, then give their report. If I know a classical Democrat is reporting on a trump rally I can expect some heavy bias. Etc. Maybe journalists and news anchors should have scorecards where they personally identify their opinions on issues from foreign affairs to drugs to crime and gender.

Ethically, is it okay to be biased towards one party (esp as a journalist) when that partys positions are objectively projective, dishonest, and baseless across senior party members, senior partisan journalists in the parties favor, and dutifully documented over the years?

No. They should disclose their biases though. It's a business. Why would you sell something that no one is buying?

If I started a news site, I would target the audience with bigger pockets and more comfortable with subscribing to online services (many people are resistant). That would be people living in expensive cities.

Even if you are a non-profit, you are still beholden to your donators. Mozilla can't go ape shit on Google.

I think that is totally fine. If you want an unbiased source you can read from a newswire service like AP or Reuters, which often feed directly into nyt and other paper's articles directly.

I think the times does ok at having some conservative pieces to balance out. They got a bit unlucky in all their republican columnists, Brooks and Douthat in particular, being never trumpers, but they try to throw in some pro trump op-eds.

I never understood this particular viewpoint. The Times is fairly centrist to begin with, and we have to balance that out by inviting the occasional fascist to write a column? What does anyone gain from that?

The goal is to see perspectives outside your echo chamber.

It is okay, and in fact preferable to pick a side, but they portray themselves as 'objective' and 'rational', when they're clearly biased. Just remember the Nick Sandmann story and the subsequent lack of introspection (as well as the continued insistence that the boy did anything wrong on the NYT's behalf).

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