Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fellshard | Hacker News Reader

It's not at all boring. There's a lot of very massive policy shifts taking place. The question is, why do partisan media /claim/ it's boring?

Usually when I see that claim being made, it's more an indication that A. The partisan media is loathe to show what's happening, and B. They want to give their readers/viewers a plausible excuse for looking the other way.

Media is based on retaining your attention. If they claim news is slow, there is something they are holding above their well-being. Figure out what it is, and start looking harder there.

View on HN

It's more boring that it used to be -- I used to read the news every morning to see what stupid thing the president tweeted.

Now that the current administration makes more planned policy decisions and announces them through normal media channels, the news is more boring. But I like boring when it comes to government policy decisions. I definitely read the news less often with this administration since there are rarely any surprising announcements and even when there are, I know that they've been vetted with others in the administration and aren't a snap decision based on his mood.

Being boring doesn't mean that the news is not important.

I like it when my psychopath-senses aren't tingling with each news cycle. Humanity has more pressing problems than being duped by monsters, again.

In this article they measure "boringness" by the amount of traffic news websites receive. It is a debatable metric but has the merit of being fairly objective.

That does lead to another solid explanation, too: post-Trump fatigue from all partisan media being cranked up to 11 for too long.

>Figure out what it is, and start looking harder there.

Some sort of conspiracy that involves both parties and so well disguised that nobody knows what it is?

A conspiracy requires some common reason shared by both parties. I think there's some common-sense split reasons:

1. Left-side, Biden is pretty concerning - there's some serious mental issues showing regularly and undeniably, and while they try to display him as a moderate, his policies are far to the left of even those adopted by Obama. Avoiding coverage of this helps preserve the claim of moderation.

2. Right-side, very few elected officials are being reasonable representatives, and most aim for social media clout over action. Coverage of this would throw a serious wrench in the GOP engine, and lead to greater voter ire. Without Trump to uphold, there's no longer cover for these reps, so avoiding coverage maintains the claim that the representatives are properly representing.

IMHO, Axios is trying to make the impression that nothing interesting is happening right now, that the new administration is too busy with real work to stirr the crowrd, and that all controversy is firmly in past.

Bit that's a lie: axios is not neutral (are there neutral objective news agencies today?) and there's a lot happening right now. Gathered by pieces from various biased sources, at the very least we have 3 big controversies: the Texas border problem (a big problem, actually), the well known ideology is invading military, schools and gov agencies, and the mysterious "test ballots" in the NYC elections that would cast some doubts if the story gets more publicity. So yeah, the party is going on.

What are your arguments that Axios is not neutral?

The left media never criticizes Biden and the right media never criticizes Trump. Axios is moderately left: they try to not make news out of thin air, but they also omit facts that would upset the left. Edit: I believe that axios would love to report both sides of the events, but they can't afford to offend their sponsors; at most they can change the side.

What is your criteria for calling Axios "moderately left"? You have not given any examples.

Early in his presidency, Axios was basically a Trump backchannel (see https://newrepublic.com/article/142441/axios-donald-trump-ma..., etc.).

As that article points out, the site was brand new at the time. Since then it has evened out a lot.

The Media Bias Chart puts it very slightly to the left. You have to take that with a grain of salt, and I'd say that the error bars from the methodology would place it pretty much dead center.

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

Of course the Media Bias Chart is itself potentially biased, but have a look at it yourself, and I suspect it will at least roughly correspond to your understanding of the left-right spectrum.

If Axios was biased in favor of Trump at the time that article was written, it no longer seems to be true. I think it's a stretch to call it "moderately left", but it's almost certainly not far right.

Yeah I don't think Axios is at all partisan and I am a huge fan of their 'smart brevity.'

I think they might be conflating access to sources (and thus the stories) which was/is a big driver for Axios.

Was founded by the most valuable Politco Playbook reporters who have probably the deepest connections in the swamp. And it's standard practice to leak what's either good for you personally or your boss' agenda.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com