Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

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What basis is there for these claims?

> IMO the most effective and most widely deployed (especially among the supposedly more reputable publications) propaganda tool isn’t outright lies, but rather, selective reporting of cherry-picked facts and omission of others to shape stories into their predefined narratives. TFA doesn’t address that at all.

That doesn't mean it isn't taught. The article can't cover everything taught in the class. So that is unfounded.

> It seems to me that students’ main takeaway from this course would be to trust NPR, NYT and the like, rather than viral content.

What makes you say that's the main takeaway; can you cite something in the article or elsewhere? The only argument behind it is the unfounded claim above.

Are you suggesting people should trust viral content? How should they interact with information about their world and decide what to trust?

> doesn’t help when your “trustworthy” media selection decide to suppress all arguments from another side, or remain silent on certain stories altogether.

That's not my experience. Obviously, news sources have limited resources and time, so they can't report everything nor will they always make good decisions. They also are there to serve readers, and thus should omit information that lacks foundation in truth - I certainly don't want to waste my time on it. They won't be perfect, but the only core 'mainstream' source (e.g., major national publications, the NYT, WSJ, ABC News, etc.) that I've seen systematically show bias is Fox News (however, I don't watch CNN or MSNBC) and a little in the Washington Post, which I notice few people remark on.

In the NY Times, for example, I haven't seen it, despite people repeating ad infinitum that it happens (repetition, I hope they teach, has no correlation with truth). They even have an opinion page with as many conservative writers as anything else, and they are among their most popular columns.

Sorry but I don’t have time to write a case study on NYT biases. Also, you seem to be thinking purely in terms of U.S. politics, Democrats vs Republicans, left vs right. I’m talking more broadly. You’re not going to get a balanced view on a lot of international topics by consuming and comparing an ensemble of U.S. mainstream media (you can even throw British media in there) for instance, however bitterly they fight about U.S. politics.

And? Is that bad? It gives an "American" perspective, which considering the influence of the US is important. That does not make it a bad newspaper.

I can’t answer this question without venturing into nationalistic flame bait territory.

Is that not problematic? You make an extraordinary claim, but then "there is no time for me to back it up." But there was time to make the claim, and this is ultimately the problem. You have just accepted out of hand that it is truth and want others to accept it.

Why should I trust anything you say, then? I don't doubt that there are biases, they're certainly are. But you're expecting us to just accept it out of hand.

> You have just accepted out of hand that it is truth and want others to accept it.

No, I really don’t give a damn about whether others accept it. I can post my opinion simply as food for thought.

If this is your stance, then walk the walk and stop replying.

Bias is like an accent: people rarely notice their own. If you haven't seen the NY Times' bias, it probably matches your own.

It is also like an accent in that a bit of one is not bad at all, but a very heavy one makes things almost unrecognizable.

"... has a bias" is trivially true for just about anything. That also makes that sentence useless unless you add more information.

Even the idea that an accent is "a bit" or "heavy" depends on believing that some particular way of speaking is the standard, with zero accent. It's very close to declaring some accent the "right" way to speak.

Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the natural human tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.

No it doesn't. You don't need anyone with zero accent. You just observe that a distribution has some kind of average or median, done.

Also, you are drawing the wrong conclusion. "Everyone has..." is simplistic. Some have more, some less is nuanced.

You're treating that theoretical average or median, even if no one speaks that way, as the standard accent against which all others are compared.

That's one way in which people sometimes choose a "right" or "zero" accent. Another is by social standing ("the queen's English" was literally that).

Either way, that's declaring one accent the right way of speaking, and describing people who speak differently as having a "heavy" accent instead of simply a different way of speaking.

Perhaps a specific example would make this clear. There are many dialects and accents of German in Germany. Which one would you declare the standard, and who would you describe as having a "heavy" accent?

My point is that making such a judgement is wrong to begin with, and one should simply describe a particular accent by its features or regional distribution, not as "heavy".

(And to respond, briefly, to the comment below: when learning a foreign language you choose to learn a particular dialect and accent. That doesn't make other accents "heavy", they just aren't the accent you've learned.)

It declares it standard, not "right". If you learn a foreign language having a standard to aim for is good and large deviations are difficult. Stop trying to turn this into right or wrong.

My whole point is to avoid turning this into right or wrong by realizing that an accent or a bias merely describes a particular way of speaking or thinking, not a degree of deviation from some standard.

In linguistics, this is the prescriptive vs descriptive debate. It's not controversial that a prescriptive grammar declares how a language should or ought to be used. Declaring one accent the standard is a similar prescriptive position.

There isn't a 'right' way to speak, but there are accurate facts against we can measure bias.

> Recognizing that "everyone has an accent" and "everyone has a bias" is about learning to think in greater depth than the simplistic tendency to believe "I'm right, and everyone who sees the world differently is wrong." That endeavor is not useless.

I'd add that the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.

> there are accurate facts against we can measure bias

In the context of reporting, bias isn't about reporting accurate facts. That's honesty or accuracy. A source could be very biased but 100% accurate (by cherry picking facts that fit an agenda) or neutral but inaccurate (by reporting everything they hear without any evaluation or judgement).

Bias is about choosing what facts are worth reporting, and which words (with similar denotations but different connotations) to use to describe those facts.

> the most important step is understanding one's own, and understanding that you always have biases that are invisible to you.

Agreed.

Yes, I agree about choice of facts also being part of it (I wouldn't exclude accuracy either). I didn't use precise wording, so it's a good point to add.

But my conclusion is the same: The 'story' is usually pretty accurate, IME, within certain limitations (e.g., news moves quickly, and I find the NYT often omits some important questions, though not political ones).

Here's a huge list of times the NYT and the other organizations you listed made shit up over the last four years, with citations

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official...

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