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Comment by a_puppy | Hacker News Reader

This essay has a grain of truth, but then he stretches it way too far.

The grain of truth is that mainstream news doesn't live up to the standards they like to claim they do. The news typically gets the literal basic facts right, but they tend to distort and omit facts to fit their narrative. And opinion pieces are no better than blogs.

Where he stretches too far is his claim that because the mainstream news is biased, one can simply ignore it and believe whatever one wants. The mainstream news may distort and omit facts, but they do get the literal basic facts right, so if one's worldview contradicts the literal basic facts, then that person is wrong. And opinion pieces are no better than blogs, but no worse than blogs either; so if an opinion piece makes a valid argument, that's just as valid as an argument made by any other source.

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>This essay has a grain of truth, but then he stretches it way too far.

Does it? If anything it's quite tame. The truth is worse, and has been for a long time.

>Where he stretches too far is his claim that because the mainstream news is biased, one can simply ignore it and believe whatever one wants

The post never makes that claim.

>The mainstream news may distort and omit facts, but they do get the literal basic facts right

You'd be surprised, and seldom when it matters most.

At best they'll offer some retraction of their errors afterthey're caught with their pants down, and when it's too little, too late (as with the WMDs or the Contra affair).

Nowadays, that they don't even have to do that (e.g. Steele dossier), since their errors are lost in the barrage of new BS news anyway, and the public, bombarded by all that, has developed the memory and attention span of a proverbial goldfish.

> The news typically gets the literal basic facts right, but they tend to distort and omit facts to fit their narrative. > The mainstream news may distort and omit facts, but they do get the literal basic facts right, so if one's worldview contradicts the literal basic facts, then that person is wrong.

Without clarity as to what constitutes literal basic facts vs facts that are distorted, this is just more plain bullshit.

I disagree. We can't argue with formal precision here (unfortunately) but we should be permitted to try analyzing, anyway. Roughly speaking, the "objective" observations made in traditional mainstream news outlets tend to be correct, but the more an article strays from those objective observations (and becomes opinion, value judgement), the more contestable the inferences that the writers draw from these objective observations becomes (and the more divisive the article tends to become, in particular in the US).

Also people often forget that journalists are people who are paid to interpret facts, form a story, and present it so the audience doesn't have to do this intellectual work.

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