There is no liberal media bias in which news stories journalists choose to cover | Hacker News Reader

There is no liberal media bias in which news stories journalists choose to cover

science.org

15 pointsdoener10 comments

Briefly: They spammed a bunch of journalists with an invitation to interview a fake candidate and did not see significant gatekeeping based on the fake candidate’s political party.

Yeah, my impression was that this was somewhat absurd in terms of what was being claimed versus what was actually done.

I'm probably much more sympathetic to traditional journalism than many, but there is definitely bias in media (conservative and liberal) and the way it operates is far more subtle and/or complex than anything examined in the article.

Is it me or does a website named “science.org” going “there is no liberal media bias” matter of factly just seem... suspicious

I suspect that the conclusion is too strong for the data, but that the study is valid. Why? What do you suspect?

It’s all about money. There is no science without funding. Instead of typing up a storm, here’s a list of suspicions:

* Was this a “commissioned” study with the outcome decided before the data was collected in order to appease a benefactor with an agenda? * Is this a means to cover up liberally biased funding? What about liberally biased science? * Was this designed to give people a quick “Gotcha!” article to cite (Trust the science!) in order to sway public opinion and silence people who argue that there is a liberal bias in media?

Or it could be none of those things and may just be one more paper for the publication count. You just have to consider who has what to gain from a study with poor data and a decisive conclusion on an arguably subjective but very political topic.

I'm more concerned about political bias in the scientific process at this point.

"trust the science!"

Following news coverage through https://ground.news/ will quickly dispel this notion.

The political party "issue" is gaslighting. There are, in fact, no parties in US politics.

> This experiment presented journalists with a potential news story (a candidate running for the state legislature) that varied only in its ideological content (i.e., the ideology of the candidate).

That is about the least ideologically charged story I could imagine. E.g. has "Unknown <republican>/<democrat> runs for office" ever gone viral among liberals or conservatives? It is exactly the kind of story I would pick if I wanted to make sure the experiment did not detect any bias.

"White kills black"/"Black kills white" would have been a much better test, as those are the kind of stories that generate the most outrage and attention.

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