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Comment by Scharkenberg | Hacker News Reader

What a terribly written article, let alone that it provides no sources. London Daily isn't a reputable and reviewed news source and it admits the following on the About Us page:

> Publishing news is very simple, just click ‘add your news’ on the site and it will take the author to the article upload interface.

Why was this excuse of a news article even posted here?

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Simple googling shows that the article was cribbed from https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-two-weeks-1-million-viewer.... I've banned the site.

Normally we'd replace the URL above but I don't think this thread is salvageable.

Thanks, dang. Is this a Sunday morning phenomenon? the shift in HN audience bias. Kinda bizarre thread.

I don't think so. There's just a lot of random fluctuation.

It is odd and leaves out some of what actually happened. CNN is still the #1 draw on basic cable. What actually happened is that the boost they got in viewership from the pandemic is starting to roll off. And, of course, younger people care a lot less about any cable TV content, so there's a long-term roll off too.

It's a few months old, but this AdWeek story is more clear: https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/q2-21-ratings-cnn-is-one-of-...

I don't think you need to put a whole lot of thought into why this article was posted. I think you already know the answer in fact. It's a terrible article and it's written in a terrible way. Who might want to post that here?

You've broken the site guidelines with this comment, assuming I'm reading your insinuation correctly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Users are asked not to post such insinuations unless there is evidence. "Evidence" means something specific and concrete and objective. Someone else liking an article you dislike on some widely divisive topic is not evidence, it's just normal. (How bad the article may be is irrelevant to this point.)

The evidence would be the obvious blatant disinfo clickbait and political slant nature of the article and its source itself as opposed to any sort of subjective but at least moderatively informative news about technology or the social impact of technology but of course that's an insinuation too, I get it. But why would a typical "hacker" want "news" about CNN ratings? Maybe the raw numbers as a source of data (not that this article supplies them of course), but a mostly evidence free conjectural rant about its imminent demise? I'll wait.

But while I'm waiting, can I get you to delete my account and my entire history here? 5 enthusiastic stars if you'll do that for me. An obvious rulebreaker like myself has never made a useful contribution here ever and everyone will be better off with my entire comment history safely deleted. Or is it something something hypothetical imaginary ycombinator possible future liability something something else so that would be a no? Or TLDR: Hacker News actually does aspire to become the new Reddit?

This is a sincere request. I really want to disconnect entirely from most of the internet. And this would be a great place to disconnect from as well. I await your potential response or the demise of this account with enthusiastic ennui.

Why not? CNN is complete propaganda without any actual news. I really dont understand how intelligent people can watch it.

As an outsider who has dabbled in American television, this is true for all of American television.

It’s incredible how even those who don’t think they’re brainwashed are brainwashed.

The news has existed to drive public opinion for over a century, before television even existed. Hell, there was even a book written in 1922 named "Public Opinion" about the very subject. The blurb about it on Wikipedia echoes truer today than it did at the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)

The introduction describes man's inability to interpret the world: "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones."

That's a broad brush. There's CNN/Fox News/OAN level bias and then there's ABC. It's a matter of degree.

I’m sure I sound like a crazy person now but I think the matter of degree is a matter of how convinced you are that your news is the right one.

Fox viewers likely think the exact same thing.

Not that all truth is subjective but the choice on what and how to report definitely is.

If you think CNN is in the same league of bias as Fox News, you are in a deep state of denial. Let alone OAN!

CNN’s front page is just embarrassing. It’s all clickbait and scare tactics.

I think a quick glance at the headlines on CNN and Fox News on any given day show them practicing the same type of intellectual dishonesty to further their narratives.

I'll give you OAN, that's an entirely higher level of misinformation.

It's true for print and news apps as well. There are zero English language sources of real journalism.

That's a bit too far. The Guardian, Reuters, AP, FT, The Economist, among others are real journalism. Some of them have their biases ( e.g. some FT writers' views skew positively towards the UK), some of them have opinion pieces from all sorts of people which can range from shit to interesting, but they are generally good quality journalism. If they make a mistake, they admit it; they don't outright lie and double down like US cable opinion pieces sold as "news".

Fair point, and I'd forgotten about FT. I'll try adding that to my sources for a while.

The PBS News Hour is head and shoulders above anything I have seen on cable. I consider the latter to be strictly “infotainment”.

Can you explain why? (I'm not from the USA) I thought it is one of the best source for news about the US/World (Together with the NYTimes)

It might have been a long time ago. Today it is openly biased. Left's Fox News basically. That is what sells nowadays apparently. Pick your audience and make them feel validated. Objectivity is secondary.

I'm not in the USA but I am an English speaking Canadian so I feel I have a familiarity more than other non-US people. And I think I have an objective view not being a US citizen.

Having watched US news for 40 years, since my early teen years, I have found all US news has become much more US-centric. CNN was pretty good but it does seem to be stuck in a US only, counter-right wing loop. Fox news is very far right from my point of view maybe less so to those in the US. It also spends its time trying to counter CNN.

Local news ABC, CBS, NBC are nightly news and often are what you'd typically think of as news broadcasts. Those three stations tend to be neutral in views but as I said above are becoming more US-centric. There is much less international news other than mentioning wars or terrorism. You won't see a story of cricket scores in India, or a recipe from a chef in Argentina, or local politics news of Ghana. You often will see such things on BBC or Reuters for example.

The US political system is a "us vs them" mentality not like parliamentary democracies where there are half a dozen political parties in government. There is a Democrat (liberal) vs Republican (conservative) ideological split. CNN, NBC, PBS tend to be seen as aligning with Democratic party, BLM, lgbt, left-leaning views. Fox, OAN, Newsmax are Republican, military, religious right, far right views.

edit: for anyone outside the US wanting to watch US news without the quick edits, fancy graphics etc. your best source would be PBS news.

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