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Comment by Victerius | Hacker News Reader

Or the opposite (that information literacy is on the decline, and people who are more intelligent and better educated trust the news more, at least from credible sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and CNN).

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I’m not sure there are any news outlets remaining that I would consider credible, at least not consistently. They all have substantial black marks.

Reuters is credible IMO.

DC and NYC coverage (especially of political demonstrations) can get a little dicey but otherwise they seem mostly ok.

>Reuters is credible IMO.

Can't say I agree:

Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-blast-minister-id...

All are the same level? Seems unlikely

If those are your picks for credible sources, you might be less informed than you believe yourself to be. I don't think they're the _most_ biased, but they're certainly not the _least_ biased.

Credibility is not about absence of bias, which is not a reasonable thing to expect from anyone. Credibility is about journalistic practices like checking sources and using editorial discretion about what level of certainty is needed to print something. Surely you have seen one of those charts that plots credibility vs politcal bias? e.g. https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc

The AP calling Abe names right after he was assassinated was stunning to me. AP news wire has traditionally been very neutral, given its wide syndication.

I saw this on /r/conservative today

What did they say?

They called him names?

They called him (in the assassination article) a "divisive arch-conservative" then revised it without issuing a correction or retraction.

How it comes up in search results: https://twitter.com/jeremyreporter/status/154545145897532211...

How it appears now: https://apnews.com/article/japan-shinzo-abe-shooting-22ec224...

Please share your list of least biased for comparison. This would be very helpful.

Thank you

I don't consider any single source or group of agreeing sources as credible in isolation. I've witnessed bad reporting from all major news sources. In cases where I wish to be well-informed, I'll seek out multiple sources, see if there's any disagreement, and try to figure out where and why the disagreement happens. When there is disagreement, I'll also examine the primary sources of the articles I've read. Do this enough, and you'll start to smell BS in most places.

OK. Great.

However you said _those_ weren't good, or least not unbiased enough. So what are the unbiased, or at least better about handling bias than those they posted.

It's not that you can't believe anything they report so much as relying on only those sources is going to give you a distorted and biased representation of ideas and events, same as somebody who only reads Fox News. I read articles from those publishers. I don't _only_ read articles from those publishers.

There is no such thing. That is the point. It's up to you to filter out the bias and figure out what happened.

CNN is credible? According to whom?

The top headlines on cnn.com at the moment are:

"Highland Park gunman's family was in turmoil for years before shooting" <-- neutral

"Shinzo Abe's assassination shocks Japan" <-- neutral

"Musk tells Twitter he wants out of deal to buy it. Twitter says it will force him to close the sale" <-- neutral

"Here's what's in Biden's executive order on abortion rights" <-- neutral

"Trump considering waiving executive privilege claim for Bannon but prosecutors say he was never shielded" <-- neutral

The top headlines on foxnews.com at the moment are:

"Dems reportedly full of 'outright worry' president won't be able to rescue plunging polls by midterms" <-- neutral

"Twitter squawks back after Musk reveals he's terminating $44B purchase" <-- neutral

"FBI director issues stern warning about biggest long-term threat to US" <-- neutral

"Mom gets terrifying call after dropping young daughter off at airport gate" <-- neutral but click-baity

"BORDER BATTLE: Biden admin fires back as governor takes spiraling migrant crisis into his own hands" <-- biased (alternative version: Biden admin criticizes Texas governor after executive order)

"GAFFER-IN-CHIEF: Biden widely mocked after he appears to read instruction right off teleprompter" <-- biased (alternative: none, because it's not news worthy)

"'Joe Biden and the Democrats are lying' to the American people: Rep. Malliotakis" <-- biased (alternative: none, because it's not news worthy)

"School choice advocate slams 'despicable' criticism from unions of Arizona school voucher bill" <-- biased (alternative: none, because it's not news worthy)

Fox and other conservative sources publish a lot of "conservative personality SLAMS liberal personality"-type articles. Left-wing publications do the opposite of course, but credible sources rarely publish this kind of article unless it's from someone important and about an important subject, and try not to use formulae like "as governor takes SPIRALING migrant crisis INTO HIS OWN HANDS" or "widely mocked".

What is being identified here isn't bias though. You're picking up style, target audience and how blatant it is.

Eg, "Highland Park gunman's family was in turmoil for years before shooting" isn't neutral, it is narrative building. It isn't relevant to anything important - there are lots of families in turmoil out there. Most families, I suspect, face some sort of turmoil every few years. But the style is more high-brow and their clearly targeting people who are/want to be emotionally sensitive.

Bias is different from whether the headline is pitching at high- or low- class audiences. You're probably picking up that Fox news isn't written with people like you in mind and CNN might be.

I would compare CNN/WSJ, and Fox/MSNBC. Much closer in terms of tone and target audience.

Reason Magazine is probably the pinnacle of very good right-leaning journalism, filling the same niche as VICE on the left. I really enjoy the excellent journalism of both.

EDIT: I have reproduced your original comparison with WSJ taking the place of CNN

CNN:

"Highland Park gunman's family was in turmoil for years before shooting" <-- neutral

"Shinzo Abe's assassination shocks Japan" <-- neutral

"Musk tells Twitter he wants out of deal to buy it. Twitter says it will force him to close the sale" <-- neutral

"Here's what's in Biden's executive order on abortion rights" <-- neutral

"Trump considering waiving executive privilege claim for Bannon but prosecutors say he was never shielded" <-- neutral

WSJ:

Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Former Premier, Is Assassinated <-- neutral

Musk Moves to End Deal for Twitter <-- neutral

Google Offers Concessions to Fend Off Antitrust Suit <-- neutral

U.S. Jobs Market Remains Robust <-- neutral

Investors Bet Euro’s Woes Are Far From Over <-- Somewhat editorial, but no clear bias

Housing-Affordability Index At Lowest Level Since 2006 <-- neutral

FYI:

If you're interested in looking at broadcast rundowns by day, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is invaluable. It permits keyword searches (for how a specific story was covered), or looking at broadcasts from the major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News), dating to as early as 1969 (for ABC, CBS, and NBC, with CNN and Fox being added at later dates).

https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

For websites, navigating archives by date on the Internet Archive can be useful. It's difficult to pick a canonical time of day for stories, and archive timing varies, but you might choose a target such as 6pm US/Eastern to designate the end of a daily news cycle and find the copy that most nearly matches that.

As noted, there are organisations which perform this work themselves, including Ad Fontes (which I've already mentioned), Media Bias Fact Check (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/), and more. Sourcewatch (https://sourcewatch.org) is another.

There are of course partisan bias-check organisations (e.g., the Media Resource Center on the right, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on the left). There are also groups which look for under-reported stories, most notably Project Censored (https://www.projectcensored.org/).

Thank you! I'm the director of public policy for a non-profit firearms advocacy group, and we do quite a bit of news analysis. This could be super helpful for a piece I'm writing on how gun owners of color have been treated by the media at large over time.

Looking at just headlines doesn't give you the full picture of bias, but it's a good start.

The most notable CNN bias indicator would be having to pay out nearly half a billion to a minor for slandering him. It's not the only event of that nature either.

But usually the bias is omission of facts and even stories, speculation, and slant within the story. In the Sandman case it was only showing partial footage that cut out him being approached and made him look like the aggressor.

So you just go and pick today's headlines and call it a day?

The effort Victerius expended was markedly greater than you had.

You're more than welcome to provide your own data, or at a bare minimum, state your standards or criteria for what a sufficient or credible response might be.

Keep in mind that there are in fact organisations which do just this over time, with Ad Fontes Media being among the better known and more credible:

https://adfontesmedia.com/

I'll give you a hint: the results would have been the same on any other day. Clearly you're only interested in having your opinions validated. I'm sorry that reality is so disappointing to you.

You're right of course but the effort to check each day would be excessive. However what would you think if for the last 30 days it was similar to today? Would you switch to cnn? Probably not.

Mr. Nobody ;)

I might have agreed with you on the first 3 many years ago. Even NPR has gotten really bad with the burying of headlines.

At this point, the best thing people can do is to just glance at the news when it presents itself and then otherwise move on with their lives. If there's any good to come out of the age of disinformation, it's that maybe people will stop doomscrolling the news.

I’ve been saying for a long time now: if its actually important it will reach you by word of mouth

Now if only I could break the news consumption habit!

Wikipedia Current Events portal is an alternative to scanning CNN, Fox, BBC, NPR etc. I like that you can tab open links to further research around a topic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

There are certainly people who think they're intelligent. They like to congratulate each other.

Taleb would call them IYI (intellectual yet idiot).

He calls everyone that unless you do nothing but slavishly agree with him. Speaking about the quality of social media compared to traditional media...

>There are certainly people who think they're intelligent. They like to congratulate each other.

>Taleb would call them IYI (intellectual yet idiot).

Lenin's "useful idiots" term is always apt.

> "credible sources"

Only for the credulous

All the credible sources you mentioned are not credible at all. That's an interesting choice you did there.

Who are then?

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