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Comment by kqvamxurcagg | Hacker News Reader

Some good points here. I think the lying by omission is a key issue. It makes it very difficult to be informed. I wouldn’t hold The Guardian up to the same standard as The New York Times though. The NY Times is a paper of record while the Guardian has a deliberate left slant. The opinion articles in the guardian are often ridiculous.

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According to [1] and [2] they both have roughly equal left bias

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/

[2] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

Are they measuring on the same scale or relative to what 'left' and 'right' means in their respective countries?

It looks like it, from the explanation of the ratings on the site. It would be impossible to consider the capitalist bastion of the New York Times to be left-leaning anywhere outside the Overton window of the United States.

Probably the same scale, although you can understand that in several ways. In any case, they clearly use the American typology, conflating the liberal-conservative axis with left-right. So it's next to impossible to tease out how left or right a publication is on more traditional markers, such as economic policy, in particular, but also labour issues, ideological orientation (e.g. Marxist/Social Democrat/Third Way/Social Liberal, or an even more mixed crowd on the right) etc.

It bugs me whenever i see something like this. Left/Right isnt really a useful continuum to measure bias over.

Realistically most outlets feigns independence but demonstrate fealty to particular power centers.

It's obvious how little point there is when you try to "measure" RT on the left wing/right wing scale (theyre pro russia above all) but what applies to them applies equally to all other outlets.

It's particularly galling when the power center is authoritarian/corporatist but wears a progressive mask for sake of fooling the naive.

I get the problem. Wouldn't say it applies equally to other outlets. RT is very specifically a single-state propaganda tube, while a lot of Western press could perhaps be characterized as vaguely Atlanticist and pretty pro-globalization. But I'm not sure whether this was what you meant exactly by power centers.

Would they need more categories, then? Like geo-political orientation and state influence (although the latter would often be close to the press freedom rating)?

I meant more like the democratic party (new york times), republican party (fox), the national security establishment (washington post).

This is still too vague even, I think and there are probably complex sub-centres of power (e.g. factions within the democrats) and alliances (e.g. the neocon/democratic party nexus) reflected as well.

All of this gets airbrushed over by the traditional left/right continuum.

It's critically important too, coz it definitely drives both what is reported and how it's selectively presented and is a better predictor than an arbitary left/right designation.

NY Times delayed a report about the Iraq war until after the 2004 re-election of G. W. Bush because his administration asked them to do so.

Snowden has also mentioned that he went to Glenn Greenwald, who was working at The Guardian, because he trusted their integrity and he wasn't sure NY Times would work with him or sell him out to the government.

As a former fan of Greenwald, I do think he's gone a bit mad and is now just screaming "I know what I'm talking about, and I know I'm right! Why won't you believe me!!!" instead of presenting the plain facts.

Yeah Glen can be pretty over the top / grating stylistically recently, but he still seems to be rigorously honest, which is definitely more than you can say for the NYT or Guardian.

Opinion pieces have opinions clutches pearls and you think the times under Murdoch's hands is still worthy of being valued as a paper of record?

The graun's reportage is good. Just ignore the editorial.

Does Murdoch own the New York Times? I didn't think he did...

The Guardian is definitely well off the deep end quite often.

https://twitter.com/somuchguardian/status/768335723846049792

Does anyone else remember ‘The Sunday Format’ on Radio 4? Was a (audio!) parody of the Guardian’s Sunday paper the Observer.

Gosh yes, I loved The Sunday Format, and it deserves to be remembered. I used to have mp3s of all the episodes, but they didn't survive an HDD fault.

Some are on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GibzbTY9V8.

Murdoch owns The Times" in London, not "The New York Times" (commonly referred to in the US as just The Times*).

In the US his holdings are the Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

At this point there are facts that are true but deemed as biased, in the current political climate stating that countries with legal abortion have less deaths when undergoing that procedure than where is ilegal its seen as taking a strongly left stance; meanwhile in other countries stating the exact same it's completely apolitical because even if a lot of people there have strong opinions about it these are not concentrated in one of the two major political parties.

Interestingly, "The New York Times no longer considers itself a newspaper of record in the original, literal sense."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record#Etymolog...

But that's because the definition of a paper of record has changed, not because they no longer align themselves with the current definition.

By that traditional definition the only paper of record in existence today is the internet itself.

Are you suggesting the New York Times does not have a "deliberate left slant"?

I'd say the NYT has an "educated big coastal city american slant", not sure it's a question of left or right. I seem to remember they were pretty gung-ho about invading Iraq, hardly a left-wing position

> hardly a left-wing position

It’s a nobody position in 2022, but the Iraq Resolution passed through congress and the senate with a substantial level of bi-partisan support. So really, it was a popular left-wing position at the time.

"bi-partisan" support in congress/parliament doesn't map neatly onto left/right support. In the UK, the Labour party (ostensibly the left wing party) pushed for the Iraq war and the vote passed with bi-partisan support, but it was still about as far from a "popular left-wing position" as you could get.

I’d say that’s just the difference between whatever ideals you hold the left to represent, and the ideas they champion in reality. To say the Iraq invasion didn’t have a substantial level of left wing support is simply to rewrite history.

I think you Americans should stick to calling this group as liberals or move to progressives where appropriate (identity politics, woke "ideology" etc.), and leave "left" to those who can still perceive it as a somewhat coherent concept in their politics (although perhaps every day less so). What I mean is just that if you toned down their woke/progressive evangelism and posing, the Democrats would be a firmly center-right party in large parts of western and central continental Europe, for example.

This is just a no-true-scotsman though. The term “left”, whilst representing an extreme generalization, means just as much (or as little) in the US as it does continental Europe, or any other western democracy.

yes, of the groups left, center, and right, it means those left of center, regardless of party

currently the Democratic party best represents "center" for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because their platform better represents most Americans (but not the ones on the right or left) than that of another major parry platform

To go from "most of the people in congress support X" to "therefore X was popular to the left wing" makes quite the leap, first of all that congress evenly represents its constituency. Left wing of US is tiny and has little representation in congress and mainstream media (including NYT). This is true today as well as back then.

I think you're also overstating the bi partisan support the Iraq resolution had. Of the Democrats, only 39% representatives and 29 out of 50 senators voted for it. Among the bloc who voted against the Iraq Resolution were politicians like Bernie Sanders, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Peter DeFazio, et al., who at the time, represented even your definition of "left wing".

It had well over a super majority in both houses, that is substantial bipartisan support.

If the definition of “left” isn’t “mainstream left wing politics”, and is instead “a small collection of politicians chosen by dfxm12”, then the word may as well not have a meaning.

It had well over a super majority in both houses, that is substantial bipartisan support.

I'll add that super majority doesn't mean much in terms of "bi partisan support", when a single party (the republicans) nearly had a super majority of the house alone. Even in the senate, the Republicans pretty much all voted the same way while the Democrats split. It's almost as if there was some sub group of politicians for whom this issue was not popular and split from the mainstream, off to one side (plus the regular Americans who did not support the war).

If the definition of “left” isn’t “mainstream left wing politics”

"Left" or "left wing" is by definition not "mainstream".

and is instead “a small collection of politicians chosen by dfxm12”, then the word may as well not have a meaning.

Do please try to post in good faith.

> I'll add that super majority doesn't mean much in terms of "bi partisan support", when a single party (the republicans) nearly had a super majority of the house alone.

In 2002 the republicans has a 14 seat majority in the house, and no majority in the senate with only 49 seats. The history re-writing going on here is pretty extreme.

> It had well over a super majority in both houses, that is substantial bipartisan support.

maybe, but that doesn't tell you as much as this (particularly since it seeks to obscure the actual numbers):

> Of the Democrats, only 39% representatives and 29 out of 50 senators voted for it. Among the bloc who voted against the Iraq Resolution were politicians like Bernie Sanders, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Peter DeFazio, et al., who at the time, represented even your definition of "left wing".

as for your assertion that your definition of "left wing" is better: such a bare assertion will not be taken at face value

The Guardian is considered to be a paper of record in the UK

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