Hacker News Reader

Comment by bb123 | Hacker News Reader

Worth mentioning that The Telegraph (also known as the Torygraph) is a zealously anti-EV newspaper. They have a strong conservative bias and routinely publish borderline fake news regarding EVs.

View on HN

If you have had the misfortune to open the default homepage in MS Edge recently, it is routinely a smorgasbord of anti EV rhetoric from the likes of the Telegraph, Express and Mail.

Someone somewhere is spending a lot of money on promoting those views to the sort of people who don't change their browser or their homepage.

The Conservative Party recently shifted very hard as anti-green and pro-ICE, after one candidate unexpectedly managed to win a race on those issues in London. It's basicaslly their only hope to not be wiped out at the next General Election this year.

Coincidence? I think not.

>Someone somewhere is spending a lot of money on promoting those views to the sort of people who don't change their browser or their homepage.

The thing about these people is they really don't matter. They are on deaths door anyway and pretty soon they won't be part of the conversation. The important people are the young car buyers of tomorrow. They seem to be quite fond of Tesla and EVs in general.

Whether or not you think they matter, they vote, and in larger numbers than the younger electorate.

Thats my point. Yes I acknowledge that they affect today. But they will not affect tomorrow and thats where the thinking should really be because tomorrow is coming really fast!

some portion of Millennials are in their 40s now. The future is definitely EV (and because they still haven't achieved their parents level of status likely left leaning as well)

Whoa man, someone is posting a website with a conservative bias to HN? Heckterino! Bring ze downvotes!

How about some actual criticism of the text in the article itself?

Personally I think taking the journalistic perspective of the publisher into account when reading an article is important.

The article simply says that according to Auto Trader (a classifieds website for cars) electric cars lose 23% of their value the first year. Where's the conservative (slur word) bias in that? Or the bias, for that matter.

I did not say that there was a bias in the article? I said the publisher has a bias. Which they clearly do.

I'd say the bias is in a coincidence: The tories have recently changed policies to something that benefits from that kind of story, but isn't really a core, traditional or classic tory policy.

Also, the 23% sounds be a bit misleading. They suggest that it's due to the EVs that were bought. I think it's four factors: The usual drop, plus the reasons they have in mind, plus price pressure from new EVs that are dropping in price, plus price pressure from competition with new EV models (ie. the number of EV models on offers is increasing). Maybe they just forgot to mentiont the last two.

https://motorway.co.uk/sell-my-car/guides/car-depreciation-g...

Typical car depreciation:

> Year 1: 15-35% depreciation. 65-85% of the original value.

Seems that this is bang in the middle of expected depreciation of any car.

I think it's fair to point out editorial bias as long as it's relevant (in this case I think it is), AND is done consistently (eg. Guardian articles should be called out for their bias when relevant; I have no idea if that is the case with the poster you are responding to here).

I mean, I think it's fairly reasonable to point out that the outlet is dodgy, so that people can watch out for spin.

Does non-progressive or even conservative bias equal dodgy?

Diversity of thought is the only diversity which really matters. Calling anything which does not conform to your ideology of choice dodgy is not just counterproductive - society needs both conservatives as well as progressives to thrive both when times are good as well as bad - but also simply intellectually lazy. If you never think outside your box you are intellectually imprisoned. You do not have to agree with the 'other side' but it is always wise to try to understand why they think differently from you. Sometimes you'll find that their reasoning actually makes sense, other times you can easily spot where they go wrong.

Attacking the messenger instead of the message works really well in most arguments because most of us get distracted by the irrelevancy.

I don't put much notice into tabloid articles just because the journalistic standards are so bad that its annoying to pick through the misinformation to even figure out what the real argument is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com