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Comment by CrimsonRain | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure these high value professionals are fair? I saw this story the other day; don't have much idea about Poland. So verify yourself.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/03/polish-billionaire-of...

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You know what you can do? Subscribe to multiple papers, from both sides. Then you can do some comparison to see when things are reported differently.

When I grew up we had at least two papers, sometimes three. One was leaning left, other leaning right.

These days it's what Ground News[1] is trying to do from what I can gather, though haven't tried them as they don't cover the news in my country.

[1]: https://ground.news/

Why should there be only two sides?

You can consider as many dimensions as you want. As I mentioned, for some time we had three papers regularly delivered, for additional perspective.

However typically, a single dimension is a useful first-order approximation[1], and so that's what's done in politics as well. As with all approximations, sometimes it works well and other times it does not.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_approximation

That was probably mentioned from US-centric point of view where they have two-party system.

I'm from Norway where we have currently ten parties in our parliament[1].

We still mostly talk about them as distributed along a left to right axis. Though as I mentioned it's not a perfect approximation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storting

Seems like Norway has also many constituencies which can favor dominant parties. However unlike US you have also leveling seats which balances it a bit.

Yes, this is a good idea. Alternatively, instead of reading "news"^ go to source and read/listen/watch it yourself. Then make your own mind.

^: which somehow became someone else's opinions in last decade. There's still opinion column. But there's no difference these days. It didn't use to be like this in the past. Journalists used to report events and facts without commentary or would add commentary in the end with some label on it.

I think it is fair, because professionals do not use cheap tricks, but at least they are trying to distance themselves when writing a report. I like discussions when Sławomir Sierakowski (from Krytyka Polityczna) is present, because he always have some new ideas, new ways to describe reality. Although, I do not follow Krytyka Polityczna.

When someone is hired into a professional job, is there something in the laws of physics that prevent them from doing wrong?

What is the job anyway?

Almost all of the publishing is ultimately funded by ads, therefore the primary job of everyone involved is to generate ad impressions.

What's being attributed to "professionals" in this thread is actually the opposite of what the job pays for.

It is very funny how humans experience reality eh? Like, the literal assignment of a word to something can cause the representation of it in a person's mind (aka the reality) to change. Also weird: it is essentially not possible to talk about the phenomenon in a serious way (participants range of possible actions become highly constrained, and therefore highly predictable).

I really wonder if this normative phenomenon will be able to survive in the age of AI.

> When someone is hired into a professional job, is there something in the laws of physics that prevent them from doing wrong?

No, but work of journalists is highly visible. Probably, this creates more incentive to write according to rules of the trade. There are examples of journalists who went with ruling regime and got monetary prizes. Some are switching to it now, betting that regime change again and their dedication will bring rewards.

but what about THIS anecdote????!

Digging up a tiny, poorly funded left-wing publication as a whipping post doesn't support the point you are making.

Hmm. You're in bargaining stage or what?

fwiw, read/listen/watch actual events instead of some "professional's opinion". Then make up your own mind.

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