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Comment by whodidntante | Hacker News Reader

I watch/listen to a variety of news sources - CNN, Fox News, NPR, NYTimes, WSj, as well as a number of smaller podcasts and substacks.

There are no longer "unbiased" news sources, all sources have moved to either the left or right.

I used to have respect for NPR, today it is, to me, the Fox News of the left, and no different than other sources. I do not have a problem with that, it is what it is. But it should not be funded with taxpayer money.

Try listening to the president of NPR at the congressional hearing and then her interview on NPR done shortly after that hearing. For the former, she was unable/unwilling to express any opinions, nor was she able to recall anything she personally said/posted for the past two years. For the latter, she was fed a series of flattering softball questions clearly made to make her and NPR look good. That is not news or reporting, it was NPR doing PR for NPR.

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> the Fox News of the left

When I watch Fox News it's usually pretty easy to spot several things that are simply made-up per day. Including entire stories.

You hear much of that on NPR?

[EDIT] FWIW I think NPR news is god-awful, because they focus way too much on horse-race politics crap and Monday-morning quarterbacking campaigns, I suppose because they're so scared shitless by accusations of bias that they prefer to fill time with topics that are neutral and don't deal with actual issues at all, because we've been in a place for decades now where dealing with real issues in a serious way makes appearing "biased" against Republicans totally unavoidable.

The things is that when "news" is compared, the divisions tend to be much smaller (but still definitely there).

But people don't think of NPR news and Fox News news. They think of (and what they actually pay attention to) are the opinion shows that dominate the ratings. That is where the gulf is huge and things are totally out of control.

It's much more tame in the 10 minute segments of running down headlines for the day, but people don't engage much with that anymore. Not as exciting as being told how right you are.

The news portions of Fox News make shit up. They run things on the ticker that aren't real.

It's also largely opinion shows, which are entirely political. NPR is very much not that.

When people make these kinds of comparisons, I wonder if they actually watch Fox News (and if they fact check it, if they do, or just assume "oh yeah all this is true and the only reason nobody else except far-right sources mention it is because of bias") or if they're going by reputation and making assumptions. It's wildly bad as a news source, in fact.

You won’t hear that on NPR and this is why the ‘both sides’ argument has been so detrimental to American’s perception of their media.

A news source aiming to independently investigate and report where reality stands in relation to opposing political talking points is an opportunity for bias, but you're guaranteed bias against reality if you don't do that part, is the thing.

Most folks haven't thought about that too much, though, and/or haven't had much education in politics and media, so "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide" resonate as slogans, rather than smelling fishy.

During the campaign for the 2016 Republican nomination for President they actually dropped several negative stories that their reporters assigned to the Trump campaign submitted, because their reporters assigned to the Cruz, Rubio, etc. campaigns were submitting a much lower percentage of negative stories and they assume the difference must be due to some flaw in their reporting.

9 years is a lot. In my home country, Hungary, dissenting in the right wing government media was possible, and happened quite often in 2012, nothing which would have reminded you of the first half of the previous century. By 2015, there was proper fascist propaganda, without any possibility to dissent. So, it was changed completely in 3 years. I would even say that any comparison in this context to anything from 9 years ago is meaningless.

I will give you that, sometimes fox news is like a ChatGPT hallucination. And the ads are unbearable - my pillow and vegetable pills.

This is more than made for by the interviews - Trump, Vance, Harris, Zelensky, the doge team, etc.

Speaking of unbearable, NPR's "soft stories" are invariably about someone's sob story. Ok, I get it, there are a lot of hard luck stories out there, but they seem to relish in misery.

All in all, neither are great, but none of the mainstream media are. I do like "All in" podcasts :-)

The thing is NPR still tells the truth, Fox will lie non stop for an entire talk show especially their "group" shows. Watch any of those that have regulars vs say a morning show on CBS or ABC. They have more fluff pieces but those shows don't lie nonstop and stroke Trump's ego the whole time.

The obvious take away is that the left needs an actual Fox News. A friend of mine actually pitched this idea a few years ago, but I was of the opinion that the left is above that and nobody would read/watch/follow it. Now I'm not so sure anymore, I think people are ready for it just for the kicks and it would actually have a big effect on balancing things out.

When I asked around in mixed political spaces which news sources were trustworthy, NPR was the only answer people on both sides of the political divide ever gave.

After reading it for several years after, its reporting it somewhat reminds me of the BBC. I think its relative bi-partisanship is something that should be cherished instead of trying to crowbar it into a particular bias.

I agree that NPR is "trustworthy" in the sense that what they directly say is usually reliable, what I have a huge problem with is what they leave out or how they redirect.

A perfect example of this is in my previous post. I was listening to their "interview" with their CEO, and the interview was put into context of her recent senate hearing (which I knew nothing about). She sounded like a reasonably well informed CEO with good intentions, doing what is best for the public.

I decided to listen to her senate hearing (which I would not have even thought of doing because I did not even know she did this), and came out with the opposite impression - someone who obfuscates, lies, and should not be responsible for the public good.

Was there anything said in the NPR issue that was incorrect or a lie ? No. They are a lot smarter than that. They are clever people who think they are smarter than everyone else, but are not to be trusted.

> There are no longer "unbiased" news sources, all sources have moved to either the left or right.

> Try listening to the president of NPR at the congressional hearing and then her interview on NPR done shortly after that hearing. For the former, she was unable/unwilling to express any opinions, nor was she able to recall anything she personally said/posted for the past two years. For the latter, she was fed a series of flattering softball questions clearly made to make her and NPR look good. That is not news or reporting, it was NPR doing PR for NPR.

These two statements don't go hand in hand. It makes it sound like previously media people were robots without opinions. They only had "unbiased" coverage on their minds. And now, because the head of a company like the president of NPR has opinions, we should write off the whole org. They can no longer be considered "unbiased".

Lets be real. There was always a bias in media. Sometimes it was used by the government to spread an agenda. This isn't a recent trend. You don't need to find an NPR PR interview for that.

What is new though is people engaging in false balance and bothsideism. Sure, NPR President might have some leftist view. And sure, they might have a leftist lean to their reporting. The question is whether it is "Fox News of the left". Objectively, no. There is no proof for example, that the company knowingly spread lies and when in court admitted to it and paid a $787 million dollar settlement. You can still dislike their coverage but lets not pretend there is equivalency here.

I agree there was always bias in the media. I think that back in the day, when things were not as polarized and not everything was corrupted by politics, the biases were not as large or as important - there was a lot more common ground.

Today, there is extreme polarization, and it is probably impossible to provide a single news source that is "objective" or "unbiased".

I am not making an ethnic or political judgement here. And, yes, I know there will be those who say you have to make a judgment because there is only one viewpoint today that is correct, that the other side is just lying and distorting. And which direction this goes depends on who you speak with.

For me, the only way to maximize what little understanding I have of the world is to go to various news sources. And I am not talking about understanding in the sense of listening to different viewpoints (which is part of it), but actually getting all the "facts", and by "facts" I mean actual events/stories. What people leave out is as important as what they put in.

I am well aware of Fox's issues. And NPR seems like the "nice guys". And I learn things from both that I could not get from one alone. And maybe Fox has more sinister lies and misrepresentations than NPR, and it is my job to sort through that. But for me, I feel Fox is pretty far to the right for me, and NPR is very far to the left for me in their viewpoints and in what they choose to present. So, for me, they are similar, for others, maybe not.

I don't care if the CEO is left leaning or right leaning. But both Fox and NPR conveniently leave out a lot of the story that does not align with their views.

And I do not believe either should get government funding. When we had a society with more homogeneous views, maybe it was ok for the government to fund news sources that provided something that fit within the views of the majority of the population. That is no longer possible.

>There are no longer "unbiased" news sources, all sources have moved to either the left or right.

Not really true. The left has moved right as the right went extreme right.

Globally, the US "left" is pretty conservative.

How can the left remain unbiased to truth when the right is constantly making things up? If the right is constantly lying about their agenda, is it responsible reporting to constantly report the unobjective lie? Is it unresponsible to lean out of direct regurgitation, acknowledge the pattern of hypocrisy, bring objective analysis of it, and continue to monitor it?

Under oath, with only offhand recollection of maybe facts, many people would prefer to say as little as possible. That seems only natural given the potential for accidentally lying if something remembered offhand turns out to be untrue or taken incorrectly.

Contrast with a lower stakes interview, likely prepared for at least in general if not with vetted and researched questions?

Well, she had plenty of time to reflect on what she did not remember and had a perfect opportunity in the NPR interview to address that.

Watch the Senate hearing. This was not a person that did not want to make an offhand statement. This was a person who clearly did not feel comfortable with what she knew she said to "her audience" but not comfortable when it came to a public audience. Many, many times. She sounded like someone repeatedly pleading the fifth.

My opinion, of course.

> today [NPR] is, to me, the Fox News of the left

Oh did they also have to pay an $800m settlement for lying?

If you're seriously equating NPR and the corporation that paid $800M to settle with Dominion Voting Systems, perhaps your own bias is more of a problem than theirs.

I am simply comparing them on a political spectrum of progressive, left, right, etc.

This is independent of lawsuits. There are a number of news outlets that have settled lawsuits - ABC, CNN, CBS (imminent), Newsmax, to name a few. Yes, Dominion was a large one. None of these change where these news outlets sit on the political spectrum.

The original discussion has to do with political bias and whether the government should be funding politically biased news organizations. NPR is a politically biased news organization. So is FOX. So are all of these organizations. Only NPR gets government funding.

Comparing the obvious shakedown of CBS to the Fox lawsuit is absurd.

There seems to be a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram between people who (1) claim to get their information from "a wide variety of news sources" (2) apparently believe that every source is equally trustworthy.

The lie to truth ratio of Fox News is far, far higher than NPR on any news show I've listened to on either.

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