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Comment by alabastervlog | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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