Item — HN Reader

Incredible. But I also have to think about the amount of blatant political bias in mainstream (unhacked) media providers.

It's just plain hard to get unfiltered news these days. I rely on 'RealClearPolitics' to give me wildly biased headlines from both sides, then try to extrapolate where the truth must lie.

2 comments

When you say bias, are you talking about the news articles or the editorials/opinion pieces. Can you give me some examples of political bias in recent news articles?

The Washington Post hit job against many independent entities was rather biased [1]

But the issue is many readers do not disassociate Op-ed from news anymore.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-...

One thing that has changed is that the Evening News on the big three American broadcast networks used to be pretty much a straight reading of the news by an anchorman. Now you have news "analysis" programs, especially on the cable networks. These tend to be strongly opinionated right or left, and include a lot of guest speakers who are not journalists, and who are also politically opinionated.

Because of the viewership these shows attract, traditional media outlets are now also less straight news and more opinion.

I generally feel it's pretty clear when I'm listening to an opinion show versus a news show, but I'm not sure how many others do.

When Twitter purged Russian bot followers in June, CNN tweeted this: "President Trump and Katy Perry among Twitter users hit hardest by follower purge https://cnnmon.ie/2KVgIkj"[1].

When reading the article, one will find that Trump lost the second to last fewest followers in absolute terms (204,000) and the fewest in relative terms (0.4 %) out of all the Twitter users mentioned. The closest relative loss was 1.7% of "the main New York Times account". President Obama lost "nearly 2.4 million" followers, or 2.3%.

Given these facts, I believe it is an indication of political bias on behalf of the CNN to mention "President Trump" as the first thing when tweeting about the article.

[1] https://twitter.com/CNNMoney/status/1017936776298680321

EDIT: It could be argued that CNN mentioned Trump first for the maximum clickbait effect. But if that is the case, why did the tweet have to cast Trump in a negative light? It could have just as well been "Trump lost barely any followers compared to Katy Perry and Barack Obama! What a whopper of a surprise!".

The recent news about someone claiming to have Trump on tape saying nigger. If she actually released the tape or was able to prove that she had the tape, then I can understand all of the media attention. But right now it is just some crazy lady who claims to have dirt on Trump (similar that prostitute that was all over the news for claiming that Trump used her).

Isn't that more of a gossip/sensesionlism, rather than bias? Given the track record of the guy, it even seems plausible. Besides if a senior aide to the most important person in the country says that the president said racially explosive stuff, isn't that worthy of a report?

You label her crazy. May be you are right. But the same crazy person was the inside person for couple of years and was also paid $180K. Sure it makes them opportunist/immoral/backstabber. Crazy? I don't think so.

For the most part all of mainstream newspaper's articles are "correct". The bias with them is what they choose to report on and how often they report on it. When they report to the front page an alt-right rally with more reporters than alt-righters but barley provide a section for the violent antifa protesters there who assaulted reporters at the same rally that is bias. Or when they nonstop report on the Parkland school shooting where 17 people where killed and following protests but report on the Orlando nightclub shooting were 50 people where killed for a week.

One could argue that the alt-right rally from last year was very eventful, hence the huge number of reporters present at the current one.

And I didn't read full details about the rally, but I do know out about the skirmish between antifa and the alt-right. Also Fox news reported about it extensively. So what's your point? Are you saying that there's a liberal/progressive bias in media?

> Are you saying that there's a liberal/progressive bias in media?

yes

Here are some more examples, they report for weeks on Gazans violently protesting and attacking the boarder and sympathise with the Gazans, but when was the last time that you heard about the ongoing Darfur genocide? When Obama imprisoned illegal immigrates in separate cells based on age and gender, the media parley said a word, but when Trump did it... How about a CNN reporter admitting that the Trump - Russia scandal is a nothing burger?

How come you are not complaining about Fox News bias? Obama tan suits/Dijon mustard/flag pin/Bengazi/her emails etc

One example I remember well is when CNN published "NFL ratings are down again this season. Is it time to panic yet?", then Trump talked about NFL ratings and CNN published "Trump says NFL ratings are 'way down.' That's not completely true".

The two were basically the same article, but the headline changed to disagree with Trump.

Hmm...downvotes without response? Guess this hit a nerve.

Regarding the downvotes, I suspect that people don't think that's bias. I don't really get how that's bias. It looks more like recycling an article with a clickbait title that's attempting to seem relevant.

Plus, anytime an article has a question in the title, the answer is no[1]. So, you're already dealing with a low-quality data situation.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

How often does CNN go the other way and say "Trump is right" in an attempt to seem relevant?

Still, perhaps we can agree that, clickbait or bias, it's untrustworthy.

(And Betteridge's Law wouldn't apply to the statement in the first headline, "NFL ratings are down again this season.")

How often does CNN go the other way and say "Trump is right" in an attempt to seem relevant?

You appear to have skipped the "clickbait" part of what I wrote.

And Betteridge's Law wouldn't apply to the statement in the first headline, "NFL ratings are down again this season."

I never said it did. In a parallel of misunderstanding, I would point out that "NFL ratings are down again this season" isn't political.

"How often does CNN go the other way and say "Trump is right" in an attempt to seem relevant?"

I guess that would depend on how often Trump has been right.

Even rightwing media has trouble finding and writing about Trump's accomplishments. For a reason.

Isn't this heuristic vulnerable to asymmetric approaches to truth and polarization?

It us.