(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])

Worse, this seems to be increasingly prevalent in the academy as well. Indeed, the study cited in the article (from University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative) also doesn't mention these points of context and the paper is pretty overtly propagandist.

[0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/movie-characters-muslim-riz-a...

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

[2]: http://decentfilms.com/articles/hollywood-religion-problem

Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot, and there's a lot of political discussion about them.

It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?

I'm not sure what your point is? That Muslims and Christians should be grateful that the news media talks about them a bit more than the entertainment media? To be clear, I'm not arguing that any particular group should have more representation; I'm criticizing the media for its increasingly propagandist angles.

> It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?

In general, yes, but that doesn't justify misleading or agenda-driven news media. And in any case, every time people try to "fix" the entertainment media, we end up with awful content (e.g., the GhostBusters reboot) and frankly I don't want to sacrifice that much quality for sake of representation. My wife and I were just talking about how many really good pre-2015 films wouldn't be made today because they don't thrust the characters' race, gender, etc into the foreground.

My point is that religious people, whether Christian, Muslim, or whatever, have a serious impact on our lives, and it would benefit everyone if we engaged with them as real people rather than fantasy stereotypes.

Fictional media can help with this by giving us insight in to what people are really like. My contention is that this is more desirable than merely leaving them as faceless talking points in the news.

Otherwise it's like asking for better sources to read about Chinese culture, or like visiting China once a year for vacation. You can't read your way into being culturally competent. You might even move your entire family to China, but it may only be your children who truly begin the road to integration. Anyone who is part of an immigrant community will have a story of the trajectory of cultural competency. It is an optimism which must be fulfilled by your next generation.

You can, however, follow generic protocols of kindness whilst in ignorance.

But I'd rather have there be movies on the Himalayas than not, even when we are aware it's not a perfect substitute for the real thing.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

You smile and nod your way through.

Anyways, the call here is for community integration, not for individual action.

Why go it alone?

Is one's clarity on community affairs the difference between choosing WION and India Times? Or The World Journal?

The solution is better movies on Tokyo, not no movies on Tokyo.

You're in luck, though, because there are plenty of great movies on Tokyo -- movies that even people living in Tokyo find give great insights in to their own society.

Yes and no. First, so much media has fallen down when it comes to character development. Then there's the problem of big companies like Disney that are deliberately secular in their content.

That's the handy thing about essentialism, you don't need an individual character when you have pre-packaged narratives about their race, gender, etc. Rather than a complex character, we get a canned Black character or a canned White character or a canned Female character or a canned Male character. What do you need to know about a person that you can't infer from their immutable characteristics? (:

I'm more interested in them making more of an effort at a good story.

It has skewed perception, but whether that matters is up for debate.

The question I have is what is being preserved by not having a diversity of backgrounds, ethnicities and belief systems in films?

But interesting movies can be made about diverse characters as they can about homogeneous characters.

Only depicting homogeneous societies furthers ignorance and demonization of people who are different.

Showing more diversity, in interesting, authentic, and deep ways is one an important way we have of striving towards a society where we better understand and value one another, and get along.

I think you're arguing against a straw man. It seems pretty clear that no one is arguing for less diversity, but rather against diversity for its own sake or prioritizing it above all other concerns.

Not to say you're not touching on the question of _why_ we're so enthusiastic in media representation for those of the Islamic faith however, but the Mormons are a pretty open and shut case

But as a former Mormon myself I think entertainment is more interesting if it focuses on what we have in common despite our differences, rather than focusing solely on amplifying differences.

When analyzing data typically the first thing you do is take out the outliers and then focus on the remaining data. News outlets do the opposite, the take the outlier and make it the headline story and ignore the other 99% of the data.

I recall seeing news about big movies, eg transformers and others where in order to satisfy the global market, ie China, decisions needed to be made.. and given that many of those markets appear to be more racist/anti-muslim, (obv not 100, but majority I believe)

and your comment seems to be suggesting [hope] that things above "will get better as the global market continues to expand." -

I'm not chiming in to say this or that is a good or bad thing, just trying to clarify that some things may make one think catering to broader global markets may not make "western whiter countries" more anti-racist or whatever is being suggested as 'changing and will get better' - if that is the perspective being considered for 'get better'.

There are studies showing "diversity" on movie posters hurt sales abroad - and of course there has been local pushback for whitewashing things for increased sales -

Unless we are talking about gov funded wokeness spreading where making money is not a goal. But I did not get that impression from the thread here.

If one goes to the desert, they should not expect to see maple trees.

If you indicated that you want to see more minorities cast - then you have the option of going to see Moonlight, over La-la-land.

I’m not white, Christian, or Jewish, and this sentence does not make sense to me. Making entertaining is a business, and it has nothing to do with what percent of people worldwide have what skin color or tribal affiliations.

If people making entertainment predict that they will earn the most money by targeting white, Christian, or Jewish populations, then they should if making the most money is their goal. Have you noticed how every big movie of the last 10+ years has a Chinese character? And a scene in Hong Kong or Shanghai? Many have Latin American characters as well, and Indian, and so on.

the point is that in a world without significant bias, we'd expect to see many more people of color and of other religions (to name just two aspects) being represented because of sheer numbers and because talents are distributed widely.

but that doesn't happen in this world.

In the real world, there will always be bias. Height, voice, gender, political affiliations. Forget about bias in US media, there are multiple Hollywood within India itself. And there is nothing wrong with that. They cater to different audiences.

And it does not “make sense” for to expect a group of Tamil film makers to add a couple white, black, Chinese, and Latin American characters of their movie is about people who speak Tamil.

this narrative is one facet of one echo chamber, tying back to the original article.

Yeah, this is a key thing to realize. People seem to think that Fox News, for example, just trots out falsehoods all the time, but if you skim the news, I'd say very little is actually factually incorrect. It's more about the story selection, who they choose to interview to get the quote, how they contextualize (or don't) statistics, etc.

But once you realize that, you realize it can apply to, e.g. WaPo, which many Republicans say is very left-biased, while many Democrats say it's neutral.

I think an amusing non-partisan example of how story selection biases viewpoints is the so-called "Summer of the Shark"[0] where for whatever reason shark attacks became a part of the summer's zeitgeist and got extensively covered. Meanwhile, shark attacks weren't at any particularly elevated level, contrary to what many people ended up believing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_the_Shark

What he found was that conservatives had no trouble answering the way liberals do. However, liberals could not do likewise. Liberals frequently chose the red herrings on the multiple choice questions, the ones that exaggerated the conservative positions to the point of more or less demonizing conservatives.

That's why we're talking about Fox News, don't you see? CNN and MSNBC are just folks. Fox News is the Anti-Christ.

Even the article itself has this same smell of bias about it.

But I'm totally unsurprised to see this downvoted here only 18 minutes in.

Here's a short article on the paper: https://ricochet.com/76902/archives/conservatives-understand...

The paper itself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2027266

Here's his TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...

What's funny is if you bring this up (even with sources) to conservatives. They're unsurprisingly unsurprised. But if you bring it up to liberals they often get furious because it goes against their beliefs that they're the more intelligent, more educated "side". Nevermind that believing in only two possible sides is six times dumber than astrology... something "both sides" are about equally guilty of. If nothing else I strongly encourage everyone to watch his TED talk. It's super informative, well delivered, and has a solid message of unity tbh.

I have a friend I haven't seen since high school, though I'm connected with him on Facebook. He will outright tell you himself that he's a communist—familiar with the writings of Marx, etc. We could not be more diametrically opposed. However, he's as clear-eyed as you seem to be.

I suspect that most people simply aren't all that intellectually curious. I don't remember if Haidt explicitly mentioned this, but I think somewhere either he or someone commenting on his study asserted that it is much easier to pick up the party line of liberals through osmosis, since those in education, the media, and so forth tend to be liberal. So, even conservatives are more readily exposed to the liberal take on things. Liberals on the other hand are not.

But the point I'm making by mentioning my friend and thanking you is that I suspect that people who are intellectually curious are more or less inoculated against mischaracterizing the side they disagree with, since they don't learn almost exclusively through osmosis.

I appreciate your contribution to this thread.

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/01/22/protestandpolarization/

I agree Haidt's model is flawed, especially on the idea of sacredness being something liberals aren't concerned with. I think he's onto something, but he's painted with too broad a brush.

Lately, I've been reading a lot on the subject of religion: specifically, from an anthropological or sociological perspective. I'm interested in the idea of ersatz religions—filling the void left by modernity's secularism. My suspicion is that the great bulk of people cannot do without the things that religion affords; and so if they aren't "religious" in the traditional sense, they unwittingly find some substitute that does everything but revere Christ, YHWH, Allah, etc.

Behavior that fits that model I see again and again, on what we think of as the political left.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

So it's possible they are not answering to how conservatives see themselves.

And let's not ignore that the MFQ is kinda shaky at best.

I also find it interesting in that link is the why they were the most off. Liberals seemed to have been wrong because they regressed to the mean when answering for other people. They seemed to think conservatives were more group-focused than they were and less individual-focused. And vice versa for liberals. They thought that the average liberal was less group-focused and more individual-focused than they were.

And it's not like conservatives weren't wrong. They got it right when estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for individuals, but not groups.

Moderates were the most accurate in estimating the average conservative and liberal answers for groups. And both conservatives and liberals over-estimated conservatives concerns for the group.

So I really don't think it's entirely fair to frame the results as "conservatives know how liberals think better than liberals know how conservatives think". Because another reading of it is that liberals give conservatives a greater benefit of the doubt. And also that conservatives don't even know how little they care for the group.

And that's also ignoring that these are self-reported morality questionnaires. It's not really indicative of how these people might act in real situations. Even Hitler thought he was a swell guy just trying to do right. We all kind of think that of ourselves. No one thinks they're the monster.

I think a major tenet of post-trump Republicanism is roughly: "We're going to be accused of being racist and conspiracy theorists by the left no matter what we do, so there is only an upside to openly courting those members of the electorate.

People trapped in that bubble are overly confident in what they believe. They aren't often exposed to arguments and data that are contrary to what they're told to believe over and over whenever they turn on the TV. So when these trapped people are confronted with opposing arguments or data, they resort to the easy mechanisms that relieve their cognitive dissonance. "You're a racist" "You're a homophobe" "You're a white supremacist" "You want sick people to die in the streets"

If you disagree with defunding the police but with significant other parts of the Democratic platform, you can ally with these people on some issues but fight them on this issue. This is also how democracy works.

Trump attempted to stay in power even though the people voted against him. This is tyranny. Working with him, in any way, is a subversion of democracy. Anyone who is willing to work with him is, by extension, an enemy of democracy.

The only logical conclusion from your post is that you are against democracy: You argue that a policy you disagree with (defunding the police) getting implemented democratically, is a similar level of "bad" as a tyrant being installed. This means that you are willing to see a tyrant installed if the alternative is (democratically chosen!) policy being enacted that you disagree with. Seems like textbook authoritarianism to me.

Conservatives didn't have "no problem" answering as liberals.

Conservatives were better able to estimate what liberals would answer for individual concerns, but were wrong about group concerns.

Moderates were better able to estimate how both groups would answer for group concerns. Both liberals and conservatives overestimated how much conservatives cared for group concerns.

Liberals underestimated how much conservatives cared for individual concerns and overestimated how much they cared for group concerns. Liberals also overestimated how much liberals cared for individual concerns and underestimated how much the cared for group concerns.

In light of that, we could even frame it as liberals see themselves closer to conservatives than vice versa. Because that's how they answered for the groups. They think there's less difference than there actually is. So they under and overestimate appropriately.

Framing it as "conservatives know liberals better than vice versa" is wrong and is a tactic to put the onus on liberals to do all the changing. Because conservatives can fill out a morality questionnaire better.

Or let me put it this way, if the question was "How many puppies is it acceptable to kick in a lifetime?"

The fact that puppy kickers were correctly able to guess "zero" for the non-kicking group while the non-kickers said the kickers would say "ten" while the kickers really said "twenty" doesn't mean that the puppy kickers are the better group.

Republicans tend (this is not universal) to view things through a lense of six things: faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order. Democrats focus on care and fighting oppression. Again, this is a simplification, but the theme is that conservatives have different moral foundations that make it hard for liberals to understand why they make decisions they do. A solid example (I can't remember if this was used in the book, but it helps me) is "why are they voting against their own interests". I hear this in my personal life all the time! I used to say it! Then I realized that voting for someone who is against welfare, when you are low on the socioeconomic spectrum, makes sense if you overweight faith, and believe that abortion is a grave moral sin. What's some poverty now compared to eternal damnation? I don't believe in hell myself, but this insight let me understand that someone who views things different than me isn't dumb, they just have different values that allow them to rationally decide things that my values seem irrational.

The hard part is trying to talk across this gap in moral reasoning, and find the right balance.

Someone posted this which breaks down the results of the study. I wasn't speaking to "The Righteous Mind" specifically, but the study it's based on.

Too many people are hopelessly trapped in their narrative bubbles and unable to calmly evaluate arguments against what they've been taught to believe.

The paper itself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2027266

Here's his TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...

The far right keeps showing up bearing the battle flag and nazi flags -- and Flynn, Stone, and Trump appear to love groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Other Republicans who speak out about that get cancelled.

Jerry Sexton's "who knows, maybe some of us will be slaves one of these days."

And the QAnon candidates.

Haidt's study uses his five moral foundations model, where one's moral foundations are characterized by five dimensions: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The first two are called "individualizing foundations" and the last three are called "binding foundations".

Haidt's findings in other studies (which generalize beyond just the US or the West) are that people across the political spectrum care about the individualizing foundations, but progressives care more about these foundations than conservatives. But progressives care much less about the binding foundations.

With this in mind, I don't think it's too surprising that conservatives have an easier time estimating the viewpoint of progressives, since the moral foundations of progressives are not alien to conservatives, they are just weighted differently. Whereas for progressives, the moral foundations of conservatives can feel utterly alien and inexplicable, especially if they tend to have their social interactions in a progressive bubble.

(Also, be mindful that the population sample of the study is nowhere close to a random sample of the population. The sample is over 60% female, overwhelmingly young (median age is 28), and liberal participants outnumbered moderates and conservatives combined. Since it's an online survey, there's a reasonable chance that you're mostly reaching urban people, which tend to live in progressive bubbles. Conservatives who live in areas that are mostly progressive may understand progressives better than those who live in conservative bubbles. The study acknowledges this in the discussion section. The result might still hold up, but the effect might be exaggerated by the sample.)

"Those are just the opinions of a small fringe" was much more believable in a pre-Trump world - but now, even more than post-Tea Party, the fringe is pushing the agenda.

And even pre-Trump, you can read that study as an indictment of the conservative media and it's evolution to sensationalism since the 1980s.

To use an example from the linked article: "For instance,when conservatives express binding-foundation moral concerns about gay marriage—e.g., that it subverts traditional gender roles and family structures—liberals may have difficulty perceiving any moral value in such traditional arrangements and therefore conclude that conservatives are motivated by simple homophobia, untempered by concerns about fairness, equality, and rights." - the vocal conservatives were not expressing a very nuanced view, it was the violent fringe that was making the most noise and claiming the most airtime even in conservative outlets.

If you want liberals to understand your complex conservative reasoning, you gotta get the very-un-complex trolls off the air!

If this reasoning is correct, then conservatives should be becoming worse at gauging liberals' position on social justice-related topics, considering how their reporting tends to be dominated by extremists as well.

I'm going to reach here a bit, but are we going to rope in the Westboro Baptist Church and pretend these people were the "conservative" response? Even if we do that, do you recall them—as odious as they are—being violent or advocating violence? And if we're not pointing to them, who are we pointing to?

What are you arguing about?

1. Someone mentions Fox being bad for bias in story selection.

2. I ask: why are we singling out Fox specifically? Others do it too?

3. You say: "They give Trump airtime!"

Ok? That is a difference I guess? Not got much to do with what we're talking about though?

Is it less honest or is it just a narrative you don't like.

> They let people on air spout obvious lies all the time. Find a mainstream channel that does the same. I'll wait

MSNBC just like the other outrage opinion info-tainments has a lack of nuance (what you call lies) in many of its narratives.

That said, journalists are just humans so it's a difficult problem, especially in the heightened political climate we've had.

This mapping has proven useful

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

Also, "middle" or centrist is not the same as objective. The path of least extreme disagreement is not the same as the truth (ask a Christian: he'll tell you that Jesus is the truth and that the world hates Jesus). Besides, the middle of what? The neoliberal paradigm? The current spread on offer?

However I believe that, to a much greater extent than citizen support for particular political issues, media bias tends to polarize along party-line dimensions because of overlapping power structures.

The opposite would be something like The Nation or Democracy Now!.

I grew up in solidly Republican Virginia in the 1990s (even my “liberal” Northern VA county voted against Clinton both times) and we certainly didn’t learn the “Daughters of the Confederacy” version. When we visited Monticello, slavery was discussed at length. Teachers have discretion so maybe some kids are still learning this stuff, but it’s a huge lie to say it’s “most” kids today.

Folks like Reid are massively gaslighting people by making it seem like the opposition to CRT is opposition to “teaching kids about slavery.” Conservatives in Virginia weren’t up in arms complaining about that when I was a kid almost 30 years ago, so it’s hard to imagine that’s what they’re doing. The opposition, instead, is to people like Reid who are trying to normalize racism against white people. It’s opposition to people who want to turn slavery into the entire narrative, such as the 1619 Project, which asserted that “nearly everything exceptional about America grew out of slavery”: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/year-zero

> Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music.

I routinely read Fox News online. I do not think they have moderated over the last 2 years - there was perhaps some moderation 4 years ago, but no longer.

CNN has swung leftward, I don't think MSNBC has substantially changed.

And Reid said “most” kids, not just those in the South.

They moved slightly back from Trumpism back toward their earlier pre-Trump far-rightism late in the Trump period (not abandoning the former, just not going in whole hog on it), which might be seen as moderation from a tribal/partisan viewpoint (as pre-Trump far-rightism currently lacking a major party home, to the extent many anti-Trump-but-far-right voices advocated voting for Democrats over Republicans despite ideological issues with Democrats in 2020 as essential to the defeat of Trumpism), but is not moderation ideologically.

While the D-R partisan split is not independent of left-right ideology, its not the same thing.

CNN/MSNBC the Democrats.

Democracy Now is essentially the American grassroots left. Not generally fans of either party.

Anyways it's kind of pointless to argue what the "opposite" of Fox is as it's really ill-defined. i think it's fair to say CNN and Fox are similar to being opposites.

Ok, I'm going to do it:

> Presidents usually get too much blame when the economy is doing badly, since downturns are often caused by outside shocks or cyclical factors, but that also gives them a chance to crow when things are going full steam ahead. Trump is not the kind of person to pass that up.

> The strong growth number gives the White House a significant boost after days of grim headlines, and its failure to move on from the President’s humiliating summit performance with Russian President Vladimir Putin nearly two weeks ago.

> It also offers some personal respite for Trump, given that he must feel that legal walls are closing around him, following news that one of his most important confidants, Allen Weisselberg, has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors investigating his former lawyer Michael Cohen.

> The New York Times reported on Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller is examining Trump’s tweets, potentially to see whether they can help him build a case that the President acted with malicious intent when he sacked former FBI Director James Comey.

> Trump is forever trying to change the subject. With the current state of the economy, he may have some ammunition.

> Often, the President’s hyperbolic assessment of his own performance is at odds with the facts

> but he [Trump] often has only himself to blame for it getting overlooked, given the daily political turmoil he creates.

> Trump’s end zone dance might come across as a little premature.

It just goes on and on. I'm practically quoting the whole article. Just the language alone: "humiliating", "walls closing in", etc. Then they quote one poll, presumably the one what makes him look as bad as possible. It's just ridiculous. I don't know how you can say this article is "positive" for Trump. The headline is relatively positive (though even then I can feel CNN begrudgingly wrote some credit).

Biden's not the opposite of Trump either. Biden pleases some conservatives, which is why he got the nomination over Sanders, so that he'd stand a chance of winning over "undecided" (ie. right wing, but not extreme right wing) voters in battleground states. Many neocons are also fans of Biden, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to find support of him on FOX.

Now I'd be surprised to find any positive coverage of Sanders on FOX.. not to mention people who are really on the left like Noam Chomsky.

Right, which is why this is kind of a pointless thing. What the hell does it mean for one media organization to be the opposite of another anyway?

I agree I did kind of start it with my earlier comment though.

MSNBC too! They may not have as many Trump folks on primetime panels, but their focus on dumb "Resistance" stuff is definitely not what the left wants at all (though liberals seem to eat it up).

>Mrs. McMahon [(CEO of WWE)] said the company began considering dropping the word "Federation" from its name when World Wildlife Fund (a/k/a World Wide Fund for Nature) prevailed in a recent court action in the United Kingdom. The court ruling prevents the World Wrestling Federation from the use of the logo it adopted in 1998 and the letters WWF in specified circumstances. The "Fund" has indicated that although the two organizations are very different, there is the likelihood of confusion in the market place by virtue of the fact that both organizations use the letters WWF. The Fund has indicated that it does not want to have any association with the World Wrestling Federation. "Therefore," said, Mrs.McMahon, "we will utilize this opportunity to position ourselves emphasizing the entertainment aspect of our company, and, at the same time, allay the concerns of the Fund." [0]

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090119180317/http://corporate....

There was no pressuring over intent. The World Wildlife Fund owned the rights to WWF and sued.

https://www.cnet.com/news/wrestling-loses-wwf-to-wildlife

https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/01/study-fox-ne...

if people are confused about what red america thinks, they would be well served to look at Breitbart, tucker, and independent conservative outlets to see how they frame the discussion. I'm always amazed at how people on the left don't really see what the right is going on about.

I've been scolded for using Breitbart or Tucker Carlson as a barometer for right-wing positions because they're claimed to be extreme, or 'alt-right', and not reflective of how real conservatives think or feel.

Might just be me. I dislike 90% of fox news but I listen to Carlson sometimes and never find him to be horrible or BS-y (admittedly I don't listen in all the time so I may be missing some stuff)

For what it's worth, I've only watched in order to try and understand other people's viewpoints.

More specifically, I think he's terrible because he has mastered the ability to tease out the base instincts of people with his messaging, which makes it hard to either agree or disagree with his statements with logic. He can point to some kernels of truth, and you are left with people saying things like "that's just dogwhistling" when attacking his viewpoints. In other words, he riles up, doesn't cause people to think critically, and overall lowers the level of discourse out there.

To me, he seems like a whiner who disingenuously argues against things in a way to bolster conservative talking points. But, I expect the majority of this is selection bias, and only the 'worst' clips are making it into my filter bubble.

Fox News really is worse, and while there may be lessons learned there which can be applied to the other outlets, such as insisting on clearer labeling of opinion content vs reporting, I think it's an all-lives-matter-style distraction to throw up our hands and say there's nothing that can be done and they're all equally bad because it's a problem inherent in the medium.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-make...

And yet while they are all genuinely terrible due to trying to remain profitable AND trying to advance their personal political agendas, people are always trying to use the excuse that "its better than X" to justify supporting them.

My solution would be to ignore the news completely, but that solution isn't effective because I know multiple people that insist on ranting about everything they see/hear from the media on a daily basis.

IMO the media is very important for civilization, but somehow we have accepted that deceit, manipulation, and failure are the golden standard.

Between the need to access government figures for interview, and their funding sources, how could you ever expect straight forward reporting?

If you aren't paying for your media sources, you're the product.

Even if you are paying, you can still be the product, as long as media can make even more money out of it. I mean, why wouldn’t they? More money is more money.

This is why we need more than just fact checkers.

It’s extremely easy to construct a biased, opinion-manipulating political hit site composed entirely of truthful statements.

Proof by politically-neutral analogy: imagine a newspaper that published an article every time a roulette wheel stopped on 6, but never for any other number.

Last week in English news it headlined an anti masker/antivax March in London which the BBC didn't mention at all.

The google vs DuckDuckGo search results for the same exact phrase "list of conservatives banned by twitter" yield utterly different results. None of the admittedly right wing websites are even listed in the google results for that search. The only site in common on the first page is Forbes, but even then the two articles are different even though they came out the same exact day.

If you use google, you'd think that twitter isn't censoring conservatives. If you use duckduckgo, you'll think that they do.

Their articles mostly follow a dialectical format -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, with about a third of the article spent on each one. I don't know of any other publication whose house style is so rigorous in this.

It's also highly editorialized, but very open and transparent about the positions it takes -- any bias they have is in the open, but is in the final synthesis after they've treated both sides.

It also doesn't fall neatly into any liberal/conservative divide. It tends to be socially progressive yet only interested in solutions that can be practically implemented, pro-free market but deeply concerned about externalities and the environment, pro-democracy but with hard-headed realpolitik.

Plus probably half of what each weekly issue covers is news you won't find in any other American publication, at least -- it's a global publication and one of the best ways to simply learn about the entire world's political and economic news.

It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the free market, and it paints non-market solutions as infeasible, even though they often work and are implementable. But this is invisible ideology and very easy to mistake for pragmatism, because a pure pragmatist will certainly appreciate many market solutions.

The final synthesis is not after having treated both sides. It's after having treated two sides, which are editorially chosen.

As far as dialectics it would be much more interesting if they could dialectically analyze their own internal contradictions between democracy and interventionist realpolitik, or between free-market fundamentalism and concern about externalities. But it doesn't really grapple with those, which is a sign that it's only applying dialectical thinking in convenient ways.

In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for foreign reporting where you don't have bearings.

They're not perfect, but it sure beats NYT.

If you want the optimal news coverage without needing to read a million sources - The Economist, Financial Times, WSJ and The Guardian.

They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common with them. This is especially true for foreign relations.

I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and that pertain to foreign policy.

If you want news coverage that is any good at all and you care about foreign affairs you absolutely have to include at least one and preferably two non-anglophone or non-western sources that preferably oppose each other.

A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began. As far as I can see the Economist published almost nothing opposing it, limiting themselves to surface-level reporting of anti-war arguments in the sole goal of defeating them.

I don't understand why you would limit yourself, if you had to choose 4 sources, to 4 centrist anglophone sources. It seems like a very biased media diet.

And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"? Isn't it literally the opposite?

Most major news sources in the world report in English too. So you can indeed read news from sources that aren't from culturally similar anglophone countries and instead are from anywhere in the world.

No, centrism isn’t the opposite of bias.

Centrism is a position toward which there can bias of any strength. Position of bias on a left/right (or any other ideological) axis and strength of bias or two orthogonal, continuous dimensions.

But in practice "centrist" news sources are far more likely to present multiple points of view -- e.g. a left and right one -- while "left" and "right" news sources generally do not.

But at a deeper level, centrism isn't really an ideology at all, in the way the left and right can be. You can be a hard-core leftist or you can be a hard-core conservative, but the idea of a "hard-core centrist" doesn't really exist.

So I'd argue centrism can be the opposite of bias in a very real way. It's about dropping bias towards ideologies, and treating issues in a practical balanced way.

No, in practice less strongly biased sources are more likely to present multiple points of view. Now, the same amount of variation can seem more diverse when you tend to bucket things into “left/right” binary categories, if the center of variation is near the point where you draw the line between buckets.

But that's an artifact of forcing things into binary buckets making a centrist outlet providing center-left to center-right views look more diverse than a right-wing publication providing center-right to far-right views.

Their latest issue literally has a massive article against vaccine nationalism. Their opposition to breaking of the Iranian deal.

> A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began

That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed. The Economist has changed hands and most of its staff.

> 4 centrist anglophone sources

4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation behind them. Money makes people write in a particular way, that is easy to gauge.

Also - why would I read insane crap on either side, my job isn't to read news all day.

Also, not specific enough. Which Iraq war? The one in 2000's? 90s? 80s?

>4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation behind them. Money makes people write in a particular way, that is easy to gauge.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Just because they have a bias that is for the status quo doesn't mean they are more or less right. As far as I'm concerned all I'm getting from this is "I agree with this ideological bias and I don't want to read anything else"

Anyways, it's your decision to subscribe to a biased news diet. You're not any better because of which bias you choose than someone who only reads Newsmax or CNN.

If your assessment is that anything that's not from the same ideology as these four sources is "insane crap", which it isn't, good points are being made by people of all political persuasions, then it's clear that you have created your own media echo chamber.

That said, the editorial stance of the Economist comes through extremely clearly in their writings and they are unabashedly economically liberal.

Your characterization of NYT as being less ideologically diverse really doesn't match my experience.

Your list is incredibly West focused and honestly not that ideologically diverse, with the Guardian I guess supposed to take the "left" position.

NYT has lost my subscription, after they just straight up started running exaggerated stories.

> Your list is incredibly West focused

I read in 4 languages, would you like some news sources in Russian, Lithuanian or Italian?

There's an adage in math modeling/statistics: all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Here, all newspapers are biased, but some are useful.

Unless there is some link between calculus and socialism that I have yet to discover

The people who recommend against those medias already believe of themselves that they are better informed and able to recognize the bias. If they are that critical, then they should have no troubles consuming biased and ideological media, and they shouldn't assume without further evidence that others don't have the same ability.

Especially in this case it's weird, because the journal is called The Economist. Obviously you'd expect some bias pro economy there.

I'm arguing against the GP that said that it's okay to read only the Economist. It's not okay to read only a single source. You can be as critical as you want but if you no longer have any bearings on a subject you're being led by the nose.

Also, "pro-economy bias" is pretty vague. There are many ways one could be biased in a way so as to focus on a better economy, and they can be radically different.

I think this is perhaps misguided. It's not fair to the economist to compare an article on, eg. politics in Brazil, against the nuanced understanding that a Brazilian citizen would have, because most people from North American with no other ties to Brazil would have no frame of reference.

In other words, the choice is not, a simplified version of the issues vs a nuanced understanding, it's a simplified understanding of the issue vs none at all.

Whenever the Economist published an article on Brazilian politics, it was generally far superior and far more insightful than anything in the local press. Which genuinely surprised me.

Remember -- most local news sources, whether in the US or Brazil, aren't nuanced at all. They're surface-level and sensationalistic.

But while Brazil has a home-grown news equivalent of Time ("Veja"), as well as USA Today (O Globo) it simply doesn't have any home-grown news source at the level of sophistication of the Economist, not even for domestic news.

I find The Globe & Mail and MacLeans quite solid when it comes to news coverage.

And even non-local sources may still bring some enlightenment. If you were trying to understand Brazilian politics but couldn't read any Brazilian sources, it would still be much better to read Anglo, European and, say, Middle Eastern reporting and then consider the differences in reporting and how they might be linked to their worldview.

Besides, oftentimes a simplistic and biased understanding whose inaccuracy is not understood is much worse than no understanding at all. At least in the second case you are aware of your ignorance and will probably be more weary of rash action.

It used to be a much better magazine.

Arguing that Economist is bad, because it was complex to cancel your subscription (I see a massive button on my account page) is like arguing that a restaurant is bad, because they don't accept gold coins as payment.

The issues come weekly with really interesting topical stories, so I always add them to my reading todo list, but they just pile up so fast.

This past year and 1/2 of WFH life meant, I now have about 50 issues to go through LOL.

Sorry for the jab, but I think this is our current political situation in a nutshell - surface level, emotional takes are the primary way people engage in news and thus politics. It's hard to engage deeply, but it's required in order to build your own narrative, rather than just take on someone else's.

Mostly i feel more articles coming up that are worded in a way to convince the reader or a certain point without any data. This is something i never really noticed in the past.

It might just be me though.

I stopped reading it about 10 years ago for a few reasons. During the housing crisis the coverage wasn't as deep as it should have been and I would read articles that were nothing more than "nationalizing banks is bad" without explaining why.

Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad. During the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position and willingness to deal. I used to get it from a library a few towns over so I would be 3-4 weeks behind. One time I was reading an article where Charles Grassley was being made out to be principled and respected and I'm laughing because he had recently endorsed the death panel nonsense.

I really, really wish I could recommend the WSJ, however they declined pretty heavily after Murdoch bought them. The number of long form articles declined and I was seeing less journalism and more ideological fluff in the non-editorial sections.

It's an English magazine that's not even 'News'.

Also this: "During the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position and willingness to deal." Is a pretty petty reason to not read something. Also, they could have been right.

There are better reasons not to read the Economist.

No, they were proven to have been wrong. I provided a specific example of their analysis being wrong, one which you did not address. The ACA passed along party lines after almost a year of deliberation. The GOP spent the subsequent decade running on "repeal and replace" only to get seriously close once. There are multiple other examples (McConnell declaring the goal of making Obama a one term president, refusing to conduct hearings to confirm Garland to the SC after recommending him, etc.) of where the GOP was acting in bad faith, which is also what you are doing here.

I agree its a well put together publication, but a socialist (for instance) would argue it is deeply ideological.

Unlike many "well renowned sources" (ahem... NYT)

I listen to their articles and they often repeat this.

Literally typing this into Google would have provided you with the link to their website.

https://www.economist.com/news/2020/06/19/frequently-asked-q...

Now, what is a classically liberal bias, concretely, as far as international affairs are concerned?

As far as free trade, that's difficult to apply to most situations.

Conservativism is a relative position, but you can't be a conservative liberal.

Economist literally had a massive article what is conservativism. And - SPOILER - UK Torries used to be conservative, while GOP has been reactionary/populist for a while now.

As a relative politico-economic position, conservative is “defense of the position of status quo elites”.

In a society with a capitalist (including most modern mixed) economy, “conservative” in the relative sense is always economically liberal, because the status quo elites in a capitalist society are those empowered by and dependent on economic liberalism for their position.

(“Classical conservativism” is not relative, and is defined relative to the pre-capitalist status quo, and is specifically tends to be about the defense of the titled, landed aristocracy. But, because that is no longer an established elite, there's not a lot of classical conservatism left to defend.)

Nowhere I claimed that you cannot be economically liberal. You intentionally removed context out of my claim that conservatives will use economic policy to make an ad hominem attack.

Congratulations on coming out a "winner".

That's a very narrow understanding of conservativism.

> “conservative” in the relative sense is always economically liberal

Conservatives have often taken steps to restrict market forces, that forced radical changes. So no - you cannot generalize conservativism to "economically liberal".

But rather than listening to me, feel free to read up a scholarly article.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/

...which amounts to “lots of people have used it lots of conflicting ways, some even denying it has meaning.” Which, as someone with a political science degree with cobsiderable exposure to both political philosophy and more common political dialogue, I’m well aware of. If you accept that whole space of use and non-use, the upthread claim that you can’t be a conservative and an economic liberal at the same time is more, not less, ridiculous, so perhaps you posted your response one comment two far down the thread?

I also don't think that being economically liberal means letting the market destroy itself or push large societal changes.

You definitely can be a conservative liberal. The American society by and large is founded on liberal principles. All you have to do to be a conservative liberal is to stick to 18th-19th century liberalism, in being a so-called "classical liberal".

I agree that the GOP is reactionary more than conservative.

The term classical liberal exists specifically, because conservative liberal creates a massive ambiguity.

And getting back to The Economist - they aren't conservative at all. It's a modern liberal magazine, that routinely promotes wealth redistribution and support for the poor.

To the point that they had a whole issue dedicated to the death of modern conservativism and how their editorial policy is classic liberal.

"Classical liberal" and "conservative" are not necessarily at odds. "Liberal" in the sense that you are using it is a political philosophy, conservative is just a slot to fill in.

Because as political movements they are vey much at odds.

If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats, and you'll almost never see Fox News write an article critical about Republicans. So you end up without much overlap between the two.

They'll only report on the same things when those common things are important enough / loud enough to where they can't ignore it, or when they're able to put their own political interpretation on it when telling the viewer what to think.

Mentioning the wrong topics gets people labelled as pushing "talking points" or "conspiracy theories" with total disregard to the factual reality behind. It doesn't serve the partisan narrative and that's all one needs to know. Insisting will get your suspended, muted, banned or deboosted/shadowbanned.

Except for everything Democrats and Republicans agree upon.

Which is a lot.

There's a massive amount Americans miss because thet witness very lively debate on very circumscribed topics.

I can name one CNN reporter right off the bat who does and his post is nearly always in the headline section for the topic being covered:

Chris Cillizza

Find me the same thing on Fox and I will accept your arguement.

The problem with Fox News and CNN is the biased attitude. They report everything good as amazing and everything bad as horrible. The anchors are "performing" the news, telling you with their tone, body language and vocal intonations how disgusted you should be or how much you should be rejoicing. This phenomenon has infiltrated the NYT and WSJ as well, and I've stopped reading both.

Not true at all. Here's one critical about Democrats as being too beholden to progressives: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...

Here’s one critical about the current Democratic VP largely for being too concerned with (and ultimately ineffective at) undercutting Republican talking points. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...

And that's just one day.

Except for stuff responding to new Trump-era revelations, they don't seem to have much current criticism of Republicans not buried within criticism of how Democrats deal with them, representing their actual bias in critical opinion coverage, in that it focuses on people currently in power.

(When Republicans held the White House and the Senate, they had more direct criticism of Republicans.)

Wow, I never thought of that.

"Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971. An even larger drop was observed among journalists who said they were Republicans in 2013 (7.1 percent) than in 2002 (18 percent), but the 2013 figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S. adults who identified with the Republican Party (24 percent according to the poll mentioned above)."

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju...)

"Some of the professional groups have clear liberal leanings. People who work in the news media are almost exclusively donors to liberal candidates:"

(https://www.businessinsider.com/charts-show-the-political-bi...)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Even if you read “voting for a D or R candidate in a Presidential general election” as “being a D or R”, and “eligible voters” as “the American population”, both which are clearly and wildly wrong, your evidence still doesn’t support your claim, because it has 98.2% of 66.2% = 65% of eligible voters, which is not “well above 90%”.

PS Americans also overwhelmingly vote either Democrat or Republican in non-presidential elections, even down to the city council level.

Americans overwhelmingly abstain rather than voting for any of the offered candidates, Democrat, Republican, or independent or minor party, in non-Presidential elections. 2018 had the highest midterm turnout since the before the Reagan era, and it reached the whole way up to 49%.

[0] https://libguides.com.edu/c.php?g=649909&p=4556556

You do realize that “woke” as a pejorative originated in left-wing criticism of bourgeois, centrist identity politics?

So, unless you are saying that CNN has joined that leftist critique, I think what you really probably mean is that CNN represents a strongly-held centrist position in that area, not a far-left one.

While they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. They cut through much of the partisan, mainstream BS - and get to the heart of many issues, all while debating ea. other in a civilized way.

https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-k...

It is INCREDIBLY refreshing, if you've fallen into the rut of mainstream internet or tv news.

https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels

Which I hope stay online to show how they are professional. I also hope their new show gets the graphics and tech to catch up quickly, as they are a refreshing source of truths that need to be told, and I'd like others to be able to watch and feel the same without being distracted and wondering if the new/current as of June 21 make them amateurs with uninformed opinions - instead of the professionals with the history and knowledge that some of us have become aware of.

So glad to see them doing real and truth - we need more.

When I caught part of on TV the other night with Sharyl Attkisson

( eg https://youtu.be/ol-6AwoPLH4?t=947

) I had a similar - jaw drop - OMG someone is telling the truth and they are on the air and not in a mysterious car accident! This is amazing.

EX-CNN aparrently(?) - maybe it's going to be a new movement of like ex-X-cult - no longer beholden to Y -

Perhaps old media is not just losing but started to be lost.

I want a browser extension to highlight individual reporters and info about past biases - as it's too hard to pin a portal as being one way or the other, when there are shills mixed in with regular reporters and editors all mucking up everything it seems.

https://www.readtangle.com/

Someone on Hacker News a while back recommended the Wikipedia current events portal[0] and I have to say this feels like a more efficient way to consume the news. It feels less tied to trending topics and manufactured drama, and is more centered on what actually happened in the world that was especially notable on a particular day.

I feel like a lot of "news" that's reported in the American political media is just ideological argument, which after you've read the same argument for the nth time doesn't come across as very interesting any more.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

He operates just a little to the right of my own political persuasions, but even when I disagree with him, it's a respectful disagreement. Isaac's positions are nuanced, well-reasonsed and kind.

That newsletter is exactly what we all wish political debate in the US was like.

Rage makes more ad money than facts.

Alternatively, use the Internet Archives to read news from this date from 2-5 few years ago. You'll probably find that most aren't worth reading, which gives you a good sense of how important the news you read today will seem in just a few years.

I think the idea that media can be neutral is pretty unrealistic anyway. Even non-profits like PBS or government orgs like VOA will have their slant so it'll always require the extra work.

I used to do what you did(just read a bunch of major publications from differing political orientations) but also found issue with not being able to compare different perspectives easily.

I started reading international news. That is, focus on publications outside country X when reading about X.

Reports from Sweden, Korea, Russia and UK (thanks google translate!) translated into English, awkward wording and all, plus a minimal dose of CNN and Fox works better for me than a mix of American media. Just my 2c.

I might even wrap it up as a convenient page or app.

Is it some fake news site, or some radio personality's take? Or is it some twitter spat / spam?

I don't think 'the other side' is all that simple to cover / has an obvious quantity to include with every news article.

It has highlighted to me some biases from some of the sources I follow on a day by day basis (NYT, Washington Post).

Bonus points for the Economist, because you also get coverage and analysis of events across the world many of which get almost 0 coverage in US press.

Our tech ingests articles from different publishers, groups them into topics based on the story they are covering, then analyze and score them based on how informative they are and present curated articles as best perspectives from left/right/center.

All of this automated and running continuously on our website : https://www.thefactual.com/news and also in our app : iOS (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-factual/id1537259360) and Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=group.thefactu...)

Do check us out.

This is a big issue. But at the same time - it's not clear to me what the solution when every side is pushing hype rather than news. How do you publish an "opposing take" on something the other side is publishing that isn't real in the first place? It's not ideal to even acknowledge lies.

After quitting reddit I'm often oblivious to clickbait flamebait minutiae that my colleagues all get worked up over.

Also- are there any reputable conservative print news sources?

Maybe study each side like you're studying a gang. Get to know the symbolism and language.

There’s a growing number of writers on sub stack covering the same issue from different sides. Often this is formulated as a response of rebuttal to the left-leaning media’s coverage of the issue, but that’s fine because you still get both sides of the story if you read things in conjunction.

The thing I look for in good political writing isn't objectivity, which is mostly fictional, but an honest centering of perspective. This has two parts to me - a clear declaration about what the author thinks is the right answer and a commitment to making sure any opposing viewpoints are given as the holders of them would give them before being attacked. Like...I do think the US Republican party is not serious about many of their stated concerns, but I think it's easiest to see that when you contrast their stated views with their mostly political action.

This can get a little distasteful with racist or other hateful views, but there's no need to go into detail with the views of the groups you are writing against. You just need to describe them in a way they can recognize before you tear them apart.

So I guess I do not think good writing requires even treatment - it just requires demonstrating that you have understood what your opponents have said before you move to disagree with it. So, so, so much writing in US politics takes place between commentators who, for all appearances, have no real understanding of what their opponents want or why they might want it.

Here’s a simple one: Last year, when anti-asian crimes were on the rise, the NYTimes dutifully reported the crimes.

But repeatedly omitted details like ethnicity or name, until a white attacker made the news.

For those earlier details, the rag the NY Post (conservative and borderline tabloid) was the paper to go to.

Eventually—as in many months after—the NY Times stated covering the full details because the problem was too obvious. Even then the Ny Times uses every opportunity to downplay the issue.

I’m sure conservative journalists are just as biased in their own way.

Those are the sources you tried to balance with? Every one of those is a fringe hard-leaning source, except maybe Wapo which can't be trusted because it's owned by Bezos. You need to seek more moderate sources to begin with.

Shout out to Annafi– how are you all doing there?!

[1] https://www.theflipside.io/

I've noticed this as well. Going from WaPo to Breitbart (or vice versa) is like going to an alternate world. When they are talking about the same thing often they are doing so in a belittling manner (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/11/13/safety-pin-ant...). I feel like the tone taken by MSM outlets like WaPo and the NYT has become harsher and more condescending, but it could just be me paying closer attention to it.

Bias by exclusion doesn't get talked about as much as it should. One way you can tell when a media establishment doesn't like something is that they do what they can to ignore it. During the Dem primaries it had become a meme in some left wing communities the length the MSM was going to ignore Bernie and his popularity. Another popular example is how Noam Chomsky is largely shunned by the MSM.

With a pillow...

Until they go away.

They compare similar headlines and also show you what you might have missed because one side doesn't even surface the headline

Edit: this article is about allsides, if you read it

The coverage/focus is the perspective.

In my experience, the biggest contributor to the echo chambers is a lack of memory.

I do not think people's memories are bad, but rather they willfully ignore the other party's position, never learned it in the first place, or are justifying it because their party is in power. This is what centrists frequently get mocked at "both sides" about. They aren't saying "oh both sides are trying to stage an insurrection" they are saying "both sides are not going to let immigrants across the border" (but it'll be generalized to everything being both sided).

I think the way to cure this is also the way to make parties better. Criticism. We should always critique our parties to make them better. Unless you believe they are perfect already and getting direct commands from god, it is deserving of criticism. But we've encouraged a culture where criticism isn't (effectively) allowed. It is allowed by certain people who speak in a certain way, but not for the average person. (e.g. if you are speaking to someone you don't know that well and politics are brought up and you criticize something x party recently did it will be presumed you are of the opposing side). I believe part of this is because we are comparing politicians and parties rather than judging them independently (this is also why I'm a big supporter of Cardinal voting as opposed to the common Ordinal propositions).

This is essentially the root of whataboutism. The classic example is one I had my parents many times over the last decade. I suggest Trump should be investigated for his connections to Epstein given his frequent contact. And my dad would be like "but what about Clinton!" and my response has always been "yeah, him too." Because it isn't about parties, it is about the crime that was potentially committed. If something is bad, then it is bad if the other party does it or if your party does it. Tribes don't matter. The whataboutism is just a distraction technique.

TLDR: Don't forget the past. Criticize everyone. Stop saying "what about...".

The truth is that news sources for each side presented completely different stories. While one side got a certain story, the other side was completely silent. So you had two groups of people who had two different sets of unrelated stories, and very rarely did they overlap. The media did an amazing job of putting each group into their own silo, making it impossible to discuss anything between groups or for any positive Trump news to ever be known to a large percentage of the population.

Some examples: Persuasion, The Dispatch, The Bulwark, and an assortment of substacks.

I get my news from Reuters with a sprinkling of fox/nytimes/reddit thrown in

It's amazing how much scoop you can get on both the establishment, and the opposition from first hands.

Just ask, politicians are talkative types. You are blessed with living in a country where you don't end on the bottom of a lake for asking politician a wrong question.

https://ground.news has an interface that highlights which news outlets with what general bias are covering which stories, which is sometimes fun to take a look at

Check out Counterspin, from the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).[1]

They monitor mainstream media and critique it from a left-wing perspective.

[1] - https://fair.org/counterspin/

I don't always agree with them ideologically, but I find it valuable to hear a perspective on US politics & media from outside the usual Right/Center-Right binary.

I remember seeing Twitter chatter from the right re: the Fauci email dump, and so I went on various liberal outlets to try to get the left-wing perspective, and it was complete crickets.

Especially when it's something I can't just read and form an opinion on myself (Fauci's email dump was absolutely massive), I depend on journalists to accurately summarize and contextualize primary sources. And it's really hard to get a straight take when one side won't even bother to write a "this is a nothingburger, here's why" article.

https://www.readtangle.com/p/dr-anthony-fauci-emails-coronav...

What are some things that we should have taken away from the Fauci emails that the broader left/centrist medias missed?

If true, COVID-19 is the biggest scientific fuck up of all time. Fauci had allegedly pushed to resume funding that sort of research.

Instead, the powers that be sort of dismissed it as a conspiracy theory for over a year until it was suddenly okay to talk about a few months ago.

Again, I can't even tell if any of that is true because most media outlets ignored it.

So does this exist? If so, just share that link. If not, stop pretending that "media bias" is an excuse to continue sharing the claim surrounded by unfounded conspiracy thinking.

>We have a good team lined up to look very critically at this, so we should know much more at the end of the weekend. I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change

Page 3187: https://www.scribd.com/document/510220252/Fauci-Emails#from_...

HN formatting is primitive, but the relevant sentence is "Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."

Like "But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change"

He basically, said "Eh, maybe, but we really need to look harder".

So much for intellectual integrity.

Nobody who is dumb enough to let such a thing come into existence in the first place winds up with a career arc that takes them through a position of substantial authority at the federal level.

Politicians may be evil but they're not dumb.

But if the Washington Post and Buzzfeed (who are also, uh, media sources themselves) FOIA'ed 3200 pages of Fauci emails, there's a zero percent chance - zero - that someone from a bunch of orgs didn't at least take a look.

The reason it looks like they "ignored" it is because they didn't see a story to report. Which is how the process should work.

So if there were a Fauci email saying, "Yeah, we probably created covid, whoops" there's a zero percent chance you wouldn't see at least someone linking to the email in question. Do you see those links? There you go.

Gets tiring responding to the rights lies.

Some center-right outlets that are still worth reading* (and I say this as a raging leftist):

The Hill, National Review, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, The Economist

*(as in they provide both informational "what's happening" and insightful analysis without venturing into flat out fake news... as long as you avoid their editorials and comments)

I suppose those are "classically conservative" news outlets, as in "small government but with a general respect for evidence-based governance, science, and the truth". I don't know of any reputable populist-right/alt-right outlets. I don't know if there even IS a reputable populist-right/alt-right movement to begin with, but that's another discussion.

Side note: Google News (as of a year or two ago, when they revamped their algorithms) unfortunately now also gives you a bunch of worthless blogs and fake news (the literal kind) outlets. I have hundreds of sources in my "never show this source" blacklist and even then it's barely usable. That said, it's still a useful way to see different takes on the same topic. Their grouping algorithm is a lot better than their vetting algorithm. Some of those sources should just not show up for anyone.

But then you can see the consequence. Apple News has less crazy but sometimes misses entire stories. Google catches what Apple misses. For the purposes of understanding the news landscape, it is more important to know that a conversation exists and to estimate its trajectory, than it is to get correct takes.

I only ever really make time for the news on the crapper. It's a nice way to compartmentalize. Plus it cleanses the soul... shit goes in, shit goes out. Current events are too depressing otherwise.

Newsvoice was an app that tried to crowdsource that job instead of using algorithms. It very quickly became an alt-right cesspool, presumably because those are the same people who feel disenfranchised by FAKE NEWS LIBERAL MEDIA and so flock to alternative communities.

The utility of looking at multiple similar voices is to get a sense of the scale of a story, and inter-rater reliability; otherwise you have a portfolio of unweighted novelties.

Good luck getting a Breitbart/Newsmax reader to switch to even the NY Times or Reuters or AP, much less The Guardian.