I often post contrarian but respectful opinions here on HN. I basically disagree with half of the ideologies, concepts and discussions here. Usually, that leads to downvotes which is fine. I've gotten used to it. It does bother me when there are no responses but only downvotes. I am always curious why people disagree and whether it is based on reason/logic/facts or simply ideological or if there was a flaw in my own opinion.

We should encourage people that challenge conventional thinking especially when it is unpopular, that's an essential catalyst in a healthy society.

Yeah if it’s “bullshit” try posting some controversial political opinions here, even when they’re related to the topic, and let me know the link to the comment. It will be hidden/dead/buried/flagged.

1. Posting mere opinion without evidence is non-constructive and deserves downvote. From HN guidelines: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle".

2. It's not dang@ doing the down-voting.

I'll note that getting crapped on from all sides isn't always a good indicator. See: mainstream media since 2015 or so.

'mainstream media' being crapped on is mostly from the extremist right. They see everything as having a left wing bias whereas all it means is that when you're at the North Pole everything else will be South of where you are.

I think US "mainstream media" does have a left bias, although not necessarily very strong. (Disclosure: I consider myself probably a slightly right of center, but definitely left of Fox) Personally, I consider "mainstream media" to be the following: NYT, WaPo, USA Today, WSJ, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, Fox. (You could argue Time, Newsweek, Reuters, but I haven't heard of anyone reading Time/Newsweek in years, and Reuters is more news for news orgs and not directly accessed by consumers). I think when people say "mainstream media is left" they mean politically. According to [1], all of that list is left except for WSJ (center) and Fox (right), so 80% of "mainstream media" is left.

If you want to argue that people mean that more broadly, [2] gives mainly the same result, except that few become center-left.

I would certainly not call anything on the right side of middle in either of those graphics mainstream besides WSJ and Fox. (And frankly, I think it's arguable whether those two are mainstream) So for the US, anyway, it does seem credible that "mainstream media" leans left.

[1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

[2] https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?utm_source=HomePage_St...

That allsides chart is a bit weird. Poltico as left slanted!?! With all due respect, as a complete and utter centrist, the NYT and WaPo are hardly left of center. NYT gave very favorable to Trump, and disfavorable to Clinton coverage all through 2016.

Going a little further back, NYT sat on the NSA dragnet surveillance story (Risen and Lichtblau) in the 2004 election year when it very well could have cost G.W. Bush the election.

WaPo has been very careful to offer pro Trump editorials all along.

Neither can bring themselves to write "Trump lies".

This really shows how inadequate the right/left division is. The NYT is an establishment newspaper - they have a few “liberal” positions like tending to support gay rights or at least some access to abortion, although they’ve published plenty of op-eds from people who don’t - but those are more outliers than a trend. Get them started on classic leftie issues like worker or renter rights, taxing rich people, etc. and they’re about as left as you’d expect the average Yale legacy admission to be. The left/right divide really isn’t the best lens for this.

I put a lot of blame on unpaid internship culture: the national media tends to skew towards people from affluent families because that’s who can afford the early career steps in NYC or DC at way below cost of living.