4 ms·

Your smug 'we're all good liberals here, and therefore must always distrust the Daily Telegraph and the Washington Times and the WSJ' attitude grates. We're no

by mordant 10y ago

Your smug 'we're all good liberals here, and therefore must always distrust the Daily Telegraph and the Washington Times and the WSJ' attitude grates. We're not all good liberals, here. And even though I'm diametrically opposed to their politics, I don't discount stories which appear in the Manchester Guardian, just because they're in the Guardian.

DanBC 10y ago
tripplesec isn't saying that we're all liberal[1], but explaining the biases of that author and that newspaper. People need to be aware of biases no matter what their personal politics are. [
- pc86 10y ago
  I think the argument is that you likely not see a similar comment as #1 if the journalist were on the opposite end of the spectrum.
soundwave106 10y ago
I think it's okay to be outright skeptical of some "news" outlets, particularly those who trope in sensationalism and/or have a knack for unresearched, unverified reporting. I don't know enough about the Daily Telegraph, but the Daily Mail is definitely one of those "news" sources that put hyperbole before facts... the Washington Times doesn't have the greatest reputation either. This really isn't a liberal or conservative thing; while it's not a Daily Mail I'm often skeptical about The Guardian as well. Actually I was a little surprised to see the Wall Street Journal in the OP list because I thought they had a pretty decent reputation for quality reporting. The main complaint I've heard about Mr. Murdoch's ownership is more that he tried to add too much general interest stories in an effort to attract non-business readers, not that he's tabloid-ized the Journal. For this article, it was pretty easy to Google a blog of a family lawyer / barrister who added quite a number of counterpoints to one of the cases. (http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/ http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/). Whether you agree or not with her counterpoint and what happened within the cases, I personally found the blog article more sober and with more data backing it. You knew you were in trouble even with the headline of the Telegraph article. (Britain's "most secret court"? Citation needed!) The problem I've found with most sensational articles is this sort of pattern: light on facts, heavy on emotion, many weasel words designed to tug your heartstrings that probably aren't justified. They usually aren't worth reading.

by mordant 10y ago

DanBC 10y ago

tripplesec isn't saying that we're all liberal[1], but explaining the biases of that author and that newspaper. People need to be aware of biases no matter what their personal politics are. [

pc86 10y ago
I think the argument is that you likely not see a similar comment as #1 if the journalist were on the opposite end of the spectrum.

soundwave106 10y ago

I think it's okay to be outright skeptical of some "news" outlets, particularly those who trope in sensationalism and/or have a knack for unresearched, unverified reporting. I don't know enough about the Daily Telegraph, but the Daily Mail is definitely one of those "news" sources that put hyperbole before facts... the Washington Times doesn't have the greatest reputation either. This really isn't a liberal or conservative thing; while it's not a Daily Mail I'm often skeptical about The Guardian as well. Actually I was a little surprised to see the Wall Street Journal in the OP list because I thought they had a pretty decent reputation for quality reporting. The main complaint I've heard about Mr. Murdoch's ownership is more that he tried to add too much general interest stories in an effort to attract non-business readers, not that he's tabloid-ized the Journal. For this article, it was pretty easy to Google a blog of a family lawyer / barrister who added quite a number of counterpoints to one of the cases. (http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/ http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/). Whether you agree or not with her counterpoint and what happened within the cases, I personally found the blog article more sober and with more data backing it. You knew you were in trouble even with the headline of the Telegraph article. (Britain's "most secret court"? Citation needed!) The problem I've found with most sensational articles is this sort of pattern: light on facts, heavy on emotion, many weasel words designed to tug your heartstrings that probably aren't justified. They usually aren't worth reading.