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they're still better than most big news organizations, but they're massively scewed toward a certain type of left wing echo chamber at this point. I loved readi
by moonshinefe 9y ago
they're still better than most big news organizations, but they're massively scewed toward a certain type of left wing echo chamber at this point. I loved reading the publication for years; the Snowden revelations were the high point.
Now you'll get a massive dosage of anti-Sanders, anti-Corbyn hit pieces and similar along that political vein. You'll get a solid 70% of opinion articles pushing extreme feminism. If that's your cup of tea, all the power to you. But I don't think they're remotely impartial for a second anymore.
Comments sections strategically opened or closed or moderated depending on the subject.
Good on them for pulling out of Facebook I guess, but that definitely doesn't mean they're remotely objective at this point in my experience.
- hyperdunc 9y agoI agree. The Guardian's definitely gone down hill since Snowden. The news they do decide to report is pretty good, but their opinion pieces very often push socially regressive viewpoints.
- otalp 9y agoWhat usually happens with their opinion pieces is that most of them are pretty uncontroversial and bland. But the ones that are silly, extreme and/or hypocritical are the ones that make it to the top precisely because they are so. Take the example of their opinion pieces today. Article 1: French polls show populist fever is here to stay as globalisation makes voters pick new sides Article 2: How the opposition parties can still make a contest of this election Two reasonable articles, which are not amongst the 10 most viewed or clicked on. What is amongst the most viewed opinion pieces then? Article 1: Allow me to womansplain the problem with gendered language Article 2: Serena Williams’s pregnant victory reminds us how amazing women’s bodies are. Subititle: Are women the weaker sex? I don't think so. So the well-reasoned, sane articles are ignored, while the clickbait rubbish is well....clicked on, makes their 'most viewed' and is featured on their front page. A large part of the problem is people's tendencies to click on what you call "socially regressive" viewpoints. It's not like the people agree with them either, most of the comment section involves bashing the author. Some people are just looking for articles to get angry too.
- zackya89 9y agoAs the commenter above me stated, in 2015 Alan Rusbridger left and got replaced with Katharine Viner
- lobster_johnson 9y agoNYT also publishes some pretty crass, clickbaity opinion pieces. I used to like Krugman, but his opinion pieces have gotten increasingly annoying the last few years. It's not that I disagree with what he says, it's just that they're poorly written rants that merely serve to make NYT look more tabloid.
- oblib 9y agoI've seen that too.
- nickbauman 9y agoNews is not Commentary. There's a wall between them in serious publications. Papers like the Guardian and the Wall St. Journal have very specific axes to grind in the Commentary sections. But they both have excellent News organizations. I'm left-leaning and find the WSJ top notch.
- oblib 9y agoI mostly agree with this. I too lean left but appreciate the journalistic work done at the WSJ. I think The Guardian has lost much of their balance in the past couple years though. I see too much rhetoric in what should be unbiased news lately and while I appreciate well thought out opinions I don't like them creeping into "News". When it does I feel the ghost of Orwell leaning over my shoulder and whispering "there it is".
- calcifer 9y agoCan you share a few Guardian articles that are not opinion pieces or a journalist's personal column but still has "too much rhetoric in what should be unbiased news"?
- otalp 9y agoThe article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-interview https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange... The reason their extreme bias shows: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of... This is a bit of an exception, because it is quite possibly the worst article I've ever seen them put out. But they definitely have a bias, towards the Clinton/Blair faux-left to the point where they not only dislike the right, but also the people like Sanders/Corbyn.
- lobster_johnson 9y agoHow is that article biased or extreme? It's just a condensed summary of an interview Assange gave to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica. It looks pretty neutral to me. Edit: Apparently Assange didn't say the things the article claims. If so, it's just shoddy research on the part of the article author, and I'm surprised it hasn't been retracted.
- djtriptych 9y agoCare to recommend any objective news outlets?
- Nutomic 9y agoNo news source is truly objective. Your best option is to read various news sources with different biases, and keeping in mind how they lean.
- scholia 9y ago> No news source is truly objective. No reader is truly objective either, including you ;-)
- oblib 9y agoThat's not entirely true. One can be objective but it does take some self awareness that's not touted much these days.
- Natsu 9y agoWell, I doubt any of us is perfect. I do my best to read the news & opinion responsibly: consider what evidence is given and do not give weight to hearsay with no proof, wait for each side to have its say before weighing evidence, and to make no rush to judge anyone. I know I'm not perfect in those regards, but I try to at least avoid marching to the drumbeat of the two minute hates the politicians use to herd people.
- rdiddly 9y agoIt's a noble goal but, I think, doomed, because we're all inherently biased towards things that a) were written(1), b) in a language we understand, and c) were delivered to us somehow. What about all the things that happened that weren't written-about? What about all the things that didn't happen, for that matter? The tree over there in Bloomington IN at the corner of Whatever and Whatever, is still there -- find out more, tonight at 11! Or what about the things that were written-about, just not in your own language? Putin has an 83% approval rating back home, but the US media seem to want me to think he's the next Hitler. If I could read Russian better, I could find out a lot more about it. What about the things that were only described with squeaks amongst porpoises cavorting in the deep? What about the things that happened on the other side of the galaxy? We're predisposed against knowing anything about any of these categories of things. (1) When I say "written" you can alternatively insert (for example) "talked about" or "filmed" or "addressed in any medium." Edit to get rid of italics-incontinence.
- ddingus 9y agoOpinion isn't news, as another stated. Nobody is objective. The Guardian is clear in how it differentiates news and opinion. High clarity is what helps people most. Couple that with some diversity in sources, and one ends up reasonably well informed.
- oblib 9y agoYep. I bookmarked The Guardian about 3-4 years ago and really enjoyed a lot of what they put out but about two years ago I began to realize just how tilted they were. I'm not sure if it was them or me that changed most but I suspect it was them. I quit tuning into CNN and MSNBC about 4 years ago and back then I recall The Guardian seemed quite balanced in comparison. It was during our elections last year that they leaned too far for me to take them seriously as a real journalistic endeavor and I scrapped the bookmark because they were wasting my time. It wasn't easy though. I really wanted to make a donation and support their stated mission of being truly independent news provider, but I just couldn't because they're not. They have a very clear agenda that's promoted with a left wing tilt but really only supports a different group of corporatists than the right. I will not subsidize that, and that's really what they're asking from us.
- desas 9y agoWhen they say independent they mean or outside influence and political parties, they absolutely intend to always follow their British liberal tradition. They don't hide this.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- delhanty 9y agoThe editor changed from Alan Rusbridger to Katharine Viner in summer 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/20/guardian-appoints-katharine-viner-new-editor-in-chief https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/20/guardian-appoi... IMO, around that time the editorial policy changed noticably too.
- oblib 9y agoThat makes sense. I was not aware of that so thank you for pointing it out.
- otalp 9y agoThere are individual vocal Corbyn and Sanders supporters- Owen Jones of the Guardian for example is possibly the only person in the entirety of the mainstream media to be an ardent Corbyn supporter, and his pro-Corbyn articles frequently hit the front page, but as a whole it's true that most journalists there are Blairites. Sort of very mild-centre left who are socially liberal and oppose austerity, but are still pro-corporate. That's not great, but for US news they are certainly in the top 3(alongside NYT and WaPo) and the only ones who are free.
- prawn 9y agoBy "certain type of left wing", do you mean "Third Way"? I thought Sanders and Corbyn were considered very much left-wing?
- ionised 9y agoCorbyn and Sanders are left-of-centre. They are not even close to the hard left that the media paints them as.
- monksy 9y agoTo me, they've gotten to be the left's response to Breitbart. (Yea I realize I'm going to catch a lot for flack for that. However, columnist/opinion writers for the guardian have been advocating for violence against men and quite a few concerning things)
- gavinpc 9y agoBreitbart being the advocate for... violence against women? Or quite a few unconcerning things? Anyway, you make an unsubstantiated (and practically incomprehensible) claim and yes, you're going to catch "flak" for it. HN being the advocate for substantive discussion.
- mathw 9y agoIf you're going to claim they're advocating violence against men you're going to have to cite your examples.
- monksy 9y agoI don't have any links because I stopped reading the source years ago. (For that reason, I did write to the editors, and never got a response back) IIRC Laurie Penny was one that stood out.
- dagw 9y agoAdding links to representative articles will make your claim much more believable and convincing. As it is my initial reaction is to reject to simply reject your claim as hyperbole.
- mathw 9y agoI always get very suspicious when I see somebody talking about "extreme feminism". The feminist content I see in the Guardian is of the "we'd really like women to be treated equally to men" kind, which is perfectly ordinary feminism I thought.
- Shinchy 9y agoNever seen the Thomas the Tank Engine is sexist because Percy got covered in pink paint and didn't like it one then?
- laurent123456 9y agoHow about this recent opinion piece: "Robots are racist and sexist. Just like the people who created them" [0]. Basically if you're one of those "white, straight men" building software you're racist and sexist. I wouldn't call that moderate feminism. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/20/robots-racist-sexist-people-machines-ai-language https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/20/robots...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- warto 9y agoWhy is that extreme? The author is asking that developers take care in their work and account for unintended consequences of a non-moral entity learning from a world with racism & sexism in it. That seems prudent to me.
- laurent123456 9y agoIs it not extreme to claim that all software developers are racist and sexist, and are all "white straight male"? The points she makes otherwise might indeed be worthy of discussion. However I think some of what she describes is simply misclassified data - black people get misclassified, but so do white people (but of course it doesn't make the news). Unless she can prove that white people are misclassified less frequently than black ones, she has no point. The Tay incident was not due to bias but to trolls purposely feeding the IA racist information. Despite what she vaguely claim later in the article it wasn't encoded, not even subconsciously, in the bot by the developers.
- bartread 9y agoYeah, I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again but - although I used to be a big fan, and still read the odd piece on The Guardian - one of the things I realised around the time of the Brexit vote is that The Guardian is basically The Daily Mail for Lefties. They have this slick veneer of intellectualism, they're generally more subtle and, yes, they appear to fact check rather more carefully, but the spin and the somewhat shrill tone are nevertheless there. I can't really deal with them any more, but I could say the same of any newspaper these days.
- davidf18 9y agoYou might consider reading Thomas Frank https://www.theguardian.com/profile/thomas-frank https://www.theguardian.com/profile/thomas-frank Who writes how the left ignored the working class and how the working class supported Trump before the election: March 2016: Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald... July (post BrExit): The world is taking its revenge against elites. When will America's wake up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/revenge-against-elites-americas-wake-up https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/reveng...