4 ms·

I'll get myself in trouble, but the main difference between Fox News and the NYT is that the NYT is far more effective at disguising its bias. Let's face it, F

I'll get myself in trouble, but the main difference between Fox News and the NYT is that the NYT is far more effective at disguising its bias. Let's face it, Fox News doesn't even try. My advice to you is to follow foreign news services and compare the news you get. The biggest challenge, unfortunately, is that you have to dig a bit because lately English language news is dominated by stories from Reuters and AP. You best bet, by far, is to get news in languages other than English for a fair comparison. However, if you can't do that, you should search google for news articles and compare them to the equivalent Reuters and AP articles to ensure that they didn't originate there. If you do that for a while, I suspect your opinion of the NYT (and many other respected English language news services) will change pretty dramatically. Which is not to say that there aren't good journalists, good editors, good news stories, etc, etc. These exist all over the world. However, the news is big business and also an institution that is critical for political success in any country. Educating yourself on the level of interference that occurs will only benefit you.

dboreham 9y ago
Which sources would you recommend? The BBC and The Guardian are foreign and have their own news gathering networks but for the most part seem similar to the NYT. If it helps I can read French as well as English. When I was a kid I listened to Radio Moscow and to go honest found it not that much different from the BBC..
- mikekchar 9y ago
  Al jazeera is worth watching. Both the BBC and the Guardian, while being foreign regurgitate a lot of stuff out of Reuters (especially BBC when it comes to foreign news). Take a look at NHK -- seemingly highly influenced by the Japanese government, but worth watching for the contrast. The key here is not to try to find the truth. Rather try to find different reports of the same events (or different editing wrt to what makes the final cut). It's quite hard if you are stuck in English because a huge amount of English language news reports come from the same pool of reporters. These reports are then packaged up differently, but the bias often exists prior to it getting to the final news service. It is interesting (and instructive), to try to find the source of news stories and then write down the names of the reporters whose stories make it into your news. What I've found (YMMV) is that only 3-4 reporters write most of the English language news for reports in certain regions. Those reports are then recycled through all of the news services. I first started doing this for Japanese news stories when I found serious factual errors in English language news stories related to Fukushima and nuclear power in Japan. In one instance, all of the news outlets reported that the power station near me was restarting within 2 weeks. So I went down to the power station and asked them. They denied the story and in fact, more than 6 years later, they are still not operating (though they do plan to restart soon). When I traced back all of the stories that I could find provenance for in the western press, I found that it all came back to 3 Japanese reporters for Reuters. Since then I've off and on checked western news reports and still find that those 3 reporters dominate all of the western news reports about Japan. Now, it's crap of me to say all this and not provide any proof. In my defence, I really don't want to get involved in the "fake news" thing going on in the US. It's not my intent to make any accusations, but rather to encourage people to look for themselves. I have not put forth the kind of effort necessary to make accusations that might affect somebody's career. What I'm saying is that it didn't take much effort at all for me to notice that something was not right, so if you look I think you'll also have no trouble seeing it either. Or I might be mistaken. It wouldn't be the first time it happened.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
  The BBC, Guardian, NYTimes, etc are just the mouthpiece of the same group of elites. To get a "diverse" set of information, you need to expand your "sources". RT, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, etc. You need to get information from the propaganda representing other elites. But you have to keep in mind that all propaganda outfits are in the business of SPINNING the truth for their own agenda. You will never get the "truth" from the NYTimes, BBC, RT, Xinhua, Al Jazeera, etc. It's up to you as a rational intelligent human being to filter the propaganda from the articles to get at the truth.

dboreham 9y ago

Which sources would you recommend? The BBC and The Guardian are foreign and have their own news gathering networks but for the most part seem similar to the NYT. If it helps I can read French as well as English. When I was a kid I listened to Radio Moscow and to go honest found it not that much different from the BBC..

mikekchar 9y ago
Al jazeera is worth watching. Both the BBC and the Guardian, while being foreign regurgitate a lot of stuff out of Reuters (especially BBC when it comes to foreign news). Take a look at NHK -- seemingly highly influenced by the Japanese government, but worth watching for the contrast. The key here is not to try to find the truth. Rather try to find different reports of the same events (or different editing wrt to what makes the final cut). It's quite hard if you are stuck in English because a huge amount of English language news reports come from the same pool of reporters. These reports are then packaged up differently, but the bias often exists prior to it getting to the final news service. It is interesting (and instructive), to try to find the source of news stories and then write down the names of the reporters whose stories make it into your news. What I've found (YMMV) is that only 3-4 reporters write most of the English language news for reports in certain regions. Those reports are then recycled through all of the news services. I first started doing this for Japanese news stories when I found serious factual errors in English language news stories related to Fukushima and nuclear power in Japan. In one instance, all of the news outlets reported that the power station near me was restarting within 2 weeks. So I went down to the power station and asked them. They denied the story and in fact, more than 6 years later, they are still not operating (though they do plan to restart soon). When I traced back all of the stories that I could find provenance for in the western press, I found that it all came back to 3 Japanese reporters for Reuters. Since then I've off and on checked western news reports and still find that those 3 reporters dominate all of the western news reports about Japan. Now, it's crap of me to say all this and not provide any proof. In my defence, I really don't want to get involved in the "fake news" thing going on in the US. It's not my intent to make any accusations, but rather to encourage people to look for themselves. I have not put forth the kind of effort necessary to make accusations that might affect somebody's career. What I'm saying is that it didn't take much effort at all for me to notice that something was not right, so if you look I think you'll also have no trouble seeing it either. Or I might be mistaken. It wouldn't be the first time it happened.
awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
The BBC, Guardian, NYTimes, etc are just the mouthpiece of the same group of elites. To get a "diverse" set of information, you need to expand your "sources". RT, Al Jazeera, Xinhua, etc. You need to get information from the propaganda representing other elites. But you have to keep in mind that all propaganda outfits are in the business of SPINNING the truth for their own agenda. You will never get the "truth" from the NYTimes, BBC, RT, Xinhua, Al Jazeera, etc. It's up to you as a rational intelligent human being to filter the propaganda from the articles to get at the truth.