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Interesting. A few remarks: * So many headlines are truncated. This is distracting. * The "What they both should probably read" section should be motivated. F

Interesting. A few remarks: * So many headlines are truncated. This is distracting. * The "What they both should probably read" section should be motivated. For example, what makes WSJ or BBC better? They are both known to occasionally publish dreadful articles. * You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian, I believe they have a fairly large readership.

gefh 9y ago
The Grauniad certainly has a Point Of View but to compare it to Breitbart is /highly/ disingenuous.
- pamqzl 9y ago
  How so? Are you sure you're not just assuming that your own point of view is the correct one?
seattle_spring 9y ago
> You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian Breitbart had a section up until a few weeks ago titled "BLACK CRIME". Can you show me a "left-equivalent" section in The Guardian? If anything, Breitbart is a "right-wing" NaturalNews.com.
- austinheap 9y ago
  Don't you dare ruin NaturalNews.com for me! They cured cancer!
- Hasknewbie 9y ago
  (Replying to both you and gefh) You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission, although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying attention. The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <- Yes, this is a real article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage. I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't think this should be excused. To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, more insidious and damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how "erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today, this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So. Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    You wrote quite a long text, but none of it supports the equivalence of Breitbart and the Guardian you’re trying to defend. The two examples given are somewhat strange in that they seem to skew to the right. Sure, they’re examples of bad journalism, but it’s not comparable to the campaign style propaganda operation of Breitbart.
    - Hasknewbie 9y ago
      Huh. I actually gave, like, five examples, argued why it's not possible to have a clear equivalence, and concluded that Fox News would have been a somewhat more apt comparison? It's interesting that you view some of the examples as right-wing though.
- slaymaker1907 9y ago
  Maybe if they had a section for the Huffington Post.
nicklaf 9y ago
Both The Guardian and The New York Times are quite intelligent and useful publications. In fact I don't see what is gained by reading NPR, BBC, or Reuters instead. On the other hand, while The New York Times gets chastised here as liberally biased, the Washington Post is listed as neutral, whereas I see the reverse as being the case.
- westoncb 9y ago
  I agree. That point specifically made me distrust the site's categorizations: just read the headlines from Washington Post vs New York Times and it's obvious which one is more exploitative/clickbait-centric. I hope that's something that can be fixed though, because I do love the idea of this site...
  - anticlickwise 9y ago
    You know, I dont have any strong opinions on the websites themselves. If enough people agree with this classification,I dont mind trying it. This thread has already been super helpful
- akvadrako 9y ago
  You're clearly in a liberal bubble. I'm not conservative but the bias on The Guardian and NYT is obvious; I can't stand reading them. The biggest difference between them and Breitbart is the subtlty - they do a good job looking smart and give lip service to opposing viewpoints. They also have much better reporters, designers and editors. All that actually serves to make their bias more dangerous though.
  - nicklaf 9y ago
    I will certainly concede to preferring liberal publications. To your second point, though, I don't feel too manipulated by them precisely because I don't seek them out to confirm my own bias, but instead because of the high quality reporting. I admit that I only read The Guardian for the occasional book review, but I singled out the Washington Post in contrast to the NYT for its shameful clickbait tactics. I would easily read the Wall Street Journal over the Washington Post. I haven't read enough Breitbart to know if it would be fair to call them a right wing version of the NYT in some loose sense, but it's not like they are winning Pulitzers with original reporting. Unlike the NYT, I'm not sure that you'd find much high quality, original reporting if you filtered out the slant. I admit I could be totally wrong here, but I always assumed that Breitbart was more of a right wing blog akin to DailyKos, than an actual newspaper (despite being presented as one).
anticlickwise 9y ago
Working on ways to show the headlines better. "What they both should probably read" is going to be controversial. I am thinking through what goes in there and what criteria I should use. I dont have any strong opinions about the ones that I have so I will move it around based on feedback and consensus. I think Guarding should be there too. Adding it soon
InclinedPlane 9y ago
The Guardian is equidistant to the left as Breitbart is to the right only if your definition of "center" is something like Il Popolo d'Italia.
- pamqzl 9y ago
  Disagree. The Guardian is mainstream left, Breitbart is mainstream right. If you think Breitbart is too far right to be mainstream, check the identity of the guy in the White House and think again. If you think the Guardian is too far left to be mainstream then check the identity of the previous guy in the White House.
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
    I can't help but gasp at how tragically the american political spectrum is skewed. I mean, looking at it from europe, breitbart is "crazed right wing extremists", obama is center-right, and the guardian is center-left.
    - pamqzl 9y ago
      And is the European perspective more valid than the American? Why isn't it Europe that's skewed? Also I note that "Europe" is a big place and quite politically diverse.
      - 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
        It isn't a question of validity, but rather a semantic dispute as the US spectrum has shifted to the right quite a bit during the last half of a century (it’s quite easy to see remnants of the red scare to this day). And you are left with a two-party system, both very liberal economically, but one who is reactionary & openly religious-backed while the other arguably tries to be liberal in other social facets. Yes, Europe is a big place, but the US is too, and it's quite common to travel a few hundred kilometers in europe and see a completely different political situation. Of course they are still large tendencies (synthesized into european parliament groups), but they really don't mean much and more importantly have no decisive power on their own.
mch82 9y ago
+1 for complete headlines... hard to compare truncated content.
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  Noted
knucklesandwich 9y ago
The Guardian isn't particularly left wing. Try libcom.org, ROAR, In These Times, Jacobin, Dissent, maybe Current Affairs. This tool is correct in calling things like nytimes, etc. "liberal", but that's the center of the political spectrum, not the left wing.

gefh 9y ago

The Grauniad certainly has a Point Of View but to compare it to Breitbart is /highly/ disingenuous.

pamqzl 9y ago
How so? Are you sure you're not just assuming that your own point of view is the correct one?

seattle_spring 9y ago

> You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian Breitbart had a section up until a few weeks ago titled "BLACK CRIME". Can you show me a "left-equivalent" section in The Guardian? If anything, Breitbart is a "right-wing" NaturalNews.com.

austinheap 9y ago
Don't you dare ruin NaturalNews.com for me! They cured cancer!
Hasknewbie 9y ago
(Replying to both you and gefh) You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission, although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying attention. The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <- Yes, this is a real article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage. I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't think this should be excused. To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, more insidious and damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how "erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today, this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So. Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.
- matt4077 9y ago
  You wrote quite a long text, but none of it supports the equivalence of Breitbart and the Guardian you’re trying to defend. The two examples given are somewhat strange in that they seem to skew to the right. Sure, they’re examples of bad journalism, but it’s not comparable to the campaign style propaganda operation of Breitbart.
  - Hasknewbie 9y ago
    Huh. I actually gave, like, five examples, argued why it's not possible to have a clear equivalence, and concluded that Fox News would have been a somewhat more apt comparison? It's interesting that you view some of the examples as right-wing though.
slaymaker1907 9y ago
Maybe if they had a section for the Huffington Post.

nicklaf 9y ago

Both The Guardian and The New York Times are quite intelligent and useful publications. In fact I don't see what is gained by reading NPR, BBC, or Reuters instead. On the other hand, while The New York Times gets chastised here as liberally biased, the Washington Post is listed as neutral, whereas I see the reverse as being the case.

westoncb 9y ago
I agree. That point specifically made me distrust the site's categorizations: just read the headlines from Washington Post vs New York Times and it's obvious which one is more exploitative/clickbait-centric. I hope that's something that can be fixed though, because I do love the idea of this site...
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  You know, I dont have any strong opinions on the websites themselves. If enough people agree with this classification,I dont mind trying it. This thread has already been super helpful
akvadrako 9y ago
You're clearly in a liberal bubble. I'm not conservative but the bias on The Guardian and NYT is obvious; I can't stand reading them. The biggest difference between them and Breitbart is the subtlty - they do a good job looking smart and give lip service to opposing viewpoints. They also have much better reporters, designers and editors. All that actually serves to make their bias more dangerous though.
- nicklaf 9y ago
  I will certainly concede to preferring liberal publications. To your second point, though, I don't feel too manipulated by them precisely because I don't seek them out to confirm my own bias, but instead because of the high quality reporting. I admit that I only read The Guardian for the occasional book review, but I singled out the Washington Post in contrast to the NYT for its shameful clickbait tactics. I would easily read the Wall Street Journal over the Washington Post. I haven't read enough Breitbart to know if it would be fair to call them a right wing version of the NYT in some loose sense, but it's not like they are winning Pulitzers with original reporting. Unlike the NYT, I'm not sure that you'd find much high quality, original reporting if you filtered out the slant. I admit I could be totally wrong here, but I always assumed that Breitbart was more of a right wing blog akin to DailyKos, than an actual newspaper (despite being presented as one).

anticlickwise 9y ago

Working on ways to show the headlines better. "What they both should probably read" is going to be controversial. I am thinking through what goes in there and what criteria I should use. I dont have any strong opinions about the ones that I have so I will move it around based on feedback and consensus. I think Guarding should be there too. Adding it soon

InclinedPlane 9y ago

The Guardian is equidistant to the left as Breitbart is to the right only if your definition of "center" is something like Il Popolo d'Italia.

pamqzl 9y ago
Disagree. The Guardian is mainstream left, Breitbart is mainstream right. If you think Breitbart is too far right to be mainstream, check the identity of the guy in the White House and think again. If you think the Guardian is too far left to be mainstream then check the identity of the previous guy in the White House.
- 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
  I can't help but gasp at how tragically the american political spectrum is skewed. I mean, looking at it from europe, breitbart is "crazed right wing extremists", obama is center-right, and the guardian is center-left.
  - pamqzl 9y ago
    And is the European perspective more valid than the American? Why isn't it Europe that's skewed? Also I note that "Europe" is a big place and quite politically diverse.
    - 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
      It isn't a question of validity, but rather a semantic dispute as the US spectrum has shifted to the right quite a bit during the last half of a century (it’s quite easy to see remnants of the red scare to this day). And you are left with a two-party system, both very liberal economically, but one who is reactionary & openly religious-backed while the other arguably tries to be liberal in other social facets. Yes, Europe is a big place, but the US is too, and it's quite common to travel a few hundred kilometers in europe and see a completely different political situation. Of course they are still large tendencies (synthesized into european parliament groups), but they really don't mean much and more importantly have no decisive power on their own.

mch82 9y ago

+1 for complete headlines... hard to compare truncated content.

anticlickwise 9y ago
Noted

knucklesandwich 9y ago

The Guardian isn't particularly left wing. Try libcom.org, ROAR, In These Times, Jacobin, Dissent, maybe Current Affairs. This tool is correct in calling things like nytimes, etc. "liberal", but that's the center of the political spectrum, not the left wing.