4 ms·

The one and only time I looked at Breitbart, because it was mentioned online, must have been around 2015 or so. The news site looked like a UK tabloid/yellow pr

The one and only time I looked at Breitbart, because it was mentioned online, must have been around 2015 or so. The news site looked like a UK tabloid/yellow press Fox News clone, nothing special really. I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot possibly be considered a "high quality news site." On a side note, from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else you could get news. The best suggestion I've ever gotten was "Wikipedia", and the best wrong answer so far was "books." Most of them don't even seem to know what news are, they seem to confuse the term with "political opinions that I like." We live in crazy times.

deogeo 7y ago
> I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Yet the founder, Andrew Breitbart, was raised Jewish, the co-founder, Larry Solov, is Jewish, as is the editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, and the senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak. That's 4 out of the 6 key people at Breitbart [1]. In the words of Alex Marlow: "we're consistently called anti-Semitic despite the fact that we are overwhelmingly staffed with Jews and are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish." [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow
bArray 7y ago
> I then looked at the public comment section and users there > were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible > in the US. This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Unless you have the resources to moderate the comments, you'll simply end up with ultra polarized views. > Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot > possibly be considered a "high quality news site." Because of a single experience in 2015? I saw this sort of thing on the BBC website too back when they had comments. > from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have > never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else > you could get news. So, shut up and accept it? I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. For example, just look at how many mainstream news outlets rushed to "lynch" the Kentucky high school student for supposedly confronting a native American [1]. The large majority of them did zero fact checking. The first rebuttals I saw online came from independent news sources that got hold of the original video and saw how it had been clipped. [1] https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-confrontation-with-native-american-speaks-out https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-co...
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  > Because of a single experience in 2015? No, because it is basically a tabloid/yellow press version of Fox News and Fox News is already very low quality in terms of actual informativity - too much editorializing, combined with garbage interviews. I thought the latter was somehow implied, but should have been much clearer about it. > This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Breitbart hasn't removed theirs, though. I just checked and the first comment on the first randomly chosen story was that "Hussein Obama created ISIS" with the reply "This. We need to exterminate the enemy within" - talking about assassinating a former president. The comments are atrocial, check them out for yourself. And these are Breitbart's readers. > I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. Your position is not very coherent, because you are (i) agreeing that there is no viable alternative to "mainstream media" (most of the time, you can only correct them on the basis other mainstream media), and (ii) everybody is biased, has always been, and will always be. It matters how you deal with your biases, not that you don't have biases. I can get my news from the most biased news site on earth - Breitbart or Fox News or CNN, if you will, and be fully informed, as long as I'm able to distinguish news from editorials. It's no problem nowadays, with access to multiple news sources on the Internet. That doesn't make the source high quality, though. In the end, all the news comes from journalists who film, photograph, write news at the place where something happens or as close as possible to it. New agencies and a few larger papers/TV channels can afford a large network of correspondents and freelancers - the remaining news provider just copy&paste/paraphrase, including Breitbart, of course.

deogeo 7y ago

> I then looked at the public comment section and users there were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible in the US. I'm sure they cleaned up the site a bit since then, but this is a true story. Yet the founder, Andrew Breitbart, was raised Jewish, the co-founder, Larry Solov, is Jewish, as is the editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, and the senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak. That's 4 out of the 6 key people at Breitbart [1]. In the words of Alex Marlow: "we're consistently called anti-Semitic despite the fact that we are overwhelmingly staffed with Jews and are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish." [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Marlow

bArray 7y ago

> I then looked at the public comment section and users there > were discussing how to best gas as many Jews as possible > in the US. This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Unless you have the resources to moderate the comments, you'll simply end up with ultra polarized views. > Bottomline of the anecdote is that Breitbart cannot > possibly be considered a "high quality news site." Because of a single experience in 2015? I saw this sort of thing on the BBC website too back when they had comments. > from the people who criticize "mainstream media" I have > never heard a single halfway sane suggestion of where else > you could get news. So, shut up and accept it? I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. For example, just look at how many mainstream news outlets rushed to "lynch" the Kentucky high school student for supposedly confronting a native American [1]. The large majority of them did zero fact checking. The first rebuttals I saw online came from independent news sources that got hold of the original video and saw how it had been clipped. [1] https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-confrontation-with-native-american-speaks-out https://www.foxnews.com/us/kentucky-student-seen-in-viral-co...

JohnStrangeII 7y ago
> Because of a single experience in 2015? No, because it is basically a tabloid/yellow press version of Fox News and Fox News is already very low quality in terms of actual informativity - too much editorializing, combined with garbage interviews. I thought the latter was somehow implied, but should have been much clearer about it. > This is the reason that the comments section of almost every news website was removed. Breitbart hasn't removed theirs, though. I just checked and the first comment on the first randomly chosen story was that "Hussein Obama created ISIS" with the reply "This. We need to exterminate the enemy within" - talking about assassinating a former president. The comments are atrocial, check them out for yourself. And these are Breitbart's readers. > I think everybody should be aware of the potential for bias and/or incorrect news produced by mainstream media. Your position is not very coherent, because you are (i) agreeing that there is no viable alternative to "mainstream media" (most of the time, you can only correct them on the basis other mainstream media), and (ii) everybody is biased, has always been, and will always be. It matters how you deal with your biases, not that you don't have biases. I can get my news from the most biased news site on earth - Breitbart or Fox News or CNN, if you will, and be fully informed, as long as I'm able to distinguish news from editorials. It's no problem nowadays, with access to multiple news sources on the Internet. That doesn't make the source high quality, though. In the end, all the news comes from journalists who film, photograph, write news at the place where something happens or as close as possible to it. New agencies and a few larger papers/TV channels can afford a large network of correspondents and freelancers - the remaining news provider just copy&paste/paraphrase, including Breitbart, of course.