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Trying to understand politics by watching the Web stream go flowing by is pointless. You need high-quality, big picture stuff that requires effort to produce an

Trying to understand politics by watching the Web stream go flowing by is pointless. You need high-quality, big picture stuff that requires effort to produce and consume. In the US, the NYTimes and the Washington Post are the best sources. To ensure you're exposure is 'fair and balanced' I would add the Economist for a more conservative, but not xenophobic or straight-up nonsensical viewpoint. It has the nice additional bonus of being more global. Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are excellent journals for, well, US foreign policy. Finally, the New Yorker has fantastic longer-form articles on American politics.

highhedgehog 7y ago
What about Wall Street Journal?
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  conservative bias
  - leereeves 7y ago
    And NYT and WaPo each have a bias as well, often very similar. And why not at least listen to people with more than one point of view?
  - lukeqsee 7y ago
    > bias …is not by definition bad. Every publication publishes with bias (recognized and announced or not). Prejudice and unannounced (or not well-known) is what you want to avoid. Reading a "conservative bias" is a good thing, if only to better understand that point of view, regardless of if you agree or not.
    - chrisweekly 7y ago
      Agreed! I respect Andrew Sullivan, who said something like "transparency is the new objectivity."
  - threatofrain 7y ago
    Financial establishment kind of conservative, not what many would think of American conservatism in general.
    - jrockway 7y ago
      I disagree with that. The stuff from the newsroom is basically identical to what you'd read in the New York Times, and doesn't seem very conservatively biased. Put the NYT's CSS on there and you'd not think anything was out of place. There is a little bit more of a focus on "business" articles; what company is buying what other company, how well the semiconductor industry is going to do this year, etc. I never see that in the NYT... but that is certainly not a conservative bias. It's just what they choose to cover. The editorials are what you'd expect in a conservative newspaper. 50% of them are rah rah about how great Trump is (today's sampling: "Trump Finally Fires Back at Iran"), and the other 50% is how taxes are evil (today's sampling: "How Tariffs Hurt Manufacturing"). I am not sure who reads these or why newspapers pay these opinion columnists / editorial boards. They are always so extreme that they just drive readers away and let them brand the newsroom as "fake news" or "biased", when in reality the newsroom and editorial boards don't even talk with each other. The NYT did a series recently about how the editorial board and opinion columns operate, and it solidified in my mind that they shouldn't exist. It just lowers the reputation of the news-gathering portion of the business, as people associate an editorial they disagree with as bias in the news-gathering. I read both the WSJ and the NYT because people on HN had me convinced that one was more biased than the other and that I was missing out on deep insights perpetrated by some sort of cabal. A year of reading both has told me that the conspiracy theories are not accurate. Both seem happy to hold the government to account. Neither routinely fabricate stories. You can subscribe to one or the other and not miss a thing. Don't read the editorials unless you are super liberal or super conservative and want some porn along with your morning coffee.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
        I subscribe to both as well. They both have journalistic integrity and try their best to report facts without bias, but I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that their own biases don't unintentionally leak into the publications. > It's just what they choose to cover. I think these choices matter. Based on the stories they choose to run, the NYT comes across as undoubtedly intersectional, a bit globalist, and pro-market in the Bill Clinton sense. In contrast, the WSJ doesn't write much about social issues and is a more explicit proponent of free trade. It's a subtle distinction -- I'm sure the staff of each are amiable toward each other and mingle freely in New York City -- but if you had to collapse all their viewpoints into a single point on a 1-dimensional scale, they would land on slightly different places on the left-right political spectrum.
- ljw1001 7y ago
  Great news content. Very rupert-murdoch-driven editorial bias
  - bscphil 7y ago
    I've been reading WSJ for a long time because of their news reporting (I'm vaguely left wing on the American left-right spectrum). Recently however I've been pretty shocked to see them taking a right wing party line in some major stories, including this one about recent events in Bolivia (widely denounced as a coup by those on the left): https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolivias-accidental-leader-tries-to-fend-off-evo-morales-set-new-vote-11576195895 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolivias-accidental-leader-trie...
- poulsbohemian 7y ago
  The WSJ has great content. But, with the WSJ, Economist, and even WaPo, I stopped subscribing to each because the editorials / opinion pages were vile. Look, I'm all about critical dialog, but when propagandists are given a soap box to spread nonsense (IE: flat out gaslighting lies), the purpose of the press in public good is abused. As the saying goes, people are entitled to opinions, not facts.
pjc50 7y ago
NYT will happily publish "high-quality big picture" antisemitism of the oldest and most eugenic sort: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/28/bret-stephens-new-york-times-jewish-intelligence-eugenics https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/28/bret-stephens-...
- ageitgey 7y ago
  NYT publishes all kinds of inflammatory stuff it its Op-Ed section. I don't think you should read the Op-Ed section too seriously (or at all). It's not up to the same bar as the rest of their reporting. It's their way to compete for clicks in a click-driven economy. Stick to the news sections.
Patatarte 7y ago
But it’s heavily lefty sided and lacks perspective.
basch 7y ago
Conservative Perspective: WSJ, Economist, The Hill, Reason, and National Review
- bag531 7y ago
  Krystal Ball from The Hill is a gem.
- monocularvision 7y ago
  Reason is libertarian, not conservative.
  - eldavido 7y ago
    Tangent, but I wish we'd come up with better labels for our viewpoints in the US than "conservative" or "liberal". It's been on my mind a lot lately. "The Once and Future Liberalism" explores this idea in depth: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-and-future-liberalism/ https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-an... "Liberal" is maybe the most overloaded word in politics. "classical liberalism", "economic liberalism", "liberal democracy", what the American right means when they say "liberals" - all WAY different.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      I feel sure it's going to happen in the next several decades. More and more people on the left are not liberals or are even anti-liberals. The right is currently dominated by a wing that's not traditional-conservative. Arguably that's been the case at least since Reagan, actually - the word "conservative" has dramatically shifted in meaning over the last 75 years.
thrwaway69 7y ago
Just thought, I would put this here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver... https://theduran.com/the-washington-post-admits-that-its-fake-news-story-was-in-fact-fake-news/ https://theduran.com/the-washington-post-admits-that-its-fak... https://www.rt.com/usa/369598-washington-post-fake-propaganda/ https://www.rt.com/usa/369598-washington-post-fake-propagand... https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/washington-post-fake-news-passports-media-bias/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/washington-pos... Search engines are progressively getting worse or I am finally becoming an old boomer. I can't search anything without being bombarded with amp links focused on something completely unrelated. I tried duckduckgo, yes it is better but still not comparable to the results I was getting back. If anything's a good metric for "propaganda or fake news", it's that they all use amp.

highhedgehog 7y ago

What about Wall Street Journal?

chrisweekly 7y ago
conservative bias
- leereeves 7y ago
  And NYT and WaPo each have a bias as well, often very similar. And why not at least listen to people with more than one point of view?
- lukeqsee 7y ago
  > bias …is not by definition bad. Every publication publishes with bias (recognized and announced or not). Prejudice and unannounced (or not well-known) is what you want to avoid. Reading a "conservative bias" is a good thing, if only to better understand that point of view, regardless of if you agree or not.
  - chrisweekly 7y ago
    Agreed! I respect Andrew Sullivan, who said something like "transparency is the new objectivity."
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Financial establishment kind of conservative, not what many would think of American conservatism in general.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I disagree with that. The stuff from the newsroom is basically identical to what you'd read in the New York Times, and doesn't seem very conservatively biased. Put the NYT's CSS on there and you'd not think anything was out of place. There is a little bit more of a focus on "business" articles; what company is buying what other company, how well the semiconductor industry is going to do this year, etc. I never see that in the NYT... but that is certainly not a conservative bias. It's just what they choose to cover. The editorials are what you'd expect in a conservative newspaper. 50% of them are rah rah about how great Trump is (today's sampling: "Trump Finally Fires Back at Iran"), and the other 50% is how taxes are evil (today's sampling: "How Tariffs Hurt Manufacturing"). I am not sure who reads these or why newspapers pay these opinion columnists / editorial boards. They are always so extreme that they just drive readers away and let them brand the newsroom as "fake news" or "biased", when in reality the newsroom and editorial boards don't even talk with each other. The NYT did a series recently about how the editorial board and opinion columns operate, and it solidified in my mind that they shouldn't exist. It just lowers the reputation of the news-gathering portion of the business, as people associate an editorial they disagree with as bias in the news-gathering. I read both the WSJ and the NYT because people on HN had me convinced that one was more biased than the other and that I was missing out on deep insights perpetrated by some sort of cabal. A year of reading both has told me that the conspiracy theories are not accurate. Both seem happy to hold the government to account. Neither routinely fabricate stories. You can subscribe to one or the other and not miss a thing. Don't read the editorials unless you are super liberal or super conservative and want some porn along with your morning coffee.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
      I subscribe to both as well. They both have journalistic integrity and try their best to report facts without bias, but I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that their own biases don't unintentionally leak into the publications. > It's just what they choose to cover. I think these choices matter. Based on the stories they choose to run, the NYT comes across as undoubtedly intersectional, a bit globalist, and pro-market in the Bill Clinton sense. In contrast, the WSJ doesn't write much about social issues and is a more explicit proponent of free trade. It's a subtle distinction -- I'm sure the staff of each are amiable toward each other and mingle freely in New York City -- but if you had to collapse all their viewpoints into a single point on a 1-dimensional scale, they would land on slightly different places on the left-right political spectrum.
ljw1001 7y ago
Great news content. Very rupert-murdoch-driven editorial bias
- bscphil 7y ago
  I've been reading WSJ for a long time because of their news reporting (I'm vaguely left wing on the American left-right spectrum). Recently however I've been pretty shocked to see them taking a right wing party line in some major stories, including this one about recent events in Bolivia (widely denounced as a coup by those on the left): https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolivias-accidental-leader-tries-to-fend-off-evo-morales-set-new-vote-11576195895 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolivias-accidental-leader-trie...
poulsbohemian 7y ago
The WSJ has great content. But, with the WSJ, Economist, and even WaPo, I stopped subscribing to each because the editorials / opinion pages were vile. Look, I'm all about critical dialog, but when propagandists are given a soap box to spread nonsense (IE: flat out gaslighting lies), the purpose of the press in public good is abused. As the saying goes, people are entitled to opinions, not facts.

pjc50 7y ago

NYT will happily publish "high-quality big picture" antisemitism of the oldest and most eugenic sort: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/28/bret-stephens-new-york-times-jewish-intelligence-eugenics https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/28/bret-stephens-...

ageitgey 7y ago
NYT publishes all kinds of inflammatory stuff it its Op-Ed section. I don't think you should read the Op-Ed section too seriously (or at all). It's not up to the same bar as the rest of their reporting. It's their way to compete for clicks in a click-driven economy. Stick to the news sections.

Patatarte 7y ago

But it’s heavily lefty sided and lacks perspective.

basch 7y ago

Conservative Perspective: WSJ, Economist, The Hill, Reason, and National Review

bag531 7y ago
Krystal Ball from The Hill is a gem.
monocularvision 7y ago
Reason is libertarian, not conservative.
- eldavido 7y ago
  Tangent, but I wish we'd come up with better labels for our viewpoints in the US than "conservative" or "liberal". It's been on my mind a lot lately. "The Once and Future Liberalism" explores this idea in depth: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-and-future-liberalism/ https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-an... "Liberal" is maybe the most overloaded word in politics. "classical liberalism", "economic liberalism", "liberal democracy", what the American right means when they say "liberals" - all WAY different.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    I feel sure it's going to happen in the next several decades. More and more people on the left are not liberals or are even anti-liberals. The right is currently dominated by a wing that's not traditional-conservative. Arguably that's been the case at least since Reagan, actually - the word "conservative" has dramatically shifted in meaning over the last 75 years.

thrwaway69 7y ago

Just thought, I would put this here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver... https://theduran.com/the-washington-post-admits-that-its-fake-news-story-was-in-fact-fake-news/ https://theduran.com/the-washington-post-admits-that-its-fak... https://www.rt.com/usa/369598-washington-post-fake-propaganda/ https://www.rt.com/usa/369598-washington-post-fake-propagand... https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/washington-post-fake-news-passports-media-bias/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/washington-pos... Search engines are progressively getting worse or I am finally becoming an old boomer. I can't search anything without being bombarded with amp links focused on something completely unrelated. I tried duckduckgo, yes it is better but still not comparable to the results I was getting back. If anything's a good metric for "propaganda or fake news", it's that they all use amp.