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I really hate this title, because it subtly implies some semi-balanced distribution of hyper-left and hyper-right sites, when the article says "Bengani identifi

• jjeaff 6y ago
  Maybe by not calling it out, it will convince more conservatives to read it before dismissing it.
  • iron0013 6y ago
    Yes, exactly. The authors are aware that some people’s receptiveness to new information is a very fragile thing, a door that will slam shut forever at the slightest hint of ego threat. It’s a shame that we need to coddle people in order to get them to ingest factual messaging.
  • smsm42 6y ago
    I mean, sure, inserting such objective terms as "hyperpartisan" and "masquerading" surely advertises it as objective, detached, respectful treatment of the matter, not some sensationalist clickbait. You don't have to actually click to see whether the masquerading hyperpartisans are right next to your home. If you don't care about the troubling reality of people that may have views different from you masquerading as reporters by reporting local news - RIGHT THERE NEAR YOU!, of course. If you're that dense, then well, don't click.
  • ignoramceisblis 6y ago
    Even before reading the article, I correctly guessed the message they wanted to send. By a large margin, most "news" that I've seen that gets any popular attention (through channels with any significant number of consumers) has been of the variety that paints conservatives as being the problem, having unfair advantages, &c. So what does that tell you about the actual balance of power? It's entirely predictable.
• deleted 6y ago
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• luckylion 6y ago
  > As the map indicates, there are considerably more conservative-leaning sites than liberal-leaning sites. Only 24 of the 445 sites we’ve identified so far are liberal-leaning. Withholding that wouldn't be accurate.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    Sure, but you didn't answer GP's question. 95% of these sites are conservative-leaning. That's the story here, and as GP says, implying that this is a problem across a wide ideological spectrum is wrong.
    • jsonne 6y ago
      This is assuming all reach is equal. Number of outlets seems like an incomplete picture to me where the number of people reached seems more important. Is a more concentrated effort by one group somehow less insidious? I think not.
      • ciarannolan 6y ago
        That's a good point, though I think it's unlikely that 5% of the sites and 95% of the sites both make up ~50% of impressions each. But to your point, we don't know unless we know, and my assumption could be totally wrong.
        • godelski 6y ago
          Well there's two things we have to consider: 1) Pareto: where there's a power law based distribution. So it is possible that 5% of sites have more than 50% of impact. This just means it isn't out of the bounds of possibilities. But we'd have to dig deeper into which sites garner the majority of eyes (though we'd expect a power law in this). 2) Left learning areas tend to be more population dense. Of course with these two considerations we haven't really made any conclusions. I just want to point out that a small number of sites can reasonably hold the majority of viewership. Which sites those are and which bias they entail, that requires a real analysis. We've just stated that the conjecture isn't impossible.
• smsm42 6y ago
  What's that "hyper" thing? What's "hyper-conservative" - does he vote for hyper-GOP, as opposed to regular conservative that supports GOP? Are they going to vote for hyper-Trump? Or it's just a ham-fisted way to present political opinion as something illegitimate and out of the normal - it's OK if you were just a conservative, but since you're hyper-conservative, it's clear that your opening a site with local news is a national crisis.
  • ianleeclark 6y ago
    > What's "hyper-conservative" Judging by the strange bedfellows of the conservative movement, maybe Richard Spencer.
    • waiting_in_line 6y ago
      Trying to lump Richard Spencer in with mainstream Republicans is like trying to lump in leaders of the radical black nationalist BLM organization or racist La Raza with mainstream Democrats. Oh wait, Republicans routinely condemn Spencer and his white nationalist ilk while mainstream Democrats openly embrace BLM, La Raza and other race-centric organizations. Looks like Democrats are really the ones openly embracing their "strange bedfellows"...
      • ianleeclark 6y ago
        > Trying to lump Richard Spencer in with mainstream Republicans So you're suggesting someone more on the lines of a Paul Nehlen or a Steve King?
        • waiting_in_line 6y ago
          Steve King's comments were routinely taken out of context. For instance the "straw that broke the camel's back" moment for King was in 2019 when the NYTimes stated he said one thing while King said that his words were taken out of context and gave a reasonable explanation for how they were misinterpreted. The NYTimes never released actual audio of the conversation so it boosts King's case that his words were taken out of context. If they were truly incriminating, the Times could have released audio of the interview and cleared things up. That's what I know off the top of my head, as for Paul Nehlen, I'm not sure who he is. Of course I could name other examples. Democratic congresspeople routinely spew racist and inflammatory rhetoric that is never confronted by the Media precisely because the Media functions largely as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
• Balgair 6y ago
  I just copied the headline from the article and then chopped the second sentence off to make it fit the character count.
  • loeg 6y ago
    I don't think OP was criticizing you.
  • gspr 6y ago
    I think the parent comment was directed at the article's authors, not at you.
• dtwest 6y ago
  It's pretty clear from looking at the map that they didn't attempt to include as many of the left-leaning sites for whatever reason. All but one of the sites in New England (one of the most liberal areas of the country) are right-leaning. This is not a representative selection of the news sources in the area, they are missing lots of data. Edit: I am not taking a political stance here. Just saying there are news sources left out of this survey.
  • tdeck 6y ago
    I don't see how that necessarily follows. These sites don't even need to be put up by someone who lives in the area. From the article: > We suspect many of the local sites are not based in or actually operating within the communities they serve. Timpone had previously operated “local” news sites using content produced by writers based in the Philippines and using fake bylines
    • dtwest 6y ago
      I didn't mean representative of the people living there, I mean representative of the news sources there. I am not taking a political side, just pointing out that this is not a complete survey of all sites, and the article at times suggests conclusions that can't be fairly made from this data unless it was a complete survey. Another example: there is not a single site on the map in New York City. It would be very surprising if there wasn't at least one partisan local news site in NYC.
      • itsgrimetime 6y ago
        It's not supposed to be a complete survey of all news sites. It's sites that are posing as local news sources, when in reality they're just cookie-cutter "news" article farms that are connected to larger orgs that have a historical political bias. How does one not being around NYC invalidate the rest? Isn't it entirely plausible these organizations don't see value in attempting to persuade locals in those areas? Additionally, the vast majority of these appear to be in suburban to rural areas; there's none around Seattle, LA, or Atlanta as well.
• myth2018 6y ago
  Exactly the same is happening in Brazil. There are websites like these related to both extremes of the political spectrum, but the vast majority is tied to the far right-wing. And in our case, I believe the situation is even more "interesting": there are a variety of mainstream parties, not only two like in USA. Even though, it's the far right that operate most of such disguised local news websites. They are invariably full of ads and, not by coincidence, I become aware of such sites mostly by Google suggested content.
• ibejoeb 6y ago
  It is addressed in the first sentence: > We found that while left-leaning sites prioritize statewide reporting, right-leaning sites are more focused on local reporting Obviously there are more small, local outlets than large, expansive ones.
  • ummwhat 6y ago
    An obvious confounding factor is the urban rural divide. There are numerically more conservative parcels of land in the first place. Of course there will be more conservative local papers.
    • michaelmrose 6y ago
      Parcels of land don't operate news orgs people do. Even when you break it down to say towns smaller populations have fewer news orgs like they have fewer gas stations. This is probably why there have historically not been more deeply conservative papers compared to centrist or liberals let alone 95%. Its a transparent strategy by a small number of actors to influence people on many fronts.
  • orange_fritter 6y ago
    > large, expansive These liberal sites may touch on statewide issues but just clicking on a few of them, they seem pretty insubstantial and low-effort. They are severely outnumbered by the conservative sites. > Only 24 of the 445 sites we’ve identified so far are liberal-leaning.
• coldtea 6y ago
  >Why not just say "Hundreds of hyper-conservative sites masquerading as local news?" And add "and we didn't look very hard for hyper-left sites"?
• _bxg1 6y ago
  As soon as you frame it that way, a certain portion of people stop listening. Even if it's the truth, it can be beneficial to downplay even the obvious conclusions and just stick to the facts.
  • ebg13 6y ago
    > and just stick to the facts Except that it would also be sticking to the facts, no? If you pour out a bag of marbles and find that all of the marbles are the same color, reporting that all of the marbles were the same color would be reporting just the facts. But what you're suggesting to do isn't downplaying conclusions, it's downplaying the findings. Instead of reporting that the bag is filled with marbles all of the same color, you'd just report that the bag is filled with marbles. But the marbles all being the same color is still factual, and not reporting that leaves out something potentially important.
    • _bxg1 6y ago
      But that's just it- if you read the article, "all of the marbles" are "not the same color". Oversimplifying things into a broader conclusion is often not an improvement.
      • ebg13 6y ago
        Nothing about what I said changes if 95% of the marbles are the same color instead of 100%. "Overwhelming percent of yada yada" is (allegedly anyway) a significant finding that has been buried.
  • gaze 6y ago
    So they stop reading once they get to the message in the article? You're going to feed the message to conservatives like wrapping a pill in cheese and giving it to a dog? This is both infantilizing and doesn't work.
• deleted 6y ago
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