4 ms·

I think the best approach is to read a story from a left, right and centrist source. The intersection of "facts" is probably all true and the things that point

I think the best approach is to read a story from a left, right and centrist source. The intersection of "facts" is probably all true and the things that point far one direction or the other are probably in the middle somewhere.

staplers 6y ago
I've found that even "liberal" media is heavily biased to favor corporate sponsors. Sometimes journalists can sneak small (actually) progressive articles through but are often followed up by large front-page hit pieces on those same ideas.
- necrotic_comp 6y ago
  That's because "liberal" in the U.S. typically means "neo-liberal", so the focus on corporate sponsors shouldn't be a surprise.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    Liberal globally refers to economic liberalism - that is, capitalism.
TheDong 6y ago
This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the book of mormon and take the average". It starts with the assumption left, right, and centrist sources all have biases, but those biases cancel out. That the "middle" of those things is meaningfully better. I see no evidence that that's the case. All popular news sources these days seem to be biased towards corporate profit. "Left" and "right" both exist relative to each other more than they exist relative to the truth. Reading several news sources to find the truth begs the question of if modern news sources, regardless of political bent, are meaningful sources of factual information vs sources of advertisements and outrage. For the sake of presenting a counter argument, I think that keeping up with the constant inflow of news doesn't get you meaningfully closer to the truth compared to reading well-regarded books on recent history around the world, and using that as a lens to understand the present. Well-regarded non-fiction books are generally better researched than stories on "this senator just had a haircut", and the recent past shapes the present significantly, not to mention repeats itself shockingly often. By reading left and right sources, you're assuming you can find similar stories on similar matters, when the most important matters are not "the president tweeted X" (which both sources will report on), but rather information about the structure of cities, the human condition, and changes thereof ("a postmortem on this transit project shows that we, as a society, should think in this way"), which usually no news agency will report on. It's just too dry, unless the researcher dresses it up and makes it flashy.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  Well said. The problem is not bias but just the absence of any real content. What happened in the world today? CNN: Trump is rude and orange! etc.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I know it's hip to be pathologically cynical about the news media, especially in a thread like this, but that hot take flies past hyperbole and right into farce.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  The thing with those books is, they are 100% based on faith. There are no underlying facts that they're based on. They're independently constructed origin myths and allegorical morality tales. With an article in the NYT, it's a narrative representation of objective facts as filtered through the lens of a reporter. If you think it's B.S. check Reuters, check WaPo, check NPR, hell check Fox reporting on the same core set of facts. If the story is important, it's going to be out on the wire feeds, and other major outlets. The narratives average out, the facts (mostly) stay the same. That's the whole point of college. So we can learn to think about complicated things and draw on multiple sources to paint a cohesive picture.
  - TheDong 6y ago
    I don't accept your premise that books are not factual and news media is more/entirely factual. Do you have any evidence on that? The evidence I've got generally sways towards well-regarded non-fiction book authors generally having more expertise in the area they write about than well-regarded journalists. This also makes intuitive sense - journalists often write about many subjects and act as second-hand sources, while researchers and authors are often first-hand sources and write about fewer subjects. My point is not that most news organizations don't publish similar articles. My point is that they do, but them doing so is not evidence that what they post is useful factual information for staying informed. Just because you consulted multiple sources doesn't mean you get a true picture. 3 bibles all will tell you there is 1 god because those three sources share the same underlying bias. A dozen news sources will tell you the same thing, but that could also mean that they share the same underlying biases (the bias towards a quick and profitable news cycle vs a slow and thoughtful conveyance of meaningful fact). The fact that NYT, Reuters, etc are all reporting on a fast news cycle and using similar content doesn't mean that the content they're reporting is intended to inform me and give me a more realistic grounding necessarily. It could also mean they all have the same profit motives and all optimize to produce more clicks rather than inform more meaningfully. To make sure I'm not being taken the wrong way, I do think the news generally does strive to be both true and to convey information. I think that the competing need to drive clicks/ad-dollars/etc results in it conveying information poorly. It frames true facts in ways that drive outrage to drive clicks. It tries to create a quick news cycles so there's always new things to publish. The faster news cycle favors reporters creating quick pieces, and disfavors serious investigative reporting. I don't think the news media succeeds on informing me well of important things, but rather succeeds on making me weary with a deluge of facts that won't matter in 2 weeks.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chongli 6y ago
This is the argument to moderation [1] also known as the golden mean fallacy. If one person says the sky is blue and another person says the sky is yellow, by taking the middle position you would conclude that the sky is green. This is clearly not correct. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  That's such a stupid example though. I'd assume the sky was looking in such a way that it could be interpreted as either. A nice sunset gradient perhaps? Averaging the color spectrum values or hypothetically mixing colors is ridiculous. If you have reason to assume atleast some measure of good faith, I think it's reasonable to try to cancel out biases between sources to get closer to the truth.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

staplers 6y ago

I've found that even "liberal" media is heavily biased to favor corporate sponsors. Sometimes journalists can sneak small (actually) progressive articles through but are often followed up by large front-page hit pieces on those same ideas.

necrotic_comp 6y ago
That's because "liberal" in the U.S. typically means "neo-liberal", so the focus on corporate sponsors shouldn't be a surprise.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Liberal globally refers to economic liberalism - that is, capitalism.

TheDong 6y ago

This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the book of mormon and take the average". It starts with the assumption left, right, and centrist sources all have biases, but those biases cancel out. That the "middle" of those things is meaningfully better. I see no evidence that that's the case. All popular news sources these days seem to be biased towards corporate profit. "Left" and "right" both exist relative to each other more than they exist relative to the truth. Reading several news sources to find the truth begs the question of if modern news sources, regardless of political bent, are meaningful sources of factual information vs sources of advertisements and outrage. For the sake of presenting a counter argument, I think that keeping up with the constant inflow of news doesn't get you meaningfully closer to the truth compared to reading well-regarded books on recent history around the world, and using that as a lens to understand the present. Well-regarded non-fiction books are generally better researched than stories on "this senator just had a haircut", and the recent past shapes the present significantly, not to mention repeats itself shockingly often. By reading left and right sources, you're assuming you can find similar stories on similar matters, when the most important matters are not "the president tweeted X" (which both sources will report on), but rather information about the structure of cities, the human condition, and changes thereof ("a postmortem on this transit project shows that we, as a society, should think in this way"), which usually no news agency will report on. It's just too dry, unless the researcher dresses it up and makes it flashy.

minimuffins 6y ago
Well said. The problem is not bias but just the absence of any real content. What happened in the world today? CNN: Trump is rude and orange! etc.
- krapp 6y ago
  I know it's hip to be pathologically cynical about the news media, especially in a thread like this, but that hot take flies past hyperbole and right into farce.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
The thing with those books is, they are 100% based on faith. There are no underlying facts that they're based on. They're independently constructed origin myths and allegorical morality tales. With an article in the NYT, it's a narrative representation of objective facts as filtered through the lens of a reporter. If you think it's B.S. check Reuters, check WaPo, check NPR, hell check Fox reporting on the same core set of facts. If the story is important, it's going to be out on the wire feeds, and other major outlets. The narratives average out, the facts (mostly) stay the same. That's the whole point of college. So we can learn to think about complicated things and draw on multiple sources to paint a cohesive picture.
- TheDong 6y ago
  I don't accept your premise that books are not factual and news media is more/entirely factual. Do you have any evidence on that? The evidence I've got generally sways towards well-regarded non-fiction book authors generally having more expertise in the area they write about than well-regarded journalists. This also makes intuitive sense - journalists often write about many subjects and act as second-hand sources, while researchers and authors are often first-hand sources and write about fewer subjects. My point is not that most news organizations don't publish similar articles. My point is that they do, but them doing so is not evidence that what they post is useful factual information for staying informed. Just because you consulted multiple sources doesn't mean you get a true picture. 3 bibles all will tell you there is 1 god because those three sources share the same underlying bias. A dozen news sources will tell you the same thing, but that could also mean that they share the same underlying biases (the bias towards a quick and profitable news cycle vs a slow and thoughtful conveyance of meaningful fact). The fact that NYT, Reuters, etc are all reporting on a fast news cycle and using similar content doesn't mean that the content they're reporting is intended to inform me and give me a more realistic grounding necessarily. It could also mean they all have the same profit motives and all optimize to produce more clicks rather than inform more meaningfully. To make sure I'm not being taken the wrong way, I do think the news generally does strive to be both true and to convey information. I think that the competing need to drive clicks/ad-dollars/etc results in it conveying information poorly. It frames true facts in ways that drive outrage to drive clicks. It tries to create a quick news cycles so there's always new things to publish. The faster news cycle favors reporters creating quick pieces, and disfavors serious investigative reporting. I don't think the news media succeeds on informing me well of important things, but rather succeeds on making me weary with a deluge of facts that won't matter in 2 weeks.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chongli 6y ago

This is the argument to moderation [1] also known as the golden mean fallacy. If one person says the sky is blue and another person says the sky is yellow, by taking the middle position you would conclude that the sky is green. This is clearly not correct. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

mekkkkkk 6y ago
That's such a stupid example though. I'd assume the sky was looking in such a way that it could be interpreted as either. A nice sunset gradient perhaps? Averaging the color spectrum values or hypothetically mixing colors is ridiculous. If you have reason to assume atleast some measure of good faith, I think it's reasonable to try to cancel out biases between sources to get closer to the truth.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]