5 ms·

It's been fun playing around with it, thanks for putting this together, it's nice work. I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Gua

by hnhg 6y ago

It's been fun playing around with it, thanks for putting this together, it's nice work. I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Also, I guess this analysis is taken from the perspective of the USA, given the chart on adfontesmedia. The definition of left and right (at least the Overton window) differs somewhat by country, and I feel that should be made clear on your site for global visitors. On the topic of differences, I spotted Al Jazeera on there and it made me recall that 'Al Jazeera Arabic vs Al Jazeera English' has now become somewhat of a meme, with the former being anything but progressive: https://twitter.com/search?q=al%20jazeera%20arabic%20vs%20al%20jazeera%20english&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=al%20jazeera%20arabic%20vs%20al... That again just makes me think of how news outlets change their reporting depending on the audience. I'm not sure if that changes anything for you though.

Hadjimina 6y ago
I wanted to keep the website "clean" (whatever that means) that's why I did not specifically states that their.news is mainly built for US news. But I agree that this could have been made more clearer. Regarding the al jazeera thing: I was thinking about adding news with foreign languages and then using e.g. deepl.com to translate all the news on the fly and make it searchable. This would be really cool, but would require a pretty big restructuring of the project.
eganist 6y ago
> I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Who? Both Ad Fontes and AllSides say that The Guardian merely skews to the left, and Ad Fontes' analysis concludes that it's one of the "most reliable". (Ad Fontes' analysis here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-reliability/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-reliabil...) I haven't seen anyone say that it's "quite on the left" in any sphere other than the partisan right. Edit: Even OP's project seems to represent the modest left-skew accurately. Can you help me understand where your "dead-centre"-on-OP's-platform v. "quite on the left" interpretations came from? https://i.imgur.com/NTmQERS.png https://i.imgur.com/NTmQERS.png
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Tory UK tends to characterize the Guardian as raving lefty lunatics, just as the right characterizes the NYT in the US.
  - nomdep 6y ago
    Not lunatics but very raving leftist for the last four years.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  People aren’t great at distinguishing comment and editorial from the news. It’s probably true that the Guardian’s news is centre-left, as you say. However their comment and editorial is usually pretty far left (Seumas Milne, Owen Jones, etc), and that’s what gets noticed and gives them this reputation. https://somuchguardian.tumblr.com/ https://somuchguardian.tumblr.com/
  - kingsuper20 6y ago
    I'd say that it's essentially all editorial at this point. It strikes me as several waves peaking at the same time. One being normal civilization cycles that result in political violence, another being a death of professional standards in reporting. To be fair, some eras of broadsheets, pamphlets, newspapers were just as manipulative as the modern ones. A practice I try to stick to is to read non-Anglosphere (and particularly non-US) newspapers only. For one thing, the rest of the world appears to keep on keepin' on and isn't overly concerned with the minutiae of US palace politics or the Chauvin trial.
- makomk 6y ago
  I think that mostly shows the limits of their analysis. The Guardian is basically the left-wing paper in the UK; I don't think there's anything to the left of them outside of fairly fringe, niche, and very fragmented publications. Internal disputes within the left play out within their comment section, whilst the news section often seems to attacking the right wing as its main goal.
throwaway189262 6y ago
In US at least, the population skews substantially left. Younger folks in the US lean quite left but don't vote. While Republicans and Democrats are represented fairly evenly in elections, in population surveys that include non-voters Democrats have a ~20% edge. For example, if only people under 45 voted in the last election, Biden would have won over 400 electoral votes. Perhaps getting the most in history. So the definition of left leaning varies depending on whether you include all voters or the whole population. This accounts for some of the reason why conservatives dismay media, tech, science, media, and schools being "run by the left". They are. The working and school population is younger and also votes less, and is very liberal compared to party policy positions. The parties pander to the average voter, and news orgs to the average American. That's why so many news orgs "lean left"

by hnhg 6y ago

Hadjimina 6y ago

I wanted to keep the website "clean" (whatever that means) that's why I did not specifically states that their.news is mainly built for US news. But I agree that this could have been made more clearer. Regarding the al jazeera thing: I was thinking about adding news with foreign languages and then using e.g. deepl.com to translate all the news on the fly and make it searchable. This would be really cool, but would require a pretty big restructuring of the project.

eganist 6y ago

> I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Who? Both Ad Fontes and AllSides say that The Guardian merely skews to the left, and Ad Fontes' analysis concludes that it's one of the "most reliable". (Ad Fontes' analysis here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-reliability/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-reliabil...) I haven't seen anyone say that it's "quite on the left" in any sphere other than the partisan right. Edit: Even OP's project seems to represent the modest left-skew accurately. Can you help me understand where your "dead-centre"-on-OP's-platform v. "quite on the left" interpretations came from? https://i.imgur.com/NTmQERS.png https://i.imgur.com/NTmQERS.png

pessimizer 6y ago
Tory UK tends to characterize the Guardian as raving lefty lunatics, just as the right characterizes the NYT in the US.
- nomdep 6y ago
  Not lunatics but very raving leftist for the last four years.
chrisseaton 6y ago
People aren’t great at distinguishing comment and editorial from the news. It’s probably true that the Guardian’s news is centre-left, as you say. However their comment and editorial is usually pretty far left (Seumas Milne, Owen Jones, etc), and that’s what gets noticed and gives them this reputation. https://somuchguardian.tumblr.com/ https://somuchguardian.tumblr.com/
- kingsuper20 6y ago
  I'd say that it's essentially all editorial at this point. It strikes me as several waves peaking at the same time. One being normal civilization cycles that result in political violence, another being a death of professional standards in reporting. To be fair, some eras of broadsheets, pamphlets, newspapers were just as manipulative as the modern ones. A practice I try to stick to is to read non-Anglosphere (and particularly non-US) newspapers only. For one thing, the rest of the world appears to keep on keepin' on and isn't overly concerned with the minutiae of US palace politics or the Chauvin trial.
makomk 6y ago
I think that mostly shows the limits of their analysis. The Guardian is basically the left-wing paper in the UK; I don't think there's anything to the left of them outside of fairly fringe, niche, and very fragmented publications. Internal disputes within the left play out within their comment section, whilst the news section often seems to attacking the right wing as its main goal.

throwaway189262 6y ago

In US at least, the population skews substantially left. Younger folks in the US lean quite left but don't vote. While Republicans and Democrats are represented fairly evenly in elections, in population surveys that include non-voters Democrats have a ~20% edge. For example, if only people under 45 voted in the last election, Biden would have won over 400 electoral votes. Perhaps getting the most in history. So the definition of left leaning varies depending on whether you include all voters or the whole population. This accounts for some of the reason why conservatives dismay media, tech, science, media, and schools being "run by the left". They are. The working and school population is younger and also votes less, and is very liberal compared to party policy positions. The parties pander to the average voter, and news orgs to the average American. That's why so many news orgs "lean left"