5 ms·

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 t

by 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.

eganist 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. This only reinforces the meta-point. Everyone's sharing their perception without citing anything. So far, the few research entities looking into media bias are all asserting (with randomly sampled data points as best as I can tell) that The Guardian presents reliable news with a left-leaning opinion skew, whereas self-selected commenters (i.e. those who chose to reply to my initial comment) here are asserting from their own perception that The Guardian's "basically the left-wing paper," "editorial is usually pretty far left," and "quite on the left." There's value in learning the methodologies employed by these analysis firms and think tanks, deciding whether you agree with how their analysis is performed, and upon deciding, either performing the same (time consuming) analysis yourself or delegating to the group(s) who's methods you most align with. That's largely why I'm fine with Ad Fontes. I haven't looked into how AllSides draws their conclusions, but either way, they're both in agreement re: The Guardian. This is a healthier way to conclude how a news outlet leans compared to just going by our own perception.
- SunlightEdge 6y ago
  Agreed on biased perceptions of the guardian. Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception out there that the Guardian's comment section in particular is pretty left wing particularly on identity politics stuff. Even if the core paper is pretty central - e.g. It broadly supported the Blairites over the Corbynites over past few years. It would be really interesting to have some visual data on their comments section here compared to other papers e.g. of numbers of articles on say class, race, gender and some kind of ranking of their left wing / right wing strength. And likewise for regular reported core news/articles. As it stands there might be a lot of bias in people's individual views- including this comment. Still it is interesting to compare articles. It's a cool site.
- beardyw 6y ago
  Your comment about the Guardian prompted me to check and it turns out there is a comprehensive page on Wikipedia. Who knew? The Guardian isn't on it but the Daily Mirror is - not sure I understand why since I would pretty much agree with you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_publications_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_publicatio...
- Udik 6y ago
  I'm not sure what the methodologies are. There is no objective "left" or "right", the two camps are just defined in relation to a supposed center. Where you place a newspaper depends on your perception of what the center should be- and that's a political, not a factual choice- which depends on the moment, the culture, etc. I've checked the bias analysis of some Guardian articles in one of your sources. They strike me all as pretty far left- if not in the contents, in the choice of subjects. Consider that it's perfectly possibile to compose a newspaper entirely of dry, factual articles about, for example, episodes of worker's abuse or of immigrant criminality. Each article is absolutely unbiased, the newspaper is absolutely biased.
  - eganist 6y ago
    > I'm not sure what the methodologies are. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc... https://www.adfontesmedia.com/white-paper-multi-analyst-ratings-project-august-2019/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/white-paper-multi-analyst-rati... > They strike me all as— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ don't know what to tell you. It took me all of "ad fontes methodology" in google to find the links above, and their approach is objectively stronger than your or my gut feeling/opinion. And if you were to ask for my opinion, I'd say that The Guardian leans ever so slightly right, but that's why I rely on objective methods to rank media bias rather than my own gut.
    - Udik 6y ago
      Sorry, you're right, I should have googled. Those methodologies don't strike me as particularly insightful- in the end what they try to do is to give some structure to the guts feelings of the (however chosen) reviewers. Anyway, to go back to the original point, Ad Fontes puts the Guardian solidly in the left (22% to the left). Looking at a sample of rated articles, only 2 out of 25 are classified as imperceptibly to the right, while a few get close to the "hyper-partisan left" field. Looking at specific ratings, an article titled "Scandal! Horror! Biden's press-briefing notes prompt rightwing outrage" (featuring a mocking tone and a clear indication of the "enemy" right in the headline) is given a -9 bias, the same rating of the newspaper as a whole. And "skews to the left" feels like an understatement. (Ah, looking at the media bias chart, turns out that the New York Post (whose articles are sometimes censored by Facebook) would be less biased that the Guardian. Interesting.)
kingsuper20 6y ago
I see that CNN is in the middle-of-the-road section. Search 'Trump' (naturally, it's currently the best test case) and you get: "Former President Donald Trump repeated familiar lies about the 2020 election and insulted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Saturday when speaking to Republican National Committee donors gathered for the first time since Trump’s defeat, a person in the room told CNN." 'familiar lies' 'insulted' 'a person in the room told' The Weekly World News has taken over the world.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  ... What would the proper ultra-centrist way of characterising lying and insulting Mitch McConnell be? Like, are you expecting them to use euphemisms, or just not reporting on former presidents lying?
  - kingsuper20 6y ago
    I was thinking about that. It's not so much being a 'centrist' but being able to tell the difference between reporting and interpreting. The best case would simply be a transcript. I would start by saying that Donald Trump made claims about the election and finish up by stating the actual things that he said about Mitch McConnell. Being an adult, I'm quite able to figure out the context and severity of what he said. In addition, I'd probably use better sourcing than 'some unnamed guy we talked to'. Like I said upstream somewhere, it would be fun to rewrite news articles to report news rather than to interpret news. Save the prose for editorials.
    - hpcjoe 6y ago
      This. We haven't had real news reporting in the US in a long time. The family and I watch BBC America for something more akin to news here, as the major "news" orgs in the US, are spittle inflected hyper-partisans. All of them. This deeply saddens me, but I suppose it was inevitable.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > In addition, I'd probably use better sourcing than 'some unnamed guy we talked to'. So, I see a lot of complaints about this, but everyone uses unattributed sources. It is realistically the only way to report on politics, unless you just want to print press releases, which is really more the realm of wire services. This is how it has always worked. (Even then you have to be careful; politicians often make press releases by leak...) I don’t see an issue with pointing out that a lie is a lie.

by makomk 6y ago

eganist 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. This only reinforces the meta-point. Everyone's sharing their perception without citing anything. So far, the few research entities looking into media bias are all asserting (with randomly sampled data points as best as I can tell) that The Guardian presents reliable news with a left-leaning opinion skew, whereas self-selected commenters (i.e. those who chose to reply to my initial comment) here are asserting from their own perception that The Guardian's "basically the left-wing paper," "editorial is usually pretty far left," and "quite on the left." There's value in learning the methodologies employed by these analysis firms and think tanks, deciding whether you agree with how their analysis is performed, and upon deciding, either performing the same (time consuming) analysis yourself or delegating to the group(s) who's methods you most align with. That's largely why I'm fine with Ad Fontes. I haven't looked into how AllSides draws their conclusions, but either way, they're both in agreement re: The Guardian. This is a healthier way to conclude how a news outlet leans compared to just going by our own perception.

SunlightEdge 6y ago
Agreed on biased perceptions of the guardian. Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception out there that the Guardian's comment section in particular is pretty left wing particularly on identity politics stuff. Even if the core paper is pretty central - e.g. It broadly supported the Blairites over the Corbynites over past few years. It would be really interesting to have some visual data on their comments section here compared to other papers e.g. of numbers of articles on say class, race, gender and some kind of ranking of their left wing / right wing strength. And likewise for regular reported core news/articles. As it stands there might be a lot of bias in people's individual views- including this comment. Still it is interesting to compare articles. It's a cool site.
beardyw 6y ago
Your comment about the Guardian prompted me to check and it turns out there is a comprehensive page on Wikipedia. Who knew? The Guardian isn't on it but the Daily Mirror is - not sure I understand why since I would pretty much agree with you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_publications_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left-wing_publicatio...
Udik 6y ago
I'm not sure what the methodologies are. There is no objective "left" or "right", the two camps are just defined in relation to a supposed center. Where you place a newspaper depends on your perception of what the center should be- and that's a political, not a factual choice- which depends on the moment, the culture, etc. I've checked the bias analysis of some Guardian articles in one of your sources. They strike me all as pretty far left- if not in the contents, in the choice of subjects. Consider that it's perfectly possibile to compose a newspaper entirely of dry, factual articles about, for example, episodes of worker's abuse or of immigrant criminality. Each article is absolutely unbiased, the newspaper is absolutely biased.
- eganist 6y ago
  > I'm not sure what the methodologies are. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc... https://www.adfontesmedia.com/white-paper-multi-analyst-ratings-project-august-2019/ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/white-paper-multi-analyst-rati... > They strike me all as— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ don't know what to tell you. It took me all of "ad fontes methodology" in google to find the links above, and their approach is objectively stronger than your or my gut feeling/opinion. And if you were to ask for my opinion, I'd say that The Guardian leans ever so slightly right, but that's why I rely on objective methods to rank media bias rather than my own gut.
  - Udik 6y ago
    Sorry, you're right, I should have googled. Those methodologies don't strike me as particularly insightful- in the end what they try to do is to give some structure to the guts feelings of the (however chosen) reviewers. Anyway, to go back to the original point, Ad Fontes puts the Guardian solidly in the left (22% to the left). Looking at a sample of rated articles, only 2 out of 25 are classified as imperceptibly to the right, while a few get close to the "hyper-partisan left" field. Looking at specific ratings, an article titled "Scandal! Horror! Biden's press-briefing notes prompt rightwing outrage" (featuring a mocking tone and a clear indication of the "enemy" right in the headline) is given a -9 bias, the same rating of the newspaper as a whole. And "skews to the left" feels like an understatement. (Ah, looking at the media bias chart, turns out that the New York Post (whose articles are sometimes censored by Facebook) would be less biased that the Guardian. Interesting.)

kingsuper20 6y ago

I see that CNN is in the middle-of-the-road section. Search 'Trump' (naturally, it's currently the best test case) and you get: "Former President Donald Trump repeated familiar lies about the 2020 election and insulted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Saturday when speaking to Republican National Committee donors gathered for the first time since Trump’s defeat, a person in the room told CNN." 'familiar lies' 'insulted' 'a person in the room told' The Weekly World News has taken over the world.

rsynnott 6y ago
... What would the proper ultra-centrist way of characterising lying and insulting Mitch McConnell be? Like, are you expecting them to use euphemisms, or just not reporting on former presidents lying?
- kingsuper20 6y ago
  I was thinking about that. It's not so much being a 'centrist' but being able to tell the difference between reporting and interpreting. The best case would simply be a transcript. I would start by saying that Donald Trump made claims about the election and finish up by stating the actual things that he said about Mitch McConnell. Being an adult, I'm quite able to figure out the context and severity of what he said. In addition, I'd probably use better sourcing than 'some unnamed guy we talked to'. Like I said upstream somewhere, it would be fun to rewrite news articles to report news rather than to interpret news. Save the prose for editorials.
  - hpcjoe 6y ago
    This. We haven't had real news reporting in the US in a long time. The family and I watch BBC America for something more akin to news here, as the major "news" orgs in the US, are spittle inflected hyper-partisans. All of them. This deeply saddens me, but I suppose it was inevitable.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > In addition, I'd probably use better sourcing than 'some unnamed guy we talked to'. So, I see a lot of complaints about this, but everyone uses unattributed sources. It is realistically the only way to report on politics, unless you just want to print press releases, which is really more the realm of wire services. This is how it has always worked. (Even then you have to be careful; politicians often make press releases by leak...) I don’t see an issue with pointing out that a lie is a lie.