4 ms·

> Personalized news feeds destroy that commonality. The web and partisan cable news channels have long since done away with that commonality. It's dead, buried

> Personalized news feeds destroy that commonality. The web and partisan cable news channels have long since done away with that commonality. It's dead, buried, and cold in the ground. That's why it feels like one side of the political spectrum is living in the world of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, and so on, while the other side is living in the world of CNN, MSNBC, Huffington, Vox, and so on. There are some very good attempts [0] to make media bias more visible, but people who have already decided that Fox and Newsmax are centrist and OANN is right-leaning are not going to evaluate things fairly anymore. [0]: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

LeoPanthera 5y ago
I find that site too simplistic, since it does not try to gauge accuracy, only bias. The Adfontes Media Bias chart uses a two-axis system, plotting accuracy against bias, and inevitably ending up with most sources on an inverted-V shape: https://adfontesmedia.com https://adfontesmedia.com
- LeftHandPath 5y ago
  The Adfontes chart is clever, but I always thought it must be distorted in and of itself -- they seem afraid to label any right-leaning source as "fact reporting", and any left-leaning source as "contains misleading info". The split is very visible in their article rankings[0]. What I trust most is Pew Research's (they are fairly centrist [1]) examination of the partisanship of a news outlet's audience, see: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/democrats-report-much-higher-levels-of-trust-in-a-number-of-news-sources-than-republicans/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/democrats-... (note that there are several pages. I've linked to page 2.) Unfortunately, Pew's list is not consistently updated like the Adfontes chart and other media-bias checking sites. [0]: https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ [1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research
AareyBaba 5y ago
I recently discovered https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ which has a nice display of left/right coverage for each news article.
ryandrake 5y ago
I have friends across the political spectrum, but these days there is no shared commonality at all. Not just no commonality about what's good and bad, but no commonality about what is reality and what isn't. I can't even chit-chat small-talk with my conservative friends about current events anymore, because their idea of what is happening around the world is totally different than mine. I'll bring up some recent event that was reported on widely in the mainstream media, and he'll have no idea what I'm talking about because his sources of news never even mentioned it. And to his point of view, talking to me just shows I have a different set of gaping "reality blind spots". If you ever had a friend growing up whose family was devoutly religious, you might have seen something similar: They run in totally different circles, all their friends are from their church, they take their kids to totally different movies, listen to totally different music. Can't talk sports with them because they literally can't name a football team. No culture overlap at all. Totally siloed off in their own world. That's what's happening with all this personalization and alternative news sources now, but instead of a small group of very religious people, it's 30-40% of the country!

LeoPanthera 5y ago

I find that site too simplistic, since it does not try to gauge accuracy, only bias. The Adfontes Media Bias chart uses a two-axis system, plotting accuracy against bias, and inevitably ending up with most sources on an inverted-V shape: https://adfontesmedia.com https://adfontesmedia.com

LeftHandPath 5y ago
The Adfontes chart is clever, but I always thought it must be distorted in and of itself -- they seem afraid to label any right-leaning source as "fact reporting", and any left-leaning source as "contains misleading info". The split is very visible in their article rankings[0]. What I trust most is Pew Research's (they are fairly centrist [1]) examination of the partisanship of a news outlet's audience, see: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/democrats-report-much-higher-levels-of-trust-in-a-number-of-news-sources-than-republicans/ https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/01/24/democrats-... (note that there are several pages. I've linked to page 2.) Unfortunately, Pew's list is not consistently updated like the Adfontes chart and other media-bias checking sites. [0]: https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ [1]: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research

AareyBaba 5y ago

I recently discovered https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ which has a nice display of left/right coverage for each news article.

ryandrake 5y ago

I have friends across the political spectrum, but these days there is no shared commonality at all. Not just no commonality about what's good and bad, but no commonality about what is reality and what isn't. I can't even chit-chat small-talk with my conservative friends about current events anymore, because their idea of what is happening around the world is totally different than mine. I'll bring up some recent event that was reported on widely in the mainstream media, and he'll have no idea what I'm talking about because his sources of news never even mentioned it. And to his point of view, talking to me just shows I have a different set of gaping "reality blind spots". If you ever had a friend growing up whose family was devoutly religious, you might have seen something similar: They run in totally different circles, all their friends are from their church, they take their kids to totally different movies, listen to totally different music. Can't talk sports with them because they literally can't name a football team. No culture overlap at all. Totally siloed off in their own world. That's what's happening with all this personalization and alternative news sources now, but instead of a small group of very religious people, it's 30-40% of the country!