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We need a new media system (taibbi.substack.com)
305 points by undefined1 on Jan 11, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 283 comments



Axois seems to do a decent job.

However, if you watch their interviews, for example, you quickly realize the problem isn't maintaining veracity as a fair source of news. The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.

That, to me, is the bigger problem. There are plenty of partisan pundits who feel comfortable appearing on the "other" cable news to play the wrestling villain. Nearly none of them will ever appear on Democracy Now, for example, because Amy will:

1. not negotiate ground rules for the interview in advance

2. ask occasional follow-up questions

Amy Goodman clearly sits pretty far on the left. But those two simple rules essentially made her as much of a nuisance to Bill Clinton as to George Bush. (And if you haven't heard it, go on youtube and watch her grill Clinton when he was attempting to campaign during Hilary's Senate run on Democracy Now.)

And that's the bigger issue. I don't really care whether some pundit reinforces my worldview or not. I care whether they fold under pressure when an intrepid reporter reveals they don't know what they're talking about. The problem with MSNBC/Fox/CNN is they don't usually (or even consistently) apply that pressure. (And sometimes actively suppress it, e.g., not telling their audience that one of their military analysts who is arguing for an invasion is also a board member of a defense contractor that would benefit from the invasion.)

Edit: clarifications


>The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.

I grew up watching the BBC, and even though I emigrated from the UK before the famed "I ask you again minister, is that a yes or a no" repeats of jeremy paxman, this was something that always struck me about politicians on the BBC: why did they keep coming back?

What I've realized over time was they kept coming back because they had to. If you were a UK politician at least well into the 1990s (and arguably right up to today), both the media infrastructure and the social culture required your appearance, even if you knew that David Marr or Paxman or whoever was going to chew you out.

That's not true anymore in the USA (it may also not be true in the UK either). There's really no reason why anyone needs to appear anywhere. Get a reputation as a fiery take-no-bullshit interviewer, and you won't be doing any interviews.

I don't think there's any way out of this now. The media landscape has exploded, and there's no outlet that is of enough importance anymore to hold people's feet to the fire.


It's changing in the UK too. Boris Johnson flat out refused to be interviewed by the BBC's Andrew Neil (who's conservative himself) because he knew he'd be destroyed.


While I disagree with much of Andrew Neil's politics, I have much respect for him as an interviewer. His general stance of taking a sceptical/oppositional attitude to his guests and not being easily satisfied with soundbites, definitely makes for revealing interviews.

His interview with Ben Shapiro [1] where the later accuses him of being a "leftist" is certainly revealing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk


That video is one of the funniest I've seen. I go back to it when I need a good laugh. It does highly his skill as an interviewer though, and Shapiro's lack of skill (speak fast, use big words and people think you're smart)


> The media landscape has exploded, and there's no outlet that is of enough importance anymore to hold people's feet to the fire.

Maybe not, but I'd still like a Fairness Doctrine -aligned news source such that I can do my part in rejecting dubious partisan citations (e.g., "I'm not going to believe your $partisanNewsSource article, but I might be more inclined to believe you you can support yourself with something on $aspirationallyNeutralNewsSource").


I don't even understand what the "Fairness Doctrine" would mean today.

In the 1960s and 70s and early 80s, it essentially gave a right of reply on broadcast media. It meant nothing on cable, it mean nothing in the world of books, it didn't mean much for the press (they had to be careful about libel anyway).

If it is raining outside, and there's someone who says "it's raining outside" and someone says "it's not raining outside", how is anyone's life improved by the idea that they should both be given air time?

The job of a journalist/reporter/something is to figure out what is going on, and tell that story (maybe by using quotes from other people).

The problem is that when the story is more complex than "is it raining?" there isn't a single answer, and there isn't a single way to tell the story. In making choices about what to tell and in what order, one becomes "partisan".

I prefer the solution in the UK, where nobody seriously thinks of any newspaper as "neutral", and yet despite their relatively clear biases, they all manage to tell roughly the same stories, albeit with different emphasis.

Contrast that to the US, where mainstream and rightwing-media-claiming-to-be-mainstream don't even tell the same stories, and when they do, they sometimes make essentially opposite claims about them.

There will always be room for "fringe" or "eclectic" takes. The far-left has had to deal with that essentially forever, and the far-right used to. What's really changed IMO is that in the last few decades, approaches to story-telling (which is all journalism really is) that used to be confined to the fringe far-right outlets ended up appearing on mass-audience outlets.


> If it is raining outside, and there's someone who says "it's raining outside" and someone says "it's not raining outside", how is anyone's life improved by the idea that they should both be given air time?

b/c presumably both will be asked to support their respective assertions.


This reduces the role of the journalist to a mere collector of other people's words.

I grew up with a more expansive view of their role as the ideal. Are you saying that a journalist (or anyone, really) can't tell if it's raining outside? That their job is to act as a stenographer of the "it's raining" and the "it's dry" crowd, and leave it at that?


You talked about giving people "air time", implying the context of an interview or debate.

you can either host the debate, or participate in it, but not both. I think there is leeway for a host to chase participants who give inadequate or evasive answers, for a variety of reasons, but there is a limit.

At the end of the day, you can't make anyone say what they don't want to, but you can make it obvious when they refuse to do so.

Consider the role of the host in BBC Question Time, for example.


> you can either host the debate, or participate in it, but not both.

I think this is excessively narrow. I will admit that I wouldn't rate most journalists as among the experts in the fields that they report on, and I'm not sure they would either. But the good ones know a lot more about those fields than the average reader/listener/viewer.

If you're hosting a discussion or even just interviewing, I find it entirely legitimate to interject and say "wait, wait, you just made a claim that nobody in your field agrees with, how do you justify that?" or something equivalent.

Until very, very recently, it has been extremely hard to find US journalists that will behave this way. A few have done it with respect to election claims and COVID19 related issues. It is the exception rather than the rule.

Treating interviewees with respect does not preclude treating the audience with respect, and if the interviewee says something the interviewer knows to be nonsense, or at least questionable, it is out of respect for the audience that they should "participate".


> But the good ones know a lot more about those fields than the average reader/listener/viewer.

I agree, but they never appear to be engaging in advocacy but rather not letting their interviewee get away with lying or deflection. Notably, I would like to see a reporter challenge some of the BLM narrative—at least ask the obvious questions, like “how do we know the police shooting racial disparity is racism and not crime rates or some other factor?” Virtually no journalists touched this issue, and it makes them look like they’re not only partisan, but that the movement itself needs high-profile protection from even the faintest of scrutiny. Small wonder people feel at liberty to find their own “truth sources” when the established ones appear to be dishonest.


Saying "wait, wait, .." is entirely legitimate hosting.

Talking about "fields" however only covers academics/experts. in politics, I wouldn't give peer-support so much gravity, especially since GOP and Dems appear to maintain different sets of "facts".


Sure. But this where we get back to "aggressive" interviewing technique.

Suppose someone makes the claim that tax cuts for the rich, or for capital gains, improves the economy. Journalist/host says "what evidence do you have of that?". Politician/pundit says something misleading, irrelevant or demonstrably false.

This is the crux point. The journalist/host can at this point either (a) move on (b) drill down into the claim made by the politician/pundit. But (b) will be clearly seen as oppositional by both the politician/pundit and by the audience (and correctly so, because that's the whole point).

In the current media landscape, this journalist/host will shortly end up with no significant guests at all, and will be described as "confrontational" and "partisan".


I disagree, (b) may or may not be seen as oppositional, depending entirely on what the issue is.

Misleading statements can be followed with questions seeking clarification. Irrelevant statements can be followed with questions asking relevance.

Demonstrably false statements will require the host to demonstrate the falsehood, otherwise they are not so. At least, questions can be asked clarifying the details of the statement.

> this journalist/host will shortly end up with no significant guests at all

so be it. If politicians don't want to look bad, they won't. But they can also lose face if they only accept softballs.

asking pertinent is not aggressive, nor does it disgust audiences. The problem, as I see it, are that journalists are mistaken wrt to what the facts are or at least what can be demonstrated), and when questions really are pertinent. A host can be as confrontational as they want, so long as they are bi-partisan (i.e fair); It's only when they are not that their manner becomes an issue to an audience.

I often see aggressive questions asked, then don't really serve a useful purpose other than give someone a hard time, e.g loaded questions.


> If it is raining outside, and there's someone who says "it's raining outside" and someone says "it's not raining outside", how is anyone's life improved by the idea that they should both be given air time?

Let's say for sake of argument that the people denying the weather in your metaphor are Trump supporters. TFA's thesis is that Trump (and thus his supporters) are a symptom of the media's rejection of neutrality (and indeed, the pursuit of truth). I would go farther and argue that it's not just the media but epistemological institutions in general. Presumably if someone's viewpoint isn't represented in a debate, but rather outright maligned, then that person isn't going to trust the moderator and is going to feel free to find his own moderator. If rejecting neutrality is the cause, then it stands to reason that we can cure the problem in part or in full by embracing neutrality again.

Of course, Trumpism isn't the only ideology that has prospered in this post-truth landscape, so embracing neutrality is probably a pretty threatening prospect for a lot of people.


>Presumably if someone's viewpoint isn't represented in a debate, but rather outright maligned, then that person isn't going to trust the moderator and is going to feel free to find his own moderator. If rejecting neutrality is the cause, then it stands to reason that we can cure the problem in part or in full by embracing neutrality again.

I don’t fully understand your point here as it relates to the other poster’s comment. Are you saying that “we should embrace neutrality” in this context by entertaining the idea that it’s not raining outside when it clearly is? I don’t think that’s a solution.


I’m saying had we (our epistemological institutions) not given up on neutrality (rather, truth-seeking) in the first place we might not have had so many people who felt free to give up on it themselves and in such overt ways (for example, weather denial).

That said, some people in this thread are really stuck on this contrived weather hypothetical; in reality, current events are typically a lot more subjective. Consider BLM—had the media critically considered the conservative position—that perhaps police killing victims skew black for reasons besides police racism—maybe blacks have more frequent interactions with the police or maybe they commit more crimes or both. Perhaps the media could have also considered some of the heinous police killings of whites instead of fueling the narrative that it’s only blacks who are egregiously killed by police. Had the media done these things, it might’ve earned back a bit of trust from some people, and since everyone is absolutely certain about the dynamics of race and policing, it could have been an opportunity to demonstrate to conservatives and skeptical liberals how we know for certain that crime rates, etc don’t drive police killing disparities but rather racism.


I'm stuck on the weather hypothetical because it's a neutral topic because it depoliticizes the issue at hand. What you are failing to answer is that the people who think it's not raining outside are refusing to apply any critical thinking; no amount of "neutrality" will fix that.

To go back to your topic about BLM; your counter-issues have been addressed many times. Remember that Kapernick started kneeling in 2016, during Obama, protesting to criminal justice reform. BLM activists had continually made the case that police reform is needed given:

1. Black communities are over-policed and black Americans were targets, for reasons including generating more revenue. [1]

2. White victims such as Daniel Shaver [2] received major media coverage from BLM and mainstream media.

I could sit here and list of articles and anecdotes about the BLM movement - and you can research them as well; but the solution comes with discussing police reform and as you can imagine they are certain institutions who do not want to have that conversation. The problem is, just how it's raining outside, despite evidence for it, the "not raining outside" crowd will continue to regurgitate the same arguments like the one you have espoused. And in this 4 years of trying to convince them that it's not raining outside we have hardly made a dent in the issue. At this point you can only make the assumption that one side is acting in bad faith; and if that's the case why should anyone give a neutral position to bad faith actors? That's why I don't think it's a solution - it's not that the other side is "misinformed", but they are actively impeding progress with bad faith arguments - in order to prevent having to reform our profitable criminal justice system and their attempts to tell us to be "neutral" is simply an attempt for them to slide us backwards.

How do you play neutral with a corporation that is dumping radioactive waste in your lakes?

[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releas... [2] https://www.theroot.com/horrific-video-showing-arizona-cops-...


What you've said would make sense if there's broad agreement that there are multiple opposing viewpoints/explanations all of which have some roughly equivalent level of credibility.

So for example, despite me not agreeing with it, and believe it to be completely refutable by looking at the evidence, I will concede that the concept that welfare payments might make at least some people lazy is a position that needs to be accorded roughly the same level of credibility as my own position (it doesn't, and the amounts of money and moral hazard involved make it largely irrelevant). Someone reporting on social policy questions and discussing the pros and cons of a welfare system would be remiss in not mentioning and examining both these perspectives (and others, probably).

In the case of raining/not-raining, this is clearly (to me) absurd. One of the POV's is right and one is wrong. There's no need to say "some people say <wrong thing>". It's just wrong.

The problem IMO is that many issues fall into the gray zone between these sorts of examples. For example, I'd say that people who claim that tax cuts for the wealthy lead to an improved economy really don't have any evidence whatsoever in their favor, and that reporting on their position as if it is somehow a credible economic policy is giving credit to something that is demonstrably false. But there's enough wiggle room there that a journalistic organization might still feel, even after myself or Krugman have shown them the evidence that this view is demonstrably false, that they should cover the position of those who make this claim. They can enuniciate their perspective eloquently and clearly, and they sound as if they have a legitimate position that deserves consideration. Journalists are very reluctant to make this judgement call.

The real problem, I think, is something I alluded to up-thread. It's not really about presenting particular perspectives. It's about critical thinking, both on the part of the audience but also the journalists. It's about challenging the claims made with perspicacious questions, and pushing for answers until they are given, or it becomes clear that someone is unable to justify their beliefs. The problem in the current media landscape is that if someone actually does this, they will rapidly be unable to bring these skills to bear on anyone who actually matters. So they don't. They do what NPR does so often - put the voice in front of the mic, and "let the audience decide". Don't challenge, don't ask difficult questions, don't follow up, don't call out obvious and common logical flaws and fallacies, don't ask for evidence.


But these debates are never about facts anyway. There will never be a yes/no debate about whether or not it's raining.

There will be a debate about whether climate change is going to cause huge problems and therefore mitigation measures are needed - some of which may lead to higher taxes. For some people.

Objectively the answer to the first part of that question is "yes". At this point there is no plausible argument to be made for any other position. Denying it makes as much sense as claiming that it's not raining when it is.

But interest groups who are horrified by the second part can use a standard repertoire of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) techniques to persuade less educated voters that it's not true., And also that they are being victimised by the people who are saying it is.

Which is why public debates aren't about facts or evidence. They're about "Who is the victim - and is it going to be you?"

Once that frame has been established it's very difficult to break out of it, because the debate is neither adult nor rational.

And this is the frame in which public debate has operated in the US since at least the 50s, and probably longer.

Which is not to deny that some people are victimised by others, but to point out that it's very easy for those who are perpetrators to claim victimhood too - and to do it convincingly, even when it's nonsense, by using FUD, lies, and other rhetorical tricks in bad faith.

Trying to push for ground truth and pointing out logical fallacies will do less than expected to prevent that, because the rhetorical games that are being played operate on a different level.


> In the case of raining/not-raining, this is clearly (to me) absurd. One of the POV's is right and one is wrong. There's no need to say "some people say <wrong thing>". It's just wrong.

That depends on what your goals are.

Let's continue with the above metaphor, and assume "rain skeptics" make up half of the population.

If you want a chance of convincing them that things are more moist than would appear so -- then you get to invite their most credible voices to a stage which they agree is fairly moderated.

Not which you declare to be fair and as-unbiased-as-is-possible.

One which they agree is such. And, yes, that means both sides get to sacrifice in equal number several sacred barnyard animals.

Because if not, it doesn't matter what is true or not true. Those rain skeptics will increasingly polarize against you, to the point where you simply can not reach them at all.

If you are fine with this, then you are presumably okay with green-lighting extreme measures to "solve" the "rain skeptic problem", because that's the road the United States is on right now.


The point about the rain example is that it's meant to be something on which there's a clear truth, a demonstrable truth. In this sense it differs dramatically from most of the important issues before us as a society. But it's precisely because of this that it gets raised as one end of a spectrum: what does/should journalism do when there's a clear demonstrable truth but "some people" dispute it?

That doesn't provide a guide for how to handle cases where the truth is not clear, where there is obviously legitimate grounds for disagreement.

But it's supposed to mark one of the spectrum. Many people would say that journalism has failed badly at the end of the spectrum, by taking things that are clearly true ("it's raining") and behaving as if the skeptics deserve to be heard.

Obviously, the skeptics feel otherwise, but is that relevant and if so, how much attention should we pay it?


Journalists are in the business of providing narratives, which may or may not be loosely based on an objective truth they met somewhere a few years ago at a cafe.

I'm pretty sure this has always been so.

> Obviously, the skeptics feel otherwise, but is that relevant and if so, how much attention should we pay it?

Again, this depends on your goals.


To be honest, my goals used to be to convince other people.

As I get closer to 60, I'm swinging more towards simply acquiring and exercising power on behalf of things I believe in.

I say this despite an ironic awareness of how much I despise a movement with opposite ideals to my own for appearing to do the same thing over the last 3-4 decades.


I appreciate your honesty and sincerity, genuinely.


Why fixate on this extreme when there are plenty of subjective issues where journalists could present multiple interpretations? And why do journalists so rarely call left wing denialism (e.g., blank slatism) or even something a little murkier like the propensity to impute discrimination on every disparity? No one is asking you to argue that the Trump position is equally meritorious to the left wing position, but if you want to bring Trump supporters back into the fold or at least reduce the rate that you’re creating them, then giving them some courtesy representation here and there in the media if only to explain why their points of view are misinformed might not be a bad approach. In general, respect consistently and earnestly applied can be a pretty potent thing.


My concern with this is that it gives the "rain skeptics" a platform to spread their views, and presents "rain skeptics" as a legitimate alternative to the "rain scientists". The problem with this is that once people are given a platform and presented as legitimate, then they can convince people not based on the logic of their arguments but on things which have nothing to do with the matter under debate (e.g. "I like the way he speaks, not like that snooty scientist").

I think people I know have been convinced in this manner. I don't think people necessarily reflect on why they were convinced. They just know that they agree with the "rain skeptics".

I'm not convinced that giving "rain skeptics" a platform would be the right thing to do if they only make up a small percentage of the population. If they make up half the population, I have no idea.

EDIT: My experience above is probably not helped by weak moderation in debates. Moderators with a backbone would probably help in cases where "rain skeptics" are given a platform. Sadly that seems to be rare.


> the people they interview-- like Ted Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses

So first off, I haven't seen a specific example of this as I'm not a frequenter of Axios interviews. Could you post the interview you're referring to?

I'm having trouble saying this in a way that isn't flame-bait-ish, so I won't be using your word "dumbasses". Not because I disagree, but because it could be off-putting to Ted Cruz supporters in a way that obviously is intended to outrage them.

Sorry, but I feel it's important to be very careful with our wording here after the events at the Capitol. With that disclaimer out of the way -

Is it a stretch to say that Ted Cruz doesn't really need much help from interviewers to make himself appear unrelatable to average people? From what I've seen of him, that's 100% true.

On the other hand, I can also absolutely see the style of interviewer you're referring to. They're more excited about a "gotcha" moment than they are about an informed discussion with the interviewee. Is that what you're referring to?

Thanks, and again I really hope I haven't offended anyone. If I have feel free to downvote me, I suppose. I'd appreciate a comment explaining why you did so I can work on being less offensive in the future, but if you don't feel like you need to explain yourself, that's also okay.


I assume he's referring to https://www.axios.com/ted-cruz-hunter-biden-trump-f38805a0-6...

I don't know enough about US politics to know if that qualifies as being a dumbass, but I don't think this qualifies as "gotcha"-styles interview either. It seems to be quite clearly talking about specific policies and actions, and not simply playing off silly gafs.


I haven't seen the one with Cruz, but I did see the one with T**p that was pretty internet-famous a few months ago. The interviewer didn't seem so much "excitable" as exasperated that the subject couldn't provide a coherent answer and frustrated he had to re-phrase the same question over and over before giving up and moving on. It would have been easy to set a gotcha trap, but I thought the interviewer did a good job keeping it professional and asking real questions that deserved answers.


> the one with T*p

Oh come on. Drop the hysterics and write the name of the person you're talking about.


Especially because those of us who aren't already initiated have no idea who the hell the parent is talking about.


Probably the recent interview with Jonathan Swan. I think you’ll need HBO to see the full interview but segments of it are on YouTube.

https://www.axios.com/ted-cruz-axios-on-hbo-bc6addab-ef33-43...


> They're more excited about a "gotcha" moment than they are about an informed discussion

Classical example of this "gotcha"/bad-faith style - the infamous interview between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman.


Well said. My take is that there is almost no news anymore, only infotainment. It is more important to outrage and click bait than to pursue truth. It is all about eyeballs and ad revenue. I don't know how to pay for good news platforms because people want it for free.


>MSNBC/Fox/CNN

An alternate explanation is that these are not news outlets, and haven't been for years. Instead, they are merely editorial outlets.


An alternate, alternate explanation was that there were never news outlets. They were always editorial; whether consciously or unconsciously, the stories that were run were selected (thus edited) by the producers, writers, reporters, and eventually their sponsors.


This is so true, and it doesn't get discussed enough. Folks like Medhi Hassan and Jonathan Swan are a completely different kind of journalist than most of the folks that occupy the airwaves, and it's really frustrating to watch the news when you know people like that are setting a much higher bar than everyone else.


I love Axios, wish there was a European version.

But I don't read it for the interviews. I read it for the brevity and clarity. Interviews are muddier.


> I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.

All that matters to them is staying relevant. They don't care about friendly or unfriendly interviews.

The figures need the media more than the media needs them.


> The figures need the media more than the media needs them.

That's where generalizing to "the media" causes problems, though. They do need some media to stay relevant, but can absolutely stay with sympathetic media outlets that will never challenge them. Ted Cruz need never give an interview to the likes of Axios for the rest of his career and he'll be absolutely fine with just Fox News.


Axios is not any better than other sources such as CNN, NYT, etc. The main problem is that news is cheap and free in the digital era -- so what is left to sell is opinions, conjecture and analysis. Axios is no different in this regard than other organizations.


Nonprofit news organizations are a thing and I've been incredibly positive about their future (full disclosure: I used to work for a nonprofit publication).

The nonprofit model encourages much more direct community engagement through conferences, festivals, and long-form interviews with local, state and national leaders.

A major hurdle that nonprofit and higher-quality news outlets face is that the major media players have dopamine-driven news down to a science, and it's a lot easier to consume a small and practically meaningless soundbyte than it is to sit and listen to a politician have a challenging discussion with an interviewer for an hour. The attention span of the average American isn't equipped for higher-level discourse as it's not nearly as exciting and rage-inducing as watching CNN/FOX/ABC/??? network.


The most popular podcaster right now is Joe Rogan, who does 2-3 hour interviews. Doesn't the popularity of his content suggest that Americans are very interested in higher level discourse, but have long been denied it?


As popular as Joe Rogan is, he seems to be a drop in the bucket of the news (infotainment) business.

Also, it's debatable that his podcast promotes higher-level discourse even if it's long in duration.


> Doesn't the popularity of his content suggest that Americans are very interested in higher level discourse, but have long been denied it?

This is probably true to degree, although Rogan specifically is a pretty polarizing example due to his proclivity for hosting guests that aren't always welcome elsewhere. It's hard to say how much of his popularity is due to his interview style versus his politics. I also expect that the demographic breakdown of podcast listeners aren't reflective of the country as a whole, it probably skews a bit younger.

Long-form interviews with political leaders aren't a new genre, I suspect they just don't get as much attention as the more soundbite-y forms of news, but I could be wrong.


Boring-ass long-form interviews with nonagenarians like Charlie Rose or the 60 Minutes gang don't get much attention because they are without substance. Rogan isn't necessarily trying to embarrass his guests, but neither is he desperate to support the status quo. So, occasionally, something true gets said. Like, once an hour. Still better than the nonagenarians.


> Rogan specifically is a pretty polarizing

I'd flip this; Rogan isn't polarizing, so much as a section of society is intolerant of "the marketplace of ideas".

It's not Rogan who has to change, it's his critics.

Put simply, they don't trust fellow Americans to form their own opinions, so feel entitled to control their influences.

Ok, there are also some guests that might make false claims, or misrepresentations. Exposure and open discussion is the prescribed cure for this too.


Rogan seems like one of the most un-polarizing forces in media right now. He can support Bernie Sanders, a left wing position, and oppose trans rights, a right wing position. Almost everyone else is more pushed into either the left or right pole.


You've touched on a huge problem I see with the US political system. Everyone is bucketed into one of two buckets. Everyone in each bucket must have all of the beliefs of the other people in the bucket. If you are in one bucket, you support Trump, think border walls are a good thing, support blue lives matter are anti LGBT and are anti-abortion. If you are in the other bucket you take the opposite views on all of the those topics and more.

For me it shows that the tribalism has completely overtaken US politics. If everyone was making up their mind independently or even semi-independently the odds of everyone in the same bucket having the same beliefs would be close to 0.


Well yes, that's what "polarizing" means, that everything is pushed towards one of two groups, rather than being allowed to be anything in the middle. That's why it seems to me that Rogan is not polarizing, because his opinions don't strictly belong to one of the two groups.


I see tribalism taking over as an inevitable consequence of the electoral college voting system, and I'm always startled when people tout vague calls for 'unity' as something worth doing, rather than implementing ranked-choice ballets or similar and just solving the problem.

I'm not accusing you of that, btw. Just saying it for me.


One thing I really envy about parliamentary systems (like in Germany, the Netherlands, etc.) is having lots of parties, with all sorts of different takes on the issues. I do think Americans fall into the trap of thinking there are only 2 possible political philosophies, Liberal and Conservative.


I don't think it's fair to say that he opposes trans rights. I saw him talk about recently transitioned people in MMA. I'm not a big follower of his, but I think his views are more nuanced than a blanket "he opposes trans rights like right wing people".


I don't listen to him now that his RSS feed is defunct, but ISTR Rogan supported every right of trans people except the right of trans women to compete in women's athletics without informing competitors of their gender status. This came out after multiple women MMA fighters were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.

This nuance is enough for certain trans activists to damn him completely, but that is hardly a universal judgment.


The problem is classifying "trans rights" as left wing, while those have (almost) nothing to do with the left/right spectrum.

Another example, on that spectrum this time : Trump's anti-immigration stance is a very typical leftist position. If this sounds preposterous, see this :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_A...


I fully agree with you and this just proves the point. If everyone was thinking for themselves from first principles or even just using their memories they'd remember which side of the immigration debate they are supposed to be on. You don't even need to go back that far, up until Trump the right wing were very pro immigration because their industries rely on a steady flow of cheap and under-paid and exploitable labor. Exactly the thing the left are traditionally against.


Trump was a very odd presidential candidate. He basically was super-populist (fund Social Security/Medicare, get rid of immigration), and indeed seemed like he had no firm commitment to the Republican party. I actually hoped that he'd end up governing from the center (especially after the Dems took the house).

But then he got elected, and essentially governed as a standard trickle-down Republican, with a side order of conspiracy theories and showmanship.

Like, it's important to remember that Bernie Sanders was anti-immigration without stronger labour standards, and that many Trump/Sanders voters (in 2016) liked the other candidate more than those in their respective primaries.

The US just needs one set of people who'll actually do good things for the lower half of the populace, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.


An ideal would be someone like Rogan but with a spine and some teeth, someone willing to stand up to his interviewees and bite them a bit when they say something outright wrong or fuzzy-headed. It would require the interviewer to, first, get acquainted with the idea that facts are more important than feelings, especially the feelings of the people being interviewed, second, learn the facts relevant to a given interview and have them on hand, and, third, develop a position on the topics relevant to the interview based on those facts and have the basic fortitude and honesty to defend that position. It's difficult, but it would draw in people put off by Rogan's style or lack thereof.


America needs another Dick Cavett for a younger generation in that regard (or multiple!). Less pandering, emotionally and intellectually intelligent, honest, but still relatable and still cognizant of his audience.

It definitely kicks the cynical view that people are only interested in bites that satiate a short attention span.


My town is blessed with an excellent nonprofit news organization: Berkeleyside and its spin-off, Oaklandside. Together they publish 1-2 articles each day, because that's how much news there is. There's really no reason to have the local dailies like the SF Chronicle, the only major-city newspaper to my knowledge to have been openly mocked in a famous movie, or the SJ Mercury News and the other papers of the Bay Area News Group, a Denver company that hasn't printed anything worth reading in the past decade.


Personally I find that Berkeleyside and Oaklandside are full of “personal interest” type stories that are interesting but usually aren’t too important. Some new restaurant opened, a new indie movie is showing. Whereas the SF Chronicle has recently become an excellent source for local coronavirus and wildfire news.


Interesting. I find the primary sources on wildfires, pandemics etc to be so easily accessed that I don't need the interpretations of local newspapers on those topics. What can they tell me that I can't find out by viewing up-to-the-minute satellite and air quality data? Nothing. And in particular I don't need editorial takes like the ones of the L.A. Times earlier this year, crowing about how sprawl protects them from the pandemic. How does that take seem this week? Better to just get stats from health officials' web sites.

On the other hand there's no ready alternative source for restaurant openings and closings. That's just about my favorite topic on Berkeleyside.


The SF Chronicle charts are just really well done. For example this page I find to be the most useful one for California-centric coronavirus information: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/coronavirus-map/


This is feeding into a false narrative that Fox News largely created out of whole cloth. Fox staked out a conservative position, but claimed they were 'fair and balanced'. To suggest that other news outlets, like CNN or the Washington Post must have a liberal bent is to serve Fox's agenda. Articles like this show how one media outlet has managed to shift the Overton window. Yes, there are some explicitly leftist news outlets, some, like Mother Jones, long pre-dating Fox news, and others, like MSNBC that pivoted in response to Fox. It is wrong to claim that there are no unbiased outlets because they used the term 'insurrectionists' to describe an organized group that broke into the United States Capitol with the intent to keep Congress from functioning. It's an objectively accurate description.


I do not know of unbiased television networks. Who do you nominate?



I don't get it. Is your claim that any of these are unbiased?


I think PBS gives it a sporting try, but reality does have a well known liberal bias.


"If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences"

Isn't culture war 95% of what Taibbi writes about?

This isn't the worst diagnosis I've read, but I don't see him offering any solutions.


It's what he writes about now, and I find his take on this somewhat disingenuous given that he's positioned himself as the "a pox on both your houses" guy and is making that his bread and butter. Given that, there really isn't any reason he'd want to solve this problem. I've followed him since the "vampire squid" days and enjoy his writing, but he's clearly toned down the gonzo style and largely dropped his coverage on the excesses of Wall Street, which have gotten worse if anything but which I guess don't get a lot of traction with most of the public.

You have to write what sells. It's not like there weren't news organizations that followed the old impartial model as best they could, like McClatchy - who went bankrupt continuing to do it. The real issue is that the public wants the entertainment of blood sport in every venue, from e-celeb beefs to politics and because the barriers to entry are so low now, if you don't hot-take it, the next Youtuber will.


Taibbi is a reporter and a commentator, not an innovator or a leader. The latter two are who we are relying upon to find solutions. At least Taibbi is one of the few remaining journalists doing their job.


Who else is on your short list? I sometimes say that Ronan Farrow is America's last reporter, but of course there must be more than one.


I'd include Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on the list.

I want to say Glenn Greenwald too, especially for the stuff he did several years ago, but he and Taibbi are sort of occupying the same lane now. I hope he can escape the tomb that "The Intercept" became for him; he should have quit them much earlier.


> I hope he can escape the tomb that "The Intercept" became for him; he should have quit them much earlier.

He left Intercept 2 months ago. He has a substack newsletter now

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...


I just glanced at Ben Norton's feed which I've never read before, and "The world's largest systematic violator of human rights (by far), the US government" doesn't exactly leave a glaringly good first impression of dispassionate analysis.


When China is routinely posting "smiley happy genocide" stories to Twitter (check @ChineseEmbinUS if you want to feel ill for some reason), someone calling out the US as uniquely evil means they are either uninformed or deliberately lying.

Absolutely call out the US for the bullshit it does, but whitewashing other countries actions to promote your viewpoint is abhorrent.


I live here in USA. I'd like to think I and my many fellow pacifists can do something about our behavior. I have zero effect on China, and most of their more recent supposed misdeeds are straight-up propaganda bullshit anyway. Compare their methods in Africa with ours. We send in AFRICOM, flood the zone with weapons and ammunition, undermine and eventually murder any democratically-elected leader who supports socialism on the level of e.g. Germany, etc. The Chinese hire locals to build factories and then they hire and train more locals to work in those factories.

Any time I hear the word "abhorrent" I think of all the Native Americans, enslaved Africans, Filipinos, Guatemalans, Colombians, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Afghans, etc. whose lives were ground up in the gristmill of USA capitalism.


It is still pretty much true, so probably that says more about you that about him


Maybe!


Larger than, say, China, with what they're doing to the Uighurs? That's a rather large claim...


Glenn Greenwald either one of the most-easily-fooled people in history, or one of the most dishonest. The man is never right about anything. He's wrong about whether water is wet. This tweet being the perfect example.

https://twitter.com/evanchill/status/1349097133186707457


That tweet isn't Greenwald; it's an ankle-biter wittily captioning "LOL" a non-linked picture that he apparently copy-pasted all by himself. The first half of the picture is a shot of Greenwald's perfectly factual tweet. [0] The second half is another non-linked shot of another tweet, this one composed by a Twitter user somehow skilled enough to actually link to a gizmodo piece. Examining that, one discovers that the fancy satellite picture is actually an "artist's conception". (Another clue might have been the perfectly regular grid that the parler users were supposedly creating.) The only actual reference to actual locations is the caption "@donk_enby later shared a screenshot showing the GPS position of a particular video, with coordinates in latitude and longitude." [1] Once again, this caption is on a picture without a link. However, if one actually types the pictured coordinates into a map app, one discovers that the hypothetical parler user was terrorizing a general store in Delaware. [2] Hey, they got the timezone right: the Delaware coast isn't that far from DC!

In general, rabble-rousers on the internet don't link to original data, because "easily-fooled people" like yourself will just believe your first impression. And helpfully share that with HN!

[0] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348322148704804864

[1] https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-user...

[2] https://goo.gl/maps/jkTzy46xqPCmsmwn6


Greenwald's the only for-sure other. Yascha Mounk also seems to have his head screwed on straight but isn't a journalist per se. I was hoping Isaac Saul was another diamond in the rough but he ended up going off the deep end, as so many others have.


I've followed Isaac Saul for months now and have been consistently impressed with his daily coverage. What did he do to lose you?


When he started debunking the voter fraud claims, he had a voice of objectivity. Over time, it seemed to me he just presumed bad faith on the other side (which is fair) but then started the usual "mind reading" bits where he would start claiming he knew the motives of individuals saying certain things, based upon that assumption of bad faith. When someone says "so-and-so says X, but they're doing it because of motive Y" then I don't consider that person a journalist anymore, just a commentator.


Both Taibbi and Greenwald have disgraced and discredited themselves in the Trump era by publishing a parade of disingenuous nonsense, carrying water for Putin and Trump, and slandering truth tellers. It has been sad to watch them slide so far.

There is a reason that both are now self publishing their punditry without editors or fact checkers. I wouldn't really even call it journalism anymore. Neither can still be compared to Ronan Farrow, who is meticulously honest.


Thank you for demonstrating the entire problem is such a concise and recognisable way.


That's just like, your opinion man. If you want to defend it, feel free. But for the unconvinced it just reads like a person who isn't listening to them.


There are plenty, but many work without recognition. And these days it's probably safer that way.



Is there a punch line? The NYT is so bad that I unsubscribed and now I can’t read any of it.


From what I’ve read of Taibbi’s work he’s the last guy interested in stoking any kind of culture war - but he does a very good job of both analyzing how it’s been developing and predicting how the end game will work out.


Is he a derivative of that?

He’s covering - his beat is - the current media’s stoking of culture war as a commercial reality of modern media tech.


To a certain extent he owns that at the end; even saying that substack cannot solve this problem.


I'd say he is reporting on culture wars, not selling them.


I'm wondering if there is any way for a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization to come about. Let's pretend we have a nascent neutral organization X:

Action: X publishes something properly critical of the right/left.

Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.

Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to believe (and voice) that X is biased.

Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias than expected) of the right/left

Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's coverage of the item in question.

Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"

Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority of the country may trust X, most of that majority will be among the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an audience that cares about what you are reporting.


> a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization

Until there's a definition of 'neutral' that everyone agrees with, that won't work. It's impossible to avoid making important editorial judgements unless you're going to literally report all information being generated. News organizations are not a substitute for doing research on the things that matter to you.


That's a cop-out answer, especially in the current highly polarized state of affairs in the US. The more polarized the environment is, the easier it is to define neutral:

Start with a firehose stream of "all information being generated" (which, implicit in your comment is neutral) edit it down. The extent to which the edited-down stream pisses off one side more than the firehose stream did is the extent to which your stream is not neutral.

Note that this isn't a suggestion to both-siderism; I'm not suggesting that the resultant stream will treat both sides equally, just that it's precisely as biased as the "firehose."


So you incentivise people being as angry as possible about anything they even remotely disagree with, because then it shifts the "firehose" in their favour.


Suppose that I edit down the firehouse of all information generated to be just a monthly statement of the global average temperature. This information will piss off one side a whole lot, and the other side not at all. Is this information non-neutral? Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?


> This information will piss off one side a whole lot, and the other side not at all. Is this information non-neutral?

Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral. You are specifically picking facts that back the policies of one side over the other. That's obviously non-neutral. If you are a weather-service, it might be apolitical, but as a general news organization it's hard not to read that as political.

> Could I make my editing neutral by also including the occasional statement that Trump won the election in a landslide?

I mean if your firehose of all facts includes "Trump won the election in a landslide" then sure, but I don't think you honestly believe that to be true. I suppose you could report on members of the house claiming this to be true? It might make more sense to e.g. report on perverse incentives setup by entitlement programs (to go with the climate-change theme, how about how tax-breaks for clean-fuel vehicles disproportionately benefit the rich?)


Of course reporting just this information is non-neutral.

Wouldn't not reporting that information also be non-neutral? As you are, from one perspective, hiding information that one side doesn't want to be shared, thus favoring their political stances.


Yes, not reporting that information would also be non-neutral.

You could have very bland neutral reporting by omitting information that offends both sides (as long as you do so in a ratio that is roughly equivalent to how it occurs in the firehose), and you could have extremely provocative neutral by similarly highlighting that information.

There will be times when one side's opinions are more in conflict with facts of current events than the other, so you probably won't be pissing off both sides equally (this is why my original comment was pondering that, in the current environment, a neutral source could not remain trusted), but if you truly act as a service to that strives to fairly convert the "firehose" to a "drinking fountain" then that's what people (or I at least) mean when saying "neutral source."


I dunno, if your definition of "non-neutral" news ropes in the national weather service saying what temperature it is outside, I think it might be too wide of a net...


1. The NWS does not post only global mean average temperatures

2. My comment specifically said it would be apolitical for a weather service to report this

3. If the New York times were to have an entire issue with just the global mean temperatures over time, that would clearly be both politically motivated and non-neutral.

There are 3 things that you seem to be confounding: apolitical, politically neutral, and factual. One can select which facts to report with the intention of motivating specific policies. That is neither apolitical nor politically neutral, but is factual.

The NWS was commissioned to observe the weather long before climate change was on anybody's radar, so it's clearly apolitical that it does so. The fact that some significant fraction of one of the two major political parties in the US wishes it to stop should be clear evidence that it is not politically neutral. That's fine! There is no demand in TFA, or any of my comments that any or all government agencies need be politically neutral.


What qualities do you use filter the firehose?


Presumably "newsworthiness" but in terms of bias, we have a platonic ideal of what "unbiased" means that it is possible to aim for. I was specifically refuting the GP comment that there is no way to agree what "neutral" means, while also implying that reporting all information would be neutral.


Whatever factors you use to determine "newsworthiness" will be perceived as biases.


That's kind of what I was getting at with my original comment. A reasonably neutral source could quickly become untrusted by all those who are politically engaged.


That's because your method for constructing a "reasonably neutral source" results in something which is only reasonably neutral from your point of view. This is why pretensions to neutrality are worthless.


It's also reasonably neutral from bachmeier's point of view (he implied that reporting all of the news would be neutral). If you don't think reality is neutral, then I don't think we can have a productive conversation.

If you do think reality is neutral, then the neutrality of a source can be measured in the degree to which it distorts the view of reality it presents. It is political in the degree to which it intentionally distorts reality towards or away from some policy goal.


1. Reality is neutral. 2. After it is filtered, the result is not.

bachmeier agreed with 1, but not 2. The second point is my argument.

I agree with 1.


So no subset of reality can ever be neutral?


Neutrality is not a realistic goal. In fact, the idea that neutrality is the goal has just resulted in more shrill commentary as each side claims their position is more neutral (i.e more truthful).

Humans aren't neutral. The way we interpret events isn't neutral. It is difficult to be brief or put this down to any one event/cause but, ultimately, media is just a reflection of what people want.

Weakening bonds between people in society, an education system that teach facts over nuance (this is interesting, lots of lawyers in politics in the US which generally builds a culture that permits resonable disagreement...hasn't happened), low levels of respect for other people, etc.

Neutrality is not realistic though, and isn't required. Res


> Neutrality is not a realistic goal

I didn't ask for the source to be perfectly neutral, just "mostly neutral." I'm pretty sure I won't make the best choices all of the time, but I still strive to make good choices.

Furthermore the idea of a neutral source comes from TFA; I was merely trying to point out that, even if such a source were to emerge, there doesn't appear to be a stable equilibrium in which that source can persist to exist and be trusted.


Neutrality is implausible. What matters is honesty. Sometimes I will find a political article written by somebody whose views I disagree with but the author attempts to be thorough, doesn't reason backward from their conclusion and tries to account for their own biases and limitations. It's frankly heart warming what that happens.

Most of the news that seems to gain popularity on social networks is not that though. It's not really news, it's pandering and it's reinforced by the echo-chamber nature of said social networks.

I'm lucky enough to be able to read several languages and I found that the best way to find consistently decent news coverage is simply to look for it on the outside. See how the Russians or Brasilians report the Capitol riots. See what the Ukrainians have to say about the British elections. Of course these news outlets are not without their own biases, but at least they tend to be less emotionally involved and don't have a horse in the race, which in my experience leads to more factual reports.

For instance while most European news outlets will lean anti-Trump, they are unlikely to consciously or unconsciously silence or downplay pro-Trump or anti-Democratic news simply because they don't really have any direct influence on American politics. Meanwhile a journalist at CNN or Fox News is in a different position, because their reporting will be de-facto politicized and could have direct consequences one way or an other.


I think you underestimate the power of American politics and its influence over other countries.

Many politicians are publicly supporting Trump despite sharing none of his values and none of his political stances just because he is branded as a successful right-wing politician. Most people don't know how skewed the political window is in the US anyway.

Even moderate right-wing politician from a European perspective want to be associated with him because he represents the right.

Because of that, news reporters in Europe tend to be gentle with Trump and the Republican party, glossing over their most egregious acts, to not appear biased, despite the small number of people actually supporting the same policies locally. And they still need to report on the USA because of their importance in the world.

Also at play, the incomprehension in translating American problems to other countries'. In other events, the BLM movements was imported to other countries with little knowledge of the US systemic problems and used/criticized in different ways.

This is how American politics can drag the political discussion over the world and impact the political spectrum everywhere.


On the other hand, how many of the left-leaning politicians in the USA have criticized Twitter/Facebook banning Trump or Apple/Google/AWS banning Parler ?

Here's an example from Europe :

https://www.worldstockmarket.net/twitter-when-francois-ruffi...


Any European criticizing AWS for banning Parler is only paying lip service; Parler couldn’t exist as European company as Europe has far stricter hate speech laws.

In any case far left leaning activists have always expressed that the mega caps have too much power; but they were called communists until it started affected people on the right.


He reacted to similar criticisms: https://twitter.com/Francois_Ruffin/status/13485575743843164...

> "Freedom of speech isn't without limits", I know, but it falls to the people, the tribunals and the officials to decide those limits. Not private companies.

He's not saying these are good people, he's saying the arbitrary nature of these decisions, and the fact that they're being made by unaccountable corporations, is dangerous.


AFAIK he's not criticizing the issue with Parler, as you would have seen if you actually had read my link. I have just widened the net in the hope of catching some dissidents to the "party line".


I did read link, to ensure he was western European, rather than eastern. My assertion remains the same - under French or German laws Trump would have been booted, and with clear precedent.


The thing is, if you don't write the piece as critical, if you write it neutral, some people will see it as positive, and some negative.


People want to be lied to. They don't want unbiased news. That's the core of the issue.


Yep this is the main issue,you said before me.

People here will first play the gambit "there is not such thing as an objective/impartial press" knowing that that will lead to a neverending philosophical debate with no conclusions.

Then you will say, "fine, at least give me some journo that exposes a Democratic senator with the same ferocity of a Republican senator who did the same thing and vice versa" And you will be received with this line "You are an enlightened centrist, both sides will never be the same and if A says the earth is flat and B says is kind of a sphere there is not a valid C ,middle-of-the-road both-sides position" and they will act as if they gave a fatal blow to your argument.

People love love love to be reassured they (and the people they chose to support) have the moral high-ground.



You've highlighted my main issue with American political discourse today.

Like, there's a very common narrative of "when side A has a large proportion of climate change deniers and anti-masks and anti-vaxxers and Young Earth creationists, and side B doesn't, there's no point pretending these sides are symmetrical", which I mostly agree with.

But somehow that narrative quickly becomes "therefore we should suppress all Joe Biden scandals (including corruption and sexual harassment), encourage all corporations to deny service to Republican partisans, and brand anyone trying to bridge the gap as a class traitor" and I'm left wondering what the fuck is your country doing.

(antivax used to be a non-partisan position, by the way, but since the Trump administration I've seen some data that suggests it's becoming a mostly Republican one)


Not just individuals, people at the top too.

Twitter / Reddit / YouTube / management is CHOOSING to make their platforms into liberal-or-die echo chambers because their upper management leans left. No one is forcing their hands.


What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull “objective” format.

I think Taibbi, whom I’m not generally a fan but do believe strives to be intellectually honest, makes a really unfortunate statement here. First, Rolling Stone would have only allowed your opinionated voice as long as it was generally an opinion the editors shared. Second, the idea that you did it the right way but the current breed is nothing but shallow polemics is tremendously arrogant. Third, “taking sides” means you are no longer a reliable reporter, as you unavoidably feel compelled to report things that justify the side you’ve selected.

Really, Matt and others who took off their masks of objectivity during the Bush presidency (Dan Rather, Helen Thomas, Bill O’Reilly to name a few) were the ones that opened the gates to the journalists of today that wear their bias and ignorance on their sleeve. “They literally know nothing”, as Ben Rhodes famously said.

I lament the same things in the article that Taibbi laments. The fear merchants selling wall-to-wall panic porn (from the Russians are coming! to Birtherism to whatever the lie du jour happens to be) have significantly damaged American culture and American politics. And all for clicks and eyeballs! But Taibbi, despite his attempts to distance himself, deserves a measure of blame for leading the way.

I know journalism has always had bias, but there was an incentive to make sure the bias wasn’t overt. Because overt bias would have been considered unethical. I don’t think we are better for it now the pretense of objectivity is gone.


I do not think the problem is that we lost the pretense of objectivity. I am fine listening to people who are not objective, and that is everybody really, the problem is the lack of intellectual honesty and basic fairness. That is just revolting and incredibly damaging. Taibbi is liberal minded as is almost anyone in any creative profession, but he is fair and not full of it. That is more than enough.


He's talking about Hunter S. Thompson in that passage you quoted, not himself.


Yeah, and if you have any interest at all in US politics, you owe it to yourself to read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

It's an absolutely marvelous political narrative, and Hunter S was one hell of a writer.


Every few weeks this issue comes on HN. It's hard not to mention my startup, The Factual, which is proving that people will pay a modest amount for ad-free, unbiased news on trending topics. I suspect this will get downvoted but I don't know how not to scream "we have a solution" to a problem so many have. So as not to be entirely biased let me mention other good offerings: The New Paper, Knowhere News.

Of course, our solution is not for everyone. If you have a well-tuned Twitter feed, or have figured out forums like HN/Reddit where you get news and commentary you trust, then we may not be as useful for you. But for the vast majority that just want the facts on topics of importance our daily newsletter is an easy way to stay informed and then get on with life. And we've priced it to be affordable for everyone so that factual news is not just for the rich.


The first headline on The Factual right now is “How conservative media stoked baseless election-fraud claims that motivated D.C. rioters”. That is certainly not what the “fairness doctrine” type centrist media sounded like. The whole feed doesn’t seem like it is considering both sides of the issues, it seems like it is providing the same generic left viewpoint that the New York Times would provide.


The article you mention is from USA Today and has a 69% credibliity rating. Normally we recommend >75% for a credible article.

If you click on the rating you'll see details on the four factors we rate for each article: site reputation (historical score), author's topical expertise, diversity of sources, neutrality of tone. Collectively these produce a probability of being credible. So we don't fact check individual statements (very difficult to do via an algorithm) but rather we assess the likelihood of an article being credible in aggregate.


Imagine for a moment that you agreed, as a matter of objective reality, the conservative media did stoke baseless election-fraud claims and that those claims motivated D.C. rioters. Would that headline still seem outside the bounds of centrist, fact-based reporting?

Sometimes there is not a clear both sides.


How would you make that headline even more centerist? "Conservative" media sources did stoke baseless claims about fraud, which motivated the rioters (I wouldve gone for terrorist here).


I'm with you, here.

I'm not convinced that downplaying facts just to make a headline read more friendly to a group that quite literally threatened to kill politicians is what I would call journalistic integrity. Sometimes the headlines are alarmist because something alarming happened and we saw it coming on the internet from months away.


This is exactly it in my opinion. There is not a "but both sides" to every issue, you can call a spade a spade.


You do that by stating facts. Not opinions as facts.

“Conservative media outlets accused of stoking baseless election fraud claims”

Then the article should lay out what they did. Not “here is how they stoked baseless claims”, but exactly what they did. “Conservative websites repeated a claim of fraud that had already been proven false by election officials.”

And it should include comments from those websites on their response to the accusation.

Then let the reader make up their own mind. I’m an adult. I don’t need a reporter who barely knows more than I do about a subject to tell me how to interpret the world. Save that for opinion pieces.

Not too hard is it?


I'm kind of pissed the above is being grayed out.

This. This is how it's done. You go into technical details, not just "fact-checkers proved this was false", but "here's a link to a fact-checker proving this was false".

If reality is one-sided, then you expose the facts of reality. Adding a "Reality is obviously one-sided and anyone who disagrees is a manipulating liar" headline is both superfluous and self-destructive.


Coming up next: "Timothy McVeigh vs. Clinton, where we consider both sides or the issue".

Would be ridiculous and offensive, no?

It's really not all that different...


Initial impression of The Factual from new visitor. There should be some examples above the fold, right there without entering an email.


You can certainly see how we rate all articles here: thefactual.com/news. No email required.

On our main homepage (landing page) we've found it better to ask for email because our daily newsletter is even more polished than our site as it adds an editorial layer atop the ratings/curation so as to deliver a world-class product. (And, in a bit of marketing it seems like preserving some intrigue is better... though I haven't A/B tested this).


Found that link in your bio - very helpful.


Thanks, that is a very different first impression. Is there a reason it is not obviously linked to from the landing page?


We found that our best retention is the newsletter. Most convenient for our target audience and even higher quality than our site due to some editorial oversight. So that's what the home page encourages.

When we had people go straight the site (thefactual.com/news) it did not convert as well to the newsletter and retention wasn't as great. But to be honest that was a while ago when I tested this. Maybe we should revisit.


How and where does The Factual source unbiased news?


Hi there. Our thesis is that all news has bias (heck even Matt Taibbi admits he does) and that's ok. What is most useful to the public is (1) reporters that strive to be objective and offer as much context as possible (2) a few different viewpoints across the political spectrum so that you see the same story framed different ways.

By curating the above on each topic our readers tell us they get closer to the unbiased story.


It's awesome to be optimizing for less bias, I am just curious what news streams you draw from. Do you have a list of publishers, like NYT, WaPo, NY Post, ... and/or do you draw from YouTube, or do you tap into AP and Google News.

It would also be awesome if you could post a few examples of news you consider 'minimally biased'.


We rate about 1000 news sources - from NYT, to wire services, down to niche sites like War On The Rocks. I mention that last one because it rates very highly in its area of focus: foreign policy, often in topics relating to war/defense. Indeed, because our algorithm emphasizes expertise rather than credibility you'll often see specialist sources outrank mainstream generalist sources.

As for best unbiased sources, here's a blog post that draws from our dataset: https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-best-nonpartisan-ne...

There are also great sources on the left and right, namely: https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-most-credible-conse... https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-most-credible-liber...


According to the website:

> The Factual automatically analyzes how credible a story is based on diversity of sources, factual tone of writing, author's expertise, and more.

It also costs $5/mo, FWIW.


Correct. Although nearly all our users choose the $20/year plan.


And infinitely better than $20/mo that NYT asks for.


Yes, I can vouch for this model. I currently use The New Paper, but I will probably try other similar services (like yours) just to see which if I like any of the competition better.


Thanks for making this service! I'd be more interested in it if there were a weekly option that just rolls up the most important stuff from the week instead of daily - I try not to read the news everyday for my own sanity. Is that in the works at all?


Pasting as a reference as it came up deeper in the thread. https://www.thefactual.com/news


Wow, nice concept. It looks promising.


Ideas for a fix:

#1 - Allocate a share of money and create a BBC like news source totally un-biased and pay the reporters extremely well(to attract good reporters). Have decent UI on the web, well produced shows and a mandate that both sides are allocated equal time.(PBS does this but is not very well produced, it needs more money)

#2 - Have "Bias" flags mandated on each article(or visual bubbles on TV), reflecting the authors political persuasion. This would be similar to responsible business reporting where the author states whether he has a position(shares) in the company or industry he reports on.

#3 - Require that whenever a article is posting a position, a opposite view point is required to be tagged next to said article.


Totally on board with #1. An indirect fund from donations is a good way to divorce fundraising from behavior (click-bait won't attract many charitable donations). In fact, I'm beginning to think non-profits are a good way to fund social network services while avoiding exploitative advertising and rampant data collection.

#2 isn't too bad, but how about only listing information related to the content? I don't care about the author's political leaning for an article on good travel destinations. I might care about which countries they or their family have lived in (e.g., a South Korean immigrant comparing trips to South Korea and Japan).

For #3, it should be an alternate position, not opposite. "Showing both sides" is how we've perpetuated climate denial. There is much debate to be had on the topic, but showing the "opposite view" too often leads to cranks being given air time.


Seems like #2 would have the opposite effect by prioritizing the author's political leanings rather than the issues.

Facts aren't actually Democratic or Republican, and there's not a single consensus opinion for each party. But slap a party or ideological label on an article and it will appear to indicate the article is aligned with that bias label (even if it isn't). And people will conflate the contents of the article with the appropriate side even more than they already do.

What might be more successful would be to include a neutral fact check-style notice like "This article presents the majority Republican opinion on ___" or "This article uses widely-disputed claims to justify a fringe Democratic position". That would provide more context to the actual content of the article and how to interpret it.


the bbc is pretty biased. there is no totally unbiased source


>If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.

Is this pressure coming from editors or from readers?

Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump lost the election truly have been able to have been "perceived as neutral arbiters" by Trump supporters?


> Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump lost the election truly have been able to have been "perceived as neutral arbiters" by Trump supporters?

Considering Trump and his supporters are a symptom, not a cause (although at this point it's a feedback loop) of our broader post-truth environment, I think the minimum is a newspaper with a track record of neutrality (i.e., it's not sufficient for any reasonable person to completely change their opinion of NYT or MSNBC or whomever based on a single dispassionate piece). I think the extent to which our society esteems neutral institutions ("neutral" within some reasonable error margin) is the extent to which we can see a reversal of Trumpism (and probably the woke progressivism that preceded it). There's always a fringe, but I yearn for the days when extremist viewpoints were (rightly) marginalized.


I dunno, Trump supporters were rejecting Fox for projecting Biden wins in close states. The Fox decision desk has perhaps the best track record on calling elections (maybe tied with AP). If not even a right-leaning institution that was formerly adored can sway them, what hope does a neutral one have?


Alternatively maybe we would have far more (and/or far more zealous) election conspiracy theorists had Fox not reported fairly. More importantly, I don't think an isolated event is going to bring anyone back from post-truth-land, whether they're Trump supporters or woke progressives. We need a society that consistently esteems institutions that pursue objectivity.


> Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump lost the election

It would only need to reports the facts, WP-style, about what various election officials/authorities say.


A gaping hole in this article is the fact that >90% of the media is comprised of culture war sellers in favor of the left (not to mention all FAANG companies), and <10% in favor of the right.


So, I have to preface this with saying that I am not a particular fan of the guy as a businessman or a President. Having said that, between this "fact check" from NBC https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/785299709342654465?lang=e... in October of 2016 and CNN commentator Donna Brazile being "totally not sorry" that she leaked the debate questions and topics to Clinton's campaign in November of 2016, it was very clear that this guy was never going to get a fair shake from the media, and that any and all reporting of him must be carefully examined.

I don't have it on hand, but remember that whole bit about him calling veterans losers and weak? Yeah, so if you start digging for the full transcript, you get to see just how taken out of context that was. I just can no longer trust the established media not to have a huge agenda and be constantly on the lookout for a "spin."

Trump may have been an emabarrassment, but the media has actively made me lose faith in reporting. He'll be out of the office soon, but my ability to trust in reporting has been forever tarnished. Decades of reputation have been squandered by these acts.


The Donna Brazile issue did highlight how callous the media has become. It seems there was no fallout from her making such a dishonest act ... basically openly cheating the election process.

Ironically, she now works for Fox News.


> Fox’s business model has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline.

Okay, so what is the truth? Isn’t that what everybody’s looking for? Give an uncontroversially factual explanation of that and people will start looking for solutions instead of problems. Unless they are the problem, and then they’ll be forced to engage in all-out propaganda war to convince people otherwise.

It seems to me that the truth is usually cheap and unprofitable. So if you want to know what the biggest lies are, see how much is being spent to convince you of something. Truth may often be associated with somebody losing a lot of money. These are GDP destroyers, stock market crashes waiting to happen. We’re all socially invested in preventing them.


> We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent.

Like PBS? Turns out if you’re not sensationalist, and others are, you lose viewership.


i’ve come to the conclusion it’s impossible to be unbiased and to pretend it is, is a total farce. the best we can do as readers is read multiple sources from different sides and try to piece together the truth from it. journalists are 99.5 percent hacks, we shouldn’t pretend otherwise

my personal preference would be a world where we just have like reuters and AP sources that try to give purely factual info..(though even they are biased somewhat) and then just substack. we don’t need nyt


I think the media is again just a symptom, the major problem in the US is the two party system which is a result of the electoral system and the electoral college in particular.

If there are more than two "teams" it's much more difficult to just be against the "other side" and you can see that while other countries certainly have their problems, places with multiparty systems have significantly less "hatred" against the "other" side.


Matt Taibbi has never heard of public and nonprofit news?


nonprofit != nonpartisan


KQED, which is the default (to my knowledge) news/radio station is exactly this. Nonprofit, but definitely left leaning.

I'd love if there was an alternative in the Bay Area, something truly more neutral or at least right leaning so I can listen to both points of view.


I agree whole heartily, but I think we should go bigger. I think we should create a fourth branch of government, call it the Informational, whose job is to independently educate and inform citizens of matters relevant to their citizenship. This could be modeled after the supreme court, that is life-term (or reasonably long) nominations with a public vetting process.


That's a great idea. We could call it the Ministry of Truth.


I take it you think it is a stupid idea. Why? I am genuinely interested.


I see the nomination process becoming an even greater circus than Supreme Court nominations.


I agree. I think there's a real market for an _extremely_ boring news site. 4-5 paragraph articles, sentiment analysis to be "neutral", some way to link to context and history on topics, and links to source documents. Same for weather. Here's the forecast- no flashing text and stupid names for every single storm.


I believe we should just reinstate journalistic ethics that have been suspended.

Also ban news outlets from social media.


WikiTribune is an attempt at this new "third party" media system described in this article. WikiTribune has since transformed into https://wt.social.


I have a somewhat pessimistic view that the profession of journalist should be split into two, similar to lawyers:

1. Government journalists (the equivalent of prosecutors). Not getting any explicit special protection, but that's not the point. Your job is to present government's position and actions.

2. Anti-government journalists (the equivalent of advocates). Those would get explicit special protection. You could only be one as long as you're not taking government money. You would be obliged to control the government.

They should have completely different job titles.


In the context of government, is this not the relationship that already exists between the communications teams of politicians and (good) journalists?


I've been working on this idea of a news site that presents the events of the world in two columns. In the first column is a dry, wikipedia like list of events and facts, with references to how those facts were established, or who testified to the fact. (with lots of links thorough to related events)

Then in the second column is the commentary. Its where "journalists" and the community discuss the event.

A clear separation of "reality" and our interpretation of that reality.


In a fast-moving globally-connected world, even the choice of facts to present is an editorial decision, and subject to bias.


That's where the commentary comes in, if a reader feels something important is missing, we'll have some mechanism for that to be verified and added.


How do you order the column with dry information in it? How do you choose what gets included in that column and what doesn't? Where is the information for that column even coming from, are all sources of info equally trustworthy?

It's going to need editing no matter what, and any process of editing introduces bias.


I'm thinking chronologically. I didn't mention that the chronological list of events is drawn from a database filtered by time, location, person ect. (but yes, what is in the database? And if there is too much in the database, how do you filter it so it can be digested.)

Data goes into database by trusted people of some sort with something to lose if the data is misleading or inaccurate. Employees for a start, them something larger once the system is working. (Wikipedia / Wikidata is not perfect, but it mostly works. )

There are other challenges like identifying interesting events of the day, and promoting them to be headlines.

I don't think there is a perfect solution, but I'm interested in exploring possible solutions.


This is just like the "fact checkers" that didnt last long.


When you get the dry fact that the capital was stormed by right-wing extremists, alongside the "dry fact" that it was actually an anti-fa false flag, how do you choose which to run, how to order them, etc...?

The right in the US right now sees "dry facts" as biased. Thinking there is a middle ground in them right now is missing what is going on.

Your solution either leads to giving conspiracy theory and lies legitimacy, or having to make calls that will be seen as biased anyway.


Tired argument because people seek out the 'news' they want to hear. Some iron-clad, dull, unbiased news channel isn't going to solve anything. People like Taibbi will just pretend it doesn't exist as it gets poor ratings.

We have right leaning people jumping ship from Fox News for not being pro-Trump enough. I would love for people like Taibbi to address how to reach those people, not rehash the same tired argument of complaining about the media.


I feel like "The New Paper"[0] fits the bill of what the author wants. It's neutral (i.e. unaffiliated with either party), operates on an email distribution model, and strives really hard to keep news from being sensational. It also links to primary sources as much as possible. For example, in today's TNP email:

- Twitter permanently suspended President Trump’s account, citing "risk of further incitement of violence" (source). Several other social media and technology companies (including Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, and Stripe) took similar measures against President Trump, his campaign, and related accounts and websites.

That's it - that's all that's written on that particular event. No "interpretation" on what the implications on free speech or whatever are - that's left up to you, the reader. The source linked is Twitter's blog.

I've been using it for a few months now and I love it.

[0] https://thenewpaper.co/


i've used something called the "media bias fact check" to determine the left/rightness and reliable/unreliableness news sources are:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com

I have no affiliation with them, just perplexed by the same problems everyone else here is mentioning, and it has been helpful to use.

I also think it would be helpful if reporters listed their registered political party on their bylines, ie, "John Smith, Democrat/Republican/Libertarian/etc". Or if the TV reporters wore a sign stating as much.


"The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious."

After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the MSM and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not be negative. This went on for a long time.

This was on CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, and other MSM outlets.

The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.


They did. They really did (at least, some of them). And their outlets ran stories that were 95% negative about Trump anyway. They tried to "listen", to "understand", but they never listened enough to understand.


Seems like Trump played really well into the victim complex then - if you throw yourself behind a mostly-bad hollow asshole, and people point out "wow this person is bad", you can dismiss the substance of the complaints and just use it as reinforcing evidence that you're being victimised.

What happened to the days when these party leaders were decrying relativism?


For a long time I tried to understand why news organizations said he violated the law and did terrible things. No organization provided facts. It’s no surprise that I couldn’t find actual factual data to back up their statements. The thing in me that hungers for data and not allegations forced me to dig.

I never found anything.

I’ve concluded that people mask their feelings with ambiguity. It’s really just a matter I don’t agree with their policies, but can’t be enough of an adult to say so.

It took a few years before I decided to dig in. Now, I am surprised at the number of people who either lie or have been mislead.

Media manipulation is real.


One of the problems with your quest is that "violating the law and doing terrible things" are, despite everyone's best intentions, matters of judgement.

Let's take a trivial example: the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Did Trump violate this or not? If you're looking for a simple factual answer, you cannot get one, because this is a legal question, and will only ever (if ever) decided by an actual court case. There are arguments that he did, based on some data, and there are arguments that he didn't, based on beliefs that the data isn't relevant. Only an actual court case will ever come to a conclusion (and even that will be disputed by many).

There's a tendency for some of us (I include myself in this) to want the world to offer clear, black-or-white, yes-or-no, true-or-false answers to things. But the world doesn't offer this most of the time, certainly not in the realm of human affairs. There are no hall monitors or gods sitting on thrones to decide if Trump did or did not break the law or do terrible things. Only other human beings, whose opinions, clearly, diverge.


So don't report opinions as news.


They are inextricably intermingled, unless the "news" is reduced to completely predictable trivialities.

"The sun rose at 06:23 this morning" ... even to be able to agree about such a basic fact we have to agree on a definition of what "rise" means. Upper edge or lower edge of the sun clearing the horizon? Sealevel horizon, or any horizon? For some purposes, it may need to be related to civil, nautical or astronomical twilight.

To report on when the sun rose this morning in a reasonably concise manner, there needs to be some consensus on what sunrise actually means. As long as we all agree that for more or less all purposes it is when the upper edge of the sun appears at a sea-level horizon, you can report this "news" without much surrounding explication.

But if someone comes along and argues that sunrise should really be considered the end of astronomical twilight (rational, if at odds with normal practice), or that sunrise is just a theory of people who want to enslave us all (not rational, but not too far from the level of some what shows up as "argument"), someone who wants to report on the sunrise has their work cut out for them.

And this is just the sunrise! Imagine applying this to reporting about fiscal policy ...


I don't understand. These outlets were obliged to publish positive stories about Trump because they interviewed people who liked him? Wouldn't it be important to counterbalance anecdotal interviews with people you met on the street?


> After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the MSM and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not be negative. This went on for a long time.

If that is true - and I don't remember it that way at all - it clearly doesn't make a difference now.

> The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.

That's how news is consumed though, so what little reporting and journalism actually occurs can safely be ignored for the sake of his argument.


“and I don't remember it that way at all”

Wait...

“That’s how news is consumed... can safely be ignored.”

I think I found your problem. You don’t remember it at all because you ignored it. I wonder what else you ignore that causes you to be massively misinformed.


You misquoted me there. For the sake of his argument, all the actual journalism can be ignored.

Perhaps I'm indeed massively misinformed, but then again that is the problem. That problem doesn't disappear just because according to you all this more nuanced reporting exists. People just don't read it, it's not dramatic enough.


You don't remember it that way? Every national paper and magazine tied itself in knots to explain Trump as the result of economic anxiety among misunderstood white people who don't have a racist bone in their bodies, they just fly that confederate flag from their front porch for non-racism reasons.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-ris...

Here is a fair summary of the "real americans in diners" genre of post-Trump jounalism.

https://thecounter.org/trump-rust-belt-diner-presidential-ra...


Oh yes. I remember the stories. They read like reports of the first western anthropologists to reach the highlands of New Guinea in the early 20th century.

"Who are these strange and mysterious people who call themselves 'Iowans'? Why are they so different from we civilised folk? Tonight at 8PM, Sienna Cichlid has an exclusive report."


Indeed, I don't remember it the way you phrased it. Sure, such stories may have been written, but I don't remember them, so they must not have been a very prominent theme, unlike "Russian election meddling".

You're also feeding into the "basket of deplorables" view of things, which is an image constructed to explain Trump the way certain people want him explained: A convenient narrative that lets the reader claim the moral high ground effortlessly. Racists are easily dismissed, one does not need to bother hearing them out. Fast food for the mind.


They were front page and above the fold, well advertised, and main topics across radio, TV, and news papers. Across wildly different publications. If you missed it, you had to be ignoring it intentionally.


That's your version of reality. Mine is different.


They admit to only reading select headlines, and ignoring others. I think it’s safe to ignore them.


I didn't technically admit that, I'm saying that is what people generally do. I will admit to being people though.


No, I remember a lot of "they're all racists" - which you seem to also subscribe to, since you go out of your way to state the "confederate flag" line.

Plenty of people voted for Trump for non-racist reasons. You might try to understand why...


The cover shot of the Nat Geo link is of a woman standing before the confederate flag that flies from her own front porch.


A shot which they chose to head their characterisations of the white vote, hardly a good attempt at portraying them as "who don't have a racist bone in their bodies".

Or do you think the image is not cherry-picked? That a representative majority of white Americans fly the same flag?


I don't deny that such people exist. I deny that they are a significant fraction (> 20%, say) of Trump voters. A Nat Geo shot doesn't address that issue at all; it just paints a picture that "they're all like that".

And you seem to be trying to paint the same picture. And I'm pretty sure that you're wrong.


If the brand of your political party is “contains at most 20% confederate sympathizers” you have real problems.


Fair. But if your labeling of that political party implies 100% Confederate sympathizers, then your labeling is dishonest.


“ We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:

* not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;

* employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;

* embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;

* operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.”

This reads like a description of NPR to me.


No way. NPR is clearly aligned with the Democrats. You have to live in a bubble not to see it.


A lot of people conflate "NPR" with "public radio" in general. So your local public radio station may air some things that are "clearly aligned with the Democrats" but as an actual news organization, NPR News is as good as any out there. They take fact checking seriously, they issue corrections when they get things wrong. They take time to put things into historical context and they don't bend over backwards to give "both sides" to debates that clearly don't have two reasonable sides.

If it's so clear, find me a single example of NPR news being aligned with the Democrats in a way that is divergent from objective reality.


I remember hearing a discussion of affirmative action on All Things Considered. All of the guests on the show were in favor of affirmative action (so much for all things considered), and when the 'mismatch hypothesis' (which postulates that affirmative action may actually harm some of its intended beneficiaries by putting them in institutions where they are less prepared for the academic rigor than their peers) came up, the idea was dismissed out of hand as being outdated and debunked. This plainly misrepresents the state of the research, which has pretty conclusively shown that the mismatch effect appears in elite law schools and in STEM graduate rates.

When I heard this dismissal and noticed that no one pushed back, it made me realize that the guests and host were all ideologically aligned. I still listen to NPR, but I now know that they are much more biased than I previously thought.

To downvoters: do you doubt that this happened or think it isn’t an apt example of NPR being aligned with Democratic Party positions?


I didn’t downvote, but I am wondering if this happened. A quick search of NPR transcripts makes me think the last time the mismatch hypothesis was discussed on All Things Considered was in 2012 and it was actually taken seriously (it was the focus of the piece). Perhaps you are thinking of a different public radio show, and inadvertently proving my point that people are unable to differentiate NPR news with other stuff they hear on the radio.


I appreciate your trying to find it. Here's the link. [1]

The guest refers to the mismatch hypothesis, described by a Supreme Court Justice, as an "arcane argument" that is "really proven not to be the case". Then the other guest on the show laughed at the Justice (Scalia) and mischaracterized his statement. According to her, Scalia believes that "African-American people are stupid".

In reality, the mismatch hypothesis is about largely about preparation level. If you have equally intelligent students with large differences in academic preparation, the student that is less well prepared is likely to be harmed (in terms of GPA, class rank, likelihood to drop a well-paying major) when surrounded by other students that are more well-prepared.

If one of the guests or the host were even vaguely familiar with the concept, this mischaracterization would have been questioned.

I would also note that it is mischaracterizations like these (Scalia thinks "African-American people are stupid"!) that lead to further polarization. I would expect partisan framing like this on some news outlets, but it's pretty sad to hear it on NPR, on a show whose name implies openness to all perspectives.

1: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/11/459392702/week-in-politics-tr...


So your smoking gun is... an opinion piece from 2015 where the host didn’t contradict or challenge the opinions of the guests? I’ve heard lots and lots of unchallenged opinions from guests on NPR, many of them from conservative perspectives. It is not always possible (or even desirable) to be a real-time fact checker in a daily interview show.

So again, an example of bias in actual news reporting?


It's not an opinion if it completely misrepresents a well-known sociological phenomenon. I also never said this was the only example, but it was particularly egregious because the show purports to present multiple perspectives. But hey, it looks like you're pretty set on not believing others (even when they take the time to dig up the proof that your original comment asked for), so I'll sign off here.


You do understand the difference between opinion journalism and news reporting?


NPR News is dead center along with the BBC, Reuters, the AP, Christian Science Monitor, etc.: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings

If you think NPR News has a liberal bias, that may be because reality has a liberal bias.

Plenty of Republican politicians go on NPR for interviews.

NPR opinion and talk radio pieces are slightly left of center.


> because reality has a liberal bias.

I think I've read this multiple times in this submission, and I think you're the one saying it over and over again. Do you not realize you're quoting Stephen Colbert from a news satire show?

Have you just been regurgitating this for years and no one had the decency to point it out to you?


Pretty sure I have posted this exactly once. Not sure where you get off.

Satire has a way of making uncomfortable truths easier to hear by cloaking them with humor.


I agree. I'm a moderate liberal, but I'm aware enough to realize that NPR only frames debates in terms I agree with (and increasingly only in terms that people more progressive than myself agree with). Which strikes me as profoundly unjust considering they are government-funded. I guess I can't muster the short-sightedness required to celebrate the government's wildly disproportional endorsement of my own position. Of course, someone will make some dichotomous argument that it's the progressive position or literal Nazism.


America would be in a much better place if more people had your sense. Or perhaps most Americans do and we are just being driven insane because the nutcases are the ones that get all the attention.


NPR is not government-funded ... it is funded mostly by donations from wealthy listeners and corporations

“Only 4 percent of funding in fiscal year 2017 came from federal, state and local governments ...”

https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call...


I'd still consider something to be government-funded if they receive millions of dollars in funding from the government (wikipedia shows $200M in revenue in 2016). [1]

It is relevant that this is a small portion of their budget, but generally when someone thinks "this shouldn't be funded by taxpayer dollars" they don't stop caring just because the millions of dollars spent only cover a small portion of the entity's total budget. Typically these arguments are ideological/philosophical, not matters of degree.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR


Huh, fair enough. At that point we may as well pull that remaining 4 percent then. Clearly they’d prefer to go in a different direction anyway.


NPR is government funded, and was established by Congress.


Not NPR. Not even close.

We need dispassionate reporting of apparent facts, emphasis on equal time for both side of every issue/report, and zero editorializing by commission or omission.

This is a pipedream sadly.


To prod this a bit: Qanon is popular and growing conspiracy theory. Should a news organization covering it spend equal time detailing the supposed evidence of an international satanic pedophile ring as they do discrediting it?

If such a news organization became mainstream, do you think this would lead to people being more or less informed?

Regardless, I think the "zero editorializing" idea is self-defeating. As others have said; there is near infinite information and finite webpage space and broadcast time.


> Qanon is popular

Is that true though? What % of Americans support it?


What a disaster every thread about media bias is. People can’t see past the end of their nose about it. They’re all so locked into “my bias is the correct one” that even objective reality seems biased.


Of what NPR pretends to be. Maybe was, I don’t know I only got to the US in ‘07.

I remember how furious my professor was at Terry Gross for her (in his opinion rude) interview w/ Jimmy Carter. He otherwise loves Terry Gross.

But he’s a “liberal”, so he likes NPR. NPR is pretty brutal if you disagree with them and are well informed about a topic.

I had to stop listening to NPR years before Trump came along (yes, there was polarization back then) because they’d make my blood boil with, what I thought, has thinly veiled partisanship.

Some of their reporting is just grossly wrong. If they report on anything about Christianity it’s usually riddled with embarrassingly wrong statements.

And then there’s three editorial discussions. I’m an immigrant, and I’m embarrassed with NPRs obsessions with telling me how other people outside the US live. A little bit of it is very important, but after listening to NPR for about ten years I’ve learned nothing about the famous “meat and potatoe” Americans. My dad, who traveled to the Midwest for work for a couple decades taught me more about “fly-over” Americans.


That's the joke. We already have fact-focused, by-the-book journalism outfits that bend over backwards to present all reasonable sides of debate. These are always characterized as communist propaganda outlets by Trump's allies.


Sure, NPR and Axios exist. I think where Matt is wrong is that Fox, Salon, MSNBC and all the like need to be gone for a while. Their impacts will always overwrite whatever great accomplishments in truth and lack of narrative the other outfits work to establish because they're just another option to the average coffee pounding conservative or liberal looking to get their ideological rocks off on their break or in the car. These are the kind of people who describe nuanced views as "both sides" or claim they're watered down versions of "the truth".


> We already have fact-focused, by-the-book journalism outfits

Can you name them, and how you verify them as factual?


We already did. Multiple independent analyses of partisan bias in reporting agree.

Feel free to do your own research.


I was kind of asking jeffbee since he said it, but I see you provide a list there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25739773

Which analysts of partisan bias do you consider independent, and why?

For example, why should allsides.com be trusted? There seemed to be a point when "fact checkers" started to pop up all over the place, but they also had a liberal bias: www.politifactbias.com


Clearly the answer is a meta-analysis, but at a certain point it’s turtles all the way down and you need to judge whether you are being fed crap with a modicum of critical thinking.


"If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment."

This is pedantic and downplays what occurred.


Basically a bunch of beer belly rednecks who broke into a building after a protest/rally was over, yelled, and left in 6 hours with no plan whatsoever. Id hardly call that much of a planned out effort to overthrow a country.


Thank you for a very clear example of the exact downplaying that's been discussed.

> Basically a bunch of beer belly rednecks

False. Was a huge mix of people, including very well off folks, off duty police officers and former military. Flying to DC on a week day is not exactly a working class pursuit.

> broke into a building after a protest/rally was over, yelled

Amongst other things they were yelling that they wanted to kill the Vice President. Five people died. You can claim their shouts to kill the VP were bluster if you'd like, but personally I'm in no doubt that things could have gone south very, very quickly if they'd found Pence, Pelosi or anyone else. Just watching the video footage of the violence is enough of a hint of that.

> with no plan whatsoever

To an extent I agree with you here. It was a mess of anger and resentment, not a convert military operation. But there were also pipebombs, and the current theory is that they were going to be used to distract Capitol police. People arrived with plastic zip ties to be used as hand cuffs. It doesn't require the whole mob to be organized, it just needs a small group within that mob. Just because the plan was not successful does not mean there was no plan.


If this was a real orchestrated coup organized by ex-military/special ops citizens on the right, you would know it. This was a sloppy riot.


A sloppy riot does not predict people having IEDs on hand, or the zip tie hand cuffs.

You don't bring handcuffs to a peaceful protest, nor explosives.

You'd instead expect them to have gas masks and umbrellas


Yes ex-military and special ops fight wars with zip ties.


They did some photo-ops, knocked over some furniture, stole AOC's shoe collection, and took pelosi's lectern as a war trophy. It was a ruthless attack on our democracy.


K well the summer riots caused 20 billion in damage and destroyed peoples livelihoods and we didnt hear of a coup when the fringe stormed the white house. I have no problem calling out both sides but the hyperbole seems to go one way.


You're leaving out that they murdered a capitol police officer. People who were in the building have said they feared for their lives.

Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what happened.


I'm sure most of those people had weapons back at home. If they actually wanted to stage a coup, I'm pretty more than one police officer would have died.

>Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what happened.

Let's not overplay it either.


All they had to do was kill a single Democratic Senator in order to shift the balance of power in Congress. They did bludgeon to death a capitol police officer.

We're very fortunate that no member of Congress was taken hostage or killed.


Thats not even factually accurate, he/she would be replaced by another dem. It would not shift the balance of power.


No. Your attempted correction is factually inaccurate. In most states, the governor appoints a replacement when there's an unexpected Senate vacancy, and in only six of those states is the governor required fill the vacancy with someone of the same political party as the prior senator. In the other states, governors can and do appoint someone from their own party, so a Democratic senator from most states with a Republican governor would be replaced by a Republican. That's the case in Georgia, Ohio, New Hampshire, etc.

It's a real concern; given the current atmosphere and the 50-50 Senate split, it would not surprise me at all to see someone murder a senator in order to tip the balance of control.


> That's the case in Georgia

That was not the case on January 6--the only GA senator a week ago was Loeffler, as she retains her seat until the certification of the runoff results.


True, but I was talking about the future, not January 6.


Incorrect. Take the example of Sherrod Brown, Democratic senator from Ohio. If he leaves office or dies the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, picks his replacement. He is in no way obliged to pick a Democrat.


I suppose it depends but its highly likely as blue states tend to be thoroughly blue. As long as were taking about hypotheticals, what would have happened if they killed the president and VP when they stormed the white house? Nancy Pelosi is 3rd in line right?

afavour: This is a perfect example of the information void between the two sides or selective memory. During the summer riots the white house was stormed with people trying to get past the gates. The secret service moved the pres to a bunker.


In this hypothetical, why are people that want trump to be president killing trump so that Nancy Pelosi can be president?

What's their motivation here?


Edit now that you’ve changed the structure of your commend entirely: you’re just engaging in whataboutism now. You said that killing a senator could not change the balance of power. I explained that it was in fact quite possible, then you started discussing the protests that occurred over the summer (and the White House absolutely was not “stormed”, for what it’s worth!)


[flagged]


That isn't a substantive reply to my comment.

Taibbi frequently argues that "both sides" are equally culpable. "Both sides do it" is a lazy argument which fails to make reasonable distinctions between two very different groups of people.

In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".

We can do without this sort of pedantry. It's not sensationalizing the situation to call it an "attempted coup". It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the most accurate description.

A bunch of thugs armed with blunt weapons, firearms, and zip ties for securing hostages broke into the capitol building with the stated intent of preventing the peaceful transition of power. Let's not downplay it simply because they were unsuccessful. Let's not be coy with word games.


> In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".

This is a beautifully constructed strawman argument. Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media. Your mental model about tribes is purely incidental: it is tribeless, so the idea of "sides" even coming into it is your own construction. The reason Taibbi uses the tribalist framing to articulate arguments is because it helps readers understand the alternative sub-incentives that lead to different emergent phenomena grounded in the same root incentives.

The reason Taibbi's explanation should be taken seriously at this point, beyond it's intuitive explanatory power and first-principles oriented construction, is because it's proven itself quite predictive in the broad strokes of this march towards a civil war, even if it cannot predict the specifics.


"Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media."

There are really two underlying incentive structures.

1) The media as a whole is incentivized by news which provokes an emotional reaction.

2) Fox "News" and other right-wing news and opinion sources operate as a disinformation/propaganda arm, formerly for the Republican Party, and now on behalf of Trump.

In the first case, people are given news which is generally true, but tending toward the inflammatory and not necessarily newsworthy.

In the second case, there is a campaign of falsehoods and attempts to discredit perceived enemies.

These things are not the same.


You're behind the times. Fox News (and specifically people like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz) invented this weapon around the time of 9/11, but it's now commoditized technology and the Nash equilibrium seems to be that it just eats the entire media, at least when it comes to mainstream newspapers and television news networks.

A sure sign you are probably under its influence is if you see a clean partition in the way you mention. Those of us who see the propaganda for what it is, will try to convince you that you've lost the ability to recognize it in the narratives you agree with. It's hard to do, certainly, and nobody's perfect. And you don't have to believe us. I would say to apply Occam's Razor: could it be the case that the outlets you disagree with are transparent liars, but the ones you do agree with are the ones still applying, at least in general, journalistic standards? Or could it be that the incentives point in one direction, and the Fox News model has in fact eaten the world, but you haven't yet woken up to it? If one were brainwashed, seeing the world the way you do is exactly what you should expect. It doesn't mean you are, but you can't rule it out. It's a lot easier for me to rule it out when I can point to transparent lies from both sides, regularly, and dispassionately.

We're going to keep trying to explain it to you since if we don't become critical thinkers again we're fucked.


> It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the most accurate description.

Does anyone have an obligation to use "the most accurate description", and if so, when?

I'm not antagonistic to your POV, but I'm troubled by the sloppy language and lack of accurate descriptions. I am not sure how to reconcile my desire to avoid "coyness with word games" and my sense that accurate descriptions are really important.


Everyone should use the most accurate description possible, and in fact many people have referred to the attack on the capitol building as an insurrection, which I think is a fair way to describe it.

My issue with Taibbi is it seems like he is stretching for a way to say that both sides are equally culpable. That's the context of him arguing over word choice. On the one hand, you have people who are lying about the election and whipping people into a frenzy of rage and craziness. On the other hand, these people over here are really using the wrong word to describe the attack on the capitol building. These things are not the same.


It is troubling that Trump disputes the recent election. It was also troubling when Democrats and news media firms disputed the previous election, but more so because that went on at least until Mueller embarrassed himself during Congressional testimony. At least in this sense, "both sides" is just the truth.


> It was also troubling when Democrats and news media firms disputed the previous election

No substantial fraction of Democrats or the mainstream news media argued that the result that was certified and carried into execution of the 2016 election was not the proper, lawful result of the election.

There was an argument that the successful campaign had committed illegal actions in an attempt to manipulate the public in regard to that election, and that those actions had some effect. And there was an argument that that conduct rendered the successful candidate unfit for office. But there was no substantial segment of the Democratic Party (especially no substantial segment of the Democratic Party elites like members in government or the defeated candidate) that argued that that misconduct rendered the election result invalid, and there was no armed attempt egged on by Democratic elites by supporters of the Democratic candidate to obstruct the electoral vote or the transfer of power to the elected Republican.


The fact that this is where the argument has gone is revealing. The claims in 2016 was that it was for all intents and purposes stolen by a foreign adversary's interference, the investigative focus being if the candidate knowingly colluded to that end, not if it happened (many presumed it was the determining factor.) The claim in 2020 is that it was stolen by on-the-ground cheating, bending of the rules, exploitation of weaknesses in mail-in ballots, and, on the craziest track, a foreign government manipulating our election machines.

In both cases, voters on the ground lost trust in the outcome of their election and felt foul play resulted in their loss. Democrats felt that the Russian government tipped the scales. Republicans now feel that Democrat bad actors tipped the scales. The semantics you state here are far afield from the thing that matters: distrust in elections as a pure expression of the will of the people and our government and media's inability to unwind that distrust.

Where we sit now is those who feared foreign interference in 2016 are likely nowhere near they were in 2016 for two reasons. First, they had an investigation, and this probably mitigated a lot of people from believing their worst fears. Second, they've had another election which went their way and no such interference is being claimed, so at the very least one ought to conclude that this isn't enough to control an election.

Where we also sit now is the newly aggrieved parties (approximately a third of the country if you believe polling) feel the election's outcome was determined by fraud. This is a real problem that will not go away, and needs to eventually be unwound somehow unless you want a war. I don't know how it happens, just like I would have had a hard time predicting how the former one unwound. But just like we shouldn't have ignored the first one, we can't ignore this one or pretend suppressing it will solve it: it won't.


> The claims in 2016 was that it was for all intents and purposes stolen by a foreign adversary’s interference

There were some who made an argument like that (and given how close the states necessary to swing the election were, its not hard to see how if interference had any effect at all, it could easily have been a decisive one); and, sure, also the same kind of complaints occurred with regard to the Republican FBI director’s last-minute misconduct with regard to the handling of the Clinton email investigation, but for both of those it was in, at most, a moral sense of “stolen” with regard to the election; the legal allegations were never about an invalid election.

Even though the fact of foreign interference and the allegations of collusion (and, the much less complex facts of Comey’s behavior) were present well before the election, there was no issue raised in the electoral vote count meeting the minimum member-from-each-house requirement for challenging any states electoral votes. There were no lawsuits against states votes predicated on either of these objections. There was no rally with either the sitting Democratic President or the defeated Democratic candidate and other Democratic elites riling up a mob that proceeded to attack the Capitol to use violence to alter the outcome of the count based on the objections. There was no even remote equivalence, and the both-sides-ism here is not something anyone with even casual familiarity with the facts could plausibly argue in good faith.


All you're pointing out here is the obvious fact that when you are in a run-up to a civil war, the way it goes is one of continuing escalation and distrust, each side building off of the other's previous norm breaking. We had election distrust then, we have a more potent version now. We had violent riots this summer, we have a more potent one now that that norm is now broken. Both of the recent events have opened the door for the next logical escalation: creation of new domestic terrorism laws which will find a way to turn people who question the election or are associated in opinion of the most recent rioters as terrorists. And on the other side, bombs and other violent acts to destroy things like the assets of tech companies who are suppressing speech, and more violent, less "selfie-oriented" insurrectionist action into government seats of power. And in case you think I'm saying one side "started it", I'm not. I'm talking about the two prior events on this track, one of many tracks leading us down this road. Nobody can remember when it started, but it was obvious to me years ago that the hatred and psychological manipulation we are under was going to lead here. And we're not at the end, we're at the midpoint at best.

Hypocrisy is ignored, since to recognize it would risk having to admit profound judgement errors. And it would risk losing power, since the other side would capitalize on this as weakness and an admission that they were right all along. Better to dig in, especially if you can't imagine it will ever get to the point where people are breaking into your house and trying to kill you because of a sign that was on your lawn a few months ago according to Google Maps.

Those focused on accusing people (like me) of being biased by "both-sidsing" when we point out the now obvious pattern of escalation, the transparent memory holing or double standards and hypocrisy revealed by those trying to force the debate into minor semantic quibbles (like you are) to score a point about "who was more wrong" are the people they write about in the history books that contributed to the escalation and eventual collapse of civil society. They won't be writing about me, I assure you. Having been trying to talk sense into people on both "sides" now for years, and just seeing the tide of hatred roll over them all eventually as they retreat into their bubbles and sever relationships with the half of the country they see as (in the latest analogy) a virus, I'm about ready to give up and just be prepared to protect my family.


BLM protesters were mostly non-violent.

https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-vi...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ...

====================

In many instances, police reportedly began or escalated the violence, but some observers nevertheless blame the protesters. The claim that the protests are violent — even when the police started the violence — can help local, state and federal forces justify intentionally beating, gassing or kettling the people marching, or reinforces politicians’ calls for “law and order.”


According to an Economist/YouGov poll [0], two thirds of Democrats thought Russia tampered with vote tallies. Maybe they weren't taking close enough direction from their "elites"? It seems more likely they were taking a great deal of direction from e.g. Maddow. But this quibbling is silly. Democrats didn't like the last election, so they subjected us to three years of conspiracy-theory bullshit. Republicans didn't like this election, so they sat by and golf-clapped while a few thousand Q-anon whackos defecated in the halls of the capitol building. Of course I wish no one had died, but Republicans kill a lot more people than that every day (and probably did that day too) by not wearing masks during a respiratory pandemic. Republicans like killing; Democrats like bullshit. I don't like either of them.

[0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...




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