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Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#131

Post by uncle_j »

pjc50 wrote: post #125
uncle_j wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not in the UK Conservative Party but I actually know a few people who are and I hear enough of what going on in the party. I don't particularly like the conservative party however I signed up for account because of egregiously wrong you are. a) Various leaders agreed to go on a show. Boris Johnson doesn't have to go on the BBC and the BBC can interview who they wish. Andrew Neil likes to make fools of people on…

> I am using some fairly simple word analysis techniques (most of the effort is scraping the data from these sites and deciding what constitutes a real news story) and most of the language on the BBC and the Guardian are similar. I suspect that most of them just copy and paste stories tbh. There is a more serious underlying problem you've spotted, which is "jounalism as stenography". Lots of people can put out press…

> This can be abused by bad actors to get obvious or difficult-to-refute falsehoods into the public memetic consciousness by repeating them.

This is exactly why I started the project also I know there are hit pieces that are coordinated between the news-sites. I wonder how much other news that is reported is also coordinated reporting. However I have no direct proof of this and I cannot start from trying to prove something that I suspect. First I need to collect and analyse data fairly.

So far I've just used newspaper to do the hard work of scraping for me (https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper) some basic filtering techniques e.g. I discard everything that has a question mark at the end of it (Betteridge's law of headlines and an MySQL to store articles etc. Then I run the second script to do some basic string analysis. I am going to be building a small web app to display the results.

So far it is early days (It about 4 or 5 python files and a config file) and I have got two other projects I am working on that probably need completing first.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#132

Post by MrFantastic »

ljw1001 wrote: post #56
kristopolous wrote: post #28

I try to avoid it. It's too much of a time sink and there's almost zero pieces of actionable information. I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.

This is why we can't have nice things. Like democracy. But I also have to limit my exposure to political news. Otherwise I get too depressed.

I don't think the for-Profit 24 hours news channels are helping Democracy.

With that much talk time they have to speculate about what's actually going on. When they speculate wrong it's labeled "Fake News".

Currently USA news media creates division to get eye balls.

Reading a summary of the news weekly keeps you just as informed at watching 24/7

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#133

Post by LinuxBender »

simonsarris wrote: post #126

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

This is the best comment I have seen on HN in a long time. I agree with everything you said, but that isn't the reason this is the best comment. I appreciate that someone else knows what things last and what is just short lived dopamine highs. (news drama, politic drama, etc)

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#134

Post by eric_cc »

hartator wrote: post #82
ljw1001 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we can't have nice things. Like democracy. But I also have to limit my exposure to political news. Otherwise I get too depressed.

You don’t have to follow news to make good political decisions. If people read philosophy as the same rates they follow fake political drama, we’ll be in a better place.

Can you imagine if kids were taught logic, philosophy, and psychology at school? It would be a different world.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#135

Post by eric_cc »

cryptoz wrote: post #61
kristopolous wrote: post #28

I try to avoid it. It's too much of a time sink and there's almost zero pieces of actionable information. I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.

> there's almost zero pieces of actionable information. I don't agree with this. The news is filled with actionable information. If nothing more than constant reporting of problems, many of which could be solved with new businesses - there is value in knowing about that if only to be better positioned to start businesses. The world is full of people in pain, and often the news reports on that. That is actionable info…

How many times in your life have you personally watched a news story about somebody suffering that caused you to leap off your couch and take action?

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#138

Post by omarhaneef »

There was this study a while ago about how readers stuck to the bubbles they knew. So conservative readers read Drudge Report, and Liberals read Huffington Post.

However, there was one news source that their network analysis had found to be read widely by both conservatives and liberals: the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

I don't know if this is still true, but its worth a browse.

Other than that, I agree with the sentiment here that NYT and WaPo at least go through the effort of fact checking.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#139

Post by a3n »

peteforde wrote: post #101
kristopolous wrote: post #28

I try to avoid it. It's too much of a time sink and there's almost zero pieces of actionable information. I know it's offensive to claim it's merely entertainment but in concrete terms there's no material difference resulting from tuning into daily banter that's any different than watching some serial drama on television.

I understand why you'd reach this conclusion. I would like to offer another viewpoint for you and others reading this to consider. Simply put, you are underestimating the impact you have on those around you. Every media literate and well-informed critical thinker has the ability to dramatically change someone's perspective. Not just by knowing what to say, but even more importantly how to listen. Empathetic 1:1 conve…

Has any racist uncle ever been turned? Or is that also a waste of time and effort?

I do agree that a responsible citizen must stay informed. But you need to direct your efforts to the possible and impactful.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#140

Post by jrockway »

threatofrain wrote: post #115
chrisweekly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

conservative bias

Financial establishment kind of conservative, not what many would think of American conservatism in general.

I disagree with that. The stuff from the newsroom is basically identical to what you'd read in the New York Times, and doesn't seem very conservatively biased. Put the NYT's CSS on there and you'd not think anything was out of place. There is a little bit more of a focus on "business" articles; what company is buying what other company, how well the semiconductor industry is going to do this year, etc. I never see that in the NYT... but that is certainly not a conservative bias. It's just what they choose to cover.

The editorials are what you'd expect in a conservative newspaper. 50% of them are rah rah about how great Trump is (today's sampling: "Trump Finally Fires Back at Iran"), and the other 50% is how taxes are evil (today's sampling: "How Tariffs Hurt Manufacturing").

I am not sure who reads these or why newspapers pay these opinion columnists / editorial boards. They are always so extreme that they just drive readers away and let them brand the newsroom as "fake news" or "biased", when in reality the newsroom and editorial boards don't even talk with each other. The NYT did a series recently about how the editorial board and opinion columns operate, and it solidified in my mind that they shouldn't exist. It just lowers the reputation of the news-gathering portion of the business, as people associate an editorial they disagree with as bias in the news-gathering.

I read both the WSJ and the NYT because people on HN had me convinced that one was more biased than the other and that I was missing out on deep insights perpetrated by some sort of cabal. A year of reading both has told me that the conspiracy theories are not accurate. Both seem happy to hold the government to account. Neither routinely fabricate stories. You can subscribe to one or the other and not miss a thing. Don't read the editorials unless you are super liberal or super conservative and want some porn along with your morning coffee.

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