Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#111

Post by throwaway189262 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:58 AM UTC

hnhg wrote: post #8

Hadjimina wrote: post #2

Hi all, I have the feeling that in the last few years all political discussions have become more extreme. People from the left think that all the people from the right are evil and vice versa. Our filter bubbles don't help with this issue. That's why I built "Their news". With "Their News" you discover news from the entire political spectrum without any filter bubbles. My recommendation is that you try out different…

It's been fun playing around with it, thanks for putting this together, it's nice work. I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Also, I guess this analysis is taken from the perspective of the USA, given the chart on adfontesmedia. The definition of left and right…

In US at least, the population skews substantially left. Younger folks in the US lean quite left but don't vote.

While Republicans and Democrats are represented fairly evenly in elections, in population surveys that include non-voters Democrats have a ~20% edge.

For example, if only people under 45 voted in the last election, Biden would have won over 400 electoral votes. Perhaps getting the most in history.

So the definition of left leaning varies depending on whether you include all voters or the whole population.

This accounts for some of the reason why conservatives dismay media, tech, science, media, and schools being "run by the left". They are. The working and school population is younger and also votes less, and is very liberal compared to party policy positions.

The parties pander to the average voter, and news orgs to the average American. That's why so many news orgs "lean left"

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#112

Post by patinshuti » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

this is so cool

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#113

Post by Udik » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:35 AM UTC

eganist wrote: post #110

Udik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the methodologies are. There is no objective "left" or "right", the two camps are just defined in relation to a supposed center. Where you place a newspaper depends on your perception of what the center should be- and that's a political, not a factual choice- which depends on the moment, the culture, etc. I've checked the bias analysis of some Guardian articles in one of your sources. They strike me…

> I'm not sure what the methodologies are. https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc... https://www.adfontesmedia.com/white-paper-multi-analyst-rati... > They strike me all as— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ don't know what to tell you. It took me all of "ad fontes methodology" in google to find the links above, and their approach is objectively stronger than your or my gut feeling/opinion. And if you were to ask for m…

Sorry, you're right, I should have googled. Those methodologies don't strike me as particularly insightful- in the end what they try to do is to give some structure to the guts feelings of the (however chosen) reviewers.

Anyway, to go back to the original point, Ad Fontes puts the Guardian solidly in the left (22% to the left). Looking at a sample of rated articles, only 2 out of 25 are classified as imperceptibly to the right, while a few get close to the "hyper-partisan left" field.

Looking at specific ratings, an article titled "Scandal! Horror! Biden's press-briefing notes prompt rightwing outrage" (featuring a mocking tone and a clear indication of the "enemy" right in the headline) is given a -9 bias, the same rating of the newspaper as a whole. And "skews to the left" feels like an understatement.

(Ah, looking at the media bias chart, turns out that the New York Post (whose articles are sometimes censored by Facebook) would be less biased that the Guardian. Interesting.)

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#114

Post by concordDance » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #42

wffurr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading “their” news makes me scared and angry that people actually read this crap on purpose and presumably agree with much of it. How is that supposed to help pop filter bubbles?

That’s what popping a filter bubble feels like. I followed Jacobin and a bunch of other accounts of people I disagree with when I started on Twitter. Learning more about people who hate you, your philosophy, beliefs and identities does not lead to any great improvements in your life so I stopped. Yes, the politically engaged out group really is like that. They really do hate you.

I think it depends whether you are following more mainstream opposite-position sources or following sites whose entire purpose revolves around hating the outgroup. You allude to this with the reference to "politically engaged".

A place like the various incel forums tend to degrade into being about hating womem, coontoon genuinely hated "niggers" and the more extreme social justice places genuinely do hate cis "white" men. But if you can find less extreme places that have another purpose other than hating the outgroup, you'll be able to converse with more reasonable people who aren't caught up in virtue/hate spirals. Find the average incel/racist/sjw and they'll have more nuanced views and can actually be talked to without them just repeating how much they hate you.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#115

Post by southerntofu » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #102

southerntofu wrote: post #100

That's a pretty nice thing you did here, but i'm questioned by what you call "left". Left means abolition of private property (sharing of resources) so i was expecting more left-wing publications like (just to name a few) crimethinc.com unicornriot.ninja itsgoingdown.org theantimedia.com. Some like jacobinmag.com or democracynow.org appear on the project's README but i don't find anything from there on the site. Is t…

Left means abolition of private property It doesn't, that's just a misunderstanding of your own.

What's your source for debunking my definition? What's your own definition? According to social sciences, and according to Wikipedia:

> Left-wing politics supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in critique of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involves a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.[1] According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."

> Leftist economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and the welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning, to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council- and assembly-based self-managed anarchist communism.

Social-liberal keynesian economics, according to that definition, is very-moderate left politics (center-left), whereas marxism or anarchism are more on the left. See also politicalcompass.org to get more information on this topic you obviously don't know about despite trying to lecture me.

Also related, in the field of software engineering, we use the word "copyleft" precisely as in "abolition of private property" because copyright ensures monopoly on ideas and their expression (private property), whereas copyleft ensures they belong to everyone (collective property).

As an end note, please note that abolishing private property doesn't mean taking away people's possessions/belongings. We anarchists refer to that as usage-based property (not sure about translation, we use "propriété d'usage" in french) where property is based on needs and not on the dogmatic worship of a piece of paper (property title). That is a central disagreement with the marxists who believe a central State and its police ("dictatorship of the proletariat") should be in charge of deciding what you can or can't use, which is effectively the same as private property with the State as owner/enforcer of everything.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#116

Post by kingsuper20 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #95

kingsuper20 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

... What would the proper ultra-centrist way of characterising lying and insulting Mitch McConnell be? Like, are you expecting them to use euphemisms, or just not reporting on former presidents lying?

I was thinking about that. It's not so much being a 'centrist' but being able to tell the difference between reporting and interpreting. The best case would simply be a transcript.

I would start by saying that Donald Trump made claims about the election and finish up by stating the actual things that he said about Mitch McConnell. Being an adult, I'm quite able to figure out the context and severity of what he said. In addition, I'd probably use better sourcing than 'some unnamed guy we talked to'.

Like I said upstream somewhere, it would be fun to rewrite news articles to report news rather than to interpret news. Save the prose for editorials.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#117

Post by hpcjoe » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

kingsuper20 wrote: post #71

makomk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that mostly shows the limits of their analysis. The Guardian is basically the left-wing paper in the UK; I don't think there's anything to the left of them outside of fairly fringe, niche, and very fragmented publications. Internal disputes within the left play out within their comment section, whilst the news section often seems to attacking the right wing as its main goal.

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

CNN and its ilk haven't been news for a very long time. Moreover, classifying them as "middle of the road" is insulting to those of use who are centrist, middle of the roaders.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#118

Post by hpcjoe » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

kingsuper20 wrote: post #116

rsynnott wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... What would the proper ultra-centrist way of characterising lying and insulting Mitch McConnell be? Like, are you expecting them to use euphemisms, or just not reporting on former presidents lying?

I was thinking about that. It's not so much being a 'centrist' but being able to tell the difference between reporting and interpreting. The best case would simply be a transcript. I would start by saying that Donald Trump made claims about the election and finish up by stating the actual things that he said about Mitch McConnell. Being an adult, I'm quite able to figure out the context and severity of what he said.…

This.

We haven't had real news reporting in the US in a long time. The family and I watch BBC America for something more akin to news here, as the major "news" orgs in the US, are spittle inflected hyper-partisans. All of them.

This deeply saddens me, but I suppose it was inevitable.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#119

Post by hpcjoe » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #65

wffurr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading “their” news makes me scared and angry that people actually read this crap on purpose and presumably agree with much of it. How is that supposed to help pop filter bubbles?

Because if you actually stop to look at 'their' side and compare the news stories to 'your' side, you'll find both sides are full of exactly the same kind of loaded subjective language, usually written in the same adversarial tone and distort truth in some way to fit an agenda. In some cases you can literally take a story from one side, swap all the adjectives so they have the opposite meaning and congrats, you've no…

This.

Worse is watching otherwise intelligent friends parrot the crap you see coming out of the propaganda arms of each party or party faction.

They accept what they hear uncritically, as it feeds into their own beliefs (confirmation bias), without questioning the basis/interpretation.

I've found for me, the lowest anxiety manner in which to consume news, is generally, to not consume it. In most cases, news in the US is propaganda (left, right, doesn't matter). It is a set of partial observations passed through ideological filters and summarized according to the desires of the presenters. There are no US based "news" organizations that do not have stakes in the outcome of their blather.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#120

Post by pvg » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

southerntofu wrote: post #115

pvg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left means abolition of private property It doesn't, that's just a misunderstanding of your own.

What's your source for debunking my definition? What's your own definition? According to social sciences, and according to Wikipedia: > Left-wing politics supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in critique of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involves a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified i…

I don't think I've 'debunked' let alone 'lectured' but the sources you've found yourself don't support the assertion 'left means abolition of private property'. It's simply far too narrow an interpretation of a much broader label.