The glorious promise of the post truth world (Andrew Odlyzko) https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=3061712
Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
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Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#12I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things,
This is a big issue. But at the same time - it's not clear to me what the solution when every side is pushing hype rather than news. How do you publish an "opposing take" on something the other side is publishing that isn't real in the first place? It's not ideal to even acknowledge lies.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#13I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how only 1% of American film characters are identifiably Muslim; however, nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious and important points of context, but the article doesn't even broach them.
(According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [how they are portrayed][2])
Worse, this seems to be increasingly prevalent in the academy as well. Indeed, the study cited in the article (from University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative) also doesn't mention these points of context and the paper is pretty overtly propagandist.
[0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/movie-characters-muslim-riz-a...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
[2]: http://decentfilms.com/articles/hollywood-religion-problem
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#14I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
"They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives"
Check out Counterspin, from the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).[1]
They monitor mainstream media and critique it from a left-wing perspective.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#15I didn't know about https://www.theflipside.io/latest-issue which compares news coverage of left and right leaning sources. Anyone know more sites like that they can recommend?
Not sure I'm a fan of this site in general, but I do like their list of sites at https://swprs.org/media-navigator/.
I've picked up some great regular reads from that list.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#16Nothing wrong with reading biased news sources. I think the difference is one should read sources that: 1) are upfront with their bias and 2) argue from a more neutral perspective. You’ll learn something reading a liberal or conservative argue why their position is correct versus then other side. You can usually distinguish these article because they fairly state the other side’s position. You won’t learn much readin…
It's not just how biased they are, I'm having issues with how little they're about news and how much about pure clickbait. I used to think up until recently, that CNN was a legitimate (left leaning) news source but it's all "watch this person react to that person saying something" and amazon product recommendations for stuff no one needs.
It has been going on for a while. Many of them have gone to the hot take reaction style opinion pieces. CNN copied the Fox 'formula' to try to get ratings. The 3 panel yell at each other format with maybe some news possibly scrolling at the bottom. It is not news. It is opinions presented as 'facts' when they are usually curated opinions to hit market share. The stuff before about 2010 was better disguised but it was still very similar to what you observe. Little news, lots of opinions. After that point I think they just stopped bothering to disguise it much.
It is kind of 'interesting' to watch but you are not going to get much out of it. I cut a bunch of that sort of 'news' out of my life. It was not giving me news but curated opinions to have. I found my stress levels were so much nicer.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#17I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
www.allsides.com
They compare similar headlines and also show you what you might have missed because one side doesn't even surface the headline
Edit: this article is about allsides, if you read it
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#18I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
Ive recently started reading the Tangle newsletter. It’s a daily drop that focuses on 1 topic and provides the left, right and their take on an issue.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#19I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
Google News gives you precisely this portfolio of vendors. Why would anyone subscribe to a single news vendor? I'd also advise adding WION, Al Jazeera, Axios, and The Guardian + BBC.
Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
#20I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…
> They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives
I remember seeing Twitter chatter from the right re: the Fauci email dump, and so I went on various liberal outlets to try to get the left-wing perspective, and it was complete crickets.
Especially when it's something I can't just read and form an opinion on myself (Fauci's email dump was absolutely massive), I depend on journalists to accurately summarize and contextualize primary sources. And it's really hard to get a straight take when one side won't even bother to write a "this is a nothingburger, here's why" article.