How biased is your news source?

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_Xenophon
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _Xenophon »

Good to know I haven't been missing much with The Federalist then.

Doctor Steuss wrote:Time is right of center?

My bias detector is broken.


I just noticed that The Hill is labeled right of center as well... that isn't even touching on how their rush to break stories occasionally leaves them with a factual gap. The longer I look at this thing the worse it gets.
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_EAllusion
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _EAllusion »

What's tricky about The Hill is it has a bunch of contributers who have a modest center-left bias and also some hardcore Trumpish conservatives who would be at home in the right wing propaganda bubble. How do you score that?

In terms of accuracy, they are all over the map.
_Xenophon
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _Xenophon »

EAllusion wrote:What's tricky about The Hill is it has a bunch of contributers who have a modest center-left bias and also some hardcore Trumpish conservatives who would be at home in the right wing propaganda bubble. How do you score that?

In terms of accuracy, they are all over the map.

It is almost like it is bad idea to try to pigeonhole a vast media organization into a tiny two-descriptor bucket.
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens
_EAllusion
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _EAllusion »

I read the Daily Kos explanation here and that does bring up a difficult problem. Daily Kos is firmly progressive in its perspective. But about 80% of it (in my made-up way of saying "most") is solid analysis and reporting so long as you understand the underlying perspective. Then the rest is kinda dubious. This is because of their contributor model that is part group blog, part news aggregation, and part solid journalism.

If we accept the argument that merely containing some - say 20% - misleading or fabricated information is enough to taint the rest - and I think there is value to that position - then this snares every popular conservative publication. They should all be orange or worse. There isn't a normal distribution of bias in American media this way. Current conservative culture has a problem with misleading / bad faith arguments and this infects almost every media source. The best you can hope for is more esoteric sources that lack this issue or trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.
_EAllusion
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _EAllusion »

Just bumping this thread.
_moksha
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _moksha »

Someone left the LDSfaqs videos off the bottom right side.
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_canpakes
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _canpakes »

moksha wrote:Someone left the LDSfaqs videos off the bottom right side.

The scale extends to the backside of your screen. You'll find them there.
_Res Ipsa
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _Res Ipsa »

The symmetry is what makes me suspicious. This isn’t some type of random sampling. There’s no reason to expect such a symmetrical distribution. The categories on the x axis are treated as discrete categories, when in reality they overlap. Entities that do a sustantial amount of original reporting are not listed as such, I assume because they also run wire service stories. But that throws a wide range of outlets in terms of original content into the same bin. I could quibble with the right left scale for a couple of sources, but I think the problems with the X axis are more serious.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

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_EAllusion
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _EAllusion »

Res Ipsa wrote:The symmetry is what makes me suspicious. This isn’t some type of random sampling. There’s no reason to expect such a symmetrical distribution. The categories on the x axis are treated as discrete categories, when in reality they overlap. Entities that do a sustantial amount of original reporting are not listed as such, I assume because they also run wire service stories. But that throws a wide range of outlets in terms of original content into the same bin. I could quibble with the right left scale for a couple of sources, but I think the problems with the X axis are more serious.


The Y axis wants to do three things at once. It expects that complexity of analysis, originality of reporting, and reliability move in the same direction at the same time. There's no reason to expect this and it's not true. The Enquirer is famous both for original reporting and unreliability. Jacobin is complex, but highly slanted. Fox News both routinely reports fabricated information and breaks news.
_subgenius
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Re: How biased is your news source?

Post by _subgenius »

Res Ipsa wrote:The symmetry is what makes me suspicious. This isn’t some type of random sampling. There’s no reason to expect such a symmetrical distribution....

why is there not a reason? It seems reasonable that if 10 people are all at the same event they will mostly have symmetrical report on that event.
It seems even more reasonable that if 10 people are mostly relying on 1 person for a report on an event that their subsequent repots would be mostly symmetrical.

Why are you assuming that wild and asymmetrical exaggerations should be dominating such a chart?
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