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Comment by neverartful | Hacker News Reader

Good article. The author suggests that news in print is accurate. I believe that more times than not, it is more accurate than online news. However, it does not eliminate bias.

I get my news online by scanning CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and BBC. I view ALL news as being biased (online or print) and by looking at several sources I figure that the truth is always somewhere in the middle.

Some other benefits of printed news (even if still biased): the ads in print stay where they are. They don't hover over the article I'm trying to read and force the reader to click 'X'. They don't start playing video clips. They don't have ads switching in and out and moving around. Print also has no way of tracking what I read.

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How is this not just the golden mean fallacy? Just because two sources make different claims doesn’t mean the truth is equidistant between them, or between them at all since one source could be accurate and the other peddling complete bullshit.

In fact applying this system over time will just shift your view of the world toward whichever “side” is willing to tell more extreme lies.

You can often interpolate with this type of approach, skim three articles from sources with biases you know and the common facts that you would see in a formal fact finding will stay constant, but the commentary and opinions become obvious leaving you with the facts, what various groups think and a lot better informed to reach a useful understanding.

I don't know what other people mean by middle, but what I do is take the things that are agreed on by most organisations as probably true, and disregard the rest.

Source A: An abused elephant got revenge on its handlers today, striking back and making a break for freedom.

Source B: Elephant attack! 5 gravely injured, including a mother of 3, as a crazed elephant breaks loose. Authorities still investigating.

Source C: Minister for Elephants grilled over lax elephant regulations. Angry citizens are demanding to know why legislation had not been put in place to prevent this tragedy.

My take away: Something happened, people got hurt, an elephant was involved.

Me at the water cooler: You hear about the elephant thing? Pretty crazy right.

  what I do is take the things that are agreed on by most organisations as probably true, and disregard the rest

What I do is use the mainstream media to inform me of a general situation, then look at actual firsthand sources, then watch for patterns of which MM sources have patterns of spinning/lying on which topics. ("Firsthand sources" meaning actual text of legislation, police reports, transcripts, and such)

The "take things that are agreed on by most media organisations as probably true, and disregard the rest" strategy has had profoundly negative effects throughout history, such as in China, the Soviet Bloc before 1991, the USA through the 1960s, and Germany in the 1930s.

I go to firsthand sources, or at the very least more informative write ups than news articles, for things that are going to influence my decisions or that I have more than the minimum amount of curiosity for. That rarely has anything to do with News though. High level politics - particularly foreign (US for me), natural disasters, celebrity deaths, war progress, spy poisonings, sports results, etc all have very little to do with my life.

I specifically included the water cooler part because that's what Generic News is for me. Conversation fodder and entertainment. I can live with even the filtered down information I take from it being possibly wrong.

Source D: "Peanut consumption linked to violent outbursts"

Personally, I outright disregard a large number of sources - There's so much rubbish online that the 'middle ground' is extremely unlikely to be the truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

I have the same view of "the truth is in the middle." I supplement my news with itar-tass, xinhua, and irna to calibrate my view globally.

It's also an exercise of learning what ways other people view the world. How can you understand someone that only gets information from one channel if you don't know what that channel is saying?

Dialectics is a proven ancient method for gathering information. I agree it is very useful when you've got the time.

However, the sheer volume of today's information means that nobody has time for that in most cases.

The problem you have is with the view points that are simply not represented by any of those outlets - you can't compare several sources and find the middle for those things.

What kind of view points might be consistently ignored or misrepresented across multiple apparently differing media outlets?

Herman and Chomsky went into this with their propaganda model: the corporate establishment media will have a pro-corporate pro-establishment viewpoint.

All your sources there are heavily pro-corporate and pro-establishment, by the very fact they are funded by corporations (BBC is a bit different but it is influenced in similar ways)

Our mainstream media sources run (some of) the gamut of right to left, but have a consistent bias on particular matters due to their funding.

I always wonder about what things are not shown in the news at all or are seen as so minor as to not warrant an 'agenda' with significant coverage. I remember that I am not the one deciding what is important to show in media, someone else is. I don't like the idea of someone else training my mind on what I should be paying attention to and what should be important to me.

This is the real reason to seek out a diversity of sources, not a misguided pursuit of "neutrality" or absolute truth. Every media outlet is biased, and expresses that bias through their editorial decisions on what is "newsworthy."

Agree 100%. We're building a product to help people find multiple, credible viewpoints on news stories - at http://civikowl.com. (Apologies for the shameless plug but hope it's helpful to folks reading this thread).

I optimize for calm, dispassionate analysis of news.

I only get my news from print sources that charge money or have a clear funding model not primarily reliant on advertising: The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, etc. I used to read The Economist as well but there's only so much time I'm willing to allot.

I skip the daily outrage. I skip most editorials and opinion pieces. I can form my own opinions. Sources that report the news breathlessly or with shouting heads are out. Sources that rely primarily on Facebook shares to promote their articles are out.

I add to that mix a healthy dose of historical context.

That said, the truth is not always somewhere in the middle. Maybe it is between polar-opposite propaganda sources, but not between The Guardian and Breitbart.

The New York Times is not only "reliant on advertising" to stay afloat, advertising was its primary source of revenue for its entire history until 2012. Only for the past 6 years has advertising revenue not exceeded circulation revenue, and they'd go under without advertising revenue even now.

I said "not primarily reliant on advertising." Based on your post, the NY Times fits that definition.

The Guardian is reliant on advertising as much as subscriptions (though there is then the income from its trust investments and other assets, which are dwindling and at risk).

The BBC is reliant on the support of the UK government, who essentially control it's future.

Serious analysis of the editorial lines of The Guardian and the BBC show pretty consistent pro-corporate pro-establishment bias.

Again, I said "not primarily reliant on advertising."

The Guardian's readership revenue exceeds subscriber revenue[0]. BBC is taxpayer-funded. NPR relies on donations.

Serious analysis of the editorial lines of The Guardian and the BBC show pretty consistent pro-corporate pro-establishment bias.

Sure; so does The Economist. This is why I read multiple sources and then use my big animal brain to form my own opinion. :-)

[0] https://digiday.com/media/guardian-u-s-got-profitable-pivoti...

If the story, or viewpoint, is simply not available in the sources because of their common bias then reading multiple sources and making your own opinion won't help.

It's difficult to form an opinion about issues that are not presented to you.

> The author suggests that news in print is accurate

No, what he points out is that due to the nature of print news it is not subject to all of the the problems of ‘instant’ news and social media.

It’s never perfect, but it’s clearly more likely to be accurate, with fewer malicious and unsupported details masquerading as facts.

> I get my news online by scanning CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and BBC. I view ALL news as being biased (online or print) and by looking at several sources I figure that the truth is always somewhere in the middle.

Frankly, these are all sources which don't disagree with each other very much, fundamentally.

Factually? No.

On how they present those facts and the co text the provide for understanding? Quite a bit sometimes.

Also, the amount a story is promoted sends an implicit signal as too how important you should view it, and that's often different for different sources as well.

I don't go through as many sources, but I'll often look to see how Fox News is presenting something compared to WaPo, and there's often quite different presentations. Sometimes I have to search a little deep for what one network considers big breaking news on another network.

It's a more subtle problem than some people think.

Not just factually. They have a lot more shared assumptions with each other than independent news sources do.

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