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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

>Snopes and Politifact

If these are your enemies, your political views might be a little further than "slightly" right of center.

Don't be hyperbolic and put the word "enemies" in my mouth. They are biased sources, though. Those who align with the left typically don't see it, because the organizations align with their biases... and because people rarely read beyond the "truth gauge" at the top of their articles.

Politifact will regularly find a small technicality with a right wing politician and use it to label something "untrue", but give a pass to left wingers. They are run by the Tampa Bay Times, whose editorial board endorses almost exclusively Democrats.

Snopes is just a mom and pop shop whose editorial team has about as much accreditation as your average blogger. The only reason they have any presumed credibility is because of how long the site has been around.

Could you cite some neutral sources to support your claims?

Unfortunately, most articles pointing this out come from right-wing outlets, because they're the ones incentivized to put in the work. I don't think that negates the facts (pun-ish unintended), because you can investigate the claims yourself. Here, though, is a Forbes article detailing how they engage is coverups of their own political punditry: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/27/in-200...

Isn't that convenient? The only sources that document this widespread, omnipresent bias against right-wing are far-right "news" organizations who themselves engage in endless propaganda.

BTW, that forbes article doesn't show any kind of determined bias on behalf of Politifact. I don't think you really grasp what the problem is when we talk about bias in journalism. Newspapers can make mistakes. Newspapers can even report totally incorrect information. What's important is that mistakes and erroneous reporting are acknowledged, discussed, and critiqued. It's like science -- peer review is the key. When an organization like Politifact makes a claim and is then subjected to legitimate critique and then it responds to such criticism -- that is the process working. This is very different from what happens with the far-right news complex though, isn't it?

>Those who align with the left typically don't see it, because the organizations align with their biases

Are you sure it's not the opposite? That you don't agree with them because they don't align to your biases? Again, based on your comments here, your viewpoint seems to be far more than "slightly" right of center. By comparison, if I were a hardcore socialist, I would find objections with much of the center-left/center/center-right news sources too, because they did not agree with my viewpoint. That doesn't make them less reliable, nor does it make their facts any less factual.

It is completely possible to hold opinions that don't align with facts. That doesn't mean those facts are untrue. It also doesn't mean your opinions are less valid, only that they're just opinions. The more extreme your views get to one side or the other, the more you're going to find reality seems to be biased against you. So if you find that reality seems to be biased against you and that troubles you in any way... you may want to reevaluate how close to center your viewpoints actually are.

What have I said that's solidly right? I've only stated that other organizations show bias. The irony is that you're applying your own biases to someone whom you've never met while denying bias.

I don't agree with most of what comes out of right-wingers' mouths. I'm a center-leftist that's tired of having half of the viewpoints "filtered". When Politifact labels something Trump said as "Pants on Fire", then buries the fact that he was 95% correct at the bottom of the article, I call that bias.

I'm not here to judge how you self-identify politically. I'm here to debate the idea that Facebook and Politifact and Snopes (for some reason? Does anyone actually take them seriously?) and everyone else is biased against the often-maligned center-right, but there's some conspiracy where no one can talk about it unless they're far-right which of course no self respecting liberal would believe. And even Spotify is pushing liberal playlists, and Twitter never bans David Brock's bots, and everyone is out to get those center-right guys instead!

The idea that the mainstream media is biased against conservatives is an argument that just won't go away. At some point people who read the NYT or WSJ and say it's far too liberal may have to accept that their definition of "center" is skewed. And people can make mistakes or have opinions without there being any inherent and insurmountable political bias involved.

I apologize for assuming you were conservative, I didn't realize you identify as a liberal. It was a judgement based on the fact that you're claiming the very-much centrist mainstream media is too biased toward liberal news, and Facebook is too biased towards liberals with the very-much centrist mainstream media outlets, and YouTube is too biased against center-right figures without mentioning they demonetize controversial left-leaning channels, too. It sounded exactly like many far-right extremists I've talked with in the past, and again I apologize for that inference.

I don't think this conversation is going anywhere productive and we're getting dragged from the original topic, so I'll just finish by re-stating my point that if everyone is biased against your completely centrist and moderate viewpoints, your viewpoints may not be as centrist and moderate as you thought. This applies to both sides of the aisle.

> everyone else is biased against the often-maligned center-right, but there's some conspiracy where no one can talk about it unless they're far-right

Perhaps the issue is that people talking about it, regardless of their actual beliefs, are labeled "far-right". Hell, even Stephen Pinker has been called "alt-right" at this point.

> At some point people who read the NYT or WSJ and say it's far too liberal may have to accept that their definition of "center" is skewed.

Or perhaps the Overton window on what is considered "progressive" has moved left. For example, ten years ago, senators Clinton and Obama voted for a border fence.

> the very-much centrist mainstream media is too biased toward liberal news

Did you read the Podesta emails? It was example after example of mainstream journalists going out of their way to curry favor with the Clinton campaign. Once again, I think the Overton window of "mainstream progressive" views has shifted. For example, where are the Blue Dog Democrats anymore?

I would invite you to question your own biases.

Don't know about Snopes, but Politifact has a well documented bias.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/16/running-data-politifact-...

Just for the sake of everyone reading this, I'd like to point out the The Federalist is a far-right publication that until recently had a section devoted to "black crime" and just a few months ago published an article defending a politician who was accused of the sexual assault of several underaged girls.

I would take their claims of bias with a grain of salt.

It was the first result on Google. Regardless of what you think of the site as a whole, their statements in this specific article hold up well enough in a vacuum and they provide enough evidence and give good justification for their reasoning. The examples given are particularly damning.

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