Comment by icu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icu | Hacker News Reader

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I still find it useful to read mainstream media, even 'free' publications like Metro and the Evening Standard in London. What I do is not read them for news per se, but a sort of high level scan of what the publication's bias is. What narratives are being pushed? How has the publication ordered, or prominently displayed articles? What news is completely omitted?

For example, no mainstream media outlet in the UK covers Al Quds day in London (absolutely nothing about this on the BBC or print media). Facts on the ground at the most recent (and previous) marches is that there is a lot of Hezbollah flags flown.

Another example is the BBC’s treatment of Brexit on three flagship panel shows, Question Time, Politics Live and Any Questions where Remain commentators outnumber Brexit commentators 3 to 1.

In this instance, Bloomberg seems to be wanting to push the 'Huawei is spying on you' narrative as well as 'Proton Mail isn't secure' narrative.

Make what you will of the points above, maybe they mean something, maybe they don't. I just keep an open mind, try to think for myself, see things from different perspectives, and do my best not to fall for my own cognitive biases.

I still use Proton Mail, and I trust their service more than GMail (I migrated from GMail to Proton Mail), but it's a nice reminder not to trust any corporation too much or get complacent with security. I really don't feel like rolling my own encrypted email solution so the question is, "Who am I willing to trust the solution to?" Ultimately I'm accountable to myself.

As for media bias, sometimes it is blatant, most times however I find it subtle. Either way it is pervasive. Unless you are scanning for it, I imagine it is incredibly easy not to think for yourself.

> Al Quds day in London

From what I can tell, the March on this day tends to attract less than 500 people. So lack of coverage is not a indication of BBC bias.

Regarding Brexit, Question Time seems to have Nigel Farrage on all the time, despite his lack of electoral success.

Still, I decide to take a look at last week's panel for you. And here is what I found:

Kwasi Kwarteng - Pro Brexit

Emily Thornberry - Remain

Layla Moran - Remain

Ian Blackford - Remain

Iain Dale - Pro Brexit

Richard Tice - Pro Bexit

No huge anti-Brexit bias in evidence.

Well Al Quds day might be perceived as news worthy due to Hezbollah being officially considered a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom along with the United States, the European Union, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Israel, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia to name a few.

Considering London has suffered from multiple ideologically possessed terror attacks it might be worth reconsidering how newsworthy open support of a terrorist organisation is.

Additionally, the Jewish community in London are particularly sensitive to the march as Al Quds day brings about hate speech towards them.

I'm not saying Al Quds day should be banned in London, but I think a public dialogue and debate should be had. In my estimation the lack of it is due to the 'multiculturalism is our strength' narrative bias held at the BBC.

Now I'm not saying 'multiculturalism is bad', I'm the product of it, and I definitely think it has benefits. But there are problems with it, which need to be confronted and worked through for a better society. Without a doubt these are sensitive, and ugly issues, but pretending they don't exist because you are captured by bias, will not solve the issues.

As for your Brexit comment, I believe you are suffering from recency bias.

In a report published in January 2018 called ‘Brussels Broadcasting Corporation?’, think-tank Civitas in conjunction with the group News-watch, monitored thousands of hours of radio and TV shows dating back to 1999 including the BBC flagship Radio 4 programme Today.

Of 4,275 guests on Today between 2005 and 2015 who talked about the EU, only 132 were Brexiteers.

Put another way, just 3.2% of Today interviewees were anti-EU, despite consistent public support for EU withdrawal throughout this time.

There are also a plethora of articles about this on Google, so in a way you are kind of proving my point because the data is out there but you didn't want to, or think to, look for it.

However I'm far less concerned about being 'right' and far more concerned about dealing with reality... and I believe the more people that deal with reality there are the better the world will be.

I sympathise with the BBC as it must be hard finding people who are both articulate enough to appear and coherent when defending Brexit.

Ah yes, this old chestnut: https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/92367597312354304...

It's a valid point, although probably not in the way the young man intends it.

In the interest of remaining fair and balanced, media ultimately has to appear biased, if the supporters of the issue are... unbalanced in appeal.

I think this is less of an issue with Brexit, as one can make a cogent argument for Leave (although that doesn't seem to be the popular argument).

But for something like chemtrails? How could you possibly hold a "debate" that a believer couldn't look at and say "You're just biased against my side?"

> Facts on the ground at the most recent (...) marches is that there is a lot of Hezbollah flags flown.

[citation needed]. Flying the Hezbollah flag was made illegal by the British Parliament in March, ahead of the most recent march: https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/05/28/flying-the-hezbollah-f...

Thanks, I totally missed this piece of news and have fallen to bias myself! I gave up monitoring Al Quds day in 2018 after making a complaint to the BBC that got a boilerplate response. I just don't have the time or the resources to do anything about it.

The open support for Hezbollah was there in 2018 and in previous years... but from 2019 the reports I've read, it seems like the police enforced the new law. I would need to make a freedom of information request with the police to see if there were any arrests to verify this.

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