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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

Do me a favor and read the about page. Here’s an excerpt:

“ We don’t apologize for our conservatism. Some of the best journalism is done when the author is honest with readers about where he or she is coming from, and some of the very worst journalism hides behind a pretense of objectivity and the stolen authority that pretense provides.”

Aptly describes my exact problem with most “news” publishers: they’re less than upfront and honest about their own biases and everyone has them, and it shapes the institution’s biases as a whole.

The meat and potatoes is the Morning Dispatch and Weekly Dispatch, but they also publish opinion pieces. You’re not always going to agree, just as I don’t always agree, but you asked. Check it out or don’t.

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I don’t give a flip what political angle they have I don’t want that political angle in my reporting. Why is that so hard to ask for earnestly?

You can ask for it; finding it is the real problem.

If I thought it existed, I would be in your shoes right now. My compromise with reality is to prefer publications which are upfront, honest and generally reasonable as determined by the body of their work, not one headline found on Google.

They do reporting, they do opinions, they do newsletter and podcasts which mix both. I can live with that as long as I know where they’re coming from, what their scope is, and as long as they’re not pretending to be something they’re not.

Having read The Morning and Weekly Dispatches from the beginning, I haven’t been disappointed. I also enjoy the G-File and Vital Interests (both part of the Dispatch). Based off your preferences, you might actually enjoy Vital Interests if you are interested in foreign policy, but I can say for certain that you probably don’t want the G-File because that is unapologetic political wonkery, and to Jonah’s credit, he doesn’t sell that as anything but what it is.

That’s one of the nice things about old-style publications: they try to offer some variety and don’t mix reporting with opinion pages.

So to repeat my recommendation: check out The Dispatch, specifically check out the Morning Dispatch, the Weekly Dispatch, maybe Vital Interests.

It might not be your cup of tea, or it might.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just checked the latest Dispatch Weekly and am pretty disappointed by the reporting there, as a lot of the summaries still read more like political commentary and wankery than reporting facts, and the long essay about some reporters child is completely unnecessary. Is that normal for that newsletter?

I put up a temporary email address in my profile. Email me there, I’ll be removing it tomorrow.

Don’t expect a response before 6PM Pacific, I’ll try to get back to you sooner than that, I’m still working right now.

Pretty much all reporting has bias. As they say, they're at least being honest with you. You can't avoid it, because people are inherently biased. They can strive to remove it from the writing, but that doesn't mean they succeed.

There is a level of this that is reasonable, which is that what is presented in the writing be factual and not sensationalized. I imagine The Dispatch believes they meet this bar (I have no idea, I just heard of them now).

But there is a level of this that is impossible, which is avoiding prioritizing some aspects and not others. Merely choosing what to put in a headline vs first paragraph vs 5th paragraph is making a subjective decision about what is most important.

Even more subjective is choice of words for complex phenomena that defy simple summary. For example, were the activities of last summer protests, or were they riots? Most people have an opinion on which word is a better fit, but there is no way to deny that both have a basis in objective fact. So, writers choose one or the other depending on their own biases and what they want to emphasize.

Finally, there is the "file drawer" source of bias, which is simply not covering some things that you don't think are important. You're not lying or misinforming anyone, but you are making a subjective decision about what people should be thinking about.

I personally think it's best if a publication is open about how it's going to be making these various subjective decisions. And I think it's dishonest for someone to claim their news reporting can be purely objective.

He asked for substack author, and you provided a non substack link.

Believe it or not, that’s actually a link to a Substack site.

The Dispatch has had a custom domain since they launched at the tail end of 2019.

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