Comment by dev-3892 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dev-3892 | Hacker News Reader

so much hate for le monde in these comments! While I'm probably too familiar with US politics, I'm not familiar enough with French politics to know what it means when a french person says "globalist propaganda".

In US terminology, whoever says "globalist propaganda" also says "I don't believe Trump lost the election in 2020".

The comments who say this make me think that, probably, le monde is an excellent publication.

There are other comments that say le monde is 'oligarchy-owned' and then suggest publications that take a more left-leaning stance.

This makes me think le Monde is kind of like the New York Times. In general, they know who buys their papers, but the journalism (journalism! - the opinion pages are not journalism by definition) that the NYT does is largely good. It gets the facts and it prints them, holds their own to a high standard, and does a thorough job.

Politically, the NYT pisses off the left and the right on the regular. Does le Monde do that too? Are the vocal advocates against le Monde trying to say 'go further into an echo chamber', or are there legitimate criticisms about the process of reporting that le Monde engages in? Do they get the facts wrong often or go to press too early with a story regularly?

Apparently the 90's-early 00's was a good time for le Monde -- that happens to be when I knew about it. What has happened since?

Let's say that in the past they used to have a very clear left-wing bias, but, within that bias, the quality of their news was excellent. And they were independent.

Now, they are no longer independent (the 90's and 00's good days are over..), and you can kind of feel the nonsense they are trying to push down your throat. It's not blatantly wrong, let's say, but it is a more often than not a one-side view aligned with government lines.

For instance, somebody else mentioned a bit higher that they have a "fact-checking" column that was actually a piece of fact-twisting rubbish. And although they are not peddling lies there, per se, it is very "coincidental" that the "true" view being presented there as facts is always aligned with the global trending (government) narrative and other views are dismissed.

It doesn't mean that they are twisting facts, as what conspiracy theorists denounce as the "global narrative" is, I believe, more often than not aligned with the facts, but it's very suspicious that a "dissident" point of view never shows up in those articles.

It's the job of a true, high-quality journalist to look far beyond the facts being presented, to understand if they can be taken at face value or if, perhaps, the non-obvious or non-dominant narrative should be put forward instead. And unfortunately that's not something Le Monde can be relied on anymore.

(As recent examples of "alternative facts" that have been dismissed a bit too quickly recently, one could put forward the Biden laptop hard-drive saga or the lab-made Covid story.. Both are stories with fascinating implications if they turn out to be true, and that warrants hard journalistic questions to be asked..)

In France, if you want interesting news, you have to rely on Mediapart and Le Canard enchaîné. If you just want to keep up with what is happening in the country, Le Monde will do.

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