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Comment by claar | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for being open - I've learned a lot in this thread.

I honestly had no idea that anyone "left of center" felt they couldn't openly share here, as I have always mentally categorized HN as a leftist echo chamber (hopefully that's not too blunt - it's just my honest perception).

I naively assumed that it was only those more right-of-center that felt their worldviews and opinions were unwelcome here, judging from the instantly dead posts I see of anything remotely right-aligned.

From your short share, I see that the echo-chamber is unwelcoming to a much broader sphere of humans than I realized. I find that super helpful to understand - so thank you for sharing.

View on HN

HN is largely US centric and largely suffers the blinkered bimodal view that the US itself mostly suffers from.

It's a problem amplified by Murdoch type media outlets who have weaponised the us-vs-them worldview for clickbait outrage and spread that dumbing down as far across the world as they are able.

For those of us not within that mindset such views seem very childlike and unsophisticated, there's a slew of nuance to the world that doesn't easily reduce to L v. R, "woke agenda" and all that et. al. jazz.

FWiW IMNotACommunist .. but I have an endearing love of this short interaction twixt Piers Morgan ( UK outrage talking head ) and Ash Sarkar for higlighting the pitfalls of not paying attention to what people actually think and believe in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k

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

I'm not politically informed, and I don't watch traditional media, so I had to Google "Murdoch".

If I understand you correctly, you feel it's the right-leaning outlets like Fox News that have weaponized us-vs-them mindset?

The origin feels flipped to me, but regardless who started it, I see little to no actual respectful and thoughtful discourse these days - mature discourse where each side is willing to listen and acknowledge the elements of truth and assume positive intent in the other side's positions.

As you say, the media on both sides, including social media, feels extremely childlike and unsophisticated.

"Murdoch type media" outlets are those with a greater interest in pure profit, exercising influence, and serving owner interests that extend outside of media alone. The balanced presentation of news is of minor interest and a means to an end rather than a primary goal.

This, with Murdoch, harks back in a lesser way to his father, then to his expansion into the UK Fleet Street and eventual transition in US media, in Canada with Conrad Black, in the US pre Murdoch with Hearst, Pulitzer, Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, in the UK pre Murdoch with Alfred Harmsworth and the like.

These are people who have all had large significant media outlets that have engaged in extremely partisan positions with respect to wars, the economy, favoured political candidates and dumbing down discourse.

> I see little to no actual respectful and thoughtful discourse these days

    In the 1890s the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime and graphic horrors.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer

As an Australian here, I just had my mind blown that someone in the anglosphere didn't know "Murdoch".

Murdoch is more than Fox News. Just ask any Australian or Brit .

I guess I'm one of today's lucky 10,000! https://m.xkcd.com/1053/

Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" is great place for anyone wanting to learn more about the various biases that influence what gets covered in the media, and how it is discussed. It's a book, but there's also a great documentary of the same name that's half about Noam Chomsky's life, and half the ideas discussed in the book.

It's from the late 80s, but it is still relevant (and it also helps it feel a little above the current political hot-topics of today.

Remember, the Gentleman's agreement of "no politics" was left unsaid until one party broke it, which divided america.

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