A Poli-graph
March 8, 2018 9:58 PM Subscribe
This is interesting, although it is missing an obvious category in the middle - "Hyper-partisan centrist", the sort of of news sources that report things like "some people say Donald Trump is not telling the truth", or that report on a proposed bill by devoting half the column to what the Republicans claim will happen, 25% to the man on the street, 20% to "Democrats claim", and may mention that every credible policy expert disputes the Republicans in that last 5%. The sort of news sources that are based in a city with millions of real Americans, but fly out to Ohio to talk to some 50 year old white dude running a landscaping business at the drop of a hat.
Another example of a "Hyper-partisan centrist" could be someone who makes a fancy chart implying that there are really unreliable websites on both sides of the spectrum, even though. the ones on the extreme right are websites with relatively high traction - Alexa ranks Fox News #56 most visited site in the US, Breitbart #59, the least popular of the seven is TheBlaze, ranked #1357; all of these are more popular than the sorts of sites in the yellow rectangle on the right (Reason, American Conservative, Washington Times).
On the other hand, he puts a bunch of super-obscure stuff on the left side of the chart; excluding the facebook group which Alexa doesn't track, the most popular of the six is ranked #4454. This is because there is no substantial left-wing fake news ecosystem, but accurately showing this would make the chart look "biased".
I would suggest that pretending patribiotics, the 61,484th most popular website in the US (not even the least popular one on the left side of the chart!) is of similar importance in the media landscape as Fox News is a good example of the hyper-partisan centrist.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 10:28 PM on March 8, 2018 [142 favorites]
Another example of a "Hyper-partisan centrist" could be someone who makes a fancy chart implying that there are really unreliable websites on both sides of the spectrum, even though. the ones on the extreme right are websites with relatively high traction - Alexa ranks Fox News #56 most visited site in the US, Breitbart #59, the least popular of the seven is TheBlaze, ranked #1357; all of these are more popular than the sorts of sites in the yellow rectangle on the right (Reason, American Conservative, Washington Times).
On the other hand, he puts a bunch of super-obscure stuff on the left side of the chart; excluding the facebook group which Alexa doesn't track, the most popular of the six is ranked #4454. This is because there is no substantial left-wing fake news ecosystem, but accurately showing this would make the chart look "biased".
I would suggest that pretending patribiotics, the 61,484th most popular website in the US (not even the least popular one on the left side of the chart!) is of similar importance in the media landscape as Fox News is a good example of the hyper-partisan centrist.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 10:28 PM on March 8, 2018 [142 favorites]
I think of NPR and the BBC as further to the left. I also think of reality as further to the left.
posted by poe at 10:30 PM on March 8, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by poe at 10:30 PM on March 8, 2018 [6 favorites]
Needs an axis for capitalist apologetics.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:34 PM on March 8, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:34 PM on March 8, 2018 [14 favorites]
I don't think this is very useful. Basically the horseshoe theory in print. What about the basic factual error of placing Jacobin (Marxist, etc.) in the "Liberal" category? And InfoWars is certainly partisan, but in what sense is it conservative? Where is the "values" axis? Reporting facts, performing analysis through an ideological/philosophical lens, and partisanship are entirely orthogonal.
Personally, I'm kind of sick of the idea that centrism is something that exists or can be productive. Say what you want about ________, at least it's an ethos.
posted by klanawa at 10:41 PM on March 8, 2018 [18 favorites]
Personally, I'm kind of sick of the idea that centrism is something that exists or can be productive. Say what you want about ________, at least it's an ethos.
posted by klanawa at 10:41 PM on March 8, 2018 [18 favorites]
InfoWars is conservative in its full-throated support of white Christian patriarchy.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:51 PM on March 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:51 PM on March 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
The quality of this chart can be adequately summarized by the fact that it puts Jacobin to the right of Daily Kos and New Republic. Not to mention the previous version of the chart still visible as the "lower resolution" copy putting Natural News, which *openly endorses Trump*, on the Hyper-Partisan Liberal end of the chart (it's now listed slightly to the right of neutral).
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 10:54 PM on March 8, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 10:54 PM on March 8, 2018 [20 favorites]
But yeah, putting the socialism-promoting Jacobin next to the smug/contrarian neoliberal Slate certainly seems like it's eliding some important differences.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:56 PM on March 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by Kitty Stardust at 10:56 PM on March 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
InfoWars is
probably legitimately crazy.
at least, that's what Joe Rogan thinks.
posted by philip-random at 10:57 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
probably legitimately crazy.
at least, that's what Joe Rogan thinks.
posted by philip-random at 10:57 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
The origins of InfoWars is the same Right/Libertarian reaction to Clinton that birthed anti-government militias scanning for black helicopters in the 90s, only they somehow reconcile their mistrust of The State when the white nationalist grifters are in charge. Just listen to the guy's terrible retrograde concepts on gender roles. Sounds like it could come out of any "family values" Bible-thumping conservative.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:04 PM on March 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:04 PM on March 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yeah this seems to be missing any sense of proportion. Millions of people watch hours and hours of Fox News every day, while nobody has heard of Forward Progressives. Ensuring that the chart looks evenly balanced is itself a huge editorial choice, and it's just not justified.
The vertical axis irks me a lot. I'm not really sure why "original fact reporting" is a higher plane than mere "fact reporting" (you'd need another axis for "how much do they just take other people's reporting and re-report it?" with The Hill somewhere off in the stratosphere), but I see the Times and the Post do tons of original fact reporting every day. I take a lot of issue with the idea that "complex analysis" is a lower plane than "original fact reporting." There are lots of organizations who will tell me what the President just said or give me five quotes from Members of Congress about what the President just said, but there are startlingly few that will give me a detailed breakdown of the impacts of today's new amendment to the banking bill (and most of those are little-known trade publications, mostly with tight paywalls). There are reporters out there who will stay up all night to pour through a 500-page bill, then start emailing experts to try to understand the actual impacts of some random provision buried inside. That kind of complex analysis work is so damn rare, and it's painful to see it viewed as inherently lower quality than regurgitating facts. And when that bill is deciding how much I or a CEO will pay in taxes, whether or not people will have health care next year, or what kind of reserves banks have to hold to help prevent another financial crisis, it's important work.
As for BuzzFeed News being dragged down to The Federalist's level for "Selective or incomplete story; unfair persuasion," this is a publication that was a Pulitzer finalist for a major feature on Investor-State Dispute Settlement being compared to one that had a "black crime" tag and ran an article defending Roy Moore; they spent today complaining that International Women's Day is communist. What are we doing here?
I could write more about why this all bothers me, but after seeing that they put Jacobin, a publication with an an explicitly socialist mission, to be to the right of Slate, home of the contrarian take, and the Daily Beast, I'm not really sure what the point of engaging with this really is. That makes no sense to me at all and makes me wonder if they've read any of those publications or why we should take it at all seriously.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 PM on March 8, 2018 [41 favorites]
The vertical axis irks me a lot. I'm not really sure why "original fact reporting" is a higher plane than mere "fact reporting" (you'd need another axis for "how much do they just take other people's reporting and re-report it?" with The Hill somewhere off in the stratosphere), but I see the Times and the Post do tons of original fact reporting every day. I take a lot of issue with the idea that "complex analysis" is a lower plane than "original fact reporting." There are lots of organizations who will tell me what the President just said or give me five quotes from Members of Congress about what the President just said, but there are startlingly few that will give me a detailed breakdown of the impacts of today's new amendment to the banking bill (and most of those are little-known trade publications, mostly with tight paywalls). There are reporters out there who will stay up all night to pour through a 500-page bill, then start emailing experts to try to understand the actual impacts of some random provision buried inside. That kind of complex analysis work is so damn rare, and it's painful to see it viewed as inherently lower quality than regurgitating facts. And when that bill is deciding how much I or a CEO will pay in taxes, whether or not people will have health care next year, or what kind of reserves banks have to hold to help prevent another financial crisis, it's important work.
As for BuzzFeed News being dragged down to The Federalist's level for "Selective or incomplete story; unfair persuasion," this is a publication that was a Pulitzer finalist for a major feature on Investor-State Dispute Settlement being compared to one that had a "black crime" tag and ran an article defending Roy Moore; they spent today complaining that International Women's Day is communist. What are we doing here?
I could write more about why this all bothers me, but after seeing that they put Jacobin, a publication with an an explicitly socialist mission, to be to the right of Slate, home of the contrarian take, and the Daily Beast, I'm not really sure what the point of engaging with this really is. That makes no sense to me at all and makes me wonder if they've read any of those publications or why we should take it at all seriously.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 PM on March 8, 2018 [41 favorites]
But yeah, putting the socialism-promoting Jacobin next to the smug/contrarian neoliberal Slate certainly seems like it's eliding some important differences.
Using this comment as a jumping-off point rather than a specific example (I'm specifically not accusing Jacobin or Kitty Stardust of the following)
-- I will just add that in the categorization of left vs right there's an annoying tendency among some to view "generally pro- socialism" as the be-all, end-all of what it means to be "left," when there are a lot of "pro-socialist" groups, pundits and publications that are pretty damn centrist on things like gun control, or are pretty sloppy with their general sexism and racism, or specifically espouse views like "no war but class war" and "identity politics are bad" or seem to care quite a lot about college and housing prices, and very little about reproductive justice, criminal justice reform, public k-12, homelessness, the living conditions of people in federal public housing, etc etc
posted by mrmurbles at 11:16 PM on March 8, 2018 [8 favorites]
Using this comment as a jumping-off point rather than a specific example (I'm specifically not accusing Jacobin or Kitty Stardust of the following)
-- I will just add that in the categorization of left vs right there's an annoying tendency among some to view "generally pro- socialism" as the be-all, end-all of what it means to be "left," when there are a lot of "pro-socialist" groups, pundits and publications that are pretty damn centrist on things like gun control, or are pretty sloppy with their general sexism and racism, or specifically espouse views like "no war but class war" and "identity politics are bad" or seem to care quite a lot about college and housing prices, and very little about reproductive justice, criminal justice reform, public k-12, homelessness, the living conditions of people in federal public housing, etc etc
posted by mrmurbles at 11:16 PM on March 8, 2018 [8 favorites]
Yeah, when I say InfoWars isn't conservative, I just mean they don't have a coherent philosophical position, they're just profiteering.
posted by klanawa at 11:18 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by klanawa at 11:18 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
I agree - the chart lacks a sense of proportion that would be useful for visualizing impact and the vertical axis irks me too.
Also... it... it looks sort of like goatse.
posted by dazed_one at 11:19 PM on March 8, 2018 [5 favorites]
Also... it... it looks sort of like goatse.
posted by dazed_one at 11:19 PM on March 8, 2018 [5 favorites]
It could be more accurate if they had several maps covering different topics. There are many different ways one can be biased. The different political topics do not all fit neatly into the 1 dimension on this map.
posted by Julianna Mckannis at 11:21 PM on March 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Julianna Mckannis at 11:21 PM on March 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
This chart puts BuzzFeed News in approximately the same bracket as The Federalist.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 PM on March 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 PM on March 8, 2018 [2 favorites]
The quality of this chart can be adequately summarized by the fact that it puts Jacobin to the right of Daily Kos and New Republic.
Also, it seems to suggest that Jacobin’s reporting is more detailed than that of The New Yorker, which, no.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:30 PM on March 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
Also, it seems to suggest that Jacobin’s reporting is more detailed than that of The New Yorker, which, no.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:30 PM on March 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
This seems like whatever methodology there was was determined to produce this basically one dimensional (left/fake news/shit) - (centrist/real news/good) - (right/fake news/shit) mishmash.
So Jacobin is less shit than Slate or Daily Beast, and that overrode it being much more commie than either.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:32 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
So Jacobin is less shit than Slate or Daily Beast, and that overrode it being much more commie than either.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:32 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also... it... it looks sort of like goatse
No... no it...
Oh god it does.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:38 PM on March 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
No... no it...
Oh god it does.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:38 PM on March 8, 2018 [3 favorites]
Something something horseshoe theory.
posted by panhopticon at 11:43 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by panhopticon at 11:43 PM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]
I use Google News as an aggregator. My current preferred sources are: Reuters, BBC, UPI, AP, PBS, NPR, CBC, AFP and Bloomberg. Someone's been reading over my shoulder...
posted by jim in austin at 11:48 PM on March 8, 2018
posted by jim in austin at 11:48 PM on March 8, 2018
Honestly, I do want to give this author full marks for trying to earnestly make a coherent and informative breakdown of the media. I don’t know that I agree with it, and I think the clustering is designed to imply that a bias towards original reporting is also a bias against partisanship or inaccuracy, but it’s a hard job to set yourself. So kudos to you for trying to make a good thing. Now, I will continue grousing about the ways I don’t like this approximation.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:52 PM on March 8, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:52 PM on March 8, 2018 [10 favorites]
Metafilter: Now, I will continue grousing about the ways I don’t like this approximation.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:13 AM on March 9, 2018 [18 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:13 AM on March 9, 2018 [18 favorites]
I will just add that in the categorization of left vs right there's an annoying tendency among some to view "generally pro- socialism" as the be-all, end-all of what it means to be "left," when there are a lot of "pro-socialist" groups, pundits and publications that are pretty damn centrist on things like gun control, or are pretty sloppy with their general sexism and racism, or specifically espouse views like "no war but class war" and "identity politics are bad" or seem to care quite a lot about college and housing prices, and very little about reproductive justice, criminal justice reform, public k-12, homelessness, the living conditions of people in federal public housing, etc etc
Any single-axis classification of political tendencies breaks down pretty easily, all the more so when it's as abstract as "left vs. right," so arguments among people generally on the left about who is more left inevitably tend toward silliness at some point. I'd say anarchism, marxist-type socialism and labor activism, anti-imperialism, plus structurally-oriented anti-racist, feminist and queer movements all fit well enough into the broad category of "The Left" as it's traditionally considered, though.
I happen to be both a left-wing guy and not a tremendous fan of guns but I'm not really sure "gun control" is inherently a left-wing issue except for the particular way American politics is divided. I'm not sure where you're finding self-declared socialists who don't care about things like:
criminal justice reform, public k-12, homelessness, the living conditions of people in federal public housing, etc etc
That would be... pretty weird.
posted by atoxyl at 12:17 AM on March 9, 2018 [4 favorites]
Any single-axis classification of political tendencies breaks down pretty easily, all the more so when it's as abstract as "left vs. right," so arguments among people generally on the left about who is more left inevitably tend toward silliness at some point. I'd say anarchism, marxist-type socialism and labor activism, anti-imperialism, plus structurally-oriented anti-racist, feminist and queer movements all fit well enough into the broad category of "The Left" as it's traditionally considered, though.
I happen to be both a left-wing guy and not a tremendous fan of guns but I'm not really sure "gun control" is inherently a left-wing issue except for the particular way American politics is divided. I'm not sure where you're finding self-declared socialists who don't care about things like:
criminal justice reform, public k-12, homelessness, the living conditions of people in federal public housing, etc etc
That would be... pretty weird.
posted by atoxyl at 12:17 AM on March 9, 2018 [4 favorites]
This chart would work better as a graph. It has confirmation bias blown all over it.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:27 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 12:27 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Reading some of the methodology pages, it seems that there's a clear preference here for "fact-reporting articles" over anything else. And it's that preference that causes AP and Reuters wire copy to be held up as the pinnacle of journalism.
Which is fine if that's what the author wants; AP and Reuters do great work on a worldwide scale that is vastly needed, and they do have investigative journalists who bring stories to light. But it's a preference by the author for a very particular view of what news is: a precise recitation of unbiased unadorned facts. And a lot of people worried about "bias" seem to think that's all that news should be, that reporters should just shut up and tell them what happened, nothing more.
And that's a really narrow way of looking at the world. It pretends editorial bias doesn't exist when the choice of what stories to tell and how much attention to pay to them is more important than almost anything else. It assumes that facts are always neutral, that they're always well defined and never change their meanings depending on context. It privileges a certain kind of storytelling: reading a factual description of Duterte's killings is very different from something like Daniel Berehulak's Pulitzer-winning photojournalism for the Times. There's no good reason why an AP report of the form "President Trump said X" is of an inherently higher quality form of journalism than a Vox story that analyzes the impact of, say, not paying cost-sharing reduction subsides on the individual insurance market. There's no good reason why a Reuters report with quotes from a White House opioid committee meeting is objectively a better quality product than a longform feature about what's happening in one community struggling with addiction or an analysis piece summarizing some of the most recent public health research and how it could be applied. And most good outlets do a mix of all these kinds of work.
The author is conflating a particular style of storytelling with quality. There's plenty of low-quality journalism being churned out in the form of bare-bones factual reports (see, for instance, your local TV news network, which probably had a 1:30 segment tonight on some local violent crime that was perfectly factual yet provided little to no useful information) and plenty of high-quality storytelling and analysis this author would deride as less-than.
posted by zachlipton at 12:36 AM on March 9, 2018 [29 favorites]
Which is fine if that's what the author wants; AP and Reuters do great work on a worldwide scale that is vastly needed, and they do have investigative journalists who bring stories to light. But it's a preference by the author for a very particular view of what news is: a precise recitation of unbiased unadorned facts. And a lot of people worried about "bias" seem to think that's all that news should be, that reporters should just shut up and tell them what happened, nothing more.
And that's a really narrow way of looking at the world. It pretends editorial bias doesn't exist when the choice of what stories to tell and how much attention to pay to them is more important than almost anything else. It assumes that facts are always neutral, that they're always well defined and never change their meanings depending on context. It privileges a certain kind of storytelling: reading a factual description of Duterte's killings is very different from something like Daniel Berehulak's Pulitzer-winning photojournalism for the Times. There's no good reason why an AP report of the form "President Trump said X" is of an inherently higher quality form of journalism than a Vox story that analyzes the impact of, say, not paying cost-sharing reduction subsides on the individual insurance market. There's no good reason why a Reuters report with quotes from a White House opioid committee meeting is objectively a better quality product than a longform feature about what's happening in one community struggling with addiction or an analysis piece summarizing some of the most recent public health research and how it could be applied. And most good outlets do a mix of all these kinds of work.
The author is conflating a particular style of storytelling with quality. There's plenty of low-quality journalism being churned out in the form of bare-bones factual reports (see, for instance, your local TV news network, which probably had a 1:30 segment tonight on some local violent crime that was perfectly factual yet provided little to no useful information) and plenty of high-quality storytelling and analysis this author would deride as less-than.
posted by zachlipton at 12:36 AM on March 9, 2018 [29 favorites]
Serious side-eye to any chart that puts the National Enquirer in the same zip code as "centrist", let alone straddling the center line. Their latest issue literally crows about how the Trumps are SURROUNDED BY TRAITORS and will CRUSH THEIR ENEMIES. (And in a bonus bit of cognitive dissonance, they simultaneously tease a bombastic HUSH MONEY SEX SCANDAL... about Ryan Seacrest).
posted by Rhaomi at 12:55 AM on March 9, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:55 AM on March 9, 2018 [7 favorites]
Honestly, I do want to give this author full marks for trying to earnestly make a coherent and informative breakdown of the media. I don’t know that I agree with it, and I think the clustering is designed to imply that a bias towards original reporting is also a bias against partisanship or inaccuracy, but it’s a hard job to set yourself. So kudos to you for trying to make a good thing. Now, I will continue grousing about the ways I don’t like this approximation.
It's an interesting thing to try to classify by... some methodology. I mean, I have to say I had fun with the old political compass thing. But that was at least based on your response to clear ideological statements. When people try to do an "objective" analysis of partisanship in media they seem to end up with methods that are constrained by the particular division of positions between the two major American parties and by the Overton Window. And I'm not sure this one even quite does that.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
It's an interesting thing to try to classify by... some methodology. I mean, I have to say I had fun with the old political compass thing. But that was at least based on your response to clear ideological statements. When people try to do an "objective" analysis of partisanship in media they seem to end up with methods that are constrained by the particular division of positions between the two major American parties and by the Overton Window. And I'm not sure this one even quite does that.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Is it just me or is this whole article rubbing me the wrong way? It's ticking my media literacy red flags. Reading it feels exploitative of the commons. Ironic, given the subject matter as well as the author's claims to neutrality.
Oh and, there's no a priori reason why 'centrists' should be positioned in the middle of the map.
posted by polymodus at 1:23 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Oh and, there's no a priori reason why 'centrists' should be positioned in the middle of the map.
posted by polymodus at 1:23 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
View from nowhere shouldn't be - should never be - what passes for good journalism.
posted by smoke at 2:29 AM on March 9, 2018
posted by smoke at 2:29 AM on March 9, 2018
I have a previous version of this chart pinned to the bulletin board in my intern room, along with specific examples of media covering the same story from a variety of different viewpoints. I use it to talk to new interns about media literacy. We usually cover some of the shortcomings of the chart, and the general challenge of presenting complex ideas in chart form, and how bias can play a role there too. It’s a fabulous teaching tool. With all your insights in comments here, I can add some more depth to that discussion when I put this version up. Thanks!
posted by gemmy at 2:34 AM on March 9, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by gemmy at 2:34 AM on March 9, 2018 [12 favorites]
No sarcasm, it's a great thing that the main points of discussion in this thread are the biases this chart on media bias might have. Analysis of bias should be part of any ingestion of news coverage.
posted by mcstayinskool at 4:27 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by mcstayinskool at 4:27 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Notable for me is how I've heard of almost everything in the red cellar of propaganda on the right, and none of the ones on the left. Further, many of those right-wing propaganda outlets get regularly fed to me as a "news source" via the google news aggregator, whereas again, never seen a single one on the left.
I am no fan of MSNBC or HuffPost's slanted coverage, but it does I think accurately show that it's a false left-wing equivalency to the FoxNews/Breitbart/Daily Callers of the world.
posted by mcstayinskool at 4:31 AM on March 9, 2018 [9 favorites]
I am no fan of MSNBC or HuffPost's slanted coverage, but it does I think accurately show that it's a false left-wing equivalency to the FoxNews/Breitbart/Daily Callers of the world.
posted by mcstayinskool at 4:31 AM on March 9, 2018 [9 favorites]
Daily Mail - on the "neutral" side of "skews conservative".
Yeah. Someone's really not familiar with the Mail. At all.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:55 AM on March 9, 2018 [10 favorites]
Yeah. Someone's really not familiar with the Mail. At all.
posted by MattWPBS at 4:55 AM on March 9, 2018 [10 favorites]
No Salon? I'd put it in the area of Slate but a bit more to the left.
NBC news--at least the evening news broadcast--comes across to me as slightly more to the right than the chart indicated.
I use Newser as one of my news aggregators. It tends to lean right but not enough to enrage me unless I make the mistake of reading the comments.
posted by fuse theorem at 5:23 AM on March 9, 2018
NBC news--at least the evening news broadcast--comes across to me as slightly more to the right than the chart indicated.
I use Newser as one of my news aggregators. It tends to lean right but not enough to enrage me unless I make the mistake of reading the comments.
posted by fuse theorem at 5:23 AM on March 9, 2018
Came in here to grouse some about the chart, starting with how I'd prefer it to be a bubble chart where the bubble size is linked to audience size, but y'all totally nailed all the points I wanted to cover already.
So, er, yay!
posted by sgranade at 6:45 AM on March 9, 2018
So, er, yay!
posted by sgranade at 6:45 AM on March 9, 2018
Adding to the complains over not taking into account estimated audience sizes, and the attempt to still put things in terms of liberal vs conservative or left vs right or whatever.
Look, we're in the age where misguided web developers cram a shitload of crap including 5 wallpaper-sized images to headline each paragraphs because it looks nice on their last-year model $3000 laptop and $1000 phone. I'm sure they could find someone who could display biases on a number of parameters, from economic, to social to approach to single-issues. You can't just average all that into a tidy x axis because they're all different things and sometimes not mutually exclusive. There's actual free-market liberals who don't give a shit who marries who as long as the government stays off the market. There's capital C communists that are absolute knuckle-draggers with social stuff, but wouldn't let anyone die of hunger or avoidable health problems.
posted by lmfsilva at 6:48 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Look, we're in the age where misguided web developers cram a shitload of crap including 5 wallpaper-sized images to headline each paragraphs because it looks nice on their last-year model $3000 laptop and $1000 phone. I'm sure they could find someone who could display biases on a number of parameters, from economic, to social to approach to single-issues. You can't just average all that into a tidy x axis because they're all different things and sometimes not mutually exclusive. There's actual free-market liberals who don't give a shit who marries who as long as the government stays off the market. There's capital C communists that are absolute knuckle-draggers with social stuff, but wouldn't let anyone die of hunger or avoidable health problems.
posted by lmfsilva at 6:48 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
It'd be great if they added a Z axis to this indicating popularity (thus showing the huge spike over on the crazy right).
Also, the folks who benefit most from this sort of analysis are the least likely to read it.
I think we need to recognize that there are broad swathes of the population who currently lack the capacity to determine quality (or even sanity) in their news sources ...and they vote. Radicalized idiots are very dangerous. When hostile foreign powers can get a fascist moron elected President through the manipulation of easily conned rubes, that's a existential threat to our country. It's the first amendment equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:59 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also, the folks who benefit most from this sort of analysis are the least likely to read it.
I think we need to recognize that there are broad swathes of the population who currently lack the capacity to determine quality (or even sanity) in their news sources ...and they vote. Radicalized idiots are very dangerous. When hostile foreign powers can get a fascist moron elected President through the manipulation of easily conned rubes, that's a existential threat to our country. It's the first amendment equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:59 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
graphs like these whose premise is to note bias in major news institutions without noting their own biases is one of those 'so close to getting the point' hypocritical things that you can't help but to be incensed when you see them. even more infuriating is that it'll be eaten up, skepticism free, as the viral, easily digestible, shortcut-to-cultural-capital kind of meme that it was designed to be
want to sound smart according to your biased, culturally-defined notion of 'smart'? boy have I got an image macro for you - tell all your friends about how you, personally, can really boil things down to the capital T Truth with all your worldly browsing of a 2-minute blog post
is it just hypocrisy when the thing that aims to be the solution to a problem is a symbol of the problem itself? or is there a nastier term that we can ascribe to it?
posted by runt at 7:18 AM on March 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
want to sound smart according to your biased, culturally-defined notion of 'smart'? boy have I got an image macro for you - tell all your friends about how you, personally, can really boil things down to the capital T Truth with all your worldly browsing of a 2-minute blog post
is it just hypocrisy when the thing that aims to be the solution to a problem is a symbol of the problem itself? or is there a nastier term that we can ascribe to it?
posted by runt at 7:18 AM on March 9, 2018 [6 favorites]
even more infuriating is that it'll be eaten up, skepticism free, as the viral, easily digestible, shortcut-to-cultural-capital kind of meme that it was designed to be
I can't tell you how many times I've seen this graph on Facebook over the last year or so, posted uncritically and/or unironically by people on both sides of the political divide.
posted by briank at 7:43 AM on March 9, 2018 [8 favorites]
I can't tell you how many times I've seen this graph on Facebook over the last year or so, posted uncritically and/or unironically by people on both sides of the political divide.
posted by briank at 7:43 AM on March 9, 2018 [8 favorites]
Trying to sort through the methods section, I at least respect she put work into reading and analyzing and didn't just dump things into an algorithm. Her takedown of one story as true but totally dishonest is quite good.
But beyond the specific problems (centrist Jacobin?) it's amazing how unsurprising this is. I think if you'd asked me to chart this based on reputation of the periodicals I'd have come up with something much like this. But she did tons more work! And since I am very down on much of the media (including NPR and NYT) I'm not crazy about the chart.
I want to go through her analysis more carefully and think about it more. Did it confirm conventional wisdom because conventional wisdom isn't bad or is there something baked in that pre-ordained the outcome?
One aspect is the sentence-by-sentence analysis won't cover stories ignored and questions not asked. The other more important one I suspect is that what is scored as fair and factual in this approach is very much what adheres to traditional media rules and story structure--which in my opinion is not keeping up with the modern approaches to spin. (In other words, so "Shape of the World: Opinions Differ" stories, or more attention to Clinton's emails in 2016 than all of Trumps scandals combined, would have no negative impact on your analysis or bias rating.)
posted by mark k at 7:43 AM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
But beyond the specific problems (centrist Jacobin?) it's amazing how unsurprising this is. I think if you'd asked me to chart this based on reputation of the periodicals I'd have come up with something much like this. But she did tons more work! And since I am very down on much of the media (including NPR and NYT) I'm not crazy about the chart.
I want to go through her analysis more carefully and think about it more. Did it confirm conventional wisdom because conventional wisdom isn't bad or is there something baked in that pre-ordained the outcome?
One aspect is the sentence-by-sentence analysis won't cover stories ignored and questions not asked. The other more important one I suspect is that what is scored as fair and factual in this approach is very much what adheres to traditional media rules and story structure--which in my opinion is not keeping up with the modern approaches to spin. (In other words, so "Shape of the World: Opinions Differ" stories, or more attention to Clinton's emails in 2016 than all of Trumps scandals combined, would have no negative impact on your analysis or bias rating.)
posted by mark k at 7:43 AM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
Yeah I'd like to see a cartogram version of this chart where the logos were scaled in size according to their readership.
posted by jedicus at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
Just need to factor in a weights factor based on reach/readership as mentioned above. The landscape is made of innumerable outlets and not every one can be directly compared with the other without a scaling factor of sorts. The various distances between the lables are also misleading.
posted by asra at 8:46 AM on March 9, 2018
posted by asra at 8:46 AM on March 9, 2018
The two that stood out to me were The Week and Buzzfeed. The Week literally only publishes articles that have already been published elsewhere; they are very systematic about including liberal and conservative opinions. So putting them in the "liberal" bucket makes no sense. Buzzfeed is impossible to categorize, since they mostly publish clickbait tabloid style stuff, but then have the occasional hard-hitting investigative article.
If I were making one of these, it would have two axes: do they get their money primarily from subscribers or from advertisers, and do they have fact-checkers and regular corrections or do they just say whatever.
If you have fact checkers and subscribers, and you publish a lie, then your fact checkers will print a correction and your subscribers will start leaving and you'll lose money. So there's strong motivation to stick to the truth, or basically reasonable interpretations of the truth. NYT, WSJ, National Review, New Yorker, etc. are in this bucket.
If you have fact checkers, but you don't have subscribers, you're like Huffington Post, Slate or BuzzFeed. You have to exaggerate things a bit to get lots of clicks and ad revenue, but because you're run by more or less decent people, you don't outright lie. Although you could probably get away with more if you really wanted to.
If you don't have fact checkers and you also don't have many subscribers (so you depend on advertiser money), you can exaggerate a lot and skew the truth heavily, but you're still somewhat accountable to the advertisers so you can't publish utterly insane conspiracy theories. Fox, MSNBC, etc. are in this bucket.
If you don't have fact checkers and you DO have subscribers, you're basically just an inward-looking cult that is accountable to no one, like Infowars. This is where the really crazy conspiracy theories grow and spread.
posted by miyabo at 10:32 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
If I were making one of these, it would have two axes: do they get their money primarily from subscribers or from advertisers, and do they have fact-checkers and regular corrections or do they just say whatever.
If you have fact checkers and subscribers, and you publish a lie, then your fact checkers will print a correction and your subscribers will start leaving and you'll lose money. So there's strong motivation to stick to the truth, or basically reasonable interpretations of the truth. NYT, WSJ, National Review, New Yorker, etc. are in this bucket.
If you have fact checkers, but you don't have subscribers, you're like Huffington Post, Slate or BuzzFeed. You have to exaggerate things a bit to get lots of clicks and ad revenue, but because you're run by more or less decent people, you don't outright lie. Although you could probably get away with more if you really wanted to.
If you don't have fact checkers and you also don't have many subscribers (so you depend on advertiser money), you can exaggerate a lot and skew the truth heavily, but you're still somewhat accountable to the advertisers so you can't publish utterly insane conspiracy theories. Fox, MSNBC, etc. are in this bucket.
If you don't have fact checkers and you DO have subscribers, you're basically just an inward-looking cult that is accountable to no one, like Infowars. This is where the really crazy conspiracy theories grow and spread.
posted by miyabo at 10:32 AM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Buzzfeed is impossible to categorize, since they mostly publish clickbait tabloid style stuff, but then have the occasional hard-hitting investigative article.
this isn't true anymore. they've released an app platform that updates you with news notifications and they are covering every 'normal' news story that comes up (like Parkland or Hope Hicks or whatever). and the journalism isn't bad at all - it's solid AP stuff with some flavor that trends liberal and evidence-based
I don't know if Buzzfeed can ever shake its listicle brand association though. wouldn't be surprised if Buzzfeed News renamed itself at some point in the near future since it's turning out to be a really stable source of news with not a lot of old white men editorializing
posted by runt at 11:38 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
this isn't true anymore. they've released an app platform that updates you with news notifications and they are covering every 'normal' news story that comes up (like Parkland or Hope Hicks or whatever). and the journalism isn't bad at all - it's solid AP stuff with some flavor that trends liberal and evidence-based
I don't know if Buzzfeed can ever shake its listicle brand association though. wouldn't be surprised if Buzzfeed News renamed itself at some point in the near future since it's turning out to be a really stable source of news with not a lot of old white men editorializing
posted by runt at 11:38 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
I sent Vanessa a link to Homeboy Trouble's comment and this was her response:
Thanks!
1) I’m a she, not he
2) glad they think my chart is fancy!
3) I never said these are the most popular sources, or that they are equal in reach or influence—I include them on there just to show that they exist. I just do content analysis
posted by andythebean at 1:52 PM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Thanks!
1) I’m a she, not he
2) glad they think my chart is fancy!
3) I never said these are the most popular sources, or that they are equal in reach or influence—I include them on there just to show that they exist. I just do content analysis
posted by andythebean at 1:52 PM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]
Oh gosh, I can't believe I missed Vanessa's gender. I am so very sorry about that.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 2:06 PM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 2:06 PM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
I just do content analysis
'just' 'content' 'analysis'... not the words the author thinks they mean. This can't be fixed by giving feedback. It can be fixed by going to grad school, and getting exposure actual research experience and the critical thinking skills from the people who legit do it and teach it and set the standards for what these terms mean.
And waiting for experts or audiences to chime in and "connect" on this work is really quite exploitative of the commons. It's an ethics issue.
posted by polymodus at 2:25 PM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
'just' 'content' 'analysis'... not the words the author thinks they mean. This can't be fixed by giving feedback. It can be fixed by going to grad school, and getting exposure actual research experience and the critical thinking skills from the people who legit do it and teach it and set the standards for what these terms mean.
And waiting for experts or audiences to chime in and "connect" on this work is really quite exploitative of the commons. It's an ethics issue.
posted by polymodus at 2:25 PM on March 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: Now, I will continue grousing about the ways I don’t like this approximation.
Or where things were placed or what wasn't placed, or what illogical made-up demographic wasn't represented on a made-up, unscientific chart that has absolutely no validity or utility. Yay, over-thinking sophistry!
I think this is also a good time to let everyone know those BuzzFeed "quizzes" don't actually measure anything except how much free time you have at your job to point and click at big squares on the screen.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:20 PM on March 9, 2018
Or where things were placed or what wasn't placed, or what illogical made-up demographic wasn't represented on a made-up, unscientific chart that has absolutely no validity or utility. Yay, over-thinking sophistry!
I think this is also a good time to let everyone know those BuzzFeed "quizzes" don't actually measure anything except how much free time you have at your job to point and click at big squares on the screen.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:20 PM on March 9, 2018
'just' 'content' 'analysis'... not the words the author thinks they mean.
I have my own complaints about the chart but I think she probably understands these words. And in the context of the post she was responding to it was perfectly reasonable IMO.
And waiting for experts or audiences to chime in and "connect" on this work is really quite exploitative of the commons. It's an ethics issue.
Posting stuff on the internet if you're not 0roperly credentialed is now an ethics issue?
posted by mark k at 9:00 PM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
I have my own complaints about the chart but I think she probably understands these words. And in the context of the post she was responding to it was perfectly reasonable IMO.
And waiting for experts or audiences to chime in and "connect" on this work is really quite exploitative of the commons. It's an ethics issue.
Posting stuff on the internet if you're not 0roperly credentialed is now an ethics issue?
posted by mark k at 9:00 PM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
I saw this a couple of times last week. The chart is misguided at best, but even pointing out obvious deficiencies like the placement of The Washington Times gets met with skepticism by the kind of people who think it's great. To the point where I just stopped trying to argue about it.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:51 PM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ob1quixote at 9:51 PM on March 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
polymodus: What does "content analysis" mean? And what makes this chart not content analysis, or more than just content analysis?
posted by skoosh at 8:33 AM on March 10, 2018
posted by skoosh at 8:33 AM on March 10, 2018
I include them on there just to show that they exist. I just do content analysis
What a load of wishy-washy bollocks. If the idea is to display bias in media, then audience size is relevant. "Showing they exist" is the "both sides are to blame" of media analysis, since on the "far-liberal" side of the bottom part of chart, the only ones I had heard by name are Occupy Democrats and New Republic. On the other, there's InfoWars, Breitbart, Blaze and Fox News of all things.
It's like someone saying that (a band that has the general critical acclaim of bean farts inside a stuck elevator) blows, but hey, have you heard (a song by a band with a long, quality discography except a few stinkers), they're about as bad.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:36 PM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
What a load of wishy-washy bollocks. If the idea is to display bias in media, then audience size is relevant. "Showing they exist" is the "both sides are to blame" of media analysis, since on the "far-liberal" side of the bottom part of chart, the only ones I had heard by name are Occupy Democrats and New Republic. On the other, there's InfoWars, Breitbart, Blaze and Fox News of all things.
It's like someone saying that (a band that has the general critical acclaim of bean farts inside a stuck elevator) blows, but hey, have you heard (a song by a band with a long, quality discography except a few stinkers), they're about as bad.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:36 PM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Media Literacy is something that needs to be taught from early elementary school up until high school graduation. It doesn't need to be partisan, but it should arm any future citizen to be able to examine information sources and to pick and choose based on convergence with what is actually happening. The more "this is what you should think about this" or "this is what I think" about this that is in supposed news, the less it is really news.
I'm shocked when I step outside my bubble and watch CNN or Fox News or MSNBC. So much time spent telling people how to view the world! Jeebus!
I haven't watched a major network news show since Peter Jennings died. *sigh* RIP
The best news show I'm watching right now is HBO's Vice News Tonight.
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on March 8, 2018 [10 favorites]