Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/12/14/an-attempt-to-chart-new-source.html
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I am always agog at people who claim NPR is liberal… it has been centrist and marginally corporate leaning for years. Yes local stations do carry more liberal programming like Democracy Now and such but the actual NPR news not so much.
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I think they aren’t exposed to it much.
Also is IMGUR fake news or not?
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LOL at Slate being listed as analytical/complex. Maybe 10 years ago, but not today.
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I guess that whoever made this graphic advocates centrism.
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I have a good solution for people who complain about the “liberal” media.
Start sending them articles from The Morning Star.
What about Fox news being listed as “meets high standards”? Has that ever been true?
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Yeah, I don’t think so. The problem with this is that it’s re-affirming something that isn’t true: that we can trust mainstream media to tell the truth. Bias isn’t the problem. Failing to tell the truth is the problem. The Times does this quite frequently–they consider balance to be more important than the truth, so they do the usual two-sides dance, where one side is someone who seriously knows what they are talking about, and the other side is a know-nothing blowhard who disagrees loudly. Both positions are presented as equivalently valid. This is bad reporting.
Some of the media in the middle of that picture are trying to course-correct, but the Times in particular has been quite bad about it–they are still trying to be balanced even when balance is absolutely simply not present. So referring to the Times as a really good news source is simply wrong. They are a news source, and they can be useful if you read them with a critical eye, but so can many of the sources labeled biased.
My point is that many of these mainstream sources can do a lot better than they are doing, and we should hold them to account, not applaud them for being unbiased when they do so by normalizing unsupportable positions.
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well their production values are pretty good… not sure about the standards of the fact checking department but I imagine they are bit above USAToday but that isn’t saying much really.
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This diagram is starting to look suspiciously like the McDonald’s cup…
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NPR should really pushed to the right, somewhere around The Economist and the WSJ (news, not the crazytown op-ed section). Like those two outlets it’s a good source as long as you take the known bias (neoliberal consensus, globalist, politically right-centre) into account and apply appropriate filters as you read.
I do find it frustrating hearing NPR struggle to treat #nextpresident and his cabinet nominations and policy proposals as “normal,” though. That’s a hopeless exercise that foreign outlets like the BBC and CBC and The Economist and (to the left) The Guardian don’t feel obliged to engage in.
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I notice that the BBC and Reuters are included. I’m wondering where Canada’s CBC or Globe and Mail would place.
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Even the treatment in the election… I can’t listen to their news anymore with the fact that they are not calling out the sheer insane stupidity of it.
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I’d put the CBC in the same area as the BBC – maybe slightly more liberal. I find their radio outlet a good way to keep up on breaking U.S. news, since they cover it a lot due to proximity. Their editorial approach seems more like the kind of “boring,” nuts and bolts broadcast journalism that ended in the U.S. in the late 1970s.
Globe and Mail has always seemed to me to be similar to the NYT, slightly more liberal reflecting Canada’s more progressive politics but still a corporate establishment outlet.
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I think the BBC is in the wrong place. After watching the BBC News during the last UK general election I would put it as at least Skews Conservative (and I think I’m being charitable considering how differently the Green Party and Ukip were treated despite having a similar number of MPs in parliament).
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Now, start where Breitbart is and look down.
Go past the bottom of your screen
Okay, you know what, that’s still not low enough, go downstairs and line yourself up below Breitbart on your screen.
Look at your right foot — that is where the National Enquirer falls on the chart.
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I think Breitbart is around where my PC’s water cooling radiator is.
That’s just reminded me to clean the air filter in front of it.
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Am I blind, or did they not even include Boing Boing in that chart? Is there a less biased source for cryptozoology news?
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Jesus, no. I’ve watched Fox news occasionally over the years - they straight-up lie during news segments (not just their opinion programming). Watching them post-9-11, when they repeated debunked falsehoods and contextualized the Iraq war with the banner title “War on Terror” made me realize they were more than willing to repeat partisan lies - and make up their own. It’s way too far into the “credible news” area of the chart to be accurate.
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What a perfect illustration of “both sides do it equally.” I notice there is no axis for factual versus fake. I wonder why not?
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No one seems to covering the complex-crazy parts of the spectrum.
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