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0 pointschrisweekly6y ago0 comments

conservative bias

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6 comments · 3 top-level

threatofrain6y ago· 2 in thread

Financial establishment kind of conservative, not what many would think of American conservatism in general.

I disagree with that. The stuff from the newsroom is basically identical to what you'd read in the New York Times, and doesn't seem very conservatively biased. Put the NYT's CSS on there and you'd not think anything was out of place. There is a little bit more of a focus on "business" articles; what company is buying what other company, how well the semiconductor industry is going to do this year, etc. I never see that in the NYT... but that is certainly not a conservative bias. It's just what they choose to cover.

The editorials are what you'd expect in a conservative newspaper. 50% of them are rah rah about how great Trump is (today's sampling: "Trump Finally Fires Back at Iran"), and the other 50% is how taxes are evil (today's sampling: "How Tariffs Hurt Manufacturing").

I am not sure who reads these or why newspapers pay these opinion columnists / editorial boards. They are always so extreme that they just drive readers away and let them brand the newsroom as "fake news" or "biased", when in reality the newsroom and editorial boards don't even talk with each other. The NYT did a series recently about how the editorial board and opinion columns operate, and it solidified in my mind that they shouldn't exist. It just lowers the reputation of the news-gathering portion of the business, as people associate an editorial they disagree with as bias in the news-gathering.

I read both the WSJ and the NYT because people on HN had me convinced that one was more biased than the other and that I was missing out on deep insights perpetrated by some sort of cabal. A year of reading both has told me that the conspiracy theories are not accurate. Both seem happy to hold the government to account. Neither routinely fabricate stories. You can subscribe to one or the other and not miss a thing. Don't read the editorials unless you are super liberal or super conservative and want some porn along with your morning coffee.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan6y ago

I subscribe to both as well. They both have journalistic integrity and try their best to report facts without bias, but I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that their own biases don't unintentionally leak into the publications.

> It's just what they choose to cover.

I think these choices matter. Based on the stories they choose to run, the NYT comes across as undoubtedly intersectional, a bit globalist, and pro-market in the Bill Clinton sense. In contrast, the WSJ doesn't write much about social issues and is a more explicit proponent of free trade. It's a subtle distinction -- I'm sure the staff of each are amiable toward each other and mingle freely in New York City -- but if you had to collapse all their viewpoints into a single point on a 1-dimensional scale, they would land on slightly different places on the left-right political spectrum.

lukeqsee6y ago· 1 in thread

> bias

…is not by definition bad. Every publication publishes with bias (recognized and announced or not). Prejudice and unannounced (or not well-known) is what you want to avoid. Reading a "conservative bias" is a good thing, if only to better understand that point of view, regardless of if you agree or not.

chrisweeklyOP6y ago

Agreed! I respect Andrew Sullivan, who said something like "transparency is the new objectivity."

leereeves6y ago

And NYT and WaPo each have a bias as well, often very similar.

And why not at least listen to people with more than one point of view?

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