How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week? (opens in new tab)

>60% of Republicans turn to Fox News for political news and 53% of Democrats turn to CNN

It'd be nice to see comparisons of all the news networks, but if you're going to start somewhere it seems like the two which have the majority of viewers seems appropriate.

What are good news sources? I guarantee you that for any news source you pick, there are people who will argue that it is crappy and/or biased.

CNN is not a crappy news source.

It's mostly above board, if biased.

The non-opinion parts of Fox are not that bad but it's more rare.

My bet is they are looking at headline coverage both news and opinion.

I think this is a really worthy excercise so that we can see a bit more methodologically what kind of bias happens with selective coverage.

The tone and content of the coverage matters a lot.

Almost all of the editorial is bad on all sides. They have some insight, but it's so biased you have to hear other people talk in order to contextualize it.

Because they are among the most popular sources thus it’s useful to see how they differ.

Similarly, knowing how different sources cover things presumably is part of the criteria one would use to qualify/disqualify them for personal consumption.

Because they're the two biggest news sources?

The point is that they are both very popular [1] (and hence influential), no matter our opinion about them.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-networ...

I don't see the problem with people seeing the world differently now.

I see the problem with there only being two lenses through which to see. Think of all the things we must be missing!

The “baseline” was established by ignoring points of view that didn’t align with the ruling class. It’s still largely the case, for example crime stories are popular, except for crimes committed by law enforcement, which - in some cases, like theft - is actually the majority of all cases in US, just not reported that way.

Do you have particular examples of identity being a core part of the issue?

I see people complain about identity politics all the time, but when it comes down to it, the individual issues that fall under that umbrella are things that people deeply care about and can’t just be dismissed.

How else will I set myself apart from other people while also showing that any people are on my side?

> but there was a semblance of a baseline.

How did you form that conclusion? I think the history of this country itself forms the greatest counter example to this point.

> I feel like we need a generation that strikes out against the notion of identity altogether

This feels like misplaced austerity. Human beings living their short lives absolutely have the right to their own identity, these are natural rights and desires.

This idea that we're going to fix this problem through deeper collectivism and removal of the individual instead of addressing the obvious problems of mass communication in our society is somewhat frightening to me.

I think I’m more intrigued by topics that are suspiciously absent from BOTH sources.

E.g. it is surprisingly difficult to find any TV news coverage of the wild macroeconomic trends going on with China’s banking and real-estate sector at the moment.

Also: Epstein trial follow-ups; Ghislaine Maxwell living it up after a guilty verdict. Remember when Bill Gates and many other leaders/ politicians were found to have a _paper trail_ of their involvement with Epstein??

The point is more that Fox will routinely elevate issues that aren't really "news" in a traditional sense to major "stories", either to fill time[1] or to make a partisan argument.

The IRS funding is a great example here. The IRA bill indeed increases funding for the Internal Revenue Service by something like 30%. This would be reasonable content to include in a print article, say, of the kind of bureaucratic funding decision that happens thousands of times every year. But Fox went almost wall-to-wall on it, with partisan guest after partisan guest claiming absurd things about "87000 armed agents coming after your money". That's not news. It's just not.

Edit to add: and CNN, really, just doesn't do that. If there's a breaking story that's embarassing to democrats, they run it. They're journalists, it's what they're trained to do. Surely the jouranlists and editors have opinions and perspectives about what's important, but it doesn't rise to the level of "newsworthiness" decisions. They cover what breaks, for the most part.

[1] i.e. "Avoid covering other stuff". That ridiculous Elvis story they were running was, essentially, counterprogramming the revelations about the FBI raid for which there was still no consensus republican response. They couldn't put a talking head on the screen to "explain" it, so they ran some irrelevant nonsense instead of covering breaking news.

1. They only covered a week.

2. I think the notion of "X didn't cover something" is heavily biased, maybe not in this case where they're looking at data, but I have a very news-angry friend who sends me stuff like that all the time like 15 minutes after I read about it on the NYTimes. Maybe it's not on the front page, maybe it's not "what people are talking about" but it's often there, but people want other people not just to cover it but for it to have an impact and for people to be mad about it. Lab leak is a great example I think of something everyone is made that "never got covered" but of course it got covered. At different times, to different degrees, with different angles and emphasis, but just search google for "lab leak NYTimes" and it's there all over the place. Is it as in-depth as people want it to be? Probably not, and that's where you get into conspiracy realm, because there's no actual data to follow as to why, just speculation.

It's to deflect liability? If you are quoting someone, you aren't the one who could be sued.

Journalists have done this for centuries. They're making it clear that they're reporting that someone else said that, and it's not the journalist's words.

It's slightly better than an editorialized summary.

Oh no. Is that really why you think people use quotes, or are you trolling? I hope you are.

First - your assessment of 'omitted by CNN' isn't quite right.

"yet there was nothing that CNN covered that Fox ignored. " - this is wrong. There is at any given time, thousands of 'stories' to cover. Almost by definition CNN will have covered something else that Fox didn't. All of the stories they covered are not on that chart.

...

There's one level scarier and that's when neither/none of them cover something.

In particular, the issue of possible lab leak and US institutional involvement in research over in China.

It's kind of the biggest story of a generation, but it's complicated and almost all that will come out of it is insane populist hysteria and misrepresentations, to it's kind of ignored.

It's so hot that nobody seems to want to give it really good airtime; also, it might also be because of relationship with National Security apparatus who probably have maybe told them not to talk about it, but it's hard to know. It's like one of those 'wartime' issues where most of the press closes rank a bit. The implications are just gigantic.

If nobody talks about it, then it didn't happen ... kind of thing. It remains an issue for bureaucrats and academics to meander on.

According to this [ https://adfontesmedia.com/download-the-media-bias-chart/ ] CNN’s website and Fox’s parent company is similarly factual, with a slight bias to their respective side.

Their TV channels on the other hand are more biased, but CNN is still more factual.

I’m sure some people will not like this, but there also seems to be a correlation between right bias and loss of factuality (and I remember reading a study that show similar things as well).

Nonetheless, it’s best to watch less biased, factual reportings.

It should be noted that the four stories that CNN didn't cover aren't actually real stories, but are bordering on conspiracy theories.

I had a long-untouched copy laying around and read this chapter on your suggestion. There's definitely some good info in here if you haven't been exposed to these ideas. However, I'd probably review Ch. 1 as a mixed bag overall. A good chunk of it is out of date info-dumps about the state of the industry 30-40 years ago. That said, its central thesis of media we consume being largely propaganda (and necessarily so, given the reasons provided) is certainly still true. I think one could filter and update these points, however, to make them more accurate to the current state of affairs and thus make more compelling of an argument.

I wish everyone knew about Edward Bernays, nephew of Freud, and father of modern propaganda, aka public relations, aka marketing.¹²

It's a real eye opener to be able to notice when you're being manipulated (often emotionally) by the others, including family and friends. The media and ad industries have been playing us for years. It lets you reevaluate where you stand as opposed to where you think you stand. I went through a period of outrage, violation & hate while learning this, but came out with a lot more calm & acceptance as a result. I haven't had a TV in 10 years & find it really irritating to watch bc of the way you're unnaturally enticed to resonate for or against whatever is being presented (note, I still do watch some movies). I think it's in everyone's best interests to learn to be in control ones own mind, free of manipulation.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

² https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american...

video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU