A chart, complete with logos of news sources, says much about some of the most prominent media. As an example:
![[Image: main-qimg-12f43747967c9c690a3f29e6bb5ecd29]](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-12f43747967c9c690a3f29e6bb5ecd29)
"News" ranges from original reporting (AP, Reuters) that is done in such a rush that no reporter could ever manipulate the content. This is the definitive news source -- and the AP and Reuters are explicitly intolerant of any re-writing of its material. Can either get a news story wrong? Sure, but not often. So what is lacking in AP or Reuters wires? Depth. One gets no interpretation or analysis of the news. Others can do that. Close behind are Agence-France Presse and Bloomberg. There's not much potential for bias when one simply reports what one sees.
A little more depth comes with the three main commercial networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS, supposedly arrayed from left to right). Even so you may find the stories reported on superficial. The thirty-minute broadcasts of the evening news allot little time to any story. To get more information you must read a newspaper, and depending on the editorial bias you will see little difference in news reporting between a relatively liberal big-city newspaper (like the San Francisco Chronicle) and a relatively conservative newspaper (like the Arizona Republic) or rely on NPR or PBS. In general, as news sources, entities in the upper half of the gray circle are highly reliable. This includes such entities as the Wall Street Journal (whose investor audience implies a bias of the clientele)
Just below is more complex analysis, which such newspapers as the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post start to do. To the extent that a news entity does complex analysis (or the plainer analysis) liberal and conservative bias often become more overt. OK, Time, Foreign Policy, and The Economist don't seem to have much bias, but Slate and the Weekly Standard are decidedly Left and Right, bordering on clear partisanship.
There are entities that I never thought of until recently as news sources, such as New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone -- until everything became political, including cultural expressions. Perhaps the better writers are on the Left today, which may explain much of the attraction of the Left to educated people. I remember when the National Review was eminently worth reading -- it lost that quality as the late William F. Buckley faded before dying. Could it be that literary merit has a liberal bias?
Complex analysis, plain analysis, and then persuasion follow -- and in each the polarization intensifies to Left and Right with the disappearance of any apparent middle. as one gets to plain analysis and persuasion. CNN is in a remarkable position -- not wildly-biased, but not very good. I am not sure that CNN has any clear mission in news except to fill time.
Below fair attempts at persuasion (like MSNBC on the Left and the American Conservative) one gets news sources or opinion sources that show bias through exclusion of any semblance of the Other Side. The Huffington Post and Daily Kos should be seen only in the understanding that one gets less than the whole story -- and may get some strident editorializing -- as with One America News and the Drudge Report. We are approaching the awful, and at this point the Left-Right divide is severe. At that level there is no discernible middle.
(I have cited the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos because those are not behind paywalls, and because they are easy to use on a specific issue).
The red rectangle involves even at its top such bilge as the Daily Mail and FoX News Channel on the Right and a media source that I have never heard of on the Left. The Red rectangle is the septic tank of news, material that one is wise not to admit reading. A sort of 'center' appears, but this includes the highly-untrustworthy National Enquirer which offers mostly non-news such as stories of celebrities misbehaving.
You will notice that as one goes down in the reliability of news, political bias becomes much more severe except for the anti-vaccination stuff and celebrity news. Thus Occupy Democrats... the Palmer Report... Breitbart... Newsmax... Infowars... FLUSH!
"News" ranges from original reporting (AP, Reuters) that is done in such a rush that no reporter could ever manipulate the content. This is the definitive news source -- and the AP and Reuters are explicitly intolerant of any re-writing of its material. Can either get a news story wrong? Sure, but not often. So what is lacking in AP or Reuters wires? Depth. One gets no interpretation or analysis of the news. Others can do that. Close behind are Agence-France Presse and Bloomberg. There's not much potential for bias when one simply reports what one sees.
A little more depth comes with the three main commercial networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS, supposedly arrayed from left to right). Even so you may find the stories reported on superficial. The thirty-minute broadcasts of the evening news allot little time to any story. To get more information you must read a newspaper, and depending on the editorial bias you will see little difference in news reporting between a relatively liberal big-city newspaper (like the San Francisco Chronicle) and a relatively conservative newspaper (like the Arizona Republic) or rely on NPR or PBS. In general, as news sources, entities in the upper half of the gray circle are highly reliable. This includes such entities as the Wall Street Journal (whose investor audience implies a bias of the clientele)
Just below is more complex analysis, which such newspapers as the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post start to do. To the extent that a news entity does complex analysis (or the plainer analysis) liberal and conservative bias often become more overt. OK, Time, Foreign Policy, and The Economist don't seem to have much bias, but Slate and the Weekly Standard are decidedly Left and Right, bordering on clear partisanship.
There are entities that I never thought of until recently as news sources, such as New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone -- until everything became political, including cultural expressions. Perhaps the better writers are on the Left today, which may explain much of the attraction of the Left to educated people. I remember when the National Review was eminently worth reading -- it lost that quality as the late William F. Buckley faded before dying. Could it be that literary merit has a liberal bias?
Complex analysis, plain analysis, and then persuasion follow -- and in each the polarization intensifies to Left and Right with the disappearance of any apparent middle. as one gets to plain analysis and persuasion. CNN is in a remarkable position -- not wildly-biased, but not very good. I am not sure that CNN has any clear mission in news except to fill time.
Below fair attempts at persuasion (like MSNBC on the Left and the American Conservative) one gets news sources or opinion sources that show bias through exclusion of any semblance of the Other Side. The Huffington Post and Daily Kos should be seen only in the understanding that one gets less than the whole story -- and may get some strident editorializing -- as with One America News and the Drudge Report. We are approaching the awful, and at this point the Left-Right divide is severe. At that level there is no discernible middle.
(I have cited the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos because those are not behind paywalls, and because they are easy to use on a specific issue).
The red rectangle involves even at its top such bilge as the Daily Mail and FoX News Channel on the Right and a media source that I have never heard of on the Left. The Red rectangle is the septic tank of news, material that one is wise not to admit reading. A sort of 'center' appears, but this includes the highly-untrustworthy National Enquirer which offers mostly non-news such as stories of celebrities misbehaving.
You will notice that as one goes down in the reliability of news, political bias becomes much more severe except for the anti-vaccination stuff and celebrity news. Thus Occupy Democrats... the Palmer Report... Breitbart... Newsmax... Infowars... FLUSH!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.