How does Fox vs. CNN compare in topic/event coverage over the last week?
topdown.substack.comI know this will come across as a bit of flame-bait, but:
What is the point in comparing two crappy news sources? Neither is worth spending time on.
Also, more on-point: Are they looking only at news, or are they including opinion?
>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.
It's interesting that CNN's website has more than double the website visits as FoxNews's website does.
* CNN.com: 524 million
* NYtimes.com: 449.9m
* FoxNews.com: 263m
* WashingtonPost.com: 156.9m
* CNBC.com: 144.5m
* NYPost.com: 119.6m
* Forbes.com: 85.7m
* USAToday.com: 85.5m
* BusinessInsider.com: 80.7m
* NPR.org: 76.6m
Source: SimilarWeb.com
On the other hand, more people watch Fox News than CNN & MSNBC combined.
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/week-of-june-27-basic-cable-...
I'll make a wild guess and say that Fox News's audience trends much older.
And as sibling comment says, CNN is well known internationally.
Well CNN has quite a viewership internationally - Fox not so much.
Indeed, the relative numbers are a complete misrepresentation of the image. You need to see nominal viewers to understand just how absolutely crushing Fox News' dominance has been, not just of CNN, but of all the Leftist media. The second most viewed news source (and most viewed Leftist one) isn't even CNN any more, it's been MSNBC for a while now:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-networ...
And it has continued to get worst for the Leftist mainstream media.
If there's something important in that link, can you write it out? I cannot view "premium" statistics.
>You need to see nominal viewers to understand just how absolutely crushing Fox News' dominance has been
Nominal viewers does seem really important to determine dominance. I'm not sure it's as important in the context of the project here, though. The numbers I quoted only seem to matter with respect to how the news sources were initially selected, not the actual analysis being done. I guess that stat does suggest they should compare Fox to MSNBC rather than CNN.
It doesn't provide much useful info. That one item is much crappier than another crappy item is not very helpful information.
>That one item is much crappier than another crappy item is not very helpful information.
How is it not? If my options are crap, crappy, super crap and super-extra-duper crap... It seems helpful to know which one is the least crappy.
As an aside, are you willing to share which news station you don't put in the crap bucket?
> How is it not? If my options are crap, crappy, super crap and super-extra-duper crap... It seems helpful to know which one is the least crappy.
It's also helpful to know that they are all crappy, which this didn't show.
This is a relative study. If instead they set up some reasonable objective criteria and ranked each news sources according to it, that would be useful. I may see that CNN scores only 20%, and Fox News scores only 10%. Yes, CNN would be better, but it would also tell me not to waste time on either.
> As an aside, are you willing to share which news station you don't put in the crap bucket?
I was a news junkie a decade ago, and weaned myself off of it. Things have likely changed since those years so it would be hard to suggest some now - I've heard sources like The Guardian have gone downhill, for example.
In general, print sources are way better. Even a mediocre print source tends to be better than almost all video/TV news. Radio is somewhere in between.
McClatchy DC[1] was one resource I would recommend in those days. It's a "general purpose" news organization and one of the few mainstream publications that often covered items neglected by the rest. Most hadn't heard of it, but the parent organization owns several well known print newspapers.
I see they filed for bankruptcy in 2020. I don't know if they've been able to maintain the quality.
As much as I dislike the NY Times, it's still way ahead of CNN/Fox/MSNBC.
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.
There's no such thing as a good news source. They are all biased. The best option is using multiple news sources, ideally ones that are fairly balanced (NPR, AP) as well as biased ones, as well as foreign news sources about America. For example I really like reading BBC news about the US and Al Jazeera.
Financial Times, The Guardian, Reuters are usually pretty good. There might be some bias somewhere, or a weird opinion piece (clearly labeled as such) but they are honest reporting outlets that don't outright lie, and fix any mistakes that might have slipped in.
Reuters, the AP, and Bloomberg are my go-to news sources. People who are paid a lot by a few customers to produce accurate news, rather than people who are paid a little by a lot of people to produce an entertainment product.
Bloomberg had that invisible spy chip story.
I’m not sure if Reuters, company known for hiring ex-CIA officials, is a good example of a reliable source.
> What are good news sources?
I would first begin with categories. On the bottom is video/TV news. Radio can be OK. Print is usually far ahead of the other two.
I don't think there are any good sources on an absolute scale. Some sources are better than other in certain arenas, etc. I am willing to look into comparisons/analyses of things that have significantly higher signal to noise ratio. But comparing two news sources that are poor in almost every criterion is pointless.
It's like comparing VB[1] with early PHP. They're both poor languages.
[1] Once one of the top used programming languages in the world
> What are good news sources?
I wish I had an answer. Good news sources are usually a case of: I know it when I see it. Once you read enough you can tell good shit from bad shit. Shows depth of knowledge, rigor, both sides (if there is an actual legitimate other side), a slant toward neutral verbiage, according to <reputable source>..., <reputable source> reports ..., etc. I wish this could be passed on to others. Good news sources have "it"
I think there is such an massive sea of information that you can tell any story you want with cherry-picking and aggressive call to action flame-bait verbiage.
My news-savy neighbour's strategy was to combine several sources, Channel 4[0], Al Jazeera, <can't remember> and sheepishly, RT (this was mid-2000's). He rationalised the last one as not being a reliable source, but as a way of seeing what others weren't covering. Al Jazeera is great for anything outside Qatar's interest and their early days included actually talking to real Israelis which was something not seen in most of the Middle East at that time.
It's much better if you can get an outside perspective. The right wing papers in the UK were selling Brexit as the sunlit uplands. The leading right wing paper in Canada, the Globe & Mail, called Brexit the height of stupidity. Judge for yourself which sources were better.
Double down on external sources with that second language that you've been meaning to learn. Lazy propaganda doesn't cross language barriers very well, so it stands out - almost as much as promoted content in English on a non-English Reddit sub. (but first, learn the words for "wounded" and "killed" as they are in half the headlines)
Sources change, too. The BBC used to strive for impartiality. Now, their national news spouts the government line, but the regional news hasn't got the memo and regularly runs critical pieces. I think the World Service is still it's own unit.
There aren't any excellent news sources in the US but Voice of America (voanews.com) is pretty good.
https://adfontesmedia.com/download-the-media-bias-chart/
It can be measured quite objectively.
follow the money and find sources funded by the kind of people you would also fund.
unbiased news is as meaningful as speaking without an accent. everybody has one. so follow the money and pick ones that are funded by people that have ethics which match your own.
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.
> It's mostly above board, if biased.
Above board does not equate with quality.
CNN is pretty crap compared to most big print newspapers.
Pretty much all TV news is crap compared to big print newspapers.
Which is why I tell people that if they're getting their news from TV, they're doing it wrong.
Above Board definitely correlates with quality, because it implies truthiness, which is obviously a key consideration.
CNN is a broadcast news channel that covers things as they happen, not a newspaper where they write articles as long as they like.
So you'd compare it to MSNBC and Fox and possibly Network News, not news papers.
> Above Board definitely correlates with quality, because it implies truthiness, which is obviously a key consideration.
It is one of many factors. You can have a news source that is 100% accurate and virtually useless.
> CNN is a broadcast news channel that covers things as they happen, not a newspaper where they write articles as long as they like.
> So you'd compare it to MSNBC and Fox and possibly Network News, not news papers.
Depends on your goals. If you want relevant and accurate, then print is better. If you want breaking news as soon as it happens and can't wait a day - sure, TV news is better (still worse than radio). In my experience, less than 1% of TV news content is needed by 99% of Americans on the same day it occurs. They're not worse off if they find out the next day.
On top of that, a lot of "breaking news" is riddled with errors and speculation. If you want to know what happened, as opposed to what may have happened, it's simpler to wait. When I was a news addict, I was drowning with too much content. I put limits on myself: Once a month I would catch up with the news feeds (could take over a week to do so), and it quickly became obvious how relatively worthless "early" news was. I'd get all the relevant information by reading a fifth of the articles.
Yeah I think you're stretching it here.
Yes, technically, 'very accurate' may not be good news, but that's not all CNN is. They are 'above bar' and a decent news org.
Yes, just 'breaking news' can be inaccurate, but that's not just what they are.
They're Cable News, and again, relatively decent.
Even though they are biased, if you had to pick 'just one' - I think they'd be a fair source.
I share your view on 'deep news' - but most people don't have time to go in depth.
CNN is not great but won't lead you too-too far off, most of the time.
Either MSNBC or Fox ... creates some unfortunate bubble thinking.
In my past experience, CNN has not been very transparent in terms of admitting its bias, which is very much apparent to the average news viewer. I am not sure that anyone in the US other than a few highly sheltered democrats, who get their news only from left-leaning sources, still believes that it is "the most trusted name in news."
Incidentally, I actually think MSNBC, which admits to being a left-leaning news source, produces better (and less biased) news content than CNN. I have actually seen them cover important stories that are unfavorable to their point of view, when CNN has radio silence.
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?
Combined? Nope.
CNN is chronically last. FoxNews is invariably first.
On websites, CNN is 4th (43%), Fox is 8th (40%). https://today.yougov.com/ratings/media/popularity/news-websi...
On TV (amongst the big three news channels), Fox is first, then NBC, then CNN. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/124-cable-channels-ranke... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(American_television...
YouGov is an opt-in opinion taker.
Furthermore, opt-in is not a conservative trait hence its inherent bias in favor of those who participate actively to the YouGov data farm.
What data are you relying on instead?
What YouGov About is describing about their collection methods.
Well in the absence of other data, I'll rely on YouGov more than you for viewing figures, thanks.
MSNBC and CNN together are almost as big as FoxNews.
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...
The scariest thing about biased news sources is not how they cover something but whether they cover something at all.
People who don't tune into multiple will simply have no idea that something even happened. They'll have completely different realities based on their perceptions.
Just looking at the graph you can see four whole stories that CNN completely omitted, yet there was nothing that CNN covered that Fox ignored. I'm sure there are weeks where fox ignored something too, but in this data the omissions are one sided.
This is why one of my daily bookmarks is https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
If any outlet on either side covers it, I'll see it.
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.
>There's one level scarier and that's when neither/none of them cover something.*
Completely agree.
>In particular, the issue of possible lab leak and US institutional involvement in research over in China.
I read the Fauci emails. The person who brought it up made it perfectly clear she thought there was an unnatural segment of DNA in the virus. Yet people were silenced in the beginning for even suggesting the possibility of a lab leak. After receiving and responding to that email he denied the lab leak possibility.
Any sane cynic who's been around long enough will assume that all the major players are working on biological weapons. It's reminiscent of the nuclear arms race with similar implications. But we can't even talk about it? Scary.
It was not about 'biological weapons' just slightly dangerous pandemic research.
The issue is not so much the hyper details but the ultimate confusion that arrives from the weird web of interwoven relationships, differing levels of complacency, lack of transparency, corruption in some cases ... without really a proper target to point a finger at (except the Chinese government, it's a clear problem there).
It's an intriguing situation really. The 'truth' is not some Scooby Doo 'reveal' but a messy confluence of issues that circle right back to our own institutions and credibility. The populist rage makers could do almost anything they want with it.
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.
From the first post, https://topdown.substack.com/i/47912680/bias
Let’s take a recent that has skewed coverage and is likely to be a split topic, such as Disney and the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” Bill. Here are some of the headlines from different outlets (Emphasis is mine).
CNN article is a short news piece with no external links, not much to see there.
Fox article is longer, original headline used the phrase "woke corporations", includes "Disney is bad" external links in case it's not clear enough from the article.
NYT article is a clearly labeled op-ed piece, obviously not comparable with the other two.
Aligning all of these hot-takes together
Not sure if it's the author or his "AI" that thinks comparing all of these as "hot-takes" is a useful activity.
i'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
You only need to read the first chapter, which is about 30 pages, to see the arguments. the rest of the book is example and analysis.
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
Not to accuse the author of bias, but surely are there must have been some topics covered by CNN that Fox didn't?
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??
Or omissions from both in what they covered.
IIRC, the unfortunately-named IRA won't kick in for four years, only helps people on Medicaid, and makes drug prices worse for other programs. It was clearly written in a way to help big pharma and not the little people. And that ought to piss off any CNN or Fox viewer.
Instead, they show versions of the story to trigger their bases.
I don't think people give a care about China at this point because things are so bad at home. There's really no obvious way that this affects Americans, so why bother talking about it? Plus, the crisis in China has been going on for so long at this point that it's turned into olds.
Same with the other stuff you mentioned: there's nothing really new or interesting with that.
> There's really no obvious way that this affects Americans, so why bother talking about it?
Looking at cnn.com right now, I see stuff like:
> Finnish PM says videos of her 'boisterous' partying shouldn't have been made public
> Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 2016 plane incident: FBI report reveals new details
I know nothing about the Chinese real estate market, but somehow I feel confident that it will affect more Americans than these two stories combined will.
> Plus, the crisis in China has been going on for so long at this point that it's turned into olds.
So has the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, yet it still makes big news.
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.
Increasing funding for enforcement for the IRS is something that I personally feel is a good thing, but I think it’s fair to cover it in light of the fact that it seems to be colored by politics, like so much else. Why on earth would the Democrats pronounce that it won’t be used to audit anywhere earning less than $400k? As an extension of the anti-rich rhetoric, it’s no longer a simple “bureaucratic funding decision” and should be covered/discussed. (Not that I fully agree with the tone or manner of coverage, but you can’t claim that it’s not news.)
I keep bouncing around on how to respond to this. But really you have this exactly backwards: you think we should pay more attention to a subject (i.e. dedicate our limited "news" bandwidth to understanding it) because political actors want us to think it's important.
And, no, I think that's exactly backwards. The fact that one side is predicting tax armageddon and the other is explaining that it only soaks the rich is an easy cue that this is not a subject with any real truth to it, because if there were then there would be simple answers and not spin. And there is a simple answer, and it's that "The IRS got a moderate funding bump in this bill". And that simple answer is all I need.
And it's all you should need too. The only people who want more coverage of the subject are the ones trying to change your mind about it (or reinforce your priors). And those are the people you should be listening to the least.
Nothing in my comment prescribes who or what you should pay attention to.
First you’re bothered by what networks are covering. Then I explain why these topics may be interesting. So then you say I’m backwards because I shouldn’t pay attention to what they are covering. Good grief: why are you bothering to complain about what they’re covering in the first place? Isn’t your first comment backwards for the exact same reason?
Your own bias is showing.
Fox watchers would say something like "it's just a witchhunt, and it found nothing" or "climate change is a big fat nothingburger". (I personally don't believe that!)
Can you be more specific?
More specific about...?
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 disappointing, but just a fact of life now, that people will see the world so differently. People have always had differing politics, but there was a semblance of a baseline. I feel like we need a generation that strikes out against the notion of identity altogether (as I think identity is a core part of the issue), but that already feels like an identity in itself.
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.
Now we have a world where there is no baseline to even start a discussion. Depending on your perspective, either crime is worse than ever before and the criminal are running crazy. Or the only criminals are the system and those in power. You can literally find non-trivial populations in the US who believe that we need to build more prisons and others who think we need to free all prisoners. There's no place to even stand to begin to have a conversation.
Again, this was always the case. It’s just that most of us never noticed it, because the opposing views were hard to find.
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.
I think almost all issues with any controversy seem to have identity at the crux. This is why there is virtually no principled consistency. That's why you have Defund the Police and then Defund the FBI. Or "athletes get paid too much" and "it's a free market". Or "go back where you came from" and "go back where you came from". Or "my body my choice" and "my body my choice".
If I woke up tomorrow I think the supporters of each of these could just about flip and they'd be no worse off from a principled perspective. They just need to make sure those others in their identity group are on the same page.
How is identity at the crux of “defund the FBI”?
“Identity politics” are generally considered to be issues related to things like race, gender, social class, etc
Yes, view identity as the group of people you identify with. It's a cross section of race/gender/social class/political party/geography/etc... "Defund the FBI" is just a reaction of a specific identity group -- largely the same group that hated people saying Defund the Police, fought for Blue Lives Matter, etc...
You’re confusing partisanship with identity.
I realize it’s seemingly a small difference or amounts to the same thing, but not making the distinction really muddies the conversation.
I view them as different in that this is about your personal identity. An example, is if a Republican Governor commits a crime -- should I care? Not really, it doesn't change the party platform. Maybe a minor impact associated with their chance at re-election. But when your identity is caught up with party, now you start to defend the governer purely because of their party. It's not simply a party affiliation, but your identity.
This is much larger and intractable than partisanship.
I realize that, but it’s a redefinition that makes it very challenging for people engaging in fleeting internet conversations to follow the thread.
Identity politics and partisanship have fairly well defined meanings within political discourse, and so when you say “identity is the problem” the assumption for many people is that you’re talking about issues like BLM, trans issues, etc.
People voting D or R because that’s their tribe rather than because they want those policies is an example.
I know a lot of people who vote without even really reading what’s on the ballot. They just go with whatever option has D next to it. Others do the same but for R.
Personally I can’t vote so it’s mostly an interesting phenomenon to observe
I feel like calling that “identity” muddles the term, as identity politics generally refers to categories like race and gender, and maps to feelings on issues such as abortion and the Black Lives Matter movement.
To attempt to be helpful, I’d suggest that what you’re referring to is more of an issue of uber partisanship than identity per se.
Yes and uber partisanship is identity. We even call it identifying with your party affiliation.
You can see this in how people say “I am a democrat/republican”. They don’t say vote or belong to or member of, people very explicitly talk about it as an identity and both or all parties encourage that.
It is, but is distinct from the meaning of “identity politics” and not making that distinction causes confusion.
The D vs. R tribalism is super visible if you're a G(reen).
The Ds assume I'm an R, and the Rs assume I'm a D. My voter registration says "Pacific Green" and I vote Green/Independent most of the time when possible.
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 "really hate" how some "news" sites like to, "quote excessively" in headlines.
If you want to call some nonsense, or a bold face lie, have the damn courage to just call it that. Don't air-quoting some nebulous entity to make it sound more official.
It's to deflect liability? If you are quoting someone, you aren't the one who could be sued.
Politician calls bill "horrible"
Vs.
Politician calls bill horrible
In the first, the politician actually uses the word ‘horrible’ and so it’s quoted.
In the second, the headline writer is giving their opinion/spin.
"Politican" calls bill horrible.
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.
I disagree, one/two word quotes can be used to drastically spin what a person said.
/u/legister: Headlines with mini-quotes are "better" than the alternative, since they aren't "editorialized."
Oh no. Is that really why you think people use quotes, or are you trolling? I hope you are.
Quoting entire sentences is fine. But anymore, news is quoting literally single words without any citations.
/u/secondcoming asks, "are you trolling? I hope you are."
Vs.
User "trolls" forum. Posters respond to "quotes" with "oh no."
Seriously, about 80% of FN headlines contain one or two word mini-quotes.
Right, but it's not "air quotes". Those have an element of sarcasm.
Both networks require large amounts of capital. Different sides of same dialectics that are important to those who influence large amounts of capital. A better comparison would be independent news sources of individuals against large corporate media.