Thats expected. In functioning democracies state media is run for the purpose not profit. It doesnt have the corrupting influence of political money. PBS in the US could be so much better. Just look at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
Thats expected. In functioning democracies state media is run for the purpose not profit. It doesnt have the corrupting influence of political money. PBS in the US could be so much better. Just look at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
> PBS in the US could be so much better.
PBS Newshour is pretty much the best/balanced news programming on US TV at this point. They take deeper dives into issues than most of the other shows out there. And then there's Frontline which is excellent and goes even deeper with a documentary format. The rest of PBS - there are a few good parts like Nova, but a lot of what plays on PBS stations these days is UK crime dramas - man, there seems to be a lot of mayhem going on in merry old England these days.
>PBS Newshour
Haven't watched this since I was a kid. Just scrubbed through the latest episode. I was surprised, it's not bad. Left-leaning to my eye, but FAR less so than any other left-leaning mainstream TV media I can think of. And as you point out, more substantial and meaningful coverage than you typically get anywhere else. I would be happy to encourage anyone to watch more PBS Newshour based on that
Is there a specific example of the left-leaning bias you can mention?
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias"
.. Stephen Colbert
The show had six guests on- 2 left, 1 right, 2 neutral(?) and 1 CIA deep state mouthpiece. The show gave mostly balanced coverage of every issue covered, but declined to dig into the Epstein issue beyond "Trump+Epstein", gave the deep-stater seven minutes to defend the CIA without meaningfully pressing into any of the other questions raised by the latest declassifications (such as HRC & DNC involvement in orchestrating Russiagate), flashed a debunked/misleading statistic on screen about Russians influencing the the 2020 election via social media, and gave a one-sided take on redistricting in Texas ignoring the side that says redistricting after a Census is normal and routine.
> such as HRC & DNC involvement in orchestrating Russiagate
I'm not trying to be dismissive of your viewpoint, but why should anyone bother speaking to this? Absolutely nothing new was divulged. It's not the media's responsibility to give airtime over every government press release.
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/declassified_d...
These documents don't really contain anything.
All you see are staffers at the Hillary campaign discussing the news of the Russian influence campaigns (which this report reiterates are real) and how they can use it for their campaign.
Nothing in here is novel or even that salacious. How is this newsworthy?
Texas already completed redistricting in 2021 after the most recent census (2020). They are only redrawing the maps again now because Trump is demanding an even more egregious gerrymander.
In that case I wish Newshour had made that detail plainer. I see now they lightly brush over it in the intro of the segment. Thank you for the clarification.
Is there much to say on Epstein besides "Trump+Epstein"?
Epstein was not some Darth Vader or Joker (The Dark Night version) or Commodus (from Gladiator) or Sauron or Voldemort type of villain who was openly villainous and did not have a public good side (either an actual good side or a front to try to hide his villainy).
Epstein was more a Han from Enter the Dragon kind of villain.
Epstein had a fairly extensive public good side (maybe real, maybe just a front, probably a mix of both) appearing as a legitimate businessman and a philanthropist.
A big part of his philanthropy was directed toward supporting scientific research, universities, and the arts. He liked to invite top people from particular fields, like physics and AI, to events on his island where they (the invited people) would discuss major scientific and philosophical issues from their field. Get an invite to one of those, and it was a chance to go spend a few days for free in a resort setting, participate in some pop science level discussions to keep the rich guy happy, and maybe try to talk him into funding your lab.
Because of this most of the time it isn't all that interesting when some famous person shows up in Epstein's documents.
It becomes interesting with Trump because he spent a lot of time using his opponent's Epstein connections against them in ways that made his followers come to believe any association with Epstein is practically proof that you are an active pedophile.
He did this even though he knew he himself had connections to Epstein (including to people who actually were part of Epstein's villain side). And now that's biting him.
> PBS Newshour is pretty much the best/balanced news programming on US TV at this point.
Ah yes, the news show that has a weekly politics round table that brings in a balanced approach to see issues from both sides: The side of an anti-Trump Democrat and the side of an anti-Trump Republican.
Good riddance!
How many pro-Trump Republicans actually want to engage in a fair round-table style debate?
This administration makes a point that they only do interviews with sources favorable to them. They can't opt out of the media and then pretend to be victims.
> How many pro-Trump Republicans actually want to engage in a fair round-table style debate?
There's plenty to pick from. The problem is that having someone effective in that position would anger the one people that PBS actually cares about, their donor class. It doesn't matter that Trump won the popular vote in the most recent election, they'll still go out of their way to ensure that the token conservative voice is against him.
> This administration makes a point that they only do interviews with sources favorable to them. They can't opt out of the media and then pretend to be victims.
This is the most accessible and transparent administration in decades, if not longer. The POTUS has held more interviews, with just about every national media organization, and regularly holds open ended press conferences with pools of reporters.
What you're describing is the previous administration which not only hand selected the reporters, they even gave Biden a cheat sheet of reporters (with pictures!) so he would know exactly who to call on: https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-defends-bidens-cheat-sh...
Is that your paragon of media transparency?
>There's plenty to pick from.
No there's not. Name three.
>This is the most accessible and transparent administration in decades, if not longer. The POTUS has held more interviews, with just about every national media organization, and regularly holds open ended press conferences with pools of reporters.
This is simply an absurd lie with no basis in reality, I really don't know why you even spouted it. It contradicts observable truth. Strange.
>Just at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
This is funny because BBC is a prime example of being a propaganda channel for the government of the day. And that's not new at all just look back at the coverage of the Troubles or the miners strikes in the 70s-80s.
Yes it's not on the level of CGTN or Russia Today but BBC is not neutral at all
https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-...
A lot of people are unable to see their own political bias; they look at BBC or Fox News and see “unbiased true reporting”.
I highly suggest using Ground News (ground.news) for a week or a month as your sole portal into news stories, and then use their features to analyze bias in your selection of news stories and outlets.
I use it regularly to try to offset my own biases.
I think comparing BBC new to fox news is a piss take.
of _course_ there is bias at the BBC. But to comparing it to Fox is uncharitable at best.
The comparison for something as openly partisan on the left as Fox News, in US media, would be something like Democracy Now! or maybe The Nation.
The thing is, though, there are a few components here: there's level of favorability toward a certain kind of politics, which some barely-popular left-leaning outlets roughly match Fox News on, plus propensity to lie and exaggerate. And there's reach.
Nothing left-partisan in the US that I'm aware of touches Fox on either of those latter fronts—propensity to just make shit up, and (certainly not) reach.
Nobody's putting Democracy Now! on in waiting rooms. Hell IDK maybe at Planned Parenthood, never been, wouldn't know, but not at a dentist's office or at the auto shop or what have you.
There are equivalents to Fox News on the Left (Fox News viewers think it's MSNBC because that's what Fox News and AM radio told them, LMFAO, no) in the US, in terms of level of commitment to supporting partisan causes. There's nothing like it as far as willingness to deviate from reality to do so, nor in reach. Nothing remotely close.
Also the Wikipedia Current Events portal [1]. It’s definitely biased by the Wikipedia editors decisions on what to add there (especially the “Topics in the News” box) but it gives a more or less neutral dump of the daily events.
It’s pretty much the only place I know to find news on all the conflicts that Western media tends to ignore.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
Notably when I was checking the Current Events Portal for a while, most coverage of the Israel/Hamas war was sourced from Al Jazeera and it definitely felt biased. Checking it just now, it appears to be more balanced now.
At your recommendation I took a look at Ground News.
I'm not a fan of the continued reification of "left" and "right". I have heard conservatives lament that MAGA isn't truly conservative. I've heard economic reformers lament that liberal social policies are sucking the oxygen out of the room for real structural reform. In both cases the idea of a single "left" and "right" as a group, or even worse as the two sole options on the menu of how to think, is severely damaging to productive political dialogue.
Framing everything as left-vs-right is like doing PCA and taking only the first principal component - sure it might be contain some signal, but it flattens any nuance. Critically, it also pre-frames any debate into competing camps in a way that harms rather than serves. I would challenge groups like Ground News to offer other framings - why not "owners vs workers"? Why not "rural vs urban"? We should ask why they chose the framing they do. I have my own cynical opinion but I'll refrain from sharing.
It's also showing you Where and IF people are even talking about the issues in their bubbles.
I don't know about your suggested site, but I use foreign news for this. I have switched to "consuming news" [0] almost entirely from a variety of English-language foreign services.
All national media services have their own bias and propaganda, but if you switch them up it becomes obvious very quickly. It also means that I miss out on most of the US political noise [1], which is a benefit to my mental health [2].
[0] Hot/lukewarm take: "consuming news" is a waste of time, and should be minimized. This really hits you like a brick to the head when you see the stuff that foreign countries are obsessing about, and how tiny it feels to you. Guess what: your news media is filled with the same crap.
[1] I still get the foreign opinion on it, obviously, but this is usually pretty mild. Most countries don't care about the US nearly as much as US citizens think they do.
[2] If you think that CPB/NPR don't have bias, I strongly suggest that you try this. You're probably in a bubble, and an "international perspective" is something that most NPR listeners claim to value. Removing US media from my life eliminated a huge source of angst (particularly after 2016), and revealed that all of the major US media sources are various forms of hyper-polarized clownery.
I suspect most people who look at international media and think it's better are using rose-tinted glasses.
Indian media is broadly worse if anything, latin american media is a trip if you have any understanding of the complicated political landscape, Aus is central to the Murdoch news dynasty, and East asian media has lots of famously partisan organizations. Maybe middle eastern media, explicitly funded for soft power political goals or African media, which span the gamut from bloodthirsty factional rags to leftover colonial institutions to tightly controlled extensions of the state apparatus?
They're differently biased, but you can't escape consuming media critically. "Averaging" by listening to a lot of different perspectives is 1) a lot of effort and 2) also something that can (and is) manipulated by making sure there's lots of "both sides" messaging present.
> I suspect most people who look at international media and think it's better are using rose-tinted glasses....They're differently biased, but you can't escape consuming media critically.
I went out of my way to head off this exact criticism, but I guess I didn't put it in blinking, bold, 30 point font.
Again: every national media outlet has bias (indeed, every media outlet has bias). My experience is that it's pretty easy to notice when you switch your sources regularly.
It doesn't take me any effort to do this, and even if I hear a hyper-partisan take, it doesn't melt my brain. I go "oh weird, so that's what the Indian government thinks" -- which is still vastly preferable to hearing what some reporter at NPR or CNN or whatever thinks about what India thinks.
I've been a subscriber for a few months now and it's well worth it.
Ground News worries me because now we don't need to use our brains the app just tells me the bias! Ground News could be biased!
Leads to shallow discussion where all news sources are tossed out for bias leaving nothing (or what ground news wants you to listen to). God forbid we critically examine for ourselves the information we consume.
I don’t get the sense that Ground News is trying to influence what news stories I select; I think they are presenting metadata that allow me to look at the story from my preferred frame of reference and from the opposing frame of reference. I find it valuable; you might not.
I think that the media bias ratings on Ground News are slightly biased and the factuality ratings are highly biased, not intentionally but due to flawed methodology of their sources. I have contacted their support to raise that issue.
I still find the site tries really hard to make you aware of your own predilections, and I think it does well as that, and if you find yourself gravitating towards one set of sources you can always sample the “other side”.
I agree that left-right doesn’t capture the richness of American politics but for better or worse they are convenient labels for our two party system.
This makes 0 sense
Ground news links all of their sources on a per article basis and you can simply scroll left/right through each news source. And you can add your own sources!
You didn't address the meat of my argument. The sources are irrelevant. They try to tell you the media bias which can itself be biased and gamed and which (I think) leads to readers not critically examining sources for themselves.
If somebody is going to be uncritical I don't see how any of this actually helps, but that's totally on them.
I'm not going to argue with them saying that Fox News is right wing or that MSNBC is more left wing. "Duh".
Maybe we're looking at this from a different angle, or maybe we just use the service in different ways.
The "bias" part that is relevant is showing you the difference in headline and contents between dozens or hundreds or thousands based on historical leanings of the news org, and which ones are even reporting on a particular topic.
It's not saying a particular article leans a particular way, it's saying the source does.
In fairness to the BBC on the rare occasions they do cross paths with the government this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry
I'm not sure anyone that is familiar with this has been able to take what they say seriously since because they are so clearly on such a short leash.
To quote David Mitchell - "news is a very small of the BBC...BBC is an organization that is loved around the world for its drama and stories and not just the ruddy news".
How is it not neutral ? I follow some of the news. They've criticized both Conservative and Labour governments. Of course there are problems like the whole Martin Bashir thing but recently I've seen the BBC be more self-critical than other private TV channels. If we're comparing mistakes from the past then in the 90s, Roger Ailes was molesting women behind locked doors. Lewd comments were the norm across several news rooms. Doesn't mean that all private media is bad.
>They've criticized both Conservative and Labour governments
this is really the main problem with the bbc. for example one week they publish a story talking about something horrible israel has done then the next they publish another seemingly taking their side on something. it just ends up annoying and confusing both sides instead of one
The BBC has routinely been called biased by all sides of the spectrum - it is effectively the best we are going to get in terms of neutrality.
It would help a lot if you would offer some points of comparison for which channels you think do a better job in this area.
The BBC is pro-Establishment rather than in favour of the government of the day. I.E. Strongly pro-EU / anti-Brexit. It's also decidedly pro-Woke.
I do think it is pro-establishment but as a remainer I was exasperated by both the outsized presence Mr Farage got on BBC programming and also the uncritical nature of the coverage of the post-Brexit negotations and treatment of dissenting MPs, so I am not convinced at all the BBC had a particularly pro-EU position.
I think you could argue it had a sort of pro-Cameron lean to it for a while simply because he initially positioned himself as quite a boring centrist, but I don't believe there was any policy alignment generally.
Less sure re: the scottish independence vote but I think in that case the BBC was sort of paralysed by what the outcome would mean for it, and that may have made it difficult for it to comprehensively handle.
BBC has unparalleled quality TV programming for both kids and adults, but their news channel has been compromised by conservative influence (namely the director Tim Davie) for a while now.
Channel 4 news is surprisingly now the better news source for actual events.
Channel 4 unfortunately doesn't have the breadth of news coverage (though they definitely have the depth) that the BBC has. They don't have anything like the local/regional news coverage and have to be very selective about what they report on. They're also 1 medium only (TV) whereas the BBC are TV, radio, and what is effectively the UK's biggest online newspaper.
They're also living on borrowed time. Channel 4 is publicly owned but completely self funded, largely through ad revenue. Ad revenue for TV is not what it used to be.
There's been serious consideration given to the idea of merging Channel 4 into the BBC to share admin costs but keep it editorially separate.
> PBS in the US could be so much better.
Do you have a specific grievance? How could it be better?
BBC is not 100% neutral on all issues. No one is. One could argue that it is less bad than the for-profit channels in the UK but no channel is without biase.
BBC is a bad example because they clearly cater to local politics and their monopoly on programming and news for large swaths of their country is not particularly healthy.
State media is inherently going to be pro-establishment and failures to report on their own internal scandals I think should give everyone pause about being all-in on something like the BBC.
Monopoly?
State media doesn’t have corrupting influence of POLITICAL money? It’s inheriting my political! Government media is the worse possible thing.
>Just at what BBC is able to do in the UK.
Every household that watches BBC in the UK needs to pay £174.50 ($230) a year. (the wording here has to be done carefully, let's not digress into being exact on who has to pay it)
Federal funding for public media distributed out to $1.54 per person in the US last year.
There's... uh... a bit of a difference in the national funding for the BBC and public media in the US.
Agreed. My argument was that US has a much stronger economy than the UK and clearly bigger state coffers. With proper funding there's no reason why state run media can't put out good quality stories and content. Not just news.
Every household that has a TV, regardless of their use of the BBC. I don't know why people who essentially use a TV as a monitor for games consoles need to pay it.
We don't.
True. I personally do (and I don't currently own a TV!) but I think non-payment is going to become a significant enough issue within the period of this parliament that we will likely see an end to the licence fee shortly after the 2030 election if not sooner.