The Media Bias Chart - August 2023

[brooklynite]

[Voltaire2]

1. This chart has always been idiotic.

It suffices to note that the WSJ is somehow in the ‘middle’ (a meaningless term but I digress) while the NYT is somehow on the ‘left’.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Chart does not reflect reality

Newsweek gave John Eastman space to make his case why VP Harris wasn’t eligible to hold office because her parents were foreign born. They typically frame articles with RW code words.

NYT enabled Bush/Cheney, and then went on to be servile stenographers for Trump, with a few notable exceptions. There is no political event that they won’t spin as “bad for Biden” or “Dems in disarray!”. With the exception of Krugman, their editorial page is a complete joke.

[barbaraann]

3. I think a better "media bias" chart would be one with truth on one side progressing to lies on the other. n/t

[brooklynite]

4. That, more or less, was the vertical axis.

[barbaraann]

5. Do you think that there is such a thing as the "hyper-partisan left?"

or "skews right?" I don't. I think what we have now is lying MAGA fascists and, for the most part, truthful pro-democracy advocates. How could anyone who is truthful support Donald Trump?

[brooklynite]

6. Of course there's "hyper-partisan left" and "hyper-partisan right"

Jacobin: "We Need a Marxist Account That Can Make Sense of Europe’s Reformation"

[barbaraann]

7. I do think the word "partisan" is problematic.

Let's say that it means loyal to a political party. The Democrats I know value qualities like compassion, honesty, tolerance, etc. more than they value loyalty to the Party. Republicans, on the other hand, at the present time value loyalty to the Party/Trump more than they value compassion, honesty, tolerance, etc. and more than they value democracy itself.

Saying that there are hyper-partisan leftists and righties now is sort of like saying that there are hyper-partisan law enforcement officials and hyper-partisan mobsters. Here in Oregon, for example, we have Republican members of our State Legislature who want to be exempted from the Measure passed by our citizens forbidding a member who has excessive absences from running again. There is no "hyper-partisan" left that wants the law enforced--there are only law-abiding citizens that want it enforced; but there ARE Republicans who want it ignored for THEM and them only.

I have never read Jacobin but from researching, it appears that the people involved might be considered hyper-ideological on the left of the political spectrum, rather than hyper-partisan. There certainly is a diversity of ideology on the left. On the right, it appears now that ideology doesn't even matter--just loyalty to one man. The GOP wants to replace every political appointee in the federal government with people who are loyal to Donald Trump. We are seeing people who were staunch "partisan" Republicans sounding the alarm that the GOP is different now. Saying that there is a hyper-partisan GOP is like saying Hitler was very conservative. There's just no comparison between people with extremely liberal ideas like (gasp) universal health care to people with ideas like taking orders from Putin, nullifying elections, killing Democratic leaders, criminalizing abortion, etc.

Fighting anti-democratic seditionists is not partisan, it is patriotic.

[JHB]

8. Some links to its methodology

Considering the number of mainstream sources that are counted as "skews left", it pings my radar about a lack of clear definitions or mile-markers for what counts as "left" and "right". From what they say about their methodology, it still comes down to the perceptions of their analysts, which is subject to "Overton window"-style drifting of categories.


https://adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/

[Shermann]

9. I think there is an adequate amount of rigor here behind what is essentially a solve of an unsolvable problem

The fact that they document their methodology goes a long way with me, and the results pass my unrigorous smell test.

It's also difficult to determine an exact non-biased midpoint. Is that just the middle point between the two predominant parties?

Most people are going to drift to the left or right, even if they don't have a partisan bone in their body and/or don't follow the news. In those cases, they can independently arrive at common ground with either side on various issues. I think this explains Joe Rogan, and you can see where he's off by himself on this chart.