I’m participating in a discussion group tomorrow in which we will talk about media bias and its influence on us (not a very original topic, I know, but it’s just a casual for-fun activity). I suggested that all of us spend some open-minded time reading/viewing media with a slant we disagree with prior to the discussion. Since I’m the one that suggested it, I guess I had better follow through.
Since I’m a good liberal, Fox is the obvious choice, but I don’t think I can stomach that, and besides, why not look beyond the obvious? Can anyone suggest some thoughtful resources on the right? I prefer to read, so blogs and websites are good. But I’d watch a youtube video or two of a commentator - preferably not a lunatic like Alex Jones, I’d rather get some mainstream, intelligent input.
I have almost exactly 24 hours before we meet, so bring on the suggestions FAST! Thanks.
If you want to see a point/counterpoint approach, watch The Hill’s Rising on YouTube. Krystal Ball is a progressive and a bit of a firebrand while Saagar Enjeti is considerably more of the conservative (yet rational) mindset. Since it’s on YouTube you can watch it at your leisure.
I knew I could count on the Dope! I’ll post again after our discussion - probably just to say “yeah, it was kind of predictable” but if there are any interesting tidbits, I’ll share.
Most of the group hates Trump but I think they are more Never-Trumpers than progressives. We also have two or three libertarians. It’s been kind of fun watching them squirm as they try to reconcile their personal freedom mantras with their “goddam it everybody should be required to wear a mask, I’m a high-risk person and I don’t want to be exposed!”
A few days ago I mentioned that someone needs to write the book about the covidiots, for history’s. And I was starting to write a piece on the way the right wing media (the ones on the web) did with a very important bit of news about masks.
Namely, how they reported that Trump now used a mask and tweeted that “masks are patriotic” On the whole, they are a very, very irresponsible bunch. They must be aware of the bubble many of their readers or viewers are, so looking at what the leader is doing is very influential on the mask deniers. Not reporting or reporting something else about masks is enough for me to put those sources into the trash bin of my computer.
I did look the day right after the mask 180 from Trump and what I noticed was not encouraging:
What showed one day after Trump declared the use of masks to be patriotic in their front pages:
RedState blog. No headline about masks related about Trump’s 180. One peculiar thing: a couple of images with usual critical reports about Biden showed him wearing masks, the couple of reports showing pictures of Trump have him using no masks.
The National Review, not a headline about Trump, but they get a point for a headline about Brian Kemp Is Wrong about Atlanta’s Mask Mandate “Kemp’s position seems to be that when it comes to public health, all men pretty much are angels and can be left to their own devices.”
The American Spectator had a very good article about a contributor to the Spectator that saw the light and came in favor of masks in a headline article. I still find a lot of what TAS posts is dumb, but it is then a place that sometimes is making a good effort at bringing other points of views into the bubble.
Fox News online mostly reported on the masks recommendation from Trump by pointing at an MSNBC reporter being criticized by the “left” for commending Trump on his turnaround. As Drudge reported, others saw Trump later in the day forgetting about using masks in public.
Drudge News BTW was critical of Trump and it also pointed in their front page about a Newsweek article talking at how, if someone is narcissist, Machiavellian or anti-social, that those persons are less likely to wear masks.
Townhall. com just had no contributor interested on telling their readers about how it is a good idea to use masks.
freerepublic (yeah, I know) is more crazy than Townhall. In the sense that the lone contribution about masks I saw was about seeding doubts about the use of masks. At least Townhall did not report on masks in support or to discourage their use.
So, not into the trash like almost all right wing sources, but into the loony bin goes freerepublic…
The National Review is the first to spring to mind. Media Bias / Fact Check rates them as right biased and mostly factual.
You can also play around for a few moments there with the MBFC filtered search tool. It lets you select for both bias and factual rating to find a list of sources. Just be aware that there are not very many sources with either a left or right bias under the Very High rating. As a point of comparison, the NY Time and Washington Post only manage High ratings not Very High. There are a number of Right Center and some Right sources that manage similar levels of factual accuracy to choose from.
Possibly too late, but The Economist generally has a conservative but fact-based slant. Their stories tend to be more analysis of long-term trends than daily up-to-the-minute news, though.
If you’re still looking for yet more conservative news and opinion sites at this late hour, check out The Bulwark, a conservative but anti-Trump news, opinion, and aggregator. Their self-stated claim is that they promote traditional conservative values and policies (and that Trump ain’t that).
The Wall St. Journal op-ed pages have good and not so good commentaries from a conservative perspective (contrasting with the paper’s centrist to on occasion slightly left of center news operation, which explains recent tensions between them).
Here’s the promised update: We had our meeting and it didn’t produce any interesting insights for anyone outside the group (for those of us who know each other, it was interesting to find out what news-consuming habits everyone has).
Anyway, I appreciate the suggestions and I’m going to expand my reading. So far I kind of like Reason.
This site independently assesses media bias and publishes a chart that ranks each source on a scale from left-to-right, and a scale from low-to-high reliability.
AP and Reuters are the tops in reliability and also very nearly neutral (ever so slightly to the left). Fox is about as right as you can get and still not have reliability issues. There’s a whole cluster in that neck of the woods, though.
What’s interesting is that neutrality correlates strongly to reliability. The more left or right, the farther down the reliability scale.
Made good use of it-thanks to you I added two sources and ditched two. I went for high reliability and neutral bias. I know what my opinion is, but I need rock solid facts to form it.