CNN is especially eggregious. NYTimes should also be on the left column which is reflected in the votes "Somewhat disagree" with the current characterization as Center-Left (scroll down).
Edit: I am just pointing out a free publicly available dataset of what the population thinks of the media. Make what you will, don't shoot me.
Strange comment. Seems like you lashed out because you think I am praising those networks? Those are all terrible sources of news. What if I told you that you can criticize one while also criticizing the other? It is liberating.
I agree with you there, that wasn't my intention. I was saying CNN is especially "eggregious" when it comes to Left media. Comparing with all other news sources from the left, I trust CNN the least.
If you say far-right media is completely bananas, you would be correct. That should not preclude you from making statements about others.
What if I told you I don't watch any of these 24/7 news channels because I think they are all garbage that share an agenda of making you very afraid and glued to your chair? Just last night my Biden NIMBY neighbors went up my street to warn us all of the imminent danger of the atmospheric river that is about to destroy the neighborhood (a suburb nowhere near any sort of flood zone).
I try to get my news from online and print sources ranging from slightly left of center to slightly right of center. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find slightly right of center sources of information because that's just not profitable anymore.
What is egregious to me is that all the curated news is now hiding behind paywalls but the sensationalist crap spanning the entire political spectrum is as free as the polluted air and the tainted water. Which is the way we all want it, well we get it etc.
CNN is terrible in my opinion. OAN and Newsmax and RT are more terrible, a lot more terrible. But that doesn't make CNN any less terrible on it's own... we're not grading on a curve here.
You can't interpret any fact without an internal model of how the universe works. That model is a "side" and compared to any other model, has a difference called "bias".
There is presumably one true model that matches reality best. You could call that "unbiased", but since nobody can reliably identify it, we're stuck with bias.
The truth is scattered around all points of the spectrum, left, right, center, and everywhere in between. The flawed assumption is thinking otherwise. In such a world it’s still wrong (non-optimal) to try to manipulate the news to make it seem all truth is on just one side.
That agree/disagree seems to be missing an opportunity, because you don't know what the disagrees think it should be instead - despite collecting that data when you click disagree. So it could be that people actually think they're more in the middle or even right than further left. Unless I'm missing something? Also seems to be extremely easy to game at first glance.
I see what you mean. When you vote, it follows up asking the user to also specify the correct button on the spectrum. But, your observation is correct, we don't know whether people disagree on it being left or center. This one is easy though :-).
I just noticed that and edited my comment before noticing your reply. It seems really odd that they don't show that distribution, it seems to be by far the most interesting data they're collecting there.
The text contains sources in the sense that it's reporting on Nielsen data. I have no idea whether it's reporting accurately, but it would be surprising if not, because making up fake Nielsen numbers would be such a dumb thing to do.
p.s. can you please not cross into personal attack in HN arguments? also, please don't use allcaps for emphasis - this is also in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What a terribly written article, let alone that it provides no sources. London Daily isn't a reputable and reviewed news source and it admits the following on the About Us page:
> Publishing news is very simple, just click ‘add your news’ on the site and it will take the author to the article upload interface.
Why was this excuse of a news article even posted here?
The news has existed to drive public opinion for over a century, before television even existed. Hell, there was even a book written in 1922 named "Public Opinion" about the very subject. The blurb about it on Wikipedia echoes truer today than it did at the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
The introduction describes man's inability to interpret the world: "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones."
I think a quick glance at the headlines on CNN and Fox News on any given day show them practicing the same type of intellectual dishonesty to further their narratives.
I'll give you OAN, that's an entirely higher level of misinformation.
That's a bit too far. The Guardian, Reuters, AP, FT, The Economist, among others are real journalism. Some of them have their biases ( e.g. some FT writers' views skew positively towards the UK), some of them have opinion pieces from all sorts of people which can range from shit to interesting, but they are generally good quality journalism. If they make a mistake, they admit it; they don't outright lie and double down like US cable opinion pieces sold as "news".
It might have been a long time ago. Today it is openly biased. Left's Fox News basically. That is what sells nowadays apparently. Pick your audience and make them feel validated. Objectivity is secondary.
I'm not in the USA but I am an English speaking Canadian so I feel I have a familiarity more than other non-US people. And I think I have an objective view not being a US citizen.
Having watched US news for 40 years, since my early teen years, I have found all US news has become much more US-centric. CNN was pretty good but it does seem to be stuck in a US only, counter-right wing loop. Fox news is very far right from my point of view maybe less so to those in the US. It also spends its time trying to counter CNN.
Local news ABC, CBS, NBC are nightly news and often are what you'd typically think of as news broadcasts. Those three stations tend to be neutral in views but as I said above are becoming more US-centric. There is much less international news other than mentioning wars or terrorism. You won't see a story of cricket scores in India, or a recipe from a chef in Argentina, or local politics news of Ghana. You often will see such things on BBC or Reuters for example.
The US political system is a "us vs them" mentality not like parliamentary democracies where there are half a dozen political parties in government. There is a Democrat (liberal) vs Republican (conservative) ideological split. CNN, NBC, PBS tend to be seen as aligning with Democratic party, BLM, lgbt, left-leaning views. Fox, OAN, Newsmax are Republican, military, religious right, far right views.
edit: for anyone outside the US wanting to watch US news without the quick edits, fancy graphics etc. your best source would be PBS news.
It is odd and leaves out some of what actually happened. CNN is still the #1 draw on basic cable. What actually happened is that the boost they got in viewership from the pandemic is starting to roll off. And, of course, younger people care a lot less about any cable TV content, so there's a long-term roll off too.
I don't think you need to put a whole lot of thought into why this article was posted. I think you already know the answer in fact. It's a terrible article and it's written in a terrible way. Who might want to post that here?
Users are asked not to post such insinuations unless there is evidence. "Evidence" means something specific and concrete and objective. Someone else liking an article you dislike on some widely divisive topic is not evidence, it's just normal. (How bad the article may be is irrelevant to this point.)
The evidence would be the obvious blatant disinfo clickbait and political slant nature of the article and its source itself as opposed to any sort of subjective but at least moderatively informative news about technology or the social impact of technology but of course that's an insinuation too, I get it. But why would a typical "hacker" want "news" about CNN ratings? Maybe the raw numbers as a source of data (not that this article supplies them of course), but a mostly evidence free conjectural rant about its imminent demise? I'll wait.
But while I'm waiting, can I get you to delete my account and my entire history here? 5 enthusiastic stars if you'll do that for me. An obvious rulebreaker like myself has never made a useful contribution here ever and everyone will be better off with my entire comment history safely deleted. Or is it something something hypothetical imaginary ycombinator possible future liability something something else so that would be a no? Or TLDR: Hacker News actually does aspire to become the new Reddit?
This is a sincere request. I really want to disconnect entirely from most of the internet. And this would be a great place to disconnect from as well. I await your potential response or the demise of this account with enthusiastic ennui.
Good question - and one to which I tried to find answers, having posted the link to the CNN article.
To explain my "journey" earlier today, I followed a link from an article [1] in The Atlantic (which I read almost daily and which I rate highly) to a piece [2] in this "London Daily" site. It was irreverent commentary in a largely humorous vein. I decided to poke around the LD site, which has, apparently, been around since 1999 - although I had never come across it, and I read a lot.
I saw the CNN viewing figures article and was surprised not to have seen it anywhere else. It surprised me to find what should be a news article carrying an intro that read like commentary/opinion. I posted the link to HN and then returned to LD to try to figure out what it was.
It claims to be: a non-profit, private and self-funded, commonly-created News and info-sharing platform that enables everybody to share valuable content such as local and global news updates. The news is written by different contributors, all of them volunteers.
I then went to its full "about" section [3], which includes these statements:
> London Daily is not supported by anybody, and it is not supporting any specific agenda. The mission is simply to share with all readers the big picture about every topic with as much balance as possible, without any vested political or commercial interest, for the common benefit of all, regardless of their economic status, political points of view, beliefs, and personal preferences.
> Users who wants to share their own content on London Daily are welcome to include with it advertising for their own benefit – for free and without any profit sharing with London Daily .
> ... we are also not Wikileaks, The Intercept, Telegram, etc... This platform and infrastructure is not designed to deal with super-sensitive or unlawful classified information nor to protect the privacy of the users that submit content.
I've worked in news media for many years and had never come across anything like this "about" section before. I noticed that no items published have a proper dateline - so nothing in the archive (which seems to be reachable only via hash-style text links) carries a publication date, only the current date. This more than anything raised huge red flags, so I then picked a dozen or so articles at random to get a feel for the style/tone and political leanings of LD. It seems to be all over the place in all respects. Some nicely written work, some articles seemingly rewritten from news outlets such as Reuters, AP and other agencies etc. I moved from a stridently pro-vaccination article to another that seemingly took a polar opposite view (this second one was specifically dealing with COVID vaccination, not vaccines in general, which the first one had been).
I pondered posting an "Ask HN" query to solicit HN views/opinions about this London Daily site, which has me baffled. (Again, I'd posted the CNN article mainly on the strength of having found London Daily via a direct link from The Atlantic - which, to me, lends credibility.) However, I had to go out for a few hours and didn't get around to an "Ask HN" post. Hindsight tells me that I should probably have deleted the original post to the CNN article.
All that being said, I really would love to find out what this London Daily News thing is all about.
Theory: CNN watchers are more economically affluent than watchers of other channels and are too busy working jobs and running businesses and exercising and traveling etc. to watch CNN.
Higher income households spend less time watching cable TV. Lower income people spend more time.
A channel with high viewership is actually attracting the bottom bucket of society.
Who on HN is upvoting this kind of garbage article?
> CNN continues to lose trust for its biased news against whoever did not vote for Biden, and its promotion of an extremist hate-culture against "the other" 84 million American voters.
Regardless of such sloppiness, the example the parent provided is clearly not news, but rather the political bickering of a scorned individual on a different "team", as is Greenwald's tweet. They damage discourse just as does, for example, the bad reporting Greenwald is criticizing.
The problem with what they said about Joe Rogan isn't that it's a lie, it's that it was designed to ridicule someone. That's adds no value to a news story.
CNN has a bias, but that's forgivable. What's unforgivable is that they've become useless.
If the most important stats are active viewers then perhaps we should get our news from PewDiePie [1] /s
But seriously there are a lot of long-form youtube hosts discussing news topics and current events taking the lead over traditional channels. Is there any speculation that traditional news platforms will reform and adapt, or would they have already done that? Is anything holding them back?
The worst part of air travel for our family is CNN on every screen. The children were scared seeing all the disasters in remote areas, the non-stop crises and arguments. WTF airports.
Not only is fearing and avoiding places with natural disasters rational (people avoid traveling to the Caribbean during hurricane season) but they are children. Given that I don't know a single adult who has a phobia of remote disasters, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your kids forgot about it the next time they played Roblox.
This is true, fear has evolutionary advantages. However it is also blinding, so, like fire, it has a place. Spreading fear in an airport is odd, and it would be better dealt with in other contexts.
Yea thats a super bizarre decision on the part if airports, I don’t imagine CNN/fox pays them, they probably pay huge cable bills for the privilege of increasing their customers’ anxiety.
Weather channel might make sense, but why not some anthony bourdain or rick steves, some upbeat travel TV?
I really liked his commentary on CNN calling themselves “mainstream” as opposed to supposed fringe podcasters when he has easily 10x the viewership of any program on CNN - really CNN just makes themselves more fringe by lying about ivermectin
So if instead of measles vaccine people started taking root beer, you’d want the reporting to be “humans have been safely drinking root beer for decades”?
You can give aspirin to horses as well as humans, but that doesn't make it a "horse anti-inflammatory".
The only reason to say something like that, is if you want to discredit someone.
Now, I don't know who called the shots at CNN, wether it was some leftist middle manager, or someone higher up, but someone decided they needed to make Joe Rogan appear like a crazy lunatic taking horse medicines.
"Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19"
You and Mr. Rogan (and ilk) seem to be confounding the usage of Ivermectin in researched and approved treatment regimens with the opposite and claiming discrimination when pointed out. Self-treatment carries unforeseen dangers. Whether or o not Mr. Rogan is right is irrelevant - he's not a subject matter expert.
It simply does not work both ways. You and I have limited reach in forums like these, but Rogan has listenership in the millions, which makes his unscrupulous statements very risky.
If I hear someone taking horse dewormer, my first impression is that they are crazy lunatics, but it could be just me.
Just because the FDA doesn't recommend it, it doesn't mean it's not beneficial, it merely means they don't know yet, given clinical trials are still ongoing.
I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
AstraZeneca is a the largest company in the uk by market cap.
That's just one example, my point is that there is plenty of money in vaccines and our taxes are paying for them with no oversight on whether people actually need them or not. Sure, if you're vulnerable or if you don't want to get the flu, get the vaccine. For everyone else, that's just a waste of money.
I also consider covid mortality to be pretty low, I'd rather spend these resources to fight cardiovascular diseases or build self-driving cars to lower mortality there.
Vaccines are also dropping in efficiency pretty quickly as the virus mutates (as we've seen in Israel); if we'll need a new vaccine every 6 months, it's going go to be a beautiful business.
Also, we don't call them conspiracy theories anymore, after the "covid is not from wuhan" debacle - they're now called spoiler alert.
>Just because the FDA doesn't recommend it, it doesn't mean it's not beneficial, it merely means they don't know yet, given clinical trials are still ongoing.
a) There are no clinical trials ongoing as it being a covid treatment. Some studies, sure, but no trials. Major manufacturers looked into this and studied it, and then pretty quickly scraped the idea of using ivermectin-as-we-know-it-right-now before any trials because data (even anecdotal one) to suggest it could be used as a covid treatment drug as is or with only slight modifications in therapy plan simply wasn't there. And those manufacturers surely considered it well, because they all knew they could be sitting on a money printing machine if it was a suitable treatment drug, one that they already had in production.
b) The FDA not only not recommends it, they strongly recommend against it[0]. And so do major manufacturers[1].
This study was a bit "problematic" to begin with (the methodology is a bit icky here and there, IIRC the authors of the "Brazilian" paper have been shown to have conflicts-of-interest they did not disclose themselves, and the title of the paper alone is a huge wtf).
Their paper further didn't really replicate all too well (but it does replicate to a degree).
The most glaring problem is that the study was in vitro, and it's apparently not feasible to get high enough concentrations into parts of the body where you need them to be effective[1] using convention delivery system, including eating it. Aside from the tiny problem that even if you could, the doses required would be so high, it might be life threatening in itself, if you dosed the entire body as opposed to finding a way for localized delivery.
Even if ivermectin is eventually proven to be a treatment (but all signs point to this not happening), then the treatment procedure would be necessarily vastly different from just buying some horse dewormer and eating it in doses you guessed yourself.
>I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
You know that some of the biggest big-pharma players are the main manufacturers of ivermectin. Am I supposed to believe they just let their competitors trample all over them?
Even if it was about selling vaccines? The vaccines we do know a lot about, we know about the effectiveness a lot, about the risks include side effects and contra indications a lot, we know a lot of the general delivery mechanisms (be it mRNA, be it vector viruses), we know a lot about the specific particular vaccines, there have been and are countless scientists studying all that, governments looking into that, media looking into it. Compare that to the horse-dewormer, where we don't know a damn lot[3].
Regardless, it boggles my mind why people would put so much trust in a few, contentious and often preliminary studies, while at the same time ignoring the massive body of not-so-preliminary science, studies and trials surrounding the vaccines. So the few scientists who believe they found nice, useful properties of ivermectin are the "good guys" and every other scientist who found nice, useful properties in the vaccines is somehow a corporate chills, or part of a conspiracy to make Bill Gates the ruler of a soon-to-be-heavily-depopulated world. Should I mention that most of the scientists who published "nice" studies of ivermectin do not in fact advocate it's immediate use, let alone self-medication with it, but merely suggest further study is warrante...
I don't necessarily believe ivermectin or molnupiravir to work (and I don't care, my family had covid and it wasn't anything special), but I can see that anything that is not a vaccine face opposition by traditional media, and I started to take a note whenever traditional media start talking crap about something.
I also don't think vaccines are a scam, but I do think they're mostly useless. Covid is not much more than the flu for the majority of people. I'm vaccinated because I wanted to travel with less hassle, but I didn't need it; I just needed the damn paper. At the same time I would have recommended my elderly parents to take vaccines (not that there was a need, as they became mandatory for their job, as they are doctors and treating covid patients amongst others).
Considering how much money there is in vaccines, how it's bound to turn into a yearly subscription model paid by taxpayer and the low mortality of covid, I don't think it's hard to see the scare tactics, years of lockdown as a way to milk more money.
>Covid is not much more than the flu for the majority of people.
While this is not entirely wrong, the majority of people will not get severe covid, still if you happen to get severe covid it's a lot worse than the flu including the chances of lasting permanent damage due to the disease but also due to the medication and treatment (e.g. steroid may blind you, ecmo may fuck up the mobility of your legs permanently). And it's more likely you get severe covid than severe flu.
No, he did not take horse dewormer paste like some person have when they had no prescription. He received prescription and took human formulation. This "horse dewormer" description is only some effort at a smear campaign.
He took a medication that has been given safely to humans for decades. The fact it is also useful for animals is meaningless. You literally described what off-label means, so it sounds like we agree on that part.
He can take whatever medication he wants. His position as a mainstream celebrity spouting these dangerous anecdotal stories as if they are canon without any medical recommendation or FDA oversight besides random individuals he chooses as a doctor (read: he pays them to give them what he wants) is what puts CNN and any other news organization in the right contextually.
Ivermectin might be the miracle drug - no one knows, and that's the point. Without due diligence, Rogen and his supporters are spreading FUD.
> CNN reported that it is a horse dewormer (which it is)
That's like saying Rogan was drinking engine coolant because he was drinking water.
The US currently requires refugees from certain regions to take ivermectin prophylactically. If Fox News ran a headline saying "Biden Administration Forcing Horse Dewormer on Immigrants", I think we'd all object.
That's basically what CNN is doing here.
(To avoid confusion on my own personal views: There is no data showing ivermectin is effective in treating COVID. We should all get vaccinated. But disagreeing with my views doesn't justify lying.)
Not the ivermectin itself but CNN lied about the nature of the issue earlier, and when Joe Rogan point out the CNN's dishonest, Don Lemon distort the nature of their first lie (Note: this time is not the nature of the ivermectin issue) to make the first lie looks not like a lie by cherry picking the conversation and evade the key points of CNN the first lie.
oh hell yes, finally I find the perfect place to start it up about ivermectin. It IS horse dewormer. That's a super accurate way to describe it. Just like tetracycline is cow fattener. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic agent given to humans and animals. We call it horse dewormer because we're making fun you. We're making fun of you because we're frustrated that you think a ivermectin will cure your virus, and you won't take the vaccine. Basically you're fucking with public health for no reason. Your counter-anger at our little jab is ridiculous.
I personally think that it is right to be pretty skeptical of ALL news outlets at the moment. Am I saying that none of them get it right ever? Of course not.
I would also ask anyone who is upset about this article calling out CNN to reflect on why they are upset. Is it because CNN is associated with being an ally of the left? I would ask the same if anyone feeling the same way about Fox/your favorite news outlet here.
I didn’t read the linked article because I don’t really care if the fact in the headline is true or false. It doesn’t matter.
What I worry about these days relates to the first sentence I wrote. Damn near every story from cable/entertainment news requires a deeper look and is usually written in such a way to inspire outrage and or binary tribalism. If that doesn’t scare you a little I would humbly ask you to reconsider.
Agreed. I think the problem with CNN more than others such as MSNBC or Fox News is that CNN mixes opinion and news pretty aggressively. Daily or weekend news with the latter two is relatively objective, prime time is almost entirely option, but viewers know this. With CNN, it is all conflated.
I dont know of any CNN programs that are not opinion. From Anderson Cooper to Don Lemon (4 hours in the afternoon?') They are all obvious opinion / propaganda.
As a person outside the US. I watch some of them along with Fox news opinion programs mainly for fun
I just don't find it that interesting anymore. The word "news" used to mean something that was new. Now everything is so politicized that it just means what's the latest update from a political faction. In this case, CNN is pretty much guaranteed to show the Biden administration in a good light and argue their agenda which seems to be more infrastructure and plenty of vaccines. Oh, and Trump is still bad.
See. I saved you all of that time so now you can be productive instead of hearing the same thing over and over again.
For those looking for a decent cable TV news source, I highly recommend The News at 7pm ET on CNBC. It’s hosted by an ex-fox news anchor, but it’s the only cable news show I’ve found that isn’t blatantly far left liberal or far right conservative… and also hasn’t devolved into a talk show.
It’s refreshing to hear segments reporting on actual events that occurred, and then on to the next segment without the talking head commentary.
Its funny how history repeats. CNN is basically Fox during the Oreilly and Hannity era. Completely untrustworthy and been caught over and over knowingly pushing false stories. They have ruined their reputation and reputation is everything in the long run.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadCNN is especially eggregious. NYTimes should also be on the left column which is reflected in the votes "Somewhat disagree" with the current characterization as Center-Left (scroll down).
Edit: I am just pointing out a free publicly available dataset of what the population thinks of the media. Make what you will, don't shoot me.
If you say far-right media is completely bananas, you would be correct. That should not preclude you from making statements about others.
I try to get my news from online and print sources ranging from slightly left of center to slightly right of center. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find slightly right of center sources of information because that's just not profitable anymore.
What is egregious to me is that all the curated news is now hiding behind paywalls but the sensationalist crap spanning the entire political spectrum is as free as the polluted air and the tainted water. Which is the way we all want it, well we get it etc.
Politics is preference, talks of truth are usually a pretense to strengthen a reason for a given preference.
There is presumably one true model that matches reality best. You could call that "unbiased", but since nobody can reliably identify it, we're stuck with bias.
And yet you believed it, because it agrees with your preexisting view.
The text contains sources in the sense that it's reporting on Nielsen data. I have no idea whether it's reporting accurately, but it would be surprising if not, because making up fake Nielsen numbers would be such a dumb thing to do.
p.s. can you please not cross into personal attack in HN arguments? also, please don't use allcaps for emphasis - this is also in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Publishing news is very simple, just click ‘add your news’ on the site and it will take the author to the article upload interface.
Why was this excuse of a news article even posted here?
It’s incredible how even those who don’t think they’re brainwashed are brainwashed.
The introduction describes man's inability to interpret the world: "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones."
Fox viewers likely think the exact same thing.
Not that all truth is subjective but the choice on what and how to report definitely is.
I'll give you OAN, that's an entirely higher level of misinformation.
Having watched US news for 40 years, since my early teen years, I have found all US news has become much more US-centric. CNN was pretty good but it does seem to be stuck in a US only, counter-right wing loop. Fox news is very far right from my point of view maybe less so to those in the US. It also spends its time trying to counter CNN.
Local news ABC, CBS, NBC are nightly news and often are what you'd typically think of as news broadcasts. Those three stations tend to be neutral in views but as I said above are becoming more US-centric. There is much less international news other than mentioning wars or terrorism. You won't see a story of cricket scores in India, or a recipe from a chef in Argentina, or local politics news of Ghana. You often will see such things on BBC or Reuters for example.
The US political system is a "us vs them" mentality not like parliamentary democracies where there are half a dozen political parties in government. There is a Democrat (liberal) vs Republican (conservative) ideological split. CNN, NBC, PBS tend to be seen as aligning with Democratic party, BLM, lgbt, left-leaning views. Fox, OAN, Newsmax are Republican, military, religious right, far right views.
edit: for anyone outside the US wanting to watch US news without the quick edits, fancy graphics etc. your best source would be PBS news.
It's a few months old, but this AdWeek story is more clear: https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/q2-21-ratings-cnn-is-one-of-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Users are asked not to post such insinuations unless there is evidence. "Evidence" means something specific and concrete and objective. Someone else liking an article you dislike on some widely divisive topic is not evidence, it's just normal. (How bad the article may be is irrelevant to this point.)
But while I'm waiting, can I get you to delete my account and my entire history here? 5 enthusiastic stars if you'll do that for me. An obvious rulebreaker like myself has never made a useful contribution here ever and everyone will be better off with my entire comment history safely deleted. Or is it something something hypothetical imaginary ycombinator possible future liability something something else so that would be a no? Or TLDR: Hacker News actually does aspire to become the new Reddit?
This is a sincere request. I really want to disconnect entirely from most of the internet. And this would be a great place to disconnect from as well. I await your potential response or the demise of this account with enthusiastic ennui.
Normally we'd replace the URL above but I don't think this thread is salvageable.
To explain my "journey" earlier today, I followed a link from an article [1] in The Atlantic (which I read almost daily and which I rate highly) to a piece [2] in this "London Daily" site. It was irreverent commentary in a largely humorous vein. I decided to poke around the LD site, which has, apparently, been around since 1999 - although I had never come across it, and I read a lot.
I saw the CNN viewing figures article and was surprised not to have seen it anywhere else. It surprised me to find what should be a news article carrying an intro that read like commentary/opinion. I posted the link to HN and then returned to LD to try to figure out what it was.
It claims to be: a non-profit, private and self-funded, commonly-created News and info-sharing platform that enables everybody to share valuable content such as local and global news updates. The news is written by different contributors, all of them volunteers.
I then went to its full "about" section [3], which includes these statements:
> London Daily is not supported by anybody, and it is not supporting any specific agenda. The mission is simply to share with all readers the big picture about every topic with as much balance as possible, without any vested political or commercial interest, for the common benefit of all, regardless of their economic status, political points of view, beliefs, and personal preferences.
> Users who wants to share their own content on London Daily are welcome to include with it advertising for their own benefit – for free and without any profit sharing with London Daily .
> ... we are also not Wikileaks, The Intercept, Telegram, etc... This platform and infrastructure is not designed to deal with super-sensitive or unlawful classified information nor to protect the privacy of the users that submit content.
I've worked in news media for many years and had never come across anything like this "about" section before. I noticed that no items published have a proper dateline - so nothing in the archive (which seems to be reachable only via hash-style text links) carries a publication date, only the current date. This more than anything raised huge red flags, so I then picked a dozen or so articles at random to get a feel for the style/tone and political leanings of LD. It seems to be all over the place in all respects. Some nicely written work, some articles seemingly rewritten from news outlets such as Reuters, AP and other agencies etc. I moved from a stridently pro-vaccination article to another that seemingly took a polar opposite view (this second one was specifically dealing with COVID vaccination, not vaccines in general, which the first one had been).
I pondered posting an "Ask HN" query to solicit HN views/opinions about this London Daily site, which has me baffled. (Again, I'd posted the CNN article mainly on the strength of having found London Daily via a direct link from The Atlantic - which, to me, lends credibility.) However, I had to go out for a few hours and didn't get around to an "Ask HN" post. Hindsight tells me that I should probably have deleted the original post to the CNN article.
All that being said, I really would love to find out what this London Daily News thing is all about.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-read-t...
[2] https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-descrip...
[3] https://londondaily.com/ouwczz-about
Higher income households spend less time watching cable TV. Lower income people spend more time.
A channel with high viewership is actually attracting the bottom bucket of society.
Really?
> CNN continues to lose trust for its biased news against whoever did not vote for Biden, and its promotion of an extremist hate-culture against "the other" 84 million American voters.
... what??
This trash doesn't belong here.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/144869603591685...
CNN is not the same as 20 years ago, and neither is the NYT.
CNN has a bias, but that's forgivable. What's unforgivable is that they've become useless.
Shortened it is saying: "CNN is promoting an extremist hate culture towards people who voted for somebody other than Joe Biden".
That seems accurate if you spend any time watching their programming.
But seriously there are a lot of long-form youtube hosts discussing news topics and current events taking the lead over traditional channels. Is there any speculation that traditional news platforms will reform and adapt, or would they have already done that? Is anything holding them back?
[1] - https://www.noxinfluencer.com/youtube/channel/UC-lHJZR3Gqxm2...
Weather channel might make sense, but why not some anthony bourdain or rick steves, some upbeat travel TV?
Joe Rogan is spreading misinformation and potentially VERY dangerously at that.
[0]https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
You can give aspirin to horses as well as humans, but that doesn't make it a "horse anti-inflammatory".
The only reason to say something like that, is if you want to discredit someone.
Now, I don't know who called the shots at CNN, wether it was some leftist middle manager, or someone higher up, but someone decided they needed to make Joe Rogan appear like a crazy lunatic taking horse medicines.
Again, the FDA itself recommends against usage of Ivermectin:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...:
"Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19"
You and Mr. Rogan (and ilk) seem to be confounding the usage of Ivermectin in researched and approved treatment regimens with the opposite and claiming discrimination when pointed out. Self-treatment carries unforeseen dangers. Whether or o not Mr. Rogan is right is irrelevant - he's not a subject matter expert.
It simply does not work both ways. You and I have limited reach in forums like these, but Rogan has listenership in the millions, which makes his unscrupulous statements very risky.
Just because the FDA doesn't recommend it, it doesn't mean it's not beneficial, it merely means they don't know yet, given clinical trials are still ongoing.
It's interesting how they didn't mention the antiviral effects. Study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
AstraZeneca is now the largest company in the UK.
Unfortunately the rest of what you wrote is not worth replying to, nor discussing, until you can clarify this conspiratorial-sounding statement.
That's just one example, my point is that there is plenty of money in vaccines and our taxes are paying for them with no oversight on whether people actually need them or not. Sure, if you're vulnerable or if you don't want to get the flu, get the vaccine. For everyone else, that's just a waste of money. I also consider covid mortality to be pretty low, I'd rather spend these resources to fight cardiovascular diseases or build self-driving cars to lower mortality there.
Vaccines are also dropping in efficiency pretty quickly as the virus mutates (as we've seen in Israel); if we'll need a new vaccine every 6 months, it's going go to be a beautiful business.
Also, we don't call them conspiracy theories anymore, after the "covid is not from wuhan" debacle - they're now called spoiler alert.
a) There are no clinical trials ongoing as it being a covid treatment. Some studies, sure, but no trials. Major manufacturers looked into this and studied it, and then pretty quickly scraped the idea of using ivermectin-as-we-know-it-right-now before any trials because data (even anecdotal one) to suggest it could be used as a covid treatment drug as is or with only slight modifications in therapy plan simply wasn't there. And those manufacturers surely considered it well, because they all knew they could be sitting on a money printing machine if it was a suitable treatment drug, one that they already had in production.
b) The FDA not only not recommends it, they strongly recommend against it[0]. And so do major manufacturers[1].
>It's interesting how they didn't mention the antiviral effects. Study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
This study was a bit "problematic" to begin with (the methodology is a bit icky here and there, IIRC the authors of the "Brazilian" paper have been shown to have conflicts-of-interest they did not disclose themselves, and the title of the paper alone is a huge wtf).
Their paper further didn't really replicate all too well (but it does replicate to a degree).
The most glaring problem is that the study was in vitro, and it's apparently not feasible to get high enough concentrations into parts of the body where you need them to be effective[1] using convention delivery system, including eating it. Aside from the tiny problem that even if you could, the doses required would be so high, it might be life threatening in itself, if you dosed the entire body as opposed to finding a way for localized delivery.
Even if ivermectin is eventually proven to be a treatment (but all signs point to this not happening), then the treatment procedure would be necessarily vastly different from just buying some horse dewormer and eating it in doses you guessed yourself.
>I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
You know that some of the biggest big-pharma players are the main manufacturers of ivermectin. Am I supposed to believe they just let their competitors trample all over them?
Even if it was about selling vaccines? The vaccines we do know a lot about, we know about the effectiveness a lot, about the risks include side effects and contra indications a lot, we know a lot of the general delivery mechanisms (be it mRNA, be it vector viruses), we know a lot about the specific particular vaccines, there have been and are countless scientists studying all that, governments looking into that, media looking into it. Compare that to the horse-dewormer, where we don't know a damn lot[3].
Regardless, it boggles my mind why people would put so much trust in a few, contentious and often preliminary studies, while at the same time ignoring the massive body of not-so-preliminary science, studies and trials surrounding the vaccines. So the few scientists who believe they found nice, useful properties of ivermectin are the "good guys" and every other scientist who found nice, useful properties in the vaccines is somehow a corporate chills, or part of a conspiracy to make Bill Gates the ruler of a soon-to-be-heavily-depopulated world. Should I mention that most of the scientists who published "nice" studies of ivermectin do not in fact advocate it's immediate use, let alone self-medication with it, but merely suggest further study is warrante...
I also don't think vaccines are a scam, but I do think they're mostly useless. Covid is not much more than the flu for the majority of people. I'm vaccinated because I wanted to travel with less hassle, but I didn't need it; I just needed the damn paper. At the same time I would have recommended my elderly parents to take vaccines (not that there was a need, as they became mandatory for their job, as they are doctors and treating covid patients amongst others).
Considering how much money there is in vaccines, how it's bound to turn into a yearly subscription model paid by taxpayer and the low mortality of covid, I don't think it's hard to see the scare tactics, years of lockdown as a way to milk more money.
While this is not entirely wrong, the majority of people will not get severe covid, still if you happen to get severe covid it's a lot worse than the flu including the chances of lasting permanent damage due to the disease but also due to the medication and treatment (e.g. steroid may blind you, ecmo may fuck up the mobility of your legs permanently). And it's more likely you get severe covid than severe flu.
That is exactly what they did by saying he was taking "horse dewormer"
> Self-treatment carries unforeseen dangers
He was prescribed this off-label by a doctor.
I have not been able to understand the hostility towards this treatment or unwillingness to even consider that it might help.
He did.
"He was prescribed this off-label by a doctor."
For a treatment regimen that's not recommended by the AMA nor approved by the FDA for this type of disease.
Which is why it's risky to apply one potential quack doctor prescribing a one-off vs. a rigorously studied treatment regimen.
"I have not been able to understand the hostility towards this treatment or unwillingness to even consider that it might help."
Absolutely no hostility here, at least. However, unproven and unapproved treatments are dangerous, especially when they're always anecdotal.
Ivermectin might be the miracle drug - no one knows, and that's the point. Without due diligence, Rogen and his supporters are spreading FUD.
That's like saying Rogan was drinking engine coolant because he was drinking water.
The US currently requires refugees from certain regions to take ivermectin prophylactically. If Fox News ran a headline saying "Biden Administration Forcing Horse Dewormer on Immigrants", I think we'd all object.
That's basically what CNN is doing here.
(To avoid confusion on my own personal views: There is no data showing ivermectin is effective in treating COVID. We should all get vaccinated. But disagreeing with my views doesn't justify lying.)
1. It would be good to get a source on that. 2. What do prescribed regimens have to do with unprescribed ones?
2. Rogan was prescribed ivermectin by a doctor
I would also ask anyone who is upset about this article calling out CNN to reflect on why they are upset. Is it because CNN is associated with being an ally of the left? I would ask the same if anyone feeling the same way about Fox/your favorite news outlet here.
I didn’t read the linked article because I don’t really care if the fact in the headline is true or false. It doesn’t matter.
What I worry about these days relates to the first sentence I wrote. Damn near every story from cable/entertainment news requires a deeper look and is usually written in such a way to inspire outrage and or binary tribalism. If that doesn’t scare you a little I would humbly ask you to reconsider.
As a person outside the US. I watch some of them along with Fox news opinion programs mainly for fun
See. I saved you all of that time so now you can be productive instead of hearing the same thing over and over again.
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/thursday-oct-14-scoreboard-f...
For those looking for a decent cable TV news source, I highly recommend The News at 7pm ET on CNBC. It’s hosted by an ex-fox news anchor, but it’s the only cable news show I’ve found that isn’t blatantly far left liberal or far right conservative… and also hasn’t devolved into a talk show.
It’s refreshing to hear segments reporting on actual events that occurred, and then on to the next segment without the talking head commentary.