[mathdev]

A fact check would be fine if it led to objective analyses of some sort, or even Wikipedia. But when I clicked it, it displayed some highly partisan sources, including a CNN article with its usual "Trump bad" vitriol. Maybe it was an algorithm's fault, but it didn't work at all.

[gameswithgo]

How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light?

[three_seagrass]

One way is showing what multiple experts and news sources say about the facts, such as the Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes, the ACLU, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ABC News, Fortune Magazine, Vox, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Which Twitter did - https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384

This focus on complaining about just CNN is a red herring.

[watwut]

It seems to me that general media are sanitising Trump speech, go out of way to find coherent meaning or sense where original statement had only a little. One could argue they are making him look better despite disliking him.

[dahfizz]

> How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light?

You are missing the point. Using objective reporting to paint a bad person in a bad light is exactly what "the media" should do.

I went to cnn's homepage and clicked on this article[1]. Lets look at the first paragraph:

> President Donald Trump's use of the bully pulpit to defy his own government's advice on face coverings has turned into the era's latest ideologically motivated assault on science and civility. His noncompliance is a symbol of his refusal to adopt the customary codes of the presidency during a crisis and his habit of turning even a dire national moment to political advantage.

You can't possibly call that objective reporting. The factual content is true, but highly highly subjective and filled with inflammatory language.

Saying "Trump refuses to wear a facemask in defiance of $HealthExpert's advice" is objective. Calling that act "an assault on science and civility" is a heavily inflammatory and subjective stance.

To be clear, I don't disagree with CNN here. Trump is being dumb. But you can't pretend like CNN is objective or unbiased.

CNN, like all news media, is a private, profit seeking corporation who will pander to their audience to generate ad revenue. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But turning around and treating this multi-million dollar corporation as the sole arbiter of absolute, objective truth is plain foolish.

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/donald-trump-covid-m...

EDIT: Some argue that this is an opinion piece and so my point is invalid. Up in the top left corner, this article is marked as "Analysis by $Author" instead of just "by $Author". They don't label it as an opinion, and they don't place it differently on their home page. It is an analysis on current events, written by a CNN reporter, hosted on the CNN front page. This is an explicit endorsement of the content of the article, and it's crazy to say that CNN is absolved of all journalistic integrity because this article is an "analysis" versus "regular" news. The only difference is the addition of the single word "Analysis" hidden in the top left corner. This article is clearly meant to be treated as any other.

I suppose that is the problem with using examples, though. People would rather pick apart the example rather than face the larger claim. Without examples, of course, the point would be dismissed as unsubstantiated. It's just not possible to change people's minds, I guess.

EDIT 2: This is what an actual opinion piece looks like: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-m...

They disclaim that the article is the authors opinion, they host it in the opinions section, and have opinion in the header, etc. The article I linked is not an opinion piece.

[three_seagrass]

It's not just CNN saying that the President is lying about mail-in voting.

There's a long list of news organizations:

https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384

[zo1]

Sure but that does not make it okay necessarily. Did you read what the OP said? The news sources are all opinion with bias and artistic flare for effect, sprinkled with a few dabs of factually correct details to maintain the aura of "legitimate news source".

[btilly]

You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to.

It is irrelevant how many true things CNN says, or how broadly other organizations agree with them. CNN is still not presenting things in an objective way. Which means that those you would like to convince will flip the bozo bit because of the bias, and never even hear the evidence.

Note that we seldom notice bias in others when it matches our own. So CNN's bias is invisible to its core audience. Just as Fox News' bias is invisible to theirs. But it can't be missed by anyone whose biases differ, or who are actively looking for whether things are presented with bias.

But http://gatewayjr.org/how-a-popular-media-bias-chart-determin... gets it right. CNN skews liberal, and isn't particularly accurate. It is better than Fox News...but not by much.

[three_seagrass]

>You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to.

That's because the content I am responding to is a red herring to the question of Twitter's actions.

This derailment into "Is CNN biased?" is not relevant when the majority of news organizations are in agreement about the president lying in the tweet.

Further muddying the waters with claims that it's all just an "opinion" anyways is also non-sequitur because there are definitive facts about mail-in voting showing otherwise: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384

[dahfizz]

My comment was a direct reply to my parent, who asked a fair question about how media is to deal with Trump. I make no greater claims about this specific situation and I am not derailing a discussion, I am directly answering an interesting question. If anything, you are derailing a discussion about news media bias with the red herring of "but Trump bad".

For you to say that its wrong to discuss media bias because Trump did a bad thing is dishonest at best. Yes, Trump is acting a fool on Twitter as he always is. That does not mean that the news media is beyond reproach and it is wrong to call into question their biases.

[mullingitover]

You clicked on an opinion article and caught the vapors when you found that it contained an opinion.

[dahfizz]

This is an "Analysis", not an opinion. This is what a CNN opinion piece looks like:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-m...

It is at a /opinions/ url, it has the word "Opinion" in the header, and it has this disclaimer above the article:

> The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own

Most importantly, it is not posted directly on the CNN home page. You have to click a link to go to the opinions section to see opinion articles.

The article I chose as an example is not an opinion piece. It is presented to the user the same way every other news piece is, just with the word "Analysis" tacked on in the corner. No reasonable person would say "Oh, this is just an analysis, I shouldn't take it seriously".

[mullingitover]

> It is presented to the user the same way every other news piece is, just with the word "Analysis" tacked on in the corner.

The word 'Analysis' is right there in the title on their web site, it's not confusing in the slightest to a reasonable person imho.

[dahfizz]

The word 'Analysis' appears once, under the title (not in it), in a much smaller and greyed out font. Very few people would notice it, IMHO.

And even if they did, I don't see how that changes anything. This is CNN's analysis of the news, and it has all the problems I outlined in my original comment. This is not disclaimed as the author's own opinion, it is CNN's explanation of the news, and it is filled with subjectivity and inflammatory content.

You would have to be incredibly dishonest with yourself to read that article and not conclude that CNN is biased against Trump.

And I reiterate: I don't think bias in media is inherently bad. But it is foolish to think that private media corporations are unbiased, altruistic arbiters of the complete and objective truth. This is the point I am making, but I suspect you would rather continue to nitpick the examples I have chosen rather than engage in a good faith discussion.

[bradford]

The piece is marked as 'Analysis by Stephen Collinson'. I tend to think that's an opinion piece and treat it appropriately. You call it unfair, non-objective reporting. You fail to identify that it's not reporting at all: it's an opinion piece.

I believe that the unclear identification of an article as 'news' or 'opinion' is a general problem with media. The demarcation was usually clear in the print media, it's often not clear in the digital media. I'd love to see improvement.

I often ask for examples of the press treating Trump unfairly, and I'm always (not sometimes, always) given links to opinion pieces. The public can't seem to discern between the two, which points to a general problem of media illiteracy. This illiteracy is then used to draw false conclusions about the media as a whole, and your post is doing the same.

[dahfizz]

See my edits. The article I chose as an example is absolutely not an opinion piece.

[bradford]

Ok, would you say that it is analysis a la definitions provided here? (http://thespeakernewsjournal.com/difference-news-opinion-ana...)

I'll admit that the piece you linked blurs the line between analysis and opinion. You assert that it's not an opinion piece, but I'd assert that it's absolutely not news, it's not reporting, and the larger points of my parent comment still stand: I don't think it's fair to point poeple to this piece and say "look how unfair CNN is".

[dahfizz]

From your link:

> They provide the reader with facts and evidence. They do not include their own opinion. They are similar to professional teachers. The draw conclusions from events, but the conclusions they state are clearly based on evidence.

I think the article could be called 'analysis' based on your definition, but the article definitely is less clinical than this definition would suggest. It reads more like it was written by an "angry teacher" vs a "professional teacher".

> I don't think it's fair to point poeple to this piece and say "look how unfair CNN is".

I would agree with you if this article was clearly marked as something less than factual reporting. You touched on the issue of branding different kinds of articles earlier. If CNN is going to push this article to their front page and not disclaim the author's opinion, then they need to be responsible for its content. I don't think putting the word 'Analysis' in small grey text in the corner releases them from their responsibilities as a news organization.

The content of the article is biased and inflammatory, even if factually sound. CNN put their seal of approval on this biased content, and so I think it is fair to say "look how unfair CNN is".

[paulryanrogers]

Would an AP article similarly critical of the president's remarks been more acceptable?

[SaltyBackendGuy]

> Would an AP article similarly critical of the president's remarks been more acceptable?

Seems like it would be more acceptable.

(sorry for the ads)

CNN: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cnn/

AP : https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/associated-press/

[FillardMillmore]

Whether reporting on Trump objectively makes him look 'bad' obviously depends on the content being reported on. The objective reporting (meaning, nothing but the facts, no insinuations or implications past what we can garner from the facts) on something like Trump tweeting about Joe Scarborough's possible culpability in the death of his intern might make him look bad while reporting of Trump's efforts to pull troops from abroad back home might make him look good.

The problem though, as I think some of the posters above have touched on, is how can Twitter effectively account for media biases in a way that will not make them look biased? I suppose that's just begging the question of: should they care if they appear biased?

One thought I've had is that perhaps, for every tweet that Twitter decides to put a 'fact-check' on, they could link to three different sources of information - one with a well-established left-bias, one with a well-established right-bias, and one without any well-established bias. Just an idea, I'm sure that'll probably present problems as well.

[zo1]

That's a step in the right direction. But both sides of the political media coin are biased in that they don't do fact-based reporting only.

Let's look at the tweet from the linked article and see how reporting should happen:

>"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices" "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016."

1. Republicans claim social media platforms silence conservative viewpoints. 2. Donald Trump intends to regulate/close them down if they are engaging in this, or prevent them from doing so with regulation. 3. Donald Trump claims that social-media platforms tried to do something in 2016 (insinuating that they meddled with the election).

I don't know about you but I would love actual investigative journalism to look at the above points as it's so loaded and could practically swing elections if confirmed and people decided to act on it.

So the items they need to do for the above facts:

1. Track down some legitimate poll of how Republicans feel about this. Find peer-reviewed studies that look at data-dumps or reports by the media companies. Send emails to social-media companies with details, request data about the makeup of account actions or bans, etc. If < 50% of republicans feel this way, call him out on it. <-- that sort of thing is fact-checkable for Twitter.

2. Talk about the options that Donald Trump has. Investigate the legality about it, consult some lawyers, showcase a poll on the matter, investigate how Common-Carrier laws might apply to this, etc. The media should assume he is right and play that out. What if Donald Trump is on to something and the statistical facts are being hidden. Investigate. Make a note of this and write an article in half a year about how it disappeared from his campaign so he broke his promise/commitment. Hold him accountable, help people see the things that they may have forgotten, be the voice of clear-headed reason and good outcomes for all involved.

3. Really, same as the above on some level. It's been almost 4 years, there is bound to be a plethora of peer-reviewed sources and concluded outcomes. Mention the outcomes of some of the claims during the 2016 election, track down some polls and tie it all together. They're supposed to provide insight and a big-picture view of it all.