[jollybean]

CNN is not a crappy news source.

It's mostly above board, if biased.

The non-opinion parts of Fox are not that bad but it's more rare.

My bet is they are looking at headline coverage both news and opinion.

I think this is a really worthy excercise so that we can see a bit more methodologically what kind of bias happens with selective coverage.

The tone and content of the coverage matters a lot.

Almost all of the editorial is bad on all sides. They have some insight, but it's so biased you have to hear other people talk in order to contextualize it.

[BeetleB]

> It's mostly above board, if biased.

Above board does not equate with quality.

CNN is pretty crap compared to most big print newspapers.

[timbit42]

Pretty much all TV news is crap compared to big print newspapers.

[BeetleB]

Which is why I tell people that if they're getting their news from TV, they're doing it wrong.

[jollybean]

Above Board definitely correlates with quality, because it implies truthiness, which is obviously a key consideration.

CNN is a broadcast news channel that covers things as they happen, not a newspaper where they write articles as long as they like.

So you'd compare it to MSNBC and Fox and possibly Network News, not news papers.

[BeetleB]

> Above Board definitely correlates with quality, because it implies truthiness, which is obviously a key consideration.

It is one of many factors. You can have a news source that is 100% accurate and virtually useless.

> CNN is a broadcast news channel that covers things as they happen, not a newspaper where they write articles as long as they like.

> So you'd compare it to MSNBC and Fox and possibly Network News, not news papers.

Depends on your goals. If you want relevant and accurate, then print is better. If you want breaking news as soon as it happens and can't wait a day - sure, TV news is better (still worse than radio). In my experience, less than 1% of TV news content is needed by 99% of Americans on the same day it occurs. They're not worse off if they find out the next day.

On top of that, a lot of "breaking news" is riddled with errors and speculation. If you want to know what happened, as opposed to what may have happened, it's simpler to wait. When I was a news addict, I was drowning with too much content. I put limits on myself: Once a month I would catch up with the news feeds (could take over a week to do so), and it quickly became obvious how relatively worthless "early" news was. I'd get all the relevant information by reading a fifth of the articles.

[jollybean]

Yeah I think you're stretching it here.

Yes, technically, 'very accurate' may not be good news, but that's not all CNN is. They are 'above bar' and a decent news org.

Yes, just 'breaking news' can be inaccurate, but that's not just what they are.

They're Cable News, and again, relatively decent.

Even though they are biased, if you had to pick 'just one' - I think they'd be a fair source.

I share your view on 'deep news' - but most people don't have time to go in depth.

CNN is not great but won't lead you too-too far off, most of the time.

Either MSNBC or Fox ... creates some unfortunate bubble thinking.

[pclmulqdq]

In my past experience, CNN has not been very transparent in terms of admitting its bias, which is very much apparent to the average news viewer. I am not sure that anyone in the US other than a few highly sheltered democrats, who get their news only from left-leaning sources, still believes that it is "the most trusted name in news."

Incidentally, I actually think MSNBC, which admits to being a left-leaning news source, produces better (and less biased) news content than CNN. I have actually seen them cover important stories that are unfavorable to their point of view, when CNN has radio silence.