[tivert]

> The narratives used to characterize that data point vary based on the biases of the news institution, but either way it (more often than not) paints a distorted picture relative to the macro reality.

That's true, but I'd dispute that some kind of objective understanding of "macro reality" through "data" is even possible or practical outside a few narrow areas.

[Capricorn2481]

And who said data can't be biased, anyway? It most often is

[bhupy]

To be clear, there is certainly a spectrum/degree for bias.

The best kind of news/journalism informs readers based on factually accurate and unbiased data — and perhaps uses noteworthy current events and human interest anecdotes to corroborate that data.

A worse kind of news/journalism partially misinforms readers by presenting factually accurate data in a biased way.

The worst kind of news/journalism entirely misinforms readers by presenting an anecdote (or a statistically insignificant collection of anecdotes).

Unfortunately the majority of news today (at least in the US) falls into that 3rd bucket.