> I have seen this disingenuous copy-paste objection show up in every thread on this topic on HN
To be fair, your comment is objectively more generic and closer to a "copy-paste objection" than the GP's.
I have no idea how the press were in nineteen umpties, but it seems clear to me that the reporting by Mother Jones is pretty biased, and they have their fair share of polemic-level opinion pieces.
Do you think they would cover the recent removal of To Kill A Mockingbird (which is ironically a book they do mention in the article) from the curriculum by a Washington school board [1] in the same way? I don't think so. I searched their website, and it looks like they haven't covered it at all.
It might also be simply that the press has limited resources, and being composed of human beings, cannot be expected to operate with perfect ideological consistency.
I don't think that's the reason. Hanlon's razor is just a heuristic, we shouldn't blindly and naively apply it to everything. I think you can see how biased Mother Jones is by taking the headlines on their front page, and trying to rewrite them as someone attempting to be impartial would.
There’s no question that Mother Jones has an editorial bias; every periodical does. I’m not sure what the point of complaining about that is. Likewise, it’s not particularly noteworthy that WSJ and Fox News have a conservative bias.
If we are to get up in arms about something, it should be because they are being deceptive (or worse, publishing false information), not because they are merely biased or guilty of omission.
> every periodical does. I’m not sure what the point of complaining about that is.
That is broadly correct, though not all of them are equally biased. However, journalistic objectivity [1] is something we could demand them to strive for. I'm not sure if the press have always been like this.
> Likewise, it’s not particularly noteworthy that WSJ and Fox News have a conservative bias.
Most of the US mainstream outlets are biased in a particular direction. I've said the before here, but you can see that by taking any reasonable list of major outlets [1], and checking their biases [2][3].
> If we are to get up in arms about something, it should be because they are being deceptive (or worse, publishing false information), not because they are merely biased.
Paltering is also a form of deception, and you could argue that it is quite pervasive and pernicious. I think Mother Jones, and many other outlets, are guilty of that.
Bias is only complained about when people passive-aggressively bring their politics into a situation to warp the subject and distract.
There is no such thing as "unbiased" reporting, just as it is impossible to "eliminate racism" or "eliminate rape". Journalists aren't robots. Anyone who tells you they're "unbiased" is either a liar or a fool. Reasonable and accurate reporting, without word weaseling or playing favorites, is honest journalism.
To be fair, your comment is objectively more generic and closer to a "copy-paste objection" than the GP's.
I have no idea how the press were in nineteen umpties, but it seems clear to me that the reporting by Mother Jones is pretty biased, and they have their fair share of polemic-level opinion pieces.
Do you think they would cover the recent removal of To Kill A Mockingbird (which is ironically a book they do mention in the article) from the curriculum by a Washington school board [1] in the same way? I don't think so. I searched their website, and it looks like they haven't covered it at all.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/schools-drop-kill-mockingbird-requi...