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> You should not assume things like that.

On the contrary, this is a very reasonable assumption. You appear to be confusing opinions and facts.

You also appear to have an uninformed opinion of Buzzfeed News and the journalists it employs.

You also don't seem to understand the main point of the whole paper, which is that "the writing styles of otherwise opposing orientations, namely left-wing and right-wing, are in fact very similar: there appears to be a common style of extremism."

Based on my long experience as a newspaper journalist, this was already obvious to me and no doubt many other people. However, it won't make any difference to the significant proportion of the American public that doesn't read news for honest information, but only to prop up their existing and highly distorted views.



> On the contrary, this is a very reasonable assumption. You appear to be confusing opinions and facts.

It's not reasonable to imagine a study used methods just because you would have done so if it were you, even if you know that those methods are the best or most standard ones, then defend the study on the basis of the imaginary method. The point of having a peer-reviewed study is that it clearly indicates how the fact-checking was done.

> You also appear to have an uninformed opinion of Buzzfeed News and the journalists it employs.

On the contrary - I read them and am quite familiar with their work. You can look through my comment history and see me discussing them quite extensively just the other day. Generally speaking, their journalism work is excellent, but it does have somewhat partisan viewpoint in my opinion and they do not always act as an organization in ways that I support.

But again, even if Buzzfeed is not the worst choice, it certainly isn't the best one; you really aren't addressing the point I've brought up a couple times now that there are other organizations better suited to this particular kind of journalistic work.

> You also don't seem to understand the main point of the whole paper, which is that "the writing styles of otherwise opposing orientations, namely left-wing and right-wing, are in fact very similar: there appears to be a common style of extremism."

I understand the point. I just don't think it is useful, and even if it is, I don't particularly think the study has proven it beyond doubt.


> On the contrary - I read them and am quite familiar with their work. You can look through my comment history

Fair enough: I didn't look at your comment history...

> but it does have somewhat partisan viewpoint in my opinion

There is no view without a point of view, and all you're saying is that your own view is to he right of Buzzfeed's.

Meanwhile, individual journalists at Buzzfeed News also have views that are to the right and to the left of Buzzfeed's.

None of which has anything to do with the actual paper, which wasn't about views but about facts.


> There is no view without a point of view, and all you're saying is that your own view is to he right of Buzzfeed's.

Actually, my personal political beliefs are probably substantially to the left of Buzzfeed's. That doesn't make me incapable of identifying a partisan viewpoint. I can still tell, even if I mostly agree with it.

> None of which has anything to do with the actual paper, which wasn't about views but about facts.

It has everything to do with it. Partisan sources will rate other partisan sources on their side as more truthful than partisan sources on the other side. One possible explanation of table 1 (not necessarily the true one, but a possible one) is that the reason right-leaning sources were found to lie so often is because they said things the left-leaning fact-checkers didn't agree with, or that the left-leaning fact checkers were harder on the right-leaning sources than they were on the left.

Using Buzzfeed opens the study up to criticism and may detract from the value of the data as a result.


You're still missing the point. Facts are facts, whether you agree with them or not.


It's not about whether I agree with them. It's about whether, when someone has been charged with reviewing them, they agree with them. Such a person may be tempted to subvert or disallow them on the basis of their opinion. This burden is on this study to demonstrate that this has not happened.


A statement of fact is only read as such when the reader and writer agree on the terminology used. That might lead to more interesting studies.


That's not actually true. Try reading some fact-checking sites.


Care to elaborate? How can people discuss facts when they have contradictory definitions of the words being used in an attempt to communicate?


In my experience, people don't actually have "contradictory definitions of the words being used". If they are mis-using a word, that's simply wrong.

But you're welcome to quote me an example from, say, Politifact or the Washington Post fact-checker or Snopes....




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