5 ms·

This is a pretty good website and they also have a proprietary algorithm to determine the political spectrum of the source: http://www.allsides.com/ http://www.

This is a pretty good website and they also have a proprietary algorithm to determine the political spectrum of the source: http://www.allsides.com/ http://www.allsides.com/ NYTimes is ranked moderately liberal while Fox News is ranked right (http://www.allsides.com/bias/bias-ratings http://www.allsides.com/bias/bias-ratings)

harigov 10y ago
Thanks! It seems interesting. The problem I see is that - it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. Also, journals shouldn't be the only source. Every side needs to be heard and someone's voice may come from their own blog. I am not sure how it would work but we should at least give it a try.
- rando9000 10y ago
  I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" that matters. Evidence, etc. is irrelevant. Look at the Right's views on climate change, etc. I'm sure there are people on Hacker News etc. who will be like "now you're just being a Bias Liberal!" if I don't say "the Left has its problems too" but the Left's problems, such as they are, are the traditional problems of political parties: maybe the Left's policy prescriptions won't work, maybe their need to maintain a coalition means they aren't able to address Problem P, etc. The Right in the USA is unique in having decided that there is no evidentiary standard high enough when Rightist positions conflict with reality. So removing bias from news sources and ensuring everything is quite factual won't affect the ~40% or so of the USA who frankly couldn't give a flying fuck about reality.
  - harigov 10y ago
    I am not interested in unbiased news sources. I am interested in showing alternately biased news source so that you can develop your own opinion. Even showing snippets of alternate views superposed on the same article can help people a bit. My aim is not to solve the problem in its entirety. If others cannot understand our opinion, we should at least try to understand theirs. The current situation is horrible in terms of people not even having a clue as to what's going on. If 10% benefit from this, that means there are 10% of people who at least know both/many sides.
    - achileas 10y ago
      Then you have the problem of giving equal weight to inequal ideas just because they happen to be in opposition. You see this a lot on debate shows where they have a climate scientist and a climate change denier, giving the appearance of debate within the scientific community (e.g.) when there is very little.
    - lj3 10y ago
      > it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. > I am not interested in unbiased news sources. So, which is it? I think the focus on bias vs unbiased news sources is a distraction. ALL news is biased. That is something that will never change. > If others cannot understand our opinion What if the issue here is that others understand your opinion perfectly, but still disagree with it? This whole conversation is starting to sound a lot like you want a tool that will magically make people agree with you.
      - harigov 10y ago
        Good catch regarding the biased/unbiased. Parent to that post pointed out that there is a news source that tries to show unbiased news. I was implying that we need to take such news sources to people, rather than expecting them to get to that on their own. As I mentioned elsewhere, the idea is not to show unbiased news but rather show other side of the news (in the bias spectrum). I am not entirely clear on what makes the most sense, which is why I posted it here. I don't have any claims on people not agreeing with me. I have claims on me not understanding what's going on. I think if such a tool as I proposed existed, I would be happy to use it.
- jquip 10y ago
  When you say its hard to pull people away, I think its because they have their belief/bias tuned to that source, not only toward the facts in the article. Then you are dealing with a conflicting thought that goes against the cumulative statements that have been asserted by that source and agreed/verified by the listener. Thus further strengthening the belief/bias of the listener to that source.

harigov 10y ago

Thanks! It seems interesting. The problem I see is that - it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. Also, journals shouldn't be the only source. Every side needs to be heard and someone's voice may come from their own blog. I am not sure how it would work but we should at least give it a try.

rando9000 10y ago
I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" that matters. Evidence, etc. is irrelevant. Look at the Right's views on climate change, etc. I'm sure there are people on Hacker News etc. who will be like "now you're just being a Bias Liberal!" if I don't say "the Left has its problems too" but the Left's problems, such as they are, are the traditional problems of political parties: maybe the Left's policy prescriptions won't work, maybe their need to maintain a coalition means they aren't able to address Problem P, etc. The Right in the USA is unique in having decided that there is no evidentiary standard high enough when Rightist positions conflict with reality. So removing bias from news sources and ensuring everything is quite factual won't affect the ~40% or so of the USA who frankly couldn't give a flying fuck about reality.
- harigov 10y ago
  I am not interested in unbiased news sources. I am interested in showing alternately biased news source so that you can develop your own opinion. Even showing snippets of alternate views superposed on the same article can help people a bit. My aim is not to solve the problem in its entirety. If others cannot understand our opinion, we should at least try to understand theirs. The current situation is horrible in terms of people not even having a clue as to what's going on. If 10% benefit from this, that means there are 10% of people who at least know both/many sides.
  - achileas 10y ago
    Then you have the problem of giving equal weight to inequal ideas just because they happen to be in opposition. You see this a lot on debate shows where they have a climate scientist and a climate change denier, giving the appearance of debate within the scientific community (e.g.) when there is very little.
  - lj3 10y ago
    > it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. > I am not interested in unbiased news sources. So, which is it? I think the focus on bias vs unbiased news sources is a distraction. ALL news is biased. That is something that will never change. > If others cannot understand our opinion What if the issue here is that others understand your opinion perfectly, but still disagree with it? This whole conversation is starting to sound a lot like you want a tool that will magically make people agree with you.
    - harigov 10y ago
      Good catch regarding the biased/unbiased. Parent to that post pointed out that there is a news source that tries to show unbiased news. I was implying that we need to take such news sources to people, rather than expecting them to get to that on their own. As I mentioned elsewhere, the idea is not to show unbiased news but rather show other side of the news (in the bias spectrum). I am not entirely clear on what makes the most sense, which is why I posted it here. I don't have any claims on people not agreeing with me. I have claims on me not understanding what's going on. I think if such a tool as I proposed existed, I would be happy to use it.
jquip 10y ago
When you say its hard to pull people away, I think its because they have their belief/bias tuned to that source, not only toward the facts in the article. Then you are dealing with a conflicting thought that goes against the cumulative statements that have been asserted by that source and agreed/verified by the listener. Thus further strengthening the belief/bias of the listener to that source.