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Even from their example, you can see the political bias clearly in the first pic. I believe that they believe themselves have an unbiased algorithm which create
by xname2 9y ago
Even from their example, you can see the political bias clearly in the first pic. I believe that they believe themselves have an unbiased algorithm which creates this result, which they believe is unbiased.
However, it is clear to me, their result is definitely biased. I do not believe an unbiased algorithm will generate a top list of covering on the supreme court decision on the travel ban only includes reports from NYT, WP, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune (the only right), CNN. I also do not believe an unbiased algorithm will generate a list of other top stories from only Politico, NPR, WP. So In a list of nine titles, only one right media (Chicago Tribune) got a shot, but not Fox News or WSJ. Not even CBS, ABC which are kind of centrist.
Of course, an argument would be that most of the media is left. But don't forget, the left / right split among the American voters is not that extreme. If you generate a list of new reports, which one is more unbiased: A) represent the perspective of journalists (90% left), B) represent the perspective of voters (60% left)?
My experience with Google News is that, if you do not manually customize new feed, you will get mostly from NYT and WP, almost never FN or WSJ. You will also get a lot far / crazy left stuff from Huffington post, Daily Beast, Mother Jones, but you will never get national review, not to mention breitbart.
- tacomonstrous 9y agoFox News is hardly news these days. Today their front page headline was about the Obamas being on vacation. This, on a day when the Senate Republicans fell flat on their face on healthcare. Wonder why that only got a small mention way at the bottom. Even now the main headline is about Palin suing the NYT. Your basic problem is viewing this as a left/right divide, when it's really a reasonable journalism/explicitly partisan reporting divide. Conservatives have been trained by decades of talk radio to think this way, and now all they have left on their side is a bunch of charlatans. CNN or MSNBC aren't paragons of virtue, but at least they are not completely disingenuous hucksters like the ones Fox trots out all the time. Hell, MSNBC even features their own right-wing charlatan in Hugh Hewitt.
- xname2 9y agoYour premise is that Google News only include news, which is totally wrong. Google News includes lots of comments. For example, Huffington post appears a lot in Google News.
- tacomonstrous 9y agoI think you're letting your biases about Google color your vision. I've had plenty of recommendations from Fox News, NR and the WSJ on Google News, so I can easily counter your own anecdata with mine, but, unlike you, my conclusion wasn't that Google had a right wing bias. EDIT: Oh, and I totally missed your remark about the Huffington Post. The reality is quite the contrary! Until the recent lay-offs post the Verizon acquisition, they had some of the best reportage on legislative activities in the House. Certainly, they have a liberal bent (which they do not hide), but the reporters they have (or had) are very good at their jobs.
- smt88 9y agoReality is not bipartisan. Fox has a recent history of peddling alarmingly dangerous and inaccurate conspiracy theories. I'm in favor of an algorithm that gives them less weight. Also, I see lots of Fox and WSJ. A study a few years ago found that WSJ's news is liberal, but their editorials are conservative. I think things look very different if you are able to forget about the editorials. And, finally, the left/right split of people who read news is not the same as the US overall. Even if it were, it would still skew liberal, just as the US does.
- mythrwy 9y agoCorrect. Reality isn't partisan at all. Human expression on the other hand generally is.
- smt88 9y agoNo, I'm saying reality is party. For example, in the US, accepting that climate change is real is "liberal" (in the US usage of the word) and denying climate change is conservative. So if a newspaper reports factually and responsibly about climate change, the newspaper looks "liberal" and partisan.
- mythrwy 9y agoCherry picking one example (which happens to also be not "reality" but rather a best fit to evidence and which also does not fall as neatly along partisan lines as you appear to imagine) doesn't show anything about "reality" being politically partisan. Partisan, by definition, is prejudice, the opposite of objectivity, and an enemy of "reality". The natural human condition, (at least in culture or society) is to be biased (often unthinkingly, out of cultural training or personal interest). Overcoming this is the path towards understand reality.
- smt88 9y agoOK, we're just not talking about the same thing. What I mean is that, in the US, Democrats are not equally far from the truth as Republicans. Or, if you want to rephrase it without the parties, liberals are not equally far from the truth. Objective facts will not be perfectly diplomatic. They will appear to be biased in one direction or another. This is true of literally every issue in which one side is closer to reality/truth than the other side. I don't need to cherry pick because that's every single issue (as long as they disagree, anyway).
- ENGNR 9y agoProgress and progressives seem to go hand in hand, you'll have to wait for conservatives to catch up on the tech