6 ms·

Show HN: A tool to compare news from liberal and conservative sources

61 points by anticlickwise 9y ago

phailhaus 9y ago
This is incredible, you can get an accurate sense of the news bubble that both sides are in by looking at the headlines alone!
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  yes. That was the idea of building this. Dont know how much it will help though. I remain pessimistic
folli 9y ago
Great idea! It would be even more interesting to compare the headlines or a summary of the same topic between the two sources.
- emptyvessel 9y ago
  <shame> Truly shameless plug for a personal project that does exactly what you suggest by clustering news articles from multiple (reputable) news sites; prioritizes highest quality articles, and shows the headlines. It's really interesting to see headlines on the same story side-by-side and see the bias that comes with it. Helps me stay just a bit more centered and see multiple sides of often complex stories. http://enclude.com http://enclude.com </shame>
  - carlmr 9y ago
    Shouldn't you end the open shame tag with </shame> and then reopen with <shame> after your shameless plug? Right now it looks like a shameful plug.
    - emptyvessel 9y ago
      You're right of course. Though I could also just change "shameless" to "shameful" as you rightly did and we'd be all set. Thanks for making the comment too - made me stop to think about another strange English idiom.
  - heartles 9y ago
    Subscribed. This sounds interesting, I can't wait to try it out!
    - emptyvessel 9y ago
      Thanks. Love to hear what you think. Feedback is welcome and lots of room for improvement no doubt.
Brendinooo 9y ago
Red Feed, Blue Feed comes to mind: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
- Sacho 9y ago
  This is fascinating! I love the duality presented side by side, how they react in a completely different manner to the same topic. It's also a bit sad, because it reminds me of the pressure to colour news with more opinions, take stances, etc - very rarely will you see the style of dry, "just the facts" reporting. It appears they build the feeds based on a simple keyword filter - for example, under "guns" and "liberal outlets" we have a post about a guns and roses concert... :)
  - evincarofautumn 9y ago
    “Just the facts” is a weaker play than a “hot take” when you’re competing for attention. And if you’re not driving some people away with your reporting, then you’re probably not strongly attracting their opponents, so it pays to take sides. However, I think news organisations could be opinionated without necessarily presenting opinion as fact.
DanielN 9y ago
This is really nice! I was similarly bothered by biases in new sources so I built https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-tracker/mhijknbhplbhpmemohbldppgnbohopjh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-tracker/mhijk...
jackmoore 9y ago
Why no Fox News?
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  Adding it... it just dropped out by mistake
Hasknewbie 9y ago
Interesting. A few remarks: * So many headlines are truncated. This is distracting. * The "What they both should probably read" section should be motivated. For example, what makes WSJ or BBC better? They are both known to occasionally publish dreadful articles. * You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian, I believe they have a fairly large readership.
- gefh 9y ago
  The Grauniad certainly has a Point Of View but to compare it to Breitbart is /highly/ disingenuous.
  - pamqzl 9y ago
    How so? Are you sure you're not just assuming that your own point of view is the correct one?
- seattle_spring 9y ago
  > You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian Breitbart had a section up until a few weeks ago titled "BLACK CRIME". Can you show me a "left-equivalent" section in The Guardian? If anything, Breitbart is a "right-wing" NaturalNews.com.
  - austinheap 9y ago
    Don't you dare ruin NaturalNews.com for me! They cured cancer!
  - Hasknewbie 9y ago
    (Replying to both you and gefh) You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission, although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying attention. The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <- Yes, this is a real article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage. I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't think this should be excused. To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, more insidious and damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how "erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today, this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So. Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.
mji 9y ago
An interesting project, but one that seems to suffer from a (presumably unintended and unknown) conservative bias itself, as evidenced by opening the page and seeing conservative opinion outlets like Breitbart and Drudge displayed literally next to reputable sources like the New York Times and Politico
- austinheap 9y ago
  FWIW I don't think the point is to compare reputable v non-reputable -- after all, perception is truth in politics. I think the goal of the tool is to highlight the perceptions but not to sort through the realities. There are great tools that do that (i.e.: Snopes/Politifact) but people 'in a camp' aren't generally interested in a truth that doesn't fulfill their prophecy.
  - anticlickwise 9y ago
    You nailed it. I dont agree with most of the stuff on the conservative side but I think it is a bad idea to shut ourselves off and not listen to ANYTHING they say. This site simply shows you what the other side is listening to and hopefully it will soften everyone's views in the long run.
    - mch82 9y ago
      Is the goal of softening everyone's views something you plan to keep working on? If so, are you discussing it anywhere?
      - anticlickwise 9y ago
        Not really discussing it. I just got fed up yesterday and I made this in a few hours out of disgust. The idea was born out of softening my own views I guess
    - otp124 9y ago
      If you want to soften everyone's views (and for this to be mainstream), then choose a different domain name. It can't be stated on radio or television in the US, for better or worse.
forkLding 9y ago
Looked at this to realize I only read Reuters nowadays and ignore other news sources because Reuters is pretty financial-report-talk bland and thats how I think news should be.
- innocentoldguy 9y ago
  Agreed. I couldn't care less about Fox or CNN's editorializing. I prefer to formulate my own opinions based on documented, boring facts.
- pamqzl 9y ago
  Yep. I've pretty much given up all news except the Australian Financial Review and am a lot happier for it (though for some reason I'm back on HN after many years... bad move)
austinheap 9y ago
Thanks for taking a stab at helping us fix discourse, every stab is needed! Are these RSS feeds from different websites or is the tool doing some manipulation of the data (i.e.: attempting to line up coverage of a single topic to do a one-to-one comparison of how the left v right covers it).
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  Thanks. Thats all I am trying to do. Listing how different sides cover the same topic is a most tempting idea. I am beginning to work on it
mrtree 9y ago
Who owns those media? What's their ideology?
chrisco255 9y ago
RealClearPolitics https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ has done this sort of thing for years. Every other headline is sourced from conservative or liberal news source.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  The RealClearXXX sites are my main entry point for news; the format is ideal and I don't know anything as well curated. However they definitely have a slight conservative bias, evidenced by their selection of articles and op-eds.
- pamqzl 9y ago
  Yes, and they're often pretty clever with their juxtapositions, giving two completely contradictory takes on the same subject one after the other.
skyzyx 9y ago
* https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground
mch82 9y ago
This concept is cool (the specific matchups may need refinement). Is there a way to show the diff?
anotherbrownguy 9y ago
WSJ, BBC, New Yorker and NPR should be under what liberals read. Other than that, good list.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  Is WSJ really liberal? I think it's very neocon.
akvadrako 9y ago
A similar site: https://www.allsides.com https://www.allsides.com
RickJWagner 9y ago
It'd be better if it showed the same topic, presented by left and right. As done by 'RealClearPolitics'. One topic, two articles, one pro and one con.

61 points by anticlickwise 9y ago

This is incredible, you can get an accurate sense of the news bubble that both sides are in by looking at the headlines alone!

anticlickwise 9y ago
yes. That was the idea of building this. Dont know how much it will help though. I remain pessimistic

folli 9y ago

Great idea! It would be even more interesting to compare the headlines or a summary of the same topic between the two sources.

emptyvessel 9y ago
<shame> Truly shameless plug for a personal project that does exactly what you suggest by clustering news articles from multiple (reputable) news sites; prioritizes highest quality articles, and shows the headlines. It's really interesting to see headlines on the same story side-by-side and see the bias that comes with it. Helps me stay just a bit more centered and see multiple sides of often complex stories. http://enclude.com http://enclude.com </shame>
- carlmr 9y ago
  Shouldn't you end the open shame tag with </shame> and then reopen with <shame> after your shameless plug? Right now it looks like a shameful plug.
  - emptyvessel 9y ago
    You're right of course. Though I could also just change "shameless" to "shameful" as you rightly did and we'd be all set. Thanks for making the comment too - made me stop to think about another strange English idiom.
- heartles 9y ago
  Subscribed. This sounds interesting, I can't wait to try it out!
  - emptyvessel 9y ago
    Thanks. Love to hear what you think. Feedback is welcome and lots of room for improvement no doubt.

Brendinooo 9y ago

Red Feed, Blue Feed comes to mind: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/

Sacho 9y ago
This is fascinating! I love the duality presented side by side, how they react in a completely different manner to the same topic. It's also a bit sad, because it reminds me of the pressure to colour news with more opinions, take stances, etc - very rarely will you see the style of dry, "just the facts" reporting. It appears they build the feeds based on a simple keyword filter - for example, under "guns" and "liberal outlets" we have a post about a guns and roses concert... :)
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  “Just the facts” is a weaker play than a “hot take” when you’re competing for attention. And if you’re not driving some people away with your reporting, then you’re probably not strongly attracting their opponents, so it pays to take sides. However, I think news organisations could be opinionated without necessarily presenting opinion as fact.

DanielN 9y ago

This is really nice! I was similarly bothered by biases in new sources so I built https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-tracker/mhijknbhplbhpmemohbldppgnbohopjh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-tracker/mhijk...

jackmoore 9y ago

Why no Fox News?

anticlickwise 9y ago
Adding it... it just dropped out by mistake

Hasknewbie 9y ago

Interesting. A few remarks: * So many headlines are truncated. This is distracting. * The "What they both should probably read" section should be motivated. For example, what makes WSJ or BBC better? They are both known to occasionally publish dreadful articles. * You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian, I believe they have a fairly large readership.

gefh 9y ago
The Grauniad certainly has a Point Of View but to compare it to Breitbart is /highly/ disingenuous.
- pamqzl 9y ago
  How so? Are you sure you're not just assuming that your own point of view is the correct one?
seattle_spring 9y ago
> You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian Breitbart had a section up until a few weeks ago titled "BLACK CRIME". Can you show me a "left-equivalent" section in The Guardian? If anything, Breitbart is a "right-wing" NaturalNews.com.
- austinheap 9y ago
  Don't you dare ruin NaturalNews.com for me! They cured cancer!
- Hasknewbie 9y ago
  (Replying to both you and gefh) You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission, although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying attention. The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <- Yes, this is a real article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage. I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't think this should be excused. To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, more insidious and damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how "erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today, this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So. Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.

mji 9y ago

An interesting project, but one that seems to suffer from a (presumably unintended and unknown) conservative bias itself, as evidenced by opening the page and seeing conservative opinion outlets like Breitbart and Drudge displayed literally next to reputable sources like the New York Times and Politico

austinheap 9y ago
FWIW I don't think the point is to compare reputable v non-reputable -- after all, perception is truth in politics. I think the goal of the tool is to highlight the perceptions but not to sort through the realities. There are great tools that do that (i.e.: Snopes/Politifact) but people 'in a camp' aren't generally interested in a truth that doesn't fulfill their prophecy.
- anticlickwise 9y ago
  You nailed it. I dont agree with most of the stuff on the conservative side but I think it is a bad idea to shut ourselves off and not listen to ANYTHING they say. This site simply shows you what the other side is listening to and hopefully it will soften everyone's views in the long run.
  - mch82 9y ago
    Is the goal of softening everyone's views something you plan to keep working on? If so, are you discussing it anywhere?
    - anticlickwise 9y ago
      Not really discussing it. I just got fed up yesterday and I made this in a few hours out of disgust. The idea was born out of softening my own views I guess
  - otp124 9y ago
    If you want to soften everyone's views (and for this to be mainstream), then choose a different domain name. It can't be stated on radio or television in the US, for better or worse.

forkLding 9y ago

Looked at this to realize I only read Reuters nowadays and ignore other news sources because Reuters is pretty financial-report-talk bland and thats how I think news should be.

innocentoldguy 9y ago
Agreed. I couldn't care less about Fox or CNN's editorializing. I prefer to formulate my own opinions based on documented, boring facts.
pamqzl 9y ago
Yep. I've pretty much given up all news except the Australian Financial Review and am a lot happier for it (though for some reason I'm back on HN after many years... bad move)

austinheap 9y ago

Thanks for taking a stab at helping us fix discourse, every stab is needed! Are these RSS feeds from different websites or is the tool doing some manipulation of the data (i.e.: attempting to line up coverage of a single topic to do a one-to-one comparison of how the left v right covers it).

anticlickwise 9y ago
Thanks. Thats all I am trying to do. Listing how different sides cover the same topic is a most tempting idea. I am beginning to work on it

mrtree 9y ago

Who owns those media? What's their ideology?

chrisco255 9y ago

RealClearPolitics https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ has done this sort of thing for years. Every other headline is sourced from conservative or liberal news source.

akvadrako 9y ago
The RealClearXXX sites are my main entry point for news; the format is ideal and I don't know anything as well curated. However they definitely have a slight conservative bias, evidenced by their selection of articles and op-eds.
pamqzl 9y ago
Yes, and they're often pretty clever with their juxtapositions, giving two completely contradictory takes on the same subject one after the other.

skyzyx 9y ago

* https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground

mch82 9y ago

This concept is cool (the specific matchups may need refinement). Is there a way to show the diff?

anotherbrownguy 9y ago

WSJ, BBC, New Yorker and NPR should be under what liberals read. Other than that, good list.

akvadrako 9y ago
Is WSJ really liberal? I think it's very neocon.

akvadrako 9y ago

A similar site: https://www.allsides.com https://www.allsides.com

RickJWagner 9y ago

It'd be better if it showed the same topic, presented by left and right. As done by 'RealClearPolitics'. One topic, two articles, one pro and one con.