13 ms·

Show HN: SplitSearch – Simultaneously search conservative and liberal news orgs

jabo 6y ago
Oh hey, I just posted something similar I built, earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24720482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24720482 It focuses only on searching through the candidates’ speeches, shown in a side-by-side format. My thinking was that with all the divisive misinformation making their rounds these days, hearing what both candidates have said first-hand on the same topic presented in a side-by-side format, could help inform people of all perspectives in an unbiased way. I use data indexed on a Typesense server though, not Google site search.
- jabo 6y ago
  Separately, I’ve found this site to do a good job of aggregating news from all sides and presenting them with a media bias rating (left, center or right), which I’ve found helpful: https://www.allsides.com/ https://www.allsides.com/ Where do you get your media bias ratings from?
  - siquick 6y ago
    Anyone know of a similar site that is not so US focused?
  - Vaslo 6y ago
    Thanks for posting this AllSides site. This is one of the best and most honest segmentations I’ve seen. Often other sites set a news org like CNN as the center and then go from there, which doesn’t make much sense. Allsides call NPR “center” which I completely disagree with but still much more honest compared to others.
    - jabo 6y ago
      The cool thing about AllSides is that if you disagree with a bias rating, you can give them that feedback. They use votes from readers to keep the media bias ratings updated.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      Notice that "NPR News" is segmented out from "NPR Opinion" which does appear in the least left column. Personally, I'd say that's a very accurate description.
  - bufferoverflow 6y ago
    I found Allsides to be extremely biased. In their media bias "analysis" https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/AllSidesMediaBiasChart-Version3.jpg https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/AllSidesMediaBi... they claim that NPR and The Hill and BBC are dead center. That's 100% false. These are all quite far left, especially BBC.
    - anon73044 6y ago
      NPR and BBC both report imperialist talking points of their respective governments as fact without the slightest hint of criticism. Far left would be Democracy Now, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The Nation, etc.
      - strken 6y ago
        The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level. I always considered their opinion pieces centre-left (e.g. "bootlicking apologists" rather than "hidebound reactionaries") even when I was on the far left running around with wannabe revolutionary socialists. When it comes to that, the WSJ news section is arguably closer to centre-right than AP or Reuters. I think there are a microcosm of tiny complexities within the categories. [0] e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgh9ycw/revision/3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgh9ycw/revision/3
        rsynnott 6y ago
        > The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level. I'm not sure that's a left/right issue, unless it happens to be the 1950s (there are some surviving imperialists on the right, and ~none on the left, but I wouldn't expect the _average_ Tory voter to be too gung-ho about how great the empire was...) Also, that site is a GCSE revision site; I think that's just the history curriculum. And nothing seems particularly over-critical on the page you linked.
        pjc50 6y ago
        As the sibling comment says, the bitesize revision is based on the National Curriculum: i.e. it's the state's own version of its history. Not exactly a hotbed of radicalism.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I don't really find the very reductive model of left, center, or right as that helpful. I find the most useful strategy mixing in some "non-mainstream" sources like RT, CGTN, Telesur, PressTV, etc., that are coming at the news from the a totally different perspective. Of course they have an angle, and sometimes it's rather crudely presented, but if your spectrum is Fox News to MSNBC they've also got a lot of shared assumptions you might otherwise not think about. But this gets back to my point; you could think about it from different axes like geopolitical ones, closeness to military/intelligence sources, and so on, in addition to favored political party. Even if we're going pretty narrow, I think you might see pretty different ideas from, say, the American Conservative and the Daily Caller, even though they're both conservative publications.
  - pmarreck 6y ago
    there's also https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ I like that it rates "factual accuracy" on a separate axis than "bias". If factual accuracy is "high" or greater, then any remaining difference in bias can potentially just be attributed to values/tastes, and "de gustibus non est disputandum"
    - chris_f 6y ago
      Yeah, the MBFC site isn't as 'polished' as AllSides, but they have a lot more sites covered and overall I think their rankings are better (I know that is very subjective though).
- raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
  Hey, I saw your submission minutes after I posted mine. Quite the co-incidence! I really like what you did. I too struggled with “splitting” the screen on mobile. My current solution is a little janky.
m0zg 6y ago
I've found https://web.ground.news/ https://web.ground.news/ to be quite illuminating as far as gaslighting on both sides of the political aisle is concerned. Observation: liberal outlets are able to enforce complete suppression of even slightly unfavorable news (e.g. China censoring Pence's remarks on China during the VP debate). Conservative ones will often publish unfavorable news just to rile up the audience.
- vinay427 6y ago
  How does this change if we consider the truth levels of the facts that these media outlets report? I see no reason why several remarks from the VP debate, in this instance, should be reported as reality. This is probably true on both sides but to varying degrees.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    The goal here is not to expose truth per se, the goal is to merely to expose the underlying agendas by highlighting the topics the sides prefer to highlight or avoid in their version of what they consider "reality". That, and perhaps also provide exposure to opinions outside the bubble, for people concerned that their reality might not be entirely real, irrespective of affiliation. The bubbles are stronger than they've ever been. You can't break out of them without making a deliberate effort.
- coolgeek 6y ago
  First off, China censoring anything is a "dog bites man" story. It happens all the time. It's not news to anybody with half a clue about what's going on. Second, what's your reasoning for why "liberal" outlets might be doing this? Who are they "protecting"? What are they protecting them from? Are they beholden (financially, or ideologically) to the CCP?
  - m0zg 6y ago
    They're protecting the DNC candidates, that much is obvious. In this particular case this highlights the different stance on China between the incumbent and the contender administrations. Both Harris and Biden have deep ties with China. Harris through her husband, Biden through his crackhead son. So you could indeed say that both are "beholden to the CCP". The Chinese are not stupid, they don't give just any crackhead $1.5B to "manage".
Animats 6y ago
That's nice. But the first page of results in both columns is ads, for "coronavirus". It needs to be combined with ad suppression. Reading Fox News and CNN side by side, what's striking is not what the stories say, but the selection of stories on the front page. They seem to be drawn from different universes.
polote 6y ago
There is an issue when you need to read two articles with opposite point of view to get an idea of what the reality is
notJim 6y ago
Many of the stories from OAN are actually just Reuters stories. Not saying this is bad, many publications do this, but it would be cool if the app could filter those out.
threatofrain 6y ago
I've personally found Google News to be a pretty decent front page of news. One way I ask whether I'm satisfied is if I miss out on a big story that I feel I would've wanted to be alerted on.
- raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
  I too use Google news but I often wonder if I’m missing out on a perspective/views because Google News shows me news from the same news sources.
thelazydogsback 6y ago
Well, it's balanced -- I get all [ad]s on both sides...
- raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
  I developed this locally with my adblocker on. I didn’t even realize ads were showing. Fixed it now :)
  - LexGray 6y ago
    I did not get it from your blog, but I think you are very not alone. It is amusing how many developer blogs I click on that throw up your flash player is outdated type malware.
paraschopra 6y ago
What are you using for powering search?
pmarreck 6y ago
How about something like this, but which only searches sites/orgs that https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ rates the factual reporting as "high" or higher on, regardless of bias (or perhaps incorporating no bias) Hmmm, I could probably create a custom google search page for that, eh?
- chris_f 6y ago
  Here is a Google Custom Search Engine based on MBFC: https://factualsearch.news/ https://factualsearch.news/
op03 6y ago
Looks accurate. Both sides have equal number of Meghan Markle articles everyday.
raziel2p 6y ago
I think the recency of articles is wrong, maybe only from some sources. I searched for "Netherlands" and this article was fairly high up: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-netherlands-duncan-laurence-wins-eurovision-2019-with-arcade https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-netherlands-duncan-laurenc... (2 days ago) One of the results is also just a link to the front page of AlterNet. Searching for other very generic terms (country names for example) leads me to other website's front pages as well. I also would've appreciated titles over the 2 panes, because as a non-American it took me a while to realize that red is right-wing/conservative (in Europe it's typically the opposite). Whatever I search for there also seems to be a lot of articles from the same sources (namely thedailybeast and breitbart). Not sure anything can be done about that though.

jabo 6y ago

Oh hey, I just posted something similar I built, earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24720482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24720482 It focuses only on searching through the candidates’ speeches, shown in a side-by-side format. My thinking was that with all the divisive misinformation making their rounds these days, hearing what both candidates have said first-hand on the same topic presented in a side-by-side format, could help inform people of all perspectives in an unbiased way. I use data indexed on a Typesense server though, not Google site search.

jabo 6y ago
Separately, I’ve found this site to do a good job of aggregating news from all sides and presenting them with a media bias rating (left, center or right), which I’ve found helpful: https://www.allsides.com/ https://www.allsides.com/ Where do you get your media bias ratings from?
- siquick 6y ago
  Anyone know of a similar site that is not so US focused?
- Vaslo 6y ago
  Thanks for posting this AllSides site. This is one of the best and most honest segmentations I’ve seen. Often other sites set a news org like CNN as the center and then go from there, which doesn’t make much sense. Allsides call NPR “center” which I completely disagree with but still much more honest compared to others.
  - jabo 6y ago
    The cool thing about AllSides is that if you disagree with a bias rating, you can give them that feedback. They use votes from readers to keep the media bias ratings updated.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Notice that "NPR News" is segmented out from "NPR Opinion" which does appear in the least left column. Personally, I'd say that's a very accurate description.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  I found Allsides to be extremely biased. In their media bias "analysis" https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/AllSidesMediaBiasChart-Version3.jpg https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/AllSidesMediaBi... they claim that NPR and The Hill and BBC are dead center. That's 100% false. These are all quite far left, especially BBC.
  - anon73044 6y ago
    NPR and BBC both report imperialist talking points of their respective governments as fact without the slightest hint of criticism. Far left would be Democracy Now, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The Nation, etc.
    - strken 6y ago
      The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level. I always considered their opinion pieces centre-left (e.g. "bootlicking apologists" rather than "hidebound reactionaries") even when I was on the far left running around with wannabe revolutionary socialists. When it comes to that, the WSJ news section is arguably closer to centre-right than AP or Reuters. I think there are a microcosm of tiny complexities within the categories. [0] e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgh9ycw/revision/3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgh9ycw/revision/3
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        > The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level. I'm not sure that's a left/right issue, unless it happens to be the 1950s (there are some surviving imperialists on the right, and ~none on the left, but I wouldn't expect the _average_ Tory voter to be too gung-ho about how great the empire was...) Also, that site is a GCSE revision site; I think that's just the history curriculum. And nothing seems particularly over-critical on the page you linked.
      - pjc50 6y ago
        As the sibling comment says, the bitesize revision is based on the National Curriculum: i.e. it's the state's own version of its history. Not exactly a hotbed of radicalism.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  I don't really find the very reductive model of left, center, or right as that helpful. I find the most useful strategy mixing in some "non-mainstream" sources like RT, CGTN, Telesur, PressTV, etc., that are coming at the news from the a totally different perspective. Of course they have an angle, and sometimes it's rather crudely presented, but if your spectrum is Fox News to MSNBC they've also got a lot of shared assumptions you might otherwise not think about. But this gets back to my point; you could think about it from different axes like geopolitical ones, closeness to military/intelligence sources, and so on, in addition to favored political party. Even if we're going pretty narrow, I think you might see pretty different ideas from, say, the American Conservative and the Daily Caller, even though they're both conservative publications.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  there's also https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ I like that it rates "factual accuracy" on a separate axis than "bias". If factual accuracy is "high" or greater, then any remaining difference in bias can potentially just be attributed to values/tastes, and "de gustibus non est disputandum"
  - chris_f 6y ago
    Yeah, the MBFC site isn't as 'polished' as AllSides, but they have a lot more sites covered and overall I think their rankings are better (I know that is very subjective though).
raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
Hey, I saw your submission minutes after I posted mine. Quite the co-incidence! I really like what you did. I too struggled with “splitting” the screen on mobile. My current solution is a little janky.

m0zg 6y ago

I've found https://web.ground.news/ https://web.ground.news/ to be quite illuminating as far as gaslighting on both sides of the political aisle is concerned. Observation: liberal outlets are able to enforce complete suppression of even slightly unfavorable news (e.g. China censoring Pence's remarks on China during the VP debate). Conservative ones will often publish unfavorable news just to rile up the audience.

vinay427 6y ago
How does this change if we consider the truth levels of the facts that these media outlets report? I see no reason why several remarks from the VP debate, in this instance, should be reported as reality. This is probably true on both sides but to varying degrees.
- m0zg 6y ago
  The goal here is not to expose truth per se, the goal is to merely to expose the underlying agendas by highlighting the topics the sides prefer to highlight or avoid in their version of what they consider "reality". That, and perhaps also provide exposure to opinions outside the bubble, for people concerned that their reality might not be entirely real, irrespective of affiliation. The bubbles are stronger than they've ever been. You can't break out of them without making a deliberate effort.
coolgeek 6y ago
First off, China censoring anything is a "dog bites man" story. It happens all the time. It's not news to anybody with half a clue about what's going on. Second, what's your reasoning for why "liberal" outlets might be doing this? Who are they "protecting"? What are they protecting them from? Are they beholden (financially, or ideologically) to the CCP?
- m0zg 6y ago
  They're protecting the DNC candidates, that much is obvious. In this particular case this highlights the different stance on China between the incumbent and the contender administrations. Both Harris and Biden have deep ties with China. Harris through her husband, Biden through his crackhead son. So you could indeed say that both are "beholden to the CCP". The Chinese are not stupid, they don't give just any crackhead $1.5B to "manage".

Animats 6y ago

That's nice. But the first page of results in both columns is ads, for "coronavirus". It needs to be combined with ad suppression. Reading Fox News and CNN side by side, what's striking is not what the stories say, but the selection of stories on the front page. They seem to be drawn from different universes.

polote 6y ago

There is an issue when you need to read two articles with opposite point of view to get an idea of what the reality is

notJim 6y ago

Many of the stories from OAN are actually just Reuters stories. Not saying this is bad, many publications do this, but it would be cool if the app could filter those out.

threatofrain 6y ago

I've personally found Google News to be a pretty decent front page of news. One way I ask whether I'm satisfied is if I miss out on a big story that I feel I would've wanted to be alerted on.

raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
I too use Google news but I often wonder if I’m missing out on a perspective/views because Google News shows me news from the same news sources.

thelazydogsback 6y ago

Well, it's balanced -- I get all [ad]s on both sides...

raghavtoshniwal 6y ago
I developed this locally with my adblocker on. I didn’t even realize ads were showing. Fixed it now :)
- LexGray 6y ago
  I did not get it from your blog, but I think you are very not alone. It is amusing how many developer blogs I click on that throw up your flash player is outdated type malware.

paraschopra 6y ago

What are you using for powering search?

pmarreck 6y ago

How about something like this, but which only searches sites/orgs that https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ rates the factual reporting as "high" or higher on, regardless of bias (or perhaps incorporating no bias) Hmmm, I could probably create a custom google search page for that, eh?

chris_f 6y ago
Here is a Google Custom Search Engine based on MBFC: https://factualsearch.news/ https://factualsearch.news/

op03 6y ago

Looks accurate. Both sides have equal number of Meghan Markle articles everyday.

raziel2p 6y ago

I think the recency of articles is wrong, maybe only from some sources. I searched for "Netherlands" and this article was fairly high up: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-netherlands-duncan-laurence-wins-eurovision-2019-with-arcade https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-netherlands-duncan-laurenc... (2 days ago) One of the results is also just a link to the front page of AlterNet. Searching for other very generic terms (country names for example) leads me to other website's front pages as well. I also would've appreciated titles over the 2 panes, because as a non-American it took me a while to realize that red is right-wing/conservative (in Europe it's typically the opposite). Whatever I search for there also seems to be a lot of articles from the same sources (namely thedailybeast and breitbart). Not sure anything can be done about that though.