3 ms·

I would recommend people use sites like allsides.com or ground.news to read from a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum. Any one site (even on

I would recommend people use sites like allsides.com or ground.news to read from a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum. Any one site (even one edited by a variety of people) will have its own set of biases, so I find it best to visit Web sites that contain links to coverage of the same event from a few different sources with different biases.

insightcheck 4y ago
I think it's better to manually assess bias and think critically about how news articles report information. The sites you linked are interesting, but had some major flaws. For example, AllSides includes Breitbart as a source. While it identifies it with the maximum value to the right, it doesn't give a barometer of credibility. For a reader deciding whether Breitbart is worth reading, one should closely examine credibility, not just political leaning. PolitiFact and Media Bias/Fact Check discussed the credibility of Breitbart at length [0] [1]. Then for ground.news, the way it portrays bias is also relatively simplistic. The most prominent indicator is left/center/right, but biases have a lot more nuance. It's more useful to account for how certain publications take certain policy stances. Leanings can be anti-establishment, pro-establishment, socialist, neoliberal, pro-consumption (e.g. Wired), or anti-consumption, and this information is lost when relying on left-center-right categorizations. The best way to do this is to manually select a few publications that are high on factual credibility, write down their specific biases or leanings, and compare stories across the personally-curated selection of publications. You then personally have more control and understanding of the articles you are presented. [0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/stella-immanuel/dont-fall-video-hydroxychloroquine-not-covid-19-cu/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/stella-imm... [1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/
chungus 4y ago
Both of those sites are useful and I'd like to add one more: I've been using TheDailyEdit[0] app (it was on the front page here not too long ago). It doesn't tell you what political spectrum the publisher is on, but it does help you identify when the article is using manipulative language. The coolest thing though is that when you're in an article it shows you what was missing but reported by other sources. So I can read news I like but be sure that I'm not missing something because of 'bias by omission' by the publisher. [0] https://dailyedit.com/ https://dailyedit.com/

insightcheck 4y ago

I think it's better to manually assess bias and think critically about how news articles report information. The sites you linked are interesting, but had some major flaws. For example, AllSides includes Breitbart as a source. While it identifies it with the maximum value to the right, it doesn't give a barometer of credibility. For a reader deciding whether Breitbart is worth reading, one should closely examine credibility, not just political leaning. PolitiFact and Media Bias/Fact Check discussed the credibility of Breitbart at length [0] [1]. Then for ground.news, the way it portrays bias is also relatively simplistic. The most prominent indicator is left/center/right, but biases have a lot more nuance. It's more useful to account for how certain publications take certain policy stances. Leanings can be anti-establishment, pro-establishment, socialist, neoliberal, pro-consumption (e.g. Wired), or anti-consumption, and this information is lost when relying on left-center-right categorizations. The best way to do this is to manually select a few publications that are high on factual credibility, write down their specific biases or leanings, and compare stories across the personally-curated selection of publications. You then personally have more control and understanding of the articles you are presented. [0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/stella-immanuel/dont-fall-video-hydroxychloroquine-not-covid-19-cu/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/28/stella-imm... [1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/

chungus 4y ago

Both of those sites are useful and I'd like to add one more: I've been using TheDailyEdit[0] app (it was on the front page here not too long ago). It doesn't tell you what political spectrum the publisher is on, but it does help you identify when the article is using manipulative language. The coolest thing though is that when you're in an article it shows you what was missing but reported by other sources. So I can read news I like but be sure that I'm not missing something because of 'bias by omission' by the publisher. [0] https://dailyedit.com/ https://dailyedit.com/