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Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

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Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#111

Post by Dansvidania »

SoylentOrange wrote: post #83
oceanbreeze83 wrote: post #5

For any news junkies heres, I've built https://maagnit.com which gathers both Left and Right leaning sources for any story and displays them altogether on one page. My approach has been, if we can't get neutral/objective coverage, getting comprehensive, 360 desgree coverage is a good alternative. These days, news bias is not only in the way a story is covered, but also which stories are covered. So, maagnit automatic…

When I was a kid CNN used to do this: they would invite a single climate scientist and a single climate change skeptic and have them make their points on equal time. CNN would then say “who’s right? You decide.” And the program would end. This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen a…

I wish we had more of this going on right now. TV now is pretty much "spoonfeed nation" and reality.

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#112

Post by SoylentOrange »

nautilus12 wrote: post #98
SoylentOrange wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid CNN used to do this: they would invite a single climate scientist and a single climate change skeptic and have them make their points on equal time. CNN would then say “who’s right? You decide.” And the program would end. This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen a…

So they present the facts and let them speak for themselves? Sounds like they had it right. Are you saying if they don't present their opinion its a failure of journalism? I think this new way of defining journalism is a bad standard.

It’s not about presenting an opinion, it’s about moderating a debate with facts to inform the public.

A journalist’s job is to try to present the truth, not create false equivalence.

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#113

Post by stronglikedan »

oceanbreeze83 wrote: post #5

For any news junkies heres, I've built https://maagnit.com which gathers both Left and Right leaning sources for any story and displays them altogether on one page. My approach has been, if we can't get neutral/objective coverage, getting comprehensive, 360 desgree coverage is a good alternative. These days, news bias is not only in the way a story is covered, but also which stories are covered. So, maagnit automatic…

Since people here seem to be digging your site (well, those that can access it right now anyway), I'll mention https://www.allsides.com as well. They also add a "center" viewpoint, which yours may do too, but it's getting hugged to hard for me to see right now.

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#114

Post by textgel »

aidanlister wrote: post #110
nautilus12 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they present the facts and let them speak for themselves? Sounds like they had it right. Are you saying if they don't present their opinion its a failure of journalism? I think this new way of defining journalism is a bad standard.

People don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. Giving 50/50 air time to climate scientists and climate change deniers is on one side presenting facts and on the other total bullshit and saying “hey these are both valid opinions- you decide”.

This isn't climate scientists vs deniers this is major news organisations on both sides; both of which are guilty of presenting total bullshit as facts. Allowing them to be viewed side-by-side permits users to to get a better image of who is willing to miss-lead on which subjects and get facts that have been omitted by the other side.

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#115

Post by fuball63 »

This looks like a cool library, but I have a question about the newscatcher API. How does the licensing work for the content? Seems odd (but great) that I can just read the news in my terminal from NYT but not pay a subscription or see ads. I read in some of the comments it's an RSS feed, is that freely available all the time? Surely even the RSS feed is protected with copyright and has restrictions on republishing?

If that's not the case, the larger implication here that the news is free if it's in a format that is not as widely used (RSS) compared to what the mass populous uses (mobile browsers/app).

Cool library, thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#117

Post by ineedasername »

nautilus12 wrote: post #98
SoylentOrange wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid CNN used to do this: they would invite a single climate scientist and a single climate change skeptic and have them make their points on equal time. CNN would then say “who’s right? You decide.” And the program would end. This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen a…

So they present the facts and let them speak for themselves? Sounds like they had it right. Are you saying if they don't present their opinion its a failure of journalism? I think this new way of defining journalism is a bad standard.

Picking two people on the opposite extremes of a topic with a moderator to stop the conversation, often unsuccessfully, from devolving into a shouting match is not the same thing as presenting the facts and letting them speak for themselves. In fact a 10-minute TV segment is not a great venue for any complex presentation of views.

The level of knowledge needed to adequately parse an expert's opinion, evaluate it, check its assumptions, research the evidence supporting those assumptions, follow up with research on the validity of that research... well, it takes a lot longer than a TV segment. In a TV segment like this, the "expert" with the better grasp on rhetoric and rhetorical devices "wins" in terms of audience agreement, and factual & verifiable basis of opinions is a distant second in terms of influence on audience agreement.

Or strike that: it's probably a distant 3rd: 1st place influence is whether or not it agrees with a viewer's current opinion. 2nd would be rhetorical ability, 3rd would be any actual evidence.

So, by all means let the facts speak for themselves-- just don't let yourself believe that is readily possible in a TV segment like those referenced.

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#118

Post by mguerville »

oceanbreeze83 wrote: post #5

For any news junkies heres, I've built https://maagnit.com which gathers both Left and Right leaning sources for any story and displays them altogether on one page. My approach has been, if we can't get neutral/objective coverage, getting comprehensive, 360 desgree coverage is a good alternative. These days, news bias is not only in the way a story is covered, but also which stories are covered. So, maagnit automatic…

I have been a paying subscriber to Ground News for that reason, the app shows me bias very transparently. Glad to hear there are others doing this

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#119

Post by pmyteh »

jerzyt wrote: post #100
pmyteh wrote: post #21

Depending on what you're trying to do, there's also newspaper3k: https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper It's quite easy to get "good" extraction for large numbers of outlets/articles without a massive amount of special-casing, as news articles are nearly universally marked up with RDF metadata (partly for Google News's benefit). Article discovery, and perfect parsing, is quite a bit harder. I ended up rolling a new S…

Is your code on github? I'm actually working on something very similar, and would love to get some ideas from what you've done.

Yes! https://github.com/pmyteh/RISJbot

Re: Show HN: Python package to collect normalized news from almost any website

#120

Post by dunefox »

fuball63 wrote: post #115

This looks like a cool library, but I have a question about the newscatcher API. How does the licensing work for the content? Seems odd (but great) that I can just read the news in my terminal from NYT but not pay a subscription or see ads. I read in some of the comments it's an RSS feed, is that freely available all the time? Surely even the RSS feed is protected with copyright and has restrictions on republishing?…

Why is this being downvoted? Seems like a viable question.
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