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NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

newsnotfound.com

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Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#111

Post by mmcwilliams »

transcriptase wrote: post #18
not2b wrote: post #9

"By replacing the human middle-man with our AI-centric article creation process, we eliminate the potential for bias and ensure that all coverage remains impartial." AI LLMs inherit biases from their training data and the constraints the model builders added. There's no such thing as unbiased reporting; the usual way that this is attempted is to claim that the "unbiased" position is halfway between the positions of t…

The fact that major LLMs will happily criticize certain politicians but claim they’re unable to comment on others given equally available training data is a fairly good window into what kind of biases exist within them.

If you're using a model that's behind a moderation service in their API, you're not actually assessing the biases of the model but rather of the corporation that's trying to remain profitable.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#112

Post by strogonoff »

echelon wrote: post #89
strogonoff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that unbiased news is an intractable problem purely based on information theory: to have an unbiased picture of the world, you need to have all the facts, which is physically impossible; and any layer that simplifies those facts (be it a journalist or an LLM) will add bias (either by journalist, journalist’s employer, LLM’s training data or operator preferences, and so on). In short, when your selecti…

Unbiased news algorithm: 1. Identify all clusters of power and opinion, eg. Republicans, Democrats, Chinese Communist Party, UK Labour Party, Green Party, etc. 2. Associate each cluster with news organizations that tightly align with their policies. 3. Evaluate stories - headlines in only one cluster (under reported elsewhere) represent a view. Headlines that have different takes, likewise, give you a spectrum of tho…

1. Will your cluster identification be unbiased? How do you avoid providing more fine-grained taxonomy for clusters that hit close to home for you (or this tool’s operator) and shoving the rest into as few buckets as possible (because you don’t care)? 2. What about biases shared by all news organizations, regardless of cluster?

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#113

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

denton-scratch wrote: post #104

"Unbiased" news is impossible; the reporter has biases, the editor has biases, the publisher has biases; which they may or may not be aware of. The biases they don't know about are the most insidious. So I'm most suspicious of sources that brag about their objectivity. I prefer sources that wear their bias on their sleeve (provided they're actually news sources, and not overt propaganda or gutter tabloids).

Yes, but it's perfectly valid to attempt to minimise biases. Simple things such as fact-checking and not using loaded language can go a long way to becoming more neutral.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#114

Post by strogonoff »

strogonoff wrote: post #88
AiaAidan wrote: post #21

As someone who has worked in the media industry, I can tell you that the problem with unbiased news goes much deeper than simply presenting facts objectively. The very first step mentioned in your breakdown - scraping the latest headlines from publicly available news sites - is inherently biased, because it relies on a small selection of sources to determine what is considered newsworthy. But by whom? In reality, edi…

I used to think that unbiased news is an intractable problem purely based on information theory: to have an unbiased picture of the world, you need to have all the facts, which is physically impossible; and any layer that simplifies those facts (be it a journalist or an LLM) will add bias (either by journalist, journalist’s employer, LLM’s training data or operator preferences, and so on). In short, when your selecti…

To add: where I wrote “be aware of your bias and upfront about it” I of course meant journalists and news organizations.

Corollary: since this awareness of the bias requires self-honesty and introspection, it’s drastically more difficult with an LLM because you also need to know all about your LLM developer and operator’s accidental and intentional biases.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#115

Post by pydry »

somethoughts wrote: post #62
AiaAidan wrote: post #21

As someone who has worked in the media industry, I can tell you that the problem with unbiased news goes much deeper than simply presenting facts objectively. The very first step mentioned in your breakdown - scraping the latest headlines from publicly available news sites - is inherently biased, because it relies on a small selection of sources to determine what is considered newsworthy. But by whom? In reality, edi…

I find the closest to an unbiased news source is Reuters. I removed all other news apps from my phone and only leave the Reuters news app installed. [1] I never read the news anymore. The combination of the uncurated deluge of articles about stuff I don't know anything about (and realize I am not going to ever really know anything about) and them not really poking my buttons with editorialized headlines makes me just…

Recently declassified documents that they used to run propaganda for the British government in the 70s:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-media-idUSKBN1ZC2...

Makes you wonder what the as yet to be declassified top secret documents say.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#116

Post by ethbr0 »

strogonoff wrote: post #109
blackbear_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking, if every day you take an uniformly random selection of news articles, on average what you read will not be biased. Or, to be precise, it will follow the same biases as the population of news articles you sample from.

Replace “news articles” with “facts” and you’re closer to the point, but then how useful would that input be to you?

The difference is that facts are harder to consume than news articles, as the latter is essentially packaged and distributed collections of the former.

Furthermore, the intent of parent's bias averaging, as I understand it, is...

1) There are a finite number of major biases axes in mass media (e.g. political parties, wealthy-poor, conservative-liberal, etc.), ergo averaging these out is a helpful reduction of major biases

2) It assumes the underlying material has a bias, and seeks to counteract it. If you build a fact-based method, you leave yourself open to treating biased opinions as facts, if they're sufficiently masked

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#117

Post by FireInsight »

ObscureScience wrote: post #110
AiaAidan wrote: post #21

As someone who has worked in the media industry, I can tell you that the problem with unbiased news goes much deeper than simply presenting facts objectively. The very first step mentioned in your breakdown - scraping the latest headlines from publicly available news sites - is inherently biased, because it relies on a small selection of sources to determine what is considered newsworthy. But by whom? In reality, edi…

It won't solve the basic issue you bring up, but https://www.improvethenews.org/ at least help to make us more aware of those biases.

There's also https://ground.news/

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#118

Post by idopmstuff »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #113
denton-scratch wrote: post #104

"Unbiased" news is impossible; the reporter has biases, the editor has biases, the publisher has biases; which they may or may not be aware of. The biases they don't know about are the most insidious. So I'm most suspicious of sources that brag about their objectivity. I prefer sources that wear their bias on their sleeve (provided they're actually news sources, and not overt propaganda or gutter tabloids).

Yes, but it's perfectly valid to attempt to minimise biases. Simple things such as fact-checking and not using loaded language can go a long way to becoming more neutral.

But that's not what it says - it says it's unbiased, and leading with that doesn't exactly scream self-awareness about the problem at hand.

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#119

Post by [deleted] »

pydry wrote: post #115
somethoughts wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the closest to an unbiased news source is Reuters. I removed all other news apps from my phone and only leave the Reuters news app installed. [1] I never read the news anymore. The combination of the uncurated deluge of articles about stuff I don't know anything about (and realize I am not going to ever really know anything about) and them not really poking my buttons with editorialized headlines makes me just…

Recently declassified documents that they used to run propaganda for the British government in the 70s: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-media-idUSKBN1ZC2... Makes you wonder what the as yet to be declassified top secret documents say.

[deleted]

Re: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

#120

Post by lucideer »

mellosouls wrote: post #39

Well there's been quite a backlash already, but I get the impression this is a well-motivated but perhaps a little naive attempt to do exactly what it says on the tin. Some of the criticisms are harsh but fair, yet I think that anybody who takes the time to read the "white paper" and acknowledge the admirable dedication to building in the open will see there is genuine potential and passion in this occasionally mad p…

> a well-motivated but perhaps a little naive

I normally try and be positive / open to flawed ideas or initiatives but in this particular case I think describing it as "a little naive" massively understates it. Well motivated it might be, the naivety is gargantuan. This isn't a nice idea with some flaws, this is a fundamentally misguided idea at its core. Utterly irredeemable.

I wish the authors luck in that I hope they can step away & move on to something more worthwhile without being hurt or becoming defensive about criticism. Given the level of backlash in the comments here, its understandable that may be tough to do, but I really wouldn't want to encourage them to continue.

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