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ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

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Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#21

Post by mindviews »

I'm worried based on some of the comments that people might be reading only the Impartial view and not also the Left-bias and Right-bias versions of the same story. I'd strongly suggest reading all three versions of a story before using the slider to provide feedback on the various versions.

This is great work! I have wanted some version of this news site for years and have been making sketches for how it would work. My working title for the site is "Unspun" and very similar in spirit, except instead of the "Impartial" view, the "center" would just be a list of facts about things that happened that were referenced in both a Left and Right version of an article. And there would be lines connecting the center facts to where they show up (if they do at all) in the Left and Right articles. I'm pretty happy with this format, but I still kind of want to see all 3 versions at the same time so I can cross-reference. But I must like it because I just sent links to a whole bunch of friends and family. :-)

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#22

Post by SubiculumCode »

raleighm wrote: post #20

Well done. As others noted, I feared worse based on the headline. But I think it's really important to replace the "left bias" "right bias" slider with a button and text field that simply requests users to report non-neutrality in the write-up, without identifying it as "left" or "right". Reduction to left/right is rarely helpful and often unhelpful. For most issues complex/significant enough to warrant headline, the…

Agreed. Without the two party political system with their entrenched collection of positions, who knows what subgroups might appear. Low tax, high spending (i.e. pro deficit)? Pro gay marriage, anti-abortion? Anti abortion, but pro universal health care? Pro 2nd amendment, and pro universal income? I've met all these people.

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#23

Post by mark_edward »

fulafel wrote: post #4

The "Give our impartial story your own bias score" slider should be explicit on whether it's just "far left for unbiased, far right for very biased", or if the two ends of the slider represent some implied political positions.

> The "Give our impartial story your own bias score" slider should be explicit on whether it's just "far left for unbiased, far right for very biased", or if the two ends of the slider represent some implied political positions.

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#24

Post by illuminati1911 »

I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I hope it will deliver its promise, because right now I feel like there is nowhere to go for neutral news. It's either "Omg look at what Trump is doing again! Nazis and racists are everywhere!" leftwing-bs or Breitbart style rightwing garbage.

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#25

Post by waterphone »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #24

I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I hope it will deliver its promise, because right now I feel like there is nowhere to go for neutral news. It's either "Omg look at what Trump is doing again! Nazis and racists are everywhere!" leftwing-bs or Breitbart style rightwing garbage.

One of those is based in fact and reality, the other is not. The reason you're having a hard time finding "neutral" news is because reality is not inherently neutral.

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#26

Post by illuminati1911 »

waterphone wrote: post #25
illuminati1911 wrote: post #24

I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I hope it will deliver its promise, because right now I feel like there is nowhere to go for neutral news. It's either "Omg look at what Trump is doing again! Nazis and racists are everywhere!" leftwing-bs or Breitbart style rightwing garbage.

One of those is based in fact and reality, the other is not. The reason you're having a hard time finding "neutral" news is because reality is not inherently neutral.

What is? I don't think I gave any specific examples or are you implying that other side political propaganda is completely based of "facts and reality"?

By neutrality I mean the facts and reality. Reality is inherently real and not up for negotiation. I just want to know what has happened in the world without any additional comments/thoughts/propaganda etc. by the journalist.

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#27

Post by raleighm »

One limitation a site like this runs into is the fact that there's no such thing as an "impartial" view on fundamental questions of value. For example, what's the "impartial" view on whether to accept more refugees from war-torn regions? Just because a view is sandwiched between others on whatever particular spectrum chosen, or t uses dispassionate language, doesn't mean it's "impartial". It's still a view argued from values. Stated differently, for many (all?) questions there isn't a view that remains once we've filtered out all of the "biased" views. To further complicate things, one's person's "bias" is another's "commitment".

Perhaps best to refer to the default view here as "composite" rather than "impartial".

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#28

Post by fulafel »

Partial-impartial is a risky mode of thinking, since it can seduce you into thinking that it's good to be impartial about all things. But there are subjects like climate change and Donald Trump, where it's irresponsible journalism to be "fair to both sides".

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#29

Post by cheriot »

Is bias the right thing to focus on? It's like we're all discovering that journalists are imperfect humans just like the rest of us. Even if an article is a mere list of cited facts there is judgement in which facts to include and in what order to list them.

The better questions about a news source are

1) do they have integrity?

2) are they in touch with reality?

Re: ML-powered newspaper for showing news from many political perspectives

#30

Post by daenz »

fulafel wrote: post #28

Partial-impartial is a risky mode of thinking, since it can seduce you into thinking that it's good to be impartial about all things. But there are subjects like climate change and Donald Trump, where it's irresponsible journalism to be "fair to both sides".

I assume by climate change you mean that since there is vast scientific consensus that it is happening, we shouldn't give much time to the theories that it isn't happening.

But what about Trump? Whether we like it or not, very nearly 50% of the voting population voted for him (and how many millions more were fine not voting against him by not voting at all). Are we to deny the POVs of the representative that 10s of millions of Americans elected? It's not quite the same argument as the overwhelming consensus on climate change.

EDIT>> In fact, I just realized that being deliberately unfair to Trump, as you seem to be suggesting, just feeds into his constant portrayal of MSM being "fake news", and only strengthens his position.

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