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Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

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Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#21

Post by Quanttek »

Hadjimina wrote: post #2

Hi all, I have the feeling that in the last few years all political discussions have become more extreme. People from the left think that all the people from the right are evil and vice versa. Our filter bubbles don't help with this issue. That's why I built "Their news". With "Their News" you discover news from the entire political spectrum without any filter bubbles. My recommendation is that you try out different…

Very cool website! However, I am not sure if ad fontes media is a good source of media bias ratings. Their methodology doesn't even name all the dimensions used to rate sources and their "training manual" provides very little useful guidance (https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc...). It doesn't seem like they are doing any inter-rater reliability testing.

I don't find any peer-reviewed journal articles using the rating either.

Maybe you could check out https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444 instead.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#22

Post by Hadjimina »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #20

At least on mobile, if you manually move the slider left or right, then make a new search, the slider doesn't reset position though the results go back to "center." Got pretty confused when it was selecting far left but showing Breitbart stories. Also, whatever fuzzing you use seems to break with the word "socialism," instead returning social media and socializing stories. Interesting project though.

oh shoot. Thanks for the input.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#23

Post by jefurii »

Hadjimina wrote: post #18
jefurii wrote: post #10

This reminds me of a 1980s magazine called World Press Review. WPR would take a number of topics every month. For each topic they would print a number of editorials from various points of view. Each editorial was accompanied by the source's masthead and a short note about the source's political perspective. For the most part they used the labels each source used to describe itself (conservative, libertarian, socialis…

Good point. Since I use adfontsmedia rating and wanted to have a very simple website I chose to reduce adfontes 2 axis to a single axis, which is, as you have pointed out heavily oversimplified. The default "center" position was chose simple because at this point there are the most news outlets.

As a developer I can appreciate that you have to start somewhere, and even left/center/right does a real service in our political climate. I'm glad you chose a source that at least has two axes! Thanks for putting this project together - I'll be sharing it with friends!

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#24

Post by valparaiso »

baq wrote: post #17

left/right doesn't make much sense IMHO, it's way too polarizing in itself. you want at least two dimensions, like liberal/authoritarian policies and libertanian/socialist economics. that said i love the 'pick your bias' at the top. hits dead center on target. could even be the title of the service itself.

When leftist media platforms like Facebook ban news about BLM marxist founder buying mansions in white area is this liberal or authoritarian/fascist approach?

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#25

Post by baq »

valparaiso wrote: post #24
baq wrote: post #17

left/right doesn't make much sense IMHO, it's way too polarizing in itself. you want at least two dimensions, like liberal/authoritarian policies and libertanian/socialist economics. that said i love the 'pick your bias' at the top. hits dead center on target. could even be the title of the service itself.

When leftist media platforms like Facebook ban news about BLM marxist founder buying mansions in white area is this liberal or authoritarian/fascist approach?

i don't know. do you?

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#26

Post by giantg2 »

Hadjimina wrote: post #2

Hi all, I have the feeling that in the last few years all political discussions have become more extreme. People from the left think that all the people from the right are evil and vice versa. Our filter bubbles don't help with this issue. That's why I built "Their news". With "Their News" you discover news from the entire political spectrum without any filter bubbles. My recommendation is that you try out different…

So you're using outlet/organization level bias ratings to assign bias ratings to individual articles on a specific topic? Can't it vary by topic, author, or even what facts are represented (used, excluded, or wrong)?

For example, when I looked at the articles in the middle of the slider, it seemed that they were more of a mix of left and right leaning articles, not necessarily middle ground articles (and seemed to be somewhat more left skewed articles than right, but varried by subject).

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#27

Post by eganist »

hnhg wrote: post #8
Hadjimina wrote: post #2

Hi all, I have the feeling that in the last few years all political discussions have become more extreme. People from the left think that all the people from the right are evil and vice versa. Our filter bubbles don't help with this issue. That's why I built "Their news". With "Their News" you discover news from the entire political spectrum without any filter bubbles. My recommendation is that you try out different…

It's been fun playing around with it, thanks for putting this together, it's nice work. I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising. Also, I guess this analysis is taken from the perspective of the USA, given the chart on adfontesmedia. The definition of left and right…

> I have a couple of observations: firstly, it's interesting that the Guardian is considered to be dead-centre, while most in the UK would say that it's quite on the left. I found that surprising.

Who? Both Ad Fontes and AllSides say that The Guardian merely skews to the left, and Ad Fontes' analysis concludes that it's one of the "most reliable". (Ad Fontes' analysis here: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-reliabil...)

I haven't seen anyone say that it's "quite on the left" in any sphere other than the partisan right.

Edit: Even OP's project seems to represent the modest left-skew accurately. Can you help me understand where your "dead-centre"-on-OP's-platform v. "quite on the left" interpretations came from?

https://i.imgur.com/NTmQERS.png

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#28

Post by ptero »

This is a noble goal, but when I clicked on the website a few times (admittedly, only looked at about 10 articles) I ended up with a very "left" view. I do not think it is skewed by personal views -- you could see clearly who is considered evil just from the title.

Also, not to knock down the effort, but I think this can cause more outrage, by showing that the other side "is wrong" than grow sanity. Just due to the fact that mainstream media on both sides seems to grow discord. However you select those articles, results may be the same :(. My 2c.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#29

Post by Hadjimina »

ptero wrote: post #28

This is a noble goal, but when I clicked on the website a few times (admittedly, only looked at about 10 articles) I ended up with a very "left" view. I do not think it is skewed by personal views -- you could see clearly who is considered evil just from the title. Also, not to knock down the effort, but I think this can cause more outrage, by showing that the other side "is wrong" than grow sanity. Just due to the f…

That is a valid consern. I get the rating info from adfontesmedia, so I do not judge the poltical views of each outlet and what is condisered to be left/center/right. There is no moderation what so ever (that can be a good or bad thing). But the website definelty still contains a few bugs so that might be the issue you are running into.

Could you elaborate a bit on your second point. I am not quite sure I fully understand.

Re: Show HN: Compare news from the political left and right

#30

Post by brokenkebab »

UI is confusing, IMO. Coming to the website I don't understand what I supposed to do. I clicked that bias line randomly, and most of the time headlines were from lefty sources. The idea is cool, but to be honest, it's hard to do it better then RealClearPolitics already does it.
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