> I think it is rare to see some news that is not biased one way or another I would posit that part of the problem is the implicit assumption that biased != factual. This assumption is true on both sides of the political spectrum, but it takes on a different character for those on the right. I understand the sentiment that prompted you to post this, I'm just not sure what you propose is any kind of a solution. If any…
Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
51–60 of 163 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! It seems interesting. The problem I see is that - it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. Also, journals shouldn't be the only source. Every side needs to be heard and someone's voice may come from their own blog. I am not sure how it would work but we should at least give it a try.
I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" tha…
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#53My approach has been to obtain collections based on recommendations, filter out low quality material (bad audio, lots of ums, etc) and categorize it so you can explore freely.
Someone has to fund free content, and the missing topics are a form of bias - I can't guarantee that there is a counter-argument to every lecture.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#54http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
Just seeing articles on the extreme side of each topic right next to each other shocked me.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#55I'm concerned that your frame for this might be off as I don't think the "filter bubble" is rational opposing viewpoints around a particular topic so much as there just being so much misinformation and plain weirdness out there. There's a saying about it being 10x harder to refute bullshit than it is to spew it. How do we in the information and technology wing of society build tools to deal with that? Alex Jones had…
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" tha…
I am not interested in unbiased news sources. I am interested in showing alternately biased news source so that you can develop your own opinion. Even showing snippets of alternate views superposed on the same article can help people a bit. My aim is not to solve the problem in its entirety. If others cannot understand our opinion, we should at least try to understand theirs. The current situation is horrible in term…
> I am not interested in unbiased news sources.
So, which is it? I think the focus on bias vs unbiased news sources is a distraction. ALL news is biased. That is something that will never change.
> If others cannot understand our opinion
What if the issue here is that others understand your opinion perfectly, but still disagree with it? This whole conversation is starting to sound a lot like you want a tool that will magically make people agree with you.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#57Another issue is that many biases are structural, technological or driven by commercial pressures. For instance, I would say CNN is biased toward coverage of school shootings and airplane crashes. CNN has the problem that there is not enough news to fill 24 hours so they run a heavy rotation of the same crap that is cheap to produce. Probably the best footage they show is stuff they downloaded off Youtube. When you c…
Bias with respect to how much coverage there was of the candidates, however many would say the content of that coverage was biased against him.
Besides this small point I agree. Time spent on a particular subject or topic is a subtle bias in itself which can be driven by many things (including money) and has huge effects on public perception of people and issues.
How does one expose bias in this subtle behaviour in an automated way, even with machine learning?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! It seems interesting. The problem I see is that - it's hard to pull people away from their news sources to something unbiased. We need to take unbiased articles to the people. Also, journals shouldn't be the only source. Every side needs to be heard and someone's voice may come from their own blog. I am not sure how it would work but we should at least give it a try.
I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" tha…
Bias is an inherent part of language, and we cannot eliminate it, because bias is inherent in both what is said and what isn't said.
Even beyond a simple textual level, you have to arrange content somehow, and that in and of itself is subject to bias. What do you put linked to direct from the home page? Do you entirely forego headlines? If so, what do your links on your home page say? All of that is influential in how someone perceives what you've written.
If we take Bannon's appointment to Trump's administration (and I'll preface this by saying I'm not American, and there's a limit to how much attention I pay), we can easily write headlines like:
To start with, some real ones:
* 2 Trump Picks: an Insider and a Firebrand (NYT, 14 Nov) — the former is either a positive or negative depending on your political leanings, the latter I don't know whether it's connotatively good or bad in en-us
* Trump Draws Criticism for Far-Right Pick (NYT, 14 Nov) — entirely factually accurate (so… not bias?) but omits any negativity in mentioning as to why he's drawing criticism (so… bias?)
* Trump makes controversial pick for senior aide (AP, 14 Nov) — ditto
* Trump Taps Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff, Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist (NPR, 14 Nov) — entirely factually accurate (so… not bias?)
Some hypothetical ones:
* Trump names nationalist as senior aide — I think there's consensus across the board that that would be accurate, but whether it's positive or negative depends on the reader, so is arguably bias
* Trump picks fringe right winger as Chief Strategist — disassociates him with most of the right wing, mostly negative connotation, obviously bias
* Trump Choses Racist — this is obviously an extreme example, but it's worth looking at: is it impartial? if not, it's obviously bias. do we have direct evidence that Bannon is racist (v. being on the board of a newspaper publishing such content)? if not, it's likely not entirely factual.
Obviously, we can debate how, and in what way, each of those is bias, but they all lead the reader to view Bannon in a specific way before the article is ever read (except, perhaps, the NPR one).
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#59I think the tool you need is "skepticism". Teach people to not rush to ascribe labels to everything they don't like, and to stop ignoring anything that has been labeled as X-ist by their bubble. Teach people to not think with slogans and hashtags or listen to celebrities.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?
#60I think the tool you need is "skepticism". Teach people to not rush to ascribe labels to everything they don't like, and to stop ignoring anything that has been labeled as X-ist by their bubble. Teach people to not think with slogans and hashtags or listen to celebrities.