Hacker News Reader

Comment by mji | Hacker News Reader

An interesting project, but one that seems to suffer from a (presumably unintended and unknown) conservative bias itself, as evidenced by opening the page and seeing conservative opinion outlets like Breitbart and Drudge displayed literally next to reputable sources like the New York Times and Politico

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FWIW I don't think the point is to compare reputable v non-reputable -- after all, perception is truth in politics. I think the goal of the tool is to highlight the perceptions but not to sort through the realities. There are great tools that do that (i.e.: Snopes/Politifact) but people 'in a camp' aren't generally interested in a truth that doesn't fulfill their prophecy.

You nailed it. I dont agree with most of the stuff on the conservative side but I think it is a bad idea to shut ourselves off and not listen to ANYTHING they say. This site simply shows you what the other side is listening to and hopefully it will soften everyone's views in the long run.

Is the goal of softening everyone's views something you plan to keep working on? If so, are you discussing it anywhere?

Not really discussing it. I just got fed up yesterday and I made this in a few hours out of disgust. The idea was born out of softening my own views I guess

If you want to soften everyone's views (and for this to be mainstream), then choose a different domain name. It can't be stated on radio or television in the US, for better or worse.

You might not like it, but Breitbart is mainstream. They have an US Alexa rank of 56¹, way ahead of Politico at 220 or Fox News at 62.

[1]: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/breitbart.com

I think it depends on one's definition of "mainstream news". Traditionally and I think most commonly understood, it means news that is published in widely circulated newspapers, and on accessible television.

The times are, of course, a changing. Almost all newspapers in the UK at least have, today a really low circulation number. They are widely available, but hardly anyone buys them anymore. The Guardian, for example only sells 156 thousand copies.

How do you define reputable opinion? Reputable for whom?

What sites would you list for conservative then? Also drudge is just an aggregator/curator, they don't publish anything.

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