We strip news of bias so it’s just the news
theknifemedia.com
theknifemedia.com
If talk about "bias" is to mean anything, you need to be specific about concrete forms of bias you're trying to rule out, and how.
https://www.theknifemedia.com/our-process/
The first stage ("the spin") is just identifying words and phrases which add spin with a positive or negative valance - this part could easily be automated with a dictionary search or by training a neural net. (There should probably be a Chrome plugin for it.)
The other two steps are more tricky and would seem to require a human editor's eye. "the slant" involves noticing when one perspective is put in an article to the exclusion of other, similarly valid perspectives which have been left out - to do that you'd have to either be a subject matter expert or combine enough stories from different sources to identify the universe of possible takes. "the logic" involves noticing when conclusions don't follow from the facts presented; this also would appear to require somebody carefully reading and understanding the story.
So my guess is that step 1 is fully-automated now (but being tweaked) and steps 2 and 3 need human editors with some algorithmic assistance (which they're trying to increase over time) - at least, that's how I'd have set it up...
For instance, consider their Oscars article:
https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/how-did-the-oscars-...
Scroll all the way to the bottom to find their attempt at an "unbiased" article ("the raw data"). Now, maybe Oscars reporting is a special case and you can't do this for other kinds of articles, but isn't it worth a try?
Full article follows:
> The 90th Oscars awards ceremony airs to an estimated 26.5M viewers
> Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 90th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. The “Oscars,” or Academy Awards of Merit, are given annually to “honor outstanding artistic and scientific achievements in theatrically released feature-length motion pictures,” according to the awards’ website.
> This year’s show was aired live from 8 to 11 p.m. eastern on ABC, to an estimated audience of 26.5 million viewers. It is the lowest number since the 1990s when the viewership data began being collected. The 2017 awards had 32.9 million viewers.
> Besides speaking about the nominated films and filmmaking, some presenters and award recipients spoke about other topics. While hosting, Kimmel made jokes about Fox News, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
> Best actress award winner Frances McDormand spoke about “inclusion riders,” a stipulation that actors can put in their contracts to ensure gender and ethnic diversity among cast and crew members of film projects that they work on. Presenters Kumail Nanjiani and Lupita Nyong’o spoke in support of “Dreamers,” referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Award winner Kristen Anderson-Lopez spoke about diversity and gender representation in the songwriter category.
> Award winners include:
> Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” won for both Best Picture and Best Director. > Frances McDormand earned Best Actress for her role in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” > Gary Oldman won for Best Actor for his role in “Darkest Hour.” > Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez received the Best Original Song award for the track “Remember Me” in “Coco.” > Alexandre Desplat won Best Original Score for “The Shape of Water.”
> Sources: Breitbart, Fox News, The New York Times, The Oscars
One thing in there that has a tiny whiff of bias is mentioning the huge drop in viewership. IF there is some more favorable way of estimating the event's impact or importance, then including that bit would count in their framework as "slant". Did I miss anything else?
For international news they follow the trends of the markets they serve, so you will find the same biases.
What do we know about the people behind it? Any developers on the team frequent this site?
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/the-knife-of-... is representative of what I found when I tried to research the site and its founders - is it an accurate portrayal of the company and its people?
I think the fundamental issue here is that this site doesn't have a clear concept of "bias," and perhaps because there isn't a useful clear-concept of bias.
For example, If you throw out all subjective claims, well then you throw out morality too. If you throw out speculative claims, well nothing is known 100%, so you ultimately draw an arbitrary line.
The idea that they can strip all bias from the news is absurd, though - if nothing else, they've clearly made editorial decisions about what to publish on at all.
One of the 'stories' here is a listicle of biased headlines. How is that unbiased or helpful in any way?
Obviously pointing out bias is not a bias in itself.
First, no, if it's a fact, it's not a bias.
Second, they don't say they are unbiased in everything (e.g. in how good they thing they are etc). Just that they put out unbiased news.
Their's isn't some meta-discussion about bias in general.
They spend a lot of time arguing about using words like "historic." Well sometimes a thing is historic, and the word is appropriate. For example, North Korea has indicated that they're willing to negotiate giving up their nuclear arms. If Trump manages to strike a deal with Kim, that will be historic, and it would be accurate to describe it as such.
It would be strictly less informative to present it as bare data points without context. Here's how such an event might be reported "without bias."
President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un today. They discussed nuclear disarmament. Kim agreed to give up North Korea's nuclear arms program in exchange for a normalization of relations.
That sounds like an unimportant, bureaucratic event, barely worth reporting. In fact, it would probably be the most important thing this administration has accomplished, and everyone (even people who don't care for the current administration, such as myself) will have to recognize that this is historic and impressive. Whatever complaints I may have about him, Trump would be remembered as the man who finally solved the North Korean crisis, which many of us thought to be unsolvable. Any article which fails to place such an important event in historical context will be less informative for it.