Show HN: SplitSearch – Simultaneously search conservative and liberal news orgs | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SplitSearch – Simultaneously search conservative and liberal news orgs

splitsearch.netlify.app

Oh hey, I just posted something similar I built, earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24720482

It focuses only on searching through the candidates’ speeches, shown in a side-by-side format.

My thinking was that with all the divisive misinformation making their rounds these days, hearing what both candidates have said first-hand on the same topic presented in a side-by-side format, could help inform people of all perspectives in an unbiased way.

I use data indexed on a Typesense server though, not Google site search.

Separately, I’ve found this site to do a good job of aggregating news from all sides and presenting them with a media bias rating (left, center or right), which I’ve found helpful: https://www.allsides.com/

Where do you get your media bias ratings from?

Anyone know of a similar site that is not so US focused?

Thanks for posting this AllSides site. This is one of the best and most honest segmentations I’ve seen. Often other sites set a news org like CNN as the center and then go from there, which doesn’t make much sense. Allsides call NPR “center” which I completely disagree with but still much more honest compared to others.

The cool thing about AllSides is that if you disagree with a bias rating, you can give them that feedback. They use votes from readers to keep the media bias ratings updated.

Notice that "NPR News" is segmented out from "NPR Opinion" which does appear in the least left column. Personally, I'd say that's a very accurate description.

I found Allsides to be extremely biased. In their media bias "analysis"

https://www.allsides.com/sites/default/files/AllSidesMediaBi...

they claim that NPR and The Hill and BBC are dead center. That's 100% false. These are all quite far left, especially BBC.

NPR and BBC both report imperialist talking points of their respective governments as fact without the slightest hint of criticism. Far left would be Democracy Now, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The Nation, etc.

The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level. I always considered their opinion pieces centre-left (e.g. "bootlicking apologists" rather than "hidebound reactionaries") even when I was on the far left running around with wannabe revolutionary socialists.

When it comes to that, the WSJ news section is arguably closer to centre-right than AP or Reuters. I think there are a microcosm of tiny complexities within the categories.

[0] e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgh9ycw/revision/3

> The BBC is vocally critical of imperialism[0], at least on a surface level.

I'm not sure that's a left/right issue, unless it happens to be the 1950s (there are some surviving imperialists on the right, and ~none on the left, but I wouldn't expect the _average_ Tory voter to be too gung-ho about how great the empire was...)

Also, that site is a GCSE revision site; I think that's just the history curriculum. And nothing seems particularly over-critical on the page you linked.

As the sibling comment says, the bitesize revision is based on the National Curriculum: i.e. it's the state's own version of its history. Not exactly a hotbed of radicalism.

No-one's saying that the BBC is a hotbed of radicalism, but criticising the British empire isn't a radical position in current British politics.

At Media Bias/Fact Check, Democracy Now and The Nation are reported "Left", Mother Jones is on the far side of "Left-Center" and Jacobin is assessed as slightly left of "Left". All are considered to have "High" factuality. I personally agree with these assessments, for what it's worth.

Maybe, just maybe, consider for a moment that the BBC can only appear as left of center from a position ludicrously close to the cliff’s edge on the right.

No, by every political spectrum test I've tried, I'm a democratic centrist / liberal.

That doesn't mean your evidence against/assessment of NPR/BBC isn't flawed. I have certainly never thought of the BBC as biased, and NPR only slightly to the left. What do you think of The Guardian?

> I have certainly never thought of the BBC as biased

With respect, I'm not sure why your opinion is relevant to whether it is biased. There are certainly many instances of bias, that like Twitter, only appear to occur in one direction. The Emily Maitlis opening to Newsnight in May[1] is one of the most egregious examples.

For opinion on the innards of the BBC you can listen to Rod Liddle's (former editor of the Today programme) many, many stories about it, or John Humphries, or for instance, this interview with Robert Aitken[2]. He's promoting a book called "The Noble Liar: How and Why the BBC Distorts the News to Promote a Liberal Agenda", and whether or not you feel it's right or even right for him to write it, it surely hints that some scrutiny might be applied to claims of unbiased centrism.

If you're looking for BBC reporters who you should watch for a bit of bias, Dominic Casciani is one. As to the Guardian, I was a reader for 20 years but I had to stop because it's seriously lost its way. Any given day I can find outright lies, let alone bias. I could go on but this piece[3] by the Guardian on Humpries' claims of bias at the BBC includes several quotes about his Brexit bias. He voted to remain. Maybe they didn't know - aren't journalists supposed to check?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88goijIsas

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aucDmK5E4bU

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/21/john-humphrys-...

Edit: I obviously can't number properly. I promise it's not because of bias :)

It's funny, after I posted my comment I happened to check the mediabiasfactcheck (a site whose ratings I've come to respect) report on The Guardian https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/ and, while left-center political bias is OK by me, "factual reporting mixed" is unforgivable in this day and age. I can't accept anything less than "factual reporting: HIGH", so... The Guardian is out. :(

Good for you. Slant is one thing - I even welcome it - but bias is another. I used to rely on a paper like the Graun to be a paper of record but I believe we've moved from the age of information into an age of epistemological mystery (a terrible name, sorry).

Like with so many things, more is not always better and it seems information is no different - it does not always lead to clarity.

I’ve looked at your comment history; you’ve taken political spectrum tests that were written by people so far right of you that your far right looks center, from their distorted perspective.

Not unusual: we self select for confirmation bias.

Through no healthy intellectual lens does the BBC look significantly left of center.

No, I haven't, you just made that shit up. Why do you feel that lying to me about the tests that I took is a reasonable way to talk?

I just took another test on this website: https://www.politicalcompass.org/

And here's my result:

https://i.imgur.com/9h5l4Jc.png

Tests you’ve taken that you’ve selected ... my point is that you’re self-selecting tests that confirm your biases, including the bias that you’re somehow without bias... your comment history is unmistakably and indelibly right of the center, by a substantial degree, which tracks sensibly since, again, that’s the only perspective from which the BBC appears significantly left of center.

Also that site’s model is laughably simplistic and its questions both leading and rather idiotically phrased; I can apparently swing from far right to far left merely by changing my stance on religion.

I linked to the test I just took. You told me I took far-right biased test. That was a lie you made up. This is a general political compass test.

You're so far left, centrists look right-leaning to you.

Please stop lying.

I think we now can clearly see why you think the BBC is left-wing.

You are in no possible way a centrist. You may toy with a bit of libertarianism now and then, but for the most part your extensive comment history shows you to be a bog-standard conservative. Given how the current US government is right-wing to the point of nearing fascism I can see why you might see them to your right on a political spectrum and think of yourself as somewhere close to the center, but this is not an accurate read of the situation.

Maybe, just maybe you're the one of the opposite cliffs edge. But no, you'd never consider that.

The BBC is pretty close to the centre of political debate, for the UK. They always tend to be somewhat critical of government - the last Labour (centre-left) Govt thought them right wing, the current Govt complains they are left wing.

If you look at it from other countries, your view will be somewhat skewed by the Overton window of wherever you are from. The BBC would probably look hideously left wing when viewed from the USA, but very right wing when viewed from France.

I don't really find the very reductive model of left, center, or right as that helpful. I find the most useful strategy mixing in some "non-mainstream" sources like RT, CGTN, Telesur, PressTV, etc., that are coming at the news from the a totally different perspective. Of course they have an angle, and sometimes it's rather crudely presented, but if your spectrum is Fox News to MSNBC they've also got a lot of shared assumptions you might otherwise not think about.

But this gets back to my point; you could think about it from different axes like geopolitical ones, closeness to military/intelligence sources, and so on, in addition to favored political party. Even if we're going pretty narrow, I think you might see pretty different ideas from, say, the American Conservative and the Daily Caller, even though they're both conservative publications.

there's also https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

I like that it rates "factual accuracy" on a separate axis than "bias". If factual accuracy is "high" or greater, then any remaining difference in bias can potentially just be attributed to values/tastes, and "de gustibus non est disputandum"

Yeah, the MBFC site isn't as 'polished' as AllSides, but they have a lot more sites covered and overall I think their rankings are better (I know that is very subjective though).

Hey,

I saw your submission minutes after I posted mine. Quite the co-incidence!

I really like what you did. I too struggled with “splitting” the screen on mobile. My current solution is a little janky.

That's nice. But the first page of results in both columns is ads, for "coronavirus". It needs to be combined with ad suppression.

Reading Fox News and CNN side by side, what's striking is not what the stories say, but the selection of stories on the front page. They seem to be drawn from different universes.

Many of the stories from OAN are actually just Reuters stories. Not saying this is bad, many publications do this, but it would be cool if the app could filter those out.

How about something like this, but which only searches sites/orgs that https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ rates the factual reporting as "high" or higher on, regardless of bias (or perhaps incorporating no bias)

Hmmm, I could probably create a custom google search page for that, eh?

Here is a Google Custom Search Engine based on MBFC: https://factualsearch.news/

There is an issue when you need to read two articles with opposite point of view to get an idea of what the reality is

I've personally found Google News to be a pretty decent front page of news. One way I ask whether I'm satisfied is if I miss out on a big story that I feel I would've wanted to be alerted on.

I too use Google news but I often wonder if I’m missing out on a perspective/views because Google News shows me news from the same news sources.

Well, it's balanced -- I get all [ad]s on both sides...

I developed this locally with my adblocker on. I didn’t even realize ads were showing. Fixed it now :)

I did not get it from your blog, but I think you are very not alone. It is amusing how many developer blogs I click on that throw up your flash player is outdated type malware.

Looks accurate. Both sides have equal number of Meghan Markle articles everyday.

I think the recency of articles is wrong, maybe only from some sources. I searched for "Netherlands" and this article was fairly high up:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-netherlands-duncan-laurenc... (2 days ago)

One of the results is also just a link to the front page of AlterNet. Searching for other very generic terms (country names for example) leads me to other website's front pages as well.

I also would've appreciated titles over the 2 panes, because as a non-American it took me a while to realize that red is right-wing/conservative (in Europe it's typically the opposite).

Whatever I search for there also seems to be a lot of articles from the same sources (namely thedailybeast and breitbart). Not sure anything can be done about that though.

What are you using for powering search?

I've found https://web.ground.news/ to be quite illuminating as far as gaslighting on both sides of the political aisle is concerned. Observation: liberal outlets are able to enforce complete suppression of even slightly unfavorable news (e.g. China censoring Pence's remarks on China during the VP debate). Conservative ones will often publish unfavorable news just to rile up the audience.

How does this change if we consider the truth levels of the facts that these media outlets report? I see no reason why several remarks from the VP debate, in this instance, should be reported as reality. This is probably true on both sides but to varying degrees.

The goal here is not to expose truth per se, the goal is to merely to expose the underlying agendas by highlighting the topics the sides prefer to highlight or avoid in their version of what they consider "reality". That, and perhaps also provide exposure to opinions outside the bubble, for people concerned that their reality might not be entirely real, irrespective of affiliation. The bubbles are stronger than they've ever been. You can't break out of them without making a deliberate effort.

First off, China censoring anything is a "dog bites man" story. It happens all the time. It's not news to anybody with half a clue about what's going on.

Second, what's your reasoning for why "liberal" outlets might be doing this? Who are they "protecting"? What are they protecting them from? Are they beholden (financially, or ideologically) to the CCP?

They're protecting the DNC candidates, that much is obvious. In this particular case this highlights the different stance on China between the incumbent and the contender administrations. Both Harris and Biden have deep ties with China. Harris through her husband, Biden through his crackhead son. So you could indeed say that both are "beholden to the CCP". The Chinese are not stupid, they don't give just any crackhead $1.5B to "manage".

So, how does Ivanka Trump's Chinese trademarks play into your theory?

> The Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump by April of 2019—and the trademarks she applied for after her father became president got approved about 40% faster than those she requested before Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-tr...

And since you insist in injecting illegal drugs into the conversation, is Cocaine Mitch McConnell beholden to China through his wife/in-laws?

Anybody can trademark anything. And you have to _pay_ to register a trademark, not _get paid millions_ like Hunter Biden. Also, best I can tell Trump is the first president in 30 years that's not selling out the country to China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com