I gave the 'product' to friends and some of them told me "oh, you should do it like ground.news where I can see left, center, right". This idea turns me off so much. Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee. Just give me the information that's there in most sources and it's probably be going to be close to some objective overview of the situation.
Because at the day information can be political.
>the information that's there in most sources
While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and classifiers like them can show you when and where stories are being published in very lopsided manners. When a story is only really being published by one side you can use that as another bit of information.
>> Because at the day information can be political.
Umm. Yes. Which is precisely what placing it left / center / right amplifies.
> the information that's there in most sources
>> While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and classifiers like them can show you when and where stories are being published in very lopsided manners. When a story is only really being published by one side you can use that as another bit of information.
Sure, it's another bit of information. I think more important are the facts. Did this actually happen? If so, what happened? The tl;dr of what happened should give me a pretty good idea, without having to become a reporter myself, especially if covered by both sides.
I think this is more of an issue of an union, than the 'argument to moderation' or 'false balance' might appeal to. If I'm left, and report or something and you don't. That's probably high noise. If you're right and report to something I don't. That's probably high noise. If we both report on something, and we report differently on 80% but we have the same 20%. I'd say that 20% is high signal.
What if we cut out the left / center / right ideas and just take as many sources as we can? Then extract what's common between them. Wouldn't that have some sort of higher signal to noise ratio than any single viewpoint?
Of course, I'm willing to accept I'm wrong. From my personal experience so far, I'm much less inclined to extremes than I was since starting to use this system.
Ground news tells you the bias of publications that have published the news item not the slant of the news item itself. It lets you see how much news gets completely ignored by the right and left (the right is way worse) when it isn't favorable to their cause. It's also really interesting to sample both sides and see how wildly the facts get slanted as you get further from center.
The publishers are biased, not the news item.
Honestly your paranthesis that "the right is way worse" is already too political for my taste. It makes me feel dumb for even writing this reply. Alas, these are my thoughts. News should be news. What happened and when. Not some attack vector against a group of people or another.
"What" is often a matter of definition and framing, especially if you also want news to include "to what effect" which is not always black-and-white. "Why" is an answer that also must be answered, but will often come through a political lens. News cannot be free from a political lens if "why" and "to what effect" are considered, and probably can't be free from some element of a political lens even if just sticking to "what".
I don't. I want to be able to draw my own conclusion as to the effect of what happened might be.
> News cannot be free from a political lens if "why" and "to what effect" are considered, and probably can't be free from some element of a political lens even if just sticking to "what".
I have no interest in the "why" and "to what effect". I have an interest into "what" so that I can draw my own conclusions.
Though thank you for your thoughts, it helps me understand the people calling for political sides better.
That's fair BUT do you see how this is a decision that a) won't always have a clear line of demarcation and b) reflects an internal mental model of news that likely isn't universal?
For example: let's say someone reads a news article that titled "Trump Won't Rule out Military Intervention in Greenland" (god help us, a real story). Maybe you get all the "what" you need from the headline. I would argue though that omitting contextual information about "Why does he want Greenland?" is irresponsible and bad journalism. Many others might argue that in a duty to inform readers, they should collect statements from people who understand international relations to discuss implications of such a stance.
Another example: insurance rates are rising for coastal properties in Florida. That's the "what", but there is no honest, legitimate exploration of the topic if the journalist doesn't explore "why", because the "why" of this story if also a "what" of the many contributing factors. Since that "what" will necessarily include climate-related topics, it is now considered "political" by many. And in this instance, exploring "what effect" this is likely to have on homeowners, renters, and businesses seems a core element of the phenomenon.
a) I think there's a clear line of demarcation to the "what".
b) I can see how this isn't a universal mental model, I just fail to see why the "why" makes for a better one.
> irresponsible and bad journalism
I honestly don't see how left / center / right fixes this. If there's no consensus between tens / hundreds (and I'm in a small country) sources on the actual thing that lead up to the what, I don't see why that should be included. Else the news would just be (for example, not political affirmation) "Trump Won't Rule out Military Intervention in Greenland[...] as loss of key trans-atlantic partners considered less valuable than securing arctic trade route".
> Another example: insurance rates are rising for coastal properties in Florida. That's the "what", but there is no honest, legitimate exploration of the topic if the journalist doesn't explore "why", because the "why" of this story if also a "what" of the many contributing factors. Since that "what" will necessarily include climate-related topics, it is now considered "political" by many. And in this instance, exploring "what effect" this is likely to have on homeowners, renters, and businesses seems a core element of the phenomenon
Honestly it's the same thing, if 80% of covered news sources point out to a why as climate change, sure. If only the left (or right, or center) ones do and they're not a solid majority. I don't particulary care. I care more about the "what".
Again, this might tie into the mental model more than anything but the whole left / center / right divide seems political and high noise to signal ratio to me.
>> irresponsible and bad journalism > I honestly don't see how left / center / right fixes this.
Well, it doesn't. Those are labels we have affixed to things, because those are the lenses through which society sees "debated topics." But those lenses are applied to real things, that are really happening.
That you discount climate change because right-wing publications don't engage with it - despite the overwhelming preponderance of evidence - then you've just made yourself more susceptible to propaganda, not less. The omission of information is just as political as the inclusion of it.
Then, the Rebel Times says "Moisture farmer with magic powers joins fight against Empire", but the Empire Daily has "Moisture farmer joins fight against Empire". the common whats are just that a moisture farmer joined the Rebel Alliance, which is true, but much less consequential than if he had magic powers.
Later, the Rebel Times says "Secret Empire super-weapon destroyed at the Battle of Yavin", and the Empire Daily publishes... nothing because they don't want to admit defeat. There's no common information between these stories (because there is no second story), so looking for common whats would conclude that nothing happened.
If the process of analysing the news accounted for the fact that the different outlets are interested in presenting different whats, it could conclude that the fact that the Empire Daily published nothing about the third story doesn't mean that it didn't happen. In the second case, if it could account for the Empire wanting to suppress information about the Force, the conclusion would be that Luke joining the Alliance is somewhat more of a big deal than otherwise. Even in the first case, it might realise that the fact that the two sources don't agree about Leia doesn't mean that one side isn't right.
They're not wrong, though.
Any issue I’m deeply familiar with that gets reported is almost always missing lots of meaningful information. There isn’t really competition for most news, so there’s no incentive to follow up.
Publishers have biases, and their sources have agendas.
Ground News is a startup that had 3 rounds of funding it total. If it sees significant uptake, it will become a juicy acquisition target for any influence-peddlers you can imagine, in addition to the usual data collection and ad-monetization risks.
How would that work for Ground News? $2.50/month subscriptions for news aggregation seems a bit un-unicorny, even with data collection and other forms of soft monetization. Do you think it's actually that viable, or are they going to massively pivot?
It's new media, and in the grand scheme of things, youtuber sponsorships are dirt cheap compared to traditional means.
The news model is well established by this point of ads + no-ad premium subscrition, so I don't think there's many potential dark arts here. It also feel everpresent simply because they are smartly targeting youtubers covering politics. And US politics is a burning hot topic right now.
How they're affording all these ads, though - if it's not a legit business through and through, then maybe the next possibility is that they want to be paid to hide or promote certain stories once everyone trusts them.
Given how many parrot exactly the same story, practically word for word, about how they personally find it so useful, is a useful barometer of whether I should trust any recommendation from those channels. It was called astroturfing in my day, I don't consider it any more trustworthy in its new name “influencing”.
Their segmentation of news organizations according to bias, can be obviously be biased itself. That's not a problem necessarily, but the service promotes itself as neutral while it's VC funded. You are part of a demographic that will be propagandized in the future to recoup costs.
I never saw a single sponsorship for Honey, but I see a ton for Kiwico and Ground News. I can't speak for Ground News, but Kiwico is a sponsor of basically every educational YouTube channel, and it's actually just that good and totally worth it for kids of the right age.
Get a substantial number of users, and it can be used to extract money from publishers to be part of the service, and the information provided can be swayed to investors objectives.
I hope it's just an "good" product that will (like every SaaS) be plagued by enshittification 5 years down the line.
Either case, it's hopefully a silver lining to my dads "don't trust MSM" tendencies. (fortunately he's too academic to go full conspiracy crazy but you never know)
It's probably not a nefarious scheme though, they just saw the clear market opening for "News that people think is impartial" from all the liberals that need to keep on top of the narrative that Fox News or New York Post publish but don't want to waste hours a week watching talking heads, and from all the blatant conservatives who need to validate their belief that the general conservative narrative for anything is "not political"