Ask Skewz.com Founder About Detecting Media Bias 299
Skewz.com is not the Microsoft-funded Blews experiment that is supposed to help detect rightness and leftness in stories based on blogs that link to them. Instead of detecting blog links, Skewz relies on readers to submit and rate stories, and even tries to pair stories that have "liberal" and "conservative" biases so that you can get multiple takes on the same event or pronouncement. The Skewz About page explains how it works. The site has drawn a fair amount of "media insider" attention, including a writeup on the Poynter Institute website. But what does all this mean? Where is it going? Can Skewz.com help us sort our news better and make more informed decisions? We don't know. But if you post a question here for founder Vipul Vyas, maybe he'll have an answer for you. (Please try to follow the usual Slashdot interview rules.)
Are all americans one dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is liberal or conservative? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about economic activism (Greenspan)?
What about pro-war?
How about government hypervigilance against its own citizens?
How about abortion?
What about economic stimulus?
How about WTO?
Honestly, with the way all the votes actually go when a liberal or conservative party has control of everything, I have to say that in each of these cases, the "liberal" and "conservative" positions are identical, and the opposite position has no coverage.
Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what gives the impression of "bias" to a reader in the first place.
Fake "Balance" (Score:5, Insightful)
And when one or the other is just wrong, why dignify them as "balance"? What's the point of balancing lies against truth?
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:1, Insightful)
Left: Looking after society from the bottom up.
Right: Looking after society from the top down.
Missing sliders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth: Joe went to the store to buy milk.
Bias #1: Joe, once again being the dutiful husband, went to the store to get some milk.
Bias #2: Joe, once again leaving his wife home alone with the child, went to the store to get some milk.
See the difference?
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So what is liberal or conservative? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say both definitions are (a) grossly inadquate as a basis for categorising political viewpoints which are massively more complicated and (b) merely attitudes that do not necessarily equate to the outcomes of any given policy. The divisive split between "left" and "right" is one of the things that most cripples democracy in the USA, today. By labelling something as belonging to one faction or another, serious consideration of the merits of a particular action can be derailed. Maybe tax cuts are the right thing at a given time to stimulate the economy. Maybe state aid to a faltering financial institution is going to head off disaster on another occasion. But instead of assessing ideas as good or bad, "left" and "right" become substitutes for good and bad and nothing needs to be said beyond that. Never mind that often enough it is not appropriate to categorise things in these terms. It seems half the time that political beliefs are treated as merely territory to be captured by "left" or "right" and claimed as fitting that faction's ideology.
In the words of the immortal Bill Hicks (well, except that he's dead): "Hey, waitaminute! It's one guy holding up both puppets!"
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Left = Quality of life at the expense of economic growth
Right = Economic growth at the expense of everything else, no matter what the cost
You see this in the US, where schools and hospitals are run purely to generate profit, with the barest minimum of education or care provided (got to keep those overheads down, no matter what!)
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really:
Re:Self Selection = Inaccurate Data (Score:3, Insightful)
that's because there is clear right wing bias on pretty much everything.
Fox news, along with many other well funded members of the ultra-conservative propaganda machine which has arisen since media deregulation allowed massive consolidation, foists biased reporting on real news--and often fraudulent or intellectually dishonest slander--into the mainstream media, pulling it to the right.
I won't even bother going into talk radio.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Left" is for strong central government--as you say, "top down"--(i.e. Federal government).
The "Right" is for strong local control--as you say, bottom-up--i.e. States' rights.
In America, these have been opposing sides since the framing of the Constitution.
Re:Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I have with the term "bias" is that it's going to apply to any source of news and information that attempts to present some context, background, and interpretation into its reportage. The stripped, "unbiased" news merely reports what this or that political figure says, without any clue about where they're really coming from. When the media tries to do this, they not only fail to paint an accurate picture of what's going on, they often outright mislead.
Motivations are important in politics. If the authors of the "Clean Air Act" are actually backed by polluter interests, or if the "Patriot Act" actually does nothing but strip us of rights and liberties that real patriots fought and gave their lives for, then that case needs to be made. I've had enough of news media that constantly give disingenuous and manipulative politicians the benefit of the doubt by merely transcribing what they say, or allowing them to put their labels on things unchallenged. They're little more than PR agencies then.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Problems:
- Lies of comission = stuff they just plain get wrong
- Lies of omission = stuff they deliberately leave out to tilt the story
- Bias-words; portraying the "facts" with a strong tilt or weasel words designed to push a positive/negative impression of something, like describing terrorists as "freedom fighters" or "insurgents" or "militants" instead, or running a story that twists and tilts with giving as little description to one side, while trying to give unneeded detail to the other ("20 Israeli citizens were injured or killed, while a Palestinian child 8 months old clutching a blankie and his grandmother...").
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics - hunt down a "statistic" that you claim supports your position. Usually accompanied by ignoring any other information/statistics that point the other way.
- Cherry-picked quoting - taking something out of context, or deliberately leaving out half a sentence to completely twist the meaning of a statement around.
And then after you get that out, there's the simple editorializing they always slip into their stuff (really, they can't help themselves), and the outright propaganda nonsense (such as Arabic news reports that use the wording "occupied palestine" to describe the nation of Israel).
Questions for the bias-detection-opposed (Score:1, Insightful)
If you say that it's okay for a journalist to "fight his or her case" with language bias etc - why does this not apply to any other employee group in society? Why cannot, say, a bank employee, promote their political sense of right and wrong by denying someone a loan because they feel his politics are bad? Why can't a plumber charge someone extra if they know they are a member of party X?
Effectively, if a journalistic right to bias is simply the right to express your preferences, and this includes giving a tougher deal for certain people, why isn't that right shared with any other job group?
2. Let's consider minority group X and how it is portrayed in any given communication. It is my impression that there is a strong overlap between those who speak the loudest and most often about protecting minorities, and those who speak the loudest and most often in disfavor of action being taken about press bias if it does exist, hence I feel the question may be appropriately targeted.
You may well agree that discrimination and disenfranchisement for group X may come through in communications in very subtle ways. In other words you would likely reject that discrimination is only discrimination if it comes through in explicit and strong wording, and rather say that people can use discriminating wording through very subtle methods, just by the words chosen, sentence structure, tone of voice, etc. In this case you will likely also say that a detection method for discrimination cannot rely just on detecting blatant examples of discriminatory wording, but must also detect and assign equal weights to these subtle forms.
In this case however, why would you be opposed to similar analysis of subtle clues and sentence structures in journalistic productions? For example, if the body language of a night club bouncer may be detected to be discriminatory, why cannot the body language of a journalist be examined for bias?
Re:Fake "Balance" (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, the two sides had completely different ideas of what constituted "the truth". That is a problem not with the news coverage, but with the audience.
Not only do people perceive things differently, but there it is well-known that people tend to discount information that disagrees with their previously formed opinions, especially when it comes to emotional subjects like politics (confirmation bias [wikipedia.org]).
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to protect us and our liberty?
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:1, Insightful)
Conservatives tend to prefer inflation to more traditional taxes to pay for the stuff they throw money at. Liberals like inflation, too, but they are more willing to mix it with some tax increases. Either way, the government increases it's slice of the pie. Here's a nice indicator: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm [cedarcomm.com]
This election isn't really as much about Liberal versus Conservative as people would have us believe, its more about whether or not to continue truly incompetent, nationally destructive leadership or not. The truth is, no radicals made it into the final two (McCain vs. Obama). Both very much believe in the status quo, but how to maintain it is how they differ. I sincerely doubt that you'll find siginificant reductions in worldwide military bases under Obama, for example.
Thank you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh my lack of god yes! Funny thing is, I just finished replying to a post accusing me of being a "rabid ultra-left Democrat" with:
You've been had. Just like racism is a way to get poor white folks fighting poor brown folk so they don't realize most of their problems have nothing to do with color. The policies that lead to the rich getting richer and the poor paying the bill transcend the Democratic/Republican divide.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Serious consideration is derailed, indeed, but it's not a conspiracy. It is simply human nature to find simple categories with which to make predictions and choices. Any consideration of nuances, shades of grey, contradiction and ambiguity, requires a lot of mental energy... not to mention more mental hardware than many people have to begin with.
Mental energy is a more precious resource than money, and even more than time. We all have more time than we have energy -- that's why we come home at night and "vege out".
This is why most political arguments are fights over categorization... once a thing has been categorized (and we all feel an urgent need to do so for any issues that remain expensively uncategorized), we can apply very simple logic when dealing with it again. White hat, good guy; black hat, bad guy.
An example: although ethanol logically belongs in the category of "mind-altering addictive substances", we lack the political will to admit it, because if we announce "alcohol is in the category of 'drug'", we'll then be obliged to apply our "drug == bad" logic to it.
Lord knows how I ever got hooked up with this godforsaken species. Where's the damned mothership already?
Re:Skewz me? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about the US Census Bureau statistics: "85 percent of adults age 25 and over had completed at least high school, an all-time high" http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/001863.html [census.gov]
How about Child Trends: "Dropout rates of young people ages 16 to 24 in the civilian, non-institutionalized population gradually declined between 1972 and 2005, from 15 percent to a low of 9 in 2005."
Choosing what nonsense to report also exposes a bias.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Right: Looking after society from the top down.
I don't know how you can label the Leftist view of letting the government run everything (healthcare, housing, food) as a bottom-up approach. That sounds like a top-down approach to me (where the top mandates how citizens are supposed to live).
Personally I prefer "authoritarian" versus "libertarian" as a way to separate the articles.
Maybe I'll create my own website.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at how a politician like Barack Obama is said to be "far Left", when in fact, he's to the Right of a real Center. I've lived long enough to have seen a real "Left" in America, and my father and grandfather have lived through a time when there was even a farther Left, with the Wobblies and the CPUSA. In fact, during my granddad's adulthood, Socialism was not very far from the mainstream in the US. I wonder what would happen if a real Leftist ever became a serious candidate for office here. I'd go so far as to say that not one single member of Congress could be honestly said to be on the "far Left" and that includes Rep Sanders (Ind-Vermont).
On the other hand, someone like John McCain, who is widely (and wrongly) thought to be a "Centrist" supports a torture regime, the elimination of habeas corpus, warrantless surveillance of US citizens, corporate control of media, the elimination of the Department of Education, the repeal of all banking and securities regulation, and many more positions that would normally earn a politician a reputation as a member of the Far Right, if not actually Fascism.
Seriously, let me list those again: John McCain supports torture, holding people, including US citizens indefinitely without bringing charges, warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and email conversations, unregulated corporate control of all media, the elimination of the Department of Education, the repeal of all banking and securities regulation, etc.
And interestingly, he was one of the politicians who used to push the privatization of Social Security, although he wouldn't whisper a word of that any more. Remember, if Social Security had been privatized during Bush's first term, which Bush wanted and McCain supported, there would have been a lot of Americans who had their Social Security funds at Bear Stearns, which recently went from over $100 per share to $2.00 per share. Those Americans would have lost almost every penny. This is why you don't hear any more cheerleading for the idea of privatization of Social Security from conservatives any more, even though they would still love to see it happen.
No, "Left and Right" aren't really useful terms any more, when the spectrum has really become "Right and Further Right".
The One Party State (Score:5, Insightful)
The two wedge issues are gay marriage and abortion for the right, which would never survive the "clear and secular purpose" litmus test, and the wedge issues for the left are "Bush is dumb" and "we want change," despite the fact there are no real policy differences. One side refuses to take nuclear options off the table in dealing with Iran, and the other side refuses to take nuclear options off the table when dealing with Iran.
It's really quite beautiful when you think about it. America is a One Party State, complete with gerrymandered lines and mass media that shuts out thirty party options. Why argue about things like our right to interfere in the affairs of sovereign nations when you can just leave that out of the discussion entirely?
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd label Hillary Clinton as "authoritarian" because she says, "You must buy health insurance. You have no choice; if you don't buy insurance, you will be jailed (or fined)." That mandatory requirement that all citizens buy insurance is an authoritarian viewpoint, where citizens must follow the will of President Hillary (and/or the Congress) as if she were king.
I'd label Ron Paul as "libertarian" because he wants doctors to serve patients, and patients to "pay as they go" when they receive the bill. He also wants doctors to provide volunteer hours (free service) to those who are poor or needy. ----- He does Not want government to interfere in the doctor-patient interaction in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of malpractice lawsuits (the courts).
I'm not sure where Barak Obama or John McCain would land.
Maybe in the middle.
Re:Accounting for Regional Disparity (Score:3, Insightful)
Issue One: Republicans are more business friendly. So if you are a republican you are more likely to skip higher education or not go for advanced degrees and go straight to the work force.
Issue Two: University Professors Unions. Being that most professors belong to a Union (which are rather tighly linked to the democratic party) they will not try to speak out against the Unions or their problems. I have one Professor who whispers to the class and tells them not to let it out that she feels there should be factors in place to judge the professors performance. She is afraid to be vocal about it because of the political problems it causes.
Issue Three: Durring the Vietanam War a lot of people who wanted to avoid going to war (who had predominanatly left personalities) went to colleges as a sanctuary from getting drafted. Now many of them are professors.
Issue Four: Because of 1,2 and 3 when teaching students the professor ingrain the students minds the democrat ideals (even if it is uninentional) So the students learn to like the Democrat Phelosophy and Distrust the republican phelosopy. And Imbreed a new generation of Democrat Professors.
Issue Five: If you are a Republican/Consiritive you feel out of place in a liberal insitution so you are not as willing to stay there for longer then you have to.
Issue Six: The Liberal Phelosophy of Comunity vs. the Consertive Phelosophy of self reliance. So Liberals want to work for the greater good, while Consertives work to improve themselfs.
There are a bunch of issues and they are not due to because Person A is smart they will oviously realize that Democrats are better. It is more of Democrats will thrive in our education system.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
But the left suppresses free speech ( "PC"- reeducation ) while the right suppresses free speech.. hmmm.
And so on...
Even on issues like abortion, there are pro and anti-republicans, democrats, and others. Some republicans are really just pro business. Of course so are many democrats (as long as the business is in their state... i.e. Boeing vs Airbuss recently).
Hmm, the Microsoft attempt looks more sophisticate (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you guys using machine learning at all? If not, how do you protect yourselves against user bias (e.g. the situation where liberals like your site and conservatives don't, so you get mostly liberal stories). Personally, it seems to me that Skewz is just a glorified Digg with sliders.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is everything about "bias"? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not okay if you have someone from the other side counter with the truth, either. Because there are still lies being aired.
To stop 'bias', the news media needs to stop airing 'political claims', period. Do not, even, under any circumstances, report 'political claims'. Report facts.
'Bias' is a non-issue. It's a bunch of crazy Republicans claiming that any story that involves civil rights or justice or education or people dying in war or anything is somehow a 'left' story.
The actual problem with the media is they say 'Person X claimed this, and Person Y claimed this, and we're too stupid to actually figure out what's going on.' instead of saying 'Person X said something today, and Person Y lied in response. We'll be covering these shocking lies all evening.'.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the point is that it is impossible to define because it doesn't actually mean anything. Its an arbitrary label we can throw onto other people we don't like. Each word is packed full of idiotic stereotypes, and psychological fallacies.
Left = commie
Right = fascist.
We might not admit to these translations, but I think that they are the general image we get when either term is used. And I don't think any person, or political ideology, ever actually can fall into a pure left/right schema. Its almost as moronic as the "red" and "blue" state myth, which serves no purpose than to pigeon hole people for the derision of other people.
I find it very easy to hold views from the so-called left and right at the same time. Many of them are not as contradictory as this simplistic classification would grant.
Out of curiosity where would famous political philosophers fall in this? Is John Locke, and J.S. Mill a leftist, while Thomas Hobbs is a righty?
Re:Ironic? Dontcha think? (Score:2, Insightful)
After decades of conservatives complaining about a non-existent "liberal bias" in the media, the press goes incredibly easy on Republicans (like CNN splicing video [mediamatters.org] to make McCain look better on his false claims linking Iran to Al Queda) while playing hardball with Democrats (like when Tim Russert lambasted Howard Dean for not knowing the exact number of Americans in the armed forces, when he gave Bush a complete pass on a similar question about nuclear missiles in 1999).
Or how uniformly pro-war the media has been since Bush took office: now as in 2002, the "serious foreign policy analysts" invited to discuss the Iraq mess are pro-war hawks who have been wrong on Iraq every step of the way. Those who opposed the invasion on strategic grounds are as excluded from the debate now as they were 6 years ago.
So in many cases, yes, you'll find that the foreign presses coverage of American events is far superior to that of the American media.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
State's right haven't been an issue since the "right" lost the civil war.
Since then, most everyone on the national level is for a strong central government (kind of a self-selecting kind of thing), and 'state's rights' are a topic by topic thing (i.e. if federal laws are in your favor, you like them. If they aren't, you don't).
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
Left/right has nothing to do with bigger/smaller government. Anarchists are leftists and in favor of a smaller government. Members of the Libertarian party are rightists in favor of a smaller government.
We would do well to think of government as a vector, possessing both magnitude and direction. The force of government can push left or right (or through several other dimensions), and it can do so either gently or with great force. Advocating a smaller government is fine, but doesn't say anything about which way you want that government's force to be applied.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, shame you don't have any real world examples.
Re:Are all americans one dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
Go back 100 years. The economy did better when Democrats controlled the White House than when Republicans did. Leave off the best and worst of both parties, same answer. So it isn't just the Great Depression.
I'll take the economic "destruction" of 1993-2000 that came along with a 38% top marginal income tax rate, which is still lower than the marginal tax rate for middle income people paying FICA and in the 25% tax bracket (25% + 1
For the past 28 years, conservative Republican policies have been "borrow and spend". Raise taxes on the lower and middle classes, and cut them on the wealthiest. Run up huge deficits. Hand China and India the power that comes with holding nearly a trillion dollars in US obligations.
Conservative fiscal policy, as practiced by Reagan, Bush, and Bush, are inherently unsustainable. That unsustainability is finally coming home to roost, with a plummeting dollar.