Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Skewz.com Founder About Detecting Media Bias

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-a-journalist-who-agrees-with-me-about-everyting-is-totally-unbiased dept.

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.)

6 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Are all americans one dimensional by line-bundle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I still do not understand why everything is left/right. Reality tends to be complicated and every story has a lot more aspects than left/right (even if you manage to define those two terms).

    1. Re:Are all americans one dimensional by h4rm0ny · · 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!"

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    2. Re:Are all americans one dimensional by ScienceDada · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your definition is completely reversed.
      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.

  2. So what is liberal or conservative? by MickLinux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, is sexual impropriety liberal (Clinton) or conservative (Gingerich)?
    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.

    --
    Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
  3. Why is everything about "bias"? by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Shouldn't just "being full of shit" count for anything? Why not just rate stories on their frequencies of lies, distortions, unsupported assertions, and factual inaccuracies?

    That's what gives the impression of "bias" to a reader in the first place.

  4. Fake "Balance" by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is the point of providing only two "balancing" stories with "liberal" vs "conservative" biases, when neither "liberal" nor "conservative" are labels with any real meaning except propaganda buzzwords, when the two illusory groups agree on so much but also mutually exclude so much not falling under their convenient labels, and when there are so many other viewpoints? A point other than validating the grossest oversimplification of the world since "right brain / left brain" dumbed down psychology to meaningless twaddle, that is.

    And when one or the other is just wrong, why dignify them as "balance"? What's the point of balancing lies against truth?

    --

    --
    make install -not war