
Show HN: Review the journalistic integrity of news items - chjohasbrouck
https://pressrise.org
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brownbat
+1: I like the layout and usability and hope it does well.

-1: I worry it fundamentally misunderstands why we're inundated with bad stories in some aggregators (especially political news). But I'm glad someone took a shot, and I don't think there's an quick and easy solution.

If the problem was just clickbait and spam, then I think this site would work
well. The trouble isn't with marketers and sites though, it's with us.

Consider cognitive biases like the hostile media effect:
[https://www.pressrise.org/comments/trump-cites-story-of-
gene...](https://www.pressrise.org/comments/trump-cites-story-of-general-who-
dipped-bullets-in-pigs-blood-to-deter-muslims)

Even if you have a carefully calibrated stream of neutral/moderate sources,
most people will still perceive that stream as biased. If you give them tools
to do so, they will fight to correct that imagined bias. The system is in an
unstable equilibrium. So as soon as one side gets the edge, bias will rush
that direction as the opponents flee, and the remaining more extreme positions
pull the stream ever further one direction.

If that's the case, then an implementation to correct for this needs constant
education about avoiding cognitive biases. Reminders like so:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/)
(Note: knowing some of the controversies with the LW crowd, I'm not convinced
"thinking about cognitive bias" is really sufficient.)

Maybe I'm wrong though and this site will rise beyond these challenges. I hope
someone does. Good luck!

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chjohasbrouck
Hi! I wrote this. Signups only require a username and password, so please feel
free to try it out and let me know if you find any bugs. :)

You can find general information about it on the "About" page:
[https://www.pressrise.org/about](https://www.pressrise.org/about)

Basically it's a news aggregator that takes reviews from users, and ranks
stories based on their journalistic integrity. It also has an aggregator-style
commenting system.

If you're curious about the tech stack, it's written in Ruby, on the Rails
framework. The frontend is Bootstrap/jQuery soup. It's hosted on Heroku, and
also uses S3 for thumbnails.

Feedback is appreciated, thanks!

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brudgers
The idea of rating the news makes sense. I'm not sure reporting the average of
ratings is better than displaying their range.

It might make sense to encourage descriptions of the ratings. Knowing why a
person made the rating provides context for evaluating it's relevance to me.

Over the long haul, it may make sense to pick a theme for the stories [as is
the case with Hacker News]. Something more factual than politics, maybe?

Good luck.

