
We strip news of bias so it’s just the news - handpickednames
https://www.theknifemedia.com/
======
spuz
It's just a blank page... if that's joke then it's not very funny.

~~~
johnlbevan2
Hit refresh; I got the same first time.

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pulisse
"Absence of bias" is a useless concept. A news outlet must make choices about
which topics to cover; what facts to report about those topics; which sources
to trust, which to use skeptically, and which to ignore; which claims to treat
as settled fact and which as disputed (and then it must decide how to
contextualize disputed claims); and so on, ad infinitum. What would it mean to
cover news without introducing an editorial viewpoint in this way? There is no
such thing.

If talk about "bias" is to mean anything, you need to be specific about
concrete forms of bias you're trying to rule out, and how.

~~~
glenra
Although the "how" part seems to be "via our proprietary process", they _are_
pretty specific about what concrete forms of bias they're trying to rule out.
They list that, with a few examples, here:

[https://www.theknifemedia.com/our-
process/](https://www.theknifemedia.com/our-process/)

The first stage ("the spin") is just identifying words and phrases which add
spin with a positive or negative valance - this part could easily be automated
with a dictionary search or by training a neural net. (There should probably
be a Chrome plugin for it.)

The other two steps are more tricky and would seem to require a human editor's
eye. "the slant" involves noticing when one perspective is put in an article
to the exclusion of other, similarly valid perspectives which have been left
out - to do that you'd have to either be a subject matter expert or combine
enough stories from different sources to identify the universe of _possible_
takes. "the logic" involves noticing when conclusions don't follow from the
facts presented; this also would appear to require somebody carefully reading
and understanding the story.

So my guess is that step 1 is fully-automated now (but being tweaked) and
steps 2 and 3 need human editors with some algorithmic assistance (which
they're trying to increase over time) - at least, that's how I'd have set it
up...

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akie
You should talk to a social scientist to see if there's any such thing as
"unbiased" in non-scientific endeavours. I mean, everything is biased, and
removing the bias is _itself_ a biased operation.

~~~
glenra
I dunno, I think parts of their coverage would seem to demonstrate otherwise.

For instance, consider their Oscars article:

[https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/how-did-the-
oscars-...](https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/how-did-the-oscars-
coverage-rate-hint-it-was-biased/)

Scroll all the way to the bottom to find their attempt at an "unbiased"
article ("the raw data"). Now, maybe Oscars reporting is a special case and
you can't do this for other kinds of articles, but isn't it worth a try?

Full article follows:

> The 90th Oscars awards ceremony airs to an estimated 26.5M viewers

> Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 90th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. The
> “Oscars,” or Academy Awards of Merit, are given annually to “honor
> outstanding artistic and scientific achievements in theatrically released
> feature-length motion pictures,” according to the awards’ website.

> This year’s show was aired live from 8 to 11 p.m. eastern on ABC, to an
> estimated audience of 26.5 million viewers. It is the lowest number since
> the 1990s when the viewership data began being collected. The 2017 awards
> had 32.9 million viewers.

> Besides speaking about the nominated films and filmmaking, some presenters
> and award recipients spoke about other topics. While hosting, Kimmel made
> jokes about Fox News, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

> Best actress award winner Frances McDormand spoke about “inclusion riders,”
> a stipulation that actors can put in their contracts to ensure gender and
> ethnic diversity among cast and crew members of film projects that they work
> on. Presenters Kumail Nanjiani and Lupita Nyong’o spoke in support of
> “Dreamers,” referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood
> Arrivals. Award winner Kristen Anderson-Lopez spoke about diversity and
> gender representation in the songwriter category.

> Award winners include:

> Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” won for both Best Picture and Best
> Director. > Frances McDormand earned Best Actress for her role in “Three
> Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” > Gary Oldman won for Best Actor for
> his role in “Darkest Hour.” > Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
> received the Best Original Song award for the track “Remember Me” in “Coco.”
> > Alexandre Desplat won Best Original Score for “The Shape of Water.”

> Sources: Breitbart, Fox News, The New York Times, The Oscars

One thing in there that has a tiny whiff of bias is mentioning the huge drop
in viewership. _IF_ there is some more favorable way of estimating the event's
impact or importance, then including that bit would count in their framework
as "slant". Did I miss anything else?

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andrepd
If you want unbiased news the best thing you can do is get them directly from
a news agency, like Reuters or AP.

~~~
coldtea
They are slightly better, but not a full solution.

For international news they follow the trends of the markets they serve, so
you will find the same biases.

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lincolnq
I get a blank screen. I assume you're just down, but I enjoy the kabbalistic
implications.

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Brendinooo
I'm interested in this project.

What do we know about the people behind it? Any developers on the team
frequent this site?

[https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/the-knife-
of-...](https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/the-knife-of-aristotle-
isnt-just-a-fake-fake-news.html) is representative of what I found when I
tried to research the site and its founders - is it an accurate portrayal of
the company and its people?

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alexandercrohde
Well let's think about this a little bit, because I like the intention, if not
the execution.

I think the fundamental issue here is that this site doesn't have a clear
concept of "bias," and perhaps because there isn't a useful clear-concept of
bias.

For example, If you throw out all subjective claims, well then you throw out
morality too. If you throw out speculative claims, well nothing is known 100%,
so you ultimately draw an arbitrary line.

------
dest
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:thekni...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:theknifemedia.com)

------
rm_-rf_slash
For a site that claims to be unbiased, it sure does spend a lot of real estate
saying that other places are more biased. Isn’t that a bias in and of itself?

~~~
coldtea
> _For a site that claims to be unbiased, it sure does spend a lot of real
> estate saying that other places are more biased. Isn’t that a bias in and of
> itself?_

First, no, if it's a fact, it's not a bias.

Second, they don't say they are unbiased in everything (e.g. in how good they
thing they are etc). Just that they put out unbiased news.

Their's isn't some meta-discussion about bias in general.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
I don't accept it as a fact that this source is less biased than some of the
news sources they critique. After reading some of their analysis, I find their
articles to have little context, and to be less informative than other
sources. At one point they criticize a news source for directly and accurately
quoting a person with first-hand knowledge of an event, because they believe
the source used "biased language." This kind of language policing is flat-out
ridiculous. Are news sources expected to alter quotes to make them "less
biased?"

They spend a lot of time arguing about using words like "historic." Well
sometimes a thing is historic, and the word is appropriate. For example, North
Korea has indicated that they're willing to negotiate giving up their nuclear
arms. If Trump manages to strike a deal with Kim, that will be historic, and
it would be accurate to describe it as such.

It would be strictly less informative to present it as bare data points
without context. Here's how such an event might be reported "without bias."

President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un today. They
discussed nuclear disarmament. Kim agreed to give up North Korea's nuclear
arms program in exchange for a normalization of relations.

That sounds like an unimportant, bureaucratic event, barely worth reporting.
In fact, it would probably be the most important thing this administration has
accomplished, and everyone (even people who don't care for the current
administration, such as myself) will have to recognize that this is historic
and impressive. Whatever complaints I may have about him, Trump would be
remembered as the man who finally solved the North Korean crisis, which many
of us thought to be unsolvable. Any article which fails to place such an
important event in historical context will be less informative for it.

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nugi
Twitter banner covers half of page, making it unreadabl3 in landscape mode.
Portriat seems fine.

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pimmen
How can you say it's not biased? It's clearly white-washing!

