
Show HN: A tool to compare news from liberal and conservative sources - anticlickwise
http://unitethesefuckers.com/
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forkLding
Looked at this to realize I only read Reuters nowadays and ignore other news
sources because Reuters is pretty financial-report-talk bland and thats how I
think news should be.

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innocentoldguy
Agreed. I couldn't care less about Fox or CNN's editorializing. I prefer to
formulate my own opinions based on documented, boring facts.

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mji
An interesting project, but one that seems to suffer from a (presumably
unintended and unknown) conservative bias itself, as evidenced by opening the
page and seeing conservative opinion outlets like Breitbart and Drudge
displayed literally next to reputable sources like the New York Times and
Politico

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austinheap
FWIW I don't think the point is to compare reputable v non-reputable -- after
all, perception is truth in politics. I think the goal of the tool is to
highlight the perceptions but not to sort through the realities. There are
great tools that do that (i.e.: Snopes/Politifact) but people 'in a camp'
aren't generally interested in a truth that doesn't fulfill their prophecy.

~~~
anticlickwise
You nailed it. I dont agree with most of the stuff on the conservative side
but I think it is a bad idea to shut ourselves off and not listen to ANYTHING
they say. This site simply shows you what the other side is listening to and
hopefully it will soften everyone's views in the long run.

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mch82
Is the goal of softening everyone's views something you plan to keep working
on? If so, are you discussing it anywhere?

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anticlickwise
Not really discussing it. I just got fed up yesterday and I made this in a few
hours out of disgust. The idea was born out of softening my own views I guess

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Hasknewbie
Interesting. A few remarks:

* So many headlines are truncated. This is distracting.

* The "What they both should probably read" section should be motivated. For example, what makes WSJ or BBC better? They are both known to occasionally publish dreadful articles.

* You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian, I believe they have a fairly large readership.

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seattle_spring
> You are missing "left-wing Breitbart" The Guardian

Breitbart had a section up until a few weeks ago titled "BLACK CRIME". Can you
show me a "left-equivalent" section in The Guardian?

If anything, Breitbart is a "right-wing" NaturalNews.com.

~~~
Hasknewbie
(Replying to both you and gefh)

You won't find a direct equivalent to "Black Crime" on The Guardian, because
left-wing and right-wing rabble-rousers have a different M.O. Rightwingers
write prejudiced headlines under the guise of being anti-PC, and often with
the goal of riling up their perceived enemies. Leftwingers put out victimized
and/or sanctimonious headlines talking down to their readers. In terms of
biased content, they often both favour the same tactic: lying by omission,
although I have to say I only see rightwingers opting for "bold faced
fabrication". The "black/minorities/immigrants crime" thing is a good example
of lying by omission, where the omission is other demographics and/or other
context. But if you think only the right does that you are not paying
attention.

The Guardian itself has both facepalm-inducing articles ("Men rarely catcall
me any more. I hate that our culture makes me miss it" <\- Yes, this is a real
article. That title was so roundly mocked they had to change it, but you can
still Google it), and editors dedicated to slapping the most obnoxious title
possible on otherwise decent articles. An example that comes to mind was a
fairly long article by an American-Iranian who had left Iran as a child due to
religious persecution, and felt trapped into a life-long "refugee" role in the
US, which she thought she should be able to grow out of. Or as The Guardian
titled it: "The ungrateful refugee -- We have no debt to repay" (it's only
missing the all-caps to be in full Daily Mail mode); this sure helped the
perception of that article or the point its author was trying to make. On the
other hand it probably generated a lot of clicks and outrage.

I have been reading The Guardian on and off since the 1990s, I remember a time
where it was an opiniated, left-wing, and no-nonsense newspaper. For a while
now it has slowly drifted into click-baiting tabloid realm and tribalistic
political allegiance (cynically, I believe: based on their comment sections a
lot of people are hate-reading The Guardian). It has used the lowest common
denominators of US media dicourse as templates, and applied them to its own
output in an effort to widen its appeal, at the cost of its integrity. I don't
think this should be excused.

To be fair, on the left something like salon.com is more desserving of being
compared to Breitbart (in the "foaming at the mouth" department), however I
think The Guardian's treatment of news is, if anything, _more_ insidious and
damaging. As opposed to Salon/Breitbart, they still have real journalists that
may investigate major stories (Snowden files, Panama papers), and that veneer
of real journalism is then used to prop up bonker articles telling us how
"erasers teach children to be ashamed of failure", or ask if "you are too
white, rich, able-bodied to be a feminist". Still on their front page today,
this gem: "For Trump and the US right, breaking the nuclear taboo has always
been thinkable". "The US right" was in charge when the wars in Korea, Vietnam,
Iraq 1 & 2, and Afghanistan were taking place, if they were nuke-mongers I
think we would know by now -- but hey let's accuse half of the political
spectrum of wishing for nuclear holocaust, what's the problem? Anyway. So.
Maybe I should have compared them to Fox News instead.

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matt4077
You wrote quite a long text, but none of it supports the equivalence of
Breitbart and the Guardian you’re trying to defend.

The two examples given are somewhat strange in that they seem to skew to the
right. Sure, they’re examples of bad journalism, but it’s not comparable to
the campaign style propaganda operation of Breitbart.

~~~
Hasknewbie
Huh. I actually gave, like, five examples, argued why it's not possible to
have a clear equivalence, and concluded that Fox News would have been a
somewhat more apt comparison?

It's interesting that you view some of the examples as right-wing though.

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Brendinooo
Red Feed, Blue Feed comes to mind: [http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-
feed/](http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/)

~~~
Sacho
This is fascinating! I love the duality presented side by side, how they react
in a completely different manner to the same topic. It's also a bit sad,
because it reminds me of the pressure to colour news with more opinions, take
stances, etc - very rarely will you see the style of dry, "just the facts"
reporting.

It appears they build the feeds based on a simple keyword filter - for
example, under "guns" and "liberal outlets" we have a post about a guns and
roses concert... :)

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evincarofautumn
“Just the facts” is a weaker play than a “hot take” when you’re competing for
attention. And if you’re not driving some people away with your reporting,
then you’re probably not strongly attracting their opponents, so it pays to
take sides. However, I think news organisations could be opinionated without
necessarily presenting opinion as fact.

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folli
Great idea! It would be even more interesting to compare the headlines or a
summary of the same topic between the two sources.

~~~
emptyvessel
<shame>

Truly shameless plug for a personal project that does exactly what you suggest
by clustering news articles from multiple (reputable) news sites; prioritizes
highest quality articles, and shows the headlines. It's really interesting to
see headlines on the same story side-by-side and see the bias that comes with
it. Helps me stay just a bit more centered and see multiple sides of often
complex stories.

[http://enclude.com](http://enclude.com)

</shame>

~~~
carlmr
Shouldn't you end the open shame tag with </shame> and then reopen with
<shame> after your shameless plug? Right now it looks like a shameful plug.

~~~
emptyvessel
You're right of course. Though I could also just change "shameless" to
"shameful" as you rightly did and we'd be all set. Thanks for making the
comment too - made me stop to think about another strange English idiom.

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chrisco255
RealClearPolitics
[https://www.realclearpolitics.com/](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/) has
done this sort of thing for years. Every other headline is sourced from
conservative or liberal news source.

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akvadrako
The RealClearXXX sites are my main entry point for news; the format is ideal
and I don't know anything as well curated. However they definitely have a
slight conservative bias, evidenced by their selection of articles and op-eds.

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phailhaus
This is incredible, you can get an accurate sense of the news bubble that both
sides are in by looking at the headlines alone!

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anticlickwise
yes. That was the idea of building this. Dont know how much it will help
though. I remain pessimistic

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DanielN
This is really nice! I was similarly bothered by biases in new sources so I
built [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-
tracker/mhijk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bias-
tracker/mhijknbhplbhpmemohbldppgnbohopjh)

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austinheap
Thanks for taking a stab at helping us fix discourse, every stab is needed!
Are these RSS feeds from different websites or is the tool doing some
manipulation of the data (i.e.: attempting to line up coverage of a single
topic to do a one-to-one comparison of how the left v right covers it).

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anticlickwise
Thanks. Thats all I am trying to do. Listing how different sides cover the
same topic is a most tempting idea. I am beginning to work on it

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RickJWagner
It'd be better if it showed the same topic, presented by left and right.

As done by 'RealClearPolitics'. One topic, two articles, one pro and one con.

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jackmoore
Why no Fox News?

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anticlickwise
Adding it... it just dropped out by mistake

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akvadrako
A similar site: [https://www.allsides.com](https://www.allsides.com)

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mch82
This concept is cool (the specific matchups may need refinement).

Is there a way to show the diff?

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anotherbrownguy
WSJ, BBC, New Yorker and NPR should be under what liberals read. Other than
that, good list.

~~~
akvadrako
Is WSJ really liberal? I think it's very neocon.

