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Comments and observations on social and political trends and events.

Friday, May 29, 2020

Three Resources for Checking News Bias

Scott Adams recommended an app called Ground News in one of his Periscopes. I checked it out and installed the app. When you open the app it lists the latest stories with a banner beneath it with the following categories: Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right and Right. It shows which news outlets in each category have covered the story. You can click on the five buttons for the political bent you want to check out to compare how each news outlet reported that story. Here is their URL. https://app.ground.news/top

If you sign up for their weekly email it shows examples of stories that show the "blindspots" of the coverage on the left and right. They'll post stories with a breakdown of how many news outlets in the five different categories of bias covered that story. They breakdown might show that, say, no outlets reported a particular story on the right or on the left. 

There is another site called AllSides that does pretty much the same thing. I don't think they have a phone app like Ground News does. Their home page lists stories in three columns: News from the Left, News from the Center and News from the Right.

AllSides also has a chart under the tab Media Bias that ranks news sites by their bias. You can vote to indicate whether you agree with their rating. There is a table that includes a column that shows whether the site's users agree with the AllSides rating. https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

You can follow both Ground News and AllSides on Twitter or Facebook.

6/3/2020 Update. Found a third site that also compares the news reporting of the left, right and center. https://leftright.news/


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