Do You Only Read News that Matches Your Politics?

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• Always remember, all speech is made with an agenda, the key is understanding that agenda. It's possible the agenda is merely to inform, it frequently is more complex than that. Parse the facts and look for why they presented the ones they did, knowing that will usually point you to where the ones they didn't tell you are.

• Here's something helpful we can do (but I don't know how): help people know about an easy place to just go for the raw facts. That is: how do I know if Fox/Huffpost/whatever is hiding facts from me? Where do I go to look to see what's missing from their reporting? Whatcha think?

• There is no such thing as "raw facts." All communication carries bias. Ignoring issues with presentation, the selection of which facts to present tells a story larger than "here are some facts." Still, I agree that more sources of reasonably presented information would help.

  But are we confusing bias with curation* and analysis? In most fields, excepting my own, I do not want to do much of my own research. I would rather find trusted sources to collect and disseminate the relevant information. (This is one of the reasons I like this project.) Perhaps, taken to the extreme, this is why people watch biased news: they want the news to form opinions for them. This implies part of the issue lies not in the available information but the motivation of the people.

  Yet it is true: I think the news sources I like present information fairly, and some others do not. So how can we know if a source is being fair?

  *curation is not a word. What is the word for the informed selection of objects or concepts to present to an audience?

• I really like this. Even if someone just presented raw facts, there's bias in choosing what to show: we can never have a truly complete picture.

  You bring up a great dilemma: "who watches the watchmen?" If someone rates the "fairness" of a news outlet, how do we know they're fair and unbiased? I suspect we tend to build trust intuitively and that of course breaks down (e.g. the split on news sources).

  I am not sure what's a better word than "curation" for what you're talking about, but I totally got what you meant :)

• Erik, perhaps you are right. Perhaps "we can never have a truly complete picture". But I am unwilling to give up on trying to crack that nut. I think it is possible. Does the way the picture get presented look like anything we have available to us right now? Does it look like any of the current presentations and visualization of information we are exposed to today?

  No, I don't think so. I think it's something new. Something quite unique. Quite connected - interconnected even. Perhaps the best presentation is actually a choice each of us has to visualize the 'complete picture' in a variety of ways...maybe then we could see it from different angles, multiple angles. Give the user a choice of many presentations that are all more or less vetted for accuracy - and make it visual, annotated with images and useful objects like timelines, hierarchies, maps, etc.

  And to your other point - that's certainly a great and real dilemma you bring up. Perhaps we leave the watchmen behind in history and empower each other, ordinary people, to decide. Perhaps there's a method to gather, investigate, validate, and vet information and their sources together via the crowd + technology. Perhaps using such methods we can discover a way to determine how unbiased any given new source is. Maybe, just maybe, there is an objective way to rank that.

  One thing is for sure in my mind. If we (humans) don't work together and try, we'll never find out.

• Katy, amazing statement when you say "In most fields, excepting my own, I do not want to do much of my own research." I think there's a lot of power in this natural human inclination.

  Also, I would argue that there is indeed such a thing as "raw facts", one simply needs to be able to discern them. For example, the fact that the table I'm working on right now is made of granite, that's as 'raw' of a fact as you can get. If you were in the same room, you'd agree. Even if you didn't, I'm sure there is some kind of analysis that could be done to prove it to you.

  Nevertheless, I get your point. When presenting a story about any issue, that's when things get hairy...cuz there are lots of 'facts' and information and unknowns to sort out. Plus everyone consuming the story starts from their own personal knowledge base, biases and experience - so the effect the story has on each individual will be different (i.e. some 'facts' will be obvious to some folks, but not to others and they'll be the ones to question those 'facts').

  It's a fundamental problem with the tools we (as a society) have available to us to share information. Whether it's mass media (in the form of newspapers, radio, or TV) or YouTube, blogs, comment sections like this one, online forums, Wikipedia, Facebook...all of those forms simply aren't designed for empowerment. If we truly want to be empowered as a society with unbiased information, we need different tools. Tools that actually empower us with the ability to discover and interact with information in a way that creates an unbiased source.

  And that's the reason why I say your comment has some real power behind it. It can be done. With today's technology, communication and crowd sourced knowledge we have the means to create the tools to elevate ourselves from this limitation of editorially curated and one-way consumption of information.

  Do I have the answer and total solution? No. But perhaps I can offer a place to start, similar to what Erik is doing here with this site. You can see my vision at http://www.citizenscafe.com. Hopefully, Erik and I can work together to make something awesome happen. Bottom line, we should never give up hope. A better world is possible.

  ...I think curation is the right word. Perhaps better said as 'content curation' which is certainly a real phrase.

• Glad you saw this :)

  Shoot me an email. Looking forward to linking up.

• Done :)

• I generally find that any article that goes against the general slant of an outfit is highly reliable. Fox News reports something pro- Obama? It's likely true. Huffington post reports something contrary to a liberal faction's interest. Generally reliable. A libertarian think tank says we need more government for something? We probably do.

  By contrast, nearly every political meme on social media has a dose of fiction in it. People repeat what they want to believe, and question what they don't, far too often. Questioning everything is most important, to showing critical thinking skills.