SpinSpotter Crowdsources Media Bias Flagging
SpinSpotter launched this week at DEMOfall as a Firefox3 plugin. SpinSpotter’s goal is to tap the wisdom of the crowd to flag media bias in online coverage.
SpinSpotter lets users see, share, and edit spin wherever they go online. To guide users, SpinSpotter lays out what it calls the “Seven Deadly Spins:”
- Reporter’s Voice: The reporter employs language (in the form of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, or superlatives) that conveys meaning beyond the supporting evidence provided in the article, and begs the question: In who’s opinion and by what objective standard?
- Passive Voice: The reporter employs language in which whomever performs the action is not the subject of the sentence, and which begs the question: Who did that?
- Biased Source: The reporter quotes a source that has a definable point of view, or works for an organization with a clear point of view, but the reporter does not disclose the source’s view or affiliations.
- Disregarded Context: The reporter places emphasis on one part of an event without giving equal weight to the full aspect of what happened.
- Selective Disclosure: The reporter fails to mention a critical element of the story.
- Lack of Balance: The reporter fails to give equal voice to both sides, or all sides, of a controversial story.
- Over-Reliance on Press Releases: The reporter reprints, in whole or in part, a press release (a packaged announcement from a political campaign, corporation, or advocacy group) as if it were a news story, or fails to sufficiently validate and/or edit a press release before using it as the basis for a news story.
MEDIA deluge here:
- VentureBeat, SpinSpotter aims to clear up media bias
- RWW, SpinSpotter, A New Browser Plugin To Help Spot Media Bias
- Wired Blog, SpinSpotter Combats Unethical, Biased Journalism
- NY Times Bits, Start-Up Attacks Media Bias, One Phrase at a Time
- CNET, SpinSpotter lets readers edit out bias in online news
SpinSpotter claims there’s a deep hunger for objective news writing. According to studies by the Pew Research Center cited by SpinSpottter,
- 67% of Americans say they want unbiased news
- 66% consider the press “one-sided”.
- 9% of journalists are concerned about the media’s credibility.
While SpinSpotter has a bold and admirable goal, for it to deliver on it’s promise, there will need to be a ton of users.
“Our main goal during this beta testing period is to recruit users who can go in and create spinmarkers so that the service’s algorithm can become smarter about flagging key spin phrases etc. on its own, “SpinSpotter’s PR said.
This much reliance on user-generated content is risky. Seems a better approach might be to borrow a page from Mahalo and actually do some of the SpinSpotting itself — at least as a way to kick off the service.
Plans for an IE7 version are in the works.
(via amandachapel tweet)
