WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Political discourse in this country is more polarized than ever, and part of the problem is how we get our news. The distinction between "news" and "opinion" has become clouded as reporters, writers, pundits, and talking heads all search for new ways to hold onto our attention. With so many voices shouting at us, it's getting harder to know who to listen to.This is a huge problem for our society because journalism provides the raw materials for democracy. If we don't have the whole story, or if we don't believe the person who is telling it, how can we form well-reasoned opinions, have a real debate about the issues, and ultimately make progress?
All of this noise, confusion, and outright bias is killing the conversation, driving us apart, and making it harder for people to find common ground.
WHAT'S FAIRSPIN?
It's a modest attempt to change all this.
FairSpin is a site that collects the full spectrum of political news and opinion and lets the community sort it out. By voting if a particular story leans left or right (or not at all), the community works together to separate news from opinion (opinions are great, they just shouldn't masquerade as news). By creating a complete view of the political spectrum, FairSpin helps you make your own judgments about the headlines of the day and the people writing them.
HOW DO I USE IT?
There are two ways to use FairSpin.
- Read: By revealing the bias of authors and sources, FairSpin gives you a new and useful way to read the news. Simply click and read any story you want! You don't even have to sign up, although if you do FairSpin will help you out by keeping track of the stories you've read. You can also customize your view of the news in a variety of useful ways. For example, you can see a more moderate or "fair" view of the news by hiding the far-left and far-right columns. Those of you with large monitors can also zoom out to a full-screen view.
- Vote: FairSpin doesn't decide who is biased and who isn't -- you do! Be a part of the process and make your voice heard by voting on the stories you read. It's easy: just read the story, decide what (if any) bias it has, and click one of the voting buttons at the top of the page. That's it! Your vote is added to those cast by other FairSpin users, and you instantly play a role in making FairSpin more useful and more accurate.
WHO CHOOSES THE NEWS ON FAIRSPIN?
The news stories and blog posts you read on FairSpin are collected automatically based on their popularity and significance on the Web. These stories are currently provided by memeorandum, a respected and innovative aggregator of political news. Since it is almost entirely automated, memeorandum is itself much less biased than other sites that collect their news using human editors. This means you'll see a large and diverse set of authors and sources represented on FairSpin. And while of course many of these sources have their own bias, we haven't made any decisions to include or exclude anyone based on what they have written.
"WHO THE HECK IS THAT GUY?"
FairSpin makes it easy to find out more about the people who are writing the news you read. Just click on any source or author name to see a page that summarizes their writing history and political bias (in the eyes of FairSpin users). Most sources and authors also feature a written summary courtesy of FreeBase and Wikipedia. This information gives you insight into backgrounds, perspectives, employers, corporate parents, and more.
FairSpin also features a handy search engine that enables you to search across sources, authors, and story titles. So the next time you see a name you don't recognize, FairSpin can help you find out who the heck they are.
HOW DOES FAIRSPIN DETERMINE BIAS?
All bias judgments on FairSpin are determined by the users. When users read a story and vote on it, these votes are tabulated to determine the bias of the article. The bias judgment of an article can change in real time as users continue to vote on it.
Votes are also accumulated for the article's source and author, which enables FairSpin to form a general impression of the bias of a given publisher or writer. FairSpin uses this information to make "educated guesses" about the bias of new stories. These guesses are used simply to place new stories on the political spectrum, but are discarded as soon as real users cast their own votes for the article.
HOW DO I DECIDE WHAT TO VOTE? WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA?
Everyone has their own idea of what is "biased" and what is not. And we all have our own built-in biases -- even though it is often hard to admit it. FairSpin isn't going to tell you how to vote; the point is that you need to decide for yourself. As long as you vote your mind, and in good faith, that is all that matters.
WHO IS BEHIND FAIRSPIN?
Stephen Hood and Dave Baggeroer came up with the idea for FairSpin during the last election cycle. We were both frustrated by the coverage and commentary we were seeing on both sides of the aisle, and wanted a better way to make sense of it all. To address this problem we built FairSpin as a personal tool and used it ourselves for a few months. We thought that others might find it useful too, so after some additional development work we released FairSpin to the public in April of 2009.
We see this first public version as a rough prototype with plenty of room for improvement, and we'd love to hear any feedback you have.
FairSpin is an experiment from WorkingModel LLC, a product development studio founded by Stephen and Dave.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
Anyone can read FairSpin to get a clearer view of the latest political news and opinion. Just start reading stories! But if you sign up for an account, you can also vote on the stories you read and play a role in identifying bias and holding the media accountable. Signing up is easy, fast, and free. Why stand on the sidelines when you can get involved?
