In a world where objective news coverage is often contradictory, confusing, and biased, objective news agencies should be trying to analyze their own biases in coverage in an attempt to provide their readers with as little spin or political leaning as possible. This proves difficult as each individual within the organization has their own political beliefs and leanings that could affect the coverage of objective stories. Without a way for readers to provide input on how their work is being perceived, we see objective news sources stray further and further from the hard facts, altering coverage with their own perceptions of events and issues.
Headlines is an app that attempts to hold objective news agencies accountable for applying their own political beliefs into what should be objective and politically centered news articles. Designed to be a sibling of user rating aggregates like Yelp, IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes, Headlines aggregates the “objectivity ratings” of readers across the political spectrum. Each news agency is assigned a “bias score” which reflects how far from center their recent news articles have been perceived by the user base.
Upon opening the app, users are given a number of anonymized (meaning the news agency and journalist are removed) headlines from the top objective news agencies in the country. Once users have read an anonymized article, they assign a “political leaning” on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from Left to Right. Following this, the news agency and journalist responsible for the article are revealed to them. All user responses are anonymized and aggregated into the Leader Board which tracks each news agencies’ deviation from “center” represented as their “Bias Score.” The Bias Score consists of a percentage and a leaning (left or right) for each news agency. The Leader Board ranks the news agencies from most objective to least objective based on their percentage deviation from center.
Of course, the Leader Board itself may be biased if the political leanings of the Headlines user base does not accurately represent the political demographics of the American people. When first logging into the app, users are asked to disclose their own political leanings in an attempt to have an accurate understanding of the political demographics of the user base. Beyond this, certain steps can be taken, such as applying less weight to user rankings that consistently only apply article objectivity ratings in one particular direction. However, these steps may additionally incorporate bias into the system, as it is possible the majority of objective news agencies are biased in one particular political direction. As such, Headlines remains free of such adjustments, with the hope that gaining enough well-intentioned users will compensate for these biases by the sheer number of responses and aggregated scores.
Click here to view the Headlines Prototype