Even a list of facts can include bias, by which facts it includes and which it omits. There exists no unbiased source of news. Better to have information, along with documentation of any potential sources of bias, evaluate that for yourself with the caveats included, and give it appropriately discounted weight.
We are working on this problem at Newslines. We collect news into timelines, comprised of just-the-fact summaries. We are looking for more contributors to bring us up to date with our Donald Trump newsline http://newslines.org/donald-trump/
It is important to make a distinction between what has been reported, and what is true. Nothing is added to our site unless it is sourced from a credible source and all news from even credible sources that has anonymous sources is tagged as "Rumor/Unsourced". So let's say a credible source reports, using unnamed sources, that the national guard is going to be deployed to round up illegal immigrants. So we would write that as "According to the AP, the national guard is going to be deployed to round up illegal immigrants" and tag that as "Rumor/unsourced". Then when the next report comes out we say "The White house denies the report". And if another report came out about that issue we could tag them, and link them together as being the same issue. You would then be able to follow the timeline of events as they were reported. Contrast this to a newspaper which will massage the information you read each day, and to Wikipedia, which will remove the earlier reports to give you the truth. Problem is the general reader won't know what is kept in and what has been left out.
As for pushing a narrative, that is a form of bias that can be eliminated in the main by extracting the facts from articles. Consider two articles, one in the New York Times ("Trump's Florida rally shows he is unfit to lead" and in Breitbart ("Trump's Florida rally show's he is the best person to lead our country"). While both of these are highly partisan, the fact remains the same: Trump has a rally in Florida.
That said, our tools aren't perfect, but we can build on them.
I applaud the effort but reckoning "credible" seems like a tough proposition. How and by whom is the list of "credible" sources curated.
I wonder if there's some way to come up with content quality metrics for news based on pure reporting of as many of the facts available. Maybe something similar to the stack exchange type system.
You are right. It is very tricky to determine which sources are credible. The National Enquirer broke the John Edwards love child story, despite not being a credible source. And on the other hand we see credible news sources distort the truth to fit the narrative every day. However, the first stage is create systems that let us add news events and reporting in an objective form in which it can be assessed (we have done this already), and then to work on systems that allow us to assess their validity (work in progress). I think something like stack exchange can work, and it will be interesting to experiment to see what works.
I hear you. I want more facts, less opinion, and a good list of verifiable sources out of my news. Suffice it to say, there's precious little of that to be found anywhere.
I think this is preferable. If everyone was more upfront with their bias, then it becomes incumbent on the reader to get a complete view. Sure, plenty of people would just read what they want, but that's ALREADY happening. At least there would be less denial about it.