[mc32]

At least in the near future, this has the potential to make facts-and-figures based news less biased (less influenced by author idiosyncrasies). Personally, I would rather news not be laden with personal flourishes that authors add either as filler or due to personal opinion.

I do imagine further into the future, the automated systems will be "improved" with tone and bias to better fit the tastes of the individual reader, to the detriment of us writ large.

[nkozyra]

Presentation of facts alone doesn't really preclude bias, though. Certainly all journalists carry bias - and styleguides and journalistic standards are intended to mitigate this - but any software intended to encapsulate some facts into some allotted space will also carry bias. Source/quote selection and omission will always lend some bias and news by nature has a finite space. Print news in particular imposes bias through strict space requirements, driven editorially. And then there's the weight of the sources quoted, defining a "side" or "angle" to a story and making sure there's balance in opposing voices, etc.

I think a lot of people see bias as overt when it can be quite negligible and minor. But then they also often conflate news commentary with news. It's a pretty blurred line.

That said, local news (politics, business, crime) tends to skew less toward prescribed narrative and more toward facts and points because it's often very dry.

[mc32]

Understood. Yet, this would still be an improvement over newsstories which try to read insight into something where what they do's more or less projection and speculation without saying so much.

"Amazon buys WF". vs "Jeff Bezos buys WF so you never have to talk to a cashier"

Or, "Physician runs over pedestrian" vs. "Physician accused of insurance fraud runs over pedestrian"

[Dylan16807]

I'm confused. Your first example seems to be adding pointless false commentary, while the second is adding real information about the person.

[mc32]

Right, but that information is irrelevant to the cause, it's there to color opinion. Accused (not even proven) fraudster, therefore adds to possibility of fault thru negative association.

[Dylan16807]

If it's the most notable bit of public info about the person, go for it. If they're cherrypicking out of dozens of factoids to make them sounds bad, then it's a problem. The same headline could be fair or unfair depending on how it came about.

[chrischen]

Also choosing what to report or what not to report—even as consumers choosing what news to read—introduces bias into the system.

[mc32]

I would think that an automated system would have less ad-hoc bias.

It would report on whatever triggers newsworthiness[1] rather than whatever gains the attention of a reporter (which would have fewer if any stated minimums or maximum requirements).

Concretely speaking it's the difference between human-curated search engines and automated search engines like Google.

[1] Since such a system would require thought and design, there would be less impulsive influence.