[chris_f]

This is really an analysis of the use of biased language in news articles, which is interesting but only one dimension of potential bias.

It is very possible to use non "charged" language, but still report a topic with a strong bias. For example, Slate is left leaning by most measures, but the below landscape chart from the study has them dead center. Maybe they are better at using neutral terms?

https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/phrasebias.jpg

[li2uR3ce]

> dead center

That's a bias that gets tugged around by the bias of extremes rather than the sensible. Sorry, I hate that term because it is often used to imply that you can average a wrong and a right and get something more correct. Often enough, one side[1] is decently close to right on an issue and the other is pretty much wrong. Picking the center of that isn't more right.

Often the quest for "neutrality" is bunk. In flat-world vs round-world, the flat-world is not with equal standing but the "neutral" seeking would often present as if the flat-world idiots have a case. While issues may have some subjectivity, we should not constantly pretend that there's an even distribution.

A neutral language meter can't ever hope to be right. It's not an analysis of what's well supported. Rather it's an analysis of assertiveness. I'm very assertive about the world being fucking round. I'm a red flag for such a bias meters.

Sorry if I'm going off but--I'll just go a head and say it--that term triggers the fuck out of me for getting undeserved validity.

[1] On a per issue basis. This is not to imply that one side is more consistently correct across issues.

[iNic]

Can someone explain this chart to me? What does the position on the chart indicate? Slate is left leaning, but it is correctly marked in blue.

EDIT: from the paper "Our method locates newspapers into this two-dimensional media bias landscape based only on how frequently they use certain discriminative phrases, with no human input regarding what constitutes bias. The colors and sizes of the dots were predetermined by external assessments and thus in no way influenced by our data. The positions of the dots thus suggest that the two dimensions can be interpreted as the traditional left-right bias axis and establishment bias, respectively"

[IAmEveryone]

It’s a projection of the NLP’s vectors into 2D space. Remember the illustrations for the king - man = queen example for word embedding? They also often used a 2D space. You can sometimes, but rarely Intuit a sense for these dimensions, but they don’t come with any natural definition or unit.

[mypastself]

I still don’t get it. Is the chart supposed to show axes in addition to the left/right and pro-establishment/critical, currently represented by colors and sizes? How do the “lack of human input” and “external assessments” fit into the explanation?