A new FireFox plugin knows when somebody on the internet is lying. Or, to put it more exactly, it knows when text (from a web page) on your screen is "spin" - politically motivated stretching of the truth. It was created by a conservative from Microsoft and a liberal (so you know it has to be unbiased, I suppose), although its web page holds up the evil, dreaded NYT as an example, leading "some" to suspect a lean to the right.

The software detects "spin" by looking at linguistic features of the writing. One example is passive voice, which is assumed to mean the author is trying to hide causal blame ("Bombs landed" vs "Bad people dropped bombs"), et cetera.

Problem is, the software doesn't do any of what it promises to. It's a great example of spin itself. In fact, the software seems to be lying outright, trying to exploit free labor out of early adopters. The code relies "heavily" on user submitted data, and is pretending to be able to do things it can't, in order to get free training data from the masses.

Here's the ironic part. This was covered in

• Wired Magazine (SpinSpotter Covers Biased, Unethical Journalism)
• The Washington Post (Funding In Hand, SpinSpotter Ready To Call Out Media Bias)
• The Wall Street Journal (At Tech Show, Even News Is Target For Improvement)

They all got it miserably wrong, left and right alike. Perhaps this tells us the problem isn't bias, so much as ineptitude, minus exceptions like Air America and Fox Noise?

Interesting idea. I'm no journalist, but it seems good non-editorial journalism would require writing in the passive voice. I always chuckle when I remember the two contrasting headlines on the OJ verdict, one from a southern black community which read "Free at Last!" and one from Germany which read "Wrong Verdict".

Regarding the obvious bias in the media, it seems pretty clear the majority of the Fox shows are pulling for McCain(Maybe with the exception of OReilly strangely enough). You can see it in the editorial decision making process of what they decide to give airtime, and how much airtime they give to it. Some of the morning folk (its a morning show so I'm not sure its supposed to be straight news) sometimes put overtly critical reporting about Obama.

This in contrast to MSNBC, which is a seething pit of liberal bias and hatred, to the point I doubt they really have any mainstream or independant viewers left.

CNN is pulling for Obama but probably no more than Fox is pulling for McCain again, not so much in their wording, but more in what they decide to give airtime. When Gallup announced a 5pt favor for McCain amongst registered voters and USA Today/Gallup announced a 10pt favor amongst likely voters, the headline on CNN was 'DEAD HEAT' where they quoted their own poll which showed Obama up by 1. Immediately following, they gave their elderly political commentator a little air time where he talked about more electoral states switching over to Obama. Subtle, but far more effective than the pure hate coming out of MSNBC.

What really pisses me off are the cheer leaders who claim to be "independant". Jeffry Toobin falls into this category. Everytime they air a peice about McCain, he provides the rebuttal from the Obama talking points list, yet he is supposedly an inpartial analyst. At least when Fox asks Karl Rove his opinion, you know his speil is going to come with a right wing slant.

Originally Posted by cbwm

Interesting idea. I'm no journalist, but it seems good non-editorial journalism would require writing in the passive voice.

Passive voice is very misunderstood. "Bombs fell on Israel" is active voice, because bombs are the subject, and falling is what they were doing. "Bombs were dropped" is passive voice, because bombs are still the subject, but falling isn't what they were doing, it's something that happened to them - it's passive rather than active.

Quoth a review of the product in question

Passive clauses always have a participial form of the verb, in almost all cases (setting aside "concealed passives" like "This needs looking at") a past participle. The past particple of land has the formlanded. So quite independently of the absurdity of an algorithm running on raw text being able to spot things as subtle as strength of supporting evidence or balance on controversial topics, the inventors of this crucially linguistic tool (or the people who wrote their press release) don't know even the most elementary things about English grammar. Caveat downloader.

The software itself gives this example of passive voice writing it would flag as indicating spin "

Rockets flew into Israel last night, killing five.

" - this is also written in active voice, because, again, rockets are the grammar wise subject of the sentence, and flew is something they did, not something that happened to them.

Politicians have long known how to craft language to deceive. Algorithms that only look at NLP will be fooled by skillful lying.

Originally Posted by cbwm

Regarding the obvious bias in the media, it seems pretty clear the majority of the Fox - a seething pit of conservative bias and hatred

That's besides the point, though. We can poop in our hands and throw it at each other all day talking about specific TV channels like they were baseball teams, but I'm hoping we can talk about the aggregate.

Second misquote got you a TP ding. Lets be honest here. If we put the various stations on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being extreme left and 10 being extreme right, MSNBC comes in a 2 or 3, CNN comes in a 3.5-4, and Fox comes in a 6-6.5. Trying to misquote me to get your misconception of Fox being a pit of hatred would be to call it a leftist station. Obviously a misnomer.

Speaking of biased coverage, I'm sure most of you saw Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson (ABC) last night. Regardless of whether you think the questions were fair, or quotes taken out of context, check out Charlie Gibson's interview with Barack Obama:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzecb7Qe6vo

Looks more like a cheer leading session and life biography. No grilling about whether he is ready to be president, no hostile interview format, just long videos about what a good guy he is. Pathetic. No wonder their market share is non-existent.