Reading the news is overwhelming in today's age, given the rise in fake news and clearly biased media sources. These apps and sites are doing their best to bring you objective news articles to read for free.
The apps tackle the problem in different ways. Some rely on crowdsourced news and summaries, while others use AI to find out how objective an article really is. In the end, there isn't one clear way that will solve the big problem of news today. But through these different methods, you can break through the cognitive bubble to stop spreading fake news.
In a crowded market of news aggregators, Newsvoice has carved its own little corner over the past three years. Today, it boasts of an active community of users who use Newsvoice as their primary reader and submit news articles and summaries to it.
When you click any headline on Newsvoice, you'll find multiple links talking about the same event. A label highlights each link source's political leaning or inherent bias, such as Right, Left, Russia, China, etc.
Not all articles come with a summary, but that's because Newsvoice has strict rules about what can and can't go in a summary. All user-submitted summaries are reviewed by professional journalists to ensure quality standards.
Newsvoice ranks its articles according to a similar system as Reddit's upvoting system. Engagement is encouraged, so there is an active comment box for people to chime in. Registered users can also add news to Favorites to read later.
At a time when news media is often accused of inherent biases, it's important to know whether the article you are reading is actually objective. TrustedNews tries a new approach to calculate any news item's objectivity by analyzing how it uses language.
Most "news check" extensions and apps rely on the main website's reputation and other articles to create a profile. TrustedNews reckons this is perhaps not a fair way to assess an article that is inherently objective. So it uses AI to scan the article's language to classify sentences as objective or subjective, and calculates a score based on that.
It's interesting to read news pieces from sources you usually trust and run the TrustedNews scan on them. You might be surprised how often a source you think is objective is shaping your opinion by the way it frames the narrative.
Download: TrustedNews for Chrome (Free)
Given the barrage of news these days, you can easily lose track of a topic. The average reader can't be expected to be fully up-to-date on any news item. Acciyo tries to provide much-needed context to news with a timeline of related events.
When you're reading an article on a website Acciyo supports, the extension automatically activates in a sidebar. The timeline is a series of grey bubbles, growing larger when there are multiple items on a particular date. Hover over any bubble to see the headlines on that day, which relate to the current item you're reading, and click to open in a new tab. You can also filter the timeline by keywords.
At the bottom of the sidebar, you'll also find a few cards for key people, places, and organizations mentioned in the article. The card has a short summary, and you can click to open its Wikipedia page in the sidebar itself. It's a quick shot of context that you might be missing.
Acciyo's sidebar is a much-needed context pane for any news item. News is often about a series of events rather than one incident, which is why the timeline is such a great tool to analyze and digest the happenings.
Download: Acciyo for Chrome (Free)
The Neutral is a weekdays-only news portal that tries to present the most balanced perspective on any news item. It says that all its news articles require less than four minutes to read (on average, two minutes), and portray the unbiased version of each event.
In any article, the main part briefly summarizes the most important happenings and reactions about the news item, and presents perspectives from all parties involved. It then adds context by adding two sections: Media Perspective and Influencer Perspective.
In Media Perspective, you'll see links to how the same news item was reported by different major media houses, from all political ideologies. In Influencer Perspective, you'll see tweets about the event by major personalities, again across ideological spectrums.
You won't get a deluge of news at The Neutral because, given its limited resources, it only highlights a few items every day. And perhaps that's a good thing in a world where we are overwhelmed with minute-by-minute updates of every little event, no matter how unimportant it is in truly impacting our lives.
Given the rise in biased and unfactual news articles lately, you might find yourself wondering if the article you are reading is actually true. These two websites are among many others trying to fight the fake news battle.
In both sites, copy-paste an article link to find its veracity. Is This Credible checks 100,000 news articles and relies on The Factual's rating system to arrive at a conclusion. The Factual, formerly CivikOwl, is one of the smartest news apps to avoid fake news.
But Is This Credible doesn't always give you a result when the story is new, or the website isn't too popular. That's when you might want to turn to Is It Fake News, to find the inherent bias in the article. It'll also link you to similar articles from other websites, so you can compare the two.
Both apps also offer a Chrome extension but install that only after you try both and know which one you prefer.
The biggest problem with the news media today is that the onus is now on the reader to identify it. Journalists don't inspire the trust they used to, so as a reader, you need to learn how to spot fake news and check facts.
Try to spot judgmental words, and you'll see patterns emerge that show an inherent bias. Make it a point to read multiple articles about the same event. And as far as possible, rely on the best fact-checking websites instead of claims by any individual.
