In this day and age there can never be too many fake and misinformation news fighters. Yesterday, News Corp launched Knewz.com, a new platform that is filter bubble and “crass clickbait” free and features current news stories from publishers of all sizes that span the entire political spectrum. Basically Knewz takes a headline and provides several links directly to different full text stories from varied sources, so you can get multiple versions of the story. For a more descriptive statement, the press release states “Knewz is unique in that readers can, at a single glance, see multiple sources. It is not egregious aggregation but generous aggregation.”
Here are my observations:
- When you land on the home page, you will be surprised by the visual presentation. You will see mostly bold black text with headline descriptions highlighted in bright yellow all against a white background. There are no images on the main landing and topic pages (except for one dealing with Real Estate).
- Knewz does an admirable job in providing links to both liberal and conservative sources for a headline. You also have stories with links to both serious publishers and those that are more entertainment focused, such as TMZ. The press release states that currently Knewz, in its Beta format, is sourcing headlines from more than 400 publishers.
- You can search for a news story or browse via these topics: Politics, National, World, Business, Tech & Science, and Life. On the Business page here is a sampling of top news headlines covered:
- 4th Quarter US Economy Growth
- Barstool Sports Sells 36% Stake to Penn National Gaming
- Cal Tech Wins $1.1 Billion Patent Infringement Case: Apple and Broadcom Must Pay
- FDA Warns Purell Maker to Stop Claiming It Can Prevent Flu, Ebola
- Trump Signs USMCA Trade Deal with Canada and Mexico
- Facebook to Pay $550 Million to Settle Facial Recognition Technology Lawsuit
- Also to note is the full coverage of China’s Coronavirus outbreak. Headlines are listed that cover the wide-ranging economic ramifications and concerns for supply chains and individual businesses.
- If you are uncertain of the background of a particular source, I recommend checking with Allsides Media Bias Ratings, which are: Left – Lean Left – Center – Lean Right – Right. Click here to read about how the ratings are calculated. Make sure you scroll past the chart to the actual ratings,. You can also search for an individual source.
