I told you September 7 about a browser plug-in called SpinSpotter designed to spot bias in news stories. At the moment, the plug-in was not available to the public. Today, SpinSpotter was opened up for public use. Read about and DOWNLOAD SPINSPOTTER HERE. Note that only Firefox 3 is supported, and that IE 7 will be supported soon. It turns out that SpinSpotter relies heavily or entirely on user input, which is problematic for three reasons: 1) criteria — such as “passive voice,” “disregarded context,” “selective disclosure” and others — are too subtle for the quick-reading mass public to deal with; 2) the most active users will be those with abundant of an axe to grind that they’ll mobilize mass input, thus making SpinSpotter itself an agent of bias; and 3) it seems to require mass participation on every exposition, which ain’t gonna happen.

Orginal post by Mike