Most of the sources I have seen on this site are just that.  The posters think they can get away with reporting web site content as though it is fully vetted news.  The quality is much less than a tabloid.  The criteria of truth seems to be if it is pro-abortion or pro-gay it is true news.  If it is anti-republican, it is true.  If it is pro-obama, it is true.

Shame on you liberal media liars.

This is a grey area for sure and one that we have to look at on a case by case basis.

We cannot control what sources people get their news from and use the highlight to post here, unless the post, whether highlight or not, violates our code of conduct in any way. Then we can address that.

We try to keep a balanced posting of news, but of course, sometimes that is just not possible.

We think that it helps to label those pieces as opinion, and that way, the readers know that it is not the opinion of NowPublic, but the opinion of the poster.

Of course if the posting is 'Skewed Frankenstein research' then we will address that as well, and we don't want NowPublic to become a website for bashing.

It is always good to question posts that you think are not laying out the full facts and giving a skewed vision of the news, and ask the poster to balance it out. We want to encourage people to work together to provide the best news possible, not against each other and just calling out their posts as biased, even though you think so.

Can someone clarify NowPublic policy on Blogs used as a source to support News ?

This has really been ramping up lately, where Blogs are used to support a biased slant in a news story. The blogger could even be a respected journalist, and with a major news outlet, but once they "blog" on a subject does it not become personal opinion and not news coverage ?

The way one writes a blog and writes a news story are completely different, and personally I think it is high time for someone here in the editorial department to make a decision once and for all concerning how news stories should be handles when they are using a Blog as a source. 

Not only blogs, many have taken advantage to post slanted stories with their own 'opinion' added and refused to label it opinion. after requested by wranglers, editors and others, claiming it is news, just cause they got a link to an online story or two.

If someone is using a blog as a source and it has a biased news slant, then that piece requires an 'opinion' tag. As staff members, we give the author a certain amount of time to add an 'opinion' tag via a comment on the story, usually an hour, and then we add it for them. We are not changing the posting, we are just curating the entry. Of course, we might not see all the entries of this nature, so we rely on our wranglers and guest editors to keep their eyes open for them as well.

As for using blogs as news sources, we cannot control where people highlight their excerpts from. If it is a blog with a biased slant, it will get an opinion tag, unless it is a posting where the author uses that excerpt to provide both sides of that story, and that excerpt is an example of one side.

A posting of this nature however, is also an opportunity for our community to jump in, in a respectful way of course, and argue the other side and provide good examples of what an unbiased news source would be on that subject.

We want everyone here to work together to provide good news coverage, and if other members feel a posting is too biased and that author hasn't looked at the other side, then we encourage comments on the story providing that other opinion or argument.

News can come from blogs and they can be an excellent source of alternative news - we don't want to discourage their use. However, if you see a posting you feel is not providing a balanced view of news, feel free to jump in and explain why. Of course, being respectful of the others' opinions.

Also, not all blogs are the same... it's really just a platform, and the content is entirely up to the blogger. Some are meticulous about sources and facts, some are not.  Either way, blogging is still seen as informal, and is generally presumed to reflect opinion, rather than branded objectivity. (C'mon, you think Fox and CNN and CBS and Al Jazeera are objective?) When sourcing blogs, I err on the side of more disclosure and framing rather than less: simply dumping a highlighted chunk of text into a story implies that the user is submitting it as fact, when that may not be the case. Yet another reason why framing is good, and not-framing is not-so-good.

Thanks ALL for responding !!

Correct "some" blogs are good and honorable, Some Bloggers are Good and honorable.... and then there are others.

What has been happening on Nowpublic on political stories, is sourcing  blogs as info which are blatantly biased. Quite possibly the "facts" are somewhat correct, but the wording is damning and draws conclusions in a way published news stories should not.  I have seen several blogs from known journalist, with writing nothing like their normal neutral news stories. 

All in all flaming up the news like this has really turned me away from participating here this last week.....

An example of my previous stated complaints and concerns :

Story

This is posted as news without opinion tag, by a Super Editor.

Story is from a personal web site of a self described activist.

In title the story is referred to as "perspective"

The Story is one persons view.

YET

It was posted without "opinion" tag and in at least a half day that poster has been on line editing other stories and updating his own, he still has not added the "opinion" tag to his story. 

How can NowPublic be a place for unbiased reporting when a Super Editor posts a biased story and does not tag it as opinion ? 

****Update**** at aprox. 5pm pacific on 9/10, the above linked story was updated by the author, yet still NO "opinion" marker has been placed on it. Not even a response to inquiry over need for the opinion flag has been made.

When I said above that:

"A posting of this nature however, is also an opportunity for our community to jump in, in a respectful way of course, and argue the other side and provide good examples of what an unbiased news source would be on that subject.

We want everyone here to work together to provide good news coverage, and if other members feel a posting is too biased and that author hasn't looked at the other side, then we encourage comments on the story providing that other opinion or argument."

I was referring to members offering suggestions for another point of view and excerpts from other news sites showing another side to the argument - not going around the site constantly saying the same thing but not offering up any suggestions or trying to help other members out.

As for the use of the opinion flag, there are some steps to follow:

1) If the highlight that is posted is from a clearly slanted biased news site and the poster has not offered up another side to the argument, then that piece should be labeled as opinion as it must be the poster's opinion. However, if the posting does offer some different viewpoints to the argument, whether from the same article or not, and the poster's intro is not opinion, then that does not need to be labeled as opinion. If members think that the source is a biased news slant, make a comment with evidence showing why. Staff doesn't know all the sites on the Internet and which slant they take so we rely on our members to help us out with that.

2) If the post is a highlighted excerpt, but the intro is in the poster's own words and says something like 'Clearly this means that Obama is not very bright' then that should be labeled as opinion. However if it says 'Obama spoke to a large crowd last night and many people cheered'; that is not opinion.

We are all working on this together and the opinion flag is still trying to find its home on NowPublic, so all pieces will be open to interpretation and discussion is welcomed of course, however we want to stress again that constructive discussion is encouraged; there really is no benefit to just saying 'this needs to be opinion and you know it'.

Let's all work together shall we?

Lets all work together....what a great response. Were not all journalists and coaching tends to be critical when you dont have to show your face.  I am new, but I know without cyber scrutiny from staff this site would soon be just a launching pad for complaining.

always learning at my end

Facts are only possible in Science and only with numbers not with words.

Every article and every post no matter who ethical and how well intended are both, fact as well as Opinion, even if one does site two opposite articles one being Right wing and the Other Left Wing, one will give the favouring one a better light as the other one that is disfavoured. Human nature and normal. In politics Facts are next to impossible and Opinion would be just about any thing and every thing that is out there. 

You say the Earth is Round and state this as a fact wen in fact it is an Opinion, first the earth cannot be round since it is egg shaped and two what does define round since the earth is not a circle but a sphere. There for stating that the Earth is Round is just as much an Opinion as saying it is Flat.

Even worth with Politics and religion since they are both based in large part on emotions, Belief and interpretations, yet not on Facts. 

Of course I could say I don't believe in trucks and walk into the middle of the street and then get hit by one. What matters is not what we believe but rather what we believe is true.

Evolutionary Science is not facts but theories based on a presupposition that God does not exist and that something out of nothing became everything. Complexity and design are clear facts that there is a Creator, just as a painting proves there is a painter and a building is proof there is a builder. Not based soley on belief & interpretations.

i think it would be helpful if you could select flags. like you could flag it as opinion and then after so many flags the editorial people take notice. a flag for advertisements as ive been seeing some stories where people are trying to make ads into stories lately. Also Opinion could get its own section so that when a person's story is flagged as opinion it gets the same air time of an entire section of stories so it sort of has home. granted its nice to have opinion within different topics. 

Also...it would be nice to be able to choose more than one section for a story.

other suggestions: you could sell story slots for advertising the way gothamist does and sometimes perez hilton where a post is a different color or something and noted as an advertisement. 

another suggested feature would be like Digg where a reader is encouraged to look over other stories to see if they're duplicating a newstory?