Sensationalism, filter bubbles, and the propaganda model cause many people to consume only news that is self-validating, exciting, or politically expedient for owners of the media. Reality Brief reduces a degree of bias by automatically reporting every instance in the world of a variety of predetermined types of events.
More specifically, Reality Brief uses the Wikimedia API to pull current information from crowdsourced lists. It also pulls natural disaster data from gdacs.org.
Using these sources, Reality Brief automatically reports:
Reality Brief also maintains fluid lists of:
This list is still growing and being refined. Furthermore, all news is inherently biased in that it is an arbitrary selection from a vast amount of available information. However, it is possible understand and control how that information is selected. By leaving this selection process to a simple and consistent set of rules, this site is an attempt at reducing human and political bias, allowing for transparency about news selection, and ultimately gaining a slightly closer grasp on reality.