About

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:

Every code red or orange natural disaster

Every terrorist attack

Every new state leader

Every oil spill, shipwreck, plane crash, or major fire

Every attempted or successful political assasination or coup

Each day's most impactful deaths

Major political updates from any country

Major war updates from any country

Reality Brief also maintains fluid lists of:

Every ongoing war or conflict in the world

Every mass protest in the world

Recently instated heads of states

Recent natural disasters

Recent terrorist attacks

Recent prominent deaths

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.