About
Läbipaistvus — Estonian for transparency — is an independent, non-profit project that makes media bias in Estonia visible. We read the country’s largest news houses at scale, attribute every political statement to its speaker, score its tone, and publish the result as an open ledger anyone can inspect — every number traceable to the exact sentence it came from.
The system is in beta: the analysis is not yet complete, coverage has gaps, and some data may be missing or not yet analysed.
Answer questions that could until now only be argued about: how an outlet’s tone toward a party moves across an election cycle, whether the Russian-language desk treats a politician differently, what happened to someone’s coverage when they switched parties, which promises were made and when.
No verdicts, no outlet rankings blessed by us, no fact-checking — tone is not truth. No republishing: articles remain the publishers’ work, we link to the original everywhere, and short quotes appear only as evidence for individual statements. No political or corporate money.
Trust in media is easiest to attack where its workings are opaque. Transparency cuts both ways: the same ledger that exposes a slanted pattern also defends honest journalism against vague accusations of bias. Conversations about the press should start from evidence — in either direction.
Design philosophy
Beautiful · simple · powerful · intuitive
Läbipaistvus is a beautiful new modern building whose archive is kept on paper. Clean lines and light outside; inside, every fact, every quote and the whole record filed where anyone can pull it open. That is why the site reads the way it does — monospace type for the record, whitespace instead of chrome, folder tabs instead of menus, and every chart a document that opens to its sources.
Questions people ask
The short answers, honestly given
People behind the curtain
Questions, corrections, or a statement you believe was misread? Write to the address above — flagged errors get investigated against the source text, and systematic ones fix the pipeline for everyone.