World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
I wish people would stop linking to this crap, it is literally just what one individual American centrist thinks of sources. In his methodology he explicitly states centrist (from an American standpoint) sources are intrinsically more credible.
It's not 'one guy'. It's him and a team of volunteers/contractors.
Doesn't make them perfect, but I defy you to find better for this use.
If you have a better source of both bias and credibility with an API that lets us automate it, I'm open!
If you have a good source that’s not biased, let’s see it?
Because if not, why automate introducing a bias.
MB/FC is a good source that is not biased.
It is so biased!
Have you ever looked at the reviews it gives papers? Like the actual reasoning? It’s biased as fuck.
I dont. I dont even have a problem with using it to filter out the really terrible sources automatically. But anything further than that is placing too much trust in some guy's opinion (IMO)
If only you understood how computers dealt with timezones... you'd be amazed how much critical shit in the world ends up being run by "Just one guy we all sort of just trust".
Im aware of ntp, I've had to debug timezone errors before. But labeling which news sources are trustworthy and which arent is inherently politcal in a way timezones arent.
It's a bot and this comment will be under every single submission here now. Check the pinned post.
I know its a bot, I still think its missleading to promote this one guy's opinion like he is a font of truth.
It's easier to judge the credibility of one guy than a thousand guys.
To be fair, I don't much attention to it either, and you can always block the bot so that you don't see it. I already blocked that AI summary bot because I don't trust some random person's LLM to be unbiased and truthful.
You are claiming the MB/FC is "crap" and at least indirectly accusing it of bias or poor methodology. Since I have a subscription to Ground.News I'm able to see how MB/FCs assessments compare against other outlets doing the same job such as Ad Fontes, Wikipedia, and others and MB/FC seems to be reasonably consistent with their peers.
So do you have any concrete examples of MB/FC getting it wrong or being wildly different than their peers?
Wrote this over on the announcement post for this bot:
Just looking over the methodology it's clear that it has it's own biases:
American Bias
The website itself says it’s distinctions of left and right are US based which is very skewed from the rest of the world. There should be a disclaimer or it shouldn't be used in any world news communities.
Centrist Bias
The website follows the idea of “enlightened centrism” since if it determines a website has a left/right lean (again arbitrary) it affects the factual ratings of the sources.
Examples of this are: FAIR only getting the 2nd highest rating despite never having failed a fact check.
The Intercept getting only a “mostly factual” rating (3rd highest) despite their admittance it has never failed a fact check.
Despite my personal opinions on the pointlessness of using a US based left/right bias criteria I'd feel better if it was at least kept it it's own section but when you allow it to affect the factual rating of the source it's just outright wrong. The factual accuracy of the website should be the sole thing that affects this rating.
Questionable Fact Checking
Even just checking some of their ratings raises doubts on the websites credibility.
The ADL is rated as high (2nd highest) and wasn’t found to fail any fact checks.
The ADL was found to be so unreliable on it's reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict it is considered an unreliable source by Wikipedia.
“Wikipedia’s editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable source on antisemitism.”
Maybe Wikipedia editors are a good arbiter of truth and maybe they aren’t but as people can see there isn’t a consensus and so by choosing Media Bias/Fact Check you’re explicitly choosing to align your “truth” with this websites biases.
Everywhere in the world is very skewed from the rest of the world. Someone in Venezuela would likely not agree with a bias rating given by someone in the UK and they likely wouldn't agree with someone in India who would likely not agree with someone in China. What you're basically saying, perhaps without realizing it, is that bias ratings shouldn't be given at all.
I don't know why FAIR is being rated as "High" instead of "Very High" by MB/FC but I don't see this as some kind of overwhelming issue. The Intercept ranking has an explanation in the report and you should read it but it comes down to the fact that they're known to only cover certain stories, they're known to repress journalists, and they've been previously caught with writers that were making stuff up. Despite all of that they're still being rated "mostly factual", so again I'm not seeing this as an overwhelming issue.
So the ADL is ranked the same as FAIR. Seems consistent. You're also overstating the Wikipedia article, Wikipedia only considers them unreliable on the Palestinian Conflict. The ADL is still perfectly fine (with them) for other things.
MB/FC does still rate ADL as "High" but it's worth note that the Wikepedia re-date happened after MB/FC's last review of the ADL. The next time that MB/FC re-rates the ADL it's like to go down or get specific notes regarding the Palestinian Conflict.
I thank you for taking the time to reply. I did look at and consider your argument and your sources but at the end I find them to be unpersuasive. There's no sign of serious problems, how MB/FC evaluates sources is clearly stated and appears to be consistently applied. I will watch the ADL ranking to see what, if anything happens, but a single example of something that needs a re-rank on a specific issue doesn't demonstrate a pattern. Finally there's isn't a single media bias checker on the planet that can be all things to all people at all times, it's not possible, and since it's not possible you really can't knock them for not being up to a literally impossible standard.
What I'm saying is that on a world news community we shouldn't be using a US based left/right. What that should be should be voted on by the community if the mods insist we need to have some sort of fact checker like this which I disagree is needed.
The reason FAIR doesn't is because MB/FC downgrades sources if it (arbitrarily based on the US right skewed Overton window) decides a source is left/right bias even if there has never been a failed fact check. For The intercept it was literally 1 reporter and they retracted all bogus statements, I could see that being 2nd rating then.
Again the 3 sources I mentioned we're literally the first 3 I checked, it's not a small issue with MB/FC it's the fact that the methodolgy downgrades the factual rating if the source isn't as centrist as the (effectively) 1 guy that runs the website wants the source to be. What number of incorrect ratings would make you decide this is a terrible checker? Cause with some time I'm sure I could come up with any reasonable target given.
Didn't overstate I specifically mentioned twice what it was basing that off of. Also I don't see how that would be consistent when 1 source has never failed a fact check and the other has been deemed unreliable on both the Palestinian conflict and on anti-sentism. How should both of those be the same rating?
There probably isn't a fact checker out there that's going to be perfect and also free but that doesn't mean we shoehorn a crappy one in here without putting massive disclaimers clearly calling out the biases it has.
Both Ground News and Media Bias are tuned to a very US-centric vision of what is left or right, which means that thanks to this right biased Overton window, anything they classify as left would probably be considered center in Europe. Unfortunately, said window is also slinding to the right in Europe under the influence of European right leaders calling anything left of center "far-left", see for example : Macron.
It's a fair criticism but the idea that there's some Media Bias organization out there that CAN do the job is false. Everywhere in the world is very skewed from the rest of the world. Someone in Venezuela would likely not agree with a bias rating given by someone in the UK and they likely wouldn’t agree with someone in India who would likely not agree with someone in China. What you’re basically saying, perhaps without realizing it, is that bias ratings shouldn’t be given at all.
Excellent example. To an American Macron would be "Far Left". To a Frenchie he's "Center". In China he'd likely be "Right or Far Right".
This highlight the problem. NO Media Bias organization could ever possibly hope to encompass all of that, so the best that's possible is for the rating organization to clearly explain their viewpoint, methodology, and be consistent in their ratings. All of which I think MB/FC is doing acceptably well.