A community for discussing events around the World
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For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
We've had some trouble recently with posts from aggregator links like Google Amp, MSN, and Yahoo.
We're now requiring links go to the OG source, and not a conduit.
In an example like this, it can give the wrong attribution to the MBFC bot, and can give a more or less reliable rating than the original source, but it also makes it harder to run down duplicates.
So anything not linked to the original source, but is stuck on Google Amp, MSN, Yahoo, etc. will be removed.
The bot is instituted by the Admins and with good reason.
But yes, this has been the problem that pops up recently. The bot sees "Oh, MSN, they're reliable..." but the OG source is not.
When did this happen? The admins instituted it for !politics, and the admins changed their minds about having it for !news and friends, but wanted to keep it in !politics?
What's the reason?
It's Rooki's pet project, and so it has to stay.
Heightened misinformation through the election season.
Misinformation like the website MBFC, which equates the level of factual accuracy of The Guardian to Breitbart?
No it’s okay, I checked the rating for MBFC on MBFC and they rated themselves very well.
Qnr that damn left-leaning, uh, Associated Press.
No, no, you see, they have a left-center bias because they... Report the news factually and dispassionately. Seriously, this article titled "AP exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin" is cited by MBFC as "utiliz[ing] moderate-loaded language in their headlines in their political coverage".
They specifically cite: "However, in some articles, the author demonstrates bias through loaded emotional language such as this: “PUSHED Ukrainian officials to investigate BASELESS corruption allegations against the Bidens.”"
Yeah, no fucking shit it was completely baseless and no fucking shit Trump pushed for this. How dare they present reality the way it actually is instead of fucking both-sidesing an obvious lie. Clearly left-center bias.
Don't forget how highly they ranked Radio Free Asia
I don't hate Radio Free Asia as much as some people, but even I recognize that MBFC is on crack when talking about it compared to – as I keep bringing up – The Guardian.
The MBFC Credibility Rating for RFA is "HIGH CREDIBILITY", while for The Guardian, it's "MEDIUM CREDIBILITY". For factual reporting, RFA gets "HIGH" while The Guardian gets "MIXED" – which is two ranks down from RFA and is – again – on the same level as Breitbart. Meanwhile, didn't RFA run an anti-China story using a picture from a Reddit thread as their only source?
MBFC does NOT equate the Guardian with Breitbart:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
Overall, we rate The Guardian as Left-Center biased based on story selection that moderately favors the left and Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks over the last five years.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/breitbart/
Overall, we rate Breitbart Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, the publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda, as well as numerous false claims.
If you check their list of questionable sources, Breitbart is listed, the Guardian is not:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/
Example of a “failed” fact check for The Guardian:
This was an article entirely about stress and anxiety. Ignoring that stress and anxiety have physical effects on the body, the only way someone could conclude that the article was about like, toxic apartments and not stress and anxiety was if they failed to read the article at all and instead just read the headline and made up an article in their head.
Such obviously agenda driven nitpicky bullshit is why people don’t respect the bot.
Correlation is not causation. I had my first heart attack when I was renting. It wasn't BECAUSE I was a renter. You literally cannot say someone is experiencing stress because they're a renter, that's a stretch.
They could be experiencing stress by their overall socio-economic status which is also a reason they are renting, not the other way around.
I had my 2nd heart attack as a home owner. Again, my status as a renter or owner has nothing to do with it.
“Renters experience stress and anxiety over renting to the point of illness” is not code for “and homeowners don’t feel any and are all perfectly healthy.” The only way to read it that way is if you’re trying to manufacture “fact checks” (or defend them, I guess). Same energy:
Oh, do you think that if the article about stress from renting mentioned that financial problems contribute to that then it would make that fact check unfair?
Because it does.
Again, correlation is not causation.
They aren't stressed because they're spending 41% of their income on housing, they're stressed because of their low socio economic status which causes them to spend 41% of their income on housing.
It's a symptom, not a cause.
Again, they're putting the cart before the horse and MBFC correctly points out what they're trying to say is factually false.
This is actually a great example for how the bot actively discourages critical thinking, as it seems you have started from your conclusion (MBFC is correct), worked backwards, and apparently have not even read the article or anything I’ve said in response to you.
Wow, I wonder if the article mentioned any other factors, like no-fault evictions and poorly maintained apartments, in the second paragraph?
You keep talking about there being other factors like that wasn’t entirely what the article was about. Furthermore, almost every single one of those statements was about what advocacy organizations are claiming. Reporting what they are saying is factually inaccurate? Come off it.
Again, those are stressors caused by their lower socioeconomic status, not because they are renters. They are renters BECAUSE of their status, and are stressed by their status. They are NOT stressed because they are renters.
Trying to spin it the other way is why the story is, correctly, marked as false.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questions/10-correlations-that-are-not-causations.htm
For clarity, your defense of MBFC’s rating is that anxiety over rising rent costs outpacing wages (leading to more people spending more of their income on rent), worries about no fault eviction (which only happens if you rent), and stress from poor quality housing (which again is mostly a problem for renters, because homeowners can deal with it how and when they please), is somehow completely unconnected to the fact these people are renting?
Yeah, I guess it’s technically true that they could have rented a castle or a luxury apartment instead. But it’s completely irrelevant when talking about the effects of housing insecurity on large swathes of the populace, and trying to spin it as “The Guardian says renting is bad for your health, negative points!!” is outright dishonest.
No, I'm saying them being renters is at the same level as all the other problems. They face a lot of shit because of their poor economic status, and that causes them stress, but one of the things they face is their economic status forces them to rent.
Renting doesn't cause the stress, it's caused by the same thing that causes them stress. The root cause is lower socio economic status. Everything flows from that.
Cool, you have gone so far into the weeds that this no longer even resembles the original fact check, which was:
Survey: did housing worries make you feel sick in the past year?
About 1/4th of renters: yes
The Guardian: article focusing entirely on the stress renters face
MBFC: if you only read the headline this article is very misleading!!
Jordan, please look at the 'Factual Reporting' metric. They consider both of them to be 'MIXED', and as @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone correctly points out, the sorts of few-and-far-between "fact checks" performed on The Guardian are complete nitpicks, while Breitbart is outright a disinformation outlet, peddling climate denialism, anti-vaxx, and other things that make it – based on what you said earlier – a source that isn't credible enough to be posted to this very community.
The Guardian is much more factually accurate than "MIXED", and Breitbart is much less factually accurate than "MIXED", yet somehow they elevate Breitbart while dragging The Guardian's credibility through the mud.
(To be clear, though, I still think what you guys are doing with this change is a huge improvement.)
That's not the overall rating though, which is why Breitbart is Questionable and the Guardian is not.
Jordan, please elaborate: in what world does The Guardian have "MIXED" factual reporting and have "MEDIUM CREDIBILITY"? I really want to know why you think either of those ratings even remotely comport with reality.
(Also, "Questionable" is way, way too lenient for Breitbart.)
It's even worse when you compare their final comments/summaries...
I mean, it's all right there on the page:
"Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks over the last five years."
With cited examples:
"Failed Fact Checks
The proportion of lung cancer cases only diagnosed after a visit to an A&E ranges from 15% in Guildford and Waverley in Surrey to 56% in Tower Hamlets and Manchester. – Inaccurate
Private renting is making millions of people ill. – False
“The number of children needing foster care has risen by 44% during the coronavirus pandemic, creating a “state of emergency,” a children’s charity said.” – False
915 children admitted with malnutrition in Cambridge hospitals between 2015 and 2020. There were 656 similar admissions at Newcastle hospitals and 656 at the Royal Free London hospitals. – False
Nine percent of parents surveyed say their children have started self-harming in response to the cost of living crisis. – False"
Medium Credibility stems from this:
"In review, story selection favors the left but is generally factual. They utilize emotionally loaded headlines such as “The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it” and “Trump back-pedals on Russian meddling remarks after an outcry.” The Guardian typically utilizes credible sources such as thoughtco.com, gov.uk., and factually mixed sources such as HuffPost and independent.co.uk."
So, yeah, biased headlines, "factually mixed sources".
Numerous?? It cites five over the past five years, and they're small errors that don't change the overall point of the article and that to my understanding The Guardian later corrected. You have to know that the amount of articles The Guardian has put out in five days – let alone five years – turns that figure into a rounding error.
Please explain how they could possibly have the same accuracy rating as Breitbart.
It cites 5, numerous means there are many more, but these are the cited examples.
They don't have the same accuracy as Breitbart, again, Breitbart is Questionable and is on their list of fake news sources, the Guardian is not.
Then why does it list them on the same tier for "Factual Accuracy"? It calls the ranking "Factual Accuracy", as in literally the extent to which they get facts right. And those are "MIXED" for both sources.
Because there's more to a rating than factual accuracy.
For example:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/10/10/chris-wallace-harris-has-plateaued-trump-is-now-a-slight-favorite/
"Chris Wallace: Harris Has ‘Plateaued’ — Trump Is Now a Slight Favorite"
Yeah, that's factually accurate. Chris Wallace did, in fact, say that.
“I’m hearing this from top Republicans and top Democrats, that Harris seems to have stalled out a bit in the last couple of weeks. You know, she had a great rollout, great convention, very successful debate, but she seemed to have plateaued. One top Republican said two weeks ago, I would’ve said that she was a slight favorite. He said today I’d say Trump is a slight favorite.”
He was quoting some un-named source, he didn't make that assertation himself, which makes the headline dishonest, but those words did come out of Wallaces mouth.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/
Really weird it is rated "Reliable" when the New York Times wrote and reported on literal fake news weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which manufactured consent for an illegal invasion and overthrow of Iraq and killing literally MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.
On what planet is the newspaper of the establishment of the New York elite, literally wall street, "Left" I don't think they support putting all the corporate board members in prison and establishing workers co-ops and replacing the neoliberal status quo with socialism.
You don't have to go back 20 years. They also committed a fairly big oopsie, not that long ago.
The Guardian: I don't think this one article about renters from 2020 proves its case very well. Personally, I'm not convinced. MIXED
New York Times: You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies? I don't think so.
The New York Times is a special class of paper called a "Newspaper of Record" until or unless that changes, nobody will question their reliability.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record
Oops?
no that's different....
Nevermind the fact that they still haven't retracted the probably false 'Screams without Words' article literally written by a member of the IDF with little to no reporting experience.
Your language around the mbfc website makes it seem like you're involved with them.
Please don't turn it on for the Portland sub.
In what way does having the MediaBiasFactCheck bot help with misinformation? It's not very accurate, probably less than the average Lemmy reader's preexisting knowledge level. People elsewhere in these comments are posting specific examples, in a coherent, respectful fashion.
Most misinformation clearly comes in the form of accounts that post a steady stream of "reliable" articles which don't technically break the rules, and/or in bad-faith comments. You may well be doing plenty of work on that also, I'm not saying you're not, but it doesn't seem from the outside like a priority in the way that the bot is. What is the use case where the bot ever helped prevent some misinformation? Do you have an example when it happened?
I'm not trying to be hostile in the way that I'm asking these questions. It's just very strange to me that there is an overwhelming consensus by the users of this community in one direction, and that the people who are moderating it are pursuing this weird non-answer way of reacting to the overwhelming consensus. What bad thing would happen if you followed the example of the !news moderators, and just said, "You know what? We like the bot, but the community hates it, so out it goes." It doesn't seem like that should be a complex situation or a difficult decision, and I'm struggling to see why the moderation team is so attached to this bot and their explanations are so bizarre when they're questioned on it.
Well, for example, just today (or maybe it was yesterday? Things get blurry after a while) somebody posted a Breitbart link.
Now, most of the Lemmy audience is smart enough to know Breitbart is bullshit, and I did remove the link when I saw it, but until I removed it, it was up with the MBFC bot making it clear to anyone who did not know that it was, in fact, bullshit.
We can't catch everything right away, so it's good having a bot mark these things.
Wouldn't the fact that the Breitbart article had – if I recall correctly – a 25:10 upvote-downvote ratio by the time it was removed suggest that the MBFC bot was functionally useless in counteracting a disinformation source? Presumably because most people simply read a headline about Zelensky that wasn't negative, said "oh cool", upvoted without reading the article or looking at the source, and continued scrolling? And I can hardly imagine any of the 10 downvoters actually checked the MBFC bot; instead they noticed that it was Breitbart and downvoted because of its notoriety.
We discussed boiling the bot down to a tag on the posts, but apparently there was some technical limitation doing that? Frankly, it's a little over my head.
Yeah, I've heard too that post/user flairs don't gel with ActivityPub for some reason. 😅
Yeah mbfc really doing heavy work showing how bad it is...
So it will be removed after the election, right?
Lol no then it's shown it's worth and has to stay
Why does "World News" on lemmy.world give an ass about the American election season? Why was this not instituted during the elections which happened in India? We have like a billion people.
Because the winner of the US election is going to have a massive impact on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
The #1 and #2 topics in World.
Man, idk why you're getting flak for this one.
i think a better bot would be one that shows the financial/managerial ties a publisher has in a tree format so people can make the decision themselves about political bias
That actually is partially listed on the MBFC site, but you have to follow the link through from the bot to see it:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
"Funded by / Ownership
The Guardian and its sister publication, the Sunday newspaper The Observer, are owned by Guardian Media Group plc (GMG). Scott Trust Limited was created in 1936 to ensure the editorial independence of the publications and owns Guardian Media Group plc (GMG). The Guardian states that “The Scott Trust is the sole shareholder in Guardian Media Group, and its profits are reinvested in journalism and do not benefit a proprietor or shareholders.” Donations and advertising fund the Guardian.
The Guardian switched to a tabloid print format in 2018 to cut costs. According to The New York Times, The Guardian “refused to set up a paywall — the preferred strategy of many of its rivals, from The Times of London to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — opting instead to ask its readers for donations, even setting up a nonprofit arm to help fund its journalism.”"