I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.
It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion – let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.
But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it’s the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways…so really no difference).
What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…
I’m inherently distrustful of anything that tries to tell me if a source is biased or not. Who verifies that the bot isn’t also programmed to have an agenda?
I think I’ll just stick to plain old critical thinking skills and evaluate things for myself.
Who verifies that the bot isn’t also programmed to have an agenda?
The bot itself doesn’t assign any political leanings or credibility scores though. The bot just pulls information from a website, and you can read about their methodology there.
I downvote it when its opinion is clearly wack. Like when it tries to give Washington Post a highly trusted rating after all the inflammatory, biased shit they’ve been putting out.
It’s roughly correct about the political leanings of UK newspapers as far as I’ve seen, but it’s way off on the accuracy and factual reporting measures. It seems to give loony papers a pass and the responsible ones a drubbing. It seems to have an American view of politics where liberal and left are conflated and also daring to report what the views of poor people are gets your reliability ratings plummeting.
Yeah anything responsible that reports and corrects mistakes made in past reporting gets a low score for factual accuracy, when these should be getting the highest scores.
It’s completely backwards.
Yeah, or when it says The New York Times is leftist.
Helpful for keeping me honest about checking sources, not always very honest itself.
It’s really annoying and I don’t trust it
You could block it, no?
I think it belongs at the very bottom of the page.
I downvoted then blocked it because:
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I don’t trust its specific analysis of sites. Others detail some examples.
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I don’t think whole-site analysis is very useful in combatting misinformation. The reliability and fullness of facts presented by any single site varies a lot depending on the topic or type of story.
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Other than identifying blatant disinformation sites I don’t see what useful information it provides. But even that’s rare here and rarely needs a bot to spot.
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Why is an open-source, de-centralized platform giving free space to a private company?
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Giving permission for a private trust-assesing company to be operating in an open public forum makes it look as if these assessments reflect a neutral reality that most or all readers would agree on or want to be aware of. It’s a service that people can seek out of they decide they trust it.
Presenting this company’s assessment on each or most articles gives them undue authority that is especially inappropriate on the fediverse.
Thank you, those are the precise point that summarize my gripes with it. In particular, I feel it encourages people to perceive it as an authoritative source and to form their opinions on sites it rates (often wrongly) without additional thinking / fact checking.
It’s basically a company propaganda tool that can change its own option and ratings any time, influencing others in the process.
Good summary. I think the first point is the most concerning because it’s actively spreading misinformation and giving the appearance of credibility.
Those are some great points. I do wish we had something better. But I find it to be “good enough” for when it’s a source I’m unfamiliar with.
Can’t quite say I have the time or motivation to start reading a bunch of other articles from a given source when I’m concerned about its credibility.
TBH, I just don’t think something better is possible - I suspect that there are no valid shortcuts to trust.
Unless something is just obviously bullshit, it will always take some time to develop a sense of how the different sources are treating a new story. Even a trusted source can prove unreliable on a particular topic.
It’s uncomfortable living with that uncertainty until you’ve seen a story from enough angles that you can judge for yourself. But either the story is important enough to me to spend that time, or I just accept that I can’t really know.
TBH, I just don’t think something better is possible - I suspect that there are no valid shortcuts to trust.
That’s why I like MBFC. I understand it’s impossible for them to be perfect and unbiased. But no one else is doing that work, so I’ll take what I can get.
Even a trusted source can prove unreliable on a particular topic.
I like the rule of thumb that good sources are more likely to be biased when reporting things internal to their own country. I usually look for the BBC, but if it’s about the UK, I’ll find another source. Al Jazeera is similar.
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I do because I shouldn’t even see bots due to my Lemmy settings. Whoever controls it needs to actually flag the fucking thing as a bot. I’m pretty sure not doing so is against the rules of some instances, like Lemmy World.
I also have only seen it posting clearly right-wing bs and claiming the source is a left-leaning outlet.
it is flagged as a bot, it has the bot tag on the account if you look at its profile, it’s been tagged that way since it was implemented, cause I was going to complain about it if it wasn’t
So it gets it wrong sometimes. It’s gonna.
I agree that it needs to be flagged as a bot if it’s not already though. Excellent point.
What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…
To express dissatisfaction.
There’s a lot of people that view the MBFC reports as themselves being biased, and to be fair, their process for generating the reports are opaque as fucking hell so we have no way to know how biased or not they are.
it’s also kinda spammy, and- IMO- not really all that useful.
Why do you say they’re opaque? They detail the history of the publication, the ownership, their analysis of bias within their reporting, and give examples of failed fact checks. I’m not sure what else you could want about how a publication is rated? I’m not saying it’s perfect, but they seem to be putting a solid effort into explaining how they arrive at the ratings they give.
Because their methodology is nothing but buzzwords:
The primary aim of our methodology is to systematically evaluate the ideological leanings and factual accuracy of media and information outlets. This is achieved through a multi-faceted approach that incorporates both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessments in accordance with our rigorously defined criteria.
Despite apparently having “rigorously defined criteria”, they don’t actually say what they are.
They literally publish their methodology and scoring system.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/
So they do say exactly what their criteria is, and how it is scored. None of that is buzz words, it’s just a summary that fit in a few sentences. You can look at the full methodology if you want more than just that small bullet description.
I’m not saying that you have to agree with their scoring, or that it is necessarily accurate. I just think if you’re going to critique a thing, you should at least know what you’re critiquing.
Oh look. You copied my link!
Sorry. No they don’t.
That’s not “rigorously defined”. It’s a bunch of weasel words and vagaries.
For example. In “factual reporting”, to get a “very high” score:
A source with a “Very High” rating is consistently factual, relies on credible information, promptly corrects errors, and has never failed any fact checks in news reporting or opinion pieces.
What does “consistently factual” mean? What qualifies as “a credible source”? What does “prompt” mean?
Those are all nice sounding words, but they don’t really tell you anything. Prompt could be anything from seconds to weeks. (And let’s be honest, probably varies from researcher to researcher.)
Oh they go into more detail….
A questionable source, for example:
Questionable sources display extreme bias, propaganda, unreliable sourcing, or a lack of transparency. They may also engage in disseminating fake news for profit or influence. Such sources are generally unreliable and require fact-checking on an article-by-article basis. A source lacking transparency in mission, ownership, or authorship is automatically categorized as questionable. Additionally, sources from countries with significant government censorship are also deemed questionable.
Who defines their extreme bias? What is propaganda?
Voice of America is literally a government ran propaganda service yet they assign it high factual, least-biased and high credibility.
Sorry, but their methodology isn’t a methodology, and the only thing that’s inherently reproducible is their fact check rating. Everything else relies on what their subjective analysis.
Consistently factual is exactly that. Both of those words mean actual things. And they go on to say that they can’t fail fact checks. And prompt corrections likely means that as a story develops, that if there were incorrect things reported, they are corrected as soon as the new information is available.
As for who defines extreme bias, it’s literally them. That is what they are saying they are doing. And they spell out what their left vs right criteria are. And how they judge it. Of course this is subjective. There isn’t really a way to judge the political spectrum without subjectivity. They do include examples in their reports about what biased language, sources, or reporting they found. Which allows you to easily judge whether you agree with it.
As for VOA, they say in the ownership portion that it is funded by the US government and that some view it as a propaganda source. They also discuss the history and purpose of it being founded. And then continue on with the factual accuracy and language analysis. You may not agree with it, but it is following their own methodology, and fully explained in the report.
Again, there isn’t anything saying you have to agree with them. It is a subjective rating. I’m not sure how much more transparent they can be though. They have spelled out how they grade, and each report provides explanations and examples that allow you to make your own judgments. Or a starting point for your own research.
If you can define a completely objective methodology to judge political bias on whatever spectrum you choose, then please do. It’s inherently subjective. And there isn’t really a way around that.
Consistently factual is exactly that.
So what constitutes “consistently factual”, then? if the ‘consistently factual’ means ‘always factual’, then the explanation of allowing ‘prompt corrections’ is unnecessary. A “correction” is different than an “update”, after all. so what rate of error is “rigorously” defined here?
Further, how do they deal with (the vast majority) of fact checkers, using qualified language like “mostly factual” or “misleading” or “out of context”. or “distorted”?
… And prompt corrections likely means that as a story develops, that if there were incorrect things reported, they are corrected as soon as the new information is available.
“likely…” They don’t say that. I wonder why they don’t just say that?
You’re assuming that’s what “prompt” means, but that’s… an assumption. as I said, it could be anything from seconds to weeks. I assume- i don’t know, lets just be honest here- that their language is intentional. which means it’s probably not that.
Seems like it would be a super easy thing to actually define. Like. ‘Consistently Factual’ could be “No more than X percentage of articles requiring corrections or otherwise failing a 3rd party fact check”.
… Of course this is subjective. There isn’t really a way to judge the political spectrum without subjectivity. They do include examples in their reports about what biased language, sources, or reporting they found. Which allows you to easily judge whether you agree with it.
So glad we agree on that.
As for VOA, they say in the ownership portion that it is funded by the US government and that some view it as a propaganda source. They also discuss the history and purpose of it being founded. And then continue on with the factual accuracy and language analysis. You may not agree with it, but it is following their own methodology, and fully explained in the report.
Compare, VOA’s to Al Jazeera’s. Which, Al Jazeera is Qatar-owned. even so, It’s widely considered a reliable news source; where as, VOA was literally forbidden from being served within the US borders precisely because it was propaganda, until 2013- when it decided to open up drops to the internet specifically to “counter” Al Qaeda messaging. (aka. propaganda.)
VOA:
Founded in 1942, Voice of America (VOA) is a United States government-funded multimedia news source and the official external broadcasting institution of the United States. VOA provides programming for broadcasts on radio, TV, and the Internet outside of the U.S., in English and some foreign languages. Some consider the Voice of America to be a form of pro-USA propaganda. However, VOA journalists are governed by its Best Practices Guide, which says that “The accuracy, quality, and credibility of the Voice of America are its most important assets, and they rest on the audiences’ perception of VOA as an objective and reliable source of U.S., regional and world news and information.”
Surveys show that 84% of VOA’s audiences trust VOA to provide accurate and reliable information. A similar percentage (84%) say that VOA helps them understand current events relevant to their lives. VOA is produced in 47 languages.
it should be noted that A), its so nice to know that their journalists are held to a standard. (I’m sure Al Jazeera journalists aren’t…) and b) that there’s a survey saying 84% of people that actually look at VOA is reliable. A survey conducted by… their board of governors… and the linked source is the appropriations PDF…
Compared to Al Jazeera:
Founded in 1996, Al Jazeera is an international news network owned by Qatar’s state through the Qatar Media Corporation. It is headquartered in Doha, Qatar. You can view their history timeline here and see Al Jazeera America’s leadership here. Dr. Mostefa Souag is currently Acting Director-General of the Al Jazeera Media Network.
now, I’m not saying Al Jazeera isn’t Qatari propaganda, it more or less is. but you see the the totally different tone here?
Now lets move onto the bias/analysis section. VOA:
In review, VOA presents the USA and world news from a United States perspective. There is minimal use of loaded language in news stories such as this: Officials Hope for Strife-Free Trump Visit to London and this Pompeo Seeks Common Ground on Iran, Huawei in Europe. Both of these stories are sourced from official videos or credible sources. Some stories tend to lean slightly left through portraying President Trump negatively, such as this: Trump Unleashes Again on Special Counsel Who Didn’t Charge Him. When it comes to science, the VOA follows the consensus model and therefore is pro-science.
Voice of America has been called a propaganda arm of the US Government, and perhaps it was at the start. Today, it is a straightforward journalism outfit that might lean slightly left but is mostly least biased on a whole
Emphasis mine (also the italics just to make the headlines clear.) Now the emphasised bits is straight up bullshit. it’s government funded. It’s entire purpose- even today- is to disseminate pro-US propaganda everywhere outside the US. it’s forbiden from radio broadcasts that might reach US soil, and it’s only allowed to drop things on the interent because of a special provision specifically to counter messaging by terrorists.
Factual or not, it’s a propaganda outlet.
Al Jazeera:
In review, Al Jazeera reports news with minimally loaded wording in their headlines and articles such as this: UN approves team to monitor ceasefire in Yemen’s port city, and Erdogan delays Syria operation, welcomes US troop withdrawal. Both of these articles are properly sourced from credible news agencies. When reporting USA news, there is minimal bias in reporting such as this: Pentagon chief Mattis quits, cites policy differences with Trump. In general, straight news reporting has a minimal bias; however, as a state-funded news agency, Al Jazeera is typically not critical of Qatar.
Al Jazeera also has an opinion page that exhibits significant bias against Israel. In this article, the author uses highly negative emotional words as evidenced by this quote: “Europe is increasingly sharing Israel’s racist approach to border security and adopting its deadly technologies.” This article, however, is properly sourced from credible media outlets. Another article, “How many more ways can Israel sentence Palestinians to death?” also uses loaded language that is negative toward Israel. Further, the opinion page does not favor US President Donald Trump through this article: ‘Barbed wire-plus‘: Borders know no love. In general, opinion pieces are routinely biased against Israel and right-wing ideologies.
In 2017, Al Jazeera aired an investigative report of Britain’s Israel lobby. Following the airing, Ofcom (the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority) received complaints from many pro-Israeli British activists, including one former Israeli embassy employee. They were accused of anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, which was later cleared by Ofcom, who said the piece was not anti-semitic and was, in fact, investigative journalism. Later, a US version of the documentary called “Lobby” was not aired due to pressure from US Legislators pushing for Al Jazeera to register as a foreign entity and therefore labeling its journalists as ‘spies.’ Further, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations demanded Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera. Al Jazeera rebuts the accusations here.
now, VOA’s review is easily seen as pure spin. MBFC goes out of their way to assauge any doubt what so ever that they’re factual and not biased. nop. no sir. Now, it would be fair to say that because they literally define bias using the US discourse as the meter stick… that there is no bias. Sort of chicken and the egg, right? any how… there’s no mention of Al Jazeera’s code of ethics… and the cited failed fact checks? date to 2018, one of which falls outside the 5 year window since it was last updated- the fact check was published august of 2018, when it was updated in October of 2023. Pedantic, I know, but the 5 year window is their rule.
all it takes is a five minute scroll through VOA to see that they have the same misleading bias towards the US/US government as Al Jazeera has towards Qatar.
VOA’s was last updated in… Nov 2022.
If you can define a completely objective methodology to judge political bias on whatever spectrum you choose, then please do. It’s inherently subjective. And there isn’t really a way around that.
you don’t need to define something that’s not subjective, exactly. But they need to explain what the methodology is. they’re looking for loaded words? then we need examples of what are loaded words that they’re looking for. that shouldn’t be too hard. it doesn’t even need to be exhaustive. just exhaustive enough.
Putting it on the individual articles makes it arbitrary. ask yourself… is “deadly” a loaded word? Or is it qualitative leading to understand that people actually died from the “deadly attack” rather than were just sent to the hospital in “an attack”. or that people died in a wildfire, hurricane or something else. Nobody can check every article to get a sense for their own criteria, and what they posted as a methodology is far from sufficient to the task of repeating their process. Ideally, I should be able to take their methodology article, follow it more or less step by step, and produce at least similar results. Can’t come even close.
With your own reply you show that they have given you most of the information needed to make your own assessment. Like I’ve said other places in this thread, you don’t have to agree with them. I have never claimed they are correct. I’m saying that they provide information about how they arrived at their conclusion, you can assess that information and decide whether you agree.
It still stands that it is at least a reasonable place to look to gather basic information about a media source. And provides you with a solid starting point to research and make an assessment about a news source.
I agree that using the US political spectrum pretty significantly skews things since US politics is almost all center to right if you compare it to the wider spectrum globally. But since they gave their information, and what spectrum they are using it makes it pretty simple to get a baseline for most media outlets at a glance if it’s not one I’m familiar with.
And with the number of outright insane news sources people like to share, it’s useful to have a way to get at least a decent snapshot of what to expect.
There is a lot of good stuff there but it’s still opaque when it comes to bias specifically. I mean, am I missing somether here? I genuinely feel like there must be a whole section I’ve missed or something based on some of the other commenters. The bias methodology is no more a methodology than “grind up some wheat, mix some water and yeast before chucking it in the oven for a bit” is a recipe for bread. You rate 4 categories from 0 - 10 and average it, but the ratings themselves are totally subjective.
Story Choices: Does the source report news from both sides, or do they only publish one side.
What does this even mean? If a site runs stories covering the IPCC recommendations for climate action but doesn’t run some right wing conspiracy version of how climate change is a hoax, is that biased story selection?
What did I miss here?
Bravo for bringing the notes. On a first glance, some of these feel like they require subjectivity (like, do we really believe the political spectrum is 1d?), but I agree I could run the computation myself from this.
There is definitely some subjectivity. Language isn’t something that is easily parsed and scored. That is why they give examples on the actual report about the kind of biased language they saw, or whatever other issues led to the score given.
I don’t think they mean for their website to be the end all bias resource. More of a stepping off point for you to make your own judgments.
On each page, they describe, in detail, exactly how they come to their conclusions.
While you may disagree with what they have to say, to claim they’re hiding anything or that they aren’t being transparent or arbitrary is just untrue.
here’s their definition of what’s a left or right bias
It’s pretty fucking arbitrary.
Additionally, their methodology is a bunch of gibberish and buzz words. that they explain their justification on each article is inadequate. For example, Al jazeera is dinged for using “negative emotion” words like “Deadly”.
Deadly might invoke a certain kind of emotion. but it’s also the simplest way to describe an attack in which some one dies. Literally every news service will use “deadly attack” if people are dying, regardless if it’s an attack by terrorists, or by cackling baboons. (or indeed not even an attack. for example ‘Deadly wildfire’ or ‘deadly hurricane’.) the application of using that as an example is extremely arbitrary, on a case by case basis.
Now you’re just repeating yourself. That doesn’t make it any more true.
And as far as your claims of methodology being arbitrary, just because you use words in an arbitrary manner does not make their methodology arbitrary.
Like I said, just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t make them wrong or you right. Feel free to block them if you don’t like it. But other users here have clearly demonstrated how your argument does not hold water.
Okay.
Take their methodology.
Work through it.
You can’t because most of the “rigorous definitions “ aren’t shared.
You still haven’t explained what “factually consistent” means in a method that’s repeated and able to be applied regularly.
Their methodology as posted is far too vague to adequately consider their ability to provide consistent neutral ratings.
How are “loaded” words evaluated? Is there a table of words that are considered “loaded”? Personal feeling? We don’t know. We know what some of them are, since they’re mentioned on specific articles.
But that isn’t a consistent or “rigorously defined” criteria. So what is the “rigorously defined criteria”- and why is that not published?
Do you not see how that’s ripe for abuse?
I have used their methodology and worked through it. I find no fault with it.
And finally, you’re the one who makes claims that there is some problem with their methodology, yet you have not demonstrated that at all. All you demonstrated is that you happen to disagree with it and that you don’t like it. If you wish to prove your point, you’re gonna need evidence for that, and all of your carrying on here I have not seen the shred of that.
Just block it and move on already. Your disagreement is hardly worth this crusade.
I actually meant to start a thread one of these days if we can’t ban it! Glad you started the conversation!
My main concern is that by attributing a tactfulness and political rating to them, we’re attaching weight to that. But who does these ratings? Especially when a pop/mainstream mag like the Rolling Stone is classified as “left” the same that explicitly politically left publications like Jacobin are also “left”. That just strikes me as odd.
But who does these ratings?
That information is available on the website, no? Along with their methodology
yes, I know. I meant it more along the lines of whoever comes up with a method for standardizing bias in media puts their own bias in the methodology.
For example, I feel it is a political statement in itself to have a “bias spectrum” from left to unbiased to right. This implies that both left an right are “biases”, while only the center is truly neutral and therefore an arbiter of truth and facts. Enlightened centrism, anyone?
Also, I disagree with parts of their methodology. The headline “Habitual liar and convicted felon to seek US presidency again” would probably be classified as loaded language, whereas “Donald Trump wants to become president again” would be considered more neutral.
I would argue that the former example is, in fact, more truthful than the latter because it doesn’t omit major reasons why this is newsworthy. But since the mbfc is founded on the
illusionidea that there is such a thing as truly neutral common ground, it conflates perspective and bias.Judging by headlines alone, I’d agree about your assessment of bias.
“World-renowned businessman Donald Trump runs for president” would be biased in favour of Trump (so, Right-biased).
Bias isn’t inherently a bad thing if it’s telling the truth. Yeah, there’s propaganda, but an astute reader can figure it out. Or if you don’t want to read media with a certain bias, then you can skip those publications.
Bias also includes what stories to publish. Right-leaning (and beyond) media probably doesn’t publish a whole lot about the bad things and mistakes Trump did. Yet with completely neutral-sounding headlines, they could still be a biased publication based on the things they choose to publish (or not) and highlight (or not).
Thanks everyone for your comments and information. Thank you OP for making this thread. I will now begin downvoting MediaBiasFactCheck bot
It promotes the existing power structure, which some people think is no bueno.
For example, if you post this:
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/30/ret.axis.facts/
the bot will say it is a highly accurate source with highly factual reporting so people will tend to believe with certainty that the U.S. should invade Iraq.
Actually, downvotig it has interesting benefits. If I want to know the bots’ evaluation, I can scroll to the end to find it.
That’s true! Though you’ll also see the shit comments there, lol
I for one, appreciate that bot.
For one, it bases it’s bias assessments on American politics. The UK is less right-wing than the US but when this bot comes along it calls a source which we might call centrist, “left”.
In a way, it’s like an attempt to shift the overton window for other countries closer to the US, and that’s not a good thing.
Of course, don’t expect this to be addressed by @Rooki@lemmy.world.
It’s not the bot that makes the judgement
No it’s the person who owns the source.
A pro-Israel American iirc.
A pro-Israel American iirc.
Any comment where they stated so? Seems wild based on the current context
I use an instance that does not display or parse downvotes or permit them locally.
So I don’t see the phenomenon. I don’t care about downvotes. I only see the upvotes; which are a far better indicator to me as to how useful a post I made is. If someone posts trash or extremist things; I block them. If they try to argue in bad faith or with far too extremist of a viewpoint, I block them.
The bot doesn’t always get the most upvotes but it does have it’s uses. As someone who has used the Ground News app in the past; I have a sense of their rating scale and I do find that it helps classify things; although you should always use your own discretion and not just blindly trust the bot.
But most people who downvote this bot, do so for completely wrong reasons. Usually they’re upset because they disagree with the assessment of the bot, or do not understand it’s scale. Maybe they don’t like their viewpoint’s position being laid bare for all to see.
Maybe that should be explained more; and there’s posts on Ground News’ website that EXPLAINS how their rating system works. Perhaps the bot should link them.
It said MSNBC had a leftist bias. The bot, and by extension its developers, have as much credibility as your Fox News watching uncle who calls everything they don’t like “communism”.
