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Media Bias Fact Check - Automation
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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politics
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Why are you using a bot that rates media unreliable because they are anti-Zionist using literal pro-israel lobby groups as their source?
That's the sanitized version. They re-worded it to hide their endorsement of the redefinition of antisemitism.
The recent version:
This previous version was available while the IDF was engaged in the genocide of Palestinians:
I keep saying "them/they/their" but it's not really a group. It's mostly one guy, Dave M. Van Zandt, who has no academic media literacy qualifications. He's not a social scientist. He should not be running a site that is being used to censor news feeds.
The irony is that he admits that his system for judging 'bias' is pseudoscience, but at the same time claims that MBFC's purpose is to debunk pseudoscience. He appears to have no idea what science is. His methods are not public, repeatable, or by his own admission falsifiable.
News from the left-leaning journalists should not be categorized with the same qualifiers as AI-generated Russian fake news sites. LGBT advocacy and lobbying organizations that have no economic intersectionality are not "Left" -- LGBT sexual identities are not inherently political. CNN is a corporate news network, not a socialist organization. It's pretty obvious the deeply flawed simplification of the political spectrum to a continuum is based on an American moderate Republican capitalist's narrow understanding of politics, and Van Zandt admits as much:
He is actively harming media diversity and LW should be ashamed for taking this charlatan seriously.
Great summary thanks for this
Don't know a lot about Mondoweiss, but I found this article that cites Weiss saying some pretty out there stuff:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/
I don't know that I like it if MBFC is just taking pro-Israel advocate at their word, but another commentator said they rated other pro-Israel sources as questionable as well. Example:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/israel-war-room-bias/
TheGrayZone wrote a great article about how Wapo operates for israel as they wrote a smear piece filled to the brim with lies about them recently.
The article you linked basically describes AIPAC and the israel lobby. The Wapo author just tries to conflate Zionism with Judiasm and quotes a paragraph out of context. The paragraph isn't worded great but in context of the article it's clearly not what the Wapo author tries to portray.
I don't know if I would take thegrayzone.com as a good source, personally:
https://www.axios.com/2020/08/11/grayzone-max-blumenthal-china-xinjiang
And therein lies the problem. The article I linked by TheGrayzone is 100% factual and every fact is traceable yet all people can do it pull up attacks from other news sites.
Instead of pulling up with more "fact checks' I'd rather people read the linked article like I did for the Wapo one about Mondoweiss and have an opinion about that. Great journalists like Ryan Grim agree with Max Blumenthal instead of Wapo in this case.
Look, honestly I don't really know who Ryan Grim is, but I googled "Ryan Grim" and "The Gray Zone" and apparently "the grayzone crowd comes after [him] all the time".
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1696331666980053126
I also don't know enough to really get into a discussion about Israel / Palestine, and I don't know anything about the drama with WaPo in the article you linked so I can't say whether or not it's 100% factual as you say.
Maybe in this specific instance, The Gray Zone is correct, and in agreement with Ryan Grim. I don't know. But the thing is, you are I are in a discussion about bias and source quality. And I'm saying to you that, in my view, The Gray Zone doesn't pass the smell test.
That's the whole point of MBFC: to get a smell test of whether a source is worth considering or not.
What I am saying is, I'm not going to spend hours of my life going through your source to check it out, and possibly verify it, or refute it point by point. Especially when the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on it is:
The article about Xinjiang that I linked to you was just from a random source I clicked from Wikipedia.
I realize that I am probably coming across in a rather dismissive way, but honestly I think that's the point -- if I can convince myself this quickly that a source looks suspicious, it's in my interest to dismiss it just as quickly. In the past I've spent dozens of hours doing deep dives on random sources that friends have sent me, and in every case it's been a waste of time because I ended up coming to the same conclusion that I did in 5 seconds of reading Wikipedia.
I know some people love doing these deep dives, but I've realized for myself -- like back in 2010 when one particular person was sending me crap from Natural News -- that unless I truly get "this needs the benefit of the doubt" vibes, all that time I spend just makes me feel bitter and angry at the world, and I end up having gained nothing and learned nothing from the experience.
So again, I'm sorry. Your source may be correct. But it looks seriously suspicious. Personally, I'm not willing to look any deeper than that.
I was referring to the GrayZones article about Wapo spouting false allegations being factually correct and easily fact checkable. It's not required to know any media or person in advance.