Hello World, As many of you have probably noticed, there is a growing problem on the internet when it comes to undisclosed bias in both amateur and professional reporting. While not every outlet can be like the C-SPAN, or Reuters, we also believe that it’s impossible to remove the human element from the news, especially when it concerns, well, humans.
To this end, we’ve created a media bias bot, which we hope will keep everyone informed about WHO, not just the WHAT of posted articles. This bot uses Media Bias/Fact Check to add a simple reply to show bias. We feel this is especially important with the US Election coming up. The bot will also provide links to Ground.News, as well, which we feel is a great source to determine the WHOLE coverage of a given article and/or topic.
As always feedback is welcome, as this is a active project which we really hope will benefit the community.
Thanks!
FHF / LemmyWorld Admin team 💖
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I think having this post isn’t a great idea because you are just assuming the websites bias are legit. At the very least there needs to be a lot of warnings in the bots post about the websites biases and the methodology they use so the reader can come to their own conclusion.
Just looking over the methodlogy 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.
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.
“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.
I’ll add UN Watch to the list.
MBFC rates it as “highly credible” despite it publishing laughably bad hit-pieces on UN officials who openly criticize Israel.
I did a debunk on one of their articles that was removed from this very community due to disinformation, but I’ve posted a screenshot of my critique here for anyone who is interested.
This is a really well-reasoned response… Which probably means the mods will ignore it
A standard of factuality needs to include a provision of avoiding emotionally-loaded, manipulative language. Otherwise you can pump unlimited amounts of propaganda with full factuality simply by “asking questions”.
I wont disagree that there should be a ranking for using loaded language but combining it with the factuality ranking twists what the ranking means since to the average person they’re going to read that as how accurate the facts are.
It should be its own separate rating from factuality. Again if we’re going to have to have a bot like this put clear disclaimers and ideally find a better one than this.
I disagree. I think emotional language is fundamentally the opposite of real objectivity, and cannot be honestly acknowledged as factual in any confirmable way.
It has no place in objective discussions, and employing it in any way, shape or form makes one deserve objectivity demerits.
edit: And objectivity and factuality are synonyms.
This is one of the reasons why the right is so successful. By equating emotion with lies, they erase the objections of the oppressed, and can continue with a veneer of objectivity as they advocate for genocide by seeming non-emotive and rational.
Fact-based reporting should be a measure of whether the statements and facts, express and implied, line up with the truth, and nothing more.
Choosing one organization to be the arbiter of truth and bias gives them way too much power. I think fact checking should be the responsibility of whoever reads the article.
Yes but have you considered that by using a fixed source you can shift the Overton window to where you want it to be?
At least I acknowledge that the Overton window on lemmy.ml leans to the left. This is just slowly tilting the Overton window on lemmy.world to the right.
Yes, everyone should always do all their own work every time. Trust nothing! Formula of gravity? Newton and Einstein might be liars, and all the science textbooks could be complicit. Do your own research. Conduct your own experiments. Is the Earth flat? Grab a sailboat and find out!
/parody
You think this organization’s judgement is some objective algorithm and doesn’t contain its own subjective biases?
Nearly everything has various types of subjective bias. This is not a good excuse to believe nothing when bias can simply be examined and taken into account.
This is not a good excuse to believe nothing when bias can simply be examined and taken into account.
By your own reasoning, the examination would have its own bias. This isn’t a mathematical operation with a right answer.
Correct. Mathematical certainty is an impossible standard, and seeking it in news reporting is an unrealistic and silly objective that results in nothing useful.
I’m just gonna drop this here as an example:
- https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-report/
- https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-post/
The Jerusalem Report (Owned by Jerusalem Post) and the Jerusalem Post
This biased as shit publication is declared by MBFC as VEEEERY slightly center-right. They make almost no mention of the fact that they cherry pick aspects of the Israel war to highlight, provide only the most favorable context imaginable, yadda yadda. By no stretch of the imagination would these publications be considered unbiased as sources, yet according to MBFC they’re near perfect.
It has been pointed out multiple times that mbfc is ran by a Zionist.
There is no way the mod team is not aware of this by now so it must be on purpose.
There’s a reason lemmy.ml mocks MBFC daily lmao
I love this, but I would like to state that Media Bias Fact Check seems to have a pro-Israel bias.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mondoweiss/
- Overall, we rate Mondoweiss as Left Biased and Questionable due to the blending of opinion with news, the promotion of pro-Palestinian and anti-zionist propaganda, occasional reliance on poor sources, and hate group designation by third-party pro-Israel advocates.
I feel like “blending of opinion with news” and “occasional reliance on poor sources” is all that really need be said.
deleted by creator
It’s about the bias rating. Using explicitly biased sources when rating a source makes for a bad rating.
On whose behalf? I’ve sensed bias from the brief glances I’ve given them, so I didn’t keep reading enough to actually analyze it.
We don’t allow Mondoweiss links either.
I independently checked Mondoweiss using Media Bias a few months ago because it was posted elsewhere and I had not heard of it before, but was disturbed to see the extra reasoning behind the rating.
It’s for sure questionable at best, the Wikipedia discussion someone else posted was enlightening on that, but “designation as a hate-group by pro-Israel” sources doesn’t really mean much when sources like the ADL equivocate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitic rhetoric in bad faith.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/26/wikipedia-adl-jew-zionism-israel/
Again, I love the bot, but wanted to state something to be conscious of
Yeah, I looked into it as well, there was someone intent on repeatedly posting Mondoweiss links and they would always get reported.
It’s trash tier reporting.
Given the overwhelmingly negative response from the community, what is the justification for leaving the bot in place? Is it because the moderators think they know better than everyone else?
Well, it’s more that the mods know that people don’t have an alternative
Overwhelmingly negative? Those are the 24/7 negative users. We do anything: Those guys: THIS IS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY
So you stand alone in that statement. See the post vote score.
We give you the option to block it. Block it.
Numerous comments contain thoughtfully researched, balanced and reasonable criticisms, and your reaction is to basically call them just a bunch of negative nellies, rather than to consider maybe whether they have a point.
If I made a bot that shared fake news in comments on every single news story, would you say that having the option to block that bot is sufficient? I can block anyone, yet you still ban people for breaking the rules here.
You’re getting way too defensive, and digging your heels in - criticism isn’t always bad faith.
They have a point but strict fake news it isnt. It is not an option to leave it without any second bias opinion. Its not banning anyone. If you dislike it and demand it to be shutdown for democracy. Then you arent allowing other opinions.
You’ve made a bot which shares the political opinions of one dude as a comment to every single news story on here. A pro-zionist, right-wing dude.
I’m willing to make a public API to share my media bias and fact-checking report, as well. Will you add my opinion to every news post automatically as well, please? It would save me a lot of trouble!
Got it, only enthusiastic yes men are actually counted as valid members of the community.
Interesting take, gotta admit.
Real Reddit vibes from Rooki over this one.
When your community is built from Redditors it’s sort of bound to happen
could you have the bot automatically unvote its posts (make it 0) so it goes under new comments when sorted by votes?
the spoiler thing doesn’t work on eternity and it kinda hides everything under it being so long
I wish bot comments didn’t count toward the comment count, too. It’s annoying to see “1 comment” and then you look and it’s just this or the summary bot.
Bot: Hmm this article reflects reality, thus it is biased to the left.
Using charged language like that constitutes disinformation and is reprehensible. Imagine if viewers started disregarding a source on account of your bot declaring it biased.
Shameful.
Media Bias Fact Check is totally meaningless in world news since the overwhelming majority of international news coverage seen in the west is filtered through just three global agencies, AP, AFP and Reuters and they always toe a pro US/Nato line.
What a terrible idea.
MBFC is already incredibly biased.
It should be rejected not promoted.
Ok then tell me an alternative we can use in the scale for free.
None? Then pls dont just complain complain complain… And dont suggest improvements.
So much for “feedback is welcome” I guess
So is it time for a new news community then if the admins don’t want to listen?
You can even be better than that! You can make a community that fact check news article / news pages. Then we can add the threads from that community to the bot and have there news page specific discussion.
A whole lot of people here don’t read MBFC each day and it shows. They tend to take a single and testable claim and make a decision. It’s really easy to see if the claim is true or false if the claim is specific. They don’t have a habit of taking a big claim and ruling it false because of one small detail like Snopes does.
lol, look at the failed fact checks of the Guardian UK and tell me that
See, this is what I’m talking about. They don’t fact check articles by specific publishers. They fact check a claim. “Is this statement true”, “did X Y”, etc. they don’t do “is this this article by the guardian true.” That’s a whole separate thing not done by them.
They offer a separate service where they rate the general trustworthiness and bias of a publication but that’s not the same as doing a specific article, is it?
Your comment makes me wonder if you might be confusing them with someone else or are intentionally saying something about them that isn’t accurate. Because your comment is incompatible with what they actually do.
The bot shares the trustworthiness and bias rating for a publication. This entire topic is about that bot. So that’s very obviously what we’re all referring to. I’m not sure if you’re confused or being obtuse.
I must be confused.
Here is my view of the conversation. Let me know where I went wrong.
People saying MBFC is biased. Me saying that that’s BS if talking about specific facts checks. Me saying they also offer a bias check for news sources. But that’s not a fact check. You reply saying that they have repeatedly gotten claims by the Guardian UK wrong. Me saying that they don’t fact check whole articles so your statement is inconsistent with the very nature of the type of fact checking they do. You come back saying you are talking about the bias check for the Guardian. Except that’s not what you said in your first comment, is it? You specifically said “failed fact checks of the Guardian UK” which isn’t about their overall rating but about specific facts checks. Their fact checking and their media bias checks are two separate functions.
So when you tell me I’m being obtuse it looks to me like either you didn’t realize that you complained about one thing while confusing it with another or are trying to gaslight me.
Where did I go wrong?
- Visit https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
- Notice Factual Reporting is “Mixed”
- Scroll down to “Failed Fact Checks”
- Review.
The website very clearly has a massive centrist, pro-capitalism bias. By picking and choosing what “fact checks” to include, they can tilt the “fact-based reporting” metric in whatever way they choose.
This metric is what is being included by the bot. That is the topic of conversation. If that metric is biased. It very, very, very clearly is.
Did you just criticize a fact checking organization by calling it centrist? Are you looking for a more left or right biased fact checker?
So, I’m guessing you’re American. Basically, your country is so fucked up that you call the right wing left wing and you call the far-right right wing. And centrism is like between right wing and far-right. Does that make sense? So when I say it’s centrist, I mean it’s right wing, but not explicitly fascist. Just contributing towards fascism in a “slow and steady” kind of way. You know, classical liberalism, neo-liberal, that kinda stuff.
It’s also very clearly zionist, so calling it centrist was me being a little bit nice.
Left wing is anti-capitalist, right wing is pro-capitalist. Hope that helps.
Mods, I appreciate this bot!
Deciphering media bias is tough, and finding 1 site that will ‘perfectly’ identify biases is an impossible task, but at the minimum having this bot show up on posts ‘gets people thinking’ about the credibility of their news sources.
MBFC doesn’t have to be the ultimate arbitrator either. If it is missing something about a specific article people can call it out in the comments. At the end of the day, the worst thing it does is add more data about a news source and I’m not gonna complain about that.
Actually, I’ve checked, and you’re an unreliable commenter. Sorry.
I actually like it. Thanks.
This will be great to have. Thanks!
