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 💖
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.
The Intercept getting only a “mostly factual” rating (3rd highest) despite their admittance it has never failed a fact check.
This is literally in bold at the top of the page:
Overall, we rate The Intercept progressive Left Biased based on story selection that routinely favors the left. We also rate them as Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to previous fabricated work and censorship of writers.
Fabricated work.
Is there anything that’s more of a capital crime in journalism than fabricating quotes? Surely we can all agree that publishing fiction as news is the opposite of factual reporting? They may not have failed a fact check in the last five years but it just isn’t possible for them to have published fabricated news without ever failing at least one. By their own admission they failed five in that incident alone.
I’m not going to die on the intercept hill here I’m fine with the fact that even though they fired the person it’s a stain on their record so sure let’s say that rating is fine.
It was one of the first 3 I checked so I’m sure I’ll find more that are problematic when I have a chance to look because it’s their methodology that’s biased. Also the other 2 I pointed out are clearly not correct.
Got rebuttals for any of my criticisms about the methodology?
Got rebuttals for any of my criticisms about the methodology?
I do!
I think the importance of American bias is overstated. What matters is that they’re transparent about it. That bias also impacts the least important thing they track. People often fixate on that metric when it has little impact on other metrics or on the most important question for this community: ‘how likely is it that this source is telling the truth?’ Left and right are relative terms that change drastically over time and space. They even mean different things at local and national levels within the same country. It’s not really an MBFC problem, it’s a the-world-is-complicated problem that isn’t easily solved. And it’s not like they’re listing far-right publications as far-left. Complaints are almost always like, “this source is center not center-left!” It’s small problems in the murky middle that shouldn’t be surprising or unexpected.
It’s also capturing something that happens more at the extremes where publications have additional goals beyond news reporting. Ignoring Fox’s problem with facts/misinfo, it doesn’t really bother me that they’re penalized for wanting to both report the news and promote a right-wing agenda. Promoting an agenda and telling the truth are often in conflict (note Fox’s problem with facts/misinfo). CBC News, for example, probably should have a slightly higher score for having no agenda beyond news reporting.
It might matter more if it impacted the other metrics, but it doesn’t really. Based on MBFC’s methodology, it’s actually impossible for editorial bias alone to impact the credibility rating without having additional problems – you can lose a max 2 points for bias, but must lose 5 to be rated “medium credibility”. I don’t know why FAIR is rated highly factual (and I’d love for them to be a bit more transparent about it) but criticizing bias leading to them being rated both highly factual and highly credible feels like less than a death blow. If it’s a problem, it seems like a relatively small one.
MBFC also isn’t an outlier compared to other organizations. This study looked at 6 bias-monitoring organizations and found them basically in consensus across thousands of news sites. If they had a huge problem with bias, it’d show in that research.
On top of that, none of this impacts this community at all. It could be a problem if the standard here was ‘highest’ ratings exclusively, but it isn’t. And no one’s proposing that it should be. I post stories from the Guardian regularly without a problem and they’re rated mixed factual and medium credibility for failing a bunch of fact checks, mostly in op-ed (And I think the Guardian is a great, paywall-less paper that should fact check a bit better).
So I think the things you point out are well buffered by their methodology and by not using the site in a terrible, draconian way.
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.
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.
You don’t.
There doesn’t exist a site to magically do what you want.
Likewise it’s not needed. It doesn’t add to the quality of discussion on the community. All it’s going to do is cause conflict as we now have to constantly point out to people how garbage the source is so that they don’t let it influence them.
As the other poster says we don’t need to have something like this at all.
If you’re adamant about it then make a post where people can suggest which one we use and vote on it. We can also adjust the bots comment to clearly call out the chosen ones biases and methodology. As it is now it’s actively harmful as I mention in my other comment.
Every newspaper has its bias. MBFC heavily favors western liberal perspectives. It is often fine on domestic policy but not reliable when it comes to foreign policy.
As this is worldnews and not Americanews, MBFC ratings are not reliable. Articles should be judged by the evidence they provide.
Boooo. Running a community as a mod-dictator and not being able to hear feedback and react to it like an adult. Just because you thought of something, doesn’t mean it is a good idea or that people will like it. The approach of “better than nothing” is naive and plain wrong - misinformation isn’t “better than nothing” it actively hurts the community.
No we dont. We saw the expected “ReMoVe ThE BoT” comments, because MBFC did hurt their feelings by not rating their favourite newspage the highest creditability on earth.
And just block it, then you can imagine how it is without the bot.
Seeing as this is the stance the admins stance on decisions that are majority hated by the community, I’m just gonna leave this instance and go to one with admins that are more user-focused.
I expect community leaders to take reasonable feedback from the community respectfully even if they disagree, rather than doubling down on very unpopular decisions. Especially when said community funds the platform.
The majority of the bots posts have more downvotes than upvotes. The community has voiced its dislike for this bot as a majority.
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, 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.
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.
Interesting how @Rooki is still a day later active in this post responding to all the comments supporting their bot, but manages to avoid replying to all the legitimate criticisms on display.
Really shows the mods don’t value feedback, which begs the question why even bother making a thread to get feedback if you’ve already made up your mind.
yet according to MBFC they’re near perfect
Here are some quotes from the link you posted:
They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.
After Conrad Black acquired the paper, its political position changed to right-leaning, when Black began hiring conservative journalists and editors. Eli Azur is the current owner of Jerusalem Post. According to Ynetnews, and a Haaretz article, “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Editor in Chief,” in 2017, Azur gave testimony regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure. Current Editor Yaakov Katz was the former senior policy advisor to Naftali Bennett, the former Prime Minister and head of the far-right political party, “New Right.”
During the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict, the majority of stories favored the Israeli government, such as this Netanyahu to Hezbollah: If you attack, we’ll turn Beirut into Gaza. In general, the Jerusalem Post holds right-leaning editorial biases and is usually factual in reporting.
Overall, we rate The Jerusalem Post Right-Center biased based on editorial positions that favor the right-leaning government. We also rate them Mostly Factual for reporting, rather than High due to two failed fact checks.
Based on MBFC’s methodology, they can’t have more than 6 points (out of 10) toward credibility, which is the floor for high credibility. They’re one lost point from being listed as a medium credibility source, not “near perfect.” They’ve also failed two fact checks in news reporting (not op-ed), which is seriously non-perfect. No one reading that page could walk away thinking that jpost isn’t biased toward both the current Israeli government and conservative causes. MBFC calling them “right-center” is also consistent with how they’re rated just about everywhere else. AllSides rates them as “center” (with a note that community feedback in disagreement believes they “lean right”) and even Wikipedia describes them as “center-right/conservative”.
What exactly are you angry about here?
Because? You’re angry that they have a methodology? You’re angry that they’re basing it on the paper as a whole and not solely on their coverage of Gaza?
Because they’re in agreement with you. When someone posts a Jerusalem Post story about Gaza, MBFC is saying “this source is heavily biased toward the Israeli government.” Even if their coverage is factual, you’re not getting the full context of what’s happening in the conflict.
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.
The mod team is absolutely aware of the criticisms - they’re censoring them.
I just got a comment deleted just for telling OP to engage with the criticism instead of hiding away with people who agree with them.
I wonder if they were former Reddit power mods?
Your comment was deleted for the insult, I’m guessing. I can still see it in the mod log.
