Assets owned by Rupert Murdoch or Fox News are not committed to journalist integrity and not committed to reporting of facts. This is why it’s important to avoid supporting those websites if possible.
Often times websites like nypost just summarize articles written by other people. If you are about to share a link from one of these websites it’s better to find another source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Fox_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:News_Corporation_subsidiaries
Also if someone has a Reddit account could you try to advocate for this on Reddit too please?
Here is a possible message you could use to advocate for this. I would recommend personalizing your message before sending. In a comment I will show an example how I tweaked my message. In fact this was the message I was about to send to the moderators of politics@lemmy.world but then I read their rules and realized I could update my message to make the message more personal.
According to Wikipedia “Many of [Rupert] Murdoch’s papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies”. For this reason I’m calling for Murdoch and Fox websites to be considered “B”-tier sources, that is to say other websites that have a better reputation should be preferred. Often times articles on websites such as the New York Post (nypost) and Fox News are nothing more than summaries of articles from other reporters with added bias. A New York Times article (archive link) has mentioned this practice.
I see the following possible actions that could be taking on the Politics community.
- The automoderator can reply to any link to a Murdoch owned website and issue a warning. The warning could be something like this:
The following website is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Assets owned by Murdoch have a reputation for bias and misleading coverage to support Murdoch’s business and political interests. Please use caution when reading and sharing the article and seek out more reputable sources. Consider using an adblocker such as uBlock Origin when visiting the link or use the archive link instead of visiting directly.
In the future note that it’s recommended when posting to Politics to use reputable sources. We discourage the linking of this website unless the reporting on the specific article you posted was original and verified.
- People should be encouraged to seek another more reliable source if possible unless the link offers unique and verified reporting.
- People visiting the link should be encouraged to use an adblocker such as uBlock Origin
- Instead of linking directly to the website an archive link should be visited.
- If the article contains misinformation or disinformation it should be removed. (I’m thinking you all already do this but perhaps articles on these website should get more scrutiny or be removed if a better source exists)
Wikipedia has a list of entities that are ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Fox_Corporation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:News_Corporation_subsidiaries
I hope you will consider taking a stand for journalistic integrity and truth and consider deprioritizing Murdoch owned assets. Thank you so much for your time!
Another update. I got the following back from a moderator of politics@lemmy.world.
"Those sources are not acceptable in Politics or World, along with others like the Daily Mail, OANN, Newsmax, and others.
They are nuked on sight. Our users are also super good at reporting them.
Similarly we remove social media links and blogsite posts."
That’s fantastic news!!
Here is what I ended up sending to the moderators of politics@lemmy.world. I’m leaving this as a comment because my post is already long enough.
politics@lemmy.world has robust rules to protect the integrity of the community. Looking the most recent posts I didn’t see any links to Murdoch owned websites but in case this ever comes up in the future I wanted to mention I’ve observed that assets owned by Rupert Murdoch would often conflict with the rules of politics@lemmy.world According to Wikipedia "Many of [Rupert] Murdoch’s papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies”. Content like this could be in violation of rule #4 which bans misinformation.
Moreover often times articles on websites such as the New York Post (nypost) and Fox News are nothing more than summaries of articles from other reporters with added bias. A New York Times article (archive link) has mentioned this practice. Rule #2 mentions “Links must be to quality and original content”. If it’s just effectively a summary with added commentary is it really original content?
I see the following possible actions that could be taking on the Politics community.
- The automoderator can reply to any link to a Murdoch owned website and issue a warning. The warning could be something like this:
The following website is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Assets owned by Murdoch have a reputation for bias and misleading coverage to support Murdoch’s business and political interests. Please use caution when reading and sharing the article and seek out more reputable sources. Consider using an adblocker such as uBlock Origin when visiting the link or use the archive link instead of visiting directly.
In the future note that it’s recommended when posting to Politics to use reputable sources. We discourage the linking of this website unless the reporting on the specific article you posted was original and verified.
- People should be encouraged to seek another more reliable source if possible unless the link offers unique and verified reporting.
- People visiting the link should be encouraged to use an adblocker such as uBlock Origin
- Instead of linking directly to the website an archive link should be visited.
Wikipedia has a list of entities that are ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Fox_Corporation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:News_Corporation_subsidiaries
I hope you will consider taking a stand for journalistic integrity and truth and consider deprioritizing Murdoch owned assets. Thank you so much for your time!