Talk:True North Centre for Public Policy

Recent removals by Bigbluenet

After a discussion with Grayfell, and reading the sources, I am satisfied that Bigbluenet is not acting in good faith with their removals. I've reverted their POV edits. I think further discussion should take place here before any more edit warring by Bigbluenet. Fred Zepelin (talk) 22:33, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

"Not acting in good faith" – how so? Could you be more specific? I haven't been on here for a while, but it is crystal clear that other users, namely Benicio2020, have been the ones making very biased edits to this page - sometimes nuanced, and sometimes not at all nuanced and based on very old and very biased sources.

Nuanced: that the True North Centre for Public Policy "describes itself as" a registered Canadian charity. They ARE a registered Canadian charity. Documents prove it. Why do they word it this way, and how was my correction "not acting in good faith"?

Straight-up false: that the True North Centre for Public Policy "describes itself as an "advocacy organization"". It does not. If you drill down into their years-old source (which is PressProgress, a very biased source itself), that article links to a years-old screenshot in which the True North *Initiative* describes itself as an advocacy organization. The True North Initiative, based on a search of registered corporations, no longer exists. Why is this allowed to remain on the page?

Nuanced: that Candice Malcolm "describes herself as" the founder of True North. She IS the founder of True North. Why do they word it this way?

Not-so-nuanced: They insist on the opening paragraph read that TNCPP "is a right-wing media outlet". A "conservative outlet" would be more respectful, but "right-wing" carries negative connotations. Why do wikipedia admins prefer the latter, and consider my change to be "not acting in good faith"?

I'm sure I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. An explanation for above would be appreciated. Bigbluenet (talk) 19:35, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

A neutral summary of this organization will be based on reliable, independent sources which do not, themselves, have to be "neutral" to your personal satisfaction. It appears that "right wing" is accurate, and it doesn't matter whether or not you personally find that term to have negative connotations. The article does need more work, but that will be based on sources. Digging up WP:PRIMARY listings or trivial passing mentions is not the best way to improve the article. The goal should be to provide context to readers, not to help this organizations with its PR problems.

Since you have primarily edited this article for over a year, with few other edits, I again invite you to review Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. You may also find Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide helpful. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 22:03, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Andrew Lawton

Regarding the repeated edits to include Andrew Lawton, generally lists of "notable people" are notable per Wikipedia's understanding of the term, meaning they already have an article. The best way to do this is with reliable, independent sources. For this article, sources should also directly explain Lawton's significance to the True North Centre.

Having authored a notable book does not, by itself, bestow notability (see WP:NOTINHERETED) but it could help. However, per Draft:The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks that Shook the World, it is not clear that this book meets WP:NBOOK. Being a "#1 Best seller" is not sufficient. These lists are devoid of context and completely fail to explain anything about the book itself other than vaguely implying a level of popularity. They are also widely manipulated for promotional purposes. The purpose of a Wikipedia article is to explain things, meaning to provide context. Listing isolated factoids is not an explanation, so more work is needed before including Lawton in this article. Grayfell (talk) 20:31, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Agree with this, that "bestseller", by itself, is next to meaningless because of the myriad ways publishers have of being able to claim virtually any book is a bestseller. A NYT bestseller would be one thing, and that certainly would carry more weight than "Globe and Mail bestseller", but even that would need in-depth coverage in secondary sources to make the book notable. As Greyfell pointed out, that's still a long way from making the author notable. Fred Zepelin (talk) 15:15, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Edit reversals by Fred Zepelin

After checking the talk page here, I've noticed a series of increasingly radical edits by Fred Zepelin over the past few years. In 2022, it was contentious whether it was okay to label the TNCPC right wing at all. Now it is being labeled "far right." My basic contentions are as follows:

1. The provided sources do not support the TNCPC being "far right" enough for that to be in the lede. Only one of the sources cited actually claims that, and it's from Press Progress, noted to be a leftist outlet. In fact, another source cited from Press Progress contradicts this. Taking another look at at the article now, it seems that Fred Zepelin has managed to scrounge up another example of them being labeled as so which was not there previously. This does not seem to be a good faith change and is certainly not enough evidence for it to be labeled as "far right" in both the short description or the lede.
2. The sentence at the end of the Election debate access section is totally irrelevant to the section topic. Why cite a personal attack on the outlet in an unrelated section on its access to election debates? This isn't a nuanced issue, it should be immediately removed and no real person would view this as an neutral portrayal of the outlet.Smefs (talk) 16:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

There are three good sources that describe TN as "far-right", so your description here is less than accurate. One of them is the Canada Press Freedom Project, which is actually advocating in TN's favor, and also describes them as far-right, so your cries of "leftist!" are quite nonsensical. Meanwhile, can you explain this edit, in which you wholesale-removed a published book source, without explanation or justification? That one concerns me the most. Fred Zepelin (talk) 16:47, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

There are three good sources which you specifically selected, removing all sources which disagree with you. This is plain and obvious bad faith editing. You literally just added the Canada Press Freedom Project source, that wasn't the source I was referring to, and removed the Press Progress and CBC sources which disagreed with you. Did you really think I wouldn't notice that? There are some sources that describe it as "far right," but other sources which I would argue are more reliable (such as CBC) do not. You also completely ignored my point about the snarky attack in the Election debate access section. This is really unbelievable stuff. I'm not an avid Wikipedia editor like you, but it's sort of incredible how heavily motivated editors can completely twist the truth like this. Smefs (talk) 17:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

You shouldn't be making accusations like this against another editor to begin with, but if you do, at least make sure you have your facts straight. The Press Progress and CBC sources are still in the lead. They don't "disagree with me" - they simply describe TN as "far right." I think I'm done with this particular dead horse. If you try to force your preferred version of the lead, or remove reliable sources without explanation again, I'm going right to an admin, because this is clearly a waste of time. Fred Zepelin (talk) 18:22, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that I should not have to make accusations like this, because I wish all editors would act in good faith. Yes, they're still in the lede but you've deliberately changed their location to make them not appear after the claim of the TNC being "far-right" since they directly counter that claim. And actually no, neither the October 15, 2019 PressProgres article nor the CBC article ever describe this organization as "far right." You are wrong.

I invite you to study the three citations after the words "far-right" in the opening sentence before you remove them (again). I've even added quotes from the sources to help you. They all describe True North as "far-right", so no, what you say above is, at best, a mistake, and at worst, an outright fabrication. I don't know which. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

You also continue to ignore my argument about the inclusion of the Drimonis line in the Election debate access section, which is only getting more obvious as this conversation continues. Smefs (talk) 07:38, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Toula Drimonis is a notable journalist and author. If you think that whitewashing the article by removing that sentence is the right thing to do, I invite you to seek a third opinion on the matter, as I disagree. I'm not the one who added that sentence or citation to the article, which means at least two editors (myself and whoever added it) disagree with you. Fred Zepelin (talk) 20:06, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Fred Zepelin has asked for my input, so here I am.

I don't see any particular problem with including Drimonis's opinion, per say, but it would be better with a WP:SECONDARY source to demonstrate weight. Concerns about it being a "neutral portrayal of the outlet" seem misguided to me. A neutral portrayal of a far-right fake news outlet will call it a far-right fake news outlet. Downplaying these traits, or getting evasive with them via euphemisms or similar, would be the opposite of neutral, it would be partial. We are not here to help this outlet with its PR problems, we are here to explain to disinterested readers what it is in simple language. Calling it 'far-right' helps us to meet this goal. Likewise, it sources describe it as fake news, so be it (but again, more and better sources would help). It doesn't matter in the slightest if some of the sources describing this outlet are "leftist". What matters is whether or not they are reliable. While political ideology may correlate with reliability, correlation is not causation, so this is a poor starting position for disqualifying a source.

So with that in mind, if there are sources which dispute that this outlet is far-right, they should be posted here for discussion. Vaguely implying that such sources exists, somewhere, isn't compelling. Since it comes up a lot, I will state the obvious: it is completely possible to be both right-wing and far-right, so sources which say one thing to not contradict sources which say the other. Grayfell (talk) 23:56, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment on opening sentence

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus and bad RFC. The RFC question is indeed biased, though this was pointed out quite late. Disregarding that, nothing resembling a consensus can be said to have resulted from this discussion, considering the relative weakness of many arguments on both sides, and the general lack of dialogue. I suggest proceeding with a clear focus on the available sources, and a view towards agreeing on a formulation that balances them appropriately. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 07:09, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

---

Should True North be described as "far-right" as it is described in multiple sources? Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:27, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

So, has this RfC concluded? @Fred Zepelin is certainly acting as if it has. This seems problematic to me. Biohistorian15 (talk) 23:08, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

If you're looking at the discussion below, and you've come to some other conclusion than "consensus is yes", I'd like to see your reasoning. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:33, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, usually these are closed (preferably by an admin), and this has not happened here. Biohistorian15 (talk) 05:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

When the outcome is this obvious, there's no need for you to make edits to the article as if it's going to go your way. Fred Zepelin (talk) 19:06, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

"As if it's going to go your way" is a bit flippant, wouldn't you say? I, for one, in fact, see no clear consensus at all for calling the organization "far right" in the comments below. Biohistorian15 (talk) 20:40, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

• Yes - multiple reliable secondary sources describe True North as far-right. It is a political organization, it has a particular approach, and that approach, as described by sources in the article, springs from a far-right viewpoint. One of those sources, from the Canada Press Freedom Project, is actually from a piece defending True North, and that source still describes them as far-right, so I don't think it gets much more neutral than that. Even conservative writers are describing True North as far-right. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:33, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
  • Note: This RfC was made necessary by an editor who has been removing those sources from the article repeatedly, so rather than edit war, I chose to start an RfC when my points made in the discussion above were basically ignored by them. If you don't see the sources, it may be necessary to go back in the article history to see them. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment -You may wish to review Wikipedia:Requests for comment. That page explains what should be done first, and which templates should be posted here to invite input from uninvolved editors. Grayfell (talk) 23:59, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment – While there are multiple sources that call True North far-right, there are also multiple sources that call it right-wing or right-leaning. A more accurate and neutral description would be to say "Far North is a right-wing to far-right media outlet...". However, it would be even more better to reword the lead, so that a better discussion of the organisation's political stance can be had outside the first line. A separate sentence such as "True North's political leanings have been described as ranging from right-wing to far-right." would be excellent. 5225_C (talk • contributions) 02:22, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
  • Far-right seems like a subset of right-wing and is more specific. Fred Zepelin (talk) 02:58, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
    • That's only correct in a more general sense. If you're using right-wing to describe an outlet you almost certainly don't mean far-right, or you would just say far-right. The proposed line could be rephrased to "True North's political leanings have been described as either right-wing or far-right by several sources/outlets/media/etc." 5225_C (talk • contributions) 05:05, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
      • It is not self-evident that sources don't mean far right when they say right-wing. The article cites two PressProgress sources, each using a different term. This demonstrates that not all outlets consider them contradictory. So, setting it up as being "either" one or the other is falsely claiming that the two are mutually exclusive. The more detail we go into in explaining this in the lead, the more we are implying to readers that this is a controversy, or at least a contradiction, but I have not seen any evidence of that. Grayfell (talk) 22:09, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
        • The language used is important. I disagree that you can make such a blanket judgement, sources using different terms are doing so for some reason. Wikipedia is meant to represent the views of reliable sources. Stating that sources have used a range of descriptions does not imply controversy, it merely means there are different views (which, as a matter of fact, there are). You are welcome to suggest alternative language for the lead, but just as we should not falsely present a controversy, we should not falsely present a consensus. 5225_C (talk • contributions) 10:44, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Yes - First, it is very significant that the initial version of this article describes this publication as "conservative" and "right-wing". Also, prominent persons such as Candice Malcolm and Ezra Levant would reasonably lead one to believe that the publication's philosophy is far-right. Ender and Peter 07:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
  • Note: This article should talk more about what really makes the subject notable. Perhaps it could describe notable content from the publisher that has caught others' attention. Can't help but to notice this article is quite light on such a thing. Ender and Peter 07:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the article should describe the subject, as is the purpose of any encyclopedia. Describing why a subject is notable is a requirement in deletion discussions. If a subject has a wikipedia article, it is assumed that the subject is notable (barring new articles that may or may not be deleted). It's superfluous to say "here's why this thing has an article!" Fred Zepelin (talk) 18:29, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Right-wingBased on the range of currently cited sources used in the article. It doesn't appear that far right is the most common term. Additionally, the line between right and far right is often subjective while simply staying they are on the right is more likely to be correct. Anything that makes them specifically far right should be clear in the article text. Springee (talk) 11:30, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
• Conservative or right-wing. "True North" is a rather suggestive name which means we might want to be particularly charitable to avoid likely misunderstandings. Biohistorian15 (talk) 23:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
• Procedural close and void - Bad RfC. The question is not neutrally phrased. The question asks Should True North be described as "far-right" as it is described in multiple sources? The neutral question should be either Should True North be described as "far-right" or which of these lead sentences best describes TNCPP [+ list]. Source discussion by participants raises doubt as to how they are described in sources and that should not be assumed in the question. Moreover the discussion should not be wholly about sources as the lead should be a summary per WP:LEAD and the lead should reflect the discussion in the main. Ensuing discussion suggests sources also support conservative or right wing, and if this were not procedurally closed and voided, my !vote would therefore be for right wing as the case for far right has not been made. I will request uninvolved closure. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Political views section

This edit [1] is problematic. After the RFC close, I left an edsum in this edit [2] suggesting we move focus to the main text. However, what I meant was that a proper encyclopaedic summary of the subject would be due there, not a near paste of the rejected lead sentence relocated. But to the specific problems:

1. I am not sure a section headed "political views" is actually correct at all. People have views, but True North claims to be an independent non-partisan think tank and public policy organisation conducting research and education. That is their description, of course, and we can raise a number of objections, but "poltical views" just doesn't seem the right heading for something with those expressed aims.
2. The reader needs to know what they claim to be. How they match up to "non partisan", for instance, could well be described through appropriate sourcing, but an encyclopaedic article must surely start with what they claim to be.
3. Simply calling them far right is almost content free. We can surely do better than this.
4. Sources thrown in are also problematic, as follows:
   • The book [3] The Canadian Federal Election of 2019 does call them far right, although it does not describe their political views. It is discussion the 2019 accreditation case, as for various other sources.

• PressProgress [4] uses the term far right in a fact check of the True North digital media platform. It is talking about false claims on the platform, but a couple of points here. (1) the media platform is a subsidiary of the TNCPP but not the same thing, and we should be careful of that. (2) this source would provide much better information on the kind of misinformation they are putting out, rather than as a content free far right label. But that will only be if it is itself reliable. I haven't checked.
• The Canada Press Freedom article [5] is primary news reporting. We shouldn't be using that.
• The CBC article [6] calls them right wing, not far right.
• The second pres progress article [7] calls them right wing and not far right
• First Monday [8] talks about Candice Malcolm. By extension they mention her website, that is the True North media arm, which she founded and edits, but as above, is not itself the TNCPP. It calls her a far right personality, but does not speak about the TNCPP.

So this needs a lot more thought and work. I'll back out the edit, as all sources are now preserved in this talk section. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)