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Re-righting Wikipedia

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By Newslinger

"It is widely known that Wikipedia smears and lies about many conservatives (including The Gateway Pundit) and promotes leftist dogma. [...] Only legal action will prevent these far left hacks from censoring truthful news to the public", retorted the owner of The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that was deprecated by the Wikipedia community as an unreliable source in 2019, one month before his message. "Wikipedia has been and always will be fake news, and they know it. They believe facts are subject to a democratic process, and the only people with a vote are the bubbled leftists who edit Wikipedia", insisted the editor-in-chief of the far-right website Breitbart News shortly after the Wikipedia community deprecated it in 2018.

Is there any merit to these allegations?

A quick search reveals that media outlets tend to respond negatively when they are deprecated, regardless of their political orientation:

  • MintPress News, a left-leaning, anti-Israel website that was deprecated in 2019, purported: "For over ten years, Wikipedia has been a key focus of right-leaning, pro-Israel groups that have effectively weaponized the online encyclopedia as a means of controlling the narrative when it comes to the state of Israel's more than 50-year-long military occupation of Palestine."
  • The Grayzone, a far-left, pro-authoritarian blog that was deprecated earlier this year, complained: "The campaign to blacklist The Grayzone was initiated by Wikipedia editors who identify as Venezuelans and openly support the country's right-wing, US-backed opposition. These users obsessively monitor Venezuela-related articles, aggressively pushing a regime-change line and working to excise any piece of information or opinion that interferes with their agenda."

All of these deprecated media outlets accuse the Wikipedia community of having a bias that is opposite to the websites' own political orientations. But there is only one English-language Wikipedia. Deprecation is like a mirror: a source's response to being deprecated reflects its own bias more than it says anything about Wikipedia itself.

Recently, The Critic, a "contrarian conservative" magazine, published an article in October titled "The left-wing bias of Wikipedia", in which two pseudonymous authors who identify as American academics criticized Wikipedia editors for deprecating more right-wing sources than left-wing sources. What does this tell us about Wikipedia and its treatment of American media?

America's media landscape

In a highly-cited 2017 report from Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation", researchers Robert M. Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler examined the United States media landscape in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using a corpus of 4.5 million Twitter posts, these researchers measured the "candidate valence" of popular websites, which was determined by comparing the likelihood an article was shared by users who also retweeted posts by either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. (Less than 1% of users in the data set retweeted both Trump and Clinton.) On a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, the candidate valence of a website shows how likely the website was to be aligned with Clinton or Trump supporters in 2016, with a score of -1.0 (left) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Clinton supporters, and a score of 1.0 (right) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Trump supporters.

The Berkman Klein Center report identified Wikipedia as a "center-right" website on the candidate valence scale throughout the 2016 U.S. elections. Wikipedia was quite lonely – among the top 75 websites, there were only 3 sources with a center-right valence in the American media landscape during this time period: Wikipedia, RealClearPolitics, and the National Review. Based on the number of link shares generated by sources across the left–right valence spectrum, far-right and center-left valence sources dominated public discourse, with far-right valence sources obtaining the highest number of link shares, while center-right valence sources received the lowest amount of attention. In particular, The Wall Street Journal, an acclaimed conservative newspaper with a centrist valence, was usurped in popularity by Breitbart News, an Internet-native far-right publication with a far-right valence.

The dearth of center-right sources is confirmed in the current version of Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart, a graph that shows the political bias and reliability of popular English-language publications as reviewed by Ad Fontes analysts. The Media Bias Chart portrays the American media landscape as a bell curve in which centrist sources tend to be most reliable, while an increase in a source's bias is correlated with a decrease in the source's reliability. In the chart, there is a discontinuity in the center-right region, which has a mere sprinkle of sources, while the center-left and far-right regions are much more densely populated.

The Critic uses the Media Bias Chart to point out that Wikipedia deprecates more right-wing sources than left-wing sources in community discussions. This is true, and results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources. In December 2018, I compiled a table of all sources rated by Ad Fontes as "Nonsense damaging to public discourse", and compared their political bias ratings to their Alexa ranks. Although there were low-quality sources on both ends of the left–right political spectrum, there was no comparison in terms of popularity. Hyper-partisan right-wing sources were considerably more popular than hyper-partisan left-wing sources, with no left-wing equivalent to sources such as Breitbart News, which had an Alexa rank of 253. The most popular hyper-partisan left-wing source with a low reliability score was AlterNet, which was less popular with an Alexa rank of 14,007.

Popularity and political bias of low-quality sources

Almost two years have passed since I posted the December 2018 list, so it is time for an update. The following table details all of the sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart, which includes the following categories: "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info", "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info", and "Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion":

Sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart
Source Status Overall source reliability Political bias Alexa rank
The Gateway Pundit Deprecated 14.5 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.8 Hyper-partisan Right 521
InfoWars Deprecated Blacklisted 12.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.5 Hyper-partisan Right 2,413
Newsmax Deprecated 18.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 2,621
PJ Media N/A 19.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 6,459
RedState N/A 21.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,577
WorldNetDaily Deprecated 18.8 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,680
The Federalist N/A 23.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.1 Hyper-partisan Right 7,308
One America News Network Deprecated 20.1 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.1 Hyper-partisan Right 8,430
American Thinker N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 11,845
Twitchy N/A 15.4 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 22.6 Hyper-partisan Right 12,267
Palmer Report N/A 16.9 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -27.6 Hyper-partisan Left 13,119
Before It's News Blacklisted 4.7 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 25.8 Hyper-partisan Right 15,728
Natural News Generally unreliable Blacklisted 8.3 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 31.8 Most Extreme Right 17,368
American Greatness N/A 18.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 26,521
AlterNet Generally unreliable 23.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -20.1 Hyper-partisan Left 31,744
The American Spectator N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.6 Hyper-partisan Right 37,759
The Right Scoop N/A 20.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.7 Hyper-partisan Right 42,248
The Daily Signal N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.0 Hyper-partisan Right 50,975
Big League Politics N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 51,674
NewsPunch N/A 13.9 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 54,839
Bill O'Reilly N/A 21.4 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.9 Hyper-partisan Right 55,910
LifeZette N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.1 Hyper-partisan Right 58,147
Glenn Beck N/A 21.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.9 Hyper-partisan Right 65,138
Occupy Democrats Deprecated 21.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -25.7 Hyper-partisan Left 74,059
Wonkette N/A 15.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info -29.1 Hyper-partisan Left 77,446
WorldTruth.TV N/A 7.0 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 11.7 Skews Right 78,653
Life News N/A 23.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.6 Hyper-partisan Right 96,231
Bipartisan Report N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -24.6 Hyper-partisan Left 218,772
National Enquirer Deprecated 8.8 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 10.8 Skews Right 362,156

Among the 29 lowest-reliability sources rated by Ad Fontes Media, 5 are "Hyper-partisan Left", 2 "Skew Right", 21 are "Hyper-partisan Right", and 1 is in the "Most Extreme Right". The Critic disapproves of how Wikipedia has not yet deprecated AlterNet, a website classified as "Hyper-partisan Left", but fails to note that there are six "Hyper-partisan Right" sources that are more popular than AlterNet which have also not yet been deprecated or blacklisted. Over the past decade, the prominence of hyper-partisan right-wing sources has been a key feature of the American media landscape. Considering the lack of popular low-reliability sources in the left, it is hardly surprising that a significant proportion of deprecated sources on Wikipedia are right-wing sources.

Re-righting America

Wikipedia editors try to apply the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guideline evenly to all sources, regardless of the sources' political orientation. Although a significant subset of political discourse in American politics centers around content published in low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing sources, Wikipedia cannot use those sources in most cases because they do not meet the encyclopedia's reliability standards. Wikipedia is a reality-based encyclopedia, which means that false and fabricated information is correctly excluded from Wikipedia, even when it is disproportionally published by media outlets with a particular direction of bias.

As the neutral point of view policy states, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[a] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects."

The lack of high-quality center-right sources is a problem in the American media landscape, and you may be wondering how you can fix this issue. Currently, conservative media outlets have a stronger financial incentive to publish content that is less reliable. Look no further than Newsmax, which recently increased its viewership by a factor of nine after it started publishing baseless claims of fraud regarding the 2020 U.S. elections, with most of the new viewers migrating from the more reliable and less partisan Fox News. This apparent preference for disreputable media is sparking a crisis in American journalism.

To correct the situation, the American public can return to prioritizing high-quality information over partisan misinformation. Specifically, Americans who want to see a more balanced media landscape need to:

  1. Reject low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing media. These sources currently dominate conservative discourse in American politics on the Internet, and are gradually siphoning attention from more moderate conservative sources in traditional media. To reverse this trend, conservative media outlets that reduce the quality of their content need to suffer a decrease in their audience.
  2. Embrace high-quality center-right media. These sources are few and far between in the American media landscape, and their influence is declining. Market conditions have been too hostile for more center-right outlets to flourish, and this will not change unless the general American public becomes more receptive to high-quality conservative news reporting.

As an individual, whether you are a Wikipedia editor or reader, it is unlikely that anything you personally do would make a significant difference to the state of the American media landscape. However, all demographic changes are dependent on individuals taking action to support the changes they want to see. What Wikipedia desperately needs is a larger selection of high-quality conservative sources that represent the underserved population of Americans who align with the center-right. Once those sources are available, Wikipedia editors will be able to use them to rebalance articles that could benefit from more content that reflects a conservative perspective.

And only then can we re-right Wikipedia.

Notes

  1. ^ The relative prominence of each viewpoint among Wikipedia editors or the general public is not relevant and should not be considered.
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BTW, for those interested, WP:UPSD will highlight whenever most of these sources are cited. There are some exceptions: Life News, Bill O'Reilly, The Right Scoop, The Daily Signal and The American Spectator, aren't highlighted because it's either not immediately obvious that they are unreliable (you can be partisan without inventing things for example), or lack an WP:RSN consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can I tag this article with {{Globalise}}? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, but if you want to do the same type of thing with the UK, or France, or Germany, or ... Please just submit an article. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While this very well-written article definitely defeats the right-wing talking point about everything being biased against them, we might need to discuss how your research also implicates Wikipedia in general for having a bias which leans right. Why would that be? Is it our demographic base? Is it that the insistence on reliability and established sources also contains within it an implicit bias towards the status quo, and thus more conservative basis? Food for thought. Gwen Hope (talk) (contrib) 21:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of comparing the total number of deprecated left-leaning and right-leaning sources, I think it would be more meaningful to compare the threshold of reliability below which sources may be deprecated. The Daily Mail and Breitbart are deprecated with, respectively, reliability scores of 31.17 and 28.60. Has the same threshold been applied when deprecating left-leaning sources? The only deprecated left-leaning source, Occupy Democrats, has a reliability score of 21.59, and a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard decided against deprecating AlterNet, which has a reliability score of 23.16. So the threshold for deprecating left-leaning sources appears to be much stricter. Vitreous humour (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Vitreous humour: the issue usually reflect actual need to take a position on specific sources. For example WorldTruth.TV at 7.0 and NewsPunch at 13.9 are completely unmentioned at WP:RSN, because no one is trying to use them. WP:RSN reacts to usage (both in how widespread usage is, and the nature of said usage) in Wikipedia, it does not anticipate it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another example: according to [1], Jezebel (website) is a "marginally reliable" source, meaning it may or may not be used depending on the context. According to that page Jezebel has been discussed at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard twice, and that was the conclusion of those discussions. Jezebel has a reliability score of 26.25, lower than both The Daily Mail and Breitbart. Why did the Reliable Sources noticeboard decide that Jezebel may be used as a source, even though it is less reliable than deprecated right-leaning sources? Vitreous humour (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my point, I'm saying that this unequal threshold can't be explained by the fact that some sources escape deprecation by never being challenged. All of the sources I mentioned (The Daily Mail, Breitbart, AlterNet and Jezebel) have been challenged at RSN, and so have other sources of about the same reliability such as CounterPunch and The Daily Kos. But only the right-leaning sources are deprecated as a result of those challenges, despite being slightly more reliable than the other sources I mentioned. Vitreous humour (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Again, deprecation vs general unreliability vs whatever else depends on how Jezebel is used and what it's used for. Breitbart was used to push lunacy as fact. Jezebel is used mostly to source opinions. It doesn't make Jezebel reliable, but there hasn't been a need to deprecated it because their is no widespread effort to use it to push for lunatic conspiracy theories. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:40, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Headbomb, you have noted the disparity between ratings by Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart and our deprecation of sources. That is partially because the Media Bias Chart is not an official RS for our reliability decisions. Someone might mention it, and others might say "that's interesting," but it has no weight....yet. Who knows what the future may bring? I personally think it's pretty darn good most of the time. -- Valjean (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If I would like to notice something, most far-right sources are the most loud in declaring Wikipedia is biased. SMB99thx my edits! 00:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree with Headbomb. You know, there's something with a lot of conservatives these days. They don't really produce reliable information and are prone to ignoring statistics and just opinionating stuff.

That's not to say that conservatives are bad. There are many categories of people in the US:

It's just sad how bad apples ruin the rest. We need diversity of good opinions and more neutrality in today's society. Firestar464 (talk) 01:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't believe that the social media analysis is good evidence that Wikipedia is "centre-right", and I think we can all come up with good reasons why there may be confounding factors when it comes to the demographics of people who share Wikipedia articles. But it's a good starting point for us to ask ourselves: what political position would we want to be, were there an accurate yardstick for measuring? If your answer is "apolitical" then think a little bit deeper. Our founding notion was political. We aim to provide educational resources for free. Many organisations and people with power throughout history have opposed and continue to oppose such aims. Such groups aren't simply bad or wrong, but acting according to their political interests. It's part of their support for the status quo in whatever class system their society has.
    We don't limit readership by gender. In many countries, right-wing groups use violence to ensure that girls are not educated to the same level as boys. We don't provide any different a user experience to people who pay. Contrast with state vs. private education. We don't believe in populism—we report what sources with strong fact-checking policies report, not what the majority of a population believe. (Deeper, there's something philosophically interesting here with what we think a "fact" is and epistemology.) But many politicians and journalists think that the majority is always right. We believe in the scientific method. This puts us at odds with some religious and spiritual people. And so on. These choices are all meaningfully political. This is why so many of our topics are battlegrounds for paid/COI editors, misogynists, party political fanatics, science deniers etc. It is not that these people want to impose politics on something that is apolitical. It is that they wish to change the political orientation of a very political body of work. A work which upset the status quo and balance of power by introducing people to a community-sourced, free collection of information. And when I say "political", I do mean that you can mark our principles on a position on a left-wing to right-wing scale (the centre being wherever it is in your community among the median resident). And you won't end up in the centre. — Bilorv (talk) 02:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Bilorv: I'd add a slight qualification to that. We do report what the majority of a population believe; it's just that we report it as statistics and opinion, not as fact. We do report who the majority of the US population believe would be better as the next President. Our mission is inherently political, yes, but it doesn't mean we should espouse those viewpoints as superior in our article content unless sources support our viewpoint. Some introspection may be helpful here as we seek to account for our personal biases. We report on the social and economic advantages of educating girls and boys to the same level, but we also report on religious views on educating women. We report science and present it as fact, but we also report the psychology behind pseudoscience and science denial (if we currently don't have content on this issue, we ought to). And we must distinguish the political orientation of our mission, which is left-of-center for reasons you mentioned, and the political orientation of our content, which is right-of-center. Our content is necessarily conservative because we report on topics only after they have been well established in reliable sources. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 03:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday, Breitbart published an overview of the various studies about Wikipedia's political bias. Breitbart articles apparently can't be linked to directly, but the article can be found by searching for the title, "5 Times Studies Proved Wikipedia’s Left-Wing Bias". I understand that Breitbart itself is considered unreliable, but this article is merely providing a summary of existing studies conducted by other people. There are many possible ways of measuring political bias, but as far as I know every effort to quantify it at Wikipedia has produced more or less the same result, and that result is not that the bias is right of center. Vitreous humour (talk) 04:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not referring to Conservatism in the United States. I'm referring to the definition of "conservative" as "marked by moderation or caution". Wikipedia exercises moderation in its coverage of topics via its policies of verifiability and neutrality. It maintains existing viewpoints on topics until there is reliable evidence to suggest a change. It does not pounce at breaking news and developments. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 04:37, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As an anecdote, I'd point to The Economist, traditionally considered a centrist publication. The Economist promotes social process by espousing ideas from both the left and right of the political spectrums in the US and UK. Wikipedia is more conservative than The Economist. Unlike The Economist, which argues in favor of or against certain viewpoints on political and social issues, Wikipedia strives towards a neutral point of view policy and does not partake in political advocacy. If we treat The Economist as lying in the center, Wikipedia is right of center. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 16:51, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Vitreous humour: Your last sentence means you have forgotten about the study you read about in this Signpost article. However, I'd ask which country you're talking about. Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, but most studies I've seen are American. And the so-called "left-wing" candidate in America is often further right in many respects than the right-wing candidate in my country (UK). As for Breitbart articles on Wikipedia, they're written by a far-right misogynist who was banned from editing Wikipedia due to harassment of other editors. I notice he uses as evidence in his whining that "right-leaning editors have [...] been found to be six times more likely to face sanctions". He of all people understands that this figure is disproportionately affected by Nazis and trolls who harass other editors. Why would I trust him to not have a selection bias in the content he presents, even if I were to wrongly accept that content as factual?
Anyway, Vitreous humour, you should note that WP:BADSOCK disallows "Editing project space" as an action of a legitimate sockpuppet, under the only possible SOCKLEGIT justification you could have for this account, privacy. — Bilorv (talk) 10:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
All very good points, feminist. — Bilorv (talk) 10:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How do we burst the bubbles of consumers of right-wing media? How can we rehabilitate them and get them to trust Wikipedia effectively? How can we encourage them to write about (US) conservative politics using fact-based sources instead of their opinion-based alternatives? Giving up is not an option because these people are likely voters in America; I'd even suggest it's a duty for editors of one of the most visited sites of a country to ensure the viability of America and its institutions. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 03:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's worth making the point that sources only need taking to the reliable sources noticeboard when there is a dispute as to whether they should be used. So if no-one is using or advocating for the use of a site it won't be officially deprecated. We had this argument over the Daily Mail deprecation when we were accused of not deprecating an official North Korean government website and thereby treating the Daily Mail worse than a North Korean propaganda site. The reality is that we had a lot of content cited to the Daily Mail and a number of community members defending that, but no one was using or advocating the use of a North Korean government site. Also if you have a political system where one side is more influenced by experts, and the other more likely to think that "experts" were suborned by reptilians, then people are likely to find it easier to find a reliable source on one side than the other, and an unreliable source on the side where most are reliable is more likely to be crowded out. ϢereSpielChequers 12:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some really good data highlighted in this piece, but the analysis and recommendations are lacking as they fail to socially contextualize media. Specifically, we should not be surprised at the over-representation of reliable center and left outlets and a corresponding lack of highly reliable right media in the United States – this is because reliability is a political quality. The purpose of most right media is to galvanise and uphold political-right perspectives, i.e. reliability is not connected to its purpose. Former conservative activist Matt Sheffield recently shared a solid outline of what this looks like on the inside on Twitter. By comparison, centrist media is most concerned with promoting the status quo, with gradual amendments along a somewhat scientific basis – this plays into the reliability paradigm as it mostly repeats conventional thought and produces studies that do not fundamentally challenge centrist perspectives (the biases of researchers plays its role here). Left media (as the most disempowered group) typically has the purpose of criticism of non-left power structures from a hyper-democratic and collectivist perspective. Its critiques are squarely aimed at winning over people of the left and centre so often work within the scientific paradigm and appeals to logic and reason. Its pluralist qualities also reduces the formation of high level in-group biases in left media. We should understand that "reliability" has political implications – it is not a cultural concept that can be consistently applied across the political spectrum as it fundamentally disempowers some forms of political consciousness (such as identity-based belief). This dynamic also accounts for the state of Wikipedia, as its emphasis on the notion of reliability encourages a center and left lean in sourcing. SFB 13:30, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good points; I linked Matt's Twitter thread to RSN a few weeks ago. I'd add that right-wing media, in the US anyway, appeal to fear and (to a lesser extent) rebellion.
      • A political viewpoint is not required to edit Wikipedia. I'm a right-wing man, but that is not the point of my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to write text without exposing political viewpoints because it's easy to do so, so as a result I get no trouble from it. I'm comfortable with such thing, so it's easy to accept me even if this website becomes re-righted. -iaspostb□x 21:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • To be honest I would characterize it less as appealing to fear and rebellion (whatever that means) and more as appealing to outrage. Of course this is as much an oversimplification/mischaracterization as saying the left media appeals to jealousy or outrage, so I guess my suggestion isn't any improvement. --Sephra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.50.160.80 (talk) 11:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I politely beg to differ with your "social contextualization", i.e. how the right, center, and left relate to reliability or criticism. (I lean left on many issues, but not to "critique non-left power structures"; I'd like to think I hold those views because of my values/opinions of the technical facts.) And I'd like to think we at WP don't try to push any political agenda; we don't go on any crusade, no matter how just, except the crusade to provide a service of free, transparent summarization of information. In this we try to avoid bias and emotionality (again, no matter how morally justified our outrage), and by doing so provide the best service we can. I personally like the ideal of "reliability". In summary, while I see where you (@SFB) are coming from, and I have some quibbles with the article, I still say, good article by Newslinger. --Sephra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.50.160.80 (talk) 10:19, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think what many miss is that Wikipedia's "free, transparent summarization of information" is the political agenda. By working on this, it means you are attacking those who benefit from the gatekeeping of knowledge; attacking those who stand to gain from not having their ideas challenged. This action can transform power dynamics in families and communities. It can raise political consciousness. It can create and destroy jobs. Wikipedia works against people in society who do not want this information shared or presented in this way. Many here will see that attack as justified and a positive development – our political bias is revealed in our thoughts on that. SFB 15:28, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • Certainly some will be unhappy about how information is summarized but are they always the powerful? Are the gate keepers always unhappy about this? I believe (ie I'm offering this without a clear citation) there are cases where a person's career has been harmed by things said about them on Wikipedia and where the sources turned out to be people who were in some way involved with the subject of the wiki article. Every case of citeogenesis is a failure of Wikipedia and sometimes at the expense of the weak. Don't our RS and NPOV policies effectively support/enforce the power of established news/media outlets at the expense of smaller ones? When we decide some sources are reliable and make blanket exclusions directed at others aren't we reinforcing the power of some media companies and holding back others? If the NYT says X and a small source disputes X, per RS we will generally treat the NYT (used only as an example) as reliable and the small source as suspect. Doesn't that simply reinforce the power of the NYT vs smaller sources? NPOV tends to reinforce the status quo when alternative ideas are said to be fringe and excluded or treated as inferior rather than just newer and less established. Yes, often the established version is established because it is objectively better but sometimes just because it was first or popular. It seems WP is more likely to support the power of the media/news gate keepers rather than take power from them. While certainly not the objective of our NPOV and RS policies, it is at times an unfortunate side effect. The yin and the yang of our policies. Springee (talk) 15:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is my goal to live long enough for the smoke and mirrors buzz phrase "fake news" to pass into the obsolete and forgotten alarmist phrases graveyard where it belongs. We are entering a new era soon, and hopefully all concerned can find the self constraint to not try to dumb us all down. I feel like we've lived four years with the news media (both the liberals and the conservatives) going with the lowest possible denominator in communication. In this place and time, it must be hard for this generation to imagine a time when we had so-called intellectuals in both government and some areas of the media. I miss intellectual commentators that focus on issues, and am saddened that what we have left are name calling and accusations, with nothing good resulting from it.— Maile (talk) 02:56, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • We are entering a new era soon fake news. Argento Surfer (talk) 19:28, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • By we, do you mean the world and not just America? If yes then you are right. Here in India, there is only one major anti-government news website-cum-channel (NDTV) but there are many pro-government news websites-cum-channels (Republic TV, Times Now, Aaj Tak and so on). Similarly, there are some non-mainstream news sources (The Wire and The Quint are against the government, Livemint and Scroll.in are somewhere in the middle, and OpIndia and Postcard News (which is not notable enough to have an article on Wikipedia) are pro-government). I have noticed that every single Indian web-based news source has apparently become less reliable (except maybe Scroll.in and Livemint, both of which have never been caught reporting something false AFAIK) but the ones that have become the worst are pro-government (which may not be a coincidence since the ruling centre-right to far-right (depending on whether you look at the more reasonable politicians or the idiots) Bharatiya Janata Party's former president and the current Home Minister of India said that any story, real or fake, can become viral if his party endorses it (does it remind you of Joseph Goebbels?) and admitted that the BJP has its own "IT (Information Technology) Cell" specifically to spread propaganda and sometimes even completely fake news on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp. As a matter of fact, there was a study mentioned at Fake news website#India saying that Indian conservative fake-news spreaders outnumber liberal fake-news spreaders 115 to 1). Regardless of who is at fault, and whether the conservatives are spreading more fake news everywhere or not, the world seems to have gone mad due to many factors including right-wing populism at such a dangerous time (and maybe even Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Jinping and Putin being in power at the same time has also made the world go mad) and something has to be done (by the left-wing politicians, of course. Would anyone expect us Wikipedians to launch an international center-left to centre-right political party to fix everything?). 45.251.33.78 (talk) 05:16, 2 December 2020 (UTC) (Last rephrased at 13:12, 2 December 2020 (UTC))[reply]
  • Great article. Thank you sir. I found your comparison of the Media Bias Chart with WP:RSPSOURCES, and your observation that the center right doesn't have many news sources, fascinating. I was also surprised to learn how highly the far right sources rank on Alexa. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:54, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this was a good article but it shouldn't stand as any proof that Wikipedia doesn't (or does) have a bias in how things are presented. I think Vitreous humour's concern about the margin cases is legitimate. This wouldn't come into just deprecation but also cases where we are asking should source X be treated as generally reliable vs say use with caution. We have many marginal cases and if those margin cases are decided with unintentional bias it can still shift the overall results. I say if because I don't have a list of examples so I would like to treat this as something yet to be proven or disproven. Also, using reliable sources is only part of IMPARTIAL. How facts are presented, does the lead start with a basic description or a subjective, sometimes negative, assessment of the article subject? How much weight/space do we give to a laundry list of criticisms? What is the threshold for something being on that list? This general topic NPOV was the focus of a recent Village Pump topic [[2]]. Overall I think Wikipedia does a good job but that doesn't mean we can't be better. Springee (talk) 14:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice article, Newslinger! I knew that someday the Signpost would see an article discussing these far-(insert either left or right) jerks trying to hijack Wikipedia. I was just wondering, have you already discussed the non-American portion of the "news" cesspool (OpIndia for example) in some other article on the Signpost or is that something you may do later? 45.251.33.78 (talk) 04:16, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article blames the public (our readers) for any bias that appears here. That might not be a wise piece of finger-pointing. The main argument in the piece in The Critic isn't that right-wing sources are deprecated; it's that Wikipedia is institutionally biased. Before asking our readers to support a different kind of commercial news organization, might it be wiser to ask if we at Wikipedia have done everything that we can to minimize the (perceived) biases that we present? EddieHugh (talk) 23:05, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Newslinger argues (persuasively, in my view) that what the Critic authors perceive as "bias" is in fact an appropriate result of proper application of site policies and guidelines. I agree that it's important to be aware of our implicit biases (and, frankly, we have huge blind spots when it comes to race and gender, among other things), but the idea that there is a systemic bias against conservatives or against right-leaning sources (as posited by the Critic authors) doesn't really stand up to examination. At least that's my interpretation of Newslinger's analysis. MastCell Talk 19:56, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • Newslinger mentions only "deprecating more right-wing sources than left-wing sources" from The Critic article, and then analyses that. But there's a lot more than that in The Critic article – that's why I wrote "The main argument in the piece in The Critic isn't that right-wing sources are deprecated; it's that Wikipedia is institutionally biased." Newslinger has addressed only one part of what The Critic deems to be institutional bias, so the point is far from dealt with. EddieHugh (talk) 14:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article makes the case that there simply aren't many right leaning sources sitting in the realm of, if you will, second tier, right leaning news sources vs second tier left leaning. By second tier I don't want to imply low quality but these are the sources that are less likely to do the basic, just the facts reporting. Using the Ad Fontes Media chart [[3]] let's say sources with a reliability over 36 but outside the green "most reliable" box. Note that there are far more sources on the left vs right when that cutoff is applied (looks to be 7 vs 1). So how does this impact our impartiality when reporting on a topic? Let's assume the next Milton Friedman (a darling of the right) publishes a book on how to fix the economy/education and all 8 sources review it. The 7 on the left say it's a bad book, the 1 on the right says it's a good book (for this example I'm indulging in assumed partisanship). How should we cover that? Do we treat the one reviewer who said it was good as fringe? Do we assume the 7:1 split is the natural split or just the split among sources we have? What if one of the 7 reports on an event and the other 6 sources re-report the claims of the first. Do we treat that as 7 sources or just one with the others simply trying to steal away some traffic for the sake of getting ad revenue? Our NPOV rules say we need to report based on the balance of sources but is that going to result in a neutral article if we have 7 sources with some level of echo chamber effect vs 1 that has a different perspective? If we have 7 sources vs 1 and we say we have to treat the 7 as the majority POV, is that likely to deliver a neutral article or one that treats the bias of the 7 as if it were neutral? I'm not suggesting we dump our balance of sources approach as it is like democracy, the worst form of government, except for all the others. Absent a wise, benevolent, dictator of impartiality I'm not sure how we would come up with a consistently better way to try to balance views. Still, if the balance of sources is so skewed to one side we shouldn't assume it won't result in our articles skewing to that same side. I'll close by noting that my example required two big assumptions. First, the sources would reach conflicting conclusions based on their bias. Second, no other sources (higher or lower) would report on the topic/details in question. I don't think it hurts to ask, how/where might our current system deliver sub-optimal results. Even if we don't/can't correct that it's worth being aware of it. Springee (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Springee, I love your 7vs1 example! @feminist I love the way you present your points across this thread. Re: "How do we burst the bubbles.." First, you say giving up is not an option, but there is a popular saying that even in technical empirical fields such as hard sciences, revolutions are sometimes carried out not by force of fact but by old adherents passing on. In fact, patience could be part of the answer to your question. I don't mean to wait and see and do nothing but to lead people to more patience, which is the opposite of "Consume (media and products)! Like! Follow!", which consumption of media is how we got to this mess in the first place. To answer your question directly, I would advocate a personal, change-starts-at-home approach. I have occasional conversations with my parents about their right-leaning news sources and views (some non-English from their home country). Sometimes I learn new things and agree, if not with their conclusions, at least with where they're coming from. Just because they live in a conservative bubble doesn't mean they're bad people. Sure I also get tired and frustrated at leaning in but in the end I'm OK with it personally. I think patience and compassion are important in dealing with older conservatives, even over the internet. I've found it easier to change minds if I'm willing to give a little and change myself. I'm sorry if I don't suggest quick fixes (I wish there was a technomagic-3d-printed-blockchain-AI-WP solution to fake news and biased emotionality but alas) but in my opinion a systemic problem requires a systemic solution. I think even more important is to make sure the next generations, vulnerable and impressionable, are brought up properly - not with biases, not even our own - but with the power to think for themselves. I am hopeful WP will help with this goal and the future may not be so bleak. --Sephra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.50.160.80 (talk) 11:56, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also think that there could be a worldwide analysis of the deprecated sources rather than only focusing on American sources.Ahmetlii (talk) 14:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Newslinger, thanks for such a good analysis of the situation. You really get it.

It is a frequent daily occurrence that clearly right-wing editors and visitors complain about the left-wing bias here, and mistakenly conclude that our choice of sources is because of personal bias, and not because most right-wing sources are not reliable, as noted above by Newslinger. Some editors are well aware of the article at The Critic and actually believe its mistaken premises. That's sad.

One editor recently resorted to accusing other editors of creating "barriers of entry" as a means to "own the topic" and "control the narrative,"[4] rather than recognizing that their own favorite sources were so extreme that they were not reliable enough for us to use.

Does Wikipedia have "barriers to entry?" Yes, we do have them. They are called RS, and source reliability is judged by accuracy, not by any particular bias, be it left or right.

As is always the case with politically relevant facts (IOW not all facts) and how sources relate to them, there are those sources which agree with those in power, and those sources that do not. This is a factor in what's known as "disinformation laundering": "The U.S. media ecosystem features several spheres that partially overlap and constantly interact with each other....The mainstream media... The conspiratorial media... and Disclosers."

Currently, with few exceptions, the right-wing media has become (especially since Trump) so extreme that it is the described "conspiratorial media," with some extreme left-wing sources also in that group. At some other point in history, the roles might be reversed. It all depends on which narratives, true or false, are favorable to those in power. With Trump and the GOP, they have clearly chosen disinformation and conspiracy theories to stoke Trump's base, and he often gets those narratives from sources like Fox News, Daily Caller, Breitbart, RT, Sputnik, and Russian intelligence efforts to plant propaganda and fake news, which he then repeats. He literally "launders" that disinformation.

My points:

  1. Yes, Wikipedia does have "barriers to entry," and we should be thankful for them, not criticize and undermine them.
  2. When people buy into Trump's "All RS are fake news!" mantra, they follow him down a rabbit hole that excludes RS, so they cannot self-correct. He allows no crack for "the light to get in". Being a die-hard Trump supporter has serious consequences here. This extreme media bubble of falsehood does not exist on the left, as left-wingers tend to use a much wider variety of sources, so they discover errors and self-correct fairly quickly.
  3. What lessons does this situation have for editors here? Are we willing to do anything about it?

Valjean (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Newslinger brought us an interesting perspective, and I applaud his efforts. In reading some of the responses, several editors touched on some important issues. The ones that struck closest to home for me were the responses by WereSpielChequers, Headbomb, Springee (liked his 7-1 example), and SFB's comment: "...but the analysis and recommendations are lacking as they fail to socially contextualize media." Common sense tells us people who lean left are likely to align with left-leaning sources and will naturally consider them neutral and accurate, whereas those who lean right will have a similar belief about their chosen right-leaning sources. Both sides will probably believe their respective political party is the best, and that all the others suck. But finding RS involves so much more than simply being able to identify political bias and recognizing the difference between subjective and objective reporting in our media news feeds. Spin, focus, and propaganda are all part of the issues we must sort through, and it has become a global issue with the increased use of the internet, clickbait and intense global competition. The digital age gave us McNews and we can watch it 24/7 while eating a McRib, but fast food is not always healthy or easy to digest.[stretch] National and local news broadcasts are still very much in the game, but rather than rambling on any further, I'll just quote a small excerpt from the Sharon Beder article Moulding and Manipulating the News, in Controversies in Environmental Sociology, edited by Rob White, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 204-220.

The rhetoric of journalistic objectivity supplies a mask for the inevitable subjectivity that is involved in news reporting and is supposed to reassure audiences who might otherwise be wary of the power of the media. It also ensures a certain degree of autonomy to journalists and freedom from regulation to media corporations (Entman 1989: 32; Nelkin 1987: 94). However, news reporting involves judgements about what is a good story, who will be interviewed for it, what questions will be asked, which parts of those interviews will be printed or broadcast, what facts are relevant and how the story is written:

value judgements infuse everything in the news media … Which of the infinite observations confronting the reporter will be ignored? Which of the facts noted will be included in the story? Which of the reported events will become the first paragraph? Which story will be prominently displayed on page 1 and which buried inside or discarded? … Mass media not only report the news – they also literally make the news. (Lee and Solomon 1990: 16)

Journalists are free to write what they like if they produce well-written stories ‘free of any politically discordant tones’, that is, if what they write fits the ideology of those above them in the hierarchy. A story that supports the status quo is generally considered to be neutral and its objectivity is not questioned, while one that challenges the status quo tends to be perceived as having a ‘point of view’ and therefore biased.

  • To have a better understanding of the news one is being fed, it helps to know who is feeding it. This is one of the reasons I have always emphasized a cautious approach to all news sources, and closer adherence to WP:RECENTISM and WP:BREAKING. The kind of information that may prove helpful is knowing how the "business of news" actually operates, which includes knowing their targeted demographics and advertisers, especially now that so much of our news is controlled by conglomerates like Amazon. They aren't generating advertising dollars so they can provide news as a public service - no, no, no - they're providing the kind of news that will attract a targeted demographic in order to generate more advertising dollars; follow the money. I've provided some links if you're seeking a better understanding about the true nature of news media. Yes, context does matter relative to grading RS, and yes, I have concerns over our current system of grading at WP:RSP, and the direction we're headed. See the following links: Trends in media pluralism [5], Profiles Of News Consumption: Platform Choices, Perceptions of Reliability, and Partisanship [6], Political Polarization & Media Habits [7], Understanding news outlets’ audience-targeting patterns [8]. Atsme 💬 📧 03:02, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    The combination of the immediacy pressure of the 24 hour news cycle, and the collapse of the business model that used to sustain a free press, means that things are not looking good. I predict that some of the sources that we currently rely on will either cutback on fact checking or fold in the future. One possible future for global news is that the ever improving auto translation will mean that we have more access to reliable sources in other languages. Another possibility is we'll live in a paywalled world where most people access week old news for free and a small elite are more up to date. Or perhaps we'll see a completely new business model for news, such as media departments for major universities being seen as trusted news sources, financed as loss leaders by their university as readers send their kids to the universities they trust. Or maybe people will cut out the middle man, and increasingly subscribe to the latest from the politicians they find interesting. I hope we will still have an important place under any of these scenarios, but a tertiary source needs primary and secondary sources. ϢereSpielChequers 11:36, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP is fact-based, expert-based, and centrist. The right increasingly denigrates facts and expertise, so many of them will label WP as "radical left", to borrow a phrase from someone unnamed. Tony (talk) 08:21, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Your comment evoked this 80s song. ;-) Atsme 💬 📧 18:12, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

id say it would be hard to get conservatives to trust Wikipedia as it technically isn't a reliable source, anyone can edit it, and it is just as fallible as a peer reviewed study. a long time ago I was just as liberal as many Wikipedia Editors are, and after being attacked attacked, smeared, hated, vilified for holding different viewpoints that were once considered LIBERAL a decade ago, I understand how conservatives feel and ended up becoming one much to the ire of my own mother who tried very hard to put in an anti conservative bias into me. Most people do not understand what it means to be a conservative or what a conservative really is. we get called fascist just for being for american jobs staying in america, protecting American labor, protecting american energy independence and calling out poorly legislated welfare pieces that exist to move money upward to the rich... its silly but that is how society treats us.

Wikipedia had shown conservative leaning people in the past with biased pages on things such as "Gamergate" that allowed for the activity of trolls to override a movement led by activists who wanted transparency and ethics in gaming journalism. but because the press was slandering the movement, it got biased pages on Wikipedia. in general there are a lot of bias amongst the left where they support things that generally moderates and conservatives see as entirely wrong, yet the press, the media, celebrities and influencers peddle it daily thinking its nuanced because they do not challenge their own views. Even Glenn Greenwald spoke out about the state of journalism, many journalists have been irk'd by the pay for play/reporting and the general misinformation campaigns led by a dying legacy media who takes money on the site to back up private corporate and political interests. so in short, there are tons of reasons conservatives do not trust Wikipedia, and its not just because of the tabloids that conservatives pass off as news...

there are many sources just as bad as conservative rags, fake news sites and right wing tabloids that Wikipedia trusts as a news source. many opinionated pieces are marked as sources on Wikipedia, many editorials and smear campaigns are considered factoids to be tagged onto pages. places like snopes that have lied about many things, and put out misinformation by manipulating the claims they "fact check" are considered valid and truthful sources even tho the internet at large considers them to be ultra biased and propaganda. even sources like buzzfeed are trusted more than the DailyCaller for some reason. and despite the lawsuits of Libel, the Southern Poverty Law Center is still considered a valid source for info about "Hate groups" and hateful people, despite the obvious smears. there are a lot wikipedia could do to maintain neutrality, mainly on the political end. a lot of internet users some reason think politics is black and white, no middle ground for truth, no groups taking money for putting out an occasional smear piece or deceptively edited video like AJ+, NowThis, and buzzfeed puts out.

much of the media IS biased against conservatives, many in the media grew up constantly thinking conservatives were the bad guys because of how the media framed it, and now those who grew up on said media continue the trend and stereotyping of conservatives. 0.6% of the population that is actually white supremacist get painted as if they represent all conservatives, the small portion of firebrand evangelicals and baptists get painted as if they speak for all Christians and Catholics. Not every Bigot is a monolith for the entire spectrum of the right, we are fine with black people, tons of us love gay and trans people and are gay or trans themselves. Because of this bias, many feel as if conservatives are the bad guys and that everything the left does is good, intended to be good and will have a good outcome as if somehow our legislative process cant be lobbied foreign or domestically if someone has a (D) next to their name on the ballots. Conservatives realize this, they understand not everyone in a party they like will be a good working class advocate and that the system lies for its own profit, which is why many do not vote. Even tho they care about working class issues, they don't vote because nothing changes despite what party is in power.

I understand this is an OLD OP-ED piece but I hope this viewpoint from another perspective outside of yours helps. In 2021, conservatives more rely on commentators than legacy media and online news articles and FYI Fox News is just as bad as CNN and MSNBC, both lie their butts off everyday through half-truths and misrepresentation, only difference is that one bias is obvious to you, the others get praised due to confirmation bias. You have the privilege of being within the pop-culture, not the counter culture. remember, just because idiots fall for tabloids and rumor mills, doesn't mean you should entirely discount policy and economic opinions of a spectrum of people on that side because you other them. and what we do now, echoes forever in eternity.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -Groucho Marx

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right." -H. L. Mencken

"If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it." - Mark Twain Daggerfella (talk) 12:52, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have to laugh at this article and its pompousness. What you utterly fail to realize is the speed at which you Newslinger, and Wikipedia editors like you, are fast to write off sources as "far right" and therefor "unreliable". Have you ever stopped and thought why "center right sources" are in short supply? It isn't some mysterious circumstance. American political discourse has shifted radically to the left in the last 40 years, with viewpoints that were once mainstream right now becoming "fringe" right to those who don't hold them. It's to the point that the modern American leftist classifies anything to the right of Joe Biden as far right. The mainstream media, likewise, has followed this undeniable leftward shift - and they incorporate this bias into their reporting. But because their reporting massages the worldview of the average leftist - which the majority of active Wikipedia editors have been proven by independent research to be - they are quick to label them "reliable". Wikipedia's criteria for deciding the bias and reliability is thus all one big circlejerk, with forgone conclusions of which ideological biases are reliable and which are not. And any honest person knows it. Partisan right wing media wouldn't be nearly as popular in America if the mainstream corporate outlets did their jobs fairly and accurately. But as Larry Sanger said, rather than recognizing this truth about modern media, Wikipedia editors would rather live in a dream world of their own making. Coinage1 (talk) 22:49, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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