Wikipedia's Bias by John Stossel

[trout]

by John Stossel discusses reliable sources, interview/letter response with Jimmy Wales and a prolific editor.

[Giraffe Stapler]

by John Stossel discusses reliable sources, interview/letter response with Jimmy Wales and a prolific editor.

I used to think that John Stossel wasn't very bright.

[Midsize Jake]

I used to think that John Stossel wasn't very bright.

And now you know for certain!

[thekohser]

The part where he smugly types "President Barack Obama built these cages", and thinks that this "proves" there's a problem.

Not saying there isn't a problem, but Jesus... we couldn't find something more provocative than "they made my info disappear"?

Meanwhile, Jimbo's letter is fun to read. Did he forget to list the leftist media deprecated by Wikipedia, or did Stossel erase that part before making a screen shot?

[Randy from Boise]

John Stossel is a political hack, on a par with Larry Sanger.

t

[Beeblebrox]

Libertarians should love Wikipedia. That they mostly hate it is more evidence that they don't actually believe the shit they say. The only Libertarian worth listening to is Vermin Supreme (T-H-L).

[AndyTheGrump]

Libertarians should love Wikipedia. That they mostly hate it is more evidence that they don't actually believe the shit they say. The only Libertarian worth listening to is Vermin Supreme (T-H-L).

Just seen this posted on Reddit.

[Atsme]

John Stossel is a political hack, on a par with Larry Sanger.

t

It's not just Stossel - add Jonathan Turley to the growing list of critics, which is what this forum is supposed to be, right?

[Midsize Jake]

It's not just Stossel - add Jonathan Turley to the growing list of critics, which is what this forum is supposed to be, right?

These are not "critics" in the Wikipedia context, they're just political opportunists using easily-linked anecdotal evidence to fuel the (in these cases, right-wing) outrage machine. Their criticisms, to the extent they can be called that, are kind of like Wikipedia articles themselves — assuming they're accurate, they're useful more for getting a quick introduction to the subject than any sort of deep, or even clear, understanding of it.

More to the point, Stossel's and Turley's understanding of how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), and why, amounts a tiny fraction of our understanding of these things, and don't worry, I do of course include you when I say "our," despite any differences I myself might have with you politically. And I don't really blame these guys for what they're doing either, at least as far as WP is concerned. Like most people, I'm sure they're very busy most days and don't have time to really study this stuff in the kind of detail we do. But for better or worse, this is also why we don't really keep any sort of formal "list of critics."

[Charliebware]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:C ... /StosselTV

[Captain Occam]

Does anybody have a counter-argument against Stossel's central point, that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-quality partisan sources on the left than on the right? Stossel definitely is not the first person to point this out, and Jimbo's response to him comes across as somewhat evasive.

There is a semi-objective way to compare the quality of these sources, using the Media Bias Chart. According to this chart the Daily Mail, the Daily Caller, and the New York Post have about the same reliability (shown on the vertical axis) as Jezebel, Jacobin and Salon. If political bias weren't a factor, you would expect Wikipedia to treat all these sources similarly, but the first three are considered uniformly unreliable, while the latter three are reliable or "depends on context". The fact that some hyper-partisan leftist sources such as Occupy Democrats have been deprecated doesn't refute this, if these sources are consistently being held to a lower standard of quality than those on the right.

[Vigilant]

Facts have a known liberal bias.

[Randy from Boise]

Does anybody have a counter-argument against Stossel's central point, that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-quality partisan sources on the left than on the right? Stossel definitely is not the first person to point this out, and Jimbo's response to him comes across as somewhat evasive.

There is a semi-objective way to compare the quality of these sources, using the Media Bias Chart. According to this chart the Daily Mail, the Daily Caller, and the New York Post have about the same reliability (shown on the vertical axis) as Jezebel, Jacobin and Salon. If political bias weren't a factor, you would expect Wikipedia to treat all these sources similarly, but the first three are considered uniformly unreliable, while the latter three are reliable or "depends on context". The fact that some hyper-partisan leftist sources such as Occupy Democrats have been deprecated doesn't refute this, if these sources are consistently being held to a lower standard of quality than those on the right.

ALL sources "depend on context."

In general, right wing sources tend to play looser with evidence and rely more upon emotion than left wing sources.

And right wing hacks tend to regard ALL academic sources as "left wing," which is ludicrous horseshit and goes miles and miles towards explaining their deep sense of butthurt about WP.


t

[Randy from Boise]

Facts have a known liberal bias.

This.

t

[Midsize Jake]

Does anybody have a counter-argument against Stossel's central point, that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-quality partisan sources on the left than on the right?

You just had to insert that term "low-quality" in there, didn't you?

They almost certainly are more amenable to left-wing sources, but the problem isn't "quality," the problem is whether or not the media entity does things like statistics, measurements, coherent quantification, full-quoting, not taking things for granted that are not actually in evidence, stuff like that.

You can do all those things and still be biased. But starting out biased, and not pretending to be anything else, is actually worse than starting out with at least a pretense of objectivity and then coming to a biased conclusion based on the aforementioned stuff. (As opposed to depending on anecdotal evidence, cherry-picking, "many people believe..." and so on.)

And look, now you've put me in the position of having to defend the way Wikipedia does things. This is all your fault! Both sides bad! Both sides bad!

[Captain Occam]

Does anybody have a counter-argument against Stossel's central point, that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-quality partisan sources on the left than on the right?

You just had to insert that term "low-quality" in there, didn't you?

They almost certainly are more amenable to left-wing sources, but the problem isn't "quality," the problem is whether or not the media entity does things like statistics, measurements, coherent quantification, full-quoting, not taking things for granted that are not actually in evidence, stuff like that.

You can do all those things and still be biased. But starting out biased, and not pretending to be anything else, is actually worse than starting out with at least a pretense of objectivity and then coming to a biased conclusion based on the aforementioned stuff. (As opposed to depending on anecdotal evidence, cherry-picking, "many people believe..." and so on.)

And look, now you've put me in the position of having to defend the way Wikipedia does things. This is all your fault! Both sides bad! Both sides bad!

If you look at the Ad Fontes chart, reliability and bias are shown on two separate scales (although they're inversely correlated). I wasn't only saying that the Jezebel, Jacobin and Salon have the same level of bias as the Daily Mail, the Daily Caller and the New York Post. I was saying that, looking at the "reliability" scale, they have the same level of reliability, which is measured in terms of how frequently or infrequently they get facts wrong.

This is what I meant by "low quality". On the chart's "reliability" scale, all of these sources are only mediocre.

[iii]

I was saying that, looking at the "reliability" scale, they have the same level of reliability, which is measured in terms of how frequently or infrequently they get facts wrong.

You didn't read the methodology section for Ad Fontes. The "reliability scale" is manifestly not based on fact-checking. It's based on the genre and perceptions of the reviewers as to how much of the reporting is "fact-based".

[Captain Occam]

You didn't read the methodology section for Ad Fontes. The "reliability scale" is manifestly not based on fact-checking. It's based on the genre and perceptions of the reviewers as to how much of the reporting is "fact-based".

What are you basing that on? This is what the methodology section says:

The type of rating we ask each analyst to provide is an overall coordinate ranking on the chart (i.e., “40, -12”). The rating methodology is rigorous and rule-based. There are many specific factors we take into account for both reliability and bias because there are many measurable indicators of each. The main ones for Reliability are defined metrics we call “Expression,” “Veracity,” and “Headline/Graphic,” and the main ones for Bias are ones we call “Political Position,” “Language,” and “Comparison.” There are several other factors we consider for certain articles. Therefore, the ratings are not simply subjective opinion polling, but rather methodical content analysis. Overall source ratings are composite weighted ratings of the individual article and show scores.

In our current process, we rate most articles during live shifts (on Zoom) with three analysts (one left, one right, one center), and after each article, analysts see each other’s scores and resolve discrepancies when possible. If significant discrepancies remain, the articles are rerated by a second balanced panel.

If you're aware of a better choice for a nonpartisan organization that rates the reliability of news sources, you're welcome to suggest one. I used the chart from Ad Fontes Media because that seems to be the one that's most widely used for these types of comparisons. Are there similar organizations that have done analyses showing Jezebel, Jacobin and Salon to be more reliable than the other three sources?

[iii]

If you're aware of a better choice for a nonpartisan organization that rates the reliability of news sources, you're welcome to suggest one. I used the chart from Ad Fontes Media because that seems to be the one that's most widely used for these types of comparisons. Are there similar organizations that have done analyses showing Jezebel, Jacobin and Salon to be more reliable than the other three sources?

Stop sealioning. You were caught claiming that the vertical axis on the chart says something about whether the sources were "getting their facts wrong". As a comeback, you quoted the methodology section which, crucially, does not indicate that they attempt any fact checking. They are measuring the perception of reliability by readers who self-identify across the political spectrum. This is fine, but, stay with me now, it is not actual fact-checking.

Now you are shifting goalposts asking me to suggest an alternative metric. I don't need to do that. This is not my hill to die on. It's yours.

[Captain Occam]

For each individual article that they rate (they rate individual articles, and base the overall rating of a news source on an aggregate score), one of the characteristics that Ad Fontes measures is "Veracity", i.e. truthfulness. If you think measuring the veracity of an article means something different than fact-checking it, you are nit-picking about semantics here.

The point of my linking to the chart was to show that, according to what seems to be best metric available, John Stossel is correct that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-reliability sources on the left than on the right. I asked if you could provide an alternative metric because I wanted to see if you could present any evidence that Stossel's conclusion was wrong. Based on your reply above, it seems you can't. That's actually what I was predicting, but I wanted to make sure of it, just in case there was some evidence against Stossel's conclusion that I wasn't aware of, which it seems there isn't.

[iii]

For each individual article that they rate (they rate individual articles, and base the overall rating of a news source on an aggregate score), one of the characteristics that Ad Fontes measures is "Veracity", i.e. truthfulness. If you think measuring the veracity of an article means something different than fact-checking it, you are nit-picking about semantics here.

The goal of this group is not to determine whether a source is accurate or not. The goal is to measure whether the readers think the source is accurate. For example, if I ask you whether you perceive Emil Kirkegaard to be truthful, I'm sure I will get a particular response. If I ask you instead whether you perceive creationists to be truthful, I'm sure I will get another response. This tells me a lot more about your perception of truthfulness rather than which (if either) of those two potential sources are actually truthful.

There is nothing wrong with Ad Fontes methodology for determining what the general perception of "reliability" is across the political spectrum. They are not setting out to decide whether a source is accurate or not. They are only setting out to decide whether a source is perceived as accurate. I'm not sure how many more times I'm going to have to repeat myself before you understand this.

So you failed in your providing evidence for your conceit. The best you can claim is that Wikipedia admits more sources from the political left than those on the political right for any given average perceived value of reliability. But this is rather like saying that Wikipedia prefers some sources over others and the political right tends to dislike the sources Wikipedia relies on. Hardly an Earth-shattering point and, crucially, it says absolutely nothing about whether the sources are providing actual facts or not.

[Captain Occam]

The best you can claim is that Wikipedia admits more sources from the political left than those on the political right for any given average perceived value of reliability.

This is basically what I'm saying, and (I think) what Stossel is saying also.

I suppose we don't actually know that the 9/11 attacks weren't secretly orchestrated by the Bush 43 administration, or that Covid-19 wasn't deliberately released by the Chinese government as a bioweapon, but these are considered crackpot ideas that aren't taken seriously. Unless one happens to be omniscient, saying that a news source is "getting its facts wrong" means it is presenting information that is false to the extent that this can be determined. I still don't see why this distinction is so important when evaluating Stossel's argument about sources being held to an unequal standard, but whatever.

[iii]

The best you can claim is that Wikipedia admits more sources from the political left than those on the political right for any given average perceived value of reliability.

This is basically what I'm saying, and (I think) what Stossel is saying also.

Dude, that's not what you were saying. If it is what you meant to say, then I take issue with your (lack of) ability to communicate precisely. It seems pretty clear to me that you were arguing the Ad Fontes chart provided means to determine a measure of "how frequently or infrequently they get facts wrong". The chart does no such thing.

[Captain Occam]

Dude, that's not what you were saying. If it is what you meant to say, then I take issue with your (lack of) ability to communicate precisely. It seems pretty clear to me that you were arguing the Ad Fontes chart provided means to determine a measure of "how frequently or infrequently they get facts wrong". The chart does no such thing.

I honestly don't believe anyone else besides you cares about this distinction. When a source claims that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by a conspiracy between Zionists and the Bush administration, we usually say "that source has got its facts wrong" (or maybe something more strongly worded). We usually don't say "this statement is widely perceived to be false", even if that's technically what we mean.

Incidentally, this claim that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by Zionists and the Bush administration wasn't an example I picked randomly. This is an actual argument made by articles at CounterPunch, a left-wing source that was deprecated and later un-deprecated for its publishing of falsehoods (oops, I mean perceived falsehoods) like these.

[iii]

When a source claims that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by a conspiracy between Zionists and the Bush administration, we usually say "that source has got its facts wrong" (or maybe something more strongly worded). We usually don't say "this statement is widely perceived to be false", even if that's technically what we mean.

That isn't "technically what we mean" when "we" say a source has got its facts wrong. The statement in question is simply false. Whether it is widely perceived to be false or not is a wholly separate matter.

This distinction matters because facts are important and not merely "widely perceived" opinions. That you continue to conflate the two as a matter of rhetoric is precisely the problem.

[Captain Occam]

That isn't "technically what we mean" when "we" say a source has got its facts wrong. The statement in question is simply false. Whether it is widely perceived to be false or not is a wholly separate matter.

So you're personally able to determine that these statements in Counterpunch articles are objectively false, but Ad Fontes Media isn't able to do the same thing when they evaluate the same articles? When you judge the "veracity" (to use their term) of statements like these, what are you able to do that they they can't?

Mind you, I agree that the statements are obviously false, but if you're going to make the argument that you're making here, I want you to be consistent about it.

[Atsme]

When a source claims that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by a conspiracy between Zionists and the Bush administration, we usually say "that source has got its facts wrong" (or maybe something more strongly worded). We usually don't say "this statement is widely perceived to be false", even if that's technically what we mean.

That isn't "technically what we mean" when "we" say a source has got its facts wrong. The statement in question is simply false. Whether it is widely perceived to be false or not is a wholly separate matter.

This distinction matters because facts are important and not merely "widely perceived" opinions. That you continue to conflate the two as a matter of rhetoric is precisely the problem.

"...'we' say a source has got its facts wrong. I'm of the mind that it depends on who is keeper of "the facts", and if they truly are facts vs opinions. If the former, they're verifiable and not from an anonymous source which in and of itself raises questions of validity. Many of today's young journalists either have problems deciphering the difference between ethical journalism, subjective journalism, and statements of fact vs opinion – likely a generational thing (but by design). Some of the problem may be rooted in (and most likely are) what the job demands; thus, the powerful persuasion of echo chambers (media conglomerates). It's a deep rooted issue worth considering.

[Zoloft]

That isn't "technically what we mean" when "we" say a source has got its facts wrong. The statement in question is simply false. Whether it is widely perceived to be false or not is a wholly separate matter.

So you're personally able to determine that these statements in Counterpunch articles are objectively false, but Ad Fontes Media isn't able to do the same thing when they evaluate the same articles? When you judge the "veracity" (to use their term) of statements like these, what are you able to do that they they can't?

Mind you, I agree that the statements are obviously false, but if you're going to make the argument that you're making here, I want you to be consistent about it.

[iii]

Indeed, this is Poe's Law in action. I cannot tell whether he is being deliberately obtuse or is genuinely confused about the difference between

1. asking a third party how accurate they think a story is
2. actually evaluating the statements of fact presented in a story

[Tarc]

John Stossel is a political hack, on a par with Larry Sanger.

Where's Dr. D when you need em?

[MetaVerseARGH]

Does anybody have a counter-argument against Stossel's central point, that Wikipedia is more tolerant of low-quality partisan sources on the left than on the right?

No, they don't. Because it's self-evident.

Which wouldn't matter if there was a decent pool of editors, either broadly representative or possessing sufficient expertise or ideally both, but it doesn't. The average veteran Wikipedia editor is male, white, above-average income, a US citizen, in his 30s, and spends way too much time on the internet... such a person is much more likely to possess an "anti-establishment" psychology, which in the sociocultural milieu of the contemporary United States, typically drives one towards "left-wing" politics.

There's literally a handful of editors and admin who have complete WP:OWNERSHIP over articles on contentious topics in US politics.

Just as there's a monopoly in various other topic areas by certain ethnonationalist POV warriors.

[Midsize Jake]

No, they don't. Because it's self-evident.

Well, first of all...



...and I have a similar reaction to the idea of a "metaverse," I might add. But as for the subject at hand, I'd like to think I can speak for most of us here when I say the problem was Mr. Occam's characterization of undeprecated left-leaning sources on Wikipedia as "low quality." I don't think anyone here is seriously claiming that the liberal bias doesn't exist at all, at least as far as sources are concerned. There's really no way for them to avoid it, given the way right-wing media has been constituted — and shifting the demographics of the user base (away from white males aged 30-45) is just as likely to make the bias more pronounced as anything else.

[Captain Occam]

I probably should have said "low reliability" instead of "low quality", to make it clearer that I was referring to the specific metric that's shown on the vertical axis in the Ad Fontes chart.

[No Ledge]

Stossel's Trib column

Leftists just like to write.

Conservatives build things: companies, homes, farms. You see the pattern comparing political donations from different professions: Surgeons, oil workers, truck drivers, loggers and pilots lean right. Artists, bartenders, librarians, reporters and teachers lean left.

Conservatives don’t have as much time to tweet or argue on the web. Leftists do. And they love doing it. This helps them take over the media, universities and, now, Wikipedia.

So conservatives generally work in higher-earning professions? Where does that put me, a retired programmer?

I appreciated the interview with Jonathan Weiss. We think much alike. I'm happier working on technical and non-political stuff but share his concern about the pigeonholing of "reliable" sources. I have right-leaning friends on Wikipedia and even voted in this week's Republican primary since I viewed the Democratic primary as pointless (there were only three contested races on my Democratic ballot and the outcome of two of them was a foregone conclusion). Alas I helped Dolan carry Franklin County but that wasn't enough to overcome all the votes from Jim Jordan country. I expect to be back to voting in the Democratic primary for state senators and reps whenever they get around to holding it (held up by lawsuits over Republican gerrymandering) -- if more than the Party's ordained candidates are on the ballot, so there is a reason to bother.

So Stossel has a point about Wikipedia but he kind of missed the mark by being a bit too pointy.

I generally like him though, and think he's more in his element when he reports about stuff like this.

[Midsize Jake]

So Stossel has a point about Wikipedia but he kind of missed the mark by being a bit too pointy.

He missed the mark by completely ignoring the IT industry, its workers, and their (often shared) personal interests. Deliberately, I suspect.

[Randy from Boise]

So Stossel has a point about Wikipedia but he kind of missed the mark by being a bit too pointy.

He missed the mark by completely ignoring the IT industry, its workers, and their (often shared) personal interests. Deliberately, I suspect.

Stossel, a polemicist?!?

Say it ain't so!

t