Source Bias for Wikipedia Articles on 21st Century American Politicians

[ExoticBeast]

Using the publicly available Wikipedia API, I downloaded the sources for Wikipedia articles on 21st Century American Politicians as of 7/24/2020.

I then categorized the sources with >= 100 references based on the Media Bias Ratings by Allsides.com.

Here's the breakdown:

Source Rating - # of References
Left - 4,718
Lean Left - 28,906
Center - 25,818
Lean Right - 2,860
Right - 188
Unrated - 104,151 (excludes archive.org)

[DanMurphy]

An astroturf operation of the far right Koch brothers sez what? Get out!

Oh. Welcome. I guess.

[Midsize Jake]

An astroturf operation of the far right Koch brothers sez what?

Are you referring to Allsides.com...? If so, I couldn't find anything suggesting the Kochs had an ownership stake in them — according to SourceWatch they fund some sort of annual fellowship program where I guess they pay people to intern there (among several other places) for a year, but that looks reasonably innocuous, especially compared to most of the other stuff the Kochs do.

I mean, looking at Allsides.com's Media Bias Chart, which Mr. Beast's ratings are based on, I'd have to say they're a bit "left-shifted" — IOW, several of the entities they've rated as "left" should really be rated as "lean left" instead. (Also, I doubt that The Federalist and the National Review really appreciate being lumped in with the likes of the Epoch Times and OAN, but they should really blame Trump for that, at least if they're being realistic.)

All in all, though, these results are pretty much what I would expect, given that reality has a liberal bias and all that.

[Randy from Boise]

An astroturf operation of the far right Koch brothers sez what? Get out!

Oh. Welcome. I guess.

And I miss you, Dan Murphy.

t

[AndyTheGrump]

One should probably at least ask whether an encyclopaedia (or something that claims to be one) that is (or purports to be) written for an international audience should be assessed for bias according to the standards of its readership as a whole, rather than by the shifted-so-far-right-it's-fallen-off-the-edge standards of domestic US politics. Yeah, I know that these are articles on US politicians, but as far as I know Wikipedia's so-called 'NPOV' policies don't have some sort of 'per local reporting' clause, and if there is a good case for having one, I can't think of it. Not using say Fox News as a source because everyone outside of the US thinks it is a ridiculous crock of propagandist shite would accordingly seem entirely compatible with what the WMF claims to spend its money (or rather, other people's money) on, and entirely compatible with Wikipedia policies.

[Poetlister]

It is generally assumed that Wikipedia has a house POV leaning towards liberal. That is of course compared to general American standards rather than say British or Canadian ones. The epitome of a reliable source is supposed to be the New York Times.

Remember though that the Sole Flounder is a Randian and the whole philosophy of Wikipedia is based on ignoring authority.

[Newyorkbrad]

Isn't this thread off-topic for Off Topic?

[Midsize Jake]

Isn't this thread off-topic for Off Topic?

Good point, I hadn't noticed that. And we do need more publicly-visible threads, after all...

[ExoticBeast]

I'm re-posting my results adding media bias ratings from https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/.

In addition, I've updated a few mistakes in the ratings I applied from allsides.com. The updates to the allsides ratings are indicated in yellow in the attachment.

For reference, the source data was generated from Wikipedia using the following python parser & wrapper for the MediaWiki API: https://pypi.org/project/pymediawiki/

And the sources were from articles in the following Wikipedia category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... oliticians (as of 7/24/2020)

Here are the revised results from Allsides.com:

Source Rating - # of References
Left - 4,878
Lean Left - 28,769
Center - 26,348
Lean Right - 2,860
Right - 188

Here are the results from Mediabiasfactcheck.com:

Source Rating - # of References
Left - 7,212
Left Center - 36,723
Least Biased - 36,793
Right Center - 7,292
Right - 1,918

[Midsize Jake]

I don't mean to throw a monkey wrench into this or anything, but I wonder if there's a way to determine if there's a significant general difference in the number of news articles and features about left-wing politicians in right-wing media publications, as opposed to the converse, i.e., articles about right-wing politicians in left-wing media?

On a purely anecdotal level, it does seem to me that left-wing journalists have a greater tendency to write about right-wing politicians in-depth (mostly to expose their misbehavior), while right-wing journalists seemingly prefer to use their platforms to promote their fellow right-wingers, while practically ignoring left-wing politicians (or else treating them as caricatures, which would amount to the same thing from a Wikipedia sourcing perspective).

Obviously that's just my opinion based mostly on casual observation, and there may be no way to legitimately quantify it regardless... still, if that were indeed the case, then it would presumably skew the results somewhat in favor of left-wing sources.

[Poetlister]

Mediabiasfactcheck is still showing a left bias, though rather less pronounced than Allsides does. Clearly, the bias of the bias checker must be assessed before sensible conclusions can be drawn. Is there a site that assesses the bias in bias checkers, and if there is, how do we assess its bias?

[ExoticBeast]

Here's the distribution of ratings for each site.....

Allsides.com
Left - 8%
Lean Left - 46%
Center - 42%
Lean Right -5%
Right -0%

Mediabiasfactcheck.com
Left - 8%
Left Center - 41%
Least Biased - 41%
Right Center - 8%
Right - 2%

[AndyTheGrump]

Merely repeating the same data (or similar data) without addressing questions regarding its assumptions and validity isn't really helpful. What is your response to the comments others have made in this regard?

[Ryuichi]

I don't mean to throw a monkey wrench into this or anything, but I wonder if there's a way to determine if there's a significant general difference in the number of news articles and features about left-wing politicians in right-wing media publications, as opposed to the converse...

This is an interesting thought. I wonder if having the data broken out by the political alignment of the article subject (left-wing/right-wing; Democrat/Republican) would be enlightening.

[Poetlister]

Don't forget that neither party is monolithic. For example, current Republican senators include Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Do left-wing media treat all Republicans the same?

[Zoloft]

Don't forget that neither party is monolithic. For example, current Republican senators include Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Do left-wing media treat all Republicans the same?

Dig a bit deeper, look at fools like Louie Gohmert (T-H-L).
The Republican Party is swarming with Tea Party assholes like this.

[Poetlister]

Don't forget that neither party is monolithic. For example, current Republican senators include Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Do left-wing media treat all Republicans the same?

Dig a bit deeper, look at fools like Louie Gohmert (T-H-L).

Yes, some Republicans are even worse than we are aware of over here. But I doubt that all Democrats are wholly within the bounds of reason, either.

[Ming]

Don't forget that neither party is monolithic. For example, current Republican senators include Mitt Romney, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Do left-wing media treat all Republicans the same?

Dig a bit deeper, look at fools like Louie Gohmert (T-H-L).

Yes, some Republicans are even worse than we are aware of over here. But I doubt that all Democrats are wholly within the bounds of reason, either.

Democrat gormless idiots are uncommon. Republican examples are a dime a dozen.