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Media Bias Fact Check - Automation

Hello World, As many of you have probably noticed, there is a growing problem on the internet when it comes to undisclosed bias in both amateur and professional reporting. While not every outlet can be like the C-SPAN, or Reuters, we also believe that it’s impossible to remove the human element from the news, especially when it concerns, well, humans.

To this end, we’ve created a media bias bot, which we hope will keep everyone informed about WHO, not just the WHAT of posted articles. This bot uses Media Bias/Fact Check to check context comments and adds a simple reply to show bias. We feel this is especially important with the US Election coming up. The bot will also provide links to Ground.News, as well, which we feel is a great source to determine the WHOLE coverage of a given article and/or topic.

As always feedback is welcome, as this is a active project which we really hope will benefit the community.

Thanks!

FHF / LemmyWorld Admin team 💖

bartolomeo ,
@bartolomeo@suppo.fi avatar

Good, one should always refer to the Ministry of Truth before deciding what is true or false for The Party.

morphballganon ,

Bot: Hmm this article reflects reality, thus it is biased to the left.

Using charged language like that constitutes disinformation and is reprehensible. Imagine if viewers started disregarding a source on account of your bot declaring it biased.

Shameful.

wurzelgummidge ,

Media Bias Fact Check is totally meaningless in world news since the overwhelming majority of international news coverage seen in the west is filtered through just three global agencies, AP, AFP and Reuters and they always toe a pro US/Nato line.

gmtom ,

I for one support this. Sure it’s not perfect and the bias checker had its own bias, but it’s merely am advisory, you can disregard it if you want.

ArmokGoB ,

Choosing one organization to be the arbiter of truth and bias gives them way too much power. I think fact checking should be the responsibility of whoever reads the article.

Carrolade ,

Yes, everyone should always do all their own work every time. Trust nothing! Formula of gravity? Newton and Einstein might be liars, and all the science textbooks could be complicit. Do your own research. Conduct your own experiments. Is the Earth flat? Grab a sailboat and find out!

/parody

thoro ,

You think this organization’s judgement is some objective algorithm and doesn’t contain its own subjective biases?

Carrolade ,

Nearly everything has various types of subjective bias. This is not a good excuse to believe nothing when bias can simply be examined and taken into account.

ArmokGoB ,

This is not a good excuse to believe nothing when bias can simply be examined and taken into account.

By your own reasoning, the examination would have its own bias. This isn’t a mathematical operation with a right answer.

Carrolade ,

Correct. Mathematical certainty is an impossible standard, and seeking it in news reporting is an unrealistic and silly objective that results in nothing useful.

SovietUnion ,

Classic stupid lemmy world move

Transformer ,

Rip microwave

CanadaPlus , (edited )

Hmm. It’s not a perfect way of measuring source bias, and bias is only correlated with truthfulness as I think they themselves admit, but I applaud the spirit.

I worry that people will put too much stock in it’s assessment, and as far as I can tell propaganda posting is already pretty controlled, on .world specifically. Did you code this yourselves? Is there some way one of us could request to push to the source, like if I figure out some way it could be better? In particular, it would be good to add notes on the specific sources commenters have described as having issues not covered by MBFC.

Rooki OP ,
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

Currently the code is for now private. We will see if we can make it public in the future. The mods wont moderate posts because of the MBFC result.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

What a terrible idea.

MBFC is already incredibly biased.

It should be rejected not promoted.

Rooki OP ,
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

Ok then tell me an alternative we can use in the scale for free.

None? Then pls dont just complain complain complain… And dont suggest improvements.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

You don’t.

There doesn’t exist a site to magically do what you want.

Likewise it’s not needed. It doesn’t add to the quality of discussion on the community. All it’s going to do is cause conflict as we now have to constantly point out to people how garbage the source is so that they don’t let it influence them.

catloaf ,

So much for “feedback is welcome” I guess

TrippyFocus ,

As the other poster says we don’t need to have something like this at all.

If you’re adamant about it then make a post where people can suggest which one we use and vote on it. We can also adjust the bots comment to clearly call out the chosen ones biases and methodology. As it is now it’s actively harmful as I mention in my other comment.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

I find the only people that say MBFC is biased, are just saying they themselves have biased opinions so they don’t agree with the MBFC rating

I’m 1000% with you on this

geneva_convenience ,

Every newspaper has its bias. MBFC heavily favors western liberal perspectives. It is often fine on domestic policy but not reliable when it comes to foreign policy.

As this is worldnews and not Americanews, MBFC ratings are not reliable. Articles should be judged by the evidence they provide.

circuscritic , (edited )

Oh, lovely. Ministry of Truth Bots…

This is predicated on the false assumption that those organizations are neutral arbitrators of facts, but they aren’t.

They might have a better gauge on reality than OAN, or PatriotEageNews.ru, but that doesn’t mean platform moderators should present them as if they are the source of universal truth.

People can be critical of posts and comments and their sources, without the heavy hand of moderation from the privatized Ministry of Truth.

We don’t even have to look very far back to see how platform level “fact checking” systems are used and abused to silence and suppress information goes against mainstream narratives or is politically damaging.

Rooki OP ,
@Rooki@lemmy.world avatar

Its better to have some “fact checking” than the “trust me bro” system.

We all know all “fact checking” systems have humans behind it, those humans can have biases, dislikes or do mistakes. But thats the reason why we should not have such system is not good. Its the viewers discretion to believe into the fact/bias checks of the given page. We are just giving our best effort to simplify the view.

Then i give you the recommendation to block the bot, if you dont like it.

circuscritic ,

You’re putting your moderators hands on scale that far outweighs any community/user input into the validity of information discussed here.

On a completely unrelated note, did you know that Hamas went on a baby beheading spree on Oct. 7?

I know this because I read it on MSN.com, and your MediaBiasFactCheck said that MSN.com has a HIGH FACTUAL RATING

Anyone is free to rip apart my comment, and that source, but that job becomes more difficult when bots that have been anointed as bias and fact checkers, contradict them in any way, or are themselves biased.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

No it’s not.

Bad fact checking is more harmful than not.

CanadaPlus ,

MiniTrue would just remove wrongthink, so that’s hyperbolic.

I don’t love relying on this one source of fact/bias checking so much, but the general idea of not allowing unrestricted use of whatever source without warning is good.

TrippyFocus ,

I think having this post isn’t a great idea because you are just assuming the websites bias are legit. At the very least there needs to be a lot of warnings in the bots post about the websites biases and the methodology they use so the reader can come to their own conclusion.

Just looking over the methodlogy it’s clear that it has it’s own biases:

American Bias

The website itself says it’s distinctions of left and right are US based which is very skewed from the rest of the world. There should be a disclaimer or it shouldn’t be used in any world news communities.

Centrist Bias

The website follows the idea of “enlightened centrism” since if it determines a website has a left/right lean (again arbitrary) it affects the factual ratings of the sources.

Examples of this are: FAIR only getting the 2nd highest rating despite never having failed a fact check.

The Intercept getting only a “mostly factual” rating (3rd highest) despite their admittance it has never failed a fact check.

Despite my personal opinions on the pointlessness of using a US based left/right bias criteria I’d feel better if it was at least kept it it’s own section but when you allow it to affect the factual rating of the source it’s just outright wrong. The factual accuracy of the website should be the sole thing that affects this rating.

Questionable Fact Checking

Even just checking some of their ratings raises doubts on the websites credibility.

The ADL is rated as high (2nd highest) and wasn’t found to fail any fact checks.

The ADL was found to be so unreliable on it’s reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict it is considered an unreliable source by Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia’s editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable source on antisemitism.”

Maybe Wikipedia editors are a good arbiter of truth and maybe they aren’t but as people can see there isn’t a consensus and so by choosing Media Bias/Fact Check you’re explicitly choosing to align your “truth” with this websites biases.

Carrolade ,

A standard of factuality needs to include a provision of avoiding emotionally-loaded, manipulative language. Otherwise you can pump unlimited amounts of propaganda with full factuality simply by “asking questions”.

TrippyFocus ,

I wont disagree that there should be a ranking for using loaded language but combining it with the factuality ranking twists what the ranking means since to the average person they’re going to read that as how accurate the facts are.

It should be its own separate rating from factuality. Again if we’re going to have to have a bot like this put clear disclaimers and ideally find a better one than this.

Carrolade ,

I disagree. I think emotional language is fundamentally the opposite of real objectivity, and cannot be honestly acknowledged as factual in any confirmable way.

It has no place in objective discussions, and employing it in any way, shape or form makes one deserve objectivity demerits.

edit: And objectivity and factuality are synonyms.

HelixDab2 ,

While I love the idea, I KNOW that there are certain groups that will refuse to accept that factual information. Tankies, for instance, will refuse to accept any criticism of their preferred sources. (As will Russian-asset Jimmy Dore.) Far-right conservatives will do the same, only on the other end of the spectrum.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

MBFC is not factual.

It’s subjective. The opinion of one random man on the internet and his supposed volunteers.

I’ve seen it rate Indian papers low and add comments like “Never once reported anything false.” Meanwhile some US garbage will be ranked as reliable and the comments are an essay on all the times they’ve been busted lying.

Varyk ,

Great idea

Jaderick ,

I love this, but I would like to state that Media Bias Fact Check seems to have a pro-Israel bias.

mediabiasfactcheck.com/mondoweiss/

  • Overall, we rate Mondoweiss as Left Biased and Questionable due to the blending of opinion with news, the promotion of pro-Palestinian and anti-zionist propaganda, occasional reliance on poor sources, and hate group designation by third-party pro-Israel advocates.

I feel like “blending of opinion with news” and “occasional reliance on poor sources” is all that really need be said.

hotpot8toe ,

Mondoweiss is literal propaganda tho

Limelight8077 ,

Read the lengthy discussion about them on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_427#What_is_the_reliability_of_Mondoweiss?

Jaderick ,

It’s about the bias rating. Using explicitly biased sources when rating a source makes for a bad rating.

catloaf ,

On whose behalf? I’ve sensed bias from the brief glances I’ve given them, so I didn’t keep reading enough to actually analyze it.

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

We don’t allow Mondoweiss links either.

Jumuta ,

could you have the bot automatically unvote its posts (make it 0) so it goes under new comments when sorted by votes?

the spoiler thing doesn’t work on eternity and it kinda hides everything under it being so long

catloaf ,

I wish bot comments didn’t count toward the comment count, too. It’s annoying to see “1 comment” and then you look and it’s just this or the summary bot.

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