Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Bans Daily Mail As 'Unreliable' Source (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Wikipedia editors have voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group "generally unreliable." The move is highly unusual for the online encyclopaedia, which rarely puts in place a blanket ban on publications and which still allows links to sources such as Kremlin backed news organization Russia Today, and Fox News, both of which have raised concern among editors. The editors described the arguments for a ban as "centered on the Daily Mail's reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication." The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia but does not control its editing processes, said in a statement that volunteer editors on English Wikipedia had discussed the reliability of the Mail since at least early 2015. It said: "Based on the requests for comments section [on the reliable sources noticeboard], volunteer editors on English Wikipedia have come to a consensus that the Daily Mail is 'generally unreliable and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist. This means that the Daily Mail will generally not be referenced as a 'reliable source' on English Wikipedia, and volunteer editors are encouraged to change existing citations to the Daily Mail to another source deemed reliable by the community. This is consistent with how Wikipedia editors evaluate and use media outlets in general -- with common sense and caution."
NBC also has a bias problem.
Table-ized A.I.
The summary mentions Russia Today and Fox News, but not CNN? Perhaps we should tag submissions from Anonymous Cowards, and ' BeauHD' as equally unreliable and biased ...
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
It is not censorship. How can it be censorship? It's about as much censorship as Nordstrom is directly attacking the US Executive. An encyclopaedia has decided that a particular source is too poor quality to use. You are free to read the Daily Mail if you want to.
...that we should ban Trump's statements since they are typically at least as fabricated as the Daily Mail? #noalternativefacts
I would agree with you if wikipedia held other news outlets to the same standard.
Wait... it has been used as a source EVER?! This is shocking news to me.
CNN are just as bad as Fox News, each of them just have their own selective version of the truth.
FD:I just posted a link to the Daily Mail in the last /. article.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They're like all media outlets in that they pander to their viewers' prejudices. Everybody loves the news when it confirms their already strongly held opinions. Wikipedia's editors are no different it seems. If they were genuinely impartial they would hold all outlets to the same standard.
Wikipedia doesn't claim to be a reliable source for these purposes; you can't use Wikipedia pages as references on other Wikipedia pages.
Here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I don't recognise the website, but I leave you to investigate
http://www.stopfake.org/en/rus...
Not RT accused directly but
http://www.businessinsider.com...
A reminder about the lies at the time of the invasion of the Crimea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...
And finally
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...
Just finished all seasons a month ago. That series is still incredibly relevant today.
I'm sorry, anyone who thinks the Mail is somehow in the same league is the NYT or Washington Post doesn't strike me as someone actually interested in reliability. Journalism isn't perfect but the Mail doesn't even try.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And you believe the NYT or WaPo even tries? I mean, they used to once, and the Mail never did, but these days? They were open and explicit in 2016 that winning the election was ore important than truth.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And fake news BBC, is listing all the articles on all the terror attacks Trump says they didn't report.
I (foolishly) expect more from this place, but how the fuck can anyone with a triple-digit IQ not see how hard Trump played them right there.
Trump: "Hmm, lots of controversy happening about my anti-terror efforts. Y'know what would be nice right now? A buttload of media coverage of terrorist attacks. Good thing I have the media wrapped around my finger."
@realDonaldTrump: "Look at all these terror attacks that the media never reported on! Sad! #fakenews #cnnsucks #dts #MAGA #hashtag."
MSM: LIAR REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Quick! We must all defend our honor and expose Fuhrer Trump's vicious lies by running front-page stories with a big-ass list of the dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks that we dutifully covered. We'll really show him this time!
Lol they lump Fox in with RT but leave out one of the worst MSM sources CNN. CNN has shown time and time again to leave out key facts or just report plain out wrong or unverified information. But yea Fox and RT are the ones of concern ;)
I'm not sure spinning is less powerful "lying" than outright invention (fabrication). In fact, spinning is arguably worse than outright invention because spun facts often have an element of truth to them, making them harder to debunk or dismiss. And you cannot outright dismiss the spinning source because they may not technically be lying.
Propaganda seems to last longer and goes further if it's based on partial truths.
For example, a common propaganda trick is to interview many members of the other side's group (such as at conventions or protests), edit out the normal interviews and play only the "stupid" interviews on TV. The cherry-picking makes the group members seem like idiots.
It's not outright made-up because they are real answers, but they have been filtered to present the entire group in a bad light: it's essentially a statistical trick of only showing the bad samples as if they are representative (random).
Compare that with hiring actors to act like the other side's group and say stupid things on camera. If the producers are caught, they are outright discredited for fabrication. The first approach involves no fabrication and the evidence can be deleted or hidden, such as deleting the "normal" interviews. If investigators cannot find the (excluded) normal interviews, they have no evidence of manipulation to present to the world.
The first approach (filtering) is almost just as powerful as outright fabrication, YET is not fabrication: it's all real, and the filtering trick can be buried.
Table-ized A.I.
The National Enquirer was up for a Pulitzer when they were the only paper to report on a scandal involving a Dem candidate. It's all politics, all the way down, especially wikipedia.
The Daily Fail can at least be entertaining. It's not like you can believe anything you read in the WaPo or NYT - it's all just confirmation bias - but the Mail at least tries not to be dull.
If a source has a large percentage of incorrect information then it is fair to toss it in general, or at the very least not to rely on it as a sole source. Fox has a lot of accurate programming, and a lot of not so accurate programming. It is probably reasonable to quote one of their hard news people, but not their opinion people. Similarly you wouldn't ever quote Kelly Ann Conway on anything if you were looking for truth. I'd double check it regardless and ask if there is a way they could be twisting true information to yield a misleading impression.
Either way, news should be accurate. Interesting or not is irrelevant. Sadly everyone wants ratings. People also lack the ability to look at things on deeper levels. You knew almost everything about Hillary, while you knew almost nothing about Trump, other than he was hiding almost everything and was a talented con man.
He asked us, "What do you have to lose?" Well, he has provided an answer. He has attacked the following constitutionally protected groups:
1) The Press (all of them).
2) Judges (all of them. He just called them all political).
3) Lawmakers (Yah, it was pretty much everyone versus trump the last election. Had he stuck to truth I might have had some sympathy here.)
4) disabled/women/religions.
He also attacks corporations that displease him left and right, or displease his daughter. As near as I can tell he wants to cow all opposition. If he succeeds then the country is basically lost, at least for a time, and perhaps longer...
So the answer to what do we have to lose? How about our democracy? It is quite clear that Mr. Trump doesn't care about it.
The writing is better but the content is not. Don't confuse the two. Good language skills are just as helpful for convincing lies as they are for truth telling.
He asked us, "What do you have to lose?" Well, he has provided an answer. He has attacked the following constitutionally protected groups:
1) The Press (all of them).
2) Judges (all of them. He just called them all political).
3) Lawmakers (Yah, it was pretty much everyone versus trump the last election. Had he stuck to truth I might have had some sympathy here.)
4) disabled/women/religions.
The only attacks I've seen are the Berkeley protestors beating people with clubs. What I've seen from Trump are mean tweets. And no one is immune to criticism just because they're a member of any of those groups. There are fuckups in all walks of life (especially politicians)
And did a lefty just tell me that it's bad to criticize a religion? Really? I'm not even Christian, but after watching 40 years of non-stop, relentless criticism of Christians, Christianity, Christian values, and anything remotely religious, by the left, the hypocrisy of that statement is amazing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Have you looked at CNN,WashPost, NY Times or the Huffy Post? 10x worse than the DailyMail, at least the daily mail knows they tell some BS tabloid stories, where the MSM tells BS stories and actually believes their BS stories.
they should add the Daily Express to the list as well, its just as bad
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The Daily Mail is the exactly opposite of what you describe. A typical story starts with several paragraphs of reaction and outrage, before right at the end on page 7 mentioning the facts.
Here's a classic example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea...
Note how even in the byline they manage to sneak a lie in (the straight banana law was debunked when it first surfaced in the 90s). If you can wade through all the ranting you will find a perfectly sensible, rational explanation for the ruling.
That's why the Daily Fail has been banned. It's not a serious source of news, it's a source of outrage and vitriol. Almost entirely fact free, virtually pure opinion (so long as it's the opinion of people who are angry, or who you should be angry about not being angry).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Other media outlets make mistakes, and they are quickly found and covered by other outlets. The Daily Mail rarely prints anything that is accurate, because it's editorial goal is to mislead. The entire point of the thing is to make you angry, not to inform.
It's one thing to try and occasionally fail to deliver news, it's another to consciously try to distort news for profit and to influence the government.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The Daily Mail is the exactly opposite of what you describe. A typical story starts with several paragraphs of reaction and outrage, before right at the end on page 7 mentioning the facts.
I came here to post this. This is exactly my experience with Daily Mail. The articles (and I am using the word loosely) start with pure distilled lying shit, and IF you happen to read the end, there is (if they lied enough) their 'get out of jail' card where they briefly state what actually happened (quite contrary to what they wrote above), so they can't be sued.
It is what it is.
The difference is that RT reporting is often selective, biased, opinionated - painting facts in certain light, keeping silent about some facts and emphasizing others thus painting incomplete image and with misleading implications. The facts they present are just facts though, even if they may mislead you into drawing wrong conclusions through clever wording. If you're careful though, and use multiple sources, confronting them, you are able to extract objective truth; take what the article *says*, not what it *implies* and you're good. If RT says "Kremlin announced plans of X..." you're not getting information that X is or will be true, but you're getting an absolutely true, objective information that announcement of plans of X by Kremlin occurred - regardless of what opinion the article expresses about X.
Meanwhile, Daily Mail fabricates facts. "Russia begins X!" - Nope. It does not. The announcement doesn't make it a fact. The chance Kremlin follows up with actual actions is indeterminate, the time scale was not announced, and there's not even a trace of X in Russia as of now. The news is fake.
Biased reporting is still a valid source, even if you need to proceed with caution because the wording is not conductive to impartial conclusions. Fake reporting is not a valid source, period. The only actual fact we can draw from a link to such an article was that Daily Mail announced that Russia begins X.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Articles are usually a combination of facts and narrative, some opinion or agenda.
As long as facts check out, that's okay for Wikipedia source. The narrative does get in the way, reducing value of the source, but doesn't invalidate the facts. The source confirms article author didn't make it up, but it's the wikipedia article that must present the facts impartially, stripping the narrative and opinions. If it manages to do it, all is well.
The problem begins when facts are fabricated. This is where Wikipedia must draw a line.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
They are, if you actually consider what the standard is: a consensus view among editors that the articles are unreliable and not representing accurate facts.
That doesn't happen lightly - the debate took weeks before the vote, and the vote requirement to actually ban a source is extremely high - you need over 80% of editors to agree. That's some ten-thousand people from around the world, with different biases, ideas, philosophies and beliefs - and you need to get 80% of them to agree before any publication can be banned. It requires a CONSENSUS view - not just a majority view.
The D.M. ban came after years and years of having article based on DM sources that had to be rewritten, replaced and even deleted entirely as they turned out to be pure fabrications. That's a crapload of extra work for editors - who are, remember, volunteers.
It is not censorship - they can't stop anybody reading the dailymail, but they ahve every right to decide that the frequency with which dailymail reports force them to have to do extra work due to blatantly false claims makes it not worth the effort of allowing as a source, since after all, the mission of the organisation is dependent on reliable sources.
There are different ideas on how an encyclopaedia should strive for accuracy. The traditional view is by hiring a host of experts, one on every topic you have an entry on, and have them write the topics for you. Then edit and prettify and have them fact-check the result. This is how things like Encyclopaedia Britanica for example is done.
That, however, is not viable for a crowd-sourced one... so how do you fact check ? They had to find a new way, that way is to demand reliable, outside, expert sources that agree with the statements of fact made on the pages. This reduces the workload from an unmangeable "find a verified expert on every topic and resolve disputes whenever a topic has two experts who don't agree" to a much more manageable "select which sources we trust". A process which, in another contradiction of typical encyclopaedic standards actually is based on "benefit of the doubt" - any published source starts out as "acceptable". Even your personal blog can be a source - though if you fail fact-checking (consistently) you will eventually cease to be one. If it can be backed up by multiple sources this is deemed even better. A scientists' blog about his current research is a fantastic thing to have as a source - it means wikipedia can have up to date information (far moreso than the competition), but having a link to the published paper when it comes out is even more important - because that will include the corrections made over the course of the research and not reflected in the earlier running-commentary posts.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *