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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 add 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 💖

154 comments
  • I'm just gonna drop this here as an example:

    The Jerusalem Report (Owned by Jerusalem Post) and the Jerusalem Post

    This biased as shit publication is declared by MBFC as VEEEERY slightly center-right. They make almost no mention of the fact that they cherry pick aspects of the Israel war to highlight, provide only the most favorable context imaginable, yadda yadda. By no stretch of the imagination would these publications be considered unbiased as sources, yet according to MBFC they're near perfect.

    • Interesting how @Rooki is still a day later active in this post responding to all the comments supporting their bot, but manages to avoid replying to all the legitimate criticisms on display.

      Really shows the mods don't value feedback, which begs the question why even bother making a thread to get feedback if you've already made up your mind.

    • yet according to MBFC they’re near perfect

      Here are some quotes from the link you posted:

      They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.

      After Conrad Black acquired the paper, its political position changed to right-leaning, when Black began hiring conservative journalists and editors. Eli Azur is the current owner of Jerusalem Post. According to Ynetnews, and a Haaretz article, “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Editor in Chief,” in 2017, Azur gave testimony regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure. Current Editor Yaakov Katz was the former senior policy advisor to Naftali Bennett, the former Prime Minister and head of the far-right political party, “New Right.”

      During the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict, the majority of stories favored the Israeli government, such as this Netanyahu to Hezbollah: If you attack, we’ll turn Beirut into Gaza. In general, the Jerusalem Post holds right-leaning editorial biases and is usually factual in reporting.

      Overall, we rate The Jerusalem Post Right-Center biased based on editorial positions that favor the right-leaning government. We also rate them Mostly Factual for reporting, rather than High due to two failed fact checks.

      Based on MBFC's methodology, they can't have more than 6 points (out of 10) toward credibility, which is the floor for high credibility. They're one lost point from being listed as a medium credibility source, not "near perfect." They've also failed two fact checks in news reporting (not op-ed), which is seriously non-perfect. No one reading that page could walk away thinking that jpost isn't biased toward both the current Israeli government and conservative causes. MBFC calling them "right-center" is also consistent with how they're rated just about everywhere else. AllSides rates them as "center" (with a note that community feedback in disagreement believes they "lean right") and even Wikipedia describes them as "center-right/conservative".

      What exactly are you angry about here?

  • Remove that. It’s too US centric. I don’t want that here.

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

  • I appreciate having this bot, and I also think that it can be tweaked to be better. Are there other services that do something similar (ex. I see ground.news in the bot comments). What might be better is if there was a bot that linked to a few different options, so that people can benefit from the extra information. I seem to remember a Lemmy bot that was doing something like that last year, but I can't find it now.

    For example, a format like this might get the benefits of the bot while also addressing the concerns people have:

    Information for News Source Name

    See this page to learn about this bot, and how you can support the tools above.

    If the bot was open sourced somewhere, then people could contribute improvements to formatting and add/remove sources as appropriate. It doesn't need to be a fully democratic process, as the maintainers would get the final say, but it would make people trust the tool a lot more.

    Other small tweaks / bugs

    • The links need an https:// at the start, else it breaks and shows https://instance/LINK
    • If the data can be condensed some more, with inline links as opposed to full ones. Yes we should recommend that developers fix their apps/frontends, but with federation it's likely that there will be breakages in a lot of places. Improvements to comment format will help.
    • I'm not sure if the thank you and donation link is appropriate in the comment, since it feels like an advertisement / endorsement. Having that information on a separate link would be more fair. For example, ground.news also has a donation page, but it's not in the comment.
  • This about about to spawn so many sidebar threads xD

    It's either going to be awesome, or hilarious. Probably both.

    Any guesses for how long until the "we've disabled the bot for further testing and review" post? My bet is a month.

  • 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.

    • You got it. Thats the point. Its just advisory, not if its Bad creditability you will get banned.

154 comments