MOD POST: Progress on creating community guidelines; next steps for mods and users ( kbin.social )

BasicTraveler , 11 months ago

I like the idea behind the Media Bias Chart, but I do see an issue to keep an eye on.

The website appears to do some sort of averaging. MSNBC and Fox News score 34 and 36. If you mouse over MSNBC, you'll see only a few items below 24, and only a few above 50 but they mostly cluster between 32 and 40. There's only a few things from MSNBC that are stinkers. When I read a piece on MSNBC, I have high confidence it's decent. I would be hard pressed to cherry pick 10 BS pieces to support a BS narrative.

However if you do the same thing with Fox News You'll see a bigger swing in the extremes. They do real some journalism at Fox news, but they spew a ton of shit opinion too. Just like MSNBC they have a decent chunk between 24 and 32, but they also have a decent chunk below 24. If I wanted to get 10 BS pieces to support a BS narrative, I probably could.

Also thanks for taking this on, it's a huge task and it's appreciated.

HandsHurtLoL OP , 11 months ago

I also saw this scatter plotting that you described, and for Fox News, it is more of a swing / crap shoot. Another media watchdog organization called Poynter used to have a media bias report and ultimately deemed Fox News reliable for any coverage besides politics.

To get around this, we can utilize a whitelist/blacklist of news sites. For sources of information not on those lists, we as the mods can refer to the Media Bias Chart from Ad Fontes. For sources of information not measured by Ad Fontes, moderators may use personal discretion.

Example: yesterday someone posted a link from pinknews.com, but I couldn't find it on the media bias chart. That's fine. The headline seemed like credible news, but from a queer news source.