• davel@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    I have explained what garbage MBFC and Ad Fontes Media are so many times. I’ll copypasta myself:


    https://lemmy.ml/post/12705767/8913172

    But muh Media Bias/Fact Check says it checks out!

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/contact/

    Dave M. Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. >Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence.

    Van Zandt is some hobbyist who was in the right place at the right time: the “post-truth” moment of Clinton’s loss to Trump and the string of Russiagate conspiracy theories and Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts and the Cambridge Analytica hysteria.

    The whole concept of the “left” or ”right“ “bias” being inversely correlated with factualness is garbage. These kinds of graphs, which try to convince us that centrism equals factualness, are garbage:

    The core bias of corporate media is the bias of the capitalist class, but people like Van Zandt don’t seem to understand this.

    The inner workings of corporate media were explained about forty years ago in Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent.
    A five minute introduction: Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine


    https://lemmy.ml/post/13566156/9605612

    I said “these kinds of graphs,” of which there are many https://duckduckgo.com/?q=media+bias+chart&iax=images&ia=images

    But you’ve sparked an idea for an interesting project: use MBFC’s API to create one of these graphs from t>heir own data. Doing a little googling, it seems that scripts and data dumps aren’t hard to come by.

    I think armchair media analyst Dave M. Van Zandt is going on vibes. I don’t think he understands corporate & think tank media. Does he know who Walter Lippman or Edward Bernays were, or what the Council on Foreign Relations (“least biased” 🤡) is or made note of its prominent media members? Does he know about the Powell memorandum or the Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy?

    No results found for site:mediabiasfactcheck.com "manufacturing consent".

    I’ve seen The Grayzone debunk the New York Times’ lies many times, and yet:

    Also, in what universe is the neoliberal, anti-labor NYT center-left? And if the Grayzone in the ultraviolet territory, where does that leave the explicitly Communist Monthly Review, outside of MBFC’s Overton window? Surprise, it’s to the right of it:


    https://lemmy.ml/post/17665401/12094932

    The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.

    The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’.

    This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.

    The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”

    None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.

  • CaliforniaKove@lemmy.caOP
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    4 months ago

    Media Bias/Fact Check Credibility: [Glorious and Infalible] (Click to view Full Report, loyalty expected)

    In the land of absolute truth, Media Bias Fact Check reigns supreme, meticulously rating the bias and credibility of news sources with an iron fist. Their reports are as detailed as they are mandatory.

    Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for granting access to their all-knowing API.
    Your support is not just requested, but expected—donations are a patriotic duty.

    Beep boop. This action was performed automatically by the regime. If you dare to disapprove, you may block me—at your own risk. 💔
    For any questions or ‘concerns,’ you may report to the LW Support lemmy community, where compliance is monitored.

  • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    I get it’s annoying to see a comment on almost every news article shared that contributes nothing to a conversation, but you can also just block the bot and be done with it.

    I’m not sure why it’s enough of a bug bear to take even the short amount of time it took to make this image and post it.

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      I’m not sure why it’s enough of a bug bear to take even the short amount of time it took to make this image and post it.

      OP and others like them are seething at the fact that disinformation is more difficult now, you used to be able to post whatever insane bullshit you wanted and people might engage with it, now you’ve got a great big old banner at the bottom of your post telling everyone exactly how much bullshit you’re spewing.

      They’ve been outed, so now they’ve taken to attacking the credibility of their watchdog, because if they want people to continue to engage with their propaganda then people need a credible reason to distrust MBFC.

      • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        I dunno I think that’s a tad conspiratorial… lemmy is a pretty small audience upon which to launch state sponsored disinformation campaigns. It’s a far simpler explanation that it’s just some dork annoyed at bot comments, which makes sense tbh, it’s just easy to solve by blocking the bot.

        • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          OP’s account is less than 24 hours old and already contains two articles from nonreputable sources and a complaint urging people not to trust the reputability watchdog. Even if I am overreacting, that’s a bad look.

          Also, nobody said it has to be state sponsored. Nongovernmental actors propagandize shit all the time. People do it all the time for free in my home country, and I guarantee you’ve experienced the negative effects of it, because this is why you hear things about American conservatives every day.

          A citizen who cannot trust their news cannot act. And a citizen who cannot trust an independent fact checker cannot trust their news.

      • davel@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Disinformation is easier than ever on US corporate social media, because they’ve been folded into the US military-intelligence-propaganda-industrial complex.

  • TheRedSpade@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The comments suggest that most people have seen this, but I have no idea what the context is. Can anyone explain?

    • CaliforniaKove@lemmy.caOP
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      4 months ago

      The LW mods are relying on a website to verify news, but it barely works outside of U.S. coverage, making it useless for global news (it’s like they think the U.S. is the whole world). They ask for feedback, but let’s be real—they’re too stubborn to accept any criticism