this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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136
Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
209 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi all!

As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world. This bot was introduced because modding can be pretty tough work at times and we are all just volunteers with regular lives. It has been helpful and we would like to keep it around in one form or another.

The !news@lemmy.world mods want to give the community a chance to voice their thoughts on some potential changes to the MBFC bot. We have heard concerns that tend to fall into a few buckets. The most common concern we’ve heard is that the bot’s comment is too long. To address this, we’ve implemented a spoiler tag so that users need to click to see more information. We’ve also cut wording about donations that people argued made the bot feel like an ad.

Another common concern people have is with MBFC’s definition of “left” and “right,” which tend to be influenced by the American Overton window. Similarly, some have expressed that they feel MBFC’s process of rating reliability and credibility is opaque and/or subjective. To address this, we have discussed creating our own open source system of scoring news sources. We would essentially start with third-party ratings, including MBFC, and create an aggregate rating. We could also open a path for users to vote, so that any rating would reflect our instance’s opinions of a source. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well as suggestions for sources that rate news outlets’ bias, reliability, and/or credibility. Feel free to use this thread to share other constructive criticism about the bot too.

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[–] tacosplease@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Here's the comment reply from when I first asked what was wrong with MBFC. Gotta say. I agree with that comment. I'm surprised more people haven't posted similar examples here.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/12328918

Edit: here is the text from the linked comment.

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

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-report/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-post/

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.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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

You keep repeating this lie.

From their report on the Jerusalem Post:

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.

Until 1989, the Jerusalem Post’s political leaning was left-leaning as it supported the ruling Labor Party. 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.”

In review, The Jerusalem Post covers Israeli and regional news with strongly emotionally loaded language with right-leaning bias with articles such as this “Country’s founding Labor party survives near extinction” and “Netanyahu slams settler leader for insulting Trump.” . . . 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.

They literally mention their bias over and over. Center-right is consistent with how they're rated everywhere. Allsides rates them center with the note that the community thinks they lean right. Wikipedia rates them as centre-right/conservative. Your "VEEEERY slightly" bit is pure fabrication. They specifically note that they're a highly biased source on the conflict in Gaza.