5 ms·

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and see

by savef 1y ago

What examples of this are there? I've usually found Wikipedia to be quite equal opportunity, well rounded, and factual. They have their NPOV[1] policy, and seem impressively unbiased to me, given the various divisive situations they have to try to cover. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_v...

crote 1y ago
Just because the policies are supposed to be neutral doesn't mean the resulting work is guaranteed to be truly neutral. Whether something is definitely a fact or an opinion can be very fluid, and you can play a lot with the amount of attention each viewpoint gets. Even a "neutral" article can end up reading completely differently when one viewpoint is very detailed and described in a fact-like way, while another only gets a short summary which reads as if it is a fringe opinion. And even when you are trying to be neutral, it is incredibly hard to avoid your output from getting shaped by the culture you are surrounded with.
- synecdoche 1y ago
  An example of this in biased media is that people or entities of one end of the political spectrum is almost always qualified as extreme in some way while those from the opposite end of the spectrum is almost never qualified as extreme, as if it were self evident that it is true. Hard to unsee once you know what to look for.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  It's a very thin line to walk, and I don't think "true neutral" or "true unbiased" exists for the same reasons you mention. A newspaper may be neutral and stick to the facts, but if it simply chooses not to publish something, or it chooses to publish something as a byline instead of headline, it's already biased. There are organizations trying something else though; admittedly I got this through a promotion from a youtube channel, but Ground News [0] is a news aggregator that publishes news with many sources, including ownership, political affiliation, publishing type (facts or opinions, neutral or entertaining), and even notes on which channels do and don't report on it, identifying media blind spots like "low coverage from right sources" or "low original coverage" to help people escape their bubbles and provide multiple perspectives on an issue. [0] https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/
- straydusk 1y ago
  Then give an example
  - slater 1y ago
    You're unlikely to get one; these discussions are usually just a speedrun to that "which opinions, mfer?" goose meme
krmboya 1y ago
The editors mostly reference left-leaning media outlets when it comes to political topics, without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources, assuming it were a truth-seeking endeavor. As a non American this is very obvious to me. Even Reuters that was supposedly meant to be a non-biased media outlet is clearly left-leaning at this point
- justin66 1y ago
  > without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts
- guelo 1y ago
  Labeling all media that isn't rabid right wing partisan as "left wing" is unconvincing.
  - EE84M3i 1y ago
    Reminds me of "reality has a well known liberal bias"
    - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      Or "anything left of right is left-leaning", I suppose. It's the Overton window and the steady decline of moderation; centrists are wrong no matter who you ask ("pick a side you coward", "silence is complicity"), moderate Republicans are RINOs, Republican In Name Only [0], and their disloyalty to the Party is shamed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_in_name_only https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_in_name_only
- nl 1y ago
  Reuters is left-leaning? How so? It's a new agency and as far as I've seen just sticks to publishing summaries of events. I had a look at the most potentially controversial topics I could find right now, and I say they seem fair. For example: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-detained-us-immigration-raids-new-york-state-governor-says-2025-09-05/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-detained-us-immigrat... (on ICE arrests in NY) and https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-would-wider-recognition-palestine-mean-palestinians-israel-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-would-wider-r... (on recognition of a Palestinian state). Indeed, Wikipedia lists it as a good source[1]. It's worth comparing that to outlets like CNN (reliable, but "... talk show content should be treated as opinion pieces. Some editors consider CNN biased, though not to the extent that it affects reliability.") or The Wall Street Journal ("Most editors consider The Wall Street Journal generally reliable for news. Use WP:NEWSBLOG to evaluate the newspaper's blogs, including Washington Wire. Use WP:RSOPINION for opinion pieces.") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... ("Reuters is a news agency. There is consensus that Reuters is generally reliable.")
will4274 1y ago
I don't know how much you know about the Washington Redskins naming controversy. There's little doubt that "redskin" is a slur today - Native Americans say so, and it's kind of up to them. The status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear IMHO. Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously *was* a slur then too. As evidence, it cites a study of 17th century literature that notes redskins were more likely to be villains than heros in a small sample of 80 books and a diary entry about a sign outside a small town that said "Indian / Redskin scalps - $1" or some such. I don't recall the details. The point is there wasn't one cited source that showed redskin specifically was a slur, only general evidence that white settlers were racist against Native Americans. Clear WP:SYNTH violation. Tried to make my own changes, got immediately reverted. Tried to start on the talk page, got totally filibustered by two editors who has the page and a hundred other racism adjacent pages on their watchlist and whose edit history was basically just those handful of pages. Started reading about internal wikipedia boards I could appeal to. Stopped and logged off. Once you start noticing things like that and start double checking, you find such minor distortions in a lot of political adjacent Wikipedia pages. Another good example is to grab five super murderous left wing dictators and five super murderous right wing dictators and read the summary section. Use a pen or a highlighter and classify each sentence as positive, negative, or neutral.
- nl 1y ago
  > Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously was a slur then too. It doesn't seem to say this - there's quite a nuanced discussion about whether or not it was a slur during that time period[1]: > The term redskin underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled as offensive, disparaging, or insulting.. > Documents from the colonial period indicate that the use of "red" as an identifier by Native Americans for themselves emerged in the context of Indian-European diplomacy in the southeastern region of North America, before later being adopted by Europeans and becoming a generic label for all Native Americans.... > In the debate over the meaning of the word "redskin", team supporters frequently cite a paper by Ives Goddard, a Smithsonian Institution senior linguist and curator emeritus, who asserts that the term was a direct translation of words used by Native Americans to refer to themselves and was benign in its original meaning ... > Sociologist James V. Fenelon makes a more explicit statement that Goddard's article is poor scholarship, given that the conclusion of the origin and usage by Natives as "entirely benign" is divorced from the socio-historical realities of hostility and racism from which it emerged. I think your summary saying the "status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear" is fair, but I think the Wikipeida article outlines that lack of clarity too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_contr...
ljsprague 1y ago
Race and IQ stuff.
- hnpolicestate 1y ago
  Current geopolitical stuff too. Intelligence agencies use Wikipedia articles as propaganda tools. The Ukraine War articles are factually incorrect. To be expected with so much at stake.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Yeah I try to avoid pages on Ukraine and Israel, although admittely they don't shun away from the factual things that Israel did. I bet there's a lot of well-paid organizations keeping a sharp eye on a lot of more sensitive pages. And of course famous people's PR people.
- creatonez 1y ago
  You're mad Wikipedia doesn't parrot thoroughly debunked eugenics arguments?
  - ljsprague 1y ago
    The fact that you jumped to "eugenics" proves my point.
    - creatonez 1y ago
      The fact that you can't correctly identify debunked claims about a connection between race and IQ as inherently eugenicist talking points and instead quickly resorted to obfuscation proves my point.
      - joenot443 1y ago
        This is a pretty severe leap of logic; respectfully it seems to me like both of you are sort of talking past each other here. Why don’t you just say what you mean? Not everything is about proving points or “winning”, it’s okay to just have honest discussion.
Levitz 1y ago
The article for Gamergate is basically an entire page ultimately sourcing from games journalism outlets when it was explicitly about calling out games journalism and collusion in the industry. And being fair, if there's one weakness in a site which relies on several sources agreeing on something it surely is when those sources are colluding on something, but the end result is a page rife with misinformation. This is prevalent in culture wars stuff, Keffals article "graciously" fails to mention how she frequently lied and instigated vast amounts of harassment towards herself or how she basically spent the GoFundMe money she campaigned for on heroin. If the media spins a narrative, Wikipedia doesn't really have a counter to that in any way.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by savef 1y ago

crote 1y ago

Just because the policies are supposed to be neutral doesn't mean the resulting work is guaranteed to be truly neutral. Whether something is definitely a fact or an opinion can be very fluid, and you can play a lot with the amount of attention each viewpoint gets. Even a "neutral" article can end up reading completely differently when one viewpoint is very detailed and described in a fact-like way, while another only gets a short summary which reads as if it is a fringe opinion. And even when you are trying to be neutral, it is incredibly hard to avoid your output from getting shaped by the culture you are surrounded with.

synecdoche 1y ago
An example of this in biased media is that people or entities of one end of the political spectrum is almost always qualified as extreme in some way while those from the opposite end of the spectrum is almost never qualified as extreme, as if it were self evident that it is true. Hard to unsee once you know what to look for.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
It's a very thin line to walk, and I don't think "true neutral" or "true unbiased" exists for the same reasons you mention. A newspaper may be neutral and stick to the facts, but if it simply chooses not to publish something, or it chooses to publish something as a byline instead of headline, it's already biased. There are organizations trying something else though; admittedly I got this through a promotion from a youtube channel, but Ground News [0] is a news aggregator that publishes news with many sources, including ownership, political affiliation, publishing type (facts or opinions, neutral or entertaining), and even notes on which channels do and don't report on it, identifying media blind spots like "low coverage from right sources" or "low original coverage" to help people escape their bubbles and provide multiple perspectives on an issue. [0] https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/
straydusk 1y ago
Then give an example
- slater 1y ago
  You're unlikely to get one; these discussions are usually just a speedrun to that "which opinions, mfer?" goose meme

krmboya 1y ago

The editors mostly reference left-leaning media outlets when it comes to political topics, without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources, assuming it were a truth-seeking endeavor. As a non American this is very obvious to me. Even Reuters that was supposedly meant to be a non-biased media outlet is clearly left-leaning at this point

justin66 1y ago
> without providing a counterbalance from right-leaning sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts
guelo 1y ago
Labeling all media that isn't rabid right wing partisan as "left wing" is unconvincing.
- EE84M3i 1y ago
  Reminds me of "reality has a well known liberal bias"
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Or "anything left of right is left-leaning", I suppose. It's the Overton window and the steady decline of moderation; centrists are wrong no matter who you ask ("pick a side you coward", "silence is complicity"), moderate Republicans are RINOs, Republican In Name Only [0], and their disloyalty to the Party is shamed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_in_name_only https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_in_name_only
nl 1y ago
Reuters is left-leaning? How so? It's a new agency and as far as I've seen just sticks to publishing summaries of events. I had a look at the most potentially controversial topics I could find right now, and I say they seem fair. For example: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-detained-us-immigration-raids-new-york-state-governor-says-2025-09-05/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/dozens-detained-us-immigrat... (on ICE arrests in NY) and https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-would-wider-recognition-palestine-mean-palestinians-israel-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-would-wider-r... (on recognition of a Palestinian state). Indeed, Wikipedia lists it as a good source[1]. It's worth comparing that to outlets like CNN (reliable, but "... talk show content should be treated as opinion pieces. Some editors consider CNN biased, though not to the extent that it affects reliability.") or The Wall Street Journal ("Most editors consider The Wall Street Journal generally reliable for news. Use WP:NEWSBLOG to evaluate the newspaper's blogs, including Washington Wire. Use WP:RSOPINION for opinion pieces.") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... ("Reuters is a news agency. There is consensus that Reuters is generally reliable.")

will4274 1y ago

I don't know how much you know about the Washington Redskins naming controversy. There's little doubt that "redskin" is a slur today - Native Americans say so, and it's kind of up to them. The status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear IMHO. Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously *was* a slur then too. As evidence, it cites a study of 17th century literature that notes redskins were more likely to be villains than heros in a small sample of 80 books and a diary entry about a sign outside a small town that said "Indian / Redskin scalps - $1" or some such. I don't recall the details. The point is there wasn't one cited source that showed redskin specifically was a slur, only general evidence that white settlers were racist against Native Americans. Clear WP:SYNTH violation. Tried to make my own changes, got immediately reverted. Tried to start on the talk page, got totally filibustered by two editors who has the page and a hundred other racism adjacent pages on their watchlist and whose edit history was basically just those handful of pages. Started reading about internal wikipedia boards I could appeal to. Stopped and logged off. Once you start noticing things like that and start double checking, you find such minor distortions in a lot of political adjacent Wikipedia pages. Another good example is to grab five super murderous left wing dictators and five super murderous right wing dictators and read the summary section. Use a pen or a highlighter and classify each sentence as positive, negative, or neutral.

nl 1y ago
> Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously was a slur then too. It doesn't seem to say this - there's quite a nuanced discussion about whether or not it was a slur during that time period[1]: > The term redskin underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled as offensive, disparaging, or insulting.. > Documents from the colonial period indicate that the use of "red" as an identifier by Native Americans for themselves emerged in the context of Indian-European diplomacy in the southeastern region of North America, before later being adopted by Europeans and becoming a generic label for all Native Americans.... > In the debate over the meaning of the word "redskin", team supporters frequently cite a paper by Ives Goddard, a Smithsonian Institution senior linguist and curator emeritus, who asserts that the term was a direct translation of words used by Native Americans to refer to themselves and was benign in its original meaning ... > Sociologist James V. Fenelon makes a more explicit statement that Goddard's article is poor scholarship, given that the conclusion of the origin and usage by Natives as "entirely benign" is divorced from the socio-historical realities of hostility and racism from which it emerged. I think your summary saying the "status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear" is fair, but I think the Wikipeida article outlines that lack of clarity too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_contr...

ljsprague 1y ago

Race and IQ stuff.

hnpolicestate 1y ago
Current geopolitical stuff too. Intelligence agencies use Wikipedia articles as propaganda tools. The Ukraine War articles are factually incorrect. To be expected with so much at stake.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Yeah I try to avoid pages on Ukraine and Israel, although admittely they don't shun away from the factual things that Israel did. I bet there's a lot of well-paid organizations keeping a sharp eye on a lot of more sensitive pages. And of course famous people's PR people.
creatonez 1y ago
You're mad Wikipedia doesn't parrot thoroughly debunked eugenics arguments?
- ljsprague 1y ago
  The fact that you jumped to "eugenics" proves my point.
  - creatonez 1y ago
    The fact that you can't correctly identify debunked claims about a connection between race and IQ as inherently eugenicist talking points and instead quickly resorted to obfuscation proves my point.
    - joenot443 1y ago
      This is a pretty severe leap of logic; respectfully it seems to me like both of you are sort of talking past each other here. Why don’t you just say what you mean? Not everything is about proving points or “winning”, it’s okay to just have honest discussion.

Levitz 1y ago

The article for Gamergate is basically an entire page ultimately sourcing from games journalism outlets when it was explicitly about calling out games journalism and collusion in the industry. And being fair, if there's one weakness in a site which relies on several sources agreeing on something it surely is when those sources are colluding on something, but the end result is a page rife with misinformation. This is prevalent in culture wars stuff, Keffals article "graciously" fails to mention how she frequently lied and instigated vast amounts of harassment towards herself or how she basically spent the GoFundMe money she campaigned for on heroin. If the media spins a narrative, Wikipedia doesn't really have a counter to that in any way.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]