“Media Bias Fact Check” is just a few liberal nerds with using a vibes-based methodology. Its ratings are as meaningful as asking any random phydiology major with an OT job. Which is to say, anyone with the background and credentials and experience of the founder of the site and sole editor of the “sources” portion of every single rating.
Even if they try their best, they lack the media criticism skills to properly critique the sites and papers, and in fact accidental expose their lack of political and journalistic understanding through the approach itself.
First, they put their political bias scale onto an axis, and only one axis at that. This is absurd to anyone with any political understanding beyond American-centric horse race Dem vs. GOP dumbed-down nonsense. The real world has political biases from the owners of newspapers, the editors, the decision to use access journalism, the decision to use limited hsngouts with intelligence as sources, etc. And those reflect class interests, nationalism, nepotism, state control, etc. They just ignore that and try to slam it into their baby’s understanding of left vs right.
Second, their methodology has the false premise of neutrality, something that doesn’t exist. Every analysis brings with it the biases of the analyst, and these ones are obviously some kind of American liberals given how they discuss the alt-right. Rather than describe exactly why they think the New York Times, which regularly lies for the powerful and cites a limited cast of think tanks and state-affiliated sources, is so high on facts and low on bias, they just slap on a vibes rating from their “neutral” perspectives. These are not serious people. They have all the acumen of your high college roommate.
If you want to have a strong media critical approach to sources, you can’t let these losers decide what to read and digest vs. dismiss out of hand. There is no get-out-of-critical-thinking-free card. You have to learn media tropes, follow sources, memorize the major think tanks, know the NGOs and UN bodies and states and governments, and develop yourself politically and with a knowledge of history so that when some journalist + editor comes at you with some bullshit you can be correctly incredulous.
The easiest of these for liberals to start doing seems to be to recognize media tropes. I would recommend reading FAIR.org, including its older articles so you can recognize the value and foresight that media criticism provides. The podcast Citations Needed is also good for this and regularly has subject matter experts as guests.
“Media Bias Fact Check” is just a few liberal nerds with using a vibes-based methodology. Its ratings are as meaningful as asking any random phydiology major with an OT job. Which is to say, anyone with the background and credentials and experience of the founder of the site and sole editor of the “sources” portion of every single rating.
Even if they try their best, they lack the media criticism skills to properly critique the sites and papers, and in fact accidental expose their lack of political and journalistic understanding through the approach itself.
First, they put their political bias scale onto an axis, and only one axis at that. This is absurd to anyone with any political understanding beyond American-centric horse race Dem vs. GOP dumbed-down nonsense. The real world has political biases from the owners of newspapers, the editors, the decision to use access journalism, the decision to use limited hsngouts with intelligence as sources, etc. And those reflect class interests, nationalism, nepotism, state control, etc. They just ignore that and try to slam it into their baby’s understanding of left vs right.
Second, their methodology has the false premise of neutrality, something that doesn’t exist. Every analysis brings with it the biases of the analyst, and these ones are obviously some kind of American liberals given how they discuss the alt-right. Rather than describe exactly why they think the New York Times, which regularly lies for the powerful and cites a limited cast of think tanks and state-affiliated sources, is so high on facts and low on bias, they just slap on a vibes rating from their “neutral” perspectives. These are not serious people. They have all the acumen of your high college roommate.
If you want to have a strong media critical approach to sources, you can’t let these losers decide what to read and digest vs. dismiss out of hand. There is no get-out-of-critical-thinking-free card. You have to learn media tropes, follow sources, memorize the major think tanks, know the NGOs and UN bodies and states and governments, and develop yourself politically and with a knowledge of history so that when some journalist + editor comes at you with some bullshit you can be correctly incredulous.
The easiest of these for liberals to start doing seems to be to recognize media tropes. I would recommend reading FAIR.org, including its older articles so you can recognize the value and foresight that media criticism provides. The podcast Citations Needed is also good for this and regularly has subject matter experts as guests.