I know MediaBiasFactCheck is not a be-all-end-all to truth/bias in media, but I find it to be a useful resource.

It makes sense to downvote it in posts that have great discussion – let the content rise up so people can have discussions with humans, sure.

But sometimes I see it getting downvoted when it’s the only comment there. Which does nothing, unless a reader has rules that automatically hide downvoted comments (but a reader would be able to expand the comment anyways…so really no difference).

What’s the point of downvoting? My only guess is that there’s people who are salty about something it said about some source they like. Yet I don’t see anyone providing an alternative to MediaBiasFactCheck…

  • @[email protected]
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    411 month ago

    I downvote it when its opinion is clearly wack. Like when it tries to give Washington Post a highly trusted rating after all the inflammatory, biased shit they’ve been putting out.

    • @[email protected]
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      171 month ago

      Yeah, or when it says The New York Times is leftist.

      Helpful for keeping me honest about checking sources, not always very honest itself.

    • @davidagain
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      1 month ago

      It’s roughly correct about the political leanings of UK newspapers as far as I’ve seen, but it’s way off on the accuracy and factual reporting measures. It seems to give loony papers a pass and the responsible ones a drubbing. It seems to have an American view of politics where liberal and left are conflated and also daring to report what the views of poor people are gets your reliability ratings plummeting.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 month ago

        Yeah anything responsible that reports and corrects mistakes made in past reporting gets a low score for factual accuracy, when these should be getting the highest scores.

        It’s completely backwards.