This is a perfect example of why MBFC is so bad. Mondoweiss has the same factual reporting status as presumably fine sources (the guardian is also mixed factual) it has transparent funding (far better than plenty of others) and comes from a country with mostly free press freedom (USA) and has medium traffic. Yet some how that comes out of the black box as low credibility, the only reason I can see for that is that Dave Van Zandt considers it too left wing.
“Mondweiss is basically one-stop shopping for anti-Israel news. Anything bad that goes on in Israel will be publicized and exaggerated at Mondoweiss. If you want to know the far-left anti-Israel party line on any recent event, Mondoweiss is the place to go.”
"In 2010, Mondoweiss was criticized by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs for publishing a series of cartoons which they stated expressed “anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism”.[45]
Between 2010 and 2011, Tablet magazine published three articles in which Mondoweiss and other blogs, were criticized. The articles described Weiss as a “Jew-baiter” and “intensely anti-Israel”, saying his site was “obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby” and laden with “sweeping and unsubstantiated rhetoric”.[46][47][48] Weiss responded to allegations in Tablet, by stating that the magazine had “smeared” him and several other bloggers as Jew-baiters.[49] Walt stated that Smith’s article contained “not a scintilla of evidence” that “Weiss or I have written or said anything that is remotely anti-Semitic, much less that involves ‘Jew-baiting’. There’s an obvious reason for this omission: None of us has ever written or said anything that supports Smith’s outrageous charges.”[50]
In 2012, the Algemeiner Journal described Mondoweiss as “Purveyors of Anti-Semitic Material”.[51] According to Algemenier and the Anti-Defamation League, Mondoweiss and Philip Weiss have received grants from Ron Unz’s Unz Foundation.[52][53]
Armin Rosen, a Media Fellow with The Atlantic, criticized Peter Beinart’s blog, Open Zion (which appears in The Daily Beast) for publishing an article by Alex Kane because he is Mondoweiss’s “Staff Reporter”. Rosen wrote that “Mondoweiss often gives the appearance of an anti-Semitic enterprise.”[4]
Robert Wright, a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, responded to Rosen’s article, writing “This tarring of Kane by virtue of his association with Mondoweiss would be lamentable even if Rosen produced a convincing indictment of Mondoweiss, showing that it indeed evinces anti-Semitism.”[54] James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic concurred with Wright’s response to Rosen.[55] Alex Kane, Adam Horowitz, and Philip Weiss responded in Mondoweiss arguing that Rosen’s article, “is about nothing more than policing the discourse on Israel”.[56]
Later that year, the Algemeiner Journal published another article criticising Mondoweiss for its associations with Judith Butler because of her comments describing Islamist movements, including those of the militant variety such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left”.[57]
In 2013, Peter Beinart, writing for The Daily Beast, accused Mondoweiss of “ignoring human rights abuse unless it can be linked to America or capitalism or the West”, and said that “By admitting that they’re more interested in human rights violations when Israel commits them than when Hamas does, Horowitz and Roth are implying that they don’t really see human rights as universal”.[58] Later in the year Commentary magazine accused Mondoweiss of being complicit in an “effort to delegitimize Jewish rights”.[59]
Journalist Bradley Burston, writing for Haaretz, described Mondoweiss as “avowedly anti-Israel” in reference to its coverage of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers.[61]
It was also described as a hate site in the book Anti-Zionism on Campus by Andrew Pessin.[63]
According to Elliot Kaufman, the Vice President of Cardinal for Israel, a Stanford University group, writing in The Stanford Review, Mondoweiss “often publishes astonishingly anti-Semitic material, using classic anti-Semitic imagery such as depicting Jews as spiders, cockroaches, or octopuses with tentacles controlling others, and Holocaust inversion. Its hatred of Israel is as deep as it is vicious.”[64]
Even taking all of this screed as true with no qualifications, does that in itself not show that the whole idea of pulling together a few sources about “credibility” and using an objective method to come up with an answer on how trustworthy something is as impossible? By the inputs MBFC list it should be a reasonable if not stellar source, yet they give it the lowest possible rating. Maybe that rating is justified maybe it isnt (I’ve never read anything of theirs) but given the inputs they have it is clear that the majority of the rating is based on the owner’s opinion not on the inputs they have.
Edit, on actually reading through what you wrote, it seems that the negatives are entirely about being critical of Isreal, is this by itself enough to make something not credible?
You didnt address my point at all. I was saying that the outcome of Dave’s credibility method does not match up with the stated inputs to his method, showing that the whole thing is far more subjective than he wants to appear. Whether or not that subjective interpretation is reasonable in this case or not doesnt really interest me.
This is a perfect example of why MBFC is so bad. Mondoweiss has the same factual reporting status as presumably fine sources (the guardian is also mixed factual) it has transparent funding (far better than plenty of others) and comes from a country with mostly free press freedom (USA) and has medium traffic. Yet some how that comes out of the black box as low credibility, the only reason I can see for that is that Dave Van Zandt considers it too left wing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/
“Mondweiss is basically one-stop shopping for anti-Israel news. Anything bad that goes on in Israel will be publicized and exaggerated at Mondoweiss. If you want to know the far-left anti-Israel party line on any recent event, Mondoweiss is the place to go.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondoweiss
"In 2010, Mondoweiss was criticized by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs for publishing a series of cartoons which they stated expressed “anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism”.[45]
Between 2010 and 2011, Tablet magazine published three articles in which Mondoweiss and other blogs, were criticized. The articles described Weiss as a “Jew-baiter” and “intensely anti-Israel”, saying his site was “obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby” and laden with “sweeping and unsubstantiated rhetoric”.[46][47][48] Weiss responded to allegations in Tablet, by stating that the magazine had “smeared” him and several other bloggers as Jew-baiters.[49] Walt stated that Smith’s article contained “not a scintilla of evidence” that “Weiss or I have written or said anything that is remotely anti-Semitic, much less that involves ‘Jew-baiting’. There’s an obvious reason for this omission: None of us has ever written or said anything that supports Smith’s outrageous charges.”[50]
In 2012, the Algemeiner Journal described Mondoweiss as “Purveyors of Anti-Semitic Material”.[51] According to Algemenier and the Anti-Defamation League, Mondoweiss and Philip Weiss have received grants from Ron Unz’s Unz Foundation.[52][53]
Armin Rosen, a Media Fellow with The Atlantic, criticized Peter Beinart’s blog, Open Zion (which appears in The Daily Beast) for publishing an article by Alex Kane because he is Mondoweiss’s “Staff Reporter”. Rosen wrote that “Mondoweiss often gives the appearance of an anti-Semitic enterprise.”[4]
Robert Wright, a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, responded to Rosen’s article, writing “This tarring of Kane by virtue of his association with Mondoweiss would be lamentable even if Rosen produced a convincing indictment of Mondoweiss, showing that it indeed evinces anti-Semitism.”[54] James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic concurred with Wright’s response to Rosen.[55] Alex Kane, Adam Horowitz, and Philip Weiss responded in Mondoweiss arguing that Rosen’s article, “is about nothing more than policing the discourse on Israel”.[56]
Later that year, the Algemeiner Journal published another article criticising Mondoweiss for its associations with Judith Butler because of her comments describing Islamist movements, including those of the militant variety such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left”.[57]
In 2013, Peter Beinart, writing for The Daily Beast, accused Mondoweiss of “ignoring human rights abuse unless it can be linked to America or capitalism or the West”, and said that “By admitting that they’re more interested in human rights violations when Israel commits them than when Hamas does, Horowitz and Roth are implying that they don’t really see human rights as universal”.[58] Later in the year Commentary magazine accused Mondoweiss of being complicit in an “effort to delegitimize Jewish rights”.[59]
Journalist Bradley Burston, writing for Haaretz, described Mondoweiss as “avowedly anti-Israel” in reference to its coverage of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers.[61]
It was also described as a hate site in the book Anti-Zionism on Campus by Andrew Pessin.[63]
According to Elliot Kaufman, the Vice President of Cardinal for Israel, a Stanford University group, writing in The Stanford Review, Mondoweiss “often publishes astonishingly anti-Semitic material, using classic anti-Semitic imagery such as depicting Jews as spiders, cockroaches, or octopuses with tentacles controlling others, and Holocaust inversion. Its hatred of Israel is as deep as it is vicious.”[64]
Even taking all of this screed as true with no qualifications, does that in itself not show that the whole idea of pulling together a few sources about “credibility” and using an objective method to come up with an answer on how trustworthy something is as impossible? By the inputs MBFC list it should be a reasonable if not stellar source, yet they give it the lowest possible rating. Maybe that rating is justified maybe it isnt (I’ve never read anything of theirs) but given the inputs they have it is clear that the majority of the rating is based on the owner’s opinion not on the inputs they have.
Edit, on actually reading through what you wrote, it seems that the negatives are entirely about being critical of Isreal, is this by itself enough to make something not credible?
Mondoweiss is an agenda blog, not a news site.
You didnt address my point at all. I was saying that the outcome of Dave’s credibility method does not match up with the stated inputs to his method, showing that the whole thing is far more subjective than he wants to appear. Whether or not that subjective interpretation is reasonable in this case or not doesnt really interest me.