An anonymous physician, in a letter viewed by Haaretz, has warned Israeli officials about what's going on at a field hospital inside a notorious detention center.  By Brett Wilkins Common Dreams A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Pa
  • athos77
    13•9 months ago

    It does matter. Anyone is susceptible to propaganda, and one of the classic ways to promote propaganda is to create a source that seems credible but which is presenting biased information, either in what they conver or how they cover it. Given the information war being waged with real lives at stake, it is not inappropriate to ask other people what they know about an unfamiliar site.

    And they may look legitimate to you, but someone else might notice something you’ve overlooked, or they may know something about the source. Kudos to OP for asking the question and trying to be a more discriminatory consumer of news instead of just accepting whatever comes across their path as truth.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•9 months ago

      Every source is biased, bias is not inherently a problem. Having a leftist perspective on news is not a problem.

      What is a problem is fake news.

      What is a problem is a handful of large news sites that dominate what news people get access to.

      What that user has done is to muddy the waters by doubting the article not due to the quality of the information but due to lack of brand recognition. That is worthy of contention not kudos.

      It serves no useful purpose other than to detract from the article at hand.

      • Decoy321English
        4•9 months ago

        What is a problem is fake news.

        Indeed. That’s why that user asked the simple question. They’re trying to determine the veracity of the information from that website.

        Bias and factuality are different concepts. One source can print wildly biased, yet probably true information. While another can provide absolutely unbiased disinformation.

        • @[email protected]English
          4•9 months ago

          Except the user didn’t ask, is this accurate news, they asked “has anyone heard of this outfit?”

          This is a sidestep from the actual question to instead focus on attacking the source rather than the content.

          • Decoy321English
            2•9 months ago

            I dunno, my dude. That’s still quite a reach to go from a simple question to automatically determining that it’s a hatchet job.

            I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that you’re assuming a lot more than I normally works from a singular question.

            There’s a significant difference between the two questions in your first sentence: quality of verifiability. The goal here is to determine accuracy anyways. Asking that directly will never get you an answer that you should accept at face value.

            If I ask “is this accurate?”, any sourceless responses lack weight. “yes” holds as much proof as “no.”

            But “has anyone heard of this” is a much lower barrier of veracity. Answers themselves won’t determine the accuracy of the article, just whether or not anyone can help establish credibility.

            It’s important to question and verify sources, no matter who it is. Criticizing someone who does makes you no better than anyone pushing propaganda.