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PSC CUNY - Union representing CUNY staff and faculty
I cannot fathom a good faith justification for allowing a resource that intentionally obfuscates the media landscape in an effort to compress the entire landscape onto a 2D plane from a person who cannot be found through any conventional means and very well may not exist. Their methodology is bunk for a number of reasons, but we’ll focus specifically on how they evaluate factuality.
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As you know, op-eds typically fall under different journalistic purview than news stories. This is as true for the NYT and SCMP (newspapers of record) as it is for Breitbart. Mixing the factuality rating for op-eds and news stories is rather questionable.
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The rating scheme works by sampling (how? nobody knows) a small number of stories from each paper and evaluating their factuality. This destroys the validity of the data, as different news sources cover different stories and categories of stories vary in factuality. For example, a paper which records the daily weather temperature in Toronto would be “very highly accurate” even if they release a story saying that water is dry and trees are fake once a month. Because of the limitations of sampling, their methodology leads to inherently skewed results.
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The definition of propaganda used is… Unclear. This is obvious as statements made by the US government and repeated by other news agencies are not considered propaganda, despite their factual inaccuracy. For example, “40 beheaded babies” (later demonstrated to be false) and “we [the United States] have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world” (literally, provably, false because TSMC’s Taiwan fabs are the clear and undisputed leader).
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They fail to do due diligence on sourcing because of a (I assume) lack of experience. For example, in their critique of their article “Fake data - the disease afflicting China’s vaccine system,” they say that the article is poorly sourced because it lacks hyperlinks. The article in question cites: a Hong Kong microbiologist (by name), a professor at the University of Hong Kong (by name), the WHO, stories published in the China Economic Times, data from the State Drug Administration, a law case against Changsheng Biotech, and an unnamed head of a disease control center in China. This, they claim, is a use of “quotes or sources to themselves rather than providing hyperlinks.” Their evaluation of “sourcing” seems to be dependent almost entirely on the usage of hyperlinks.
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They fail to consistently apply standards applied to smaller news outlets (such as Al Jazeera) to larger news outlets (such as the New York Times and CNN). Against Al Jazeera, they claim that wordplay is used that is negative towards Israel. However, as covered by The Intercept and The Guardian, the New York Times and others have just as extreme (if not more extreme) policies surrounding wordplay that is used to show Israel in a positive light. In major newspapers, for example, the words “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” are reserved almost exclusively for Israeli deaths rather than Palestinian deaths.
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MBFC is not consistent with the sources of their fact checks. Against Al Jazeera, they point to “The forgotten massacre that ignited the Kashmir dispute” as not crediting the image correctly. In fact, the caption describes exactly what the image shows, which is exactly what the original source for the image (which they cite) claims.
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I can go on…
Again, if it’s trivial to do the legwork and discredit a source anyway, then do that. If it’s not, then don’t outsource the work just because you don’t understand it.
“[MBFC’s] subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.” - Columbia Journalism Review
“Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.” - PolitiFact journalists
Journalists seem to agree with me, which you’d know if you actually read “all of my comments.” This isn’t the first time I’ve posted these quotes in this thread.
I don’t think you quite understand what an ad hominem attack is. The fact is, the operator of MBFC has no accountability if they get anything wrong because nobody knows who or what he is. The fact is, the operator of MBFC uses his degrees and experience as justification for his “scientific” evaluation of media bias.
I’m not making any claims that the operator isn’t making themselves.
A person without credentials, without experience, and without any evidence to prove that their claimed credentials or experience are legitimate… Is a credible source?
Can you find any evidence, any at all that the person actually has the credentials that they themselves claim? This is trivial to do for pretty much any modern journalist, but I’ve been able to find zero information on him.
Professors of Practice tend to have experience in the industry they are professors in. Their reputation is hinged on their achievements, and they don’t cite their degree as being instrumental to their credibility.
Edit: professors are also, y’know, subject to scrutiny and can’t hide behind anonymity when they get things wrong.
“[MBFC’s] subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.” - Columbia Journalism Review
“Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.” - PolitiFact journalists
MBFC is used when analyzing a large swathe of data because they have ratings for basically every news outlet. There, if a quarter or a third of the data is wrong, you can still generate enough signal to separate from noise.
It absolutely matters who is running a site because there’s an inherent accountability for journalism. There’s a reason you don’t see NYT articles from “Anonymous Ostrich.”
Thing is, even if he is good at media criticism, there’s no stakes for him. Nobody knows who he is, what he looks like, he has nothing on the line, and his credibility in his primary occupation cannot be harmed if he is wrong.
Nevermind that he lacks the credentials nor any legitimate scientific expertise, and yet claims that his Bachelor’s in Physiology was sufficiently advanced to teach him everything he needs to know about the scientific process.
The dataset is seen in academia as being accurate enough to train machine learning models for or to make aggregate claims on. Machine learning models are not the bastions of truth, nor are their datasets.
Please avoid citing MBFC as a valid source.
Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year olds he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.
The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method to develop a methodology to support his assessments.
If you’re going to discredit a source, please try to do the legwork of actually discrediting it. A guy with a Bachelors in Physiology and being “fascinated with politics since high school (a long time ago)” cannot be considered a reliable source, nevermind one who claims to follow the “scientific method” which he, presumably, learned while studying to become an occupational therapist or through his 20-year journey of reading political news.
If you have photos of this man, any record of interviews with him, records that support his credibility/the incorporation of his company, records of his job in occupational rehabilitation, details about his team, or anything else, please feel free to share them. Please do not confuse him with Dave E. Van Zandt (Princeton BA Sociology, Yale JD, London School of Economics PhD, ex-managing editor of the Yale Law Journal, ex-Dean of Northeastern’s School of Law, ex-President of The New School).
When titles are this non-descriptive, it might help to give a more descriptive title.