Why are people downvoting the MediaBiasFactChecker bot?

otp@sh.itjust.works to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 347 points –

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...

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I guess that is also a shortcoming of the left/right scale. Al Jazeera is super popular among leftists on Lemmy, as they do a lot of Anti-Israel propaganda.

It is not propaganda if it is true. Al Jazeera has journalists on the ground and many of them have been killed by Israeli forces.

The term propaganda makes no implications about true or false. This is not a discussion about truth but bias. Propaganda is when you push your ideology using communicative methods like loaded language.

News agencies like Al Jazeera do exactly this. This is not unexpected as it sits in Qatar and wants to be the mouthpiece of the arab world. Saying they do propaganda is not a bad thing per se, but readers should be aware of this.

It is not propaganda if it is true.

Something can be true and propaganda. If reporting is misrepresenting a situation using purely true information and events, then it's propaganda. It's misrepresentation that makes something propaganda, not truthfulness.

Note: This is not a comment on whether I think Lemmy/Al Jazeera is doing propaganda.

They can report only one side over and over again and focus on the emotional impact, include "people say" or qualify rumors or speculations or exaggerations so that it's still factual reporting, while completely ignore the other side. That is what you see Israel and US MSM doing. Humans have biases and can easily be manipulated.

I suspect that Al Jazeera is still mostly on it's "best behavior" trying to establish itself but ultimately it's controlled by Quatar and not free. That still makes it incredibly valuable because it's not controlled by US empire.