7 ms·

NewsGuard gives a red mark for Wikileaks, but a green tick for Fox News. I think we're done here. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913 http

NewsGuard gives a red mark for Wikileaks, but a green tick for Fox News. I think we're done here. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913 On NewsGuard's advisory board, 5 of the 7 slots are taken by people who have held high level posts in US Intelligence and other state affairs. If NewsGuard was just being rolled out to the USA, I'd still consider it horribly biased, but its a complete joke to make it on by default for the entire world.

quantumwoke 8y ago
Why are they wrong in giving a red mark to Wikileaks?
- dleslie 8y ago
  While it could be argued that WikiLeaks has acted as a useful fool, or that it has withheld publishing information for questionable reasons, it could not be said that they have published much false information. The veracity of the information they do publish is certainly more reliable than what you'll get from Fox.
  - nickysielicki 8y ago
    > that it has withheld publishing information for questionable reasons This is echoed quite a bit lately, I have not seen any evidence to support it. Is there any documented case where WikiLeaks withheld information? Is the criticism about the fact that they have a release schedule rather than always immediately publishing? They're a journalism group at the end of the day, don't they have a right to publish stories in a way that maximizes impact?
    - quantumwoke 8y ago
      A quick Google search for 'wikileaks withheld' yields a few links [0][1][2]. [0] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-russian-documents-from-syria-files-leaks/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/wikileaks-may-have-withhe... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42019835 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42019835 [2] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-wikileaks-withheld-email-linking-syria-to-russian-bank https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-wikileaks-withheld...
      - nickysielicki 8y ago
        Those are all the same story, just repeated. The entirety of the claim comes from Daily Dot, who claims to have an anonymous source that sent them sealed court documents, and then goes further to insinuate that because Wikileaks did not publish that exact document, that it's evidence that they selectively withheld information, presumably because they must have received that document. None of that makes any sense to me, and it lacks credibility. 1. Daily dot has not published any evidence of actually having this document. It could be entirely made up. 2. Even if such a document exists, there's no guarantee that Wikileaks' source was the same source that somehow ended up in the hands of US courts. 3. Why the hell would wikileaks publish so many other juicy files in the Syria Files, but selectively withhold this one minor document about a money transfer between two allies at a time of war? Yes, it's a large sum that's claimed to have been transferred, but in the midst of the Syrian Civil War in 2011? A few billion is peanuts. I don't buy it. edit: The BBC story is about Jared Kushner and is not really about Wikileaks. edit2: 4. Considering that Daily Dot names the group that is behind the attack, why haven't the hackers who allegedly sent the documents to Wikileaks said anything about this situation? They have the power to tarnish their reputation or confirm that it wasn't sent.
        repolfx 8y ago
        Which is a good example of the problem. So the Washington Examiner is publishing false stories about Wikileaks (as has CNN, the Guardian, etc). Which one gets the ticks and the crosses? The one the US government doesn't like gets marked as fake news despite being real news, and the ones lying about them get marked as good. I don't know who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea but they're clearly insane. I had nothing in particular against Edge and even use it sometimes, but after this there's no way I'm going to use it. The last thing I need is some delusional crazies who probably believe Assange works for Putin telling me what is and isn't real.
      - raxxorrax 8y ago
        Well, they also withhold information in their insurance files. Maybe for a good reason. This story is crap though.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Can you link a fake news example from WL?
  - quantumwoke 8y ago
    It's always hard to agree on a definition of fake news, but their tweets are well documented to be extremely biased these days - even the tweet linked above uses loaded language like 'neocon'.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    The problem is that "fake news" is undefined. It could be pure lies partial truth / known lies partial truth / unprovable assertions conjecture passed as news limited snippets biasing intended viewpoint commentary (Fox "news") Disagree with assertions Propaganda by state actor And those are what I could think of in a few minutes. Worse yet, who's to be the arbiter of "truth"? What credentials do they have? And why would we believe them to be transparent with truthiness ratings? They will have bias - will we be able to discern? Doubtful. The underlying thing, is that when things are bought to light, the truth surfaces. Yet now, the attack is on the very definition of "truth", playing the ultimate word definition game.
    - buboard 8y ago
      Of those, only the first two qualify as "fake news", i.e. false news. To claim that "real news" do not contain the rest is ludicrous.
      - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
        You made my point, that the definition of "fake news" is undefined. Pretty much anything can be pointed at and yelled "Fake News". And that's what we're seeing.
        syntheticcdo 8y ago
        Fake news is news that is fake -- aka entirely fabricated with no basis in reality. "13 Obama supporters arrested for terrorist plot"-- boom, just made that up. That's fake news. Anything with a basis in reality is not.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
I'm more concerned about this looking like it's a whole site thing instead of a link-by-link sort of thing. makes easy for green sites to sneak one or two hit/propaganda piece and amplify their effect.
- whoopdedo 8y ago
  More to the point, how many people who are caught up by fake news actually read the original article? The pattern is to: (1) Publish a fake article on a propaganda site (2) Tweet it out from a sockpuppet account (3) Use paid promotion or hacking to get it retweeted by a few influencers (4) The unassuming masses amplify the message by repeating the headline in the tweet. By the time anyone notices that the source of the misinformation is a fake news site the story has already traveled around the world two-and-a-half times. NewsGuard may as well flag twitter.com in that case.
  - ilaksh 8y ago
    Here's what you should really be worried about: the propaganda that goes straight out of CNN into your brain and you don't question it.
    - whoopdedo 8y ago
      Legitimate stories can be abused by retweet misinformation as well. A blogger or tweet posts "NYT says" with an out-of-context quote from the article. This gets repeated until someone points out "Actually that's not true." All the people who saw the retweet think that newspaper was caught spreading false information. But because they never read the actual article, only the selectively edited version of it, they don't notice that the New York Times was reporting it in a balanced and responsible way.
- bsdetector 8y ago
  It would be a huge privacy/tracking violation to send every URL you visit to the arbiter to find out if it's fake news. What they could do is have a "fake news?" button that you press to find out if a particular article is bs, with a panel showing pro and con views so you can make up your own mind based on real information.
sergiotapia 8y ago
That's so strange as far as I know wikileaks has a perfect 100% track record of sharing real information. Why would they give CNN/Fox green checks and not Wikileaks?
- yzb 8y ago
  It's not strange. These organisations have always existed to push mass media. It doesn't matter to them whether it's false information or not, but they are scared of not being able to control the information.
crocodiletears 8y ago
Slanted though it may be, Fox's reporting is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries, and their written articles are a notable step up from their tv coverage. They've even received some praise from Sy Hearsh for having what he saw as one of the most promising investigative teams in the industry (I'll have to find the interview later today and update the comment with a link). I do question the wikileaks rating, but wikileaks isn't a news site, and everything they publish ought to be a matter of 'buyer beware'. I also question Microsoft's decision to include the plugin at all. I'd rather not have an arbiter of truth looking over my shoulders, reminding me what i should or shouldn't read.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
  The Fox News channel’s opinion programming concerns me more than their news coverage.
- hahamrfunnyguy 8y ago
  That's true to a degree, though I still feel like a good portion of the stories are missing details. Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't covering).
  - shawnz 8y ago
    Which is the real problem with mainstream media today IMO, not fringe outlets like infowars or whatever.
  - crocodiletears 8y ago
    I agree with you there, but I don't think you can say much better about any other news source, unfortunately. They just lack a lot of the 'subtlety' publications like CNN have. They'll never be a paper of record like the NYT, byt they're pretty par for the course. Just right leaning.
  - stronglikedan 8y ago
    > Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't covering). Which, in my experience, "is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries", just concerning different stories and the way they're spun.
MrZongle2 8y ago
I would hope that the opposite condition (a green tick for a source you personally trust and a red mark for one you personally do not) would give you similar pause. This sort of thing strikes me as a type of modern-day Star Chamber. Even if initially implemented by the right people with the right intentions, it wields enough power that inevitably it will be compromised in some fashion that makes it a threat to a free and open society.
- Kye 8y ago
  People are still unwinding the damage from that popular Twitter block list that, whoops, just happened to have a lot of trans women on it.
tzs 8y ago
Wikileaks gets green checks on: • (1) Does not repeatedly publish false content • (5) Avoids deceptive headlines • (8) Reveals who's in charge, including and possible conflicts of interest It gets red marks on: • (2) Gathers and presents information responsibly • (3) Regularly corrects of clarifies errors • (4) Handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly • (6) Website discloses ownership and financing • (9) The site provides names of content creators, along with either contact or biographical information On "Clearly labels advertising" it gets N/A. The parenthetical numbers are the order of the importance of the various criteria. So, red on 1, 5, 8, green on 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9, and 7 is not applicable. Foxnews.com gets green on 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9, and red on 3, 6, and 8.

quantumwoke 8y ago

Why are they wrong in giving a red mark to Wikileaks?

dleslie 8y ago
While it could be argued that WikiLeaks has acted as a useful fool, or that it has withheld publishing information for questionable reasons, it could not be said that they have published much false information. The veracity of the information they do publish is certainly more reliable than what you'll get from Fox.
- nickysielicki 8y ago
  > that it has withheld publishing information for questionable reasons This is echoed quite a bit lately, I have not seen any evidence to support it. Is there any documented case where WikiLeaks withheld information? Is the criticism about the fact that they have a release schedule rather than always immediately publishing? They're a journalism group at the end of the day, don't they have a right to publish stories in a way that maximizes impact?
  - quantumwoke 8y ago
    A quick Google search for 'wikileaks withheld' yields a few links [0][1][2]. [0] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/wikileaks-may-have-withheld-key-russian-documents-from-syria-files-leaks/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/wikileaks-may-have-withhe... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42019835 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42019835 [2] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-wikileaks-withheld-email-linking-syria-to-russian-bank https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-wikileaks-withheld...
    - nickysielicki 8y ago
      Those are all the same story, just repeated. The entirety of the claim comes from Daily Dot, who claims to have an anonymous source that sent them sealed court documents, and then goes further to insinuate that because Wikileaks did not publish that exact document, that it's evidence that they selectively withheld information, presumably because they must have received that document. None of that makes any sense to me, and it lacks credibility. 1. Daily dot has not published any evidence of actually having this document. It could be entirely made up. 2. Even if such a document exists, there's no guarantee that Wikileaks' source was the same source that somehow ended up in the hands of US courts. 3. Why the hell would wikileaks publish so many other juicy files in the Syria Files, but selectively withhold this one minor document about a money transfer between two allies at a time of war? Yes, it's a large sum that's claimed to have been transferred, but in the midst of the Syrian Civil War in 2011? A few billion is peanuts. I don't buy it. edit: The BBC story is about Jared Kushner and is not really about Wikileaks. edit2: 4. Considering that Daily Dot names the group that is behind the attack, why haven't the hackers who allegedly sent the documents to Wikileaks said anything about this situation? They have the power to tarnish their reputation or confirm that it wasn't sent.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        Which is a good example of the problem. So the Washington Examiner is publishing false stories about Wikileaks (as has CNN, the Guardian, etc). Which one gets the ticks and the crosses? The one the US government doesn't like gets marked as fake news despite being real news, and the ones lying about them get marked as good. I don't know who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea but they're clearly insane. I had nothing in particular against Edge and even use it sometimes, but after this there's no way I'm going to use it. The last thing I need is some delusional crazies who probably believe Assange works for Putin telling me what is and isn't real.
    - raxxorrax 8y ago
      Well, they also withhold information in their insurance files. Maybe for a good reason. This story is crap though.
StreamBright 8y ago
Can you link a fake news example from WL?
- quantumwoke 8y ago
  It's always hard to agree on a definition of fake news, but their tweets are well documented to be extremely biased these days - even the tweet linked above uses loaded language like 'neocon'.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  The problem is that "fake news" is undefined. It could be pure lies partial truth / known lies partial truth / unprovable assertions conjecture passed as news limited snippets biasing intended viewpoint commentary (Fox "news") Disagree with assertions Propaganda by state actor And those are what I could think of in a few minutes. Worse yet, who's to be the arbiter of "truth"? What credentials do they have? And why would we believe them to be transparent with truthiness ratings? They will have bias - will we be able to discern? Doubtful. The underlying thing, is that when things are bought to light, the truth surfaces. Yet now, the attack is on the very definition of "truth", playing the ultimate word definition game.
  - buboard 8y ago
    Of those, only the first two qualify as "fake news", i.e. false news. To claim that "real news" do not contain the rest is ludicrous.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      You made my point, that the definition of "fake news" is undefined. Pretty much anything can be pointed at and yelled "Fake News". And that's what we're seeing.
      - syntheticcdo 8y ago
        Fake news is news that is fake -- aka entirely fabricated with no basis in reality. "13 Obama supporters arrested for terrorist plot"-- boom, just made that up. That's fake news. Anything with a basis in reality is not.

LoSboccacc 8y ago

I'm more concerned about this looking like it's a whole site thing instead of a link-by-link sort of thing. makes easy for green sites to sneak one or two hit/propaganda piece and amplify their effect.

whoopdedo 8y ago
More to the point, how many people who are caught up by fake news actually read the original article? The pattern is to: (1) Publish a fake article on a propaganda site (2) Tweet it out from a sockpuppet account (3) Use paid promotion or hacking to get it retweeted by a few influencers (4) The unassuming masses amplify the message by repeating the headline in the tweet. By the time anyone notices that the source of the misinformation is a fake news site the story has already traveled around the world two-and-a-half times. NewsGuard may as well flag twitter.com in that case.
- ilaksh 8y ago
  Here's what you should really be worried about: the propaganda that goes straight out of CNN into your brain and you don't question it.
  - whoopdedo 8y ago
    Legitimate stories can be abused by retweet misinformation as well. A blogger or tweet posts "NYT says" with an out-of-context quote from the article. This gets repeated until someone points out "Actually that's not true." All the people who saw the retweet think that newspaper was caught spreading false information. But because they never read the actual article, only the selectively edited version of it, they don't notice that the New York Times was reporting it in a balanced and responsible way.
bsdetector 8y ago
It would be a huge privacy/tracking violation to send every URL you visit to the arbiter to find out if it's fake news. What they could do is have a "fake news?" button that you press to find out if a particular article is bs, with a panel showing pro and con views so you can make up your own mind based on real information.

sergiotapia 8y ago

That's so strange as far as I know wikileaks has a perfect 100% track record of sharing real information. Why would they give CNN/Fox green checks and not Wikileaks?

yzb 8y ago
It's not strange. These organisations have always existed to push mass media. It doesn't matter to them whether it's false information or not, but they are scared of not being able to control the information.

crocodiletears 8y ago

Slanted though it may be, Fox's reporting is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries, and their written articles are a notable step up from their tv coverage. They've even received some praise from Sy Hearsh for having what he saw as one of the most promising investigative teams in the industry (I'll have to find the interview later today and update the comment with a link). I do question the wikileaks rating, but wikileaks isn't a news site, and everything they publish ought to be a matter of 'buyer beware'. I also question Microsoft's decision to include the plugin at all. I'd rather not have an arbiter of truth looking over my shoulders, reminding me what i should or shouldn't read.

DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
The Fox News channel’s opinion programming concerns me more than their news coverage.
hahamrfunnyguy 8y ago
That's true to a degree, though I still feel like a good portion of the stories are missing details. Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't covering).
- shawnz 8y ago
  Which is the real problem with mainstream media today IMO, not fringe outlets like infowars or whatever.
- crocodiletears 8y ago
  I agree with you there, but I don't think you can say much better about any other news source, unfortunately. They just lack a lot of the 'subtlety' publications like CNN have. They'll never be a paper of record like the NYT, byt they're pretty par for the course. Just right leaning.
- stronglikedan 8y ago
  > Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't covering). Which, in my experience, "is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries", just concerning different stories and the way they're spun.

MrZongle2 8y ago

I would hope that the opposite condition (a green tick for a source you personally trust and a red mark for one you personally do not) would give you similar pause. This sort of thing strikes me as a type of modern-day Star Chamber. Even if initially implemented by the right people with the right intentions, it wields enough power that inevitably it will be compromised in some fashion that makes it a threat to a free and open society.

Kye 8y ago
People are still unwinding the damage from that popular Twitter block list that, whoops, just happened to have a lot of trans women on it.

tzs 8y ago

Wikileaks gets green checks on: • (1) Does not repeatedly publish false content • (5) Avoids deceptive headlines • (8) Reveals who's in charge, including and possible conflicts of interest It gets red marks on: • (2) Gathers and presents information responsibly • (3) Regularly corrects of clarifies errors • (4) Handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly • (6) Website discloses ownership and financing • (9) The site provides names of content creators, along with either contact or biographical information On "Clearly labels advertising" it gets N/A. The parenthetical numbers are the order of the importance of the various criteria. So, red on 1, 5, 8, green on 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9, and 7 is not applicable. Foxnews.com gets green on 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9, and red on 3, 6, and 8.