Portal talk:Current events/2018 May 12

Airstrikes in Syria

• American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War
  • Two US-led coalition airstrikes kill up to 17 civilians in Al-Hasakah Governorate, says the state-owned Syria Satellite Channel. (Sputnik News)

User:Spoonlesscorey plainly rejects reporting from 'dictator' state-run news agencies. I have another idea of Current Events. Isn't it logical to keep an eye on what Syria says is happening in Syria? After all, it's the legitimate government of a sovereign country speaking. Where is the policy link? Wakari07 (talk) 16:27, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd say to keep it in. Saying it did definitely go down that way would be unacceptable, but saying "Syria claims this..." is both inherently important and undeniably true. -- BobTheIP editing as 95.148.229.138 (talk) 17:53, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. However, I listened to ortas.gov.sy radio news bulletins and also read their website but I found no report like that. So I decided to remove it again, since Sputnik News should of course also base itself on some real reporting... Wakari07 (talk) 18:29, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Now I hear in the French version of the Ortas news bulletin that Syria reports the two attacks anyway. Changing course again. The English version of the news bulletin is in half an hour. Unfortunately, I don't speak Arabic or Russian. Wakari07 (talk) 19:25, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Heh. Your diligence is impressive. -- BobTheIP editing as 95.148.229.138 (talk) 19:32, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I have added an npov tag as the material in question is in violation of WP:PUS since it is sourced to a state-run publication but does not contain the official views of the government of that state and accordingly initiated an RFC discussion per the below. Wingwraith (talk) 23:15, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

RFC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Withdrawn by the proposer as an administrator (User:Rmhermen) has removed the related news item here. Wingwraith (talk) 01:12, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

---

Should the news item below be included in the article?

American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War

Two US-led coalition airstrikes kill up to 17 civilians in Al-Hasakah Governorate, says the state-owned Syria Satellite Channel. (Sputnik News)

Wingwraith (talk) 23:15, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

• Exclude per this as the source isn't stating an official claim by the Russian government. Wingwraith (talk) 21:16, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: it can be deduced that User:Spoonlesscorey also supports the exclusion of this news item per this edit. Wingwraith (talk) 21:16, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The reporting was also heard in the French-language ORTAS (Syrian foreign radio) news bulletin, and also read on Al-Masdar and TASS Wakari07 (talk) 04:26, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Al-Masdar isn't a reliable source and TASS can't be used for that news item as it doesn't mention the official views of the Russian government. Wingwraith (talk) 10:11, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

My two cents - either an airstrike happened or it didn't. If it did, an RS should be easy to find. If it did happen and there is disagreement about who's responsible, that should also be easy to find. Simply citing non-RS sources opens the doors to spreading disruptive propaganda, which isn't great. If we can get an RS cited I'm totally alright with mentioning the airstrike. Drawing conclusions based on information found in non-RS sources, however, isn't alright in my opinion. As a rule of thumb, I'm usually pretty skeptical of any article that spends a lot of time discussing the numbers of victims, women & children, civilians etc. WITHOUT ALSO discussing the context of what lead to those numbers. TL;DR if the airstrike happened, especially in the way sputnik claims, it should be pretty easy to find an RS.Spoonlesscorey (talk) 16:31, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

@Spoonlesscorey: Is there a RS that you can provide for this? I've looked around and can't find one which reports on this incident; incidentally the first search result that I got when I was Google searching for a RS on this (I keyed in: civilian death may 12 syria) was this website which documented the death of 14 civilians, 10 of which were at the hands of the Syrian regime forces. If there's nothing that you can find either, then I am going to remove the news item. Wingwraith (talk) 04:32, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

@Wingwraith:Nope, I haven't seen any either. Googled, on and off all day ever since I noticed this discussion. Thanks.

@Spoonlesscorey: Then per the above I've removed the news item; let me know if you have any objections to it. Wingwraith (talk) 05:20, 14 May 2018 (UTC)