User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2021/April

Almost all major news media in the U.S. are "liberal."

Hi, I saw you post the following on the Hunter Biden talk page: Almost all major news media in the U.S. are "liberal." Most of the conservative news media (Fox News, Washington Times, New York Post) are considered less than reliable. I wanted to ask (since you seem knowledgeable on this topic) why so many right-leaning/conservative sources are considered unreliable on Wikipedia but the majority of left-leaning/liberal sources are considered reliable? I have always been very curious about this issue. Yodabyte (talk) 02:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

At least since the end of WWII, all quality news sources were broadly speaking liberal - broadsheet newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, the wire services and network and cable news.

Conservatives never set up outlets that could compete with the quality of legacy news. Instead, they concentrated on magazines that published opinion pieces such as the National Review and tabloids such as the New York Post. Opinion pieces are not generally considered to be reliable in Wikipedia, while tabloids are seen as less reliable than broadsheets.

Left-wing alternative news sources such as Democracy Now and The Nation are much more likely to run news stories than conservative magazines. As Bill Moyers said, they cover news that mainstream media ignore. That's why their articles are more likely to be considered reliable. That however limits their usefulness as sources to fairly obscure topics that receive little or no mainstream attention.

I think however that the campaign to blacklist conservative sources is possibly politically motivated. The first target was the Daily Mail which had run a lot of negative stories about Hillary Clinton. The blacklisting was unnecessary since per weight, we wouldn't have included these stories in articles about her unless they received attention across mainstream media, which was highly favorable to her. So it was more a matter of shaming the Daily Mail than an attempt to ensure quality of sources.

Similarly, Fox News is probably no less reliable than other cable news. Shep Smith and Meghan Kelly moved from Fox to mainstream cable, while Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck had shows on CNN before moving to Fox.

In the end, it doesn't matter what reliability is assigned to conservative media, since any stories they covered would also have to be covered by liberal media before they could be included.

TFD (talk) 15:38, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. If what you are saying is true doesn't that mean Wikipedia political articles (especially U.S.-related articles) are all slanted in a biased unencyclopedic direction? Yodabyte (talk) 21:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Articles about current events will reflect the bias in mainstream media. I imagine so would most mainstream encyclopedias. Encyclopedias after all merely summarize what mainstream sources say. TFD (talk) 01:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Postmodern conservatism

you may or may not have a view to offer on this redirect discussion, I feel it has merit, would be interested in your perspective on the matter. Best, Acousmana 14:50, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Sheldon Adelson ‎

I hope I wasn't being too abrasive with you on the Adelson page. I think you're a pretty rational, neutral editor in the scope of AP2. :) Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 09:41, 21 April 2021 (UTC)