Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Breitbart even publicly retract or correct stories at all?
I've seen it a couple of times. More relevant: can you identify any examples of Breitbart content that is, and remains, factually incorrect?
Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
201–210 of 219 posts
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was blissfully unaware. For a fleeting moment your post made me wonder whether I should consider the ban problematic. Then I figured that credible sources would report on whatever Breitbart was shouting about, if it was serious. And I'll live on as before.
> Then I figured that credible sources would report on whatever Breitbart was shouting about, if it was serious. To the best of my knowledge, Breitbart was the only place to release all of the court documents from the Damore case. Interesting enough, because of that, those documents are not cited on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
As far as I understood Wikipedia's decision the court documents could still be linked in an article. Breitbart is not the original source of the documents.
I think that Wikipedia trusts Breitbart enough not to falsify court documents.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen it a couple of times. More relevant: can you identify any examples of Breitbart content that is, and remains, factually incorrect?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of...
Great, some meat, let's meta-check the first fact check.
This is useful because your citatation is a good example of misleading commentary that tries to make Breitbart look worse than it actually is (again, do not mistake this argument for claiming it's actually super reliable). The story described on that page isn't false and the fact checks contradict themselves or end up agreeing.
Wikipedia is writing about a story headlined "Revealed: 1,000-Man Mob Attack Police, Set Germany’s Oldest Church Alight on New Year’s Eve". It states "the story was later shown to be false". This seems pretty categorical. The story was false, entirely false, and nothing but false. The citation for this statement is citation 189, a story in TheLocal.de
So let's read this takedown. Wiki says:
St. Reinold's Church is neither the oldest church in Germany nor was the church set on fire.
But the article Wikipedia cites says:
St. Reinold is not Germany's oldest church - that would be the Cathedral of Trier - and a small fire had started on some netting on scaffolding around the church, not the roof, due to one firework.
Wikipedia states St Reinold is the oldest church in Dortmund, Germany. So the claim of falsity here hinges on a dispute over whether churches are the same thing as cathedrals, or maybe there is an older church somewhere else in Germany, I was unable to establish that within a few minutes.
However it makes no actual difference to the story, is the sort of mistake that is easily made, and in fact Breitbart has published a correction at the bottom of the story:
"Correction: This article states St. Reinold’s Church is the oldest in Germany. We are happy to clarify that accolade belongs to the Trier Cathedral. Breitbart News stands by all other substantive facts in this article."
This sort of minor correction occurs frequently across all news organisations, and is not worth labelling a story as entirely false. Let's continue.
The second part of the claim that Breitbart is lying hinges on a dispute over whether the fire was on the roof of the church, or whether it was on some scaffolding around the church. This again does not seem very important, especially as scaffolding typically reaches the roof.
The third part of the claim is this:
video footage from the scene does not show a "mob", and no policemen were targeted
but again, citation 189 contradicts Wikipedia. It says:
The original report by the local news site from that night describes how some individuals did start launching fireworks from within the crowd towards police, who told them to stop but were ignored.
So local non-Breitbart news sources reported that policemen were targeted and I suppose, whether you describe a crowd of 1000 people deliberately launching fireworks at police as a "mob" is dependent more on your viewpoint than facts - any crowd can be described that way and Breitbart makes no claim to be neutral. However they were just re-reporting what local German news itself claimed here.
Final inspection. One of the stories central claims is that a group of men unfurled the flag of the "Free Syrian Army", which Breitbart describes as a group of "al-Queda and ISIS collaborators". The video is included in the Breitbart story so you can check this claim for yourself. It's actually kind of hard to see because the man unfurling the flag is facing away from the camera and we only get to see small parts of it, but it does look somewhat like the FSA flag, and again, TheLocal.de (the primary citation for the claim "the story is false") does not disagree with what happened. Instead they describe it like this: "In fact, the video shows a man holding a flag widely flown by those opposing the current government." - this is not a refutation. The FSA did indeed oppose the Syrian government. Breitbart's claim that they're "ISIS and al-Qaeda" collaborators relies on another story I won't bother to fact check, but I note nobody is disputing that claim specifically.
As fact checks go this is one of the weaker ones I've seen. Most of the claims Breitbart made came from local German press to begin with, and the claims that the story is "false" turn out to be quibbles over trivial details that Breitbart itself happily corrected because they were irrelevant to the story. The other claims are all things that those disputing them actually agree with, they just have a preferred spin.
Do you have other stories you believe demonstrates this problem better? I'm sure they have published entirely false stories because it's such a common thing. But this case doesn't seem to be one of those times.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#204Maybe this speaks more about how Wikipedia works than quality of Breitbart as a source. First, if you look how credible news organizations work, they need three confirmations from unrelated sources before calling it a fact. If Wikipedia has lower standards than that, then it doesn't really matter whom they choose as a source of information, it still rises the question of validity of the claim if there is only one cor…
> if you look how credible news organizations work, they need three confirmations from unrelated sources before calling it a fact. having worked in journalism, hahahhahhahhahahhhahhahahaha
Yes that claim is wrong, here's CNN admitting they ran a story that was totally false and aren't going to do anything about it, because it met their standard of two sources:
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-...
Raju went on CNN, in muted tones, to note the correction, explicitly claiming that “two sources” had each given him the false date on the email, while also making clear that CNN did not ever even see the email, but only had sources describe its purported contents.
As Greenwald points out, in this particular case it's implausible that those two sources could have been independent because the mistake was about mis-reading the date on an email in a way that happened to be politically convenient:
All of this prompts the glaring, obvious, and critical question — one that CNN refuses to address: How did “multiple sources” all misread the date on this document, in exactly the same way and toward the same end, and then feed this false information to CNN?
So either the OP is wrong about what credible news organisations do, or CNN is not credible (see my arguments below to that end), or both.
I wonder how much of the commentary about NYT/CNN/etc being "credible" and Breitbart being "not credible" is based on misunderstandings of how journalism works?
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your source for the 500 refugees per year? I saw different: > The country registered 3,500 asylum seekers in 2017, according to the ministry, the lowest number since 2008. https://www.thelocal.dk/20181004/denmark-refuses-to-take-in-... As for the rest of your nitpicking, I'm sure you're aware we could do the same with the headlines from any media source. I once saw CNN publish essentially the same story with t…
In the article I linked. > However, Inger Støjberg has broad support for the decision in the Folketing. All parties in the blue block and Social Democracy say no to take 500 quota refugees through the UN system, as it did before. These are the quota refugees . The ones the article is lambasting. Asylum seekers are different, technically a superset of refugees I guess. I'm glad you saw two contradictory headlines once…
That was just one example of thousands. Headlines are misleading more often than not, I find.
The examples you gave from Breitbart don't come anywhere close to proving that it's worse than other media.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the article I linked. > However, Inger Støjberg has broad support for the decision in the Folketing. All parties in the blue block and Social Democracy say no to take 500 quota refugees through the UN system, as it did before. These are the quota refugees . The ones the article is lambasting. Asylum seekers are different, technically a superset of refugees I guess. I'm glad you saw two contradictory headlines once…
That was just one example of thousands. Headlines are misleading more often than not, I find. The examples you gave from Breitbart don't come anywhere close to proving that it's worse than other media.
And the zero examples you gave prove what exactly?
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News#False_report_of...
Great, some meat, let's meta-check the first fact check. This is useful because your citatation is a good example of misleading commentary that tries to make Breitbart look worse than it actually is (again, do not mistake this argument for claiming it's actually super reliable). The story described on that page isn't false and the fact checks contradict themselves or end up agreeing. Wikipedia is writing about a stor…
They have not corrected their reporting even after everybody who was there disagreed with them. The very first sentence still reads: "At New Year’s Eve celebrations in Dortmund a mob of more than 1,000 men chanted ‘Allahu Akhbar’, launched fireworks at police, and set fire to a historic church."
Their reporting constructs from disparate events a mob that fought police and attacked a church while shouting "Allahu Akhbar". The source they themselves refer to (Ruhr Nachrichten) is very clear on how events cannot be connected in that way.
https://www.ruhrnachrichten.de/Nachrichten/Dortmund/Breitbar...
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was just one example of thousands. Headlines are misleading more often than not, I find. The examples you gave from Breitbart don't come anywhere close to proving that it's worse than other media.
And the zero examples you gave prove what exactly?
Anyone that's not ignorant of modern media knows it's true, that clickbaut headlines stretch and mangle the truth.
Now, what you showed us with your Breitbart analysis is very minor and irrelevant to the basic thrust of the story.
The full quote about migrants not contributing to their own upkeep is "there are still too many who do not support themselves. This applies especially to women, where too few contribute."
"Do not support themselves" and "too few contribute" have the same meaning. So she is basically saying "too many don't support themselves. This is especially true for women". So Breitbart's headline is correct in saying too few support themselves. The meaning is the same.
The way the author wrote the headline is standard journalistic license used by the NYT, WaPo, etc...
The point is your evidence was not really an effective critique of Breitbart.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go read the set of stories published in the west about Russian hacking. Every story collapses when examined. Again, I cited Greenwald above, he was written about this extensively. The only reason you believe the outlets you named are "legitimate organisations with bias" vs "hack conspiracy websites" is you haven't picked up yet on the conspiracy theories being peddled by those so-called legitimate organisations. Anot…
Your stories about Russia are specific to CNN & MSNBC, but plenty of other reporting has been done on this matter. I think it's safe to assume the narrative has moved from 'hacking' and more to highlight the weaponinzing of social media for political propaganda. > there's a shadowy, far reaching conspiracy by men against women > To back that up, examine how they falsely reported the contents of Damore's memo Picking…
> However, Wired did a write up[1] on why Damore's memo was clumsy despite trying to use scientific evidence. Mainly in that he cited facts without extrapolating on them and noting the small differences in the numbers. Further, there is a lot of nuiance in all of this and societal studies that get picked apart for gotcha facts is not a great way of using studies. [1]
It's great somebody discussed that, it was probably biggest complaint I had about Damore's article.
But you have to admit that "flawed methodology in reaching the conclusions" was not really widely cited as biggest issue with Damore's memo.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was just one example of thousands. Headlines are misleading more often than not, I find. The examples you gave from Breitbart don't come anywhere close to proving that it's worse than other media.
And the zero examples you gave prove what exactly?
Now you're just being argumentative. I gave one example of a misleading headline.
Just try being equally critical of, say, CNN headlines and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.