Just had explosive interaction w/ @Columbia’s heightened security coming onto campus. They followed me to my office & then lied, saying I didn’t scan my ID for entry (I did) & I pushed an officer (I didn’t). An ugly scene followed. They did this to me, a tenured, full professor.
Europe’s phoney war with China is at an end. After years of building up an improved arsenal for a trade war, Europe is now showing it is willing to get tough on Beijing....
Because the EU doesn’t really allow large-scale subsidies in the same way. Of course, the US does, which is why Tesla has been so successful and half the chip companies in the world just decided to set up new fabs there, but…
So does the US, though? Tesla has received an absurd amount of government support. So has Intel. This is targeted at China specifically, it’s not some economic leveling scheme.
In case the US has forgotten, China is selling key technology like drones to Ukraine, too. If that’s not staying neutral and not picking a side, I don’t know what is. The US wants China to pick the US side, not stay neutral. In fact, China currently has a trade deficit with Ukraine.
In February 2024, China exported $221M and imported $477M from Ukraine, resulting in a negative trade balance of $256M.
A person without credentials, without experience, and without any evidence to prove that their claimed credentials or experience are legitimate… Is a credible source?
Can you find any evidence, any at all that the person actually has the credentials that they themselves claim? This is trivial to do for pretty much any modern journalist, but I’ve been able to find zero information on him.
The OP is using this “source” to discredit other sources. If you’re going to disprove another source, prove that your own source is legitimate in spite of the questions regarding its credibility.
An LLM also “aggregates and analyzes a ton of sources, and gives generally accurate information about how they are funded, where they are based, and how well the cite original sources.”
I don’t think you quite understand what an ad hominem attack is. The fact is, the operator of MBFC has no accountability if they get anything wrong because nobody knows who or what he is. The fact is, the operator of MBFC uses his degrees and experience as justification for his “scientific” evaluation of media bias.
I’m not making any claims that the operator isn’t making themselves.
We don’t allow LLM-generated summaries as news stories. Do the legwork, use these tools to start if you want to, but don’t cite them as though they are gospel.
“[MBFC’s] subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.” - Columbia Journalism Review
“Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.” - PolitiFact journalists
Journalists seem to agree with me, which you’d know if you actually read “all of my comments.” This isn’t the first time I’ve posted these quotes in this thread.
I cannot fathom a good faith justification for allowing a resource that intentionally obfuscates the media landscape in an effort to compress the entire landscape onto a 2D plane from a person who cannot be found through any conventional means and very well may not exist. Their methodology is bunk for a number of reasons, but we’ll focus specifically on how they evaluate factuality.
As you know, op-eds typically fall under different journalistic purview than news stories. This is as true for the NYT and SCMP (newspapers of record) as it is for Breitbart. Mixing the factuality rating for op-eds and news stories is rather questionable.
The rating scheme works by sampling (how? nobody knows) a small number of stories from each paper and evaluating their factuality. This destroys the validity of the data, as different news sources cover different stories and categories of stories vary in factuality. For example, a paper which records the daily weather temperature in Toronto would be “very highly accurate” even if they release a story saying that water is dry and trees are fake once a month. Because of the limitations of sampling, their methodology leads to inherently skewed results.
The definition of propaganda used is… Unclear. This is obvious as statements made by the US government and repeated by other news agencies are not considered propaganda, despite their factual inaccuracy. For example, “40 beheaded babies” (later demonstrated to be false) and “we [the United States] have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world” (literally, provably, false because TSMC’s Taiwan fabs are the clear and undisputed leader).
They fail to do due diligence on sourcing because of a (I assume) lack of experience. For example, in their critique of their article “Fake data - the disease afflicting China’s vaccine system,” they say that the article is poorly sourced because it lacks hyperlinks. The article in question cites: a Hong Kong microbiologist (by name), a professor at the University of Hong Kong (by name), the WHO, stories published in the China Economic Times, data from the State Drug Administration, a law case against Changsheng Biotech, and an unnamed head of a disease control center in China. This, they claim, is a use of “quotes or sources to themselves rather than providing hyperlinks.” Their evaluation of “sourcing” seems to be dependent almost entirely on the usage of hyperlinks.
They fail to consistently apply standards applied to smaller news outlets (such as Al Jazeera) to larger news outlets (such as the New York Times and CNN). Against Al Jazeera, they claim that wordplay is used that is negative towards Israel. However, as covered by The Intercept and The Guardian, the New York Times and others have just as extreme (if not more extreme) policies surrounding wordplay that is used to show Israel in a positive light. In major newspapers, for example, the words “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” are reserved almost exclusively for Israeli deaths rather than Palestinian deaths.
MBFC is not consistent with the sources of their fact checks. Against Al Jazeera, they point to “The forgotten massacre that ignited the Kashmir dispute” as not crediting the image correctly. In fact, the caption describes exactly what the image shows, which is exactly what the original source for the image (which they cite) claims.
I can go on…
Again, if it’s trivial to do the legwork and discredit a source anyway, then do that. If it’s not, then don’t outsource the work just because you don’t understand it.
Shafik authorizes NYPD to sweep ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ officers in riot gear arrest over 100 (www.columbiaspectator.com)
EU pulls its gun on China: The EU is accelerating its crackdown on what it sees as Beijing’s unfair support for companies that undermine European rivals (www.politico.eu)
Europe’s phoney war with China is at an end. After years of building up an improved arsenal for a trade war, Europe is now showing it is willing to get tough on Beijing....
US accuses China of backing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (www.politico.eu)
Beijing is “picking a side” and can’t claim to be neutral any more, the US ambassador to NATO tells POLITICO....
Russia vetoes a UN resolution calling for prevention of a dangerous nuclear arms race in space (apnews.com)
Moscow pressured Nicaragua to file genocide case against Germany, intel sources say (www.politico.eu)
The Kremlin may have been trying to undermine the ICJ’s authority by making it a venue for specious legal arguments, say authorities....
U.S Troops Loot Syrian Oil and Wheat Continuously (www.telesurenglish.net)
US occupying forces in northern Syria are continuing to plunder natural resources and farmland, a practice ongoing since 2011...