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International Peace Project in the Middle East: The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field

More eyes needed at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Transcendental Meditation, and Transcendental Meditation technique. One specific issue is the reliability of a primary research paper published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. It proposes that group practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field (the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program) during August and September, 1983, in Jerusalem, would reduce stress in the collective consciousness and behavior of Israel and Lebanon. It concludes that the "yogic flying" by the group had a leading relationship to change on the quality-of-life indicators, supporting a causal interpretation.

Orme-Johnson, David W.; Alexander, Charles N.; Davies, John L.; Chandler, Howard M.; Larimore, Wallace E. (December 1988). "International Peace Project in the Middle East: The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 32 (4). Sage Publishing: 776–812. doi:10.1177/0022002788032004009.

The following is comment on the article by the journal's editor, from a history of the journal published in 2017.

Extended content

The role of editor of a scientific journal is rarely smooth, and sometimes a ride that is both hilarious and dangerous through potholes. I remember best an article entitled “International Peace Project in the Middle East: The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field” (Orme-Johnson et al. 1988). I’ll not reproduce it here, but you can get the basic message from their abstract...After the reviews arrived I made, in some fear and trepidation, the decision to publish it with the following comment to precede the article (Russett 1988): "The following article presents and tests a hypothesis that will strike most readers (myself included) as, to say the least, unorthodox. The hypothesis, supported by the empirical tests, is that the practice of Transcendental Meditation by a relatively small group of individuals can lower the manifestations of social conflict in a much wider circle of individuals not in any contact with the meditators. This hypothesis has no place within the normal paradigm of conflict and peace research. Yet the hypothesis seems logically derived from the initial premises, and its empirical testing seems competently executed. These are the standards to which manuscripts submitted for publication in this journal are normally subjected." "The manuscript, either in its initial version or as revised, was read by four referees (two more than is typical with this journal): three psychologists and a political scientist. One dismissed the first version summarily, as “using social scientific method to legitimate religious/philosophical teachings.” Two others, reading the first version, raised various questions about the methods employed in the study. One of those referees, himself technically adept, began his report with the words, “This paper illustrates that Box-Jenkins techniques can be used to support any hypothesis.” The other, after a detailed methodological critique, nevertheless concluded that the paper “has a great deal of merit in that the author(s) proceeds to examine a hypothesis that is on (or just beyond) the fringe of accepted ‘scientific knowledge’ in a very professional fashion.”" "A year later, I received a revised version of the paper, in which the methodological problems with the original seemed to have been properly addressed. I sent this version also out to referees: one of the previous referees and a respected associate of the Journal. Both essentially passed the methodology as competent. The first discussed the research design and execution in detail, replying that “if I apply the criteria I would use to judge any other example of ‘traditional’ research I would have to recommend publication.” He then nevertheless expressed reservations about the implications this had for the conduct of scientific research, and offered to write a commentary, which I am happy to print at the end of the article. The second disdained the paper as “a logically and methodologically coherent effort to test a set of hypotheses that, to be blunt, I regard as absurd.”" I decided, also ambivalently but with the opposite conclusion, that JCR should publish the article. While one should have serious reservations about research originating in highly implausible assumptions, the criteria for plausibility are unclear. For example, even non-Marxists would hardly find it acceptable to dismiss a piece of research simply because it originated in Marxist assumptions. I am also sympathetic to the second referee’s further stricture: “I do not trust a quasi-religious organization to conduct fair and impartial tests of the predictions of the founder of the organization. I’d be willing to consider seriously the current research for publication if, and only if, it were conducted by an independent, scientific body such as the National Academy of Sciences.” Yet, this is a bit of a catch-22. For a study with premises as heterodox as this one, it is almost impossible to imagine a body like the National Academy of Sciences being willing to fund such a research effort without some prior appearance of evidence for the hypothesis as produced by the normal scientific review procedures. Acceptance of the stricture would in practice mean the virtual impossibility for evidence ever to appear in print. Some would doubtless reply, “and so it shouldn’t.” Certainly, one can imagine a system of science becoming deluged with quackery passed off as research. Certainly, there is a great deal of quackery in the world at large (not all of it being practiced by quasi-religious organizations). It is vital to uphold normal scientific standards. But the practice of censorship in science, as in more overtly political realms, can be very unedifying. See, for example, DeGrazia’s (1966) report on the methods used to discourage publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s rather outrageous work; Galileo was censored because his views offended the precepts of religious authorities. Most research—at least the presentation of new findings—is performed by scholars who begin with the belief that their hypotheses are plausible. Who else would spend the effort? Those who doubt that plausibility can try to replicate the original findings, and if they cannot do so they cast new doubt on the plausibility. This adversarial process must be conducted according to scientific norms and standards for evidence. Eventually, the dialectic begins to produce something like a consensus. It is possible to “cook the data,” in ways from wishful thinking and marginal adjustment to massive fraud ... . The procedures for detecting error are cumbersome, and most of the time, we must rely on the scientist’s own honesty. But the costs of being caught cheating are severe—few people lose status faster than a scientist so apprehended. All in all, it is an imperfect process, though less so in instances such as this where the data are basically in the public domain, and what really is the alternative? Publication by itself provides no “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” It does, however, provide the opportunity for anyone who either believes in the plausibility of the hypothesis or who does not to carry on subsequent research. Attempts to continue or replicate such research should explicitly compare results produced by these authors’ hypotheses with those of alternative hypotheses. The research should incorporate the best safeguards against the intrusion of personal bias. All the data must be publicly available for scrutiny. It also would be desirable for major replications to include in the scientific team members whose initial bias is against the hypothesis as well as those in favor of it. This whole affair produced numerous jokes and complaints—so many that I sometimes regret publishing the article. But JCR survived it, and so, I hope did my reputation as editor. On the whole, I think it raises issues which are still relevant.

What are editors views on the article's reliability? Cambial — foliar❧ 13:21, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

As a general principle Wikipedia tends rightfully to be somewhat wary of citing primary-source papers on any subject. More so if the research seems to run counter to current scientific consensus. And given that this paper doesn't so much run counter to scientific consensus but depart off at a tangent into a new reality entirely, there are no circumstances I can imagine where policy would permit it to be cited as factual evidence for anything. Wikipedia reflects current scientific consensus. It is not part of its mandate to demolish it, and to construct a new paradigm where bouncing around on ones arse (which is a key component of 'Maharishi Technology': any good search engine will find plenty of videos depicting 'Yogic Flying') results in outbreaks of world peace. Hokum isn't science, even when misguidedly published in a scientific journal. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:41, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. Moreover, that article contains a lengthy section about "Collective Consciousness and Quantum Fields", which posits Striking parallels between the description of the unified field by the objective approach of modern science [...] and pure consciousness by the subjective approach of the ancient Vedic tradition. It is hokum to a degree that calls into question the journal editor's good sense. First, what is quantum physics doing in a journal of international relations? Second, even supposing we stretch plausibility to the breaking point and imagine that it might belong, did they have the basic competence to ask a physicist to evaluate the claims about physics? No, they got all their referee reports from three psychologists and a political scientist. Editorial malpractice. XOR'easter (talk) 02:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Looking at other recent edits on the articles in question, this block of disputed text on the same theme ("yogic flying" and "national stress") cites a paper in the World Journal of Social Science, which is a journal from a predatory publisher. XOR'easter (talk) 02:11, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

References

CHUD.com

The site is defunct, but I was wondering if we could still use it as RS for all things entertainment? I dug through some archives of relevant WikiProjects and found that a handful of regulars at WP:HORROR do consider it RS without explaining what makes it so. Do you concur? Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 06:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it might be too gossipy to be generally reliable, but there is probably some appropriate use that can be ironed out. I would not count coverage from CHUD towards notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:51, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

So I can cite movie reviews (contemporary and retrospective) but not entertainment news from this site? Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 03:39, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Reliability of Al Jazeera

What is the the reliability of Al Jazeera English in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict and generally? 14:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Jump to:

Reliability of Al Jazeera - Arab-Israeli conflict

Reliability of Al Jazeera - General topics

The immediate background to this discussion is:

• Discussion about "Why is Al-Jazeera green?", a discussion of prior discussions where it was said The current noticeboard discussion appears to be evolving into a full RfC. When this happens, I urge the RfC starter to ask responding editors to evaluate the aspects of Al Jazeera that I mentioned in the #Discussion review (Al Jazeera) section, and to list the RfC as a centralized discussion
• Discussion about "Al Jazeera - factual errors", as a WP:BEFORERFC
• Question drafting

To keep this discussion concise, editors are encouraged to limit themselves to no more than ten comments.

Other prior discussions
Al Jazeera Trustworthiness Al Jazeera reliability Al Jazeera - 2023 Al Jazeera might have published a false claim

Reliability of Al Jazeera - Arab-Israeli conflict

The following discussion 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.

---

What is the reliability of Al Jazeera English in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Note: Only extended-confirmed editors may participate in this discussion, per ARBPIA General Sanctions.

Survey (Al Jazeera - Arab-Israeli conflict)

• Option 3. Previously I reviewed approximately half of the 76 articles published by Al Jazeera on the Israeli-Palestine conflict within a two week period. Among these articles I found three - almost 10% - that made significant factual errors in Al Jazeera's own voice, errors that have gone uncorrected for two months despite being reported. By any reasonable definition of the term, a source that makes significant errors almost 10% of the time is "generally unreliable".
  1. US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school

     Al Jazeera claimed that Fourteen children were killed, as well as nine women in an Israeli attack. This is false; nine children and three women died. While the figures did match the initial figures reported by al-Aqsa hospital, those figures had been corrected hours prior to the report being published - and even if the figures had been corrected after, Al Jazeera's decision to put them in their own voice would have meant that they still had a responsibility to issue a correction.

  2. Nuseirat, anatomy of Israel’s massacre in Gaza

     Al Jazeera claimed that Israeli special forces began the operation at 11am under heavy air bombardment on the camp. This is false; airstrikes began only after the hostages had been retrieved, as Israel tried to extract them. (AP News, New York Times, ABC News, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, NBC News)

     In the same article, they claim that three other captives were killed. While this hasn't been proven false yet, Al Jazeera's decision to put the unverified claims of Hamas in their own voice raises questions about their reliability.

  3. Israel occupying Palestine echoes France colonising Algeria

     Al Jazeera claimed that the Second Intifada started off largely nonviolent. This is false; it started violently, with gunfights in nearly every major West Bank town and city within the first few days, something that even Al Jazeera previously acknowledged, saying that it began when Ariel Sharon's visit to Temple Mount sparked a violent reaction from Palestinians.

Other sources that contradict Al Jazeera's Second Intifada claim

Arab Uprising Spreads to Israel, published October 1, 2000 The rioting and gunfire seemed to spread everywhere today--to Arab towns and cities in northern Israel's Galilee region; to Jaffa, the scenic old port town just south of Tel Aviv; to Rafah on Gaza's border with Egypt, where a pitched gun battle was punctuated by Israeli missile fire; even to Ramat Rachel, an upscale kibbutz on Jerusalem's southern outskirts where molotov cocktails exploded this evening. Israeli forces and Palestinian police and gunmen traded fire in nearly every major West Bank town and city, from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south. "Between Humanitarian Logic and Operational Effectiveness: How the Israeli Army Faced the Second Intifada": But unlike the first Intifada, which was basically a civil uprising against the symbols of an occupation that had lasted since June 1967, it very quickly lapsed into an armed struggle between Palestinian activists and the Israeli armed forces. Almost from the very start, armed men took to hiding among crowds of Palestinians, using them as cover to shoot from. The IDF retaliated forcefully, each time resulting in several deaths The Current Palestinian Uprising: Al-Aqsa Intifadah On October 1, Israeli helicopter gun ships fired on Palestinian sniper locations in apartment buildings near the Netzarim junction after Palestinian snipers started shooting at the Israeli military post. Rioting as Sharon visits Islam holy site, published September 29, 2000 Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins, and whatever missiles came to hand at the Israeli forces. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets, shooting one protester in the face. Al-Aqsa Intifada timeline 30 September: In one of the enduring images of the conflict 12-year-old Muhammad Durrah is killed during a gunbattle between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the Gaza strip Broken lives – a year of intifada The Netzarim junction, where Muhammad al-Dura was killed on 30 September 2000, was the scene of many riots involving demonstrators throwing stones or Molotov cocktails in the first days of the intifada. Chapter 4 The Second Palestinian Intifada The Palestinian uprising, soon termed the al-Aqsa intifada, began with groups of Palestinian teenagers throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints at border crossings, but it quickly escalated. There were increasingly fierce clashes between armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority and the IDF. Palestinian snipers directed fire against Israeli civilian neighborhoods on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Violence escalates between Palestinians, Israeli troops, published September 30, 2000 At least seven Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died and hundreds of demonstrators have been injured in three days of fighting, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials. Sharon Touches a Nerve, and Jerusalem Explodes, published September 29, 2000 Tightly guarded by an Israeli security cordon, Ariel Sharon, the right-wing Israeli opposition leader, led a group of Israeli legislators onto the bitterly contested Temple Mount today to assert Jewish claims there, setting off a stone-throwing clash that left several Palestinians and more than two dozen policemen injured. The violence spread later to the streets of East Jerusalem and to the West Bank town of Ramallah, where six Palestinians were reportedly hurt as Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and protesters hurled rocks and firebombs.

Any one of these errors, uncorrected two months later despite being contacted, is sufficient to consider the source unreliable - and there are three of them.

In addition, scholarly sources do not consider Al Jazeera to be independent media but to instead be a hybrid model, that operates independently in routine affairs to boost its credibility, and only reverts to state-sponsored-style broadcasting when the state considers its interests to be at threat. Given the identified issues, this lack of independence raises further concerns. This is discussed further here. BilledMammal (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to !vote in this discussion, but if your rationale for GUNREL is that they made errors in reporting immediately after events on the ground, then pretty much every publication reporting on war and conflicts should be GUNREL. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:42, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

It isn't that they make these mistakes, it is that they don't correct them - The Guardian, for example, also often makes mistakes in the "breaking news" coverage, but they are prompt and open about issuing corrections. BilledMammal (talk) 07:27, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I had previously replied to BilledMammal's objections here. 1. As mentioned back then, AJ did issue a correction here. 2. More details in discussion below, but TLDR is that IDF and Palestinian witnesses gave competing versions of the events, AJ supports the Palestinian side and some other RS do too. 3. "largely nonviolent" is pretty open to interpretation. We should not be using ambiguous statements from any RS.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: noting that WP:GREL means generally reliable, not "always reliable". If we imposed the requirement for sources to be "always reliable" in order to be WP:GREL then we would judge the New York Times to be not reliable on behalf of their parroting the demonstrably incorrect claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. TarnishedPath^talk 15:07, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, per my comments based on the assessment of academic sources in 2020, my brief comments at the last time this was discussed at RSN to the same effect, and the lack of any new evidence of similar caliber in this discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Generally reliable for the topic area, I would note that despite being used to support BilledMammal's innovative (if unconstructive) argument none of those sources would survive the same level of scrutiny which is being applied to AJ. This sort of blatant cherrypicking is exactly what we are NOT supposed to do at RSN. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:49, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, generally Fog of war issues are not enough to destroy a news orgs credibility. Also we have discussed similar "factual errors" before here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_445#Al_Jazeera_-_factual_errors. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:45, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thoughts in general:

  Al Jazeera is the only media org with correspondents/journalists on the ground. Most western sources have removed their correspondents due to fear of bombardment [1], and use IDF supervised visits to look over Gaza. [2]

  Thoughts on claims:

  • "US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school"

  a fog of war claim and seems silly to try to deprecate a source when constant air strikes and on the ground reporting means sometimes a correction of deathtoll remains hard to do.

  I would also argue that compared to many other news outlets that do not regularly report the deathtoll of airstrikes, Al Jazeera provides better coverage.

  • "Nusseirat, anatomy of Israel's massacre"

  The claim about the early airstrike comes from analysis of an expert professor at the Doha institute. [3] The claim about a delayed airstrike comes from citing the IDF's own press communication and statements.

  • "Talks about the Second Intifada starting non-violent."

  This claim is based on decision of what counts as violence and which side started violence, a loaded bit of argument that would be impossible to adjudicate on this thread and would expand the scope of this thread. Al Jazeera is biased, like any news outlet. I'd argue that in comparison to many other english media sources that are biased towards Israeli claims (see [4] [5] [6] [7]) that Al Jazeera provides a useful counterpoint. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:10, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Similar issues with other outlets:

  • See the various claims and debunking of some of them in Screams Without Words, the NYTimes article that had been done by an IDF syncophant who was eventually let go
  • [8] [9], both CNN articles, states that Hind was 5. Uh no, she was 6.

  Trying to deal with Fog of War is challenging for all outlets. Expecting pinpoint accuracy on all points or else arguing unreliability seems like too much to ask.

  Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:19, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. This has been debated to death and it's pretty clear that Al Jazeera English is a legitimate, reputable news organization in line with what we'd expect of a generally reliable source, including for this topic. The stick needs to be dropped on this one. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:08, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Rosguill and agree with Horse Eyes Back that this is cherry picking articles that some Wikipedian disagrees with, not ones that sources have actually raised a concern with reliability for. It’s claiming that if a source does not agree with the sources they prefer then the source is unreliable, and that is antithetical to the entire NPOV system. nableezy - 17:19, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  And to demonstrate how far reaching this method of determining reliability would be, let’s examine a couple of sources. France24 has, still uncorrected and in their voice, that The war began with the Hamas cross border incursion that brought terror and slaughter to towns, kibbutz and a music festival. 1,400 Israeli civilians were killed, and 229 are still in captivity, kidnapped by Hamas. No, 1400 Israel civilians were not killed, about 1200 in total were killed and several hundred were Israeli military personnel. The NY Times at least said after the Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers on Oct. 7 and while they have civilians and soldiers they have not corrected the count down to 1200. The Washington Post got the number right, but said On Oct. 7, militants surged across the Gaza border and began hunting down Israeli civilians, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostage. That was corrected on March 19, three months later, by changing Israeli civilians to people, but silently so, no correction appears on the article. Nobody would consider this cause to claim any of those sources are generally unreliable. nableezy - 00:31, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 and suggest snow close. For the Intifada thing, people can debate what counts as violence and who started it, and the other two points are pretty clearly "fog of war" issues that happen with immediate reporting. If these three cherry-picked examples are the biggest "errors" that Al Jazeera committed, that makes them a pretty reliable source. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with a snow close here. TarnishedPath^talk 23:23, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: Nothing significant enough in the cherry-picked examples to warrant a change. I agree that the stick should be dropped. C F A 💬 19:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Tentatively option 2. I am not worried about breaking news being wrong, but I am tentatively convinced by BilledMammal's arguments that Al Jazeera is not exhibiting the pattern of error correction that we generally expect from reliable sources. I could be persuaded otherwise by evidence that other reliable sources also have uncorrected errors of the kind noted above. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  @Compassionate727 did you nableezy's comment above? Also AJ did make a correction, see this comment.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:28, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3. A source that always errs on one side in this conflict (see u:BilledMammal's examples) and is under the influence of a country that is the most important financial backer and foreign ally of Hamas cannot be higher than GUNREL. Alaexis_¿question? 20:46, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  I think I'll continue to follow American newspers even though the US is Israel's most important financial backer and foreign ally and I think the newspapers are under american influnce. NadVolum (talk) 21:07, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Similarly, Reporters without Borders lists Israel as a country with less freedom of the press than Qatar ([10])--Qatar is listed at 84, Israel at 101, Palestine at 156 (although Palestine's low rating seems to primarily correspond to the more than 100 journalists killed by the IDF in Palestine). Quote: Since the start of the [2023-2024] war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:21, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  The US and Israel have outlets that are sharply critical of their country's policy. There is no such thing in Qatar. Alaexis_¿question? 21:31, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Global Peace Index United States 131, Israel 143, Qatar 21 alongside Australia and Belgium. Can't say I'd want to be there, but which are deserving of sharp criticism? NadVolum (talk) 10:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

  Peacefulness doesn't imply much about press freedom. Qatar has punishments including life imprisonment for certain "propaganda". — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:51, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: Generally reliable. Toeing the pro-Isreal western line is not the bar for reliability. They are no worse than the NYT or any other mainstream western sources. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:51, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: They have a point of view, as do most News organisations, but that does not make them propaganda or unReliable. It does not colour their reporting more than that of many other sources we accept as Reliable. It may be that we notice it more because we are so awash in News coverage predicated on another point of view that we fail to even notice that it is a point of view at all. I don't want to entertain option 2 without a clear indication of what the specific "special considerations" might be. I can not conceive of any argument for options 3 or 4 that would leave us with any News outlets on the Reliable Sources list if applied equally across the board. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:57, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Per the previous discussions. M.Bitton (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. For the first example, the article was written based on information available at the time provided by the hospital and even an AP reporter. Note that AJ also reported on the corrected figure later that day.

For the second example, AJ is citing Palestinian witnesses. The other news outlets, like most western ones, are citing the IDF. Not sure why one is automatically more reliable than the other. Regarding the three killed captives, the exact quote is Among those Israel killed, according to the al-Qassam Brigades, are three Israeli captives, one of whom had US citizenship. AJ is not claiming anything in their own voice.

Lastly, for the third example, they're right. During the first day, after Sharon left, Palestinians started protesting, not rioting (calling any protest riot is straight out of the IDF book). Some Israeli officers had minor injuries caused by stones and three Palestinians civilians were shot. The next day, 7 Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded. After this, when the Palestinians protested again, the Israeli reaction was to fire more than a million bullets against civilians, which were unarmed (unless you adhere to the IDF doctrine that a stone is equivalent to a WMD). The violence started from the Israeli side, which usually responds to anything in a grossly disproportionate way. Trying to frame this as the arabs being violent out of the blue is asinine. Largely non-violent != no violence. I wouldn't call a protest violent per se, but indiscriminately shooting at protesters (who have the legal right to protest btw) certainly is.

Aside from those examples you provided, and addressing the main issue: the fake concern about bias always comes up for non western sources. I don't see that being applied to for example the BBC. You won't see a source without a bias, and most of the mainstream RS are in fact pro-Israeli (consider the abuse of passive voice in their headlines when the victims are Palestinians, parroting uncritically what the IDF says, prepending "Hamas-run" to the GMH, being purposely vague when the perpetrator of massacres is Israel, refusing to even call them massacres, etc etc etc) or Israeli (the Times of Israel and JPost keep being used with seemingly no major opposition). AJ not only has people on the ground (independent media access to Gaza is banned and IDF censors whatever comes from there), which is why Israel banned them, accused them of being terrorists and recently killed one of their journalists, but also usually reports on things that other outlets do not. Do they have a bias? Yes, like every single source. Per WP:SBEXT, Wikipedia content reflects the biases in the sources it uses. Removing our key non-Western source (we barely have any) will worsen our WP:BIAS. The fact that some things cannot even be included in Wikipedia unless they have coverage in English speaking sources is ridiculous, especially with conflicts like this one. I don't see any issue with AJ that you wouldn't encounter with any other RS. Removing AJ would heavily distort Wikipedia's viewpoint, leading to an overly one-sided narrative on Middle Eastern conflicts. - Ïvana (talk) 00:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 Little reason provided for why the previous consensus ought to change. News outlets all have biases, it is only when a bias becomes so pervasive it directly affects the factuality of the source when a news outlet becomes unreliable. Besides some fairly minor errors and fog-of-war issues that plague all media, I do not see any infactuality in AJE's reporting. Curbon7 (talk) 00:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 preferred, option 2 with [no factual information cited, opinions permitted] acceptable. There is ample evidence that this is not a "point of view" issue, but that they are slow to (or neglect to at all) issue corrections when they get facts wrong, that they will quickly issue corrections/updates that look good for "one side" (ex: higher civilian casualty count in Gaza) than they are for corrections that don't do the same (ex: lower civilian casualty count than originally reported), and that their reporting is, at best, "hasty" to put it nicely. I have seen no argument here that they are actually issuing corrections where they are expected, and no argument that we should not expect corrections to be issued where they were pointed out in the prior discussions (which satisfy BEFORE, by the way). There furthermore is not a published editorial corrections policy beyond a one sentence statement that 7. Acknowledge a mistake when it occurs, promptly correct it and ensure it does not recur.[11] for their English language non-TV news. The only evidence any editors have shown of their actual policies covers their television and other endeavors (such as social media in some cases), but not their English language news format. There is furthermore, as was pointed out in the most recent discussion no easy way to submit corrections to them as is expected of other news sources. It requires a generic contact form and then multiple unclear selections to get to a form that allows a "correction" to be submitted. Reliable sources do not hide/obfuscate the method of reporting errors to them.
  Some have also pointed out that they are one of the few, if not the only, news organizations with "boots on the ground". We do not bend our standards lower just because of a lack of reliable sources that fit some arbitrary "geographic coverage" criteria. We do not permit sources to fail to issue corrections, report blatantly inaccurate information (hours or days after it's corrected in other sources), etc. just because they are one of the few of a "dissenting point of view". We actually have an entire guideline that requires we do not do just that. If Al Jazeera's English language reporting is one of the few of a point of view, then it needs to be evaluated as against the mainstream consensus of reliable sources. Ultimately, however, none of this paragraph matters because their reliability is not based on bias or lack thereof, nor their point of view. Any arguments based on their point of view or similar are completely irrelevant and should be downweighted accordingly.
  Furthermore, I will point out the discrepancy in correction timing. Corrections that "support" their desired point of view tend to be issued within no more than a week (7 days) of the information being available. Corrections that don't support their point of view, however, are issued months later, if at all. Put bluntly, while a week or so is not a questionable time frame to issue corrections, failing to issue them for over 2 months (in at least one case) when the information you're correcting may "damage" your point of view is unacceptable. Per WP:V, The best sources have a professional structure for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source. And that cannot be said about a source that issues "good" corrections in a timely manner, but sits on (or fails to issue) corrections that may damage its reputation in a timely manner. All of these things considered, Al Jazeera English cannot be seen as a reliable source for facts related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and should only be used in specific situations for opinion/similar reporting where their "boots on the ground" means they're the only ones who can possibly report things. As one example, I would consider them to be reliable for reporting on the opinion of Gazans on a topic if and only if there is no other way that that opinion could be gathered.
  I encourage those providing their opinion here to, if possible, provide evidence of their "reputation for fact checking" that shows they issue corrections in a timely manner and will happily reconsider my view if such evidence is provided. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 00:30, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
  • I absolutely must correct this bolded claim (with no links to evidence) no easy way to submit corrections to them. At the bottom of the Al Jazeera website, click on Contact Us. After ten words, a very visible dropdown menu appears, in which you select "AJ English Feedback". Then, by default, both "I would like to provide content feedback" and "Content Correction" are is visible (EDIT: click that and "Content Correction" becomes visible). This is not hard, unless you don't know how to operate a dropdown menu. I seem to remember I corrected this claim in the previous discussion, and I am very disappointed that it was brought up again despite my correction. starship.paint (RUN) 01:19, 18 August 2024 (UTC), edited 10:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

    Compare that to "better reliability" sources that provide a direct link to a corrections email or form, without having to "hunt" for it. Not to mention on two of the issues that were identified in the past BEFORE discussion, I myself submitted two corrections that had not yet been made. They were no more than one paragraph (a few sentences) and linked to multiple other reliable sources which had either reported the correct information or made similar corrections. Neither of those contacts ever received a response, nor have they issued either corrections. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 01:33, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

    Hunt? I would not call changing the dropdown menu from the first option to the fifth option being a hunt. (EDIT: one more click of one of the three options was required to see "Content Corrections") We don't even know what you have submitted. starship.paint (RUN) 01:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC) edited 11:17, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 News media is the first draft of history and will inevitably report claims that turn out to be false. No evidence has been presented that al Jazeera's reporting is any less accurate than other reputable media. TFD (talk) 00:58, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - per Rosguill, Nableezy, and Ïvana, who respectively argue that academic sources rely on AJ, that errors are sometimes made by news organizations, and that in the issues raised above, for issue 1, AJ did also report the amended figure, while in issue 2, the other news outlets are reporting the Israeli military's version of events, even quoting Admiral Daniel Hagari. Indeed, in the fog of war, errors are to be expected. The fog of war has been specifically worsened by Israel's ban on foreign journalists in Gaza [12] [13] [14] [15] and Israel's raid and shutdown of Al Jazeera [16] [17]. The Israel government has even ordered that media must submit for censorship any content on hostages, Israeli operations, Israeli intelligence, rocket attacks, and other issues. One must consider all these context in light of any reporting that does not seem to align with the Israeli government/military. starship.paint (RUN) 02:11, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable..... Was waiting to see some sort of independent analysis outside editor analysis.... But to no avail. As a Canadian you choose this over most any American publication.Moxy🍁 02:22, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, and support snow close as per Chaotic Enby. To start, 3 out of 76 is not "almost 10%". The three sources linked would not go against WP:GREL by any reasonable interpretation of it. As has already been pointed out by other users, applying this unrealistic standard to GREL would make a lot of currently reliable sources WP:GUNREL. Additionally, the errors pointed out are not errors I would question the integrity of editorial staff over, much less call into question the reliability of an entire publication over. They appear to be issues with early reporting during wartime, and has been pointed out, they are also not entirely wrong in some cases, or released articles that have given correct information later. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 05:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Give us a break. This "evidence" is simply pathetic and blocking a large news organization on account of a tiny number of errors (even if they are errors) would be a travesty of the first magnitude. I must admit, though, that I am going to have to review my knowledge of arithmetic on learning that 3/76 is almost 10%. Zero^talk 08:42, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
  • @Zero0000: a bit of a misreading there, BilledMammal said they reviewed approximately half of the 76... starship.paint (RUN) 08:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
    • Not my fault if BM can't write clearly. Anyway, BM claims to have found 3 errors in 76 articles; nobody can assume that the ones he didn't look at have the same proportion of errors as the one he did look at, nor do we have to assume that his method of selecting which of the 76 to look at was uninfluenced by his a priori suspicion of whether they would suit his case. So his case is 3/76 at best, not 10%. Zero^talk 08:54, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 The methodology proposed by the RFC opener is deeply flawed and the three examples cited are unconvincing. The methodology took three sentences and divided them by 38 articles to claim that Al Jazeera's factual accuracy is 10%, which is obviously misleading and nonsensical. Looking at the supposed three sentences which are factually inaccurate: #1 is as stated by them "match the initial figures reported by al-Aqsa hospital" so I no issue here; #2 "under heavy air bombardment" does not imply subsequence or consequence so I see no supposed factual inaccuracy here; as for #3 the Second intifada did indeed start non-violently as reported by esteemed Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his the Biggest Prison book page 206. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per the Royal Television Society (Current Affairs - International: Rescue Mission Gaza - Witness, [18]), New York Festivals (2024 Broadcaster of the Year [19]) and the Peabody Awards ([20]). Daveosaurus (talk) 10:34, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Al Jazeera may have a bias, but bias is orthogonal to reliability. I disagree with the assertion that "Any one of these errors, uncorrected two months later despite being contacted, is sufficient to consider the source unreliable". No, those aren't major errors, those are errors about details rather than significant claims, and seem about par compared to the error rate in other reliable sources. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:40, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. While WP:BIASED sources can sometimes be reliable, Al Jazeera's biases do get in the way of reliability. Consider for example the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, which they referred to as Israel’s attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, the deadly Israeli air attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital, etc. well after that assumption became dubious. They also don't have a good track record for promptly and transparently correcting false information. E.g. after they reported on rape allegations which turned out to be false, they quietly removed the video; they did nothing to correct the record. They also never corrected their live blog; the false account is still here. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:54, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

  Live blogs should not generally be treated as reliable regardless of whether their publisher is otherwise a reliable source or not. Generally live blogs are "corrected" by a new post in the live blog, since their very nature means things move fast and people are unlikely to be seeing that old post anyway once the correction can be issued. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 21:19, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1-ish: Technically speaking, I support the current note saying that they're a partisan source on Israel/Palestine, which would technically speaking be an additional consideration. But they're overall WP:GREL for facts regardless of topic area, and there's basically no source in this topic area that isn't biased one way or the other. (Maybe we should rename "additional considerations apply": because it really means marginally reliable, quite a few additional considerations can apply without threatening a source's status as WP:GREL overall.) Loki (talk) 00:02, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Rosguill et al., Why hasn't this been snow-closed? Nishidani (talk) 00:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• AJ has outstanding coverage of the Israel-Hamas war — bar none. NYT notes "Al Jazeera has a more extensive operation in Gaza than any other publication." The BBC notes that "With foreign journalists banned from entering Gaza, Al Jazeera staff based in the strip have been some of the only reporters able to cover the war on the ground." So, option 1 per others above. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:25, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Options 2 or 3: Al Jazeera has repeatedly published factual errors, particularly in the Arab-Israeli conflict, without timely corrections. The Qatari state influence on its editorial stance also undermines its credibility. IntrepidContributor (talk) 04:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 Al Jazeera has well demonstrated that it cannot maintain it's usual commitment to truth when it comes to this conflict. For example, Al Jazeera's continual claims (or failure to retract incorrect claims) that the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion was a result of an Israeli rocket, when there is widespread consensus in other reliable sources that it was a failed launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad show this to be true. More broadly, its unquestioning citing of Gaza Health Ministry's (aka Hamas') numbers which are highly unreliable and don't distinguish between Hamas combatants and civilians is especially disingenuous. Melmann 08:48, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  ... there is widespread consensus in other reliable sources that it was a failed launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad - actually, there is a dispute of this failed launch theory as noted by the article of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion. Multiple sources have noted that the video showing a mid-air explosion was not the cause of the hospital explosion, unlike what the Israelis claimed. Furthermore, our article also notes that Forensic Architecture has provided a new analysis that raises doubts about the theory that the failed launch's propellant caused the damage, due to finding that the Palestinian rockets (pinpointed by the Israelis) had burned all of their fuel away during the flight. starship.paint (RUN) 13:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  The article itself notes how widespread consensus is on the fact that it was a failed launch. I will read what you've linked, but ultimately this is not the right venue to get into the weeds, so I won't address your claims directly here. Suffice it to say that, on balance, reliable sources support the failed launch explanation, which is a fact that is not in dispute. Melmann 15:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  Your claim of a fact that is not in dispute is inaccurate, at the time of your post, our article stated that The cause of the explosion is contested, The cause of the explosion has not been confirmed, and that your claimed consensus only suggests and is is not a conclusive finding starship.paint (RUN) 23:08, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: Generally reliable. Pachu Kannan (talk) 13:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Al Jazeera has offered some of the best and in-depth coverage of the conflict in recent years. Most recently, this coverage has been award winning. The responses of option 2 or 3 appear to confuse GREL with "never makes a mistake/error". If never making a mistake in war coverage were a serious standard, every major Western outlet would be in the docks on this one. There's just nothing of serious substance here. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:13, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Is it biased? Of course, but no more than the WSJ is biased. This can be seen not so much in what their stories say but in the stories they decide to put out and leave out. That does not mean that they are unreliable. The US asks Qatar to ask AJ to "turn down the volume", seriously? (might have been referring to the Arabic channel). The best recommendation for IP area is that the Israeli government (read Netanyahu) has banned it in Israel (and the West Bank, apparently, which is a bit of a cheek, an occupier censor). If it's that annoying, must be hitting the spot. I'm heartily fed up with these endless threads desperately trying to turn AJ into anything that isn't green, based on very little or nothing at all. These efforts should be resisted imo. Selfstudier (talk) 16:36, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  WSJ is biased, but Al Jazeera is a on a whole other level. WSJ publishes plenty of content that's critical of Israel, such as this. You'll never see comparable scrutiny that from Al Jazeera; Hamas and Qatar would never allow it. Their 7 Oct coverage for example cherry-picked facts, like covering the relatively minor fights at military bases while completely ignoring the Re'im music festival massacre, in order to frame it as a legitimate military operation. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure "murdering doctors in prison" => "allegations of abuse" is really the best example of robust criticism; that's more like bare minimum admission / maximum sheepish euphemism. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:49, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  Using a qualifier when referring to credible but unproven claims seems rather mild compared to ignoring a whole massacre of 364 civilians. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:08, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  How did that go again.....turn the volume down? Not reporting something is not an indication of unreliability. Selfstudier (talk) 18:10, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  Covering Hamas' incursion in depth, but never mentioning the music festival where 364 civilians were killed, is very blatant cherrypicking, much more blatant than anything WSJ or other mainstream sources do.

  True, bias doesn't inherently imply unreliability; that's why I gave examples elsewhere where AJ's bias did get in the way of reliability. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  It's reported here, so the basic coverage of the facts box is ticked. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  True, it's something, but the way it's buried (with most articles about Oct 7 not mentioning it at all) and downplayed ("dozens", not calling them civilians, etc) is still rather extreme. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:23, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: Generally reliable per TarnishedPath, Rosguill, and Horse Eye's Back. Also:
  • According to Brown University's Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Studies webpage about "trusted resources on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories", Al-Jazeera is one of the links give under "General News Reporting" [21].
  • As mentioned by Iskandar323, Al Jazeera has won awards for its "war on Gaza coverage" [22][23].
  • Al Jazeera also has won Peabody Awards (which is affiliated with University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication) for "Bisan Owda’s frequent video and livestream reports from the Gaza Strip vividly document the Palestinian civilian experience under Israeli siege..." [24]. Bogazicili (talk) 21:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. WP:RS is determined by whether a source has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, not by editors doing their own personal investigation and nit-picking. The (sparse) examples above include points of reasonable disagreement, areas where breaking news was overcome by later events, and so on; what I'm not seeing is secondary coverage indicating that any of this has actually impacted Al Jazeera's otherwise high-quality reputation on this topic, which would be the main point. See eg. this paper, which summarizes Al-Jazeera by quoting Max Rodenbeck: Some, like Al-Jazeera, rival and sometimes surpass Western models for the quality and timeliness of their reporting. Obviously it has a bias, but sources analyzing that bias generally treat it as roughly as biased as eg. CNN or the BBC on the topic area; it would be inappropriate (and would be an example of systematic bias) to label it as unusually WP:BIASED just because Western biases are comparatively invisible to us. Academic coverage does not support the idea that Al Jazeera is unusually biased compared to other major sources of coverage. --Aquillion (talk) 22:30, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, Generally reliable, largely by User:Horse Eye's Back; as they correctly remarked that this is blatant cherry-picking, I suspect I could find equal examples in most of the major Israeli newspapers, (How many of them have corrected their Oct 7th reports about "40 beheaded babies" and "cold-blooded murder of pregnant woman and her foetus"? Huldra (talk) 23:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, generally reliable. Al-Jazeera is an award-winning WP:NEWSORG and has repeatedly been determined (both by discussions here, and by other RS which review or rely on them, as Aquillion mentions) to be generally reliable, so I would've expected anyone arguing they'd ceased to be generally reliable—and especially anyone arguing they'd become unreliable, even in a specific topic area—to have evidence of actual issues significant enough to merit such a reversal in how we treat them: instead, I'm startled by how flimsy and inaccurate the case presented here is. First the notion that any one of a handful of claimed errors is sufficient to consider the source unreliable—when on the contrary, "generally reliable" does not mean "never errs"—and then, the more concerning issue that like in the pre-RFC discussion, most of the claimed 'errors' aren't errors, as various editors laid out in the pre-RFC discussion, and as Ïvana, Vice Regent, Selfstudier and others have discussed here:
  A situation where OP has a different opinion than Al-Jazeera of what counts as "largely" hardly seems like a question of fact, let alone an error. A report of what order events happened in, that is supported by the evidence and witnesses and corroborated by other RS (as Vice Regent and Selfstudier discussed), is not an error. Other claimed 'errors' are also cases where Al-Jazeera's reporting reflects the evidence (witnesses, video footage, etc), and fails only to match IDF claims. Frankly, that they report based on the evidence even when that contradicts the authorities exercising military control of the area they're reporting from and even in the face of pressure from those authorities banning them and killing many of their journalists suggests Al-Jazeera is more reliable than we previously realized, and indeed, I see they have continued winning awards for their reporting from press groups like the Radio Television Digital News Association. (It's also remarkable that one of the relatively few other users arguing they're unreliable asserts there's "no easy way to submit corrections", when in fact their contact form is conspicuously linked at the bottom of every page.) -sche (talk) 23:20, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 I'm not seeing evidence to the contrary here regarding the general reliability of this source as it pertains to this issue. Let'srun (talk) 03:56, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: The examples cited aren't particularly serious or valid in my opinion; I've seen similar or worse errors in other sources we consider to be RS. Additionally, Al-Jazeera is an essential source for providing NPOV for articles in this topic area, given that many English-language RS are arguably biased in favor of Israel.[25][26] Rainsage (talk) 07:41, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4: It's greatly compromised. As such, due to it's reporting WP:NPOV has gone by the wayside and Wikipedia is suffering greatly as a result.MaskedSinger (talk) 09:36, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Al Jazeera - Arab-Israeli conflict)

• Comment: note that this RFC was started by @BilledMammal. TarnishedPath^talk 15:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Bad RFC: Nothing seems to have changed significantly in either Al Jazeera's leadership, company org, journalistic standards, nor do these errors seem particularly egregious Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Also, i argue BEFORERFC has not been satisfied. There is no fundamental difference from status quo in the previous questions brought up. this RFC seems forced, and previous discussion has been tortured along the same veins of discussion as all previous discussions of Al Jazeera, with same fightlines, and same broad consensus of reliable if a bit biased on Israel-Palestine.

  Repeating myself, I argue that unless there is some significant change in the status quo, this is bad RFC Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:02, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

There are multiple reliable sources which confirm the influence the Qatari state has on AJ which result in blatant propaganda and manipulative techniques and double standards. Since the Qatari state is involved in the conflict and has been hosting the Hamas leadership, this kind of influence is quite problematic. Alaexis_¿question? 20:41, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

• Qatari crisis study states in conclusion that it can't assume that Qatar specifically caused increase in coverage of Yemen war, though it also says that increased coverage does reveal a pro-Qatar bias. That news sources can have bias is not the question here, and there are no specific finding about reliability.
• Al-Jazeera’s “Double Standards” in the Arab Spring by Zainab Abdul-Nabi specifically talks about the issues with al jazeera arabic, which is far more biased than Al Jazeera English.
• The article by Kosavara states also the same, there is bias, and that Al Jazeera English is more reliable than Al Jazeera Arabic.

Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

The article by Kosarova is about Al Jazeera English (Selection of the articles was preceded by a preliminary research. We decided to examine one case study not directly dealing with a conflict and focus on how the websites of Al Jazeera English and Al Arabiya English. Alaexis_¿question? 12:00, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• I hope that irrelevant arguments are not taken into account. It's true that other outlets mostly don't have journalists in Gaza but that's also the case in the Russian-occupied Ukraine. So should we consider Russian state-owned media reliable as well because there is no alternative? Regarding the for of war, it's true that it's hard to get facts right in such circumstances, but if it makes such errors then it should not be used ~100 times in an article like Israel-Hamas war. Alaexis_¿question?

Just a note that I am unable to locate a relevant policy or guideline based argument from you in the above section so if you want to start throwing stones be aware of that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

This is precisely my problem with the argument "there are no other journalists in Gaza" that it's not based on any policy. Alaexis_¿question? 12:17, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Reliability is the issue, it might mean that we should place relatively less reliance on reporting from outlets without that presence, particularly if those outlets are in the habit of regurgitating the IDF's last press release/statement and correspondingly more reliance on AJ, that seems reasonable imo. Selfstudier (talk) 12:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Detailed response from above. Did IDF's bombardment of Nuseirat start at the beginning of the operation, as AJ claims, or only after the vehicle got stuck, as IDF claims? AJ's claims appear to be based on Palestinian witnesses on the ground. AP also quotes these withnesses: "The commandos sprang from the truck and one of them threw a grenade into the house. “Clashes and explosions broke out everywhere,” he said." The article implies this happens before the IDF vehicle got stuck. NBC repeatedly casts doubt on IDF's chronology of the account: "Asked why the footage appeared to be taken 45 minutes before Hagari said the operation began, the Israel Police referred NBC News to the IDF, which declined to comment" and "Hagari said the IDF had come under intense fire after withdrawing from the apartments, but did not provide evidence for his claims." Guardian also seems to support this: "The hours of bombardment were ordered at least in part to shield the hostages and Israeli forces, and the attacks intensified after a rescue vehicle carrying the three male hostages was trapped under heavy fire." This would imply the bombardment had started much before the vehicle got stuck.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Great find, Vice regent, these are good points that should caution us from blindly accepting the Israeli military's narrative of events. starship.paint (RUN) 08:37, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, take a report from English El Pais, also written June 11 (same date as AJ report).

"Forces from an operational unit of the intelligence services and an elite unit of the border police then got out of the vehicles and moved quickly between tents, while aircraft continued bombing the area as support. “I made sure that there would be a rain of fire at a relatively high rate to ensure that no one approached the vehicle,” the commander of the air mission, a captain identified only by the call sign Alef, told the military correspondent of Israeli television Channel 12, Nir Dvori." (my italics).

The Intercept on the 10th cites a witness "On Saturday, at around 11 a.m., Abu Nasser was standing by a window in the home when missiles began to rain down on the area. One struck just 20 meters away." and

972Mag on the 13th says "Aerial bombardment, as described by a journalist in the camp who preferred to remain anonymous, was accompanied by the entry of dozens of Israeli military and police special forces personnel who emerged from aid trucks."

Taken together with the above reporting, I would say it is more likely than not, that AJ is correct in its reporting. Selfstudier (talk) 11:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

The IDF is never reliable, never. We have too much filmed evidence for decades that contradicts what its spokesmen's boilerplate narratives claim. The latest is this coldblooded murder of a Palestinian policeman. Nishidani (talk) 00:42, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• We're supposed to rely on RS, and Fridays of Rage by Sam Cherribi (Oxford University Press, 2016) has quite a lot to say about AJ in general and about its relationship with Hamas in particular

pp. 120-122

“ Al Jazeera has worked to tarnish the Palestinian Authority in order to give more leverage to Hamas...

The network played an important role in pressuring Arab countries to build their relationships with Hamas as it transitioned from a resistance movement to a governing political party ...

Al Jazeera's main objective in favoring Hamas is to show that political Islam can be democratic, since Hamas was democratically elected. By focusing on positive framing of Hamas, Al Jazeera promotes the credibility of political Islam as a means of voicing the Arab people's aspirations for freedom, dignity, development, and independence. Qualitative and quantitative reviews of the author's dataset show that Al Jazeera functioned as a campaign machine for Islamist parties throughout the Arab Spring.

”

p. 260

“ Al Jazeera and its pundits were instrumental in this radical transformation, presenting political propaganda as objective analysis in covering the events of the Arab Spring events ”

So we have both factual mistakes and a clear evidence of bias and propaganda which is not compatible with a generally reliable source. Alaexis_¿question? 12:31, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: And lo and behold, Al Jazeera wins four accolades from the US-based Edward R. Murrow Awards for its coverage of the war on Gaza. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:01, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• That is out-of-context and misrepresents the book's conclusions, which they themselves cast as more negative than Al-Jazeera's overall reputation - their summary of Al-Jazeera's reputation, which the book is framed as a response to, is that A common theme of the literature on Al Jazeera is the success it has achieved through the encouragement of free thought, creativity, and personal initiative among its employees combined with a BBC-like precision and CNN-like speed. (pg 6.) It also says that Critics have described Al Jazeera as a diplomatic arm of the Qatari government. But this is an inaccurate and simplistic view. Al Jazeera has earned much of its success on the strength of debates between political rivals on controversial issues (pg. 56) and In a France Culture interview, Mohamed Krichen, a Tunisian presenter often critical of Al Jazeera, was clear that there are distinct limits on Qatari influence over the editorial content of Al Jazeera. The data collected by the author back up this assertion. (pg. 57) That book is one of the more negative academic takes on Al Jazeera (as they acknowledge throughout, constantly contrasting their position with, and presenting it as a critique of, a more mainstream one that eg. holds Al Jazeera equivalent to CNN), but even they don't really support the level of unreliability you are arguing for here; and they acknowledge that overall Al Jazeera is a respected news outlet, even if they feel it's more respected than they believe it ought to be. --Aquillion (talk) 23:01, 19 August 2024 (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.

Reliability of Al Jazeera - General topics

The following discussion 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.

---

What is the reliability of Al Jazeera English generally, excluding the Arab-Israeli conflict?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Note: All editors may participate in this discussion.

Survey (Al Jazeera - General topics)

• Option 1: noting that WP:GREL means generally reliable, not "always reliable". If we imposed the requirement for sources to be "always reliable" in order to be WP:GREL then we would judge the New York Times to be not reliable on behalf of their parroting the demonstrably incorrect claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. TarnishedPath^talk 15:07, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, Al Jazeera is one of the strongest general purpose english language news sources currently extant on our planet. Partisan hacks who want to wage the Arab-Israeli conflict need to find somewhere else to do it besides wikipedia. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:43, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - no compelling argument presented that it is anything other than a NEWSORG generally. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Al Jazeera has a reputation for reliability, especially on issues in the Middle East. They have defined editorial policies and are often cited by other major news outlets which we consider reliable sources. I haven’t seen any compelling reasons why they shouldn’t be considered reliable. Elspamo4 (talk) 16:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: same reasoning as TarnishedPath. Al Jazeera English seems generally useful as a NEWSORG.
• Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:45, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per the many previous discussions about this source that determined it to be generally reliable. It's going to take something much bigger than a few nitpicks to raise legitimate questions about reliability. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 I haven't seen any reason that Al Jazeera English general reporting shouldn't be considered generally reliable. They have an editorial staff, publish corrections, are cites by others, etc, etc. Obviously all the normal policies and guidelines apply (NEWSORG, RSOPINION, RSBIAS, HEADLINES). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:18, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: No indication of why it shouldn't be considered generally reliable. C F A 💬 19:20, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:52, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Why was this even proposed? --DanielRigal (talk) 20:59, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. This is a no-brainer. M.Bitton (talk) 21:04, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 As above, there is no indication of why this is anything but generally reliable for non I/P topics. Curbon7 (talk) 00:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - there's really not much to add aside from what the other editors have already said, not only in this RfC but in the previous ones. Nothing has changed since then that would justify going through this process again expecting a different outcome. - Ïvana (talk) 00:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - there is no evidence of problems for this source outside the Israel-Palestine conflict and related topics for which their bias is evident and their editorial control is clearly insufficient. As such, they can still be considered generally reliable for other topics. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 00:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. This is a ridiculous proposal. Zero^talk 08:45, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, given the paucity of evidence this should be WP:SNOW closed, let's not waste everyone's time in this section. starship.paint (RUN) 08:46, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

  I've called for a close on the basis of WP:SNOW at WP:CR. TarnishedPath^talk 08:49, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 I don't see any reliability issues outside of the IPC topic area either. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:23, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per the Royal Television Society (Current Affairs - International: Rescue Mission Gaza - Witness, [27]), New York Festivals (2024 Broadcaster of the Year [28]) and the Peabody Awards ([29]). Daveosaurus (talk) 10:34, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. AJ had "articles framing the [Qatari] regime’s propaganda as facts", used "manipulative techniques" and its "discourse is politicized to serve their sponsor state especially when dealing with a conflict situation where states have certain interests at stake". Alaexis_¿question? 12:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Why are we doing this again? This is a bad faith RFC; we don't decide whether a source is 100% reliable, but generally reliable, and there has been no compelling argument given to show otherwise. Bias and reliability are two different things; one doesn't equate to the other. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2, with additional considerations applying to anything either directly or otherwise closely related to interests of the Qatari government, where they should not be used for any contentious claim, per @Alaexis; I would consider them GUNREL for this. The usual issue with AJ Arabic likely applies, but I could be wrong. FortunateSons (talk) 19:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Much clearer case than their coverage of I/P which I still voted 1 on. They're just very clearly a normal WP:NEWSORG for coverage not related to I/P. Loki (talk) 00:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: A very strong case has been made for reliability, and WP:GLOBAL implies that we should not have more stringent criteria for Option 1 for media based in other countries than we do for US media. NightHeron (talk) 09:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources/Archive 9#Why is Al-Jazeera green? reviewed and summarized all prior discussions (other than one in progress at the time), yielding the current RSP listing, and asked that editors in any upcoming RFC evaluate the different Al Jazeera channels and coverage of general topics, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and topics related to the Qatari government. Imo, AJ in general is green with the possible exception of AJ Arabic, which needs inline attribution for anything controversial. I am not persuaded that any bias produced as a result of Qatari funding cited by critics entails a reliability issue. Reliability in the AI/IP area is addressed in the separate discussion. AJ live news (news blogs) is as good and imo sometimes better than other major newsorgs, the majority of whom also produce live news but are not criticized for it. Selfstudier (talk) 10:13, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: It's unclear why this is even up for discussion for general topics. AJ is no less reliable than many other global mainstream outlets considered GREL. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Al Jazeera - General topics)

Outside the Arab-Israeli conflict area I have not found any significant errors, although I have also reviewed a far smaller proportion of the articles published. However, I am concerned by their lack of independence and their use by an autocratic regime to advance their agenda, so I'm reserving comment on their reliability generally for now. BilledMammal (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: note that this RFC was started by @BilledMammal. TarnishedPath^talk 15:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  I am generally unimpressed by the RFCBEFORE, and what seems to be repeated attempts to undermine a source whose strengths and weaknesses have been extensively assessed by peer-reviewed publications, using only ad-hoc original assessments of sentence-level accuracy, a level of scrutiny not applied to any other source discussed here in recent memory. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Having an RFC is probably better than another month long hotchpotch like the discussions last November and then again in March and June this year. Having a discussion with a proper close should hopefully put a stop to the repeated discussions. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:08, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: Is this the best you've got? I was expecting examples in the neighborhood of misquoting casualties as deaths, not stuff like background errata (at worst) and reporting from the other side (which, by the way, you didn't address in previous discussions). RAN1 (talk) 17:03, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

The OP forgot another discussion they started here on this two months ago so I've added it to the the end of the list of 'Other prior discussions' they provided above. NadVolum (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I see they actually linked to it in the text above. NadVolum (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2024 (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.

References (Al Jazeera)

References

Independent Political Report

The Independent Political Report was marked unreliable in 2010 and again in 2012, however most of the issues have since been resolved.

Most articles are written by Jordan Willow Evans, who is a notable and generally reliable journalist (Despite having run for local and party office several times). As a user of the site, I do feel the need to stress that it's generally one of the only reliable sources covering third parties in the United States, alongside Ballot Access News edited by Richard Winger Microplastic Consumer (talk) 19:14, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Looks WP:BLOG-ish to me. That doesn't make it useless, but that and WP:WEIGHT may be issues, depending on context. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:56, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

It's often the only Independent Source on a few presidential candidates, they also have a full editorial staff so I don't think WP:BLOG shouldn't apply. The website is ran by an established nonprofit as well. [30] Microplastic Consumer (talk) 01:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

How suitable is Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections for a FLC?

Links: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, User:OlifanofmrTennant/sandbox/Oklahoma pres elections, United States presidential elections in Oklahoma.

I opened up the Oklahoma elections page and found it quite unreadable and also unsourced. I opened a sand box using the table from United States presidential elections in Arizona and began replacing the data with proper sources. I got to the 2000 election and was looking for a suitable source when I found the site. I did some digging and decided to ask about it. I originally posted this in the wrong location by mistake but someone pointed towards WP:USEBYOTHERS though I don't know if this is the best argument for it being FLC material. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 01:53, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

It's fine as a source in my experience, Nate Silver and the Washington Post have both praised it's reliability. I like the way you organized that table Microplastic Consumer (talk) 19:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, but like i said I took the table from the page of Elections in Arizona Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 00:45, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@OlifanofmrTennant: Please note that United States presidential elections in Oklahoma is one of a series of 51 carticles, which should all be consistent with each other. I am not particular about what formatting is used, but it has to be the same across the set. BD2412 T 01:22, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@BD2412: The formatting across the set is pretty inconsistent, the version I went with is the one used on the FL in the series. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 02:23, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

It was consistent when I created the series, many years ago. It has only grown the other way by piecemeal editing. BD2412 T 02:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

RfC: NewsClick

An investigative piece titled "A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul" was published by The New York Times in August of 2023. The inquiry examined the reported network of groups and persons that American tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham sponsors in order promote Chinese government agendas and interests across the globe. One of organizations apparently getting financing from Singham's network was named in the report specifically as NewsClick. It said NewsClick's coverage presented a positive image of China and at times resembled talking points of the Chinese government.

The reliability of NewsClick is:

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

• newsclick.in: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwan0031461/: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

14:51, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Survey (NewsClick)

• Bad RfC. ND61F has not indicated what Wikipedia article has disputed cites, and four-way forms with blanket-ban options are always bad. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:32, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  I am counting 4 uses of this as a reference, using a very silly search. [31] I am not quite sure it is used extensively enough to warrant an RFC as well. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  Using insource is a better way, as it can see the URLs hidden inside cites.[32] Using that shows 333 pages with references using the source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:25, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  OHH. did not know about that. thank you! Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 with a note warning about bias and a lack of independence related to the Chinese government and its talking points. I can understand the concerns about the lack of prior discussion, but I think this is clear-cut enough that we don't have to waste time on it unless someone wants to argue for unreliability or deprecation (which it could still be downgraded to in a later discussion if evidence comes up or if it remains an issue.) There are sufficient reasons to believe it is biased that some sort of warning where people will see it is called for; while it isn't perennial yet, RSP is the only logical place to put such a warning, and a source like this shouldn't be used 300+ time without at least some indicator of the problems where people might see them. --Aquillion (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  +1. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 06:20, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (NewsClick)

• For reference the New York Times articles can be found here or in this archive. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:01, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
• Was there any WP:RFCBEFORE relevant to this RFC? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:01, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
• Let's do RFCBEFORE now. The source is used quite extensively, including for topics like Right-wing politics (the right-wing tendency to elect or appoint politicians and government officials based on aristocratic and religious ties is common to almost all the states of India) and Cryptocurrency (Review of "The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism"). If there are credible accusations of this outlet spreading Chinese propaganda, we should at least note its bias and make sure it's not given undue weight. Mostly it's used for India-related topics and I'm not really qualified to judge the quality of the articles used there. Alaexis_¿question? 20:43, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  The source is only briefly mentioned in the NYT article, with it showing bias towards China and talking points of the Chinese government. Would a note about these issues be enough? If so is a RFC even necessary. In the first example you give above the source is one of four used to support the statement, the second is used to support an attributed statement by David Golumbia who according to his obituary[33] was "an expert on cyberlibertarianism, bitcoin, blockchain". Is there any concerns with the reliability of these statements?

  To be clear my point about RFCBEFORE was that it could make the whole RFC unnecessary, not that discussion shouldn't happen. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  I would suggest we close the formal RFC (unanswered) … and continue to explore several of the citations that use this source and the context in which they use it. Blueboar (talk) 00:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

  I agree. Alaexis_¿question? 12:58, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

  If so I would suggest a note be added about the validity of the concern of Chinese bias, lest the closure of this RFC become a way to brush those off. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 10:27, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  I would have thought that, and that it probably shouldn't be used for reporting on the Chinese government or Chinese history. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:18, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  I think that at the very least noting its biases is worth doing, and that even in the absence of previous disputes over it it's worth adding something like that to RSP (or somewhere) in situations, like this one, where it wouldn't otherwise be obvious. The problem is that AFAIK we can't actually add something to RSP without a designation, or at least it would be fairly awkward to do so. Would it just default to a yellow "unclear" entry, if we don't discuss it in any context except its bias? At the bare minimum concerns over its biases appear serious enough to be an "other stuff applies" situation even if the rest were reliable (which we haven't really examined.) --Aquillion (talk) 20:07, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  This is a point I would love clarity on; I was considering for some weeks now starting a discussion about the related question of: where and how do we discuss that a source is biased? Because WP:RSP records when sources are biased, but the "standard options" for RSN RFCs are only about reliability (not bias, which editors have to decide on their own to mention); if someone doesn't dispute the overall reliability of a source (let's even say, one that's already present on RSP, so how to colour-code its reliability isn't an issue), but wants to discuss adding that it's biased, where do they do that? Here? How, a custom RFC which people will complain doesn't have the "standard options"? And then, yes, as you ask, how do we note the outcome / bias in RSP if all we want to note is "unexpectedly, this source is biased about X" and not "this source is reliable/unreliable"? Should there be a separate page—or section of WP:RSP—WP:RSPOVP, where this is noted? -sche (talk) 20:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  Well, nothing prevents us from adding a new record to the RSP table with blank status and a note about the bias in the summary field. Alaexis_¿question? 08:41, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

• Bias is even more contextual than reliability. I think that it's valuable to note it down precisely because of sources like this one (where the bias is clear-cut but may not be obvious at a casual glance); to me, part of the value of RSP is to give people an at-a-glance sense of a source in order to provide a starting point for local discussions. I don't think we need an entire column for it or more details than that - it's the kind of thing where if there's a dispute or problem related to it you really want to read the entire entry and think about how it applies to using that specific source in that specific context anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 23:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for raising this important point regarding the evaluation and documentation of source bias. Your observation highlights a significant gap in our current processes for assessing source reliability and identifying potential biases. The current system, while effective for determining overall source reliability, does not adequately address the nuanced issue of bias. As you correctly point out, the absence of a dedicated platform for discusing source bias creates challenges for editors seeking to address this critical aspect of source evaluation.

I agree that clarifying the appropriate forum for discussing source bias is essential. A dedicated page or selction within WP:RSP, as you suggest, could provide a structued approach to these discussions. Addtionally, developing standardized criteria for assessing bias and documanting finding would enhance consistency and transparency in process. I propose we initiate a formal discussion to explore potential solutions for this issue. This could involve creating a task force in order to develop recommendation for addresing the evaluation and documantation of source bias. I look forward to collaboratng with you and other interested editors to find a satisfactory resolution.

Please let me know if you would like to proceed with creating a task force. ND61F (talk) 07:42, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that RFC is not necessary. The fact that NewsClick is heavly influenced by Chinese gov propaganda is a serious allegation that requires detail investigation and talk. It can't be dismissed with a simple note. 333 unchecked citations of NewsClick are alarming. It is imperative that we review these instances to analyze impact of this potentialy biased source on our articls. I understand your concern about the length of the RFC proces, but in this case, it's essential to ensure accuracy and neutrality of our content. A well structred RFC can expedte the process by focusing the discussion and gatherings. The NYT article provides imp evidence of NewsClick bias, but it' is not enough. We need a comprehensive analysis of the source, including its editoril policies, funding, connection to the Chinese government. RFC will allow to collect evidence, check the source content, and reach a consensus on its reliability . ND61F (talk) 08:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with ND61F, if there are biases present in Newsclick with the help of fundings from the Chinese Communist Party then I don't see how this is any different to WP:GLOBALTIMES or Huanqiu Shibao which is also funded/owned by the CCP. Xoocit (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2024 (UTC)