Every artivle presents just facts and no opinions or emotions.
Propaganda is the dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.
A biased release of information (for instance, a local news channel that reports exclusively on black criminals and white victims) is presenting exclusively facts and can be fully devoid of an opinion section or an editorial appeal to emotion, and still have a powerful impact on how its audience perceives their world. More banally, if you have a sports section that exclusively covers baseball games, baseball scores, and baseball players’ life events, you’re going to incline your audience towards baseball as a topic of conversation and as a cultural touchstone.
Wikipedia biases itself towards western media, particularly larger and more corporately owned and operated media conglomerates. It’s editors are primarily English-speaking and source data from English-language academic sources. It’s founder and the original team of editors are whiter more professional class GenXers, and are biased towards researching and recording a body of historical and cultural touchstones most relevant to this cohort. The moderation team has standards that were implemented by these founders and original team members and are biased in turn.
Deliberately or not, if you click the “Random” button on the website, you’re going to end up on a page with a decidedly white, english-speaking college-degreed GenX bias.
I love Wikipedia, and I treasure it as a project dedicated to accruing and curating enormous amounts of information. But it is absolutely a biased source.
The issue with your take is that literally everything has a bias. But Wikipedia does what it can to correct for that bias. Any good media outlet will attempt to reduce their bias when possible.
Unfortunately, all too often people on the internet will see someone complaining “this outlet is biased, you can’t trust it”. Then those people get pushed towards some other source that does nothing to correct for bias with those sources sometimes being just outright propaganda.
The issue with your take is that literally "everything has a bias*.
Absolutely.
But Wikipedia does what it can to correct for that bias.
Absolutely not.
Any good media outlet will attempt to reduce their bias
Corporate media attempts to reduce the appearance of bias in order to maximize its customer base. But that is because the call to action of corporate media is to indulge in the consumer economy.
Activist media attempts to deliberately agitate its audience in order to affect political change. That is because the call to action of activist media is to achieve political reform/revolution.
Social Media attempts to maximize the number of interactions with the online material. That is because the call to action of social media is repeat engagement and continuous contribution (which the site’s administers consider valuable free labor). Wikipedia is a form of social media whose business model revolves around power-users continuously contributing volunteer time and money. And since the root of the organization is liberal-libertarian, and the goals of the organization are similarly skewed, the incentives to participate flow towards like-minded people.
Unfortunately, all too often people on the internet will see someone complaining “this outlet is biased, you can’t trust it”.
They’re virtually never wrong. But the impulse to call out bias is rooted in one’s prior understanding of the world. It’s this friction that causes schism, not the degree of bias within the media.
Then those people get pushed towards some other source
Sure. But what you’re neglecting is the people who remain. People who are also biased, but whose biases segway with the existing material.
what’s the problem with free actual information on the world?
Also Wikipedia is a s politically unbiased as it can be. Every artivle presents just facts and no opinions or emotions.
I think the intent of the comment was meant to be sarcastic? not sure
Propaganda is the dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.
A biased release of information (for instance, a local news channel that reports exclusively on black criminals and white victims) is presenting exclusively facts and can be fully devoid of an opinion section or an editorial appeal to emotion, and still have a powerful impact on how its audience perceives their world. More banally, if you have a sports section that exclusively covers baseball games, baseball scores, and baseball players’ life events, you’re going to incline your audience towards baseball as a topic of conversation and as a cultural touchstone.
Wikipedia biases itself towards western media, particularly larger and more corporately owned and operated media conglomerates. It’s editors are primarily English-speaking and source data from English-language academic sources. It’s founder and the original team of editors are whiter more professional class GenXers, and are biased towards researching and recording a body of historical and cultural touchstones most relevant to this cohort. The moderation team has standards that were implemented by these founders and original team members and are biased in turn.
Deliberately or not, if you click the “Random” button on the website, you’re going to end up on a page with a decidedly white, english-speaking college-degreed GenX bias.
I love Wikipedia, and I treasure it as a project dedicated to accruing and curating enormous amounts of information. But it is absolutely a biased source.
The issue with your take is that literally everything has a bias. But Wikipedia does what it can to correct for that bias. Any good media outlet will attempt to reduce their bias when possible.
Unfortunately, all too often people on the internet will see someone complaining “this outlet is biased, you can’t trust it”. Then those people get pushed towards some other source that does nothing to correct for bias with those sources sometimes being just outright propaganda.
Absolutely.
Absolutely not.
Corporate media attempts to reduce the appearance of bias in order to maximize its customer base. But that is because the call to action of corporate media is to indulge in the consumer economy.
Activist media attempts to deliberately agitate its audience in order to affect political change. That is because the call to action of activist media is to achieve political reform/revolution.
Social Media attempts to maximize the number of interactions with the online material. That is because the call to action of social media is repeat engagement and continuous contribution (which the site’s administers consider valuable free labor). Wikipedia is a form of social media whose business model revolves around power-users continuously contributing volunteer time and money. And since the root of the organization is liberal-libertarian, and the goals of the organization are similarly skewed, the incentives to participate flow towards like-minded people.
They’re virtually never wrong. But the impulse to call out bias is rooted in one’s prior understanding of the world. It’s this friction that causes schism, not the degree of bias within the media.
Sure. But what you’re neglecting is the people who remain. People who are also biased, but whose biases segway with the existing material.
Wikipedia is hyper biased on any nonscientific topic.
lmao. Half of the articles are corporate propaganda and the rest are CIA.