Talk:Serge F. Kovaleski

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No evidence that Trump "bent his wrist severely", nor any proof that he intended to mock Kovaleski's disability.

I removed the unsubstantiated claim that Trump "bent his wrist severely", implying that he intended to mock Kovaleski's disability. Once again, antifa disciple Grayfell has moved quickly to restore the fake news. Will Jimmy Wales need to be alerted to this politically biased censorship by one of his editors yet again? 16stumps (talk) 08:04, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Uh huh. Wikipedia goes by reliable sources. Random Youtube uploads are WP:UGC, which are not reliable sources. Grayfell (talk) 23:31, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Then why were the references to Fox News article (with included video of Trump) removed from the section on the controversy? In order to eliminate bias from the Wikipedia article, all major sides of the controversy must be reported. It would be biased only to report criticism of then-candidate Trump without also reporting the evidence tending to refute the criticism. I do not edit very often, but I am fairly certain that Wikipedia operates under a principle of even-handedness to eliminate apparent bias. Can we reinstate the Fox News article? It is not a "random YouTube upload". Milkchaser (talk) 23:22, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

This source was not cited or being discussed at the time I posted the comment you are responding to, which is why it's usually best to post new comments at the bottom of a section. Grayfell (talk) 00:01, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Fine, then I'll just delete the section about Trump "bending his wrist severely" as it amounts to unsourced opinion. I'm happy that you won't have any complaint therein. 16stumps (talk) 23:39, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

I have added several reliable sources, which were trivially easy to locate. Grayfell (talk) 23:49, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

It's notable that you've ignored the exculpatory examples which prove the gesture is common from Trump when he simply wishes to portray someone as flustered. Does your support for the hate group "antifa" in any way affect the manner in which you censor edits on this site? Perhaps Jimmy Wales needs to made aware of your one-sided abuse like he was on the UTR page. You'd better hurry up and ban my account before the truth about you gets out! You're becoming quite well known on Twitter. 16stumps (talk) 23:55, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

As I said, Wikipedia goes by reliable sources, which you have not provided. Grayfell (talk) 00:10, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

And I'll ask for a second time: Which reliable source are you citing to support the "bent wrist" allegation? That's important, because the clear implication is that Trump intended to mock his disability. 16stumps (talk) 00:11, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

As I already said, I have added several sources for this statement. Grayfell (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, do you ever expend effort to maintain edits which *favor* President Trump, or is all your energy devoted to damaging him? Your reputation seems to indicate the latter, so maybe you can elucidate. 16stumps (talk) 00:18, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

No reply. Interesting. 16stumps (talk) 02:15, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

16stumps I think it is important to presume good faith on the part of editors. Grayfell's political bias is not in evidence and should not be made an issue.

That said, there might be a way to not only report on the criticism of Trump's mocking behavior but on the defense of this behavior as well, in order to remove possible bias from the article. Fox News (a reliable source) has published video [1] of two other times when Trump mocked a person in a similar way (including text to put it in context of the Kovaleski controversy). The viewer of the video could be trusted to judge how similar the mocking gestures are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkchaser (talk • contribs) 16:20, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Unsure if you've read the full edit history Milkchaser, but I've cited both the FNC video and article twice now. Grayfell and Binksternet have removed both of them. 16stumps (talk) 19:21, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

The added wording was editorializing for several reasons. "Others have called attention to the fact that..." presumes that this is a "fact", which isn't accepted even by the Fox news source (it puts the word "evidence" in scare quotes, for example). This edit also failed to explain who these "others" are, which is a WP:WEASEL wording. Opinions would need to be presented with context and attribution. Reliable sources state, as a fact, that Trump mocked the reporter, whether or not this was based on his physical disability is, I suppose, debatable, but the mockery itself is not in question. If this was standard behavior for how he mocks many people... so what? We would need to explain why that's significant according to reliable sources, and we would need to present unreliable opinions, such as the catholics4trump.com (which now appears to be a dead link) as the opinions of... Who, exactly? Someone who put up a website? Presenting this as a credible rebuttal without any of this context is inappropriate, because it's false equivalence between one or two unreliable sources and many, many reliable ones. The alternative is to presenting this with all of this context, but this risks undue weight. Not every sourced factoid belongs, especially when dealing with election-cycle political gossip. So far, the arguments from catholics4trump have not, from what's been presented here, had any sort of lasting impact on Serge F. Kovaleski as an encyclopedia topic, so it's not clear why this belongs here. Grayfell (talk) 23:37, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

While this might end up getting bogged down in procedural and attempted gotchas, I had not removed the Fox news source until my most recent edit. This source was previously included, but was removed back in October. Obviously I support that removal, but the goal is still (and always) to summarize reliable sources in proportion to WP:DUE. So again, does this source add clarity to the article? If even the Fox News source treats this website with some skepticism and quotes fact-checkers who dispute its claims, and the site's about page says absolutely nothing about them, it's hard to treat this source seriously. If we cannot explain why this anonymous website's perspective is significant, we shouldn't bother mentioning it at all. Grayfell (talk) 00:01, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

As someone who rarely comments or edits, it's hard for me to understand how video of Trump is deemed unreliable.

The comment from Meryl Streep would seem to be out of place then, since she is obviously editorializing - the point being to criticize Trump. The collation of examples of Trump mocking others with gestures quite similar to that which he used to mock Kovaleski tends to refute the gist of her criticism, namely, that he was not mocking him for his disability ("imitated a disabled reporter"). Was he continuing to imitate that same reporter when he mocked Ted Cruz or the General? No. He was not. This raises the possibility that his gestures may have been contemptuous of the person and not his disability.

So leaving the Streep quote in place injects bias, especially when not presenting a contrary opinion that was contemporaneously published in a reliable source.

I do not see why it matters that the original editor of the video works for Fox News or not. Fox News published it and cited the source that was available at the time. That establishes that the video existed at that time. The Catholic website's video editor has no more nor less standing to editorialize than Meryl Streep, right?

It seems to me that the choice is either to remove the Streep quote or to also include the Fox News report of contemporaneous editorial comment presenting a contrary view. Otherwise, there is bias in the article.

Moreover, the article should only state that Trump mocked Kovaleski, not that he mocked his disability, which is a controversial and unproven opinion/interpretation - not a fact. It should not matter that this interpretation of Trump's gestures is widespread (and reported as such in RS) as this only informs the reader that the opinion is popular, thus serving to further popularizes the opinion (something I think wikipedia is not supposed to do - it would be a departure from mere reporting of fact). The article should report, not bolster one interpretation, right? Milkchaser (talk) 06:57, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Readers know who Meryl Streep is, or they can easily find out. They can judge her opinion in that context. We do not provide any way for readers to find out who or what Catholics 4 Trump was. Noting the existence of an opinion isn't editorializing. WP:EDITORIALIZING is when we, as Wikipedia editors, inject our opinions as fact, or when we misrepresent sources to imply that other opinions are plain fact.

I've looked for better sources, but I simply don't see any which support this as significant. There are countless news sources covering this incident, but I have found only a few mention the Catholics 4 Trump clips, and of those, even fewer accept the clips as valid. The Fox news one which, as I've said, doesn't seem particularly weighty in context and is tepid. Breitbart (via Ann Coulter) and Daily Mail mention it, but those are so unreliable I believe they have been blacklisted on Wikipedia due to past abuse. I think Washington Times mentioned this? That outlet is either borderline or flatly unreliable depending on who you ask. Independent Journal Review has slightly rehabilitated their reputation, but in 2016 when they published this they were still pretty shady and their articles read like clickbait. VDare mentions it, but there is no way in hell we are citing that in a BLP, and if sites like that are not a red flag I don't know what to tell you.

One possible source is this one from Washington Post. It's yet another election-cycle political gossip column, but it's a reliable source. It specifically disputes the claims made by Coulter about the Catholics 4 Trump video. If were's mentioning that "others" have said the videos support one perspective, we should also mention that other analysis, who have just as much expertise or more than Coulter and the anonymous website, specifically dispute this perspective. To me this seems completely undue in an article about Kovaleski.

So the problem isn't the existence of the videos, it's drawing a conclusion from those videos and presenting it here as factual. We need reliable sources to do that for us, and so far they do not. Grayfell (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

We're not using the Fox News article because they are not neutral or accurate regarding Trump topics. They habitually slant their reportage in favor of Trump. The Fox link that I removed last October is exactly the kind of non-neutral stuff that is unreliable. Binksternet (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

OK Binksternet - you just outed yourself as having anti-Trump bias. That comment is not responsive to the gist of my statement either.

Is there a neutral arbitrator to which we can appeal this blatant anti-Trump bias? The Fox News article is a reliable source. Milkchaser (talk) 04:24, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Having just read up on WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Bias_in_sources, it seems to me that the smear against Fox News is a clear example of editor's preference in excluding a source he or she finds biased. But the guideline advises against this. In fact, this particular Fox News article is quite balanced and presents source material (preserving the video collated by Catholics 4 Trump) as well as links to opinions that support the notion that Trump was intentionally mocking Kovaleski. It is really an excellent example of presenting both sides of the controversy and its deletion as a source challenges the fairness of this section of Kovaleski's bio. Milkchaser (talk) 04:53, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Grayfell Thanks for drawing the distinction between editorializing by Wikipedia editors and the expression of opinion by a public person. So if someone of Meryl Streep's notoriety states an opinion, it can be quoted as such (alongside actual facts). So if, for example, I were to get a quote from Scott Adams commenting on the video, that would be quotable as well. I think he just tweeted about this. I hope you see where I'm going with this. It should not matter if a lesser-known person edits a video that shows the actual and well-known Donald Trump because we know who Donald Trump is and can recognize him in the video. The credibility of Catholics 4 Trump is really not the issue. The question is whether that video, as published by Fox News, portrays Donald Trump making mocking gestures toward non-disabled people in campaign events nearly contemporaneous to the Kovaleski comments. Do you seriously doubt that this is not video of Donald Trump? That strains belief.

The fact that these lesser-known examples of Trump mocking people with spasmodic gestures were not published as voluminously does not indicate that the events never occurred. Right? Behavior that is deemed scandalous is more likely to be reported on - that does not justify further amplifying the false narrative.

You keep calling this the Catholics 4 Trump clip, but they are not the news event, they are mere collators of video of Trump from other contemporaneous events. If we could find the original source of video of those clips (e.g. from C-SPAN) then could we not cite the events to disprove the false narrative being spread by "countless news sources".

As for the unreliability of Breitbart, Daily Mail and Washington Times, (a) I think this betrays a kind of fallacy - that just because they have made mistakes, we cannot cite them. It's the "stopped clock is right twice a day" phenomenon, that is, just because they have been wrong does not mean that they are wrong in this instance. (b) What really matters is not the collator of the Trump clips, but whether the clips are indeed recognizable as Trump. (c) If other "news sources" refuse to publicize factual material that contradicts a popular narrative (or in this case, a hoax), that raises the issue of whether those "news sources" are themselves biased. Examples abound of the possibility of left-wing bias in formerly reputable media sources and the most glaring recent example was the two-year narrative that Donald Trump was in thrall to the Russian gov't - the evidence for which has proven elusive, but for which you can find "countless news sources" claiming it as likely fact. (e) It would be a shame if Wikipedia fell into the trap that these other news sources have fallen.

This is why I am taking pains to assume that the editors of this article are acting in good faith - something that we are asked to do as fellow wiki editors. I hope that you can see that I am also trying to erase bias from the article.

"drawing a conclusion from those videos and presenting it here as factual. We need reliable sources to do that for us" - I find that to be an astonishing statement. "We need reliable sources to draw a conclusion" instead of merely pointing us to video of Trump and allowing the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions? That is the very definition of bias. And how the heck does a critic of Ann Coulter have more expertise at analyzing the video than Ann Coulter? The very fact that she presented the examples and someone refuted her makes her controversial opinion on the matter just as weighty as Meryl Streep (whose primary area of expertise is not political analysis, as is Coulter's). Millions of people buy Coulter's books precisely because of her compelling analysis. I don't think Streep has sold that many books showing Coulter's level of research and analysis.

The fact that the reporting by Fox News in the article describing the video of Trump mocking Cruz and the General is actually a sign of a lack of bias on the part of the reporter - not a sign that their conclusion is "tepid" because it does not attempt to draw a conclusion for the reader and instead let's the reader watch the video and decide for himself.

tl;dr Either the Streep comment should be excised or the reporting by Fox News of contrary opinions on the issue should be included (and that would make more sense to me). Milkchaser (talk) 04:24, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia guideline on Neutral point of view states, "This page in a nutshell: Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias." This particular Fox News article, the one that keeps getting deleted by editors of this article, is a fine example of not taking sides, but explaining both in relevant detail. Milkchaser (talk) 05:01, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

tl;dr indeed. If reliable, independent sources cover Adam's tweet, for some strange reason, let's see them. Many reliable, independent sources discuss Streep's comments, which where made at a high-profile event. The difference is obvious, and false equivalence between them is absurd. See false balance and WP:FALSEBALANCE. We do not assume that every side is significant just because it can be sourced, and an anonymous website is WP:UGC and WP:FRINGE.

Thanks for explaining the difference. That makes sense to me. Please bear in mind the guideline to be kind to newbies. Milkchaser (talk) 05:57, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Your comments about what makes a WP:RS are, to be blunt, simplistic and not productive here. Having individual editors Interpret an unreliable source, such as the clips compiled by Catholic 4 Trump, is WP:OR. We need to present what reliable sources say about it, not our own personal opinions. Breitbart has not only a documented negative reputation for accuracy and fact checking, it is consistently defined by this reputation by experts in media and journalism. Coulter's reputation is similarly questionable, regardless of her popularity. This has already been discussed on Wikipedia countless times. So often that we have a shortcut for it: WP:BREITBART.

Your comments about assuming good faith are contradicted by your comments about "anti-Trump bias", because that's not how any of this works. Neither editors nor sources are expected to pretend to have no biases or opinions, because that's insulting the reader's intelligence. Wikipedia isn't the place to right great wrongs. Perhaps the "mainstream media" has a leftist bias, but that doesn't change Wikipedia's status as a tertiary source. A hypothetical truly objective position must concede that that having a "bias" isn't necessarily a problem, right? Being biased doesn't make something factually incorrect, and recognizing a bias in someone else is neither quick nor easy anyway. Sometimes (usually) the word "bias" is a pejorative way of saying that something has a point of view. So what? Who cares that some of us oppose Trump? How far do you think you're going to get presenting that as if it were an accusation? Per Wikipedia policy, Wikipedia:Comment on content, not on the contributor. There are plenty of better places to discover why people oppose Trump, and why only some of us are "Antifa disciples" (whatever that means), but this isn't relevant here, and truth isn't a popularity contest. If you have reliable sources supporting that Trump didn't mock Kovaleski's disability, let's see it.

If you don't have a reliable source, move along, please. Grayfell (talk) 05:12, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Coat rack

The Trump section is grossly disproportion to this article about a man who received a Pulitzer Prize, and it appears to primarily discuss Trump and his actions rather than the subject of this article. I have no objection to including a reference to this incident, but let's keep it in proportion. See also: wp:undue Rklawton (talk) 02:04, 18 April 2019 (UTC)