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RfC: PressTV

What is the reliability of PressTV?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail?

(t · c) buidhe 23:32, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Survey (PressTV)

• 4 Iranian propaganda outlet (similar to the deprecated HispanTV — see discussion), repeatedly publishes conspiracy theories and other blatant lies. Indeed, the deprecation of all channels of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting should be considered. (t · c) buidhe 23:32, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

If we deprecate all Iranian state channels, then isn't that basically banning all viewpoints of the Iranian government and its supporters from Wikipedia? The POV of the Iranian government need not be treated as fact, but should be given due consideration on Iran-related topics per WP:NPOV.VR _talk 00:00, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, I saw your vote above to give option 1 to MEMRI. Does MEMRI not routinely publish conspiracy theories and extremist content? For example consider this article from MEMRI and this from Press TV.VR _talk 00:06, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The difference is that MEMRI is just providing a translation and does not vouch for the truth value of everything it translates. Similarly, non-conspiracy outlets sometimes report on faleshoods and conspiracy theories without stating that they are factual. PressTV on the other hand is actually promoting a conspiracy theory as fact. (t · c) buidhe 00:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

buidhe I'm talking about how they would be used here. The current PressTV guideline requires attribution, and does not consider PressTV as a source of fact. How is maintaining this statusquo worse than allowing MEMRI as a source? Both allowing MEMRI as a source and allowing PressTV as a source with attribution have the exact same consequences for wikipedia.VR _talk 00:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

buidhe MEMRI does produce original reporting, thats actually the vast majority of what they produce. Just go to their home page [1] and look. MEMRI and PressTV are extremely similar in their unreliability, not so much in most other ways. They are in the same class of source, I consider them both deprecation worthy for publishing disinformation with few upsides to their use. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• 4 Promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and holocaust denial 1 2 3 recently claiming that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran" 4 Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the arguments about Press TV representing the sole mouthpiece of the Iranian govt are convincing. Russia has TASS, which in the 2019 RfC was found to be usable as as source of the Russian govt's views. Iran has other news agencies including Islamic Republic News Agency, AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA), Tasnim News Agency, Fars News Agency and Iran Press some of which have also recieved similar criticsm over antisemtism like Press TV, like Mehr News Agency. Ultimately, we shouldn't be citing a source that publishes stories like Two-thirds of UK adults dispute number of Holocaust victims: Study when there are less odious alternatives. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:22, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: Then you need to take a look at this survey by Holocaust Memorial Day (UK). Just to tell you how this appeared. --Mhhossein ^talk 14:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

The Press TV report states:

More than 65 percent of adults in Britain believe that the Holocaust, the alleged genocide of Jews during the Second World War, has not taken place in the way that historians claim, a new study shows

While the actual text of the study states:

It shows that 64% of people polled either do not know how many Jews were murdered or grossly underestimate the number

Press TV's wording is a gross distortion of what the study was actually says, some other quotes from the article:

According to some historians, around six million Europeans were killed by the Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945.

Many in the UK and other European countries have constantly rejected claims that around two-thirds of European Jews were killed by the Nazi Germany during the Second World War, saying Holocaust was a historic fabrication which helped Israel occupy Palestine under the banner of protection of Jews.

Under immense pressure from Israel and other Semitist lobbies, many European governments have outlawed the denial of holocaust and continue to impose fines and prison sentences on those denying the incident.

The (implicit) suggestion of these quotes is that there is good reason to doubt the Holocaust, referring to it as an "alleged genocde" and stating that "some historians" have claimed it had happened, when the concensus among mainstream historians is unanimous, and the claim that this recognition is pushed by Zionist lobbies is an antisemitic canard. This article from 2008 states:

The West punishes people for their scientific research on Holocaust but the same western countries allow insults to prophets and religious beliefs

Press TV was banned in the UK in 2012 (and remains so) after airing forced confessions of journalist Maziar Bahari. Given that Iran has one of the world's lowest press freedoms, like China, essentially all media outlets from Iran are quasi-official government mouthpieces anyway. But like China, I would expect that that this would vary between outlets, for example Xinhua and the People's Daily closely represent the government line, but Global Times is more jingoistic than the official government position, even though it is ultimately controlled by the PRC. Can you name me something especially valuable on Press TV that isn't in other Iranian news agencies or newspapers like the Tehran Times? We should never be citing something that calls the Holocaust an "alleged genocide", end of. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3. Press TV is certainly not reliable on issues relating to antisemiitism. But it is a major source for the viewpoint of many in Iran, including the government. It should be used with attribution and only on articles related to Iran and the region.VR _talk 00:00, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• 4 I'd rather cite the Daily Mail. GPinkerton (talk) 00:25, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. This is already on WP:RS/P, I think. This is Iranian state propaganda that promotes conspiracy theories and antisemitism; I don't see any need for it. If the views of the Iranian government are necessary in an article, that can be reflected using other, independent sources. Neutrality^talk 00:53, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• 4 - It's state propaganda, no different than RT, KCNA, OANN, etc. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 03:33, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• 4. Can't think of legit uses. Readers of Wikipedia are meant to have some confidence in the quality of underlying sources. Alexbrn (talk) 04:41, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Alexbrn: there is a legit use: to be used, with proper attribution, to present the view of the Iranian government respecting the guidelines in accordance with WP:ABOUTSELF.VR _talk 21:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

No. If such a view was due it would be mentioned in a good secondary sources which should then be used. By voting "4" I am voting for deprecation. There may be some theoretical edge-cases where the source can be used, but as I say, I can't think of one. Alexbrn (talk) 06:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• 4, This isn’t even really a news website, it’s state sponsored conspiratorial lies dressed up to give it an air of legitimacy. Devonian Wombat (talk) 11:02, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• 3 based on the Consensus we reached few years ago: The consensus is, as far as I can ascertain it, the traditional Wikipedia fudge. There are precedents for this in treatment of other government-controlled news organisations and other news sources with a long history of ideological bias (e.g RT, the Daily Mail). In general they are sources to be treated with caution and the default should be not to include: they may be acceptable, subject to prior consensus, for uncontroversial facts or as a reflection of the views of the government in question, but are rarely, if ever, appropriate for contentious claims where the ideology of the source may be in conflict with neutrality. It's especially important where the subject is a living person. It is wiser, overall, to avoid using these sources: genuinely significant information will generally be available from a less biased source and claims which are uncorroborated - especially if they have failed active attempts at corroboration - should be clearly identified by attribution and certainly not treated as fact. Guy (Help!) 07:38, 17 April 2015 (UTC) [2]--Seyyed(t-c) 14:08, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Sa.vakilian: While that conclusion may be valid at the time, in the intervening years both examples quoted - RT and the Daily Mail - have both been deprecated and should not be used for such purposes by common agreement. PressTV should be no different. GPinkerton (talk) 17:25, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

• 4 in bold, underlined, italic and ideally in a large font. Holocaust denialism is a bit of a red flag. Guy (help!) 17:18, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

JzG No one is saying that it should be used for statements of fact. But PressTV can be used, when properly attributed, for Iran related topics to present the view of the Iranian government.VR _talk 21:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Vice regent, no, I don't think so. Let's link the government press release directly, not a cesspit that repeats it possibly unmodified. Guy (help!) 22:27, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Jzg I am not following you here. Are you saying that Iranian government press releases are OK sources but Iranian state TV is not an OK source? That sounds like a contradiction.VR _talk 02:50, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: taking many of the "4" votes to their natural conclusions, we will end up banning most viewpoints coming out of Iran (a country of 80 million people). This is because all media in Iran is state-regulated to some degree, and the degree of that interference can change quickly. In the end, current Iranian affairs will solely be presented through sources outside of Iran, some of whom are openly hostile to its people and their culture (e.g. 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy). This will have negative implications for both WP:NPOV and Wikipedia:Systemic bias.VR _talk 21:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Iran has banned most viewpoints comming out of Iran, wikipedia is just acknowledging that. Adding a theoctratic regimes propaganda doesn't do anything for neutraility or systemic bias.AlmostFrancis (talk) 23:43, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

• 4 Once an organization starts dabbling in holocaust denial you really can't trust much of anything they say. What ever small gain there may be from using their content for direct comments from the Iranian government, doesn't make up for the damage of sending users to an antisemetic website.AlmostFrancis (talk) 23:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3: The source can be used with proper attributions for Iran related topics. There's a recent consensus over its usage for expressing the Iranian voice. Moreover, deprecating this major Iranian state channels clearly goes in line with promoting Systemic bias. I still see no valid argument as to why this source should not be used with attribution for Iran related topics. --Mhhossein ^talk 14:52, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3: I oppose blacklisting major newsorgs on principle, even unreputable ones like PressTV. Blacklisting newsorgs means that you lose major perspectives that wouldn't otherwise be represented. PressTV is the only English-language neworg based in Iran, so blacklisting it means you lose the whole Iranian perspective.

For example, here is an interview with international human rights law expert Alfred de Zayas. De Zayas isn't a nobody - he's like one of the top 10 experts in the world. But he is a vocal critic of US involvement in Venezuela, Bolivia, Yemen (by proxy) and other places so he is not interviewed very often on American news networks. So if you want to add his opinions about, say Yemen, to his own Wikipedia article you have to source it from PressTV (or Russia Today or some equally "shady" newsorg). Except, you can't! PressTV is #4 and verboten so even though you have both the video and the quotes from the interview in front of you, you are forbidden from adding it to Wikipedia. Same for Venezuela's Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza who also isn't welcome in American TV. ImTheIP (talk) 17:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing deprecation and blacklisting. Using an interview of de Zayas with PressTV would still be possible if there is a local consensus for that particular citation, per WP:DEPS. Imo it would be equivalent to citing de Zayas' blog, assuming he has one, according to WP:SPS. (t · c) buidhe 17:25, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. Deprecation pretty effectively discourages the use of the source and there is also an automatic revert bot for ip users. Yes, you can argue for an exception if you have read up on all the latest WP:RULES and if you dare to argue why a link to an antisemitic conspiracy site is warranted (with the risk of being sanctioned if your argument doesn't hold up). Most people won't bother or will just add whatever they wanted to add without sourcing it which is even worse.ImTheIP (talk) 18:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, yes, it does. And given that PressTV has a history of holocaust denial, conspiracy mongering and bullshit, that is exactly how it should be handled: with a strong presumption against use, subject to exception by local consensus. That's option 4, by the way. Guy (help!) 22:29, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4: Propaganda mouthpiece of the Iranian regime.--Aroma Stylish (talk) 00:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought you have something to add based on the RS policy. But wait, you're exactly asking to censor the Iranian government POV. I think ImTheIP is better than me at explaining this.--Mhhossein ^talk 14:37, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4: for Holocaust denial.Slatersteven (talk) 17:16, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. We should also be weary of other similar state propaganda agencies; they should not have a place in Wikipedia. Stefka Bulgaria (talk) 09:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Unreliable for areas with demonstrated bias by the Iranian government e.g. fringe views on the Holocaust, but reliable in general non-political matters or for views of the Iranian government and their allies. Examples of their recent articles [3][4][5] --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:54, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3: Press TV is a state sponsored media outlet of the Iranian government. In my opinion, it publishes false and fabricated information. It is a highly biased pro-Iranian news outlet. I would advise to avoid using it in almost every possible case; however, there might arise a situation where an editor who specializes in the field of Iranian politics and government affairs will feel that its usage is justified. An example of possible usage would be reporting that the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers met in Moscow in July to discuss the ongoing Iran nuclear deal. However, it is preferred that this foreign minister meeting were reported using a generally reliable source. If Press TV is used, it should be attributed. (as an aside: I cannot support deprecation, option 4, because it is equivalent to a ban) --Guest2625 (talk) 08:17, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4: Holocaust denial gives an idea of the type of false propaganda outlets like Press TV spreads. I love Iranians and they have an incredible history, but if we introduce the Iranian regime's practices into Wikipedia (ie. using sources like Press TV), we are lending to an agenda that has no problems lying and spreading fake news. I acknowledge that our system in the West is by no means perfect, but here our governments don't openly execute journalists for their ideas. There is a MAJOR difference. Ypatch (talk) 12:04, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
• 2 Though it's a state sponsored outlet but has some good coverage of the region. It can be used as reliable source other than of Iranian government stances where it should be attributed to government. USaamo ^(t@lk) 13:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
• 3 Blacklisting of that or other similar Iranian official media outlets does not make sense originally, because they cover Iranian domestic news which are absence in non-Iranian media outlets. Benyamin (talk) 21:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3, allow with attribution as a source for Iranian state perspectives (status quo) PressTV is a very biased source. However, its perspective is crucial to all Iran-related articles as the mouthpiece of the Iranian government, and its level of detail is rarely met in non-Persian-language sources. Consider this PressTV report today. Its level of details about Khamenei's speech yesterday, with a direct video of Khamenei's address for cross-reference and checking by any Persian speaker, is simply not matched by the more generally reliable sources (see corresponding AJ English, Reuters article). For example, from AJ we only know:

Khamenei said, "But the smart Iranian has made the best use of this attack, this animosity and benefited ... by using sanctions as a means to increase national self-reliance."

From PressTV we know:

Ayatollah Khamenei said the Iranian people are smart and have taken advantage of the enemy’s sanctions, gaining achievements against the enemy’s will.

He went on to say that the US’ secondary sanctions led the Iranian scientists and producers to indigenize what the country could not provide because of Washington’s bans.

He pointed to the production of the advanced homegrown jet fighter Kowsar, the spare parts produced inside the country, the establishment of thousands of knowledge-based companies, the Persian Gulf Star Refinery built by the IRGC, and the major energy projects in southern and Western Iran as examples of the Islamic Republic’s achievements under the sanctions.

“Had they sold us a jet aircraft, we would not have produced the jet trainer Kowsar inside the country,” he said.

“They [enemies] have admitted that Iran managed to manufacture so many defensive products at the time of sanctions.”

Same for another of today's articles, "Iran's largest industrial livestock farm opens near Tehran". I see absolutely no reason that PressTV would fabricate anything about this, and as far as I have found this is the only English-language source that talks about this sheep farm at Fashafoyeh. Deprecating PressTV at large is a disservice.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 02:15, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• 4 Propaganda mouthpieces, such as this one, do not provide "coverage". They are not designed to provide facts, they are designed to influence. Alex-h (talk) 16:11, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2 and 3 - this is the state press of the Iranian government. As such, sometimes the reporting will be accurate, sometimes it won't be, but it is a reliable source for the views of the Iranian establishment. Quite obviously, then, it should be used with attribution. Statements that it should be deprecated because it includes propaganda are worthless from our perspective, as all national media include propaganda. Deprecation on this principle would cause us to shut out viewpoints of major governments and peoples who are not politically aligned with the US or UK, doing a disservice to our readers and contravening Wikipedia's status as an international encyclopedia. -Darouet (talk) 14:42, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3 I think if an article relied entirely on Press TV or similar coverage we would need to either find better sources or think about deleting it. However the point has been made above that the Iranian government has views and positions on things that we can use Press TV to verify. If Holocaust denial is the issue that concerns people then perhaps we ought to refuse to give any space to any mention of Iranian government views, since they are the source of Holocaust denial in Iran; the editorial decisions of an individual channel are secondary. Also Press TV makes a habit of interviewing Western politicians from outside the mainstream, and these interviewees sometimes make comments in Press TV interviews that they have not made elsewhere. The verifiability of those comments depends on our being able to source them to the relevant interview. If we just source to what someone else claims the person said in a Press TV interview, we’ll go wrong again. Finally, most national news in most countries is not entirely independent and reliable. All public media in China deny or ignore large-scale punishments and incarceration in Xinjiang. Most Japanese media deny or downplay the Shanghai Massacres. I doubt you would get much from sources close to the Serbian government on the topic of Srebrenica that wasn’t bluster, deflection and conspiracy theory. Does a single Russian news outlet cover the war in the Ukraine honestly? If we start knocking off sources close to unpleasant regimes or sources that share in their country’s blind spots we will be left with ‘the sum of all human knowledge according to the New York Times’ and that’s not really viable. We have to exercise our judgement in using sources, and look for the most reliable ones we can, but we have to work with what’s out there. Even KCNA can tell us what Pyonyang claims/thinks, even if it is pretty much useless for anything else. Mccapra (talk) 13:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 as an infamous disinformation outlet. There is almost no upside to keeping them around, any reporting we could use would still be of their regular low quality. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 pure state media --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 18:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per Buidhe, disinformation service. Cavalryman (talk) 13:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC).

• Option 3 (or Option 4 as alternative), per Guest2625. Most people in this RFC have cited PressTV's Holocaust denial as the basis for depreciating the source; while I agree that it is a significant red flag, I think PressTV is usable for the Iranian government's viewpoints only (hence it should not be deprecated); the source should be used with in-text attribution (or attributed to the Iranian government) if it is used in any Wikipedia article. For everything else that PressTV reports, I would think that other (much better) sources should be available to cite instead; if PressTV is the sole available source, its probably undue. JaventheAldericky (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 and 3 Generally, I presume that PressTV is an appropriate source for the users to use it particularly in the news which are related to Iran --for example, concerning Iranian government's viewpoints--. On the other hand, it seems to be useful/trustworthy in regards to the Middle-East issues, as well. Ali Ahwazi (talk) 03:10, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. State media famous for disinformation. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:08, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 - Holocaust denial should be enough, let alone the disinformation. Doug Weller talk 18:02, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• As an editor that has extensively covered the Syrian Civil War, I'd like to give my two cents. Finding non-biased sources that cover that conflict's more intricate details is nigh on impossible. Practically all publications that cover the war in any significant detail are either pro-government or pro-opposition. PressTV falls squarely in the first category, with a notable pro-Iranian twist. Though biased, publications like these are often used in the SCW community in addition to some other source with the opposite bias covering the same subject matter, in order to avoid bias and to provide additional information in terms of Iranian deals or troop deployments. For that reason, I'd suggest an Option 2/3 to allow PressTV only when used either with attribution for a claim made by Iranian or pro-Iranian groups or when used in addition to another source with an opposing editorial viewpoint. Option 4 when reffering to Jews, Israel, the Holocaust or other very contentious topics. Goodposts (talk) 00:00, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Clear as daylight state propaganda by the IRI. --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:15, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Wikipedia is not an outlet for state media produced by the IRI, a dictatorial regime. Similar propaganda agencies funded/created by states who do not acknowledge the concept of "freedom of press" should likewise be banned from Wikipedia. If people need to present the viewpoint of the Iranian regime more appropriate sources can be chosen. - LouisAragon (talk) 02:57, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 for being an outlet controlled by a dictatorship. Then there is the holocaust denial [6], not to mention the "interview" with Maziar Bahari where he had been told he could face the death penalty if he didn't say the right things [7]. All of that said, I think the fact that they are an outlet controlled by a dictatorship should be sufficient reason, without any need for the rest. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 I agree with JaventheAldericky. While there are obvious examples of misstatements and disinformation, there may be certain situations where PressTV's content does accurately describe the viewpoint of the Iranian government, and could be cited. Anything included on WP from the source should be scrutinized thoroughly on a case by case basis. Comatmebro (talk) 00:44, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, seeing as this is neither independent nor reliable. Essentially a propaganda outlet, which even promotes holocaust denial among other things. If there is any significant views of the Iranian government that might need to be mentioned in an article then other reliable sources would cover it. If there is such a need to cite it in an article then it can be whitelisted, leaving it without any sort of filter just leads to excess work in constantly monitoring its usage. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 01:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4: the holocaust denial puts it squarely in the class of sources that cannot be trusted to provide accurate information. The flaw in the argument that "it might be accurate for the Iranian government's viewpoint" is that the only way we would know it was accurate is if that same viewpoint were reported in a different, reliable source. In which case we still don't need PressTV as we have the different, reliable source to use. --RexxS (talk) 14:10, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

  RexxS, would the holocaust denial not just put it option 2 where the additional consideration is that it can't be used for articles about the holocaust? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:41, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

  @Emir of Wikipedia: Absolutely not. A source which denies the holocaust is patently peddling false information of the most extreme kind. Once we have found that a source habitually engages in that activity, it cannot be trusted for its views on any topic. Your argument is that we should trust that liars are telling the truth, except for when they have been found to be lying. The word "gullible" was invented to cover those circumstances. --RexxS (talk) 19:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4: May I remind that just a few years ago Iranian State Press TV’s license was revoked in United Kingdom.. Later google blocked press TV’s accounts on You tube As the loudspeaker of the Iranian Government, Press TV ‘s news and programs are Iran’s POV, that is why its license was revoked in UK. Option 4 will keep Wikipedia safer. Bahar1397 (talk) 21:11, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

• To the contrary, Iran’s government POV is something we need—certainly, on Iran-related topics, it matters much more than the Western POV—and censuring it on Wikipedia makes Wikipedia that much more dangerous as a putatively neutral and inclusive source of information. Whether PressTV is the best way to discuss Iran’s POV is up for dispute, but IMO this line of thinking—that the perspective of one side (and one side with enduring popular appeal in Iran and Shi’a populations throughout the Middle East!) is “dangerous” and must be disregarded out of hand—has problematic implications. It’s ultimately no different than the stated rationale for the Great Firewall.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 01:58, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• status quo (option 3) I don't think it should be used generally, but as the English language state-sponsored media of Iran, it is frequently cited by other news organizations and deprecating it as a source on Wikipedia would harm building NPOV in many articles. Enough systemic bias already exists on Wikipedia. If it is used, the content should (almost) always be attributed in text. Pahlevun (talk) 17:28, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (PressTV)

Comment and Question Apparently, those who have participated in this RFC, took position based on their political and ideological tendencies and at least 5 of those who have considered it as totally unreliable referred to antisemitic and holocaust denial contents. Even if this allegation is true, is there any policy or guideline which says antisemitic and holocaust denial contents will lead to total unreliability of a source?!--Seyyed(t-c) 07:22, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

PressTV's reliability as a source seems to have been discussed before but seems not to have been entered on the Perennial Sources board. Should such a major state broadcaster be omitted from scrutiny? There are citations on such pages as State of Palestine, for example, where such referencing might be considered contentious. Our article on them is not shy of denouncing them in various ways, so shouldn't there be a consensus attempted? GPinkerton (talk) 21:29, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Press TV indeed has an entry on RSP, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Press TV Press TV has been cited roughly 2,000 times combining presstv.com   and presstv.ir  . I was thinking about calling a deprecation RfC considering their repeated promotion of Holocaust denial, but you beat me to the punch. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:31, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh! So there is! My ctrl+F didn't find it because I was writing "PressTV" without the space. And yes, that's the way I would like it to go; I don't see how they're better than Sputnik. GPinkerton (talk) 21:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think sources should be deprecated unless in very special circumstances. Furthermore, I don't think the consensuses on this page really represent anything more than the opinions of those who like to vote a lot. It appears to me that a lot of people vote based on their opinion of the source rather than whether the source is reliable or not. I think people should use their own judgement rather than these kind of blanket bans. ImTheIP (talk) 01:08, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I can understand this for some sources, but Press TV promotes and advocates for conspiracy theories, which makes it akin to something like Breitbart. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:17, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Can't people just exercise caution? A while ago I wanted to use an article from Russia Today as a source and the stupid filter stopped me. In that case, I knew the source was correct because other news sites articles said the same thing but the RT one was more to the point. I don't see the problem of linking to Breitbart either if it is for uncontroversial stuff.ImTheIP (talk) 04:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Who decides what is uncontroversial? GPinkerton (talk) 05:36, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, if other sources say the same thing, use other sources. If they don't, well, it's probably not true. Guy (help!) 17:19, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I don't think editors should have to use other sources. If the fact is corroborated by multiple sources, editors should be free (within reason) to choose the source they think is most appropriate. Blanket ban of sources are wrong because it cuts off minority perspectives. For example, if a famous Iranian general wrote an op-ed in PressTV, we wouldn't be able to cite it unless that op-ed was republished in other sources. That is not fair. ImTheIP (talk) 21:23, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

"If the fact is corroborated by multiple sources, editors should be free (within reason) to choose the source they think is most appropriate". You said it - "within reason".

If you deliberately use an unreliable source such as RT where alternative reliable sources are known to be available, all you're doing is creating work for whoever later comes along, finds the unreliable source, and has to redo the research to replace it. That puts it well outside the bounds of "within reason". Kahastok talk 22:33, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has to clean Wikipedia of links to RT. ImTheIP (talk) 03:05, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, but most Wikipedians do, because RT is a Russian propaganda outlet. Guy (help! - typo?) 00:56, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

JzG Iranian viewpoints are often not presented in other sources, or those sources might distort Iranian viewpoints. This doesn't just apply to Iranian politics, but they could simply misrepresent what's happening inside Iran. We already have the 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy and I can't tell you the amount of times I have seen Fox News openly attack the culture and religion of the Iranian people.VR _talk 21:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Like it or not, WP is supposed to reflect the major viewpoints represented in reliable sources (WP:NPOV). Iranian media being conspiratorial and fake news does reduce the number of reliable sources which reflect Iranian perspectives. Maybe they could clean up their act. (t · c) buidhe 02:35, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Vice regent, we don't reduce our standards to include shitty sources because they are the only ones that repeat what shitty people say. Guy (help!) 22:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

It is a reasonable assumption that the views of the Iranian government also reflect the views of a substantial portion of the people of Iran (although how many Iranians agree with their government is controversial, see this example). So saying "shitty people" is really uncalled for. Consider what implications your comment has for WP:Systemic bias.VR _talk 02:50, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Vice regent Iran is a totalitarian theocratic dictatorship; there is absolutely no reason to assume any such thing. Just the opposite, in fact. GPinkerton (talk) 03:47, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Vice regent, so there is a Canadian National Post article/op-ed that is filled with bunk and within days other sources like the AP, Reuters, AFP, and an Israeli at the National Post show it too be bunk. If anything your example shows we don't need PressTV.AlmostFrancis (talk) 02:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Questioning the legitimacy of this approach: Apparently, the community has changed its position on WP:UNDUE and WP:Biased, so that the media which runs or supports by nonliberal-democratic states are considered as unreliable sources even for representation of the position of those states. First, Russia Today[8], now Press TV and later many Chinese as well as Arab media. So this trend will undermine the current explicit terms of WP:NPOV and it needs a broader consensus. I mean the community should not follow an approach which clearly contradicts with the main policy, unless after revision of that policy.--Seyyed(t-c) 05:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED so why should there be any reliance placed on sources that are not only censored, but openly embrace chanting out the party line? If we need to take a government's word for something, or represent their views, we can quote their own websites and press releases. There's no need to apply the distorting lens of that state's pet media organizations. GPinkerton (talk) 05:56, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Excuse me, but you have not got the point and your argumentation is absurd. From the beginning, Wikipedia has declared that it does not believe in an orthodox or main stream narration, thus it has chosen to narrate all of the viewpoints, even the viewpoints of Fascists. Thus if we want to write a neutral article about Benito Mussolini, we should cover his own viewpoint as well, no matter how Fascist he would be. In addition, your argumentation is based on self-contradiction. If wikipedia policy is WP:NOTCENSORED, then it should not censor anything.--Seyyed(t-c) 10:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Fully agree with GPinkerton here. If we need to quote the Iranian regime for their POV, we can go directly to their websites rather than having to weed out all the rubbish that these state-sponsored publicity outlets publish. I've come across so much of this recently and it's been very time consuming going through endless RfCs and talk page discussions trying to show what we already know about these outlets. The problem is that the Iranian regime's disinformation has spread beyond Iranian media:

• How Iran spreads disinformation around the world Reuters
• Iran’s threats to BBC Persian staff must be confronted The Guardian
• Facebook dismantles disinformation network tied to Iranian media Al jazeera
• Iran's propaganda implies Soleimani is being widely mourned — and the U.S. press is buying it NBC
• Iran has online disinformation operations, too CNN
• Iranian Propaganda Abroad

Stefka Bulgaria (talk) 09:43, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

A good strategy, so take this:

• BBC to pay Lord McAlpine £185,000 after false child abuse allegations
• WATCH: BBC forced to apologise on air for 'fake news' GERS figure
• BP denies BBC accusations over Senegal gas deal
• BBC admits ‘anti-Semitism’ claim against Jackie Walker was false. Where’s LABOUR’S apology?
• Corbyn claims BBC report on anti-Semitism in Labour full of ‘inaccuracies’

Hahaha...--Mhhossein ^talk 13:12, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Mhhossein: Funny, using Scottish Nationalist paper to attack the BBC (!) and then using a Labour Party blog to ... try to deflect criticism of the Labour Party and harp on their eternal victimhood and then using an oil company's denials to ... prove the unreliability of the BBC ...? What's next, using PressTV to attack the legitimacy of Israel? Using RT to say how wonderful Putin is? Please ... GPinkerton (talk) 16:17, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Be serious please. I tried to show how absurd the editor's argument is. You can discredit The Guardian, France 24, Times of Israel and etc using your own labels. Who cares? --Mhhossein ^talk 05:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

The first link involves a mistaken report for which there was a settlement and an acknowledgment. It is the conduct that makes a source reliable since all sources are wrong from time to time. The second was an acknowledgment that a host said "Scottish spending" when he should have said "Scottish and UK spending in Scotland," which they corrected promptly. Third, petroleum extractor claims reporting on their extracting is wrong, with no evidence it is wrong.???? Fourth, personal blog, who cares. Fifth, politician claims errors, with no evidence there are errors. So???. You compare this to holocaust denial and aggressive antisemetism?AlmostFrancis (talk) 23:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

...and who asked to use PressTV for holocaust denial? Most of the users are puzzled here and even don't care what the discussion is. --Mhhossein ^talk 07:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Xinhua News Agency

What is the reliability of Xinhua News Agency?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail? Adoring nanny (talk) 02:59, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Responses (Xinhua)

• Option 4 Xinhua has promoted the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 originated in a US Army lab in Maryland. [9][10][11]. For another fine example of Xinhua "reporting", see [12]. We should not make an exception for "non-controversial" topics or the like. For example, for the critical first few weeks, Covid-19 was not considered "controversial". Adoring nanny (talk) 03:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment I couldn't find anything in your sources that say Xinhua News Agency reported that COVID-19 was created in a U.S. army lab, just that the Chinese government had spread this disinformation. Some of your sources are behind a paywall, so perhaps you could provide the quote. Note that the head of the U.S. government, Donald Trump has publicly stated that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese Lab. That doesn't mean that PBS and NPR shouldn't be considered reliable. As for your other example, I don't see anything extraordinary about the claim that "nearly 100 people" in Hong Kong protested in favor of the government. Since Hong Kong has a population of 7.5 million, that would be about 1/1,000 of 1% of the population. There are 42 pro-China members of the legislature, the executive council has 30 members, so we're up to 72 verified supporters of the government already. TFD (talk) 04:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• The difference is that NPR is WP:Independent of Donald Trump. It is free to, and frequently does, say that Trump is talking nonsense. By contrast, Xinhua is not WP:Independent of the CCP. NPR-style reporting would be to say something along the lines of "The CCP is promoting the theory that Covid started at a lab in Maryland, but we found no evidence to support this." But that's not what they do. Per my The Atlantic source [13], "State media outlets rarely transmit conspiracies in the form of bold, direct claims. They usually do it through a combination of insinuations: We’re just asking questions, really." That's how Xinhua promoted the Covid conspiracy. See the article which as of yesterday was here [14] and can (as of now, but possibly not for long) be found in Google's cache here [15] and archived here [16]. Unlike what NPR does, I can't find anything from Xinhua saying that the theory is nonsense. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

You claim above that Xinhua has promoted a specific CoVID-19 conspiracy theory. Can you provide a link to a Xinhua article where they do that? If you can't, you should strike your statement. Factual accuracy matters, especially at WP:RSN. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

[17] does it precisely in the manner described by [18] - "We're just asking questions, really". Adoring nanny (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

If "We're just asking questions" articles are going to be used to deprecate sources, I have bad news, because plenty of "generally reliable" Western news sources have engaged in this exact same sort of wild speculation about the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). To list just a few, The Sunday Times (generally reliable) had a long report that repeatedly hints that SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from the WIV: [19]. The Independent then wrote its own article based on The Sunday Times' story, including new quotes from Richard Ebright, who has been promoting the WIV leak theory non-stop for months: [20]. The Independent quotes Ebright as an expert, even though his expertise is in bacteriology (not virology) and the claims he's making about mutation rates of the virus are WP:FRINGE (for example, they're completely at odds with Boni et al. 2020). The Washington Post (generally reliable) played one of the largest roles in the promotion of the WIV leak theory, with its publication of Josh Rogin's column claiming that the US State Department had uncovered severe problems at the WIV in 2018: [21]. Though this was nominally posted under "Global Opinions," it was written in the style of a news article, and was widely referenced by other news outlets (and later by the Trump administration). For example, the BBC wrote it's own "We're just asking questions" article that speculated on the lab leak theory, based on Rogin's piece: [22]. The BBC article extensively quotes Filippa Lentzos, a promoter of the WIV leak theory. Even the venerable Columbia Journalism Review (itself often used to determine reliability of news sources) wrote an article that while criticizing some of the right-wingers commenting on Rogin's story, also posed the "What if?" question about the WIV: [23]. In other words, if "We're just asking questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2" is a basis for judging a news source unreliable, get ready to deprecate The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Washington Post, the BBC and Columbia Journalism Review, and possibly many more sources. Xinhua is really a very minor offender in this department. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• As a CCP mouthpiece, it is probably reliable only in an WP:ABOUTSELF stylee for attributed statements about the CCP. As a source of fact, I would say no thanks. So that's option 3 with a bullet I guess, or maybe 4 but we need to clarify the wording slightly. Guy (help!) 08:50, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per JzG. OhKayeSierra (talk) 09:28, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 We currently have around 9,500 citations to Xinhua per xinhuanet.com   and news.cn   Xinhua is the official state news agency of the Chinese Government. Like the Russian Government's TASS (RSP entry), and the Turkish Government's Anadolu Agency (RSP entry) and TRT World (RSP entry), Xinhua is usable for statements regarding the official views of the Chinese government, and non-controversial topics per WP:NEWSORG. However it is not a reliable source for stuff like the Xinjiang Camps/Uyghurs, Tibet human rights, Taiwan, or anything else where the Chinese government could be reasonably construed to have a conflict of interest. I don't see strong enough evidence (excluding the COVID-19 stuff which I don't think is definitive) that Xinhua is an outright propaganda outlet in the same way RT or Sputnik is, which I think CGTN falls a lot closer to. Any use of Xinhua should be attributed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  The problem with that is that it is not always immediately obvious that something is controversial. For example, who could be opposed to a reduction in terrorism, an increase in stability, economic prosperity, and an increase in happiness? [24] (now dead link, here is Google's cache, at least for the moment)[25][26] Adoring nanny (talk) 13:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

That particular piece is the attributed views of "Dr. Kaiser Abdukerim, a member of the Chinese delegation and president of Xinjiang Medical University", it states this right in the lead: "A Chinese expert from the Uygur ethnic group on Monday stressed here that without stability in his hometown of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, nothing can be achieved there." I don't think that Xinhua is making up what he is saying, and therefore can be considered reliable for his views. The statement by Dr. Kaiser that: "Today's Xinjiang enjoys social security, its people live and work in peace and contentment, its economic development is flourishing, all ethnic groups enjoy heart-to-heart solidarity, and the human rights of people of all ethnic groups are fully guaranteed" is not true, but it is his attributed opinion. Of course Xinhua is being selective in promoting this view, but this could be said for most sources. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:06, 3 August 2020 (UT

Per the article, "As a professional in medical education, he said he was especially impressed by such figures that from 1949 to 2017, the population mortality rate in Xinjiang decreased from 20.82 to 4.26 per thousand . . ." So the article is approvingly quoting him being impressed by mortality "figures" of 4.26 deaths per thousand people per year. Sure sounds like an alternate universe. One wonders what the mortality rate is in the camps.[27] Same story for the "happiness index" he approves of, whatever that may be referring to. Are the camp inmates happy? Lastly, the article describes him as an "expert." That part is the article's statement, not his. Is "expert" really an appropriate way to define him? Does his expertise include the camps? Does it include the ability to distinguish real data from fake data? Adoring nanny (talk) 14:39, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

4.26 is less than half of the UK's mortality at 9.3, but this is probably related to Britains proportionally older population. I can't find any other evidence of Kaiser's existence outside the UN speech other than a single paper where his is last author. Compare Xinhua with this story in CGTN and you can see that the CGTN story comes much closer to outright propaganda. I definitely think there is a case for deprecating CGTN, but not really for Xinhua at the moment. See also: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_293#CGTN_(China_Global_Television_Network) Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:10, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: I wouldn't mind seeing China Central Television/China_Global_Television_Network added to the Perennial sources list. Not sure if new RFCs are needed for those? WhisperToMe (talk) 18:21, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2: As as I mentioned in previous discussions, Xinhua often has decent reporting in English for quite a few non-controversial topics. For example, I used it heavily on some tables to provide accurate dates for Xi Jinping presidential trips. For international reporting, it has published many reports about COVID-19 in underreported areas in Africa. These reports could be verified in non-English sources (French, Arab), but hard to find in other secondary English sources. Now, there's a few topics where it would be no-go except for quoting Government officials, specially US-China disputes and other political controversies involving China. --MarioGom (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 Option four makes a statement which is demonstrably true but I am opposed to outright bans on any source. CCP propaganda can be judged on a case-by-case basis, recognizing what it is. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:12, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 US government sources peddled the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but that theory didn't stand up, did it? All government-controlled organs are partisan by definition and this naturally matters in controversial cases such as wartime. Xinhua should be treated like other government sources of information and attributed so the reader can decide for themselves whether to trust them. Holding a straw poll here to decide the matter is ridiculous because Wikipedia and its editors are definitely not reliable sources. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Straw polls on RSN are the standard way feedback on each particular source is collected. Honestly I haven't thought of a better system than that, though one could post information on polls and surveys indicating trustworthiness of sources in certain countries. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 3: In both Chinese and English, Xinhua generally report factual information with carefully chosen terms that favor the PRC government. It also often publishes articles for major government propaganda points. Xinhua should only be used for certain restricted cases.
  It's important to note that the heavy journalistic spin doesn’t mean that they are fundamentally unreliable for factual reporting. An appraisal from a 2010 Newsweek article (pre-2013 Newsweek is considered generally reliable on WP:RSP): It helps, of course, that Xinhua's spin diminishes when the news doesn't involve China. [...] And even if the agency fails to improve its image, naked bias is not a handicap the way it was for TASS, the Soviet Union's 100-bureau news agency during the Cold War.
  That said, I still would not use Xinhua as the sole source for most claims given that their editorial oversight is severely compromised by being an arm of the PRC Central Government, which does not hesitate to actively censor information. It's really only useful as a source for the view of the Chinese government, or for obscure details of uncontroversial events (e.g. the dates and lineup of a concert). — MarkH₂₁^talk 21:11, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  Updating vote: after seeing Newslinger's response and seeing that Xinhua has a news exchange agreement with AFP, I'm also okay with a very restricted option 2 that relegates its use to covering the Chinese government point of view and uncontroversial events. — MarkH₂₁^talk 04:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4, any source that published conspiracy theories related to COVID should be deprecated. Devonian Wombat (talk) 21:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Devonian Wombat: Neither The Telegraph or The Atlantic stories specifically mention Xinhua in reference to COVID 19 conspiracy theories. The NYTimes story refers to this tweet which contains a bizarre video mocking Pompeo using automatically generated speech and weird animated figures, see what you make of it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 or 3. It is similar to RT (TV network) that was depreciated. We need to be consistent. It does not matter that much if it is controlled by a government, although to be controlled (rather than simply be funded) is a red flag. It is known for promoting disinformation, which is opposite to be known "for fact checking and accuracy". My very best wishes (talk) 23:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  RT and Xinhua are superficially similar as state-run news outlets by Russia and China. However, they have different histories and different sets of appraisals by RSes. The history of RSes calling out RT for disinformation and other journalistic malpractice is significantly more extensive than Xinhua.

  The two outlets have no formal relation, so Xinhua needs to be looked at independently from RT. — MarkH₂₁^talk 00:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  They do have a lot of similarities, as sources say. For example, according to US senators [28], "Similar to Russia’s state-controlled RT and Sputnik news services, the People’s Republic of China controls several media organizations that disseminate news and propaganda domestically and internationally." So, they are placed together. Also, they both appear in the controversies about the "foreign agents" in the USA. Now, according to the letter above, Xinhua is not just a propaganda organization (like RT). “Xinhua serves some functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership…”. See als o here. Yes, that appear to be a difference. In Russia such reports for "the leadership" are compiled by the GRU and SVR (Russia), not by RT. My very best wishes (talk) 02:30, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, and none of these similarities have to do with the reliability of factual reporting published by Xinhua. That can be assessed on its own merit by what RSes say about the accuracy of Xinhua's reporting. — MarkH₂₁^talk 02:57, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  I don't think this analogy is precise. Xinhua is China's largest state-owned news agency and is targeted to audiences both within and outside China, which makes it the equivalent of Russia's TASS (RSP entry), currently considered a situational source. The Chinese equivalent to RT (Russia Today) (RSP entry) is China Global Television Network (CGTN), a television network that was modeled after RT and is targeted exclusively to non-Chinese audiences. — Newslinger talk 07:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree: the analogy with TASS would be more appropriate. It indeed served as a front organization for the KGB, although even TASS did not prepare the intelligence reports for the Soviet leadership. But it does not add any reliability as a source for controversial content. Using TASS or Xinhua for official statements by the government? Even that would be pretty much just a "primary source". One should use other, secondary RS which would place such government statements to proper context. My very best wishes (talk) 18:14, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 It's a reliable source for the views of the Chinese government, but there are better sources for that. Presumably a secondary source will discuss important Chinese political views without us having to determine what is and is not propaganda. The misinformation is disqualifying similar to RT, and anything factual those sources say will be corroborated by a news organization with a better track record. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 I'm against banning major news outlets on principle.ImTheIP (talk) 03:18, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3, even if they technically meet the definition of option 4 and are eligible for deprecation I would oppose deprecation on the grounds that it would leave us with few direct sources for Chinese government opinion. They are the world’s second most powerful country after all, even if they engage in world leading levels of disinformation and generalized information operations. That being said the disinformation published by Xinhua in relation to the coronavirus pandemic has been shocking even by the standards of Chinese information operations and information warfare, the argument for full depreciation is a solid one I just oppose it for the reason stated above. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 03:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 (first choice) or option 3 (second choice) by process of elimination. Xinhua News Agency is the official state-owned news agency in China, and its content is guaranteed to be consistent with the Chinese government's position. If used (whether under WP:ABOUTSELF or on its own merits), content from Xinhua should be attributed in-text. Xinhua is not generally reliable (option 1), because it is a biased or opinionated source that is not editorially independent from the CCP. Among all mainland Chinese state-owned sources, Xinhua is the highest-quality source, which is enough to make me oppose deprecation (option 4). There are other Chinese sources for which deprecation is warranted (e.g. the Global Times), but if I were only able to use one mainland Chinese source to provide coverage of China across Wikipedia, it would be Xinhua. It's the gold standard. Compare to Russia's TASS (RSP entry). — Newslinger talk 04:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  An alternative approach would be to treat Xinhua similarly to Turkey's Anadolu Agency (RSP entry), a state-run news agency that is considered a situational source (option 2) for general topics and a generally unreliable source (option 3) for controversial topics and international politics. — Newslinger talk 01:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3 or 4 per Wugapodes. If you need to quote the Chinese government's statement, there are better, third-party independent sources for that. OceanHok (talk) 09:57, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2-3 WP:ABOUTSELF for the PRC. Xinhua is useful for uncontroversial details like who's the Party Secretary of randomProvince, what jobs did they held beforehand and when they were elected to the Central Committee. Some people may see that stuff as trivial, but due to the way the PRC/CCP Nomenklatura functions I think that it provides notable information. --RaiderAspect (talk) 11:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 in general, except where WP:ABOUTSELF applies. Stifle (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 2 - This is the official news agency of the most populous country on earth, and should be treated as major news organizations in the west that are closely aligned with their respective governments. -Darouet (talk) 14:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 per Newslinger. Regarding the argument that state media outlets transmit conspiracy theories through insinuations, anyone trying to cite a claim in an article to something as weak as an insinuation should rightly be reverted, regardless of the publication. As long as the disinformation doesn't rise above the level of insinuation (and as long as the publication publishes something other than insinuations), I don't think that we as editors have much to worry about. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1: there is quite a lot of opinion here but few examples. Those examples that have been given don’t show unreliable reporting. Regarding the quote "State media outlets rarely transmit conspiracies in the form of bold, direct claims. They usually do it through a combination of insinuations: We’re just asking questions, really.": this describes some of the COVID reporting published by western media outlets that have been trying to assign blame to China. Burrobert (talk) 15:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 2 1) The AFP cooperation agreement, in force since 1957, speaks volumes. 2) And there is no basis whatsoever to have an assessment vastly different in spirit (e.g. "generally unreliable" or deprecation). 3) Per Rosguill and Burrobert, insinuations aren't promotions of conspiracy theories, anyone who suggests otherwise should be regarded as in violation of WP:CIR; to add to Andrew Davidson's point, major U.S. newspapers (WaPo, NYT, USA Today, WSJ) played as propagandists to promote the false notion that Gaddafi was perpetrating large-scale state violence on yet another largely nonviolent "Arab Spring" revolution; as an example, the WaPo has no story on HC 119, which confirmed that the US/UK/France had made a false case to the UNSC for NATO intervention in the 2011 Libyan civil war. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 16:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  CaradhrasAiguo, I don't know that I'd say that insinuations aren't promotions of conspiracy theories, they just aren't the kind of promotion that affects our ability to use the source here because we shouldn't be basing claims on insinuations in any context. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:56, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1-2 depending on the topic. For non-politically-controversial subjects (e.g. China opened _______ new train/subway line/road/some other building), it would be a reliable source. However, for some more controversial issues, it is reliable only for getting the Chinese government's view on the subject, as it is the official view of the Chinese government (e.g. The official Chinese government view on ______ subject, according to Xinhua, is "blah blah blah"). Félix An (talk) 16:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1-2, just like for any other news agency. But this discussion is far too theoretical for my liking. Are we discussing something specific here? Is there a specific factual inaccuracy that we're evaluating? I haven't seen any examples in this thread of actual problems in Xinhua's reporting. I therefore propose that this thread be closed with no result. If someone has a question about a specific Xinhua article, they can bring it here to get input. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3, an unreliable source as is typical for a state run outlet from a one party state which is consistently at or near the basement of press freedom rankings. Analogous cases include PressTV (which was deemed unreliable) and Telesur (which was deprecated) so I don't see why this source should be granted an exception. To grant an exception to Xinhua for the simple fact that it's a non-"Western" or non-European/Anglospheric source isn't going to cut the mustard. If an exception has to be made with regards to the difference between its political vs non political reporting, then we can split the Xinhua source accordingly (as is the case for Sixth Tone on the RSP directory and as was the case for RT) and designate Xinhua as usable for non-political/general topics and unusable for political topics. While there is some agreement that Xinhua is usable for general topics, there is near universal consensus that it is problematic as a source for politics, and the final decision needs to reflect that reality. @Newslinger: and @My very best wishes: The two of you are free to correct me if I am wrong, but I would say (in my lay and non-expert capacity) that the comparison with TASS and I would even go so far as to say RUssia Today is misleading because: 1) Russia is a constitutional democracy and 2) the press freedom situation/ranking in Russia is significantly better than that in the People's Republic of China. At this point I would strongly recommend closing this thread with the result of at least a designation of general unreliability for Xinhua's political reporting given my comments and the tally of the votes above (11 votes for option 3/4 vs 6 votes for option 1 vs 5 votes for option 2 - I've disregarded option 2/3 votes to prevent bias.) Festerhauer (talk) 00:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

  Press TV (RSP entry) is a television network solely targeted to non-Iranians, which makes it the Iranian analogue of RT and China Global Television Network, but not TASS or Xinhua, which are news agencies that serve both domestic and international audiences. Telesur (RSP entry) is a single television network with plenty of competitors, whereas Xinhua (as a news agency) is the closest thing China has to an Associated Press or Reuters, complete with a news exchange agreement with Agence France-Presse as others have mentioned. Yes, China scores lowly on the Press Freedom Index, but there is more to a source's reliability than the country that it is based in, and even in countries with low press freedom, some sources are more reliable than others. Finally (and this applies to both comments above), RfC discussions are not solely assessed through vote-counting, and early closures are not performed unless there is overwhelming support for a single option and close to no support for the other options – which is not the case here. — Newslinger talk 01:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Declaring that Xinhua can't be used for "political" topics would be the worst outcome, as it would substantiate editor fears that this discussion is being used to censor Chinese political viewpoints. Politics is precisely what I would go to Xinhua for: in order to understand the political perspective of China on a given issue. -Darouet (talk) 14:43, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2, In some non-political news, this is still relatively reliable. But for news involving politics or controversy, just because it is the official release channel of the Communist Party of China, this means that it will be accompanied by its political needs to meet its interests. This may deviate from the objective facts.——Cwek (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2, mostly per Cwek. —— Eric Liu_（Talk） 01:34, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3: Xinhua is not just state owned, it is an integral part of the Chinese Communist Party. All information coming from Xinhua should be indicated in the text, not footnotes, of articles. It is a task for someone who actually knows something about China to figure out what is true and false, slanted or straight in a Xinhua article. It is not 4, which I would reserve for unprofessional, low grade conspiracist drivel. It is a professional propaganda unit of the world's largest Communist Party. It has many professional journalists, but its goals are set by the party, its writing is supervised and monitored by the party. Writing which is in any way inconsistent with party policy appears there only by accident, and will be punished. Accuracy is NOT its primary concern, except insofar as it serves the party's purposes. It can and often should be cited in China-related articles, but with clear indication of where the information came from. It should never be used for general information outside China! Why should it be when there are so many accurate and timely sources of information that are not part of the CCP? As for general information inside China, always check whether there are non-Xinhua sources available first. It should never be a default choice and special care in attribution should always be used. Rgr09 (talk) 01:46, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1-2, most of their news reports are reliable. Their political comments may be controversial in neutrality. --Steven Sun (talk) 01:55, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1-2 in general; Option 1 for establishing notability; Option 3 for politics and international relations. I think Xinhua is most problematic when discussing political matters, and any instance of it should be attributed (if used at all). However, given that all mainstream media in mainland China is CCP-influenced, declaring all of them unreliable would have the effect of requiring subjects from China to receive significant coverage using only international sources to be considered notable, leading to systematic bias. As long as it's not making any exceptional or controversial claims, I think Xinhua is reliable for domestic non-political reporting. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:52, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

  @King of Hearts: So just to be clear. Are you saying we should split the evaluation of this source into its reporting on political vs non-political issues (as is the case for Sixth Tone on the RSP directory and as was the case for RT) and designate Xinhua as usable for non-political/general topics and unusable for political topics? Because it seems like that's what you are saying. I am asking because of how similar your position is to mine, which is to close this thread with the result of at least a designation of general unreliability for Xinhua's political reporting Festerhauer (talk) 03:09, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

  I wouldn't split the discussion as we don't have an agreed-upon boundary yet. We do want to think carefully about how we delineate the topics for which Xinhua is considered unreliable, as POV pushers (in either direction) will wikilawyer every single word of the RSP entry to get it to say what they want it to say. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1, a good source.--RuiyuShen 03:06, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1I think Xinhua News Agency is reliable. If you say it is non-neutral, then Fox News, CNN, Voice of America and other media also have non-neutral phenomena. For example, Fox News exaggerates Mr. Trump’s political achievements and CNN has fake news. Voice of America is not neutral in some matters, and my English is not very good, so use Google Translate, please understand!Jerry (talk) 04:21, 5 August 2020 (UTC) — 城市酸儒文人挖坑 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Option 1-2: Most of the time, Xinhua Net is a good source for Chinese news, even it is the best one in all nationwide news agency of China.--Xiliuheshui · chat 04:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1, as I know it is serious and accurate when reporting the facts, and more neutral than RFI, VOA (especially when reporting China). Compared with NYT, BBC, it has less doubts, assumptions and implies which is trying to lead to conspiracys in its reports. Maybe you dont agree with its ideas for it has a Chinese offcial background, but it doesnt mean it is unaccurate when reporting the facts. --“ ROYAL PATROL ” ^{☎ 911} 04:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 when the reports are not about China's politics. KONNO Yumeto 04:29, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 and 2 - Xinhua is a reliable source with special considerations. This is pretty clear cut to anyone who has spent a significant amount of time citing their articles: they are more reliable than many national and international news providers, except on certain topics where there is an incentive to propagandize — and likewise for SCMP. Prohibiting either of these two would have completely unnecessary and wide-reaching consequences across the project, and I would strongly oppose a blanket restriction even on politics because there are dry, non-controversial political stories where they are literally the most reliable source tangible.   — C M B J   04:54, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 2 - A lot of political decision/policy from China Mainland government and China Mainland NPC are published via Xinhua News Agency as official policy release channel, thus needed to be Option 1. For non-politically news, Xinhua News Agency is fairly reliable. For political decision articles that is not marked as "Official Release", they can be in the scope of option 2. VulpesVulpes825 (talk) 05:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 for controversial topics and international politics and Option 2 (situational source) for general topics. Per Newslinger ([29]) Flickotown (talk) 06:54, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2/3, mostly per Newslinger. It is a state propaganda source, so must be used with caution and attribution except the most basic information, such as the dates of Xi's trips (t · c) buidhe 07:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Xinhua is owned by the government of P.R. China and hence they are, or could be, biased when reporting around topics like China's international policy and so on. When reporting most of China's internal news, they are still pretty reliable. Itcfangye (talk) 09:14, 5 August 2020 (UTC) — Itcfangye (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Option 2/3, it is a state propaganda source which should be used with great care.--Hippeus (talk) 11:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 Xinhua News Agency can be regarded as a relatively reliable media in China, and it is actually relatively neutral except for political reports. --⌬Yxh1433 11:41, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Options 2-4 depending on subject. Like RT is a state propaganda mouthpiece. For boring insider baseball it is probably fine. The more the CCP dislikes something or needs spin, the less likely it is to be reliable --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 15:18, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3-4 depending on topic. I came here wanting to argue 2/3 but was convinced by the arguments that (a) RT is in category 4 and (b) actually I have never written about any topic for which Xinhua was a reliable source I depended on - for topics about Mainland Chinese culture and events there are more specialist sources; for anything vaguely political they're firmly in category 3+. Deryck C. 16:17, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. As an official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, use should be attributed by default, which is how their reporting is generally handled in reliable sources I've seen. Reporters Without Borders calls it "the world's biggest propaganda agency" and "at the heart of censorship and disinformation put in place by the communist party". Some straight news and the fact that independent original reporting from China is hard or impossible to come by for certain topics doesn't make it reliable. I think this is most important when considering due weight – if other sources don't cover something they've said, we shouldn't either, and if they do, we should be able to cite those sources instead. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 17:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 for most cases, while Option 4 for global news/politics of regional/global concern . It should be generally reliable in local (China) news, but when it comes to global or regional news, like that in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or even that in Xinjiang, it becomes a propaganda service rather than a global news service. I can't agree with what most Chinese editors think of putting it a direct option 1 because it is the official mouthpiece of China. Being a mouthpiece means some reliable sources for news related to the location, but at the same time, can raise doubt of neutrality and factuality if the thing that they report is of global concern that doesn't align with the country's values.--1233 ( T / C） 00:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1-2 If you choose Option 3 or 4 because of Xinhua is state-run media, how about Yonhap, Tanjug, Anadolu Agency? If you choose Option 3 or 4 because of Xinhua is communist country media, how about VNA, KPL, Prensa Latina? As for Covid-19's source, Xinhua is just quoting rumors on social medias, just like some media (including US-based) said Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan Institute of Virology. I think Xinhua is generally reliable as a news broadcaster, though its political words and opinions are left-wing. 隐世高人 (talk) 09:40, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Some of those would indeed also be unreliable. Volunteer Marek 18:14, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I believe of all the sources you just named Yonhap is the only one we hold to be generally reliable. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 19:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

So what about Antara, MTI, CNA, they are all generally unreliable as state-run media? 隐世高人 (talk) 03:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Antara is complicated and has changed massively over the last three decades. I’ve discussed MTI before and its a middling source but their issues seem to be with selective coverage and boosting of the governing political party there not disinformation. By CNA do you mean Taiwan’s or North Korea’s? I wouldn’t consider either to be of top quality but Taiwan’s CNA would be a solid 2. State media as a category is not inherently reliable or unreliable, its a very diverse group of sources. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:49, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh jeez pete Singapore’s is CNA too isn't it? I would say they’re also a two, they generally produce higher quality journalism than Taiwan’s CNA but Singapore’s press environment and freedoms are inferior to Taiwan’s. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:54, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

When you ignoring Xinhua's left-wing words and opinions which makes it nonneutrality, Xinhua would be generally reliable. 隐世高人 (talk) 02:20, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2 - we should exercise caution regarding all news sources, particularly state-owned sources when it's political, per WP:RECENTISM, WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NPOV, and WP:RSBREAKING while keeping in mind that the paradigm shift from print publication to digital online has made once trusted news sources dependent on clickbait revenue and sensational headlines in a highly competitive cyber environment. Also to consider are the nuanced changes in journalism today which is an opaque blending of opinion journalism and factual information in the same article (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/Op-Ed for links) which creates media spin and makes it difficult for the average reader to distinguish between the two. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:37, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. Pretty obvious. Volunteer Marek 18:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• 'Option 2' It depends on thetopic. For topics of current controversy where the Chinese government had a particular contested opinion, then Option 3. For routine news,Option 1. DGG ( talk ) 10:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 mostly per Hemiauchenia. It is a government news outlet, and in China there is no practical difference between the party and the state. However, Xinhua's articles skew straight reportage rather than publications outright designed to be party propaganda like People's Daily or Global Times. I would trust Xinhua for e.g. statistics of airports in China. feminist (talk) 03:17, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 I find Hemiauchenia's opinion reasonable. wikitigresito (talk) 12:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 - Per Newslinger, because it makes sense to still have a Chinese source for inside China stories. TheKaloo (talk) 15:07, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2. Xinhua's reporting in many underdeveloped news markets is sometimes the only source available online, owing to their global footprint. I don't see any case made for why all of Xinhua's reporting should be presumed bad. [MBFC also rates it mixed. --Bsherr (talk) 17:36, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Just FYI Ad Fontes Media and their media bias fact check are not reliable per Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Ad Fontes Media. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:51, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Media Bias/Fact Check (RSP entry) and Ad Fontes Media (RSP entry) are separate entitites fyi, though they are often mentioned together. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:10, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

You’re right, I’m confusing AFM’s Media Bias Chart with Media Bias Fact Check (shame on me but those are awfully similar). I don’t believe that either is reliable though. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 18:14, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• Object to form of RfC - based on the lack of a succinct question. EllenCT (talk) 03:32, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

  The RfC statement meets WP:RFCBRIEF and this RfC format has been recommended since Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 6 § RfC: Header text. — Newslinger talk 03:35, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1/2 - I am fimiliar with their work, especially in the field of foreign policy when I was researching the Syrian Civil War. Their publications on the topic tended to be accurate, well-informed and corroborated by other news outlets. Furthermore, as another editor noted, they have a cooperation agreement with AFP, which is considered a very trustworthy reputable news agency. Xinhua is state-run media, which could mean editorial viewpoints in line with those of their respective government, but most of their work lacks any serious issues. As long as their reports continue to be accurate, I do not believe that their state-run status ought to be cause enough for a deprecation. For these reasons, I opine that they ought to remain an acceptible source, though may require attribution in cases in which their status as a state-run outlet could be problematic. Goodposts (talk) 17:08, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• Depending on context, location and topic - Option 1-3: Xinhua News Agency is a big news agency, and its reliability differs depending on the topic being covered and its location. Xinhua inherently has a pro-China bias owing to its ownership by the CCP/Chinese government, and editorial oversight is controlled by the Chinese government as well - whether this affects reliability is discussed below. Hence I think Xinhua should be split into multiple entries in the Perennial sources list when it gets added there:

Option 1 for all African and Central/South American and uncontroversial Chinese topics per MarioGom and King of Hearts. The Chinese government has little incentive to propagandise topics covered in Africa (and to a lesser extent Central/South America); in these regions, Xinhua has relatively neutral reporting and its news articles in those regions can be considered generally reliable. Specifically, I should note that English-language reporting in Africa is relatively scarce and Xinhua does help to somewhat plug this void of African-based reporting. This also includes news reports on African politics (as long as China is not directly involved; if China is involved, there will definitely be a pro-China bias, but I don't know if this bias affects their reliability for such cases so Option 2).

Option 2 for all other general topics per Newslinger and Hemiauchenia not covered above or below. From here on citing Xinhua should preferably (but not mandatory) be used together with in-text attribution. Topics that fall into this category include some European topics (i.e Eastern Europe), Oceania topics, South-east Asian topics (except South China Sea), South Asian topics (except the China-India border), the Middle East, etc. For such topics, Xinhua is generally useable, but if other sources are available, cite those sources in addition to the Xinhua article being cited.

Option 3 for all topics where China is involved / has a conflict of interest. Such topics include all North American and some European topics (i.e Western Europe), the politics of East Asia, Taiwan, Tibet, the South China Sea, the China-India border, etc. For such topics, Xinhua can be used for the viewpoints of the Chinese government; outside of that, other sources should be used instead. Citing Xinhua for these topics should use in-text attribution.

Per Newslinger, I don't think Xinhua should be deprecated given that it is the "gold standard" of Chinese reporting. JaventheAldericky (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

You might want to clarify what you mean by "where China is involved". As I explained in my !vote above, I consider Xinhua most reliable for Chinese inside baseball and routine reporting of uncontroversial events that don't rise to international prominence (where Chinese sources are often the only ones available). And since China is one of the biggest investors in Africa, I'm sure the CCP has certain politicians it favors, so I'm not sure it is that great for covering African politics. If Xinhua reports on any international news that isn't covered in other media, that's very suspicious. So for me Xinhua is primarily a source for Chinese domestic matters which are not highly political in nature. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:02, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: With regards to uncontroversial events inside China, I agree with you, so I've amended my !vote accordingly. Xinhua is a good source for non-political matters within China and should be treated as generally reliable for such topics. As for African politics, examples like | this, | this and | this show that Xinhua is relatively unbiased so long as the Chinese government does not have a conflict of interest. JaventheAldericky (talk) 11:20, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I guess for any international news reported by Xinhua it's always going to be on a case-by-case basis. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:42, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2 It is generally reliable when the reports are not about politics.--BlackShadowG^★（talk） 09:10, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. Might occasionally be useful for documenting government statements. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:17, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1. As Thucydides411 noted: If "We're just asking questions" articles are going to be used to deprecate sources, I have bad news, because plenty of "generally reliable" Western news sources have engaged in this exact same sort of wild speculation about the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). I also agree with Darouet re Politics is precisely what I would go to Xinhua for: in order to understand the political perspective of China on a given issue. A biased implementation of policy that ranks Western-aligned media that walk in foreign-policy lockstep as somehow more 'independent' and 'reliable' than non-Western-aligned media does our readers a disservice. Humanengr (talk) 06:14, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1' Option 2. No evidence has been presented of poor journalism, just criticism of the state. It has been demonstrated that there are some issues around Xinhua reporting about China. I think if we are using them as a source on say Tibet, Xinjiang or the South China sea we should look to other sources. That being said it is generally reliable, at leat as much so as a rubbish western outlet like Fox News. If being in step with the CCP makes them unreliable then surely all of Murdoch's papers are unreliable, he once ordered his editors to "Kill Whitlam" our democratically elected Prime Minister during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis which lead to the un-elected opposition taking power. We still consider his rags reliable, and many of them are despite their notoriously partisan owner. Do we have evidence of Xinhua publishing falsehoods? I've seen none. This debate is mostly just pro-china vs anti-china opinion. Bacondrum (talk) 21:52, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Many of Muroch's papers are also considered unreliable by our standards. I feel the issue here is less one of verifiable outright lies and more of what to do when Xinhua is the only source we have on a topic, as is frequently the case given the heavy restrictions on press freedom in China. In those cases, reliable sources I've seen make clear in the body of the text where the information came from (for both plain and dubious claims), and we should as well. That said, they also publish lies and deliberately misleading information, such as that "There are no so-called "re-education bases" in Xinjiang." or that "There are no so-called "wildlife wet markets" in China." even though the market where COVID-19 originated sold wildlife at the time. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 13:57, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Your Australia Yahoo link contained no references to wildlife wet markets. If you cannot provide a link that does, you ought to redact the entirety of your comment, lest be considered in violation of WP:SOAP. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 14:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

User:ReconditeRodent Thanks for your considered response, as always. You've convinced me there are issues with this outlet. Bacondrum (talk) 00:27, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2/3 I'm no fan of the CCP by any means, and I find quite a few false equivalences between this and various Western media among the Option 1-ers, but per KofH and Horse Eye Jack I find that this is an at least tolerable Chinese source (esp. compared with stuff like China Daily) so outright deprecation would give us a systemic bias. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:59, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1-2. When the reports aren't about politics, it's reliable, as China's national news agency. When talking about politics, you should check their reliability separately, not deprecate. --Rowingbohe♬(Talk/zhwiki) 02:29, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 3 per Hemiauchenia. Xinhua is definitely not reliable for any WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim made or any claims where the Chinese government is known to lie (COVID-19, Uyghurs, Hong Kong etc). But it can be a valuable source for non-controversial news in China as well as the views of the Chinese government. Like it or not, that government runs the largest country on earth.VR _talk 05:00, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 - I explain my rationale in the discussion below. Jr8825 • Talk 07:43, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 per Rgr09 and Hemiauchenia. Xinhua is part of the propaganda apparatus of the Chinese Community Party/Chinese government, which does not value press freedom. Per it's article, Xinhua head is a member of the party central commitee. They will prioritize supporting the party/government's political views over truthful reporting (which has been clear to me since I came upon a clearly propagandistic article of theirs about Tibet in Google News results about 15 years ago). They should not be used as a source on any topics that are subject to those political views or are otherwise considered "sensitive" by the party/government. Those topics include, but are not limited to: Xinjiang, Uygurs, Tibet, Tibetans, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Democracy Activists, Protests, Human Rights, COVID-19, any organization or person critical of the party/government, party/government accomplishments, actions of "rival" nations, views of the Chinese people in general on any political topic, Chinese terrtorial disputes, etc. I agree with King of Hearts that there are certain noncontroversial areas where its reporting can reliable, but the number of caveats that have to be placed on it are so great that I think it needs considered generally unreliable, and when it's used a good argument for the reiablity of a prticular article needs to be made on a case by case basis. In most cases, a better source can be found and should be used instead. - GretLomborg (talk) 16:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Xinhua News Agency reports on the facts. There's very little editorializing in its articles, and when there are opinions, it's just quoting government figures, (which are especially relevant, being it's news from China). Deprecating Xinhua would take away a prominant source for news in China. I also agree with some of the other comments, in that a lot of the criticism seems to come from its ownership rather than its reporting. I ask, should we deprecate Deutsche Welle because it's owned by the German government and receives all of its funding from the state? Conflict of interest with DW reporting on German affairs, politics? To me, there just isn't enough evidence that Xinhua should be deprecated based on these facts. LittleCuteSuit (talk) 01:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

  At least Option 2-3. Germany is a full democracy with laws ensuring journalistic freedom, the PRC is a one-party state with laws restricting it. Their state-funded (and even public) journalism systems are nothing alike. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:14, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

We are here to discuss the reliblity of the source. Is there any specific issue regarding factual reporting. Not liking the Chinese government is not a reason to question an oulets reliablity. Bacondrum (talk) 00:16, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3 leaning towards 4. I'm surprised that we are even having this discussion. Shellwood (talk) 10:18, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

User:Shellwood Any reason? Remember, this isn't a democratic vote, you are supposed to provide a reason for your vote. Bacondrum (talk) 00:16, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Bacondrum: Yeah, nope, no reason given for Xinhua just a simple "democratic" vote. It is annoying when people disagree. Shellwood (talk) 01:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

No worries, it's not annoying. Just thought you might have a reason as to why you think the source is generally unreliable or should be depreciated. Bacondrum (talk) 07:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Xinhua)

Pinging participants of the last discussion @SwissArmyGuy:, @Newslinger:, @MarioGom:, @Horse Eye Jack:. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• If there is consensus that Xinhua is generally unreliable, we would need to re-evaluate the reliability of the Global Times (RSP entry), a Breitbart-like tabloid (except state-owned and pro-CCP) that could not possibly be more reliable than Xinhua. — Newslinger talk 03:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  Definitely. If Xinhua is deprecated then almost every single news outlet in mainland China would have to be deprecated. Xinhua is the only publication in mainland China with a news exchange agreement with AFP, for instance. — MarkH₂₁^talk 04:01, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I would support depreciation for *every* mainland news source besides Xinhua. The other government sources are worse and the “independent” sources don’t exist for our purposes as they only re-write and republish content from the government sources. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 19:00, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Every news source should be evaluated on its own merits. Blanket banning of sources from entire countries is a very bad idea. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Its not a blanket ban if theres an exception. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I'll just add that your proposal would mean banning Caixin, which as far as I can tell, does excellent reporting. During the outbreak in Wuhan, for example, it published articles that revealed a lot of previously unknown information about the initial phases of the outbreak and the initial government response. These articles were fairly critical of the government. This is just to illustrate that a blanket ban on an entire country's news sources is misguided. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Legal investigative reporting does not exist in China in a way which would be recognized in the west, what does occur is illegal. Like all other non-government media organizations Caixin is banned from doing independent investigative journalism and primarily publishes rewrites of stories from state media, sometimes they do add their own reporting to these stories but thats not what people in a free country would consider investigative journalism. The problem here is Chinese law, not the companies themselves. If the law changes then we can reconsider. See media in China for more. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I think to add to Horse Eye's statement is I believe exposing stuff on local governments is allowed by the CCP in China but not on the CCP leadership and nor the central government. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:56, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Thats very true, within China the media plays an important role in exposing and/or scapegoating local and regional officials for major problems/corruption to deflect from or obfuscate the failings of higher officials or the CCP. Its much more a kangaroo court of public opinion than what we would recognize as genuine muckraking though. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Caixin did independent investigative reporting about the outbreak in Wuhan, contrary to your blanket statement. More generally, their articles appear to be mostly original content - not reprinted from government media. We should evaluate every news source on its own merits. Deprecating every news source from China, without looking at them one-by-one, would be wrong-headed. You appear to have some very strong preconceptions about Chinese news sources, but the statements you're making about Caixin are just factually incorrect. Political dislike of China by some editors should not trump WP:RS policy. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: If Caixin's reporting was focused on the wrongdoing of the Wuhan municipal government I could see the CCP let them do that, but one would not expect Caixin to do "independent investigative reporting" on the CCP highest leadership. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

"Caixin did independent investigative reporting about the outbreak in Wuhan” source? That would mean they broke Chinese law btw, there is no dispute here that independent journalism as we would recognize it in the free world is illegal in China. China is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to press freedom, they make the Russians look good in comparison. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 15:56, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Caixin does good investigative reporting, as proven by their coverage on Wuhan ([30]), but because you assert that their reporting is actually illegal in China, you want to ban their use on Wikipedia. Where's the logic in that? -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:33, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I missed the part about investigative reporting, is there a specific quote you have in mind? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 20:26, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Did you read the Caixin article I linked? It's packed full of information about the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan that had not been previously known, before the article was published (29 February 2020). Caixin learned this information by talking to people directly on the ground - for example, at labs that had tested samples. This is the sort of high-quality reporting that you're saying should be barred from use on Wikipedia, simply because it comes from China. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:18, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I did read the article, however if I want to read it again I must subscribe. Thats why I’m asking for specific quotes. I also noticed you havent responded to the much meatier comment below. Are all those WP:RS lying? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:10, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: The whole article is here at archive.is. I'll see if I can get one on Megalodon. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:54, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! I’m not seeing a level of information here that would allow us to discern whether or not "It's packed full of information about the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan that had not been previously known.” We need a third party to deliver that analysis. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Every statement in the article that begins with something along the lines of, "Caixin has learned that ..." is based on Caixin's original reporting. There are many such statements throughout the article. For example, almost all the details about how the first patients were discovered to have a novel coronavirus was uncovered by Caixin, by talking with its sources (including people at the testing labs). -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:28, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

How do you know that? I also wonder how you can argue that their board is independent given their Chairman’s affiliation, you do know who he answers to right? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:52, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

There is almost no media freedom or editorial independence in China, per the BBC "Most Chinese news sites are prohibited from gathering or reporting on political or social issues themselves, and are instead meant to rely on reports published by official media, such as state news agency Xinhua.” and media outlets are shut down for doing independent reporting. Most indipendent media outlets have been forced to shut their doors and the few that remain publish under heavy state supervision and control. Xi Jinping has stated that Chinese state media are “publicity fronts” for the CCP/government and that “All news media run by the Party must work to speak for the Party’s will and its propositions and protect the Party’s authority and unity,” (Xinhua translation) Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@Newslinger: how we have not deprecated Global Times is beyond me. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 19:02, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Then start a vote for it. No sarc when I say this, but it should be a guaranteed deprecation given the reputation of that publication/Communist Party rag Festerhauer (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

The last time it was up for discussion Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 294#Global Times I made my views clear, it wasn’t a RfC so a formal deprecation wasn’t on the table. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:44, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Err...so do you want to start an RFC on it or do you want me to? It's better if you did as I'm not familiar with the procedures of rsn. And while we are at it maybe open an RFC on CGTN as well? I mean we might as well given what we have discussed here...Festerhauer (talk) 03:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I don’t believe in starting RfCs from whole cloth, I prefer it to be a specific incident which is escalated here. We don’t want to clutter the space. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 03:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Horse Eye Jack, Festerhauer See Global Times RfC below. It is used in more than a thousand articles, so better deprecate sooner rather than later, imo. (t · c) buidhe 18:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

buidhe we might as well do CGTN too as its between Xinhua and Global Times in reliability, that would be our direct analogue to RT. They also publish straight up disinformation like this gem: "By following CNN, we find how they make fake news about Xinjiang” published on 13 January 2020. I suggest you do as they say and "Click the video to find who's spinning a lie for the audience.” [31] TBH this one video is probably grounds for deprecation. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

To be fair, most of the votes in the TASS discussion were for option 3, yet it wasn't found to be generally unreliable. I think DannyS712 did an excellent job closing that discussion. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

If an exception has to be made with regards to the difference between Xinhua's political vs non political reporting, then we can split the source accordingly (as is the case for Sixth Tone on the RSP directory and as was the case for RT) and designate Xinhua as usable for non-political/general topics and unusable for political topics. The thread above shows that while there is some agreement that Xinhua is usable for general topics, there is near universal consensus that it is problematic as a source for politics, and the final decision needs to reflect that reality. Festerhauer (talk) 00:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

We are only two days into this RfC, and RfCs on this noticeboard are open until there are no new comments in five days, with a minimum duration of seven days. An uninvolved closer will assess the consensus here. It is premature to make such an assessment when the discussion is still highly active. — Newslinger talk 01:07, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Newslinger: Well I would have to respectfully disagree with what you've said. Based on what's written above I just don't see my assessment as being premature. There is near universal consensus that Xinhua is problematic as a source for politics and that needs to be reflected in the final consensus; you don't need to look any further than all the comments that have been made after our above exchange (Cwek, Eric Liu, Rgr09 and Steven Sun). Their voting options may be different but they all agree on one thing: that Xinhua is problematic as a source for politics. You are right when you say that the discussion is highly active but tahat doesn't mean we can't draw stable conclusions in the interim. And you are also right when you say that we ourselves will not be determining the consensus, but of course our contributions are still important as they help determine the consensus. Could you comment on my point above to split Xinhua's source between its political vs non political reporting (as is the case for Sixth Tone on the RSP directory and as was the case for RT) and designate Xinhua as usable for non-political/general topics and unusable for political topics accordingly? Festerhauer (talk) 03:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the Sixth Tone (RSP entry) split would also be appropriate for Xinhua, and I had made a note under my original comment in the survey section referencing Turkey's Anadolu Agency (which is treated similarly) after you submitted your previous comment. Yes, many editors who have already participated in the discussion agree that Xinhua is less reliable for politics, but there are still at least five more days in this centralized RfC, and the consensus could very well shift in either direction. — Newslinger talk 03:07, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Please participate in this discussion regarding the interpretation of WP:Biased. --Seyyed(t-c) 05:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Just to mention that someone placed a link to this page on Chinese wiki's village pump, with an inaccurate claim that "enwp proposes to list Xinhua New Agency as an unreliable or deprecated source" (while this is actually an discussion on reliability-related issues), before the surges of editors with little experience here. --Antigng (talk) 08:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• @Antigng: Except that is exactly what Adoring nanny is setting out to do, considering this previous post of theirs. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 14:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm actually quite impressed that nobody has yet been able to show an example of Xinhua's reporting being factually inaccurate. I came into this assuming that there very well could be problems with Xinhua's accuracy. But all of the criticism has been entirely theoretical - that Xinhua must be unreliable, because of its connection to the Chinese government. But the inability of Xinhua's detractors here to actually present real examples in which Xinhua's reporting has been unreliable has convinced me that the news agency is probably generally reliable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:43, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: With reference to our article Xinhua News Agency, it was easy to find:

• Dodds, Laurence (2020-04-05). "China floods Facebook with undeclared coronavirus propaganda ads blaming Trump". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on April 6, 2020. Retrieved 2020-04-07.
• Zhong, Raymond; Krolik, Aaron; Mozur, Paul; Bergman, Ronen; Wong, Edward (2020-06-08). "Behind China's Twitter Campaign, a Murky Supporting Chorus". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
• Kan, Michael (August 19, 2019). "Twitter Bans State-Sponsored Media Ads Over Hong Kong Propaganda". PC Magazine. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-21.
• Doffman, Zak (August 19, 2019). "China Pays Twitter To Promote Propaganda Attacks On Hong Kong Protesters". Forbes. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-21.
• Lakshmanan, Ravie (2019-08-19). "China is paying Twitter to publish propaganda against Hong Kong protesters". The Next Web. Archived from the original on August 20, 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-21.

Doubtless older resources could be found for less topical matters. GPinkerton (talk) 16:53, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

You posted a bunch of links about China. Do you have anything about Xinhua? I'm asking for actual examples that demonstrate Xinhua's supposed unreliability, not a litany of complaints about the PRC in general. If there are real concerns behind this attempt to deprecate Xinhua, other than general dislike of China, then there should be some specific examples you can give in which Xinhua's reporting is unreliable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: All the articles I listed detail Xinhua, the agency which has been spreading and amplifying misinformation it wrote for the purpose at the behest of its superiors. The headlines mention China, the actual articles describe Xinhua malfeasance in China's service. GPinkerton (talk) 16:49, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Your links show neither "malfeasance" nor "misinformation" by Xinhua. The first link only mentions Xinhua once, and doesn't actually point out any instance of inaccuracy or misinformation in Xinhua's reporting. The second article, from the New York Times, only mentions Xinhua to link to a humorous video they posted on Twitter. I don't think anyone is proposing treating tweets as news articles. I'm sorry, but at this point, you either show actual examples of misinformation printed by Xinhua, or you admit that you can't find any. Decisions on WP:RS have to be based on real facts, not on political dislike of one or another country. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Have you tried taking a peak in the local references section? It doesnt appear you have, why go nuclear on GPinkerton when you havent done your due diligence? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Propaganda by Xinhua, among other state-sponsored channels Chinese and no, is analysed here:

• Ma, Cindy. "Coronavirus Coverage by State-Backed English-Language News Sources". The Computational Propaganda Project. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
• Ma, Cindy. "Covid-19 News and Information from State-Backed Outlets Targeting French, German and Spanish-Speaking Social Media Users". The Computational Propaganda Project. Retrieved 2020-08-06.

by the Oxford Internet Institute. GPinkerton (talk) 18:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I opened the PC Magazine link, and it is a typically incoherent mess and hack job, stating on the one hand In response, Twitter told PCMag it removed the ad cited by Pinboard for violating its ad policies on inappropriate content, which bans advertisements that can be considered inflammatory, provocative, or as political campaigning. Twitter also appears to have removed many other ads Xinhua was promoting concerning the Hong Kong protests., while, in the next paragraph, It isn't the first time a state-run news agency has been accused of spreading misinformation via Twitter ads. Well, which is it? Inflammatory / provocative / political campaigning, or outright "misinformation", for which they provided no evidence of Xinhua itself (and not random accounts) engaging in? Inclusion of tangential links, as Thucydides mentioned, to bait discussion elsewhere is not a sign of good-faith discussion. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 17:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

All you have is somebody else has said this, it is really not that helpful. Do you have the link to an actual article that is in the Xinhua news network's domain that is not reliable? VulpesVulpes825 (talk) 11:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I mean stuff like this is clearly lie by omission. Like TASS, it's reliable for the views of the Chinese government and non-contentious topics. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:56, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

That's an interview with a Chinese government official, in which all views are properly attributed to that official - just as we expect reliable sources to do. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:08, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• "it's reliable for the views of the Chinese government and non-contentious topics". Here is the problem: with sources like that you never know if this is really a personal opinion by a state official or a scripted disinformation he was asked to promote, and you do not know if this is something really "non-contentious" or this is a "kernel of disinformation" about something you know little about. such tactics are generally well known [32]. My very best wishes (talk) 18:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Like this kernel of disinformation put out by gov't official, broadcast by Xinhua: [33]. Or: this bland propagandizing or this. GPinkerton (talk) 18:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

As Comrade J said, 98% of information would be accurate. Only 2% would be the "kernel of disinformation". But you never know which 2%. My very best wishes (talk) 18:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

1. It's perfectly legitimate to report what Chinese officials say. 2. Nothing in that first link is "disinformation." It's a short statement by a government official complaining about anti-Chinese sentiment in the US. You appear to be upset about the idea that a news outlet might actually report on the views of Chinese officials. This is a global encyclopedia, and reporting on the views of Chinese officials is just as important as reporting on the views of American officials here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:38, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• A concrete lie by Xinhua I've seen repeated statements in the RfC that Xinhua doesn't lie, they are just selective. I'd like to point to a counterexample. In this article[34], Kaiser Abdukerim is described as an "expert." The remainder of the article consists mainly of quotes from Kaiser. The choice of word "expert" is therefore crucial in framing how the reader understands the article. And Xinhua introduced that word. The article then goes on to describe his reaction to various "statistics" about death rates, poverty rates, the "happiness index", and so in in Xinjiang. These "statistics" all claim to show dramatic improvements. But the Xinjiang re-education camps hold a large number of people who are utterly destitute, die with considerable regularity, and are surely unhappy.[35] A true expert would notice that the "statistics" could not possibly be correct. For example, it is not plausible that there is a death rate of only 4.26 per thousand in a region where a significant portion of the population is held in such camps. Therefore, Xinhua should not have used the term "expert" to describe Kaiser Abdukerim. But it's actually worse than that. A quick control-F shows that they use the word four times -- once in the headline, and three times in the body. So they are hammering the usage home. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:46, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• @Adoring nanny: Re: the CNN link, using one verified death (of the infant Mohaned) and a former detainee's spurious claim of deaths of fellow detainees is hardly solid evidence, and your die with considerable regularity extrapolation is thus WP:SOAP-violating nonsense. There are numerous examples of former detainees fabricating stories of physical abuse; e.g. that of Sayragul Sauytbay, who witnessed no violence in her facility(ies), per reporting from Aug 2018, yet in Oct 2019 "reporting", somehow was disrobed and violated in front of 200 inmates. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 22:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Per CNN: But Tursun's story of detention and torture -- which she also delivered in full to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2018 -- fits a growing pattern of evidence emerging about the systematic repression of religious and ethnic minority groups carried out by the Chinese government in Xinjiang. Those are CNN's words, not mine. Based on what do you conclude that her account is "spurious"? See also [36]. Adoring nanny (talk) 01:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• Your initial strongest claim above was large number of people who...die with considerable regularity. Per WP:EXTRAORDINARY, I am not going to allow a shifting the goalposts. And as with the Nayirah testimony, yes, people do perjure themselves in human rights testimony to U.S. congressional institutions. And please stop the WP:SHOUTING. There are templates such as {{tq}} which can allow for emphasis in quoting.
• Just for the record, I don't contest the "destitute" part for many detainees who feel utter emptiness in the facilities. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 01:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• Toned down the bolding. You are arguing that nine deaths in a single cell does not support "considerable regularity"? What about this? [37] I am still interested in your assertion that the nine deaths statement is "spurious". Based on what? Does evidence that one person lied support an assertion that a different person lied? Or do you have something more? Adoring nanny (talk) 14:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

You're citing "Radio Free Asia," a US-government-funded outlet established explicitly in order to oppose the Chinese government. Even if we believe the article, it claims that 150 people died, which would not have much of an effect on overall mortality in the region (Xinjiang has a population of over 20 million). -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:50, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• Adding why there are so much Chinese users flocking to this place: someone posted in the Chinese Wikipedia that enwp tried to label Xinhua as unreliable when this is clearly a RfC. Then, these people who basically ruined the Chinese Wikipedia's discussion atmosphere of sensitive topics, flocked here to defend the news agency. They are mostly Chinese and seems to be linked to a working group (which called themselves a User Group) Wikimedians of Mainland China. BTW, this vote sea have been seen in the Chinese Wikipedia at admin votes and some other issues, but it is really another story. Back to this story: there should really be a separation of columns and news articles of Xinhua, where can be seen below:

User:1233's opinion on Xinhua News Agency (and all other agencies with communist influence in China)

Content related to:	Opinion	News Story
China, excluding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan	Normally Reliable	Reliable (considering this is a government mouthpiece)
Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, South China Sea	Proceed with caution, may contain disinformation	Mostly contain disinformation, while in some cases, such level can be considered as fake news
East Asia (Japan, the two Koreas)	Normally Reliable	Proceed with caution, may contain discinformation
South and Southeast Asia	Normally Reliable	Proceed with strong caution, especially related to South China Sea
Africa	Be careful, but mostly Reliable	Reliable, but proceed with caution in news reports about clashes as it may be sided
Other regions with a positive Chinese presence (e.g. Pakistan)	Mostly reliable	Mostly Reliable
Other regions with a negative Chinese presence (e.g. USA)	No comment on opinion	Beware of disinformation, though news tips from Xinhua (and other CCP-controlled media) would mostly be considered ok and could supplement an article in a positive side.

--1233 ( T / C） 15:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• That is interesting. Note to closer: people living in mainland china who don't want to be blacklisted, arrested, or otherwise punished, may not feel free to write something bad about CCP organizations such as Xinhua. People living in China are subject to punishments up to and including disappearance for expressing the "wrong" opinions.[38] See also [Ren Zhiqiang]. Adoring nanny (talk) 13:14, 8 August 2020 (UTC)13:14, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Its actually a bit more pervasive than that... Its any Chinese citizen anywhere in the world, there is a portal maintained by the Chinese Communist Party's Cyberspace Administration which allows users overseas to report Chinese citizens committing political crimes (they can even report them by just their username and the CCP will investigate who is actually behind that account). In July they handles 95,000 reports and thats just for political crimes. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:59, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

@Adoring nanny: It looks like you're telling the closer to discount the views of Chinese editors. Have I misunderstood you here? @Horse Eye Jack: Do you agree with Adoring nanny's suggestion? This is really beyond the pale, in my opinion. -Thucydides411 (talk) 20:14, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I don’t agree with your assertion of what Adoring nanny’s comment does, advising closers to be aware of a relevant legal concern is not the same as telling the closer to discount the views of Chinese editors. Do you disagree with the characterization of the nature of political crimes in China or the Cyberspace Administration's online portal? I doubt the Sydney Morning Herald is making that up. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 20:33, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the practical distinction between "advising closers to be aware of a relevant legal concern" about Chinese editors and "discount[ing] the views of Chinese editors." Anyone can see what Adoring nanny is asking the closer to do - to treat the Chinese editors as if their votes are based on fear of their government, and therefore to ignore them. I don't see any other plausible interpretation of Adoring nanny's statement. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:05, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Failure to WP:AGF would be unwise, I’ve already given you another plausible interpretation of Adoring nanny's statement. That you don’t see a distinction between them is your opinion, I see a very large distinction and you need to respect that. Also consensus isn't about votes, wikipedia (like China) isn't a democracy. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:25, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Spell out the distinction: how should the closer take this legal concern into account? If the implication isn't that the closer should discount the opinions of Chinese editors, then what is it? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

There is a discussion about that issue that needs to be had. But on this RfC, it's a distraction, so I've struck much of my comment. Adoring nanny (talk) 22:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

The USA runs Guantanimo Bay, can you tell me how many people went through that camp, what their names were and what crimes they had been accused of, what they were eventually charged with, how much time they served? We will never know how many have been disappeared after being subjected to "extraordinary rendition", the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another with the purpose of circumventing the former country's laws on interrogation, detention and torture (A crime against humanity in international law). The USA has been disappearing people with collusion from British and Polish security agencies since the 90's and they continue till this day. Do we suggest US media sources are unreliable based on these well known facts? Bacondrum (talk) 21:37, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - It seems to me that Xinhua's reporting fits the description of WP:QUESTIONABLE, so should be considered generally unreliable and fall into option 3. Consider "a poor reputation for checking the facts or with no editorial oversight": here is a Xinhua article that states, without qualification, in the headline, lead and article body that 'over 470,000 people gathered on Saturday in a rally held at Tamar Park'. A factual source would at the very least attribute this number to the rally organisers, and to be accurate and reliable would also say that the police estimate of turnout was 108,000 (contrast an accurate report of the same rally).

I've seen three main lines of reasoning for treating Xinhua as option 2. Firstly, per @Hemiauchenia:, that there's no strong evidence that Xinhua sometimes acts as propaganda à la RT. I point back to the linked article above. Considering the topic is a pro-police rally in Hong Kong, sentences such as 'people from all walks of life take part in a rally to voice their opposition to violence and call for restoring social order, expressing the people's common will to protect and save the city', and phrases such as protestors 'say "no" to violence', are clear, blatant propaganda. As Xinhua is not WP:INDEPENDENT from the CCP, it's fair to presume that the article is intended to mislead readers about the scale of pro-police protests, amount of popular support for pro-democracy protests and promote an image of pro-democracy protestors as only seeking violence. ReconditeRodent linked a report that confirms how the CCP controls/influences Xinhua's output.

The second argument is one that @MarkH21: and @Newslinger: make, that Xinhua isn't fundamentally unreliable for factual reporting, but simply skews, manipulates or otherwise misrepresents facts. Essentially, because it's a news agency it's the 'gold standard' for factual reports within China. However, as Horse Eye Jack has rightly pointed out, the sad truth is that there is very limited media freedom in the PRC and therefore can be no factually reliable large-scale WP:NEWSORGs, Xinhua is no exception. Returning to the above article, it's obviously unrealistically generous to account for its inaccuracy as a gross failure of fact-checking. For this reason, I think it's worth looking back at WP:QUESTIONABLE, which also says "beware of sources that sound reliable but do not have the reputation for fact-checking that this guideline requires" per the 2017 Daily Mail RfC. There seems to be a presumption that Xinhua, because it has less commentary and analysis, is factually accurate. How can there be evidence for this, even on non-sensitive issues, if it has no independent editorial oversight or reputation for trustworthy fact-checking?

The final argument, made by @Darouet: and Mark H21, is that Xinhua is a reliable source for illustrating the Chinese government's position. On this point I agree with Wug·a·po·des - the political concerns of the Chinese government will be analysed and discussed by political science journals, current affairs magazines and well-respected research groups such as Brookings or Chatham House in a much more reliable, neutral and rigorous way (and without having disinformation mixed in), while factual claims by Xinhua can be confirmed by more reliable news or statistics sources. Jr8825 • Talk 07:43, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

References (Xinhua)

References

RfC: Global Times

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 Global Times (globaltimes.cn  )? It is used in more than a thousand Wikipedia articles.

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail?

(t · c) buidhe 18:32, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey (Global Times)

• Option 4 a tabloid newspaper known for disinformation, state propaganda, and conspiracy theories [39][40] (t · c) buidhe 18:32, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4: Almost all of the attention for the Global Times is focused on its outlandish editorials, which should never be used outside of WP:ABOUTSELF regarding its authors. Their factual reporting also has major issues and should be regarded as unreliable; so possibly a 3 for non-editorials, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Global Times' false reporting extended to its factual reporting. — MarkH₂₁^talk 19:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. I wouldn't rely on the Global Times for anything except to get a sense of the most hawkish and nationalistic propaganda coming from Chinese state media. Only usable for WP:ABOUTSELF, I think. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:46, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. While Xinhua (RfC above) exhibits some of the highest-quality reporting that mainland China has to offer, the Global Times exhibits some of the lowest-quality reporting. The main factor that distinguishes the Global Times from other Chinese state-owned publications is that the content published by Global Times is not necessarily aligned with the position of the Chinese government. Often, the Global Times exaggerates to generate a reaction, which frequently leads to Western publications incorrectly describing what the Global Times says as China's stance on an issue. This is a mistake: even though the Global Times is owned by the more respectable People's Daily, the Global Times is just a tabloid that publishes polemic for the sake of polemic (or in other words, propaganda). The Global Times serves the same purpose as Breitbart News (RSP entry) in the US, but is state-owned and takes a stance favoring the Chinese Communist Party. Here are some quotes from reliable sources that describe the Global Times, taken from my previous comment in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 271 § Chinese news sources:

Quotes about the Global Times from reliable sources

As tensions rise on the Korean Peninsula, the world’s eyes are on China’s response. And "China" has given plenty of answers. "China Offers to Defend Kim Jong-un If He Gives Up His Nuclear Weapons," read one National Interest headline. "China Warns North Korea Not to ‘Cross Point of No Return’ With Nuclear Test," claimed Breitbart. The problem is, it wasn't the Chinese government issuing these statements; it was a market-driven tabloid that strives for exactly this sort of attention. [...] By its own admission, the paper’s actual relationship with China’s levers of power is tangential at best. And while the Global Times and the Chinese government have interests that overlap, they aren’t nearly identical. Several current and former editors at the paper say business incentives drive it to be intentionally provocative whenever possible. Provocations that involve straying from the official line of the Chinese government are welcome, so long as they don’t entirely sever the illusion of a tight connection between it and the newspaper. "China's Angriest Newspaper Doesn’t Speak for China", Foreign Policy Few countries have invested more man-hours in suppressing awkward facts than China. Internet censors employ more foot-soldiers than some armies. Propaganda officials are so strict that, lest instructions faxed to newsrooms leak, they issue some orders to squelch stories by telephone, to be recorded by hand. Yet the rules do not bind all equally. The Global Times is a jingoistic tabloid that tackles topics shunned by rivals, even though it is a subsidiary of the Communist Party mouthpiece, the important-but-turgid People's Daily. [...] It is not fashionable in China to take the Global Times seriously. Mention it at dinner with Chinese intellectuals and fireworks follow. They deplore its sabre-rattling towards Taiwan and Japan, and its deep reservoirs of grievance (this week the paper peddled a largely confected tale accusing Swedish police of brutalising some rowdy Chinese tourists). "China's Global Times plays a peculiar role", The Economist (RSP entry) China's most belligerent tabloid, the Global Times, is certainly a one-of-a-kind publication. The Chinese- and English-language news outlet is published by the ruling Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) paramount mouthpiece, the People's Daily, but it goes much further than China’s typically stodgy state news. The Global Times is best known for its hawkish, insulting editorials—aggressive attacks that get it noticed, and quoted, by foreign media around the world as the "voice" of Beijing, even as the party's official statements are more circumspect. "Inside the Global Times, China’s hawkish, belligerent state tabloid", Quartz The tabloid that Hu edits is known for its nationalistic coverage and bellicose opinions, which are frequently quoted by Western media. Like all state media outlets in China, it operates within a heavily censored environment that is tightly controlled by Communist authorities. Published in both Chinese and English, the Global Times boasts a daily circulation of two million copies, and every month its website attracts around 30 million unique visitors. Where other state media outlets adopt a more measured tone, Hu's paper takes a combative approach to covering international issues by calling out perceived threats and slights to China from across the world. "The man taking on Hong Kong from deep inside China's propaganda machine", CNN (RSP entry) From the preceding discussion of Huanqiu Shibao and Global Times, we can see that the two newspapers operate within the broad boundaries of the Party-state's propaganda strategy. The domestic edition pursues commercial objectives and strives to differentiate itself from its official state-run parent publication, People's Daily. It also maintains propaganda discipline by upholding the Party-state's main melody on important issues that shape China's interaction with the rest of the world. The international edition seeks to bring a nonofficial, pluralist Chinese perspective to foreign audiences. When it comes to sensitive subjects such as human rights and democracy whether there is conflict between the official Chinese discourse and Western discourses, however, Global Times seems more likely to reproduce the main melody than to provide a venue for the expression of a plurality of Chinese perspectives. The Globalization of Chinese Propaganda, p. 149, Springer

If the Global Times is ever used (primarily under WP:ABOUTSELF), it should be attributed in-text as a biased or opinionated source. The attribution should be made to the Global Times specifically, and not to "China". — Newslinger talk 19:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 per above and for the fact that Global Times has been criticised for its coverage by the Chinese government itself. 1 Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:57, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, one of the worst in the world among the major state media outlets. Deprecation benchmarks RT and Daily Mail are superior in almost every way to Global Times, I don’t see any wiggle room on this one. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 20:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Per Newslinger's sources --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 18:18, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, Newslinger's sources make it pretty clear that its widely recognised as a state owned propoganda outlet at best, which is saying something. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 20:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per nom. That newspaper does not even pretend to provide reliable information about anything. My very best wishes (talk) 02:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. This really is just a propaganda outlet. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 concerning its propaganda service nature, and how much the world agrees on its nature as a propaganda service.--1233 ( T / C） 23:51, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. Straight propaganda. feminist (talk) 03:20, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 pure propaganda. Cavalryman (talk) 13:18, 8 August 2020 (UTC).
• Option 3 Propaganda. KONNO Yumeto 09:35, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. Pure tabloid propaganda. Sometimes Global Times (or Hu Xijin, should I say?) takes on a straw-man role with extreme opinions that go beyond Chinese state propaganda as a means for the CCP to test the waters regarding particularly controversial positions. As a result we can't even say GT reliably represents Chinese government opinion. I thought for a while about GT opinion being so notable that they might be cited and inline-attributed, but on second thoughts figured out that more reliable news outlets will have covered those opinions if they were sufficiently notable (in the news media sense, not the Wikipedia sense). Deryck C. 22:58, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 There's long been a consensus in the reliable sources I've seen that the Global Times is essentially a propaganda outfit, and is not a reliable source for facts. Nick-D (talk) 03:53, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 - They have been officially chastised by Chinese authorities for their publications before, so their editorial line cannot even be said to be in line with that of the Chinese government. Neither does it even match that of their parent company, whose standard of publishing is far, far higher. Couple that with the criticism over conspiracy theories and you have a good argument for being very careful with them. Perhaps they might be kept around when referring to perticularly jingoistic strains of Chinese society, though. Would be open to having that discussion, though it should be handled with care. Goodposts (talk) 19:13, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 The Global Times effectively combines the "reliability" of the Daily Mail and state intervention of RT with Chinese propaganda to produce a tabloid milkshake that is likely to be reliable for... uhh... "facts". JaventheAldericky (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Propaganda.--BlackShadowG^★（talk） 12:39, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per nom. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:21, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per[41]. If you have the slightest doubt, follow the link and read as much as you can stand, and compare with a sane article about Lai here[42].Adoring nanny (talk) 05:18, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 CPC mouthpiece, plus high unreliability and spurious claims. HalfdanRagnarsson (talk) 10:48, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 The quotes provided by Newslinger are compelling. The negative quotes are provided by the highest caliber of sources that we have. Such a propaganda source is not necessary on Wikipedia. As the quotes mention there are other possible sources that Wikipedia is able to use concerning the workings of China. And sure aboutself if necessary as option 4 allows. --Guest2625 (talk) 06:48, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Pure propaganda. 唔重要嘅人 (talk) 13:15, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Per above Flaughtin (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 It's not just propaganda, but trollish propaganda: "Strikingly, rather than claiming that Western journalists misreport Xinjiang, the Global Times prefers to troll them, accusing foreign correspondents of hoping to “profit” from negative China coverage, while asserting that the Western press is “nowhere near as influential as it once was” and gleefully noting Mr Trump’s attacks on “fake news”." (from the Economist article above, just before the quoted section). - GretLomborg (talk) 17:14, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 It's necessary to have a media to express those opinion against those five eye medias which are full of double standard and false propaganda about China,such as BBC,CNN and FINANCIAL TIMES.Erquanmen (talk) 03:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 The same could be said about the People's Daily. Shellwood (talk) 10:20, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Global Times)

The votes above are amazing. Every single source listed by anyone notes that the Global Times is an important voice of hawkish elements within the Chinese establishment. If you take the sources seriously, its perspective is necessary to understand Chinese politics, but is obviously biased. Here on Wikipedia, editors cite these sources but then counter that we should deprecate the Global Times. What is the point of the categories Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply, or Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting, when we so often think in the binary terms reliable vs deprecation? -Darouet (talk) 16:41, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Options 2 or 3 are for sources like Xinhua not bottom of the barrel tabloids like the Global Times. I see no evidence that anyone is thinking in binary terms, can you say more about why you feel that way? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:49, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Right this isn't a binary thing, it's just that there's a consensus that the source is too unreliable to use for anything except possibly statements about itself. Oh, and it's a great source for alternative facts, but Wikipedia doesn't traffic in such things. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

User talk:Horse Eye Jack & User:Anachronist: Why hasn't this been snow closed yet? The above votes show consensus to deprecate. Flaughtin (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Flaughtin: Probably because the closer has to be familiar with the process of deprecating a source? I could close it, but is there more to do than simply tagging this conversation as closed and updating the list at WP:DEPRECATED and possibly also WP:RSP? Does an edit filter need to be set up? ~Anachronist (talk) 18:34, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Anachronist: I can't answer your questions because I just don't know. All I know is that threads can be closed (I just looke at the examples on this page) but I don't know all the technical requirements that have to be met for it to go through. That is why I pinged you two in the hopes that you may know. Flaughtin (talk) 20:49, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Flaughtin: Newslinger was kind enough to explain the process to me here. It's more complicated than I expected, but it's done. ~Anachronist (talk) 16:37, 4 September 2020 (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.

RFC: China Global Television Network

What is the reliability of China Global Television Network (cgtn.com  )?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail?

(t · c) buidhe 22:44, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey (CGTN)

• Option 4 known for lies and propaganda: "It has a consistent record of blatantly and egregiously violating journalistic standards and encouraging or justifying hatred and violence against innocent people." The Diplomat, September 2019 Reporting things they know to be false is my benchmark for deprecation. (t · c) buidhe 22:44, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

It's worth noting that this is an opinion piece, for what that's worth, much of the piece is dedicated to the reporting of CCTV in mainland China, not just CGTN. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:15, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Its also worth noting that Sarah Cook is a subject matter expert, she’s Freedom House’s Senior Research Analyst for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and the author of their 2020 report Beijing's Global Megaphone [43] which features CGTN heavily. Also the 2019 report China Central Television: A Long-standing Weapon in Beijing’s Arsenal of Repression [44] which is what The Diplomat re-published. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:23, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

It's important to note that Freedom House is funded by the US government. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:02, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 (Contentious issues relating to China) Option 2 for Africa Bureau. I can understand why deprecating CGTN for stuff like Xinjiang is necessary, for stuff like this piece. CGTN has repeatedly aired forced confessions, see 1 2, which has been found to violate UK broadcasting rules 3 The Arabic language version of CGTN also ran a video pushing COVID 19 disinformation. 4. However, I think that it's coverage of issues unrelated to China like for instance its African Bureau are okay and can be probably treated in the same way Xinhua can. Over 1/8 of our entire references to CGTN are to its African Bureau per africa.cgtn.com  , there's not much reason to doubt their reporting that Singapore exploring feasibility for direct flights, as cited on Kenya–Singapore relations, is accurate, maybe these stories are be covered in other African outlets and therefore citing CGTN is redundant I don't know. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• Re: your Xinjiang link, simply stating it as "deprecation-worthy" does not make it so; the only remotely objectionable quote begins with Can you believe your ears? "This is apparent"…Such sentences should never have been the language of a researcher!, which is clearly the opinionated voice of Liu Xin, not an attempt at "factual reporting". CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 23:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@CaradhrasAiguo: It's clearly an attempt at analysis, rather than just straight opinion. Stuff like Western media lies about China's Xinjiang is more blunt. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

If you can overlook the "bias" and "negative media" soapboxing, Barrett is wholly correct about the metholodogy: Quartz admitted themselves that the common estimates of 1M+ detained first derived as follows: The estimate used most widely for over a year—of a million Uyghur Muslims held in Chinese camps—was arrived at using similar methods by a group called China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), and by Zenz. But how many CHRD interviewees actually provided estimates of detention ratios? Follow thru to the CHRD link, and navigate to The following table presents the data we have compiled based on interviews with eight ethnic Uyghurs. Their families reside in eight different villages in counties in the Kashgar Prefecture. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 00:33, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 on Africa Bureau, per Hemiauchenia, on non-contentious issues in mainland China (snooker, opening of the Baoji–Lanzhou high-speed railway) and issues wholly unrelated to the PRC government, such as this piece on Fair Wayne Brant's life sentence in Louisiana, comparable to The Guardian. No opinion on contentious issues. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 23:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 due to a complete lack of a reputation for fact checking, zero editorial independence, and specific disinformation stories like "By following CNN, we find how they make fake news about Xinjiang” published on 13 January 2020 [45]. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:17, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per Buidhe. Cavalryman (talk) 13:22, 8 August 2020 (UTC).
• Option 1 Per CaradhrasAiguo. 隐世高人 (talk) 02:38, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 for topics related to East Asian politics; Option 3 for other coverage. I don't think I need to rehash all the disinformation CGTN has purveyed in any topic related to the PRC/CCP. Beyond China and her neighbours, CGTN isn't much better either - for example CGTN Europe regularly cherry-picks and misinterprets evidence in order to present a narrative that unduly emphasises internal division within Europe, which fits CCP's strategic interests in the region, and often get their facts wrong in the process. Today CGTN churned out this sensationalist piece about the UK government's internal deliberations about refugees crossing the English channel, which tries to paint the UK's plan to deploy the military as more confirmed than it actually is, and France's response as more antagonistic than it really is (compare e.g. The Guardian (which is usually pro-refugee) and BBC (which is usually pro-UK gov't)), and seems to have misattributed Priti Patel's opinion to her colleague Chris Philp. Deryck C. 22:50, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• CGTN is effectively China's equivalent of the BBC foreign service and Voice of America. The BBC isn't exactly a reliable source to deprecate with here. One state funded news source shouldn't be used to deprecate another especially when they have a strong incentive to say that CGTN is unreliable. I would agree that CGTN has significant bias in favour of Chinese goals and opinions but that's only warranting option 3 and not full blown deprecation. There are many cases where CGTN can be used as a source, such as opinion pieces by Chinese writers, domestic Chinese news, or possibly its Africa bureau. For example this analysis piece on the China Basketball League [46] might be a good source and their coverage of Africa might be useful as well considering systemic bias in western sources. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 14:36, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. Well said: "lack of a reputation for fact checking, zero editorial independence, and specific disinformation stories". No, this is not BBC. My very best wishes (talk) 16:09, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• Depending on context, location and topic - Option 1-4: CGTN's reliability differs depending on the topic being covered and its location. CGTN inherently has a pro-China bias owing to its ownership by the CCP/Chinese government, and editorial oversight is controlled by the Chinese government as well - whether this affects reliability is discussed below. Hence I think CGTN should be split into multiple entries in the perennial sources list when it gets added there:

Option 1 for all African topics (except topics related to the Belt and Road Initiative). The Chinese government has little incentive to propagandise topics covered in Africa (with the exception of topics about the Belt and Road Initiative); in these regions, CGTN has relatively neutral reporting and its news articles in those regions can be considered generally reliable. This also includes news reports on African politics (as long as China is not directly involved; if China is involved, Option 2). CGTN does not touch much on Central/South America as compared to Xinhua, so it is not included here.

Option 2 for topics about China's allies, the Belt and Road Initiative and CGTN documentaries. CGTN can be used for such topics but must have in-text attribution. Where other sources are available for the same topic, other sources should be used in lieu of or in conjunction with the CGTN source.

Option 4 for all topics where China has a conflict of interest. Such topics include all North American and Western European topics, the politics of East Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, the South China Sea, the China-India border, etc. At this point CGTN tends to go full-on propaganda mode and should not be used. JaventheAldericky (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree that China doesn't have an interest in Africa. They after all want African countries to sign on to the Belt and Road Initiative. (t · c) buidhe 00:11, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: That's true, but for other African topics not related to the Belt and Road Initiative, like | this, CGTN provides factual reporting instead of propaganda. Nevertheless, I've amended my !vote above. JaventheAldericky (talk) 11:36, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Just FYI Africa is currently the primary focus of China’s information operations etc outside Asia... We call contemporary Chinese diplomacy Wolf warrior diplomacy after the Wolf Warrior series of movies, specifically Wolf Warrior 2. Where do you think Wolf Warrior 2 is set? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:41, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

It's implied in the article. Wolf warrior diplomacy is a result of backlash towards constant bombardment of Chinese criticism from Western mainstream media as well as refusal for China-based media to have any say or defend Chinese actions due to perception as biased for being state-based. An example would be this, and no other mainstream media pointed out the obvious bias and double standard NYT portrayed. It naturally leads to the perception that Chinese must have a strong narrative to defend themselves. NoNews! 10:21, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 per Buidhe and also per [47]. Per the NYT, It is controlled by the Communist Party and serves as part of what Mr. Xi has called Beijing’s "publicity front." We should not indulge such outlets by granting exceptions in certain areas. It is impossible to predict what might become important to lie about when, and our policies should recognize that. Adoring nanny (talk) 22:50, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 3: Echoing what I said in the recent RSN discussion about CGTN, it's a source that should only be used in limited circumstances, e.g topics that are non-political contexts like tourism information or uncontroversial cultural highlights. It should generally be WP:INTEXT-attributed and should not be used for anything remotely contentious. — MarkH₂₁^talk 10:37, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per Buidhe and Adoring nanny. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:23, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3, as China's emulation of RT. feminist (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per buidhe. Willing to lie and misrepresent information, and impossible to use for due weight due to its lack of independence. Airs forced confessions. Also applies to Africa, where China obviously has interests. Some straight news doesn't make it reliable – the Diplomat analysis even mentions this: "While it initially aims to build local audiences with attractive and innocuous content, it can be mobilized at key political moments to attack CCP opponents." Genuinely notable events will be covered elsewhere. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 16:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

References

• Options 1-4: as per User:JaventheAlderick -- but with additional stress that no press (including UK or US-based media) has any monopoly on truth or moral high ground when they report on any contentious topics; all such reports need to be attributed and cross-checked and not automatically assumed as factual. NoNews! 10:21, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
• Options 4 per above Flaughtin (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Options 4 --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 13:21, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per buidhe and Deryck C. GretLomborg (talk)
• Option 4 Shellwood (talk) 10:25, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 for non-controversial Mainland China news (e.g. they opened _____ train line or whatever), option 2-4 for controversial issues such as HK/Macao/Taiwan. Félix An (talk) 03:44, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (CGTN)

• @Buidhe: Thank you for writing this! I notice Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources doesn't include CCTV so I'm not sure if this RFC should cover CCTV too, or if that should be separate, or if it's worth doing? Also note CGTN was once CCTV's English operations. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

  WhisperToMe, I noticed that CCTV has dozens of stations so I was worried that it might become a WP:TRAINWRECK if one or two of them turned out to be not as bad. (t · c) buidhe 22:50, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

  Buidhe Ah, I see. I was thinking in regards to the internet presence (it's less likely people may use TV clips for sourcing). The foreign language CCTV pages are all now CGTN anyway and CCTV now only covers Chinese language content. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:52, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

This isn't actually true english.cctv.com   exists, some of the content is syndicated from Xinhua, but other stuff like this piece appears to be original reporting. We also appear to have a large number of chinese language citations to CCTV per CCTV.com  . Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• Didn't we just have an RSN discussion on CGTN three months ago? — MarkH₂₁^talk 23:17, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

  That wasn't an RfC and doesn't appear to have settled the issue, with multiple users calling for an RFC above. (t · c) buidhe 23:19, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe, Buidhe, MarkH21, and Hemiauchenia: Why hasn't this been snow closed yet? The above votes show consensus to deprecate. Flaughtin (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack and Anachronist: Based on your contributions to the Global Times thread, can you two take a look at this one as well? Flaughtin (talk) 20:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

RFC: Daily Star

What is the reliability of the Daily Star (United Kingdom)?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail

Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Responses (Daily Star)

• Option 4 Has been shown to publish false and fabricated information, see Daily_Star_(United_Kingdom)#Dwayne_"The_Rock"_Johnson_interview_fabrication, where an interview with Dwayne Johnson was fabricated and which they were called out for, and Daily_Star_(United_Kingdom)#Grand_Theft_Auto_Rothbury where they falsely claimed that the GTA creators was going to make a game based on Raoul Moat, which is defamatory. Many uses of the Daily Star are on BLP articles, which is unacceptable given its unreliability. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:57, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Makes the Daily Mail look like a broadsheet. Red tops are just not acceptable for an encyclopaedia. Usual common sense exemptions. GPinkerton (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Deliberately falsifying information has always been my benchmark for deprecation. (t · c) buidhe 18:06, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 - I wouldn't have worried (it's obvious trash), but fabrication crosses the line - David Gerard (talk) 18:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 one of the worst type of tabloids, full of titillation and sensationalism, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 22:40, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Another crappy red top that publishes outright lies.Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 13:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 - Is not a fit source for an encyclopedia. Neutrality^talk 22:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 A tabloid that deliberately fabricates information should not be allowed to be cited on Wikipedia at all. Goose^(Talk!) 01:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 This is less reliable than the Daily Mail. Kill it with fire. Scorpions13256 (talk) 19:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 - Unreliable. I'm not !voting for deprecation since in the best documented case we have of the paper pushing a false story, they seem to have been a victim of a fraudulent freelancer, rather than the architects of the fabrication. — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. Crap, but I don't know that it makes shit up the way the Mail does. Guy (help! - typo?) 00:10, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. Tabloid reporting. Undecided between 3 and 4.--Hippeus (talk) 11:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Daily Star)

We currently have around 1,500 citations to the Daily Star per dailystar.co.uk  , most of which appear to be on BLP articles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

urgh. And that'll be tabloid gossip being used as a source on celebrity BLPs, then. Pretty sure I wouldn't even trust the Daily Star for sports scores. They're now owned by Trinity Mirror, and may be a little less rabidly awful lately - but it's still a trash-tier source - David Gerard (talk) 18:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• David Gerard is right to characterise the paper as trash tier. However they are not a Daily Mail style clickbait factory and one documented case of apparent fabrication in over 9 years is not exactly terrible for a high circulation UK tabloid. Did any particular problems lead to this RfC? This looks more like 'option 3 with special BLP concerns' to me as it stands. — Charles Stewart (talk) 14:45, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Fabricating an interview with a major celebrity and putting it as your front page story is pretty brazen, Roy Greenslade's retrospective in The Guardian is an interesting read:

It has become a pathetic article, a travesty of a newspaper, having lost any sense of purpose. Yet it obviously fills some need, because it sells 355,000 copies a day, and its print decline is no worse than that of its rivals.

It survives on a diet of sex, still featuring a topless model on Page 3 each day, and on celebrity trivia. The Star is a newspaper without either news or views. If it can be said to have any political outlook at all, then it is rightwing. There is no passion, no commitment, no soul.

Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:59, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Greenslade's history is amusing, thanks. Digging into the fabricated interview, "Staff at the newspaper suggested the supposed interview was provided to the Daily Star by a freelance journalist and then written up by the staff reporter whose byline appeared on the piece.//The unnamed freelance reporter is thought to be abroad and not responding to messages." [48], which shows a serious failure and casual attitude to fact-checking, but not a Daily Mailesque culture of fabrication. As a source it neither is reliable nor does it seem to cover stories other sources miss, so I'd lose no sleep over deprecation, but the positive case for it doesn't look clear-cut to me. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:36, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

RFC: New York Post (nypost.com)

What is the reliability of the New York Post?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 10:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Responses (New York Post)

• Option 3  Option 4 – The Post has a generally unreliable track record of fact-checking. In one particularly memorable example, the paper's coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombing shows several instances of failure to fact-check before rushing to print. The website is of particular concern. Online articles are rarely to almost never corrected. To this day, the website claims that "12 people were killed" in the bombing. (Only 3 people died) There are several instances from the bombing that show its lack of fact-checking. (Criticized in [49][50][51][52]) In the space of a few days, the Post had ruined the lives of at least 3 innocent people which it had accused as suspects in the bombing, going so far as to post a photograph of two of them on the front page with the headline "BAG MEN: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon". Mistakes happen but the Post has an almost "I don't care" attitude on fact-checking. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 10:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Relabeling a clear false story about COVID-19 as opinion, instead of retracting it, takes the cake. This shows irresponsible and dangerous intent to misinform and no regard for truth. I have to change my !vote to Option 4. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:42, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 The evidence of fakery means they should never be used.Slatersteven (talk) 11:46, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2. I’m concerned about deprecating the Post entirely, because we would be losing a valuable source for New York politics and news. Not to mention that yet another conservative leaning news outlet is being brought here. We should use caution but not entirely ban it. -- Calidum 12:21, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Infrequently valuable, but not never. Mainly replying to the latter. If you can find the sort of evidence C+C has presented here about the Daily News, an RfC may be due to talk about that one, too. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:12, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per the evidence from Coffeeandcrumbs below. I'm not worried about the balance of outlets that we depreciate. If right-leaning outlets would like to be seen as reliable, they can report the facts and make corrections when they get things wrong. I would be more than happy to re-allow the Daily Mail if their standards increased. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 13:10, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 per Coffeeandcrumbs's evidence, New York Post#Controversies, [53][54], and my personal impression. Rightly or wrongly, high quality sources do occasionally cite New York Post. I'm not really opposed to option 4, but I would prefer that we don't deprecate sources that may be useful in rare cases. - MrX 🖋 13:31, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3.5 per MrX. They are rarely the sole source of first-reporting on any meaningful factual story, they have a reckless disregard for fact checking, and evidence that they may even make up stories out of whole cloth. I would rather use better sources for anything that is widely reported, and I'd be suspect of the veracity of anything that only the Post is reporting. I may carve out a VERY small exception for where their initial reporting is vetted by an actual real source, but even then I'd like to see both sources side by side as a minimum. --Jayron32 15:48, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

• Qualified Option 3. Absolutely never should be used for controversial claims about living people (it's a tabloid after all). Beyond that, the subject they struggle with most seems to be crime and crime-adjacent topics. The Post's NYC is a scary place filled with "thugs" and "gang-bangers" and violent homeless people/protesters/immigrants, with politicians who won't do anything to protect you. Their willingness to jump into a story without doing their due rigor is pretty well documented, and the evidence C+C provided about missing retractions/corrections is problematic. When covering politics in general, they have a bias that's strong enough to affect their factual reporting, sometimes blurring opinion and news reporting. That said, there are times when the Post's coverage of local NYC topics is useful. For the most part it's better cited to the other sources which make use of the Post's reporting but do their own vetting, but I feel like there have been stories about NYC public projects, local institutions, what's going on in local agencies, etc. that are useful enough and innocuous enough that I'd hope there would be room for an occasional exception. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:09, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 - The Post is a tabloid, and like all tabloids should be used with caution because it runs to sensationalism in how it covers news stories. That said, it is usually accurate once you get past the sensationalism of its format. The print version does contain an “errors and retractions” section (which is one of the ways we differentiate between reliable and unreliable news outlets). From some of the comments above, it sounds like there may be problems with the website that are not found in the hard-copy paper. Blueboar (talk) 16:38, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 like The Sun. Ample examples of outright fabrication of facts and quotes on all sorts of stories to the point that it just seems like the way they operate. I can’t say to what extent the print edition issues retractions but almost none of the online versions of false or misleading stories listed in the discussion below have been retracted or corrected. After falsely accusing people of involvement in the Boston marathon bombing, the Columbia Journalism Review said of the paper that it “deserves no benefit of the doubt. Any pretense of professionalism—as thin as it might have been—is gone.” ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 19:20, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

References

• Option 3: I don't think The Post is that bad for general reporting. Gossip and speculative articles notwithstanding. As always editors should use their good judgement. ImTheIP (talk) 19:58, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 generally unreliable for factual reporting but ok for film reviews, music reviews, tv reviews and similar, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 21:30, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 provided evidence gives us the US equivalent of the DM. --Masem (t) 22:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 for factual reporting: I am just seeing too much fabrication and lack of attention to truthfulness to rate it any other way. (t · c) buidhe 22:10, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3.5 - Per MrX, Jayron32. Their news section is generally (although not invariably) tabloid trash. Analogous to the British rags (Sun, Mirror, Express, Daily Mail). Neutrality^talk 22:15, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 for NYC area coverage, option 3 for everything else. I've found their local news to be mostly reliable (though of course with a political lean); it's when they get into national politics that they go totally off the rails. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Additional considerations apply as with any tabloid, and it's not particularly strong source, so due weight needs to be considered if it's the only source reporting on something. But that should be considered individually, not at RSP. Examples of errors are mostly old: Lady Gaga story from 2011, Boston bombing from 2013. Breaking news coverage can be wrong in any source (w/ Boston). As WP:BIASED sources can be reliable, I just don't see enough evidence that they mispresent news, except a few cases within the span of a 10 years. Despite being a tabloid, clearly they operate much more professionally than, say, Zero Hedge. Quite comparable to the left-wing Salon, except I suppose some may find the latter to be ideologically more reliable. --Pudeo (talk) 07:47, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. It's a tabloid, so starts at a default 2, but its place in the right wing media bubble with the asymmetric polarisation and perverse incentives that produces has resulted in a markedly worse record for accuracy than erstwhile competitors. It's not quite the Epoch Times yet, but it's pretty bad, often enough that it should not really be used here. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:04, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 as Coffeeandcrumbs provided examples of fake news and there are more reliable sources that provide a right-wing and populist American perspective.VR _talk 16:25, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2|3 useful for local NYC reporting and film/tv etc. reviews. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:45, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1/2 as it looks generally reliable for local reporting. WP:HEALTHRS is a thing so an opinion article on COVID 19 should not be used to deprecate this source. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4. The Post's publisher once forced out an editor who was trying to make it more credible with the infamous quote "credible doesn't sell ... Your big scoops are great, but they don't sell more papers." A 2004 survey found it the lead credible news outlet in New York (perhaps unsurprisingly given that the above); and, as noted, they have repeatedly published false information with no indication that they care. What pushes it from 3 to 4 to me is the constant indications that they are not trying to be a reputable source or to build a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Any news source can make errors, and a source that fails to correct them is simply unreliable; but a source that doesn't care whether it makes errors or not should be depreciated. --Aquillion (talk) 00:04, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

  Aquillion, did you mean "the least credible"? and also can you cite the page number? --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 19:35, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

  I found it on p. 18: "On net, New Yorkers consider THE NEW YORK POST to be incredible (as in not credible), by 39% [believed it is credible] to 44% [believed it is not credible]. Among the most recognized media outlets, only THE POST earns a higher negative than positive rating on the credibility scale." I added clarification in [brackets]. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 03:59, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3+ -- I don't read it. But I live in Manhattan and seeing the headlines in the grocery store reminds me of the Enquirer. I see no reason to use them for local reporting given the excellent sources available in NYC. O3000 (talk) 00:16, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 per arguments above. The only thing that made me hesitate is that sometimes it has actual reporting on NYC local news, but as others pointed out, there are plenty of other NYC sources available. Given the track record of rushing to print without fact-checking, it shouldn't be used as a source at all. Andrew Englehart (talk) 21:12, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 - I was hoping for option 3, but the discussion here is convincing me this source should absolutely not be on Wikipedia. Fabrication and direct disregard for fact-checking make it unusable as a source for an encyclopedia - David Gerard (talk) 08:54, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 - They make a considerable number of mistakes, but they do have a corrections process. For all the users who argue that this mistake or that is a reason for deprecation, my concern is double standards, due to this[55] from the NYT, with the flagrantly false thesis that there was enough evidence for Mike Nifong to take the Duke lacrosse case to the jury, and that the files in the case did not give a clear answer as to whether or not the defendents were guilty. The story was never corrected. How can we deprecate the NY Post for uncorrected false statements, but treat the NY Times as our gold-standard source, even though it is guilty of the same offense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adoring nanny (talk • contribs)
  • This is a WP:FALSEBALANCE argument. If you want to RFC the New York Times, you'd need to start an RFC about the New York Times. Unless you have an argument that is specifically about the New York Post, which is what we're talking about here, then you're not making an argument to be taken into consideration in the discussion about the New York Post - David Gerard (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • You had to go back 5,119 issues to find an error in the NYTimes? O3000 (talk) 19:18, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
    • It's more than just an "error." It's a lengthy, front-page story, with a thesis that the NYT has every reason to know is wrong, yet they still have not corrected to this day. Worse, it is about individual criminal defendants, implying that they could be guilty of the crimes as charged. If found guilty, they would have likely faced many years in prison. I don't see any reason to cut the NYT a break based on the age of the story. In regard to WP:FALSEBALANCE, I would note that that policy applies to Wikipedia articles. This page is not a Wikipedia article. Furthermore, that policy states, in effect, that one should not give equal weight to truth and lies. But that's not the situation here, is it? The falsehood of the NYT's thesis in that particular article is a fact. Adoring nanny (talk) 18:27, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1/2: Extremely weary of yet another conservative news source being excluded. They've covered a lot of stories factually which other left learning sources either don't cover or cover with bias. I think users need to ask themselves the true reasoning for this source being depreciated and whether they would apply the same scrutiny to other sources. Alexandre8 (talk) 22:02, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • A culture war argument and whataboutery aren't actually claims about the New York Post's quality as a source in itself, and probably wouldn't be worth considering. This is not a forum - David Gerard (talk) 15:16, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 As pointed out above they have published many falsehoods and have a reputation very poor journalism, I wouldn't even call the work they produce journalism, it's a trash outlet like the Daily Mail. As Chuck D from Public Enemy said "Here's a letter to the New York Post - The worst piece of paper on the east coast - Matter of fact the whole state's - forty cents in New York City fifty cents elsewhere - It makes no goddamn sense at all - America's oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit" Bacondrum (talk) 00:43, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 - as their history shows, they have a poor reputation for fact checking and often print false or sensationalized stories. Lev!vich 18:10, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Option 3 - ^{Changed as a result of the responses to my question. 01:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)} same as the other sources in this class of news reporting. I need specifics regarding the allegations that they repeatedly failed to fact-check. Has the NYPost suddenly become a gossip tabloid? Can somebody please point me to the actual failures that support the claims I've been reading? It seems more like this downgrade may be based on anecdotal evidence or worse, POV, so before I downgrade a source, I want to be sure that I'm doing the right thing based on factual information. I mean, look at this if we're going back in time to 2013 to downgrade a source. Thanks in advance... ^Atsme _Talk 📧 22:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

  Atsme, I will give you one recent example described here in GQ. The story was published on June 1, 2020, under the headline "Looters swipe $2.4M worth of watches from Soho Rolex store". Other reporters immediately noticed it was bogus because, for one, there is no Rolex store in Soho. But that maybe semantics, but the bigger problem is that nothing was stolen. The article, to this day, still quotes "a police source" saying, "The Rolex store is empty"... "They stole like $2.4 million in Rolexes."

  Now, what does the Post do after they find out the store owner's said, "no watches of any kind were stolen"? They add that bit to the story and change the headline to "Conflicting reports of looting at Soho Rolex store". This is a dishonest headline and shows their unwillingness to correct the record. (See also this for a past example of obstinate editor behavior). I am arguing this situation can only mean one of either two things happened:

  1. They did not fact-check the "police source" at all. They made no effort to go look at the store and speak to the store manager.
  2. Or, the "police source" Does. Not. Exist! Knowing their history, not an unlikely scenario.[56][57] From what I have read, they have made up quotes before.[58]

  Both of these above scenarios, in combination with their long history of bad journalism, seems to me that they should at least be considered generally unreliable. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 00:48, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  IMO they were always a gossip rag; they're mostly known for Page Six. In terms of evidence of shoddy journalism, the first example that comes to mind is the infamous 2013 "Bag Men" front page misidentification after the Boston Marathon bombing, see e.g. [59]. Lev!vich 01:09, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

  Thank you - I have adjusted my iVote accordingly. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 01:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 A news agency doesn't have to be a gossip tabloid to be totally unreliable as a source for use in the 'pedia's articles. Their reputation very poor journalism is well established. MarnetteD|Talk 22:51, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 Fabrication and direct disregard for fact-checking make it unusable as a source for a reputable authority such as WP. --Whiteguru (talk) 07:05, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 per King of Hearts, for any coverage of the New York metropolitan area and, really, anything that doesn't have national-level political connotations or implications. For those I'd go down to Option 3.

  I have used the Post without reservation as a source on true-crime articles; I just don't see in their articles on that subject any evidence of the embellishments that you see in the Daily Mail on the same incidents. Nor have I seen the kind of evidence of outright fabrication, i.e. tell-alls by disgruntled former staff, that finally prompted us to deprecate the Mail. If someone's got that ... Daniel Case (talk) 15:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 Just look at this: "Newly Discovered Planet Could Destroy Earth Any Day Now.” [60] [61]. This NYPosts track record is definitely one marred by many factual inaccuracies that just proves they are really just doing it for the attention. Bar NYPost citations like these as they could influence reader's trust of Wikipedia. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 22:12, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Its a tabloid. It makes mistakes, but it is not a work of fiction. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 04:51, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 "Publishes false or fabricated information" is a bit much. It's a tabloid, not a work of fiction as Billhpike put it. However, I generally try to avoid using media outlets as sources at all, let alone tabloids. The Post's journalism is certainly sub-par, and they are known to have political biases. That isn't to say they should never be used - I'm sure they have decent articles on culture, fashion, entertainment, etc - but we should not be using them for anything political or scientific in nature. --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 18:03, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Seems to be case by case. A lot of media today is unreliable in some cases as we move away from paid media to crowdsourced. I would think not an WP:RS for WP:BLP but for some other general topics, could be ok. Where do we draw the line? TMZ is useful sometimes, and we use huffpo. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:53, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 I had the impression going in that this would be an option 3, but looking over the evidence provided, I have to up my !vote a notch. Their process is dishonest, in a deep way. XOR'easter (talk) 00:05, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (New York Post)

• commnetWhilst I am getting a red top vibe, I would need to see evidence of deliberate lies (rather then incompetence) before making a judgement.Slatersteven (talk) 10:23, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  Slatersteven, here are some instances of fabricated stories.[62][63][64][65][66] AFAIK, none of them were corrected. What they most often do is make up quotes or fabricate sources. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 11:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  Here are two more people that accuse the Post of fabrication: [67][68]. This story [69] is more of a bias than fabrication, but it is the modus operadi of even their stories that are true. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 12:05, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

• More examples: False story that COVID-19 virus possibly leaked from a Chinese lab,[70][71] false claim that singer Lady Gaga met with radical leftist Slavoj Zizek,[72][73] and printed an entire interview with a person falsely claiming to be the brother of Adam Lanza.[74] --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 12:57, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  Note, the Lady Gaga story was on Page Six, the paper's gossip section, which is worse than the parent. The fake Lanza brother story is one of the few instances that I have seen that were corrected.[75] There was also a made up story of a high school student making $72 million in the stock market which they reprinted from New York Magazine without any double-checking but they at least corrected.[76][77] All the rest from my examples are still live and never corrected. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 13:32, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  The COVID link you posted is an opinion piece, not a news article. -- Calidum 14:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  My bad. Sorry, I missed that. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 14:12, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  It was published as a normal article and relabelled an opinion piece after being criticised. [78], [79] ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 19:45, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  The COVID-19 lab leak theory is not an example of misinformation. There are two angles a) the virus accidentally leaked from the institute that studies them b) the virus was engineered by humans. The former is quite clearly less conspirational, and indeed was something that leaked US State Department cables and the UK government suggested may be the origins of the virus. The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that the accidental leak origin is a plausible theory and quoted experts who think that. Nowhere in that NYPost article they report it as a fact. --Pudeo (talk) 08:14, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

  The claim that it leaked from a lab has been discussed at Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and rejected time and time again for no evidence.

  Unlike WaPo's opinion piece that is careful to attribute such claims to their source, the Post's opinion piece sure attempts to characterize lab as the likely source in author's own voice:

  It turns out that in all of China, there is only one [microbiology lab that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus]. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan that just happens to be … the epicenter of the epidemic.

  That’s right. China’s only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  How else are we supposed to read this besides the implication that COVID-19 came from a lab? As the article was not labeled as opinion for 4 days, we can only conclude it was not fact-checked before publication and, only when experts protested, was it marked as opinion. The Post's piece, later relabelled as opinion, also falsely claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a "one of only two bioweapons research labs". As discussed at length at Talk:Wuhan Institute of Virology, this is simply a conspiracy theory. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 19:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

  My assessment of the issue is similar to the USA Today "partly false" fact check from April. It stated that claims about COVID-19 being a bioweapon are untrue; but that circumstantial evidence suggests the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan lab due to a lapse in safety measures. A lot of new studies have been published since February and Apil. That also means you can't anachronistically judge an article from February with present knowledge. --Pudeo (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

  (1) The Post concludes much more than what the USA Today suggests. (2) The Post story was fact-checked by a sources in March. This narrative they presented was immediately debunked and then they labeled it as opinion. The "bioweapon lab" implication is also a fabrication. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 05:21, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

  Just to be clear, if the article about the high school student who supposedly made $72 million is to be held against the Post, shouldn't it be held against New York Magazine which actually reported the story to begin with even more so? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:36, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• More examples to add to the pile: [80], [81], [82], [83] ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 19:45, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

  This bit is so telling: "Needless to say, the Post hasn’t corrected [the] piece." ─ "A bogus NY Post piece sets off a frenzy". Columbia Journalism Review --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:12, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

L:Even if it was not originally labelled as opinion, an article by Steven W. Mosher of the Population Research Institute clearly is not a news story. A news story is what happened today or what someone said today written by reporters. It's not an activist's analysis of how a virus originated. ReconditeRodent's first example is reported in their source as by "columnist John Crudele" so it would not be rs in any case. Mainstream media also publish opinion pieces by conservatives, and even articles by liberals can contain questionable logic and facts. For example, the New York Times and other major media pushed the Bush administration lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda. What I find disturbing about this process is that we are basing it on anecdotal evidence and even then not looking at actual news reporting. What we should do is use sources that compare the reliability of various sources. While I am sure the NYT would rank higher, there are lots of other local newspapers I imagine that would rank lower. Why not just have a general rule that right-wing newspapers cannot be used as sources? TFD (talk) 00:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Because there are many good reliable right-wing sources, like The Times of London and the Wall Street Journal. Merely because some right wing sources push bullshit out (and oddly enough, they're the only sources people who want to push that bullshit on Wikipedia can find that support the bullshit) doesn't mean they all are. It isn't helpful to say that right-wing = unreliable in all cases. Unreliable = unreliable. I don't particularly agree with the editorial stance of sources like The Times and the WSJ and the Weekly Standard and the Christian Science Monitor and sources like that, but insofar as they report actual news, they have the sort of integrity and editorial oversight and commitment to truth that means I would never doubt their reliability. It's not "having a conservative editorial stance" that makes a newspaper or other source unreliable. It is being unreliable that makes a source unreliable. Don't confuse the two. --Jayron32 15:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

And any editor who implies - or sometimes says outright - that we need more right-leaning unreliable sources for "balance" is fundamentally misunderstanding why Wikipedia concerns itself with reliability of sources - David Gerard (talk) 16:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. If the correct view is "XXX is bullshit", then it would be incorrect to provide "balance" by hunting for sources based solely on whether they say "XXX is not bullshit" rather than on their reliability. Reliability is the first concern. If genuinely reliable sources disagree, we can handle that disagreement explicitly. But where shitty sources are the only ones presenting a particular side of a narrative, then they're still bad sources and we shouldn't be citing them at all. That also may be a sign that that particular side of the narrative isn't correct. --Jayron32 16:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

The Times and the Wall St. Journal also publish opinions by conservatives. John Fund for example was a columnist for the Wall Street Journal for 20 years where he wrote about climate change. The white nationalist Peter Brimelow has written for many respectable publications such as the Financial Post, Maclean's and Forbes claiming among other things that whites were more intelligent than blacks. Some conservative writers are even published in liberal publications. In general though comparing The Post to The Times is a strawman argument. The Post is local middle market tabloid, while The Times is an upmarket publication with international reach. The Post should be compared with other local newspapers. TFD (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I.e., the most obvious point of comparison, the Daily News, which has taken on a sort of liberal bent in reaction to its competitor's rightward tilt (There is a huge irony in all this ... half a century ago the Post was an outspoken liberal paper that fought McCarthyism, while the News occupied the niche the Post does now, printing any McCarthyist slur Robert Moses leaked to them about Joseph Papp in the early days of the New York Shakespeare Festival when the two were feuding over Papp's use of the park). Daniel Case (talk) 02:29, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure I have much of an opinion on the NYP but I do wonder if there are outside sources making this reliability claim or if this is just the views of editors here? I was curious and looked up the NYP on the various media bias sources. It looks so-so but I find it interesting that Adfrontsmedia puts it at about the same level as CNN, Slate and other sources we are frequently happy to cite. [[84]] Still, some of the others such as the often maligned MBFC say it's mixed. Springee (talk) 17:26, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

This is not a question of bias. For example, no one would dispute that Jacobin and Democracy Now! have a strong left bias and are partisan publications. However, you could not provide evidence that they are fabricating quotes or framing false stories. I have provided ample evidence that other RS publications have found that the Post has published false and fabricated information. This is not Wikipedia editors' opinions. It is the analysis of RS. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 18:38, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I think I would feel better about that type of argument if third party sources were making the case. Still, you make a good point, unbiased and accurate are not the same thing. I will freely admit I don't know much about the NYP so I won't comment in the survey. Springee (talk) 18:51, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

The examples presented here are approaching "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" territory. So many of the alleged examples are wrong in one way or another that it detracts from the credibility. Adoring nanny (talk) 19:20, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Consider just this one story that ruined two men's lives -- how can we trust a source that considers this as enough evidence to publish photographs of people implying they are terrorists? And then says, well, we didn't really say they were suspects, just that the police were looking for them. Why put the photo on the cover, no less, if not to imply they are terrorists?

I do not believe this whole headlines don't matter bullshit people throw around thse days. The veracity of the headline and how well it represents the story within shows the motivations and trustworthiness of the editors that oversee the production of the paper. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:09, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Question for some of the "option 2 for NYC news" !voters (e.g. King of Hearts and Daniel Case). Could you say more about where it's unclear or where additional considerations apply within that option 2? The Post is fine sometimes, and on some topics, but they're really pretty terrible on matters of crime/policing and a lot of their other local political coverage includes opinion or a clear slant. The latter is the sort of thing I'd expect to read next to an "additional considerations apply" but I feel like we should exclude crime/policing from the Option two-ness of the NYC news carve-out. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:11, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I'd probably agree that any coverage of alleged police misconduct, particularly in the use-of-force area, in the Post is increasingly slanted in the police's favor. I would advise not using anything in those stories sourced solely to unnamed police sources. Daniel Case (talk) 18:17, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

The Post is indeed largely uncritical of police and generally sides with police unions, sometimes becoming indistinguishable from their talking points and always a reliable outlet for printing their opinions. Police are just-doing-their-jobs to protect us from violent thugs and vagrants, while politicians and anti-police rioters want to see the city burn or don't care. There's a reason why the highest profile examples of them getting it wrong have to do with crime, and it's not limited to what's outside the city. It's most visible now because there's a lot of attention on policing, but it's not really new, either (unless we're talking about the full scale of the paper's history, in which case decades are short). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:35, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Rhododendrites and Daniel Case, my thing is that it is more than just bias. See my example above in response to User:Atsme, where they fabricate a story to support their strong pro-police stance (both a local and national issue). It is not only that they have a bias but that their bias also influences them to either fail at fact-checking or maybe worse fabricate stories. Either they made up this "police source" or, as soon as this source satisfied their confirmation bias, they published the story about looters. Yes, the store was vandalize in protests but it was certainly not looted by rioters for $2.4 M??? Bullshit! They simply wanted to perpetuate a common racist trope about protesters of color, that they are "rioters and looters", and did not care if the story was true, which it was not. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:37, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

@Coffeeandcrumbs: Oh, I'm not arguing with your point. I'm trying to distinguish the baby from the bathwater here. And one way I would do that with the Post is to consider unreliable any fact in any story they do about, well, let's say, anything involving tensions between the NYPD and local minority communities that is not sourced to anyone named. But that does not mean I consider anything and everything the Post reports to be fabricated and/or embellished. Daniel Case (talk) 02:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Daniel Case, that does seem pragmatic. If I were to carve out any portion to keep, it would be their art and film reviews. Everything else, parochial, national, or global, I simply cannot trust, especially for a BLP. At least with art and film, they cannot do much damage. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 03:01, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

TuttoAndroid.net as a reliable source?

Is TuttoAndroid (tuttoandroid.net, Italian Language) a reliable source for technology-related topics, or should it be considered a self-published group blog?

I was on the fence and used it before, but the more I look, the more it seems like a spammy advert-blog. I couldn't find evidence of editorial oversight. It is only used in 5 articles, 2 of which I've been involved in editing, CopperheadOS and GrapheneOS. Tuttoandroid was brought up for Talk page discussion at CopperheadOS Talk, but more opinions would help. -- Yae4 (talk) 16:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Adding: I'd forgotten Newslinger previously said at Talk:GrapheneOS "These citations clearly aren't reliable" and included TuttoAndroid in his list of sources to remove, saying about it: "No staff list. Also appears to be a summarized translation of this Liliputing article. [85] However, somehow it was put back into GrapheneOS later. Considering consensus on Liliputing was non-reliable, TuttoAndroid.net is also looking non-reliable. -- Yae4 (talk) 21:53, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

There are 3 non-TuttoAndroid / non-Liliputing references for the CopperheadOS Alpha release now. I'm not aware of all the past discussions or entries like this. If I knew you would have a problem with this reference I would have used the other ones from the start. As far as I know, using these as references for the Alpha release is the only time I have used these references. It now uses https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/CopperheadOS-Alternatives-System-will-Android-sicherer-machen-2827911.html (appears to be a good source) and https://www.androidworld.it/2015/09/08/copperheados-firmware-open-source-sicuro-333633/ (which at least has a staff list with editors) along with the reference to the Alpha release in the LWN article about the Beta release which similarly explains that the Alpha / earlier project was based on CyanogenMod and then it became directly based on AOSP with the Beta. I would have happily used other references if I knew that these were going to be considered a problem. I hope the current references are adequate, which I think is the case. Pitchcurve (talk) 02:52, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@Pitchcurve: As it says at the top of this page, "Please focus your attention on the reliability of a source. This is not the place to discuss other issues, such as editor conduct." This discussion is to establish consensus on the one source, if possible, for future reference. -- Yae4 (talk) 19:38, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Generally unreliable. Considering the similarities between the two articles, it certainly looks like TuttoAndroid translated the Liliputing article, changed a few words around, and then claimed it as its own in https://www.tuttoandroid.net/modding/grapheneos-android-sicurezza-privacy-open-source-669777/. Liliputing was already considered a self-published blog in a 2019 RfC, so TuttoAndroid is at best also generally unreliable. — Newslinger talk 10:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Infodrips as source

As I read the guidelines about the Wikipedia reliable sources, I found that infodrips.com may be useful for reliable source, almost all the informative contents are already verified by editors as they also referenced (sources from reputed medical journals,academic journals, academic books etc.) that all in their contents. Still want to discuss it more that maybe I'm wrong, Editors are requested to have a look on it. — Aaqib Ahmad ^Talk 07:53, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Per infodrips.com/about/ and infodrips.com/infodrips-for-writers/, I'd say it's not a WP:RS. Also blacklisted on WP. However, a random article I checked linked some references they used, and some of those may be useful. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång for the comment, Would you please explain it more that what you found at infodrips.com/about/ that you said it's not WP:RS, and the infodrips.com/infodrips-for-writers/ means that it's user generated but not user verified informations, infodrips also mentioned at infodrips.com/infodrips-for-writers/ that after a review they published, and review is a moderation process that verifies the information reliability, you can say that the moderation filter hidden, but the published information are verified or reliable. Hope you getting it. — Aaqib Ahmad ^Talk 11:07, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Like you said, it's WP:USERG, thus "generally unacceptable." per guideline. Nothing at infodrips.com/about/ indicates that this site should be an exception, neither does "After a short review of infodrips terms, Your article will be published on infodrips.com.". So, if they use good refs, use those.

Note also the "Disclaimer of Warranties:" section in their Terms and Conditions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:16, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I noted you said that Nothing at infodrips.com/about/ indicates that this site should be an exception. And the references you suggest to use is also sources from another sources, So, it's a chain of reliability that refers to others, on the basis I also found infodrips WP:RS. "Disclaimer of Warranties" is a common thing in almost all publications or journals, For example healthline.com is also have same "Disclaimer of Warranties:" but it's also WP:SP, therefore, "Disclaimer of Warranties" doesn't mean that their information is actually not reliable, it's a different topic of discussion. — Aaqib Ahmad ^Talk 11:55, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to have any real reputation (not WP:PUBLISHED); we don't even have an article on it. Just use the other sources it provides because those are the most preferable anyway. ping me when responding, gràcies! TheKaloo talk 23:09, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@TheKaloo and Gråbergs Gråa Sång:, (WP:PUBLISHED) defines the two basic factor that the first one is "Like text, media must be produced by a reliable source and be properly cited" which is already we have seen on it, and second one is "Additionally, an archived copy of the media must exist. It is convenient, but by no means necessary, for the archived copy to be accessible via the Internet.", it's all archiving at (Digital Library Internet Archive) which is reputed party, You can find the infodrips contents in the library, for a sample you can find any information link from infodrips here at Archived,(I couldn't insert the link here because infodrips links are blacklisted here to put), all contents are timely archiving in that library for future citation exploration. More, Not all WP:RS guideline factors completely meet to all reliable sources ever. Hope you're getting the point. — Aaqib Ahmad ^Talk 11:27, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@Aaqibacs1: if it's sourced, then use those sources! Who is the editor? What process do they go through? Who is behind the company (it's a blog)? What's their reputation (they have 15 followers on instagram)? We have exactly zero evidence to support changing the policy for this one source. Three editors have given you three different reasons that it's not a WP:RS, and if it's sourced so well, then use those sources. And if you publish on InfoDrips, then you need to declare a COI and make sure not to violate WP:OR. ping me when responding, gràcies! TheKaloo talk 14:45, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Not a reliable source. WP:QUESTIONABLE: "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts or with no editorial oversight." --Guy Macon (talk) 13:28, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: Examination of the front page articles (this day) suggest it is definitely user generated content, very bland blather, and unreliable as a source. --Whiteguru (talk) 06:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

WebMD

We currently have 1,375 citations to webmd.com  , Is WebMD MEDRS compliant? I've heard mostly negative things about the website over the years, mostly about their close relationship to pharmaceutical companies.Vox NYTimes Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:11, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

I think it is considered a "MEDRS of last resort", such that its usage is strongly discouraged but not completely forbidden. (t · c) buidhe 03:00, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: Interesting observation about the close relationship with pharmaceutical companies. Just by way of simple surfing the web over some years, I have noticed somewhat apparent relationship exists. --Whiteguru (talk) 06:29, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Israel Guide: A useful encyclopedia for the knowledge of the country

A question has come to the fore on the Talk-Page of Qarawat Bani Hassan, shown here, about the reliability of a 11-volume Hebrew published work entitled, "Israel Guide, A useful encyclopedia for the knowledge of the country," published by the Keter Publishing House in Israel, in affiliation with the Israel Ministry of Defence, between the years 1978–1980. For more details, see volume 8 of this edition: Shorer, Yaakov; Grossman, David, eds. (1980). Israel Guide - The Northern Valleys, Mount Carmel and Samaria (in Hebrew). Vol. 8. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, in affiliation with the Israel Ministry of Defence. OCLC 745203905.. The chief-editor of the encyclopedia is a man by the name of Arieh Yitzhaki. Each volume speaks about a different section of the country and has its invidual editor. The title of this work has caused some confusion, as one editor thought that it may strictly be a tourist guide when, in fact, it is much more than that. The back-cover of each volume carries a short description of the entire work, which reads as follows (translated from the Hebrew):

The Israel Guide is the first useful encyclopedia of its kind in Israel. In its composition, the best researchers with a knowledge of the land in all fields have come together. The Guide reviews all the important historical, archaeological, geographical sites, nature reserves and landscapes. It also includes detailed information on traveler services and accompanies up-to-date illustrations, photographs and maps. Some of the sites included in the Guide have been adapted from the series, "From Dan to Eilat," which was published by the Chief Education Officer, IDF. (END QUOTE)

Since this work is written in Hebrew and, most likely, not found in English-speaking libraries, perhaps Wikipedians in Israel (e.g. User:Yoninah, User:Debresser, User:Netanel h, User:Gilabrand, User:Tzahy, User:IsraeliteoftheShephelah, User:Tomerarazy, User:Bolter21, User:Ynhockey, User:Shrike) can voice their opinion about the worthiness, or un-worthiness, of this 11-volume publication. See also Madrikh Yisrael - (Israel Guide); Israel Guide (on Google Books). By the way: The editor of the 2nd volume is a scholar by the name of Raphael (Rafael / Rafi) Frankel who has written extensively about sites in the Galilee. Among his other publications, one may notice this, "The Map of Achziv", as well as the following publications: 1) Frankel, Rafael; Getzov, Nimrod; Aviam, Mordechai; Degani, Avi (2001). "Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee (Archaeological Survey of Upper Galilee)". Israel Antiquities Authority. 14.; 2) Frankel, Raphael; Finkelstein, I. (1983). "'The Northwest Corner of Eretz-Israel' in the Baraita 'Boundaries of Eretz-Israel'". Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv. 27 (27): 39–46. JSTOR 23398920.; 3) Frankel, Raphael (1979). "'Bibra' — A Forbidden Village in the Territory of Tyre". Israel Exploration Journal. 29 (3/4): 194–196.; 4) Rafael, Frankel, "Kabri, Nahal Ga‘aton Aqueduct: Final Report" (JSTOR 26601478), among others.

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail?

Davidbena (talk) 23:24, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey (Israel Guide)

Is there a reason other than it being Israeli for some to discredit it? It's written by scholars, right? So shouldn't it be a RS, regardless of the clunky title and funding? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 01:19, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

That is correct. The entire encyclopedia (11 volumes) has been compiled by a consortiom of scholars, all of whom bring down the latest archaeological, historical and geographical information on places in Israel proper, up to the time of its publication. They include the precise measurements of tombs, references to these sites by the writers of classic literature, their Arabic and Hebrew names (where applicable), descriptions of synagogues once built in these places, etc., etc.02:19, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I have a procedural objection. I feel like leaping straight to a four-option depreciation RFC is a bit premature, both per WP:RFCBEFORE and because it sort of obscures the real question that brought you here. The dispute is very specifically over whether it can be used for this claim, which at first glance seems at least slightly WP:EXCEPTIONAL or highly technical (requiring a suitably technical source) in the sense that it touches on a controversial archeological claim; the question of whether this source is valid for that specific claim is worth considering, and I don't think a general RFC about the source as a whole can meaningfully answer it. These sorts of RFCs are for sources that are constant recurring issues or ones with glaring problems; they're not what you're supposed to do when you have one extremely specific question over "can source X be used to cite statement Y." Also, RFCs are required to be neutrally-worded, which this 100% is not - you overtly dismiss the arguments you're trying to get an RFC outcome against in your summary. I'm particularly bothered that you devoted a ton of text to how notable the source is, but didn't even vaguely reference the specific claim people are debating. In any case, I'm also not convinced by your "tots not a travel guide" summary. The translated bit you quote strikes me as somewhat blithe; ultimately it emphasizes its value to travelers above all else. Obviously a guide to Israel is going to state that it is historically-accurate, since that history is a big part of why people travel to Israel, and it could be perhaps used for uncontroversial claims (the way we might use any other general encyclopedia), but for something as potentially-controversial as this we ought to be citing more academic or professional sources, not just guides that boast vaguely about using the best available research. --Aquillion (talk) 07:06, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Your analysis is good and correct, for which reason that specific edit (about the site's alleged identification) has been deleted from the article. It would require a more critical review of the subject, say, by historical geographers who have weighed the matter very well, before inserting that one detail into an article.Davidbena (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 to 2, geographical encyclopedia written by academic experts. The one issue here is that it is dated, being published back in 1978-80, but it is reliable for knowledge up until that time.--Hippeus (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Business Insider

Is Business Insider a reliable source for the following claim at China–United States trade war?

According to Capital Economics, China's economic growth has slowed as a result of the trade war, though overall the Chinese economy "has held up well", and China's share of global exports has increased.

References

Thanks for your input. —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:07, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

As a direct participant to the debate, I say no. It may be reliable, but it's not reliable enough. RSP makes it clear that there's no consensus over the reliability of Business Insider, so a second, (reliable) source is at the very least needed for the material given above. Flaughtin (talk) 07:57, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: Business Insider's reliability isn't at question here, since there's no dispute that Capital Economics said these things (they linked Capital Economics' website which agrees with their summary). The question should be whether or not Capital Economics is a reliable secondary source. I would say based on my surface-level assessment of Binging them that they are, and the statements that China's economic growth has slowed and China's share of global exports increasing are likely true factual statements. That being said, this statement is also an opinion, as saying China's economic growth is slowing because of the trade war or that China's economy "has held up well" are both qualitative statements that are analyses of the facts. I think Capital Economics is a good source due weight wise for this opinion. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 17:56, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

The author is a "reporting fellow" (https://www.businessinsider.com/author/yusuf-khan).

The article seems a warmed over press release providing nothing beyond a summary of what was released by Capital Economics. The author seems to specialize in such articles.

This seems reliable with the qualification it's coming from Capital Economics. It may not deserve any mention with such a poor source, but that's a POV issue. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:59, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Journal of Young Pharmacists

• Source: Journal of Young Pharmacists
• Webpage: [ http://www.jyoungpharm.org/content/about-journal ]
• Specific citation: [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930110/ ], [ http://www.jyoungpharm.org/article/659 ]
• Page citing this source: Ayurveda#Panchakarma
• Pagelinks: Ayurveda (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Specific claim cited to this source:

According to Ayurveda, panchakarma are techniques to eliminate toxic elements from the body.

Extended content
References

Related:

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Talk:Ayurveda
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience
• Talk:Ayurveda#RFC: pseudoscience in the opening sentence
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive310#Ayurveda
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive272#RFC Review at Talk:Ayurveda/Archive 9
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive266#Ayurveda
• Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 69#Quacks who poison patients with mercury compounds and the Wikipedia editors who think this is OK

So my questions are:

1. Is the Journal of Young Pharmacists a WP:MEDRS source?
2. Is the Journal of Young Pharmacists a generally reliable source even if it fails MEDRS?
3. Is the specific page linked above reliable for the specific claim listed above?

--Guy Macon (talk) 13:36, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

They're published under Phcog.net, which has several publications on Beall's list and was itself listed 2012–2015 (the citation in question was published in 2013). The plurality of the chief editor's publications are in this journal (which is a bad sign), with the majority of the rest in other Phcog.net journals and OA MedKnow affiliates (iffy status). It hits quite a few of the 13 characteristics of potential predatory journals identified in this article recommended by Harvard -- for example, their article processing fee for Indian authors is ridiculously low ($90 for the priciest submission) (characteristic #11: "The Article processing/publication charge is very low (e.g., < $150 USD)"). JoelleJay (talk) 19:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Based on JJ's information, I would say no, no and no. (t · c) buidhe 03:03, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Buidhe --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 16:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

agree w/ above two editors--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Irrespective of the weaknesses of the currently cited source, I think the only change I'd make to the sentence is to say that they "are techniques meant to..." From a quick search, the sentence appears to be factually correct, in that Ayurveda understands the purpose of its panchakarma techniques as doing (altmed-style) detoxification. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

This is the "reliable sources noticeboard", not the "content disputes noticeboard". If the statement is not in a more reliable source, we cannot just say it is "true". (t · c) buidhe 02:17, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

INCORRECT PHOTO

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.

---

First: That is not a photograph of Jimmy Cleveland. I know this because I have seen several pictures of him and I have his lp's. In addition, he was not a left-handed trombonist. Your picture could be one of Slide Hampton.

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.

Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints: Selva J. Raj on "Being Catholic the Tamil Way" in Uvari

I am trying to cite this book under the History section of Uvari but User:MrShortCircuit keeps removing it under the pretense that it is a "promotional book". User:MrShortCircuit has not acknowledged my requests for him to discuss the validity of the citation on the Talk:Uvari page or User_talk:MrShortCircuit. In fact, he has removed my direct notification to him on his user page to discuss the matter too.

The citation is a book.

Vernacular Catholicism, vernacular saints : Selva J. Raj on "Being Catholic the Tamil way". Raj, Selva J.,, Locklin, Reid B.,. Albany. ISBN 978-1-4384-6505-0. OCLC 956984843.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: others (link)

The paragraph being supported in the article is as such:

Legend has it that the crew of a Portuguese ship that sailed near Uvari in the seventeenth century contracted cholera. In an attempt to avert death, a carpenter aboard the ship carved an image of Saint Anthony. Soon after, the entire crew were restored to health. When the ship docked at Uvari, the sailors placed the statue inside a hut in the village. In the 1940s, the villagers built a church with the original statue of St. Anthony holding the infant Jesus in his hand. St Anthony is said to perform many miracles daily for the people who flock there with faith in his intercession, therefore the church was upgraded to a shrine. Uvari is visited by Hindus and Christians from all over South India.

I need clarification on how the book is considered promotional. The book is written and edited by academics specialized in theology and religious studies. Soggmeister (talk) 17:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

I fail to see how it is promotional, but i would suggest attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 17:24, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I will see what I can do to make the citation valid for the quoted section. Soggmeister (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Noel Malcolm a RS

Good evening I was reading something about Military Frontier and stumbled upon wikipedia article and after that upon a Noel Malcolm book about Bosnia [86] also I've noticed that he is quoted a lot here but still has some controversy behind him with his other books [87]. There is probably a discussion about every historian in the world ,but still there is a lot of opposite opinions about him. So is he a RS and why is he so lets say controversial ? Thank you Theonewithreason (talk • contribs) 19:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC

Android Headlines (AndroidHeadlines.com) as a reliable source?

Is Android Headlines (AndroidHeadlines.com) a reliable source for technology-related topics, or should it be considered a self-published group blog?

• They have an about, and list of authors.[88][89]

• Every article/post I've looked at has fine print saying "This post may contain affiliate links. See our privacy policy for more information."

• My impression of the site is it is "advert infested" with primary goal of pushing people to ads and product purchases.

• It is used in 133 articles.

• It has been discussed at Talk related to CopperheadOS, where there is an opinion claiming they, in essence, re-publish company press releases, and have retracted controversial articles/posts. I have confirmed only that a couple appearing in recent web search are now 404-not found,[90][91] (but are in archive.org). The actual reason for this is not clear. In light of other things about the site, my guess is this is less due to editorial oversight, and more likely avoiding controversy, and not standing behind what they publish, or properly publishing an update - in balance, negative reliability indicators.

My opinion is they should be considered a self-published group blog (i.e. not reliable). -- Yae4 (talk) 23:03, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/12/copperheados-updates-thriving-shut-down.html was retracted and the author of the article Daniel Golightly has confirmed it. They are more than happy to confirm it for others that contact them by email or perhaps Twitter. Regardless of whether or not the source is acceptable in general, that article in particular was retracted. I don't know what happened to the other articles. It's likely they took them down at the same time. I don't have an opinion on whether it's a problematic source as a whole since I haven't read more than the 2 articles about CopperheadOS which had serious accuracy / sourcing issues. Pitchcurve (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Android Headlines is marginally reliable at best and self-published at worst. The website simply deleted the article about the CopperheadOS situation instead of formally retracting it, which is not a positive indicator of its reliability. From my experience, editors tend to be more accepting of marginally reliable sources for niche or specialized topics, but Android in general is too popular to be considered niche. — Newslinger talk 09:55, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

War is Boring and The Arkenstone

Are thearkenstone.blogspot.com and medium.com/war-is-boring reliable sources for military articles? The article is Shahed 171 Simorgh, but I see that they are used elsewhere too. Pahlevun (talk) 14:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Also here, probably. And David_Axe#War_is_Boring may be useful. Jlevi (talk) 14:58, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

War is Boring has been cited by The Diplomat and suggested by Politico[92].Jlevi (talk) 15:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)David Axe seems to have published at least one scholarly book and David_Axe#War_is_Boring appears to sometimes be cited by reliable, secondary sources. At first glance, he seems to qualify under WP:RSSELF.VR _talk 15:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

The book Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War does not sound like a scholarly work (from the pages can be read on Google Books). It is most probably published by University of South Carolina Press only because it is a "nonfiction tale" about ROTC program at the university (Gamecock Battalion). Pahlevun (talk) 17:17, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

• I think War is Boring is an RS --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 16:06, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
• Comment: I found two WikiProject discussions from 2013 and 2017 about War is Boring: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 123#Reliable source question - War is Boring and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 141#War Is Boring as RS. Pahlevun (talk) 17:25, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
• War is boring used to be an up and coming military news/analysis site run by David Axe, a few years ago it had a pretty strong reputation. In the past two years or so, however, Axe has been doing other things and the site mostly reprints content from elsewhere or reprints old stories. So it depends when.--Hippeus (talk) 12:01, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The Arkenstone has been cited by the Defense Intelligence Agency [93]. It seems to me to meet WP:SPS. Streamline8988 (talk) 16:34, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The DIA report cites the blog for information already available on Wikipedia (such as duration of conscription in Iran or subordinates of the defense ministry), which in my opinion, indicates the report's author was lazy enough to not to find a source better than a blog rather than it being reputable. The criteria for SPS inclusion is being an established subject-matter expert. Is the person who ran the blog (which is inactive since 2016), Galen Wright, an established subject-matter expert? Pahlevun (talk) 18:45, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Sarup & Sons

This is regarding the publisher Sarup & Sons   which is cited at around 800 WP articles. The particular book in question is:

• Gupta, R. K.; Bakshi, S. R., eds. (2008). Rajasthan Through the Ages. Volume 4: Jaipur Rulers and Administration (1st ed.). New Delhi: Sarup & Sons. ISBN 978-81-7625-841-8.

I have compared this book's first 70 pages with Jadunath Sarkar's following book: A History of Jaipur, c. 1503-1938 (1984). And every page of Sarkar's book (which is available to me in Google Books preview) is copy-pasted by this book. Here's the details:

I) Page nos. 1–37 copy-pasted from page nos. 75–111 of the Sarkar's book

ii) Page nos. 42–70 copy-pasted from page nos. 118–144 of Sarkar's book

The only difference is that the chapter titles are different. And there is no attribution to Sarkar anywhere. I haven't checked the remaining pages yet, but they also seem copy-pasted. The Sarkar's book is copyrighted till 2047 – see User talk:Diannaa:Query about the copyright status of a book. So this is a case of clear copyright violation, and we should not even provide its link in an external-links section or in a citation, per WP:COPYVIOEL. Anyway, is such blatant copyright violator (Sarup & Sons) considered reliable for anything on this project? - NitinMlk (talk) 18:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

NitinMlk, I would say that if the publisher cannot be trusted to filter out such obvious copyvio than it is the equivalent of predatory journal and should not be cited. (t · c) buidhe 19:40, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, I agree with you. BTW, I will also crosscheck few other books of this publisher, although copy-pasting hundreds of copyrighted pages in a single book is as bad as it gets. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

The Hustler's Digest

• The Hustler's Digest
• External Links

I came across The Hustler's Digest while reviewing an AfC submission and decided to investigate the source. The media company produces news articles and other content for its customers. Following are things I noted about it as a source;

• The digest has a clear policy and distinguishes news from sponsored content.
• Articles on the site are written by either staff (team members) or by contributors
• Content produced by contributors is subject to some editorial oversight and follows guidelines

Taking the above into consideration, articles written by company staff may be considered reliable at first glance. However, it should be noted that the site's editorial policy seems to allow for native advertising that is distinct from sponsored content, so sources written by staff should be used with caution. As for contributor content, said content is user-generated and as such is unreliable for Wikipedia's purposes. In addition, a search for citations of thehustlersdigest.com on en.wiki shows that - in 7/8 instances - the source cited was written by a contributor and not by staff. It should also be noted that while staff articles distinguish paid content from unpaid content, this standard may not apply to contributor content as most contributors seem to be digital marketers. Surmising all of the above, the source in question should probably be considered as generally unreliable with only staff articles being considered as WP:RS, and then only with proper vetting. SamHolt6 (talk) 01:25, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

SamHolt6, I think you give the publication too much credit. It has all the hallmarks of a pay-to-print enterprise. A staff of 4 and no designated editors does not indicate to me that it is a reliable source. I would consider it a self-published source. I mean the home page has "EDITORS PICK" instead of "EDITOR'S PICK" or "EDITORS' PICKS". --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 03:44, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

User contributed content is treated the same as self-published, regardless where it is published. Letters to the editor and reader commentaries on news media websites for example are not reliable. Neither are opinion pieces. Seems to me that if a source is rarely used and no problems can be found with its accuracy, it's not a big problem. TFD (talk) 05:18, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Colombo Page

Is Colombo Page a reliable source for events that occur in Sri Lanka? We have more than 400 citations to colombopage.com  .VR _talk 05:35, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

They appear to be primarily a news reprinter, and not a source themselves, per their about us page, which states "We post news from the established wire sources such as Reuters but from time to time we include news or news analyses from other sources as well. Most of the "news analyses" are one person and/or group of people�s opinion and these are NOT necessarily a news item." Which says to me that each individual reference should be checked against whether or not it is a reprint from a genuinely reliable source or not. If it is a fine source, we can optionally find the original and link that, but that would not be strictly necessary. If it is not, it should be removed as it probably falls under the sort of "NOT necessarily a news item" reprints that it also claims to have. --Jayron32 14:37, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Clarification: Does Daily Mail RfC apply to the Mail on Sunday?

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.

---

(Manually unarchiving thread, setting DoNotArchive to 1 October 2020 (UTC) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:45, 2 September 2020 (UTC))

The Mail on Sunday is owned by the same company that owns Daily Mail. They aren't the same newspaper, however, and, to quote our article, "the editorial staffs of the two papers are entirely separate". That being said, for the online version, the content of The Mail on Sunday is available under the dailymail.co.uk domain (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/mailonsunday/). Does the RfC on the reliability (or lack thereof) of the Daily Mail also apply to The Mail on Sunday? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:45, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

• The 2017 RFC did not separate MoS out as a separate publication, even as it's at the same explicitly deprecated URL - neither in the finding, nor in the discussion. Two commenters on the 2019 RFC tried to make out that it was explicitly excluded by the 2017 RFC, but that's not the case from the actual discussion or RFC finding, so their claims of this are spurious.

There's a curious phenomenon of people claiming that MoS isn't covered by WP:DAILYMAIL (again, even though neither RFC excludes it from consideration) - and therefore links to it are actually good and usable. I think it's important to note that even if the MoS isn't deprecated, that doesn't make MoS an RS (as some advocates of this viewpoint that "but it's not covered!" seem to think) - it's still a garbage-tier tabloid that should not be used in Wikipedia any more than the other garbage-tier tabloids.

In short - I'd consider, and would tend to treat, this as yet another variant attempt at special-pleading exceptions to WP:DAILYMAIL. Either way, it's a bad source and shouldn't be in Wikipedia.

Anyone seeking to seriously dispute this should do so with specific reference to the wordings used in the previous RFCs - David Gerard (talk) 11:39, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

David Gerard, I'd consider, and would tend to treat, this as yet another variant attempt at special-pleading exceptions to WP:DAILYMAIL If that's a reference to me, then I don't particularly care what the answer to the question posed is (in either direction). This is genuinely a request for clarification because I couldn't find it with a quick search of RSN, and they do appear to be different newspapers so I think it's a valid question to ask. For clarity, the consensus on this question should be added to the notes of WP:DAILYMAIL. A little good faith goes a long way y'know. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:30, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh no sorry, I meant specifically the people who explicitly claim in discussion over particular usages that MoS was excluded in the RFCs - David Gerard (talk) 12:44, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Me too, per DG. I dont understand when people claim it is a different newspaper. It's just the sunday edition people. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 12:57, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

You seriously don't understand the role an editorial staff plays at a newspaper? It's not a Sunday edition, it's a sister paper. It's an entirely different thing. In the exact same fashion that just because the Wikipedia editors had a massive hate fest over the Daily Mail, that doesn't mean that the finding of "generally reliable" applies to other titles owned by the same company. CommandTeamSixSixSix (talk) 17:26, 21 August 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

CommandTeamSixSixSix is a brand new account, I suspect it's a Brian K Horton sock. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Blocked while I was in the middle of filing a SPI. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 18:00, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

• THe Daily Myths website is explicitly deprecated.Slatersteven (talk) 11:34, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
• It's this sort of stupidity that is properly going to bite Wikipedia in the ass. Do you people not think outsiders realise that this whole "depreciation" nonsense deals with pu fishers, not websites. -- Preceding unsigned comment came from CommandTeamSixSix on 17:27 21 August 2020. Blocked sock. David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• This has been asked and answered before, see "Does WP:Dailymail apply to the Mail on Sunday". No, WP:DAILYMAIL1 ended in a conclusion about Daily Mail. Two editors (Andrew D. and I) did say that there was "muddle" about Mail on Sunday, but the closers chose to mention only what was clear. You can of course ask them though -- I found that, when I had a false impression that all Daily Mail opinion columns were disallowed, the closers were willing to clarify. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:30, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Your "reference" link claiming to be a previous discussion is to literally the present discussion. Please support your claim of a distinction in the RFCs with quotes and a link to what you're quoting. Even as you were one of the commenters in WP:DAILYMAIL1 asserting a distinction, the comments and conclusion of WP:DAILYMAIL1 and WP:DAILYMAIL2 do not support the claim of distiction - David Gerard (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
    • Indeed my link was a self-reference, I apologize to all. If I'm understanding your comment now, it's a demand that since the closers didn't say Mail on Sunday is banned, somebody must prove that they didn't silently mean that it's banned. Er, there are thousands of publications that they didn't mention, if we followed your logic then those thousands of publications were banned due to argumentum ex silentio. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:21, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
      • You're not understanding the comment, if that's what you think logically follows from it. I'll take it from that that you do not in fact have textual support from the RFCs for the claim that the MoS is not covered - David Gerard (talk) 23:35, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
        • Here is a link to a 2019 discussion, perhaps the similar title mixed me up. As for David Gerard's main claim, once again closers were willing to clarify, see below. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:56, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
• What about "This is Money"? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I asked about this one previously - it literally self-describes as the "money section of the MailOnline" in its about page, so it's just another URL for the deprecated source. (The opinion at that link saying we should treat it as a separate source is from a banned sockpuppeter.) - David Gerard (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
• NO OPINION - just want to point out that this question has been raised several times since the deprecation of the DM... and each time it gets slightly different results, depending on who gets involved in the discussion. (See archives 278 and 280) We may need to have a full RFC, and put it on the perennial list. Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
• The Sunday Times and The Times are different, and sometimes take different sides. This may not be the same as the DM and MoS, but it is at least possible for a Sunday paper to be separate from it's quotidian stablemate. I agree with Blueboar that the simplest expedient would be to have a separate RfC on the matter to get and accurate gauge of just how many angels are on the pinhead. GPinkerton (talk) 23:40, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
• Sunday newspapers in the UK are separate publications. The Observer, News of the World, The Correspondent and in the beginning the Sunday Sport were strictly Sunday newspapers, although the NoW was linked to The Sun. While I imagine that the editors who banned the Daily Mail would probably ban the Mail on Sunday as well, the fact is that they didn't, probably because they were unaware it was a separate publication. So I think a separate RfC is required. TFD (talk) 00:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
• I'm going to have to agree with TFD above; the original RFC asked if DM was reliable; if MoS is a separate publication then it is not covered by the scope of the original discussion (similar to how the recent Fox News discussion specifically left out pundits/opinion pieces). I will, however, note that dailymail.co.uk was specifically included in the close, which muddies the water somewhat as MoS uses that base URL; I think a new RFC will be required to deal with MoS specifically. Primefac (talk) 02:27, 21 August 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

  Note for other editors that, on Primefac's talk, a second closer of WP:DAILYMAIL1 has also responded with their support for this view. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:02, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:DENY

In the grand traditions of pure nonsense masquerading as sensible outcomes, the closing statement is interpreted by the haters whichever way suits their hatred on any given day. An explicit url was identified as depreciated, but other URLs can be considered to be included too, according to the victors. An explicit title was mentioned, but other titles can also be assumed to be covered too, according to the victors. All this is based on criteria that don't exist and that which they will never explain. Why? Because they genuinely don't have a good reason for any of this nonsense, and you won't find it in the debates, no frames of reference, for example. Just pure hate, a grand pile on, started by a now banned editor, banned for violating the holy BLP of all things, a person who confessed to having used "Daily Mail tactics" in how he achieved victory. Quite. There are holes and flaws like this all over the debate and the assorted closures/summaries purporting to be community consensus, of which there are now four I believe. CommandTeamSixSixSix (talk) 17:48, 21 August 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC) What about other DMGY titles? It is precisely because the Wikipedia editors participating in DAILYMAIL didn't seem to know or care what they thought the primary reasons for the Mail's alleged unreliability actually are (editor, culture, owner, market conditions, regulator, law courts), it seems prudent to take this opportunity to also obtain a clear and explicit statement that DAILYMAIL at least doesn't apply to other titles owned by the Mail's parent company. You would think this was an obvious no, but you look above, and you look at some of the nonsense said in DAILYMAIL about Nazis and other general rubbish that showed that it was nothing but a (dis)organsied hate mob, ironically, and you just genuinely don't know anymore. Even though Paul Dacre's name was all over the debate, we already know apparently that was just a mistake, that the finding is about something other than what can be controlled or commanded by an individual Editor In Chief. Which may, or may not, also apply to the Sunday paper. I mean, seriously, how long are people going to pretend thwt wasn't a farce from beginning to end? You don't even know what paper you were talking about! CommandTeamSixSixSix (talk) 17:37, 21 August 2020 (UTC) Blocked sock. David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC) This is classic MickMackNee/Brian K Horton. Can somebody open up a sockpuppet investigation? Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

So the editors that David Gerard maligned are vindicated, and the OP's question "Does Daily Mail RfC apply to the Mail on Sunday?" is answered: no. I hope there's no need to continue this thread. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:31, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

They won't be vindicated until the community explicitly sanctions the use of what is obviously a questionable source with close ties to the deprecated organ. GPinkerton (talk) 20:31, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

An RfC on the question would probably be a waste of editors' time at this stage. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:58, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

This would be an extremely questionable declaration, as much as you'd like it to be the case - David Gerard (talk) 21:00, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Despite the Daily Mail RfC closers' statements there is still disagreement, and this could affect many edits past and future, so I will ask for a formal close per WP:CLOSE soon unless there are more posts. I now ping all participants in the above-mentioned 2019 discussion (Guest2625 Black Kite Slatersteven 86.143.229.179 Andy Dingley). David Gerard said "Two commenters on the 2019 RFC tried to make out that it was explicitly excluded by the 2017 RFC" so I would ping them too to give them a chance to defend themselves, but I can't, they don't exist. The closer must answer what the OP asked, for me that would be sufficient. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Close request is here. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:58, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

This isn't an RFC, it's an unformatted discussion - there wasn't an RFC open to be closed - David Gerard (talk) 18:58, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I must note: the OP's question "Does Daily Mail RfC apply to the Mail on Sunday?" is answered: no. is not in any way an accurate summary of the responses you got from the original closers, and you appear to have grossly misread what they said, which contained many conditionals - David Gerard (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

The Mail on Sunday is a reasonably well put together newspaper, and its staff are different from the Daily Mail and Mail Online. The fact that the MOS stories appear on the dailymail.co.uk website is misleading. I don't think that the MOS is much worse than the Sunday Telegraph.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:59, 2 September 2020 (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.

Twitter tweets

Are twitter tweets a reliable source for the following statements at Alex Morse?

On August 12, Business Insider journalist Grace Panetta wrote in a series of tweets that she had been one of the first reporters the College Democrats had tried to shop their allegations to in April 2020 and that the names in the chat logs The Intercept had acquired were the same as those who had written her and Politico with "vague, unspecified allegations."

On August 14, Wisconsin College Democrats filed an ethics complaint through the national College Democrats of America against the College Democrats of Massachusetts and triggered a formal investigation into those involved.

References

Fortliberty (talk) 05:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:BLPSPS says that self published sources are NEVER acceptable for claims about third party living people. (t · c) buidhe 05:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• No, absolutely not. This is a reasonably exceptional claim about third parties that would require proper sourcing. WP:BLPSPS is for stuff like uncontroversial biographical details, not dramatic claims like these. And more generally it's silly to suggest that this is about herself - the intent of putting this in the article would be to make a statement about Morse and about the story in question, not about Panetta (who isn't even mentioned otherwise.) "I saw X happen" is not a WP:BLPSPS claim. --Aquillion (talk) 14:30, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Podcasts

I don't know where to look, but in the Vera Farmiga article it states that Freddie Highmore is the godfather to one of her children. The source used [94], the article doesn't state that he is, but he mentioned it in the podcast. The question is, can podcasts be used as a source? I've looked and can't find where it says if podcasts are reliable or not. If they are not, it's easy to find other articles to replace it as a source. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 19:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Fishhead2100, that would seem to be an unvetted claim about a third party, and therefore likely prohibited by WP:BLPSPS. (Also, it's a fairly insignificant detail that doesn't necessarily add to reader understanding of the subject.) (t · c) buidhe 02:12, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: It's that Vera and Freddie became friends while on the series Bates Motel which is why she made him godfather. But will change the source on the Verma Farmiga article. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 06:14, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

I've found many instances of plagiarism in the book A Reflective Guide to Gender Identity Counselling (published in 2019 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers). For example, the "Trigender" glossary entry is almost identical to an old version of the lead in our "Trigender" article, including the nonsensical final sentence. The next glossary entry, "Tucking", is copied in part from a 2016 Buzzfeed article. The "Demigender" definition is copied from nonbinary.wiki, where it is sourced to a Tumblr post. I emailed Jessica Kingsley Publishers about this months ago; they never responded and they're still selling the book. (Courtesy ping to @Mathglot:, whose work on an unrelated JKP issue reminded me of this.) Cheers, gnu57 20:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

There's a talkpage parameter that specifically documents stuff like this so it makes clear that it is not copyvio, see Talk:Alex Thomson (sailor) for an example. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Genericusername57:, thanks for the ping, but, can I also get a link, please? I hunted around, but could not find what you were referring to. Your comment did remind me, however, to question the notability of Jessica Kingsley Publishers, so I've tagged the article and raised a discussion on the TP. I may also prod it, or recommend it for deletion after a time, if no one else does. Mathglot (talk) 21:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

It's bad that the plagiarism is there, even if it's only in a glossary. They are still an academic publisher though. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:55, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Itsmejudith: The book also contains plagiarism outside the glossary: compare, e.g., the discussion of terms for people attracted to transgender people on pages 218-219 with an old revision of the corresponding Wikipedia article. gnu57 22:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Well is this a discussion about whether this book is reliable for the subject it deals with, gender identity counselling? Or is it about Jessica Kingsley in general? Because they have published some good academic stuff too. IMHO notable. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:15, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot: The Alex Stitt book ACT For Gender Identity: The Comprehensive Guide was also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. In April 2020, Literary Art Historian added material based on the ACT book to a number of articles. I noticed earlier today that you had flagged part of gender variance as directly copied from the ACT book, which reminded me of this other JKP copyright-related issue. (While I haven't noticed any copyright problems with the ACT text--it's clear that we're copying from Stitt at gender variance, rather than vice versa--I do wonder whether the Stitt material is due to include, given the apparent lack of responsible editorial oversight by the publisher.) Cheers, gnu57 22:02, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, right, thanks. Mathglot (talk) 00:07, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

• Given how controversial gender-related issues are, I think we should make an extra effort to use sources that are highly reliable. I don't think this publisher qualifies (at least in recent years, maybe they were better in the past?) based on its history of publishing plagiarism. (t · c) buidhe 22:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Member of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry by Andrey Fomich Novatski

Is this report a reliable source. This is used in the context of [[95]]. Andrey Fomich Novatski, the author, was the prosecutor of the local Ganja District Court of Azerbaijan. He was commissioned to create this historical report by the Azerbaijani Government under the Foriegn ministry during the time of the Armenian–Azerbaijani_War (http://www.milliarxiv.gov.az/en/fovqelade-tehqiqat-komissiyasi). The report broadly hoped to raise awareness of Armenian violence. The source is [[96]] page 116. Maidyouneed (talk) 05:25, 4 September 2020 (UTC)