Talk:The Grayzone/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

No article?

Has nobody written an article for The Grayzone? Why does it redirect to Max Blumenthal's article? I mean, an editor and a news outlet are not the same thing. Should this be interpreted, as some argue, that Wikipedia is biased against progressive, independent media and, in violation of its own rules, censures them?

Reference:Wikipedia formally censors The Grayzone as regime-change advocates monopolize editing— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dgalaviz (talk • contribs) 04:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

There is an article now. deprecation isn't related to notability. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 07:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Characterizing the political lean of The Grayzone

@Mind flux: I've reverted your recent edit. Part of the reason was that it changed the political orientation of The Grayzone from "far-left" to "ostensibly far-left". I'm wondering the extent to which there is sourcing for that claim; the pieces currently cited in the lead appear to generally describe the website as "far-left" (Coda, WaPo, Diplomat, RFI, UnHerd). I'm wondering if you've found strong sourcing to suggest that the website is "ostensibly" far-left, rather than actually being far-left. I can't really find that, so I'm not inclined to support that change the first sentence of the lead. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:05, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

there's this going on daily for years and i didnt say they were "former" rt employees https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1097713720707436544 https://twitter.com/im_PULSE/status/1380905492768247813 Mind flux (talk) 03:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mind flux: Pulse self-describes as a "web log", which ordinarily gets lumped in as WP:SPS. I understand that there are connections to RT at the highest level of this organization, though we'd probably need a reliable non-primary source to actually include this descriptor for their employee base writ large.

anti-war is not a far-left position

why is wikipedia spreading conspiracy theories? 2601:588:8181:C80:10BF:6E6E:880:70C0 (talk) 15:36, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The far-left descriptor is amply and reliably sourced. Please see Special:Permalink/1081266404 § cite note-9 for details. — Newslinger talk 11:00, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Description as news website

There must be a discussion of how to refer to The GrayZone. Numerous reliable sources have described it as a "news website", including USA Today, Coda Story, South China Morning Post, Mashable and Newsweek. In fact it is much more frequently referred to as a "news website" than a "blog". As Wikipedia's own article on blog states, a blog implies it has "diary-style text entries". That is clearly not what The GrayZone is. I made an edit citing these reliable sources, but it was reverted.

"Left-wing" or "far-left" do seem to be an accurate description of the website, given these terms have been repeatedly used by reputable sources. So I think it should be referred to as a "news website that has been described as left-wing or far-left" to provide the most neutral description.

As I have said above, this article very clearly suffers from problems with NPOV, and it appears some editors are trying to monopolize it to advocate particular viewpoints. This violates the collective spirit of Wikipedia. There should be more discussion here. – SpiritofIFStone (talk) 15:09, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I’m fine with using “far-left news website” or “far-left news blog” based on the RS coverage. It appears be the case that The Grayzone Project (I.e. the article subject prior to its independent launch) is generally described as an AlterNet blog rather than as a news website, so we might want to add something to the sentence on its founding to indicate that part about its origins. The phrasing of “The Grayzone is a news website that has been described as…” seems unnecessarily clunky when RS pretty widely characterize the website as far-left and I would prefer to keep the first sentence succinct. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 17:29, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

As we have seen in the discussion above, there is debate about whether The GrayZone is "far-left". Some reliable sources have referred to it as "far-left", but several other sources including Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast and The Independent have only called The GrayZone "left-wing". Calling something far-left or far-right is often used as an insult in a pejorative way, as can be seen in some of the opinion pieces that are cited as sources on this article (not factual reports but op-eds like those in HaAretz). This violates NPOV.

It is better to say that it "has been described as left-wing or far-left", as is commonly done on other articles on Wikipedia - for example, see the "political position" section of the articles on La France Insoumise or PSUV. Even the article for Morning Star only describes the publication as "left-wing", and that is the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain. If that is called "left-wing", the GrayZone should at least have both descriptions, for consistency. - SpiritofIFStone (talk) 20:09, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Not really seeing the hair you’re intending to split... Isn’t the far-left part of the left wing? I don’t see a direct contradiction there. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:13, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

No one is disputing that the GrayZone is a biased website with a clear left-wing slant. But there is a qualitative difference between "far-left" and just "left-wing". The term "far-left" is frequently used as a political insult, not a neutral description. And some editors here, who have a history of pushing particular political viewpoints, are dominating this article and unfairly portraying the website to push their own perspective. Again, this violates NPOV. If reliable sources like Foreign Policy Magazine, The Daily Beast and The Independent refer to the GrayZone as just "left-wing", that description should be used. - SpiritofIFStone (talk) 20:19, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I just added some additional sources. The majority of sources refer to it as far-left and no sources contradict that label. Therefore, that's the label we should use. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

But when it isn’t being used as an insult and instead is being used as a neutral description it would fall under “left-wing.” Not really sure why you’re dismissing this argument as its a very good reason to go with the broader description, if its not a broader and narrower description like you’re saying then NPOV would be to include both opinions (if as you say there is a "there is a qualitative difference” then NPOV gives us no choice, we must include both). Also RE "And some editors here, who have a history of pushing particular political viewpoints, are dominating this article and unfairly portraying the website to push their own perspective.” thats off topic, this is not the venue if you want to address those concerns. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:55, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Taking into account of Mike and SpiritofIFStone's comments, it does seem weird it is described as a blog in the present tense in the opening sentence. The subsequent sentence then calls it a website when describing it's origins (when it was probably more of a blog). Can't we just switch this around? Vladimir.copic (talk) 04:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I have reviewed the sources the article currently cites, to see what they say on the issues under contention. Here are the results [5 Nov: couple more added in square brackets from discussion below, where they’re linked]:

• Left-wing/leftist: Independent, Foreign Policy, Daily Beast
• Far left: Coda Story, Washington Post, The Diplomat, RFI, plus weaker sources UnHerd, BylineTimes, Washington Examiner, [Media Matters]
• Other/purportedly left-wing: Ha'aretz news puts leftist in scare quotes; Radio Free Asia just cites ASPI "Western influencers and denialist fringe media outlets like The Grayzone"; China Digital Times says "associated with the political left"; New Politics says its editors "may be mistaken for genuine left-wing person[s]"; CARR says they are "ostensibly" anti-imperialist but in reality fascist-adjacent

Conclusion: Left-wing includes far left, so might be fine, although more sources say far left. I'd go with something like "is described as left-wing or far left".

• News website: Coda Story, Washington Post, USA Today, plus weaker sources UnHerd and Mashable
• Fringe (news/conspiracy) website: ASPI ("fringe media outlet"), Radio Free Asia & China Digital Times just cite ASPI ("Western influencers and denialist fringe media outlets like The Grayzone", "fringe website"), plus weaker sources Washington Free Beacon ("fringe website"), [Business Insider (“fringe website”), Media Matters (“conspiracy-theory outlet”)]
• Blog: RFI, Axios, Ha'aretz news & opinion pieces, CARR, plus weaker sources BylineTimes
• Website/media outlet: The Diplomat, Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship, New Yorker
• Other: "one stop propaganda shop" (Commentary)

Conclusion: as no consensus among sources, either use neutral website/media outlet, or say "variously described as a blog, news site or fringe media outlet".

• Relationship to Russian media: "[editor] Blumenthal has made frequent appearances on state-run broadcasters such as Russia’s RT and Sputnik radio, and China’s television news channel CGTN" (Coda Story), "a far-left blog with alleged ties to the Kremlin" (Byline), "a website edited by an RT contributor" (Daily Beast), "The founders...have been featured on Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik Radio" (ASPI), "a website founded by Max Blumenthal, a frequent contributor to RT and the Russian-controlled Sputnik news agency" (ProPublica).

Conclusion: saying the editors are frequent contributors to Russian state media would be due. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:51, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

In addition to the Washington Post, USA Today, South China Morning Post, South China Morning Post another time, Coda Story, and slightly weaker source Mashable have all referred to the GrayZone as a "news website".

The articles in HaAretz, UnHerd, BylineTimes, Washington Examiner, Commentary and New Politics are opinion pieces, and thus should not be given nearly as much weight as the news reports in the other reliable sources.

It is clear that a majority of reliable sources refer to it as a "news website", not a blog. - SpiritofIFStone (talk) 14:35, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Mashable is case-by-case and I don't think that it carries significant weight here. If we want to list additional sources that refer to it as a blog (CARR) or simply as a (media) outlet/website (WSJ, The New Yorker, Daily Beast, ProPublica, The Economist), I'm not so sure that we'd come to the conclusion that It is clear that a majority of reliable sources refer to it as a "news website". I've also seen a foreign language source refer to it as a portal (VOA Español) and a major UK online newspaper refer to it as an opaquely funded leftist publication based in the United States. Chinese state-affiliated sources almost entirely refer to it as an "independent news website", but I don't think they'd be RS in this context.

I'd be fine with something like leaving it as "website" in the first sentence and then later on in the lead explaining how it's been characterized. RS don't appear to have a consensus for any one descriptor, so we should note all the prominent ones in line with WP:NPOV. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:35, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I think one of the Ha'aretz pieces is badged as news and one as opinion. I've added the additional sources mentioned above (except for SCMP and WSJ, which I can't access) to the list above. I've distinguished between strong RSs and weaker opinion pieces or otherwise less reliable sources. It's not the case that more RSs say "news" than "blog"; there's clearly no consensus among reliable sources. Better to say a website which is variously characterised as an investigative news site, a blog and a fringe media outlet. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: Is it the case that many of the sources that use "news website" hedge on that designation or add qualifiers that might be relevant here? I don't think "investigative news site" would accurately reflect the HQRS; the only sort of mention of that term is the passing one in USA Today or in sources saying that it self-describes that way. The Coda Story source also includes the line publications such as The Grayzone function on a purely ideological level and describes it as a far-left news site. I wouldn't think that the most neutral way to pull out of that source would be to extract (unqualified) "news site". — Mikehawk10 (talk) 01:30, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Coda Story, Washington Post and USA Today call it a news site in their own voice, while a couple of other sources say that it calls itself an investigative news site, which I haven't listed. One option would be to say that it describes itself as an investigative news website, while other sources characterise it as a blog or fringe media outlet. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:59, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I think that would be a neutral phrasing. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 20:23, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

New article at Media Matters for America: “Far-left conspiracy theory outlets The Grayzone and MintPress News also adapted the global nature of Soros conspiracy theories to sow doubt about [Pandora Papers] whistleblowers and leaks.”[1] As with Business Insider (see below) not necessarily a good addition to the article, but another item for the “fringe website” side of the due weight scales. I’ll add these to the list above, but I think we have enough now to get the lead right. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:01, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

The article should use the far-left descriptor instead of left-wing. There is a critical mass of reliable sources that describe The Grayzone as far-left. Since far-left politics is a subset of left-wing politics, the sources that use the left-wing descriptor do not contradict the sources that use the far-left descriptor. Likewise, since news websites and far-left organizations are not mutually exclusive, the sources that call The Grayzone a news website also do not contradict the sources that use the far-left descriptor. Because no reliable sources refute the far-left descriptor, and considering that a left-wing advocacy organization (Media Matters for America) has distanced itself from The Grayzone by calling it far-left, "left-wing to far-left" should be replaced with "far-left". — Newslinger talk 11:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Nicaragua

New article in Business Insider on a troll network just closed down by Facebook includes this: “The student protester's false confession, for example, was circulated by a British supporter of the government, John Perry, who adopted a fake identity to publish commentary on the episode at The Grayzone, a US-based fringe website that has promoted the Ortega government's line on social unrest in the Central American country.”[2] Not necessarily a source for the article, but one more item in the due weight scales pushing the balance away from “news site” to “fringe media outlet”. BobFromBrockley (talk) 03:50, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: The Daily Beast appears to have reported similarly in 2018 regarding the involvement of The Grayzone in Nicaraguan propaganda. Might be worth mentioning in some way in the article. I've also boldly broken this off into a subsection so as to focus discussion on this; feel free to RV if this isn't the best way to structure this. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 16:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

So The Daily Beast (which is described as a "tabloid" right here on Wikipedia) is a realiable source? Wikipedia truly is overrun with right-leaning editors who quote snipe for "news" to "prove" their own biased POV. Attacking the entire outlet of Grayzone without giving specific reasons is propaganda and badjacketing. Asaturn (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

The Daily Beast is an WP:MREL source because it, like Newsweek, veers into clickbait at times. That being said, the specific article cited doesn't actually look like clickbait, but decent reporting. And, the publication is certainly... not right-leaning. I also find it rather odd to describe Bobfrombrockley that way if you've ever looked at Bob's user page, and I'd advise against making personal attacks against other editors. Please don't insinuate without evidence that people like Bob and I are doing this because of your misguided perception that we're motivated by the political right in making our edits. Doing so is casting aspersions, which is considered to be WP:UNCIVIL on Wikipedia. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Neutrality

The article hasnt any neutrality at all. Its simply a harsh - not well founded - critic on grayzone. --2A02:8389:2181:A400:94E2:1DF:95CD:D5E1 (talk) 11:36, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Editors of Wikipedia article's are dependent upon reliable sources for what can be included. It is unlikely any usable sources make positive comments about the subject of this article, but you are welcome to try to find them. However, please check Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources to see if sources you find can be cited. Websites like Global Times, RT, Press TV and Global Research may well contain positive content about The Grayzone, but they are all deprecated by community consensus (and Global Research is blacklisted). Philip Cross (talk) 13:53, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Absurdly biased article. No pretext of neutrality whatsoever. The fact that it seems to have been written mostly by someone (Philip Cross) who The Grayzone has covered negatively in their news articles and editorial comments and that author's comments here cast serious doubt on his ability to write an objective article on the subject. Zellfire999 (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

"Absurdly biased article. No pretext of neutrality whatsoever." Agreed. Looking over the talk page it seems quite a few editors feel the same way. Perhaps a neutrality tag is on order?--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:12, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

See here for a breakdown of the percentage of the article written by individual editors referred to there as authorship attribution. The third person at this time, responsible for 4.1% of the content, is Philip Cross. In other words, most of the article was not written by this editor. Philip Cross (talk) 17:47, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zellfire999: If you're going to make personal attacks against editors and break the spirit of civility, then at least make the attacks against the correct person. I am the one who wrote the initial draft of this article. If you think that Philip Cross is not acting in good faith here, then you could take it to WP:ANI, but I don't think that doing so would be prudent on your part. If you have issues with article content, please provide reliable sources to support proposed changes; complaining vaguely about the lack of neutrality in an article isn't helpful for resolving disputes over whether content is fairly weighed. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 17:58, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zellfire999: Breitbart has published two articles criticising me and other Wikipedia editors for being too positive about antifa in our editing here. Does that mean, following the logic above, that I should now never edit articles related to Breitbart? That policy seems like it gives a licence to media outlets and web platforms to simply attack Wikipedia editors to skew our editing in their favour. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:56, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Neutral Point of View

This article has huge problems with NPOV. It's clear that a small handful of editors are using it to advocate for their own personal views while denigrating others, citing opinion articles in politically charged websites as if they were impartial facts. This violates the spirit of Wikipedia. There should be an effort to bring in more editors to balance the perspective, and using a greater variety of sources, not just political opinion columns. — SpiritofIFStone (talk) 22:33, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are dependent on reliable sources. If they all find problems with The Grayzone, the article is certain to reflect that regardless of how many editors are active in writing the article. Please see Wikipedia:Canvassing for involving additional editors. It is not admissible in the manner you are suggesting. Philip Cross (talk) 06:53, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Seconded. This article reads like a hit piece. Leading language like "known for its sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes," does not belong on an article about a news website, and it's not even directly supported by the "sources"- at least two of which read as opinion pieces, and one of which identifies itself as such. The characterization of the site, which has numerous authors, as a "blog" also seems designed to discredit- it's facially inaccurate, and not the consensus of websites which have reported on The Grayzone. Zellfire999 (talk) 13:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I concur as well. I think the neutrality tag that was just removed should be restored.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:38, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Zellfire999, do you believe that "known for its sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes" is not supported by reliable sources? How else are we supposed to what the site is known for? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 00:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, and at least one of these editors seems to think it's acceptable to edit others' comments on the talk page. I will repeat my point again: This article is so absurdly biased that I expect it will actually have the opposite of its intended effect, raising a flag of suspicion among readers and making them more sympathetic to the subject being smeared. I've observed this before on absurdly POV articles like the old Gamergate page.

Sometimes I wonder if "professional" Wikipedia editors ever venture outside Wikipedia to the rest of the internet to observe how real people react when they read transparently motivated articles like this. The reputation of Wikipedia can only be tarnished so many times before people stop taking it seriously as a source of information on politics. The disputed neutrality tag belongs on this, at bare minimum. 98.127.81.62 (talk) 18:24, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

@98.127.81.62: The point of this page is to have an article on The Grayzone, which gained notability independently of Max Blumenthal in recent years. This article, you seem to imply, is being made for the purpose of having The Grayzone be smeared. I don't think that any editor on this page is actively trying to concoct smears against The Grayzone, and I'd advise against making personal attacks that imply that editors are trying to do so.— Mikehawk10 (talk) 00:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Regardless of intent, the *content* of this article reads as incredibly narrow in perspective. Where is anything about their actual independent reporting and news stories they've broken? They've broken important investigative journalism stories regarding Assange and Venezuela but this article is entirely focused on portraying them as a propaganda outlet.

Why is the "reception" section entirely criticisms? That does not reflect the reality of the position the Grayzone has in the media. The *entirety* of this article is just trying to make the case that the site is a crack foreign backed fake news outlet.

Fair.org for example portrays them very positively: https://fair.org/home/deathly-silence-journalists-who-mocked-assange-have-nothing-to-say-about-cia-plans-to-kill-him/

2600:1700:7420:DCB0:C198:1204:6B86:FC20 (talk) 01:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The current article is highly charged and opinionated against the topic, as it draws from highly charged and opinionated sources - largely opinion articles. The geopolitical view the article takes towards countries with differing geopolitical interests to the United States is highly combative, and borders on Brinkmanship, or willingness to push international conflict to its limit. Its sources rely often on "generally accepted" understandings of geopolitical events, but their source trails often lead nowhere. Where are these "generally accepted" views coming from, and who is "generally accepting" them? The article should take a more neutral stance towards charged geopolitical topics, rather than repeating the editorial stances of its sources. Wackword (talk) 00:35, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Wackword

There is not a consensus on the article's neutrality. I am putting a POV tag at the top of the page because of this lack of consensus. Please do not remove it until a consensus is reached. Wackword (talk) 00:35, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Wackword

Specifically, where do you see neutrality issues? Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 01:57, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

The Grayzone is marked as being affiliated with or propaganda for the broad Anti-US bloc of countries, those most often targets for sanctions and military brinkmanship. It is charged with denying crimes against humanity, while the sources used are the very sources criticized by the site for alleging said crimes without due diligence. The article takes a Pro-US or Pro-Western editorial stance towards an Anti-Western website, when the job of the wiki is to be aloof and neutral towards these types of conversations. This reflects a broader issue with Wikipedia in regards to accusations against Anti-West countries: Wikipedia uses "Mainstream Sources" without investigating them and their ties to western governments. The best sources are not the New York Times or Reuters, just as they are not The Grayzone or Xinhua. The best sources are publishers like the Inter Press Service which present neutral information without giving in to western bias, and focusing on a perspective which includes the whole world, especially the global south, not just the West. This article uses charged language about the Grayzone's stances which only plays into the site's editorial line. Wackword (talk) 20:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Wackword

When we talk about the Grayzone as being called "Sympathetic to authoritarian regimes", for example, we need to consider, "Who is calling these governments authoritarian? Do they have a vested interest in this? Does the claim hold up considering this?" before moving on. The answer to that last question can be yes - think of al-Sisi's Egypt, for example. We need to investigate deeper than what is being presented on this and other pages. It is wrong to evaluate sources at face value, especially on foreign policy, considering the history of American Yellow Journalism, such as in Iraq (no WMDs, no 'Incubator babies'), in Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin), all the way back to Cuba in 1898 (USS Maine). TLDR: See Propaganda Model. Wackword (talk) 21:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Wackword

Dr.Swag Lord You and Phillip Cross and MikeHawk10 should stop camping on and reverting this article and allow the natural process of Wikipedia modification to reach a factual and well written entry over time. Many users have criticized the article on this talk page, but looking at its edit history you three users in particular have kept it static despite differing opinions. That's not consensus, that's domination. Wackword (talk) 21:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Wackword

First off, please ping me if you're going to accuse me of "domination". For their sakes, I'll ping Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d and Philip Cross so that they are aware.

Second off, if you look at the section below about how to characterize the website, you'll see a good bit of discussion. I've participated in that in good faith, as have others, who have proposed alternative phrases and made changes along those lines. If you'd like to propose specific changes to specific lines, either boldly make them and engage in discussion if they're reverted, or make proposals on the talk page to try to gain consensus. As 331dot noted on the helpdesk, there don't appear to behavioral issues here. If you don't like specific content, I'd encourage you to actually propose what you specifically want changed; discussing concrete proposals are generally more productive than discussing abstract allegations of POV issues. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:38, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

@Wackword: You still haven't stated any specific reasons why you believe this article suffers from NPOV issues. Sources are allowed to have their biases (see: WP:BIASED). And all the sources in this article are compliant with our reliable sources guidelines. If you have reason to believe that the 35 sources used in this article are all factually incorrect, please post your evidence to the reliable sources noticeboard. However, mere allegations of the source being "biased" is not enough to consider the source faulty. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Quick question, if a publication offers the "pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia" (etc), is it illegitimate to claim that the publication is "sympathetic to authoritarian regimes", particularly if it's backed up by reliable sources? If you really want to debate the issue, surely you should be asking whether or not it does 'toe the line' of these governments, rather than debating whether these governments are authoritarian or not... Alssa1 (talk) 23:09, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

When we talk about The Grayzone being sympathetic to authoritarian regimes, we're closely following what reliable sources say about The Grayzone. These include multiple sources listed as generally reliable at WP:RSP. That China is led by an authoritarian regime, for instance, appears to be included in Wikivoice in the lead of Chinese Communist Party, so this doesn't appear to generally be an issue; more importantly, the sources that discuss The Grayzone are sources that also give the same characterization that you're contesting and this isn't a case of novel synthesis by editors of this article. It might be that you believe that the sources are not reliable for this characterization, but this doesn't appear to be the community's general view of these sources. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:54, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem with neutrality wasn't that Wiki was inappropriately accusing China, et al. of being authoritarian. They obviously are and that doesn't need to be debated here. It's that many of the references were demonstrably inaccurate or unevidenced hit pieces. Even if it's in an RS, demonstrably false and unevidenced opinion pieces that have been cherry-picked to support a POV should not form the basis of a Wikipedia article, especially ones that have been authored by people with a COI because they are individuals/organizations that have been criticized by the subject of the article. The current version of the article should be much more balanced. It stresses that it is a fringe news site (well supported by multiple references) rather than a disinformation site (which relies on people knowing their motives or where their Patreon funding comes from, which no one has established). It doesn't rely on bogus or evidence-free criticism. I've also added the one positive review from FAIR as mentioned above. Bueller 007 (talk) 23:54, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

That "conflict of interest" argument was rejected in a 2020 policy RfC. — Newslinger talk 11:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Conspiracy theory

The opinion article by "Alexander Reid Ross" in "Haaretz" is the only source calling it a "conspiracy theory" website. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view says this is wrong. 79.168.187.252 (talk) 17:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Haaretz is a reliable source and we make a judgement of what goes in an article based upon what reliable sources say. NPOV does not mean we ignore the statements from reliable sources. Furthermore, there is already a discussion about the broad neutrality of the article above. Alssa1 (talk) 17:47, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

In "News organizations" it says that "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact". I hope you above get together and find an unbiased way to describe the subject because it seems the guidelines try to protect articles against slander and defamation. 79.168.187.252 (talk) 20:06, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

What makes you think it's "slander and defamation"? We have a number of reliable sources the describe the Grayzone in 'unflattering' terms. Media Matters describes them as a "Far-left conspiracy theory outlet...", Business Insider calls them a "...a US-based fringe website...", and the Daily Beast refers to them repeatedly in an article titled "In Nicaragua, Torture Is Used to Feed ‘Fake News’". .codastory refers to them as "fringe leftists" and Iain Levine (formerly of Human Rights Watch) says: "Proving that Max Blumenthal sets no limits on the number of atrocities that he acts as apologist for https://the-tls.co.uk/articles/max-blumenthal-assad-syria-verso/". How many reliable sources do you need to have for the claims not to be in breach of your understanding of NPOV? Alssa1 (talk) 01:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

"Media Matters" is a propaganda outlet run by David Brock, famous for referring to Anita Hill as "a little bit sl_tty and a little bit nutty." Daily Beast is described as a "tabloid" in the Wikipedia article on the outlet. Are these seriously considered reliable sources for the internet's largest encyclopedia??? FAR from a neutral POV. They are blatant propaganda rags and gossip blogs not worthy of being referred to as "news websites." Shameful. Asaturn (talk) 21:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Media Matters is considered to be politically biased and there's no consensus on its reliability. But, it seems like you're making part of your argument along the lines of "this source doesn't have neutral POV, so it can't be trusted", and I have to push back on that part. Per WP:BIASED, that's not the case; the guideline says that reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 22:25, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

This has been removed: Index on Censorship described The Grayzone as "a Kremlin-connected online outlet that pushes pro-Russian conspiracy theories and genocide denial." If included it should be more carefully attributed, e.g. Nerma Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, writing in Index on Censorship, described The Grayzone as "a Kremlin-connected online outlet that pushes pro-Russian conspiracy theories and genocide denial." The argument for removal is that we can't use the author because the publication which is the subject of the article has written about the organisation she works for, even though it's published by a well-regarded source. I don't think our policy works like that. The question for attributed opinion pieces being used as sources for opinions should be whether they have due weight not whether they are biased. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

This is a nonsense removal. This is a reliable source with a reputable publisher. Just because The Grayzone criticized a media outlet doesn't mean that media outlet suddenly has a COI with the Grayzone. I'll restore the source but I think adding the authors name, her employer, and the name of the source is a bit too wordy. I'll just do the author name and the name of the source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:24, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

It's too wordy to list the reason why she has an obvious conflict of interest and an interest in discrediting a source that has criticized her employer? Right, makes perfect sense. Also, it's kind of amazing to claim that it's a "nonsense revert" when you didn't even bother to acquaint yourself with any of the facts. (i.e., you didn't even know who her employer was, indicating that you didn't understand a single thing about the situation before you reverted.) Bueller 007 (talk) 21:48, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

How would writing out "Commission for International Justice and Accountability" inform the reader the author has an "obvious conflict of interest" with the Grayzone? Oh, are you seriously accusing me of not reading the source? You do realize that CIJA stands for the "Commission for International Justice and Accountability" and not the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs? Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I misremembered. Thanks for the correction. However, it doesn't change the fact that your original edit was daft. Do you have a valid point to make, or no? Bueller 007 (talk) 22:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Their original edit was not "daft"; it is completely correct. In a 2020 policy RfC, your "conflict of interest" argument was rejected by the community. — Newslinger talk 12:04, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d that the removal is nonsense. Also, a deprecated source criticizing someone is not worth mentioning in this article; it carries no weight and the claim isn't being used in an WP:ABOUTSELF manner since it involves a third party. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 01:28, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

References

To add to article

To add to this article: from which sources (other than advertising) The Grayzone obtains its funding. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Afaict The Grayzone has no advertisements, which generally compromise an outlets independence. The Grayzone says that it does not take money from any government or government-backed group or individual and relies on the support of readers like you. Burrobert (talk) 05:49, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The Grayzone has a Patreon. They do not publicize how much money they get from there, but given they have 794 patrons, if we assume mid-tier ($25), that would mean they get $44k/mo. (This is likely an overestimation, most patrons tend towards the lower tiers, per Zipf's law. At the lowest, they get $8k/mo.)

Given that they have several full-time correspondents living in expensive locales such as New York City, and they frequently fly overseas to report on-site, many believe there is a discrepancy between their alleged financing and their expenditures, a gap filled with foreign funding (usually alleged to be Russian state funding, since they are never critical towards the Russian or Chinese states or their geopolitical interests). However, because they do not release transparent accounting on the matter, we can only speculate. As for the article, because there are not any WP:RS (that I know of anyways, I'd love to be wrong) concerning their funding, we cannot add information about it in the article. aismallard (talk) 23:29, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

left-wing?

the sources for left wing and far left seem unrelated 218.215.251.212 (talk) 10:36, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I looked over them and they mention The Grayzone as well as its alignment, either describing it as "left-wing" or "far-left". Additionally, there was a prior discussion on this above. aismallard (talk) 23:41, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

POV tag

I created the POV tag for this article on the grounds that the discussion on its neutrality was still ongoing. To this I add the following issue with the article, which is undue weight, as per WP:NPOV. The explanation is simply that there may be existing WP:RS which state a minority opinion relevant to the article (relevant due to being a reliable source rather than not). This deduction is logical given the existence of left-wing outlets deemed minimally to totally reliable by the guidelines; these may contain points of view in favor of The Grazyone.

For consensus to be reached, all members of a group must be in agreement with the topic at hand. As per the POV template's page, this is a requirement, as the discussion is active and the issue is clear, both on this section and the older one. Choose which section to discuss the issue in, but I will only attend to this one.

Fasscass (talk) 03:37, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that policy clearly states that the tag should remain while the discussion is ongoing and consensus has not been reached. Burrobert (talk) 04:11, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The discussion that you replied to above had been closed for a long while, and it reached a consensus last year. The new objection seems to be based solely off one (questionable) book chapter questions the way one source reported on The Grayzone, which is hardly enough to render the article's neutrality shaky. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 05:17, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

You're just an infrequent WP:SPA who occasionally every few months crawls out from under your rock to complain about bias before disappearing again. There's no reason to care about your opinion, and the sooner you crawl back under your rock the better, as to avoid wasting other, more valuable contributors time. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:13, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

• I am not sure if I totally understand the OP's objections. Is the OP saying there are RSs out there that cast the Grayzone in a positive light? By all means, present them. The only sources I know that present the Grayzone in a positive light are the Global Times and RT, both of which are deprecated. All other mainstream, reliable sources present the Grayzone as a conspiratorial website. I do not believe the POV tag is warranted. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 05:30, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I removed the POV tag from this article because it appears consensus has been reached. Philip Cross (talk) 05:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

"For consensus to be reached, all members of a group must be in agreement with the topic at hand." just FYI thats not how WP:CONSENSUS works. I will suggest that in the future you avoid using tags of any kind until you are confident in your ability to use them competently. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:14, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the consensus here that consensus has been reached on the POV issue. I don't see an open discussion on whether the article is POV, and the overwhelming number of editors have agreed that the article has achieved NPOV. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:53, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Muros Invisibles

@NoonIcarus: I've reverted this edit, since it appears to solely source itself from a self-published Medium blog. I see in your comments that you note that Joshua Collins has written on the subject in other contexts, but I'm not 100% convinced that we should be using what amounts to his blog for sourcing on The Grayzone. There are still a few other places in the article text that cite this source, so I'm wondering what the rationale for reliability is given that it's an SPS. Are you saying that the writer is a subject-matter-expert? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:02, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: Hi! Many thanks for the message. Yes, that is what I'm arguing, also based in Medium's entry in WP:RS/P Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Medium. Joshua is the editor of Muros Invisibles, which since 2019 has written, among other themes, about the crisis in Venezuela, the subject that the section talked about. Collins might not have reported as much about Nicaragua, for instance, but he's definitely a subject-matter-expert regarding Venezuela. I would like to know your thoughts regarding this. --NoonIcarus (talk) 21:32, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

There are potential BLP issues with using SPS like this. Best avoided. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I would agree. Collins seems to be a freelance journalist, not a subject-matter expert. We might be able to salvage some of the material in the Nicaragua section using the Daily Beast article. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:00, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

• Journalists can be subject-matter experts, but I'd want to see evidence that they are regarded as experts by peers outside the news industry, e.g., reviews of their books by academics, prizes awarded by bodies that aren't swayed by the news industry, etc. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:32, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

  This is certainly true. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 02:32, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

We're right to be wary of a Medium post, especially if there are BLP issues (are there in this case?) but worth noting that he is not simply a blogger, but very much a serious, respected journalist widely published in reliable and mainstream sources on both Latin American issues (the topic of these posts)[3][4][5][6][7] and also specifically on state/media relations in Latin America, on which he has written for NACLA's scholarly journal.[8] BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:04, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the use included something like "Blumenthal did X" with respect to The Grayzone which would be a WP:BLPSPS issue. It's also a bit difficult to separate The Grayzone from its (relatively small) set of staff. There's also stuff that amounts to "The Grayzone said A about B living person", citing Muros Invisibles. This amounts to using a self-published source to describe a deprecated source's allegations about a living person (which seems to go against WP:SPS). I'd prefer to avoid this sort of sourcing arrangement. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 21:13, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I've placed an "unreliable sources" tag on the subsection while we try to sort out reliability, since there doesn't seem to be a consensus yet. Is this something that should go to WP:RSN for additional input on whether the source is a SPS made by a SME? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:13, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I've reduced the section's reliance on the source, and added the tag to the other section where it's prominent. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Grayzone&type=revision&diff=1093270501&oldid=1093225209 I think maybe taking this to RSN not a bad idea. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:57, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Just logging for reference the text on Venezuela that Mhawk10 removed, in case editors want to check for stronger sources or if a consensus emerges that this is acceptable on SME basis. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:13, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I removed the few final references to Collins and re-wrote the Nicaragua section in this diff. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:37, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

New Politics

Should this be mentioned in reception section, by the editor of New Politics?

• "Against the GrayZone Slanders". New Politics. 2019-07-12. Retrieved 2022-06-17.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:21, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I have only read part of the New Politics article and the Grayzone article that it is discussing. It appears to be a case of he said-she said. If we include a mention, it needs to be done neutrally, i.e. not from the perspective of New Politics. Outline the claims made by Grayzone and include New Politics denial in an appropriate form. An interesting point from the part that I did read was that Grayzone claimed that some of the groups attending the conference were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the State Department. The New Politics article does not refer to those claims so presumably they are true. At one point the NP article states "The GrayZone article makes the crude, simplistic argument that any criticism of nations that are the enemies of the United States—such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, China, or Russia—is “anti-anti-imperialism.” ". The Grayzone article does describe a number of groups as "anti-anti-imperialism" but not necessarily because they criticised nations that are enemies of the US. Grayzone describes ISO as "ant-anti-imperialist" because it spends a large part of its time "attacking the anti-imperialist left". Haymarket books are described as publishing "anti-anti-imperialist screeds that echo the US State Department’s rhetoric". These comments are not for publication, but to justify why we need to take an even-handed approach in covering this. Burrobert (talk) 17:14, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

We've already got a source from New Politics that's in the reception section, so I'm not sure adding a second one is the best idea when the criticism from both of them stems from the same place—specific stuff about the DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket Books seems to (pretty explicitly the mind of New Politics editor) be a part of this pattern rather than some unique phenomenon. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 06:44, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

It was funny once, but is starting to get stale

Removing a comment by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist writing in a green-tick source was funny the first time, but its time to get some new material. What about expanding the comment that "According to La Prensa, Blumenthal and Norton could be seen "worshipping" the regime while dancing the cumbia". That should get a few laughs. Burrobert (talk) 06:21, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I've restored a modified version of the content sourced to The Intercept; I think it's probably due in some capacity, though it might properly belong in the "reception" section. My initial reaction upon reading the line was that the speech was metaphorical w.r.t. dancing, but the report is quite literal that they were dancing, so I've added a "clarification needed" tag. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 16:55, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Bring on the dancing girls again?

"Blumenthal and Norton expressed their support to the regime dancing to "El Comandante se queda" (English: The Comandante Stays) a cumbia song composed in support of Ortega during the 2018 protests".

That's gold Jerry! Gold! Burrobert (talk) 13:39, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Manufacturing disrespect

I agree that this article basically reads like a hit piece. Regardless of its political bias, the Grayzone has published numerous valuable investigative pieces. Criticisms of the Grayzone usually don't offer anything to dispute the articles that are published but are rather just resorting to emotionally charged monikers and ad hominems. This has even been picked up in peer-reviewed academic publications like Routledge, see for example:

Singh and Blumenthal (2019) present evidence that the extraordinary claim about millions of Uyghurs being incarcerated is based on two studies only, and the estimation is made after interviewing a total of eight people. [...] Coda, a New York-based news platform, dismisses Blumenthal as a far-left supporter of the Syrian regime (Thompson, 2020). However, while Blumenthal’s political view on Syria might say something about his potential bias on the Uyghur issue, Thompson does not respond to the evidence the Grayzone presented that challenges Zenz’s research.

— Chi Zhang (2022), Fighting Tigers or Flies? Towards Effective Counter-Radicalisation Narratives in China, p. 186, Routledge

Additionally, apart from heavily relying on opinion pieces that are devoid of any actual journalistic content, the language in this article appears to be rather manipulative. For example, the article reads: "Along this vein, the website has supported the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, publishing content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian civil war."

While technically true, even the Wikipedia article about the Douma chemical attack doesn't draw a conclusion about which party used chemical weapons. In essence, it says the Syrian government and governments supportive of it attribute it to the rebels and/or white helmet troops, while the rebels and governments opposed to the Syrian government attribute it to the Syrian government, but that independent investigations only found that chemical weapons were used, without attributing it to either side. Saying that the Grayzone "denies" that the Syrian government used chemical weapons strongly implies the usage of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is undisputed, which it is not. It would be akin to writing in 2003 that "France has a pro-Hussein stance, denying that Iraq is in possession of WMDs". Phrasings like these are just highly charged language about disputed political issues, which has no place on Wikipedia. Sarrotrkux (talk) 00:23, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

The article in its current state reflects the sources cited in it, one of which is the very Coda Story piece that Zhang appears to be criticizing. But if we're going to be using a book edited by two employees of the Chinese state university system, I think there are genuine questions about the extent to which that paper received proper editorial review that need to be answered. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:44, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The book is published by Routledge. Routledge is one of the largest academic publications in the world, whose books and articles are all independently peer-reviewed. Are you questioning the credibility of Routledge based on the fact that they do not discriminate against Chinese researchers?

If that's the bar of credibility that you are setting here, then most of the sources in this article need to be removed. The article here mainly relies on sources such as The Daily Beast that are tabloids, sources with ties to the American or other governments such as ASPI or RFI, and non-journalistic commentary articles such as Bruce Bawer's. None of them have went through an even remotely as strict peer-reviewing process that Zhang's article went through. Only sources 20, 29, and 45 are independently peer-reviewed academic publications on the level of Routledge.

If you wish to continue to question Routledge's credibility, you may open a discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard. Or, if you are arguing that even a publication like Routledge is not credible enough for this article, it would be kind of you to propose a draft of this article that excludes all of the sources that have went through no independent peer-review, considering this will require a complete rewrite. Sarrotrkux (talk) 15:03, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

I think you fundamentally misunderstand WP:RS. We evaluate each source in context and we evaluate both the author/authors and publisher. Also just to be clear Routledge's "peer review" for books is not the same sort of process as for a journal, peers provide advice but they don't actually have any impact on whether or not the book is published. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:20, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Routledge books would generally be considered RS. This article is by a Chinese postdoctoral researcher (i.e. very junior academic) at a UK university, and the editors both work for Nottingham University's Chinese campus (which is very friendly with the Chinese government). So I would say it's a weak RS rather than non-RS. But the extract above doesn't seem to include anything we could usefully add to the article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:58, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

POV re Syria

Let's start with the statement that GrayZone published "content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian civil war". Neither of the two sources support this statement. Burrobert (talk) 06:21, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

After I added this comment, one of our editors added a quote from one of the sources. The quote does not support the statement. Burrobert (talk) 06:52, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The editor has now added a source to support the statement. A few points:

- the source has marginal reliability

- is the point of this section to identify the holes in our narrative so that editors can run around filling them in?

- What was the point of the other two sources?

Burrobert (talk) 07:58, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

While editors are thinking about the above points, consider the statement: "The Russian fake news website Peace Data promoted articles from The Grayzone ". A few points:

- "promoted" is not a close enough translation of "relayé". Republished would be closer. "Promoted" gives the unsupported idea that there is some connection between Peace Data and Grayzone.

- the statement tells us nothing about Grayzone unless we explain why Peace Data republished Grayzone articles. This is explained in the source provided. It was not because Peace Data is a "Russian fake news website". The source says Peace Data republished articles from Grayzone "to build a reputation as an alternative media (progressive and anti-West) and attract contributors".

Burrobert (talk) 11:17, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you identify which sources you think are problematic? BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:48, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I’ve re-read the sentence about Syria. Everything we say there has a source which says it. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:58, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

My only comment about Syria was as part of the discussion about the lack of neutrality in the article and the POV tag. Initially, we stated that Grayzone published "content denying that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian civil war". We sourced that statement to articles by BC and NewPolitics. Neither source supported the claim we were making. A third source from Daily Beast was added which does in fact say something quite similar to our statement. Daily Beast is listed as having indeterminate reliability on the Perennial source board but the statement sourced to it has not been attributed. There is also the issue of why we would initially make such as statement using two inadequate sources. Both points are signs that the article lacks neutrality. Burrobert (talk) 09:55, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

POV/sourcing re Nicaragua

While editors are thinking about the above, consider the Medium blog Muros Invisibles. Bits and pieces of it keep floating in and out of the article like Banquo's ghost, or, more appropriately, the turd that won't flush. Burrobert (talk) 03:28, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

The Nicaragua section is worth looking at. It is largely based on the notorious Muros Invisibles blog. In addition,

- It also refers to a Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report which does not mention Grayzone

- The following words should ring alarm bells: “despite”, “lionized”, “parroted”, “exposed”, “it was in fact”

- We say “The Grayzone also published a "lengthy, insinuation-infused attack" on the photojournalist Carl David Goette-Luciak”. There are two sources for this. The Guardian says “The US blogger Max Blumenthal later published … “. The other, less reputable source, says “Also while in Nicaragua, Max penned a lengthy piece in Mintpress heavily implying, if not stating directly, that Carl David Goette-Luciak, … , was actually a regime-change plant”. What is the relevance of this to an article on Grayzone?

- By the way, the sources don’t say that Goethe-Luciak was implied to be anti-regime. One source says the implication was that he was “a regime-change plant”. The other says Blumenthal “painted Goette-Luciak as a “novice reporter” acting as a “publicist” for a Nicaraguan opposition that was set on regime change”. None of this matters of course because it is unrelated to The Grayzone.

Burrobert (talk) 06:57, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Part of the turd has resurfaced, this time making claims about a living person. The connection with The Grayzone is unclear. Burrobert (talk) 06:49, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree the stuff on Goette-Luciakis is not about Grayzone. It’s about Blumenthal and MintPress and might belong in those articles but not this one. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:54, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

There has been no hurry to remove this. I have corrected the text to agree with the source. Not sure why editors think this is relevant to Grayzone. Burrobert (talk) 08:55, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I have now removed it, and made some other edits to strengthen sourcing, remove POV language and remove SYNTH: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Grayzone&type=revision&diff=1093270501&oldid=1093225209 What do people think? BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:54, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes that is an improvement. Btw, regarding sourcing, if we are now allowing self-published sources on the page by people some of us consider experts, we should be able to find relevant material written by Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, John Pilger et al on their various SPS'. Burrobert (talk) 15:05, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Also support further edits by Burrobert. I think the POV issues are now dealt with. Good point about Greenwald et al but if Collins is justified it would be his specific expertise in relation to Latin America that would be most relevant (and this case is actually strongest in relation to Venezuela than Nicaragua). BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:06, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

The intention was to use Greenwald, Hedges, Pilger et al in their areas of expertise, not necessarily in relation to Latin America. Greenwald, of course, has special knowledge of Latin America. Burrobert (talk) 13:25, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

This RfC found that Greenwald does not qualify as a subject-matter expert. I suspect a similar conclusion would be reached about Chris Hedges and, yes, Collins. Instead of attempting to add more self-published sources to this article, we should minimize the use of the current self-published source as much as possible. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:46, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Don't panic! There was little chance of favourable assessments from Pulitzer Prize winning journalists being added to this page. Let's be satisfied with eight separate references to articles by someone called Charles Davis in marginally reliable sources.

That RfC on Glenn Greenwald is amusing. The question being posed is unclear and the assessment from the closing editor is hard to understand. The only definite outcome is that Greenwald's SubStack and YouTube output should be considered self-published. Not a big surprise. It also seems to be saying that Greenwald should not be granted a blanket exemption from the SPS policy requirements. A fair enough assessment but does not really say anything about Greenwald's reliability. Has anyone else been given such an exemption? Burrobert (talk) 16:06, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

The leaked Paul Mason - Amil Khan correspondence

While on the subject of Grayzone reports, how should we cover the recent Grayzone revelations about Paul Mason and Amil Khan? Mason has published a few articles on his blog about the allegation he is an asset of British intelligence who conspired with Khan to deplatform Grayzone. There is also some interesting information in the leaked emails about Bellingcat's intelligence agency ties, but that is for another article. Burrobert (talk) 17:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

how should we cover the recent Grayzone revelations about Paul Mason and Amil Khan? With reliable, third-party sources (if they exist at all). Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 03:09, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

The Paul Mason affair won't be mentioned in reliable sources. It is suspected that the UK regime has issued a DSMA-Notice on national security grounds since the revelations relate to intelligence services. In the meantime Mason has discussed the leaked emails and we are allowed to use his material under WP:about self. We would need to be careful of course. Burrobert (talk) 04:36, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

If it won't be mentioned in reliable sources whatsoever, then I'm not really sure that we could (or should) provide it any WP:WEIGHT. WP:BALASP, in particular, notes that [a]n article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. As such, If the number of reliable, published material on the subject that cover the Paul Mason thing is zero, then WP:NPOV commands that the thing should get zero space in the article. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 06:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes the DSMA-Notice system is fairly effective at censoring information. Thankfully we have social media, although the forces of darkness are starting to descend on that as well. Anyway the story has been mentioned in a few spots outside the UK. We probably need to discuss the revelations and Mason's responses in detail to see what editors think. I will start a new section. Burrobert (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you provide links to the reliable sources outside of the UK that have provided coverage of this? I'm seeing a few blogposts or unreliable sources in google search, but I'm wondering what you're finding w.r.t. reliable sources that I'm not able to. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I definitely think we should wait and see if RSs cover this. Mason's blog would be OK per ABOUTSELF on his page if this was considered due there but it can't be due here if he's the only thing close to an RS. No rush. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we should wait and see if RS cover this, though I disagree with the notion that Mason's blog be OK per WP:ABOUTSELF when the claims would also involve Khan (a different living person) in some way. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, sourcing this exclusively from Mason's blog would violate #2 on ABOUTSELF and seems rather WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

We should discuss the Grayzone’s recent article about the leaked email correspondence between Paul Mason and Amil Khan. Let’s start with the primary sources which are the articles by Grayzone and Consortium News and Mason’s blog response.

So, briefly, Grayzone obtained leaked emails and documents from Paul Mason and Amil Khan, who were discussing how to deplatform Grayzone. Amil Khan is a former Reuters Middle East correspondent who runs a counter-disinformation firm called Valent Projects. They suggested a financial blockade involving Paypal and a sting operation to embarrass Grayzone a la the operation by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability against Paul McKeigue.

They also decided to set up a group to debunk "all [The Grayzone’s] allegetions[sic] and ‘facts’ ". The suggested participants included a disproportionate number of BBC employees. In the emails, Mason described Bellingcat as a channel for "intel service input by proxy" and said that Bellingcat received "a steady stream of intel from Western agencies". Khan, who has apparently been associated with Bellingcat for a while, did not challenge Mason’s description.

Consortium News was dragged into the story through one of Khan and Mason’s contacts, Andy Pryce from the Counter Disinformation and Media Development unit at the UK Foreign Office. Pryce asked Nina Jankowicz, the Mary Poppins of disinformation, for advice about Consortium News. She said CN was not being funded by Russia, but were just being "useful idiots".

The leak has been covered by a number of secondary sources as detailed below.

1. Private Eye magazine mentioned the story in Issue 1575 17 - 30 June 2022 under the title "Grayzone Layer". Of course the magazine put its pro-establishment spin onto the story: "After journalist Paul Mason said someone had tried to hack his email, pro-Kremlin site the Grayzone used "anonymously leaked emails" to attack him".

2. Yanis Varoufakis and Owen Jones discussed the leaks on Owen's show (Starting at 56:20).

3. Counterfire wrote about it but Mason threatened legal action and the site took the story down.

4. The Hill's Rising discussed the leaks. The discussion is hosted by Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave. Their guest is Katie Halper.

5. The WSWS covered the story.

6. George Galloway discusses the leaks in his show, starting around 11:20.

7. Caitlin Johnstone wrote an article which has appeared in numerous places.

8. Other sources are The Disinformation Chronicle. and In Defence of Marxism.

Burrobert (talk) 13:35, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the list above. I've looked through the sources and I'm not quite sure that they're all up-to-par, though some might be:

Primary Sources:

1. The primary sources of the article itself and Pushback with Aaron Maté (a The Grayzone-published podcast) are (general reliability issues aside) not independent sources. They don't contribute any weight.
2. The source in Consortium News (RSP Entry) is tagged with "analysis" and "commentary" in its tags. The source, besides appearing to be a labeled opinion piece published at a WP:GUNREL outlet, is also plainly non-independent given the content of the allegations. I don't see why this would add any weight, even if it were reliable, owing to independence issues.
3. Mason's blog responses are plainly non-independent here and don't contribute towards establishing weight.

Clearly WP:QUESTIONABLE secondary sources:

1. Self-published YouTube video by Owen Jones that features Yanis Varoufakis is a self-published YouTube video. We can't use this except WP:ABOUTSELF when it involves claims of living people.
2. CounterFire's (soft-)retracted opinion piece from a group that does not claim to be a news organization doesn't seem like it would be useful in any case. If a website takes a story down due to a legal threat relating to libel, that's quite indicative that they can't support the facts of the original story. It's been touched upon once at RSN; I agree with Buidhe's statement that it's clearly a partisan activist website that is not reliable for third-party claims.
3. George Galloway's self-published stream is a self-published video that can't be used except in an WP:ABOUTSELF manner when the claims involve living people.
4. Of the four links provided where Caitlin Johnstone talks about this, one is a self-published podcast, one is a self-published blogpost on her website, one is a post on a hyperpartisan blog that doesn't appear to be an established WP:NEWSORG with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and the final one is a of the blog post on her website by Consortium News. None of these are something that can be used to describe the alleged actions of a living person.
5. The Disinformation Chronicle is a self-published substack blog. I hate to keep repeating myself, but this ain't an WP:ABOUTSELF sort of thing.
6. In Defence of Marxism is plainly not a WP:NEWSORG; it's a Trotskyist analysis blog. This is the sort of WP:QUESTIONABLE source that should not be used when determining weight.

Other secondary sources:

1. I'm generally unfamiliar with Private Eye and, while it looks like it's been published for quite a long time, the discussions on RSN are not extensive. The link you've pointed to indicates that there's a print story in the publication itself that goes more in-depth. I presume this is not exactly something available online, but the content of the underlying story might matter here in how we frame things. If the story is a satire piece, then it's not going to be good for establishing weight, though its investigative journalism might be weighed differently.
2. The coverage in Rising from The Hill (RSP entry) seems to be substantial coverage, though I'm not super familiar with its format: is this something of an opinion/analysis talk show or is the show doing original reporting?
3. The World Socialist Web Site story provides substantial coverage of this. While this appears to be a Trotskyist advocacy website rather than an established and reputable NEWSORG, last RSN discussion did not really come to a consensus on the site's reliability. It might be worth having an RfC on the site's general reliability, but that is a separate topic.

Overall, I'm not convinced that this is really being covered by the news side of any newsorg that's ordinarily reliable for claims about living people. That a bunch of opinion articles and blog posts exist about something wouldn't be enough to make content WP:DUE, but if these are three instances of news coverage from RS it would probably be. I'm just not convinced that this is what we have here. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:47, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I believe the only possible reliable source for facts here is Private Eye, which is generally seen as a scurrilous, muckraking, anti-establishment source mixing satire with good investigation. The Hill podcast is opinion/commentary so really not useful unless we think their opinions are DUE. All the others are fringe, unreliable, or worse. I haven't listened to the Hill show, but the others are all focused on Mason rather than on Grayzone, so I don't see what they'd add to this page. BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:21, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Of the sources listed, The Hill is a green tick source and the three participants in the discussion are well-known journalists. Wikipedia contains over 300 references to articles on In Defence of Marxism, although there appears to have been no prior discussion about its reliability. Wikipedia contains 140 links to articles in Private Eye but the only discussion about reliability was in 2011. The Private Eye piece seems to be from the print edition. I have seen the story and can tell you that it mentions the following:

- confirms that Grayzone published an article on the leaked emails.

- quotes the article's description of Mason as the "establishment's favourite gatekeeper of the UK left"

- wrote that the leaked emails showed that "Mason wanted a 'relentless deplatforming' of the Grayzone".

However, there is no point in having a discussion about reliability or suitability of the sources until we know what text is being proposed. The suitability of sources is measured against the text they are being used to support. So that should probably be the next step. Given the reluctance of editors to include anything that might be construed as favourable to Grayzone, I would suggest starting with a simple descriptive sentence and work from there. Also keep in mind that only one poor reference has been provided for the dancing girls routine. Burrobert (talk) 11:13, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

In Defence of Marxism: I think we could use this as a source on their specific Trotskyist current or perhaps on certain areas of Marxist theory, but not for this. Private Eye: Of the three things you say are there, the first is about Grayzone (it feels noteworthy that it publishes articles based on hacked/leaked material), the second isn't, while the third is about someone's opinion about Grayzone, so third hand and very un-noteworthy-feeling. I really don't see much of use here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC) Looking at what the Private Eye says about Grayzone: it calls it "the leading pro-Kremlin site in the English-speaking world" since the deplatforming of RT/Sputnik; and it gives a lot of information about the editor, Blumenthal (e.g. that he a long-standing contributor to Russian state media, or that his "reporting" that Russian atrocities are false flags), and the co-author of these three articles (e.g. that he is a prolific contributor to Russian state media and that he was previously a "financial hack" promoting a hedge fund manager). Should we use any of that? BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:27, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

To clarify my earlier suggestion, we don't need to include opinion. The sources state the facts of the case and it should be easier to come to some agreement about what facts to include. We should start with a simple wording that sticks to some basic facts as detailed in the various sources.

- Grayzone published articles (there are now three articles) based on emails and documents hacked from Paul Mason.

- the emails show a discussion between Mason, Amil Khan, Andy Pryce from the UK Foreign Office and others about methods of deplatforming Grayzone.

Regarding the reliability of the various sources, in a little while I will start a thread at the reliable sources noticeboard to ask for more opinions about the suitability of The Hill's Rising, Private Eye, WSWS and In Defence of Marxism for a basic statement of the facts in relation to the Grayzone's reporting. It also looks as though we will need to go through an RfC process here to gauge support for the inclusion of some reference to the material.

Regarding the other opinions from the Private Eye article, can you start a separate thread about that. We should restrict this discussion to Grayzone's reporting on the leak. Burrobert (talk) 13:57, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

The Hill's Rising mentions some things which have not been covered above.

- Briahna Joy Gray opens with the information that Mason "created a Putin-influence map, waged a war on anti-imperialists, activists, campaign groups, independent journalists and media sites and tried to get the Grayzone, an independent news website, deplatformed. The emails show him allegedly plotting with Andy Pryce of the UK Foreign Office Counter-disinformation and Media Unit". The map mentioned here is shown later in the show. It is an incoherent mess of vertices and arrows which, in some unexplained way, draws the Black and Muslim communities, Trade Unionists, Scottish Nationalists and others into the Putin-influence conspiracy.

- Robby Soave then mentions some of Mason’s ideas. Mason suggested creating a "Putin-proxy-watch project guided by info-war experts to attack bad actors in the UK". Mason also called for "suspending UK libel law to smear targets and a special effects driven project to sensationalise Russian atrocities". Soave said that when the Grayzone covered the story on its YouTube channel, its video was removed, put back up and then removed again.

We should discuss how many aspects of the story should be included. The story is still developing as Grayzone and others are going through the leaked documents. As mentioned earlier, perhaps start with a simple statement of the two main facts which I listed above. We can expand the coverage as needed.

Burrobert (talk) 04:18, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Don't see how any of this content meets WP:DUE. The best source is Rising which is an opinion show. The story is still developing.... Let it develop then. We are not a newspaper. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 08:30, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm really wary of using the Rising because the opening words of a talk show aren't really a good source for facts, and the opinions of these commentators really doesn't seem due. But all of these are comments about Mason, not about Grayzone. They don't illuminate Grayzone one bit. Agree let's let the dust settle and see if there is anything here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:07, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes the points relating to Mason would be more appropriately added to his page, where a discussion has started. The two additions I suggested were about the Grayzone. A similar discussion at Emma Briant's page has not yet been started, perhaps because her role was only discussed in the most recent Grayzone article published a few days ago. Burrobert (talk) 16:17, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

It's even less usable at Mason's or Briant's page, even though a lot of it is about Mason, because there we need to abide by BLP policy: using bad sources (based on hacked or leaked material that might be fake or manipulated and which both Mason and Briant have said they are taking legal action over) is totally against our BLP policy. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:44, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I am not aware of any BLP policy related to leaked or hacked documents. There are many well-known examples of such documents being subject to reporting and then finding their way into Wikipedia articles. The threat of legal action does not affect what we do, unless possibly if the action is against us. Anyway, it's a discussion you should have on Paul Mason and Emma Briant's pages not here. Burrobert (talk) 17:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

We have not yet discussed the authenticity of the documents. Afaict no one has questioned the documents' authenticity. Mason made one comment about them: "I make no comment on the purportedly hacked contents other than to repeat that they may be edited, distorted or fake". Commentators have taken this to mean that the documents are real but, for obvious reasons, Mason won't confirm it. Afaict Amil Khan has not commented but has indirectly confirmed the authenticity of the documents. He pointed out that the initial story attributed two emails to him when in fact they were written by Andy Pryce from the Counter Disinformation and Media Development unit at the UK Foreign Office. The Grayzone and CN corrected their stories and issued an apology which is visible at the bottom of their article pages. Burrobert (talk) 10:42, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

No let's not get into OR about the authenticity of documents. Let's see if RSs report anything and look carefully at WP:LIBEL and WP:GRAPEVINE before even considering using it. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:44, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

 Note: A related discussion has been opened up at WP:RSN#Leaked Paul Mason - Amil Khan correspondence. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Disinformation

Checking Google News again in light of Masongate (see above) I see a new source:

• Townsend, Mark (2022-06-19). "Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-06-19.

Data gathered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified a network of social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations who disseminated disinformation about the [[[Syrian civil war]]], with 1.8 million people following their every word... Since 2020, journalist Aaron Maté at the Grayzone is said by the report to have overtaken [Vanessa] Beeley as the most prolific spreader of disinformation among the 28 conspiracy theorists identified.

It cites this:

• Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2018-04-13). "Deadly Disinformation". The Syria Campaign. Retrieved 2022-06-19.

Since 2020, Aaron Maté at the Grayzone has overtaken Beeley as the most prolific creators and spreader of disinformation among the 28 actors we investigated. An article that he wrote for the Grayzone where he attacks Bellingcat for its contributions to the OPCW was the most shared link in our data set in both 2020 and 2021. He, like Beeley, also appeared at the UN at the invitation of Russia,[9] where he attempted to defend the Syrian government against accusations of chemical weapons use...

2020: Grayzone articles, mainly written by Aaron Maté, are widely shared in 2020. The Grayzone describes itself as “an independent news website producing original investigative journalism on politics and empire”...

16 April. Aaron Maté, a journalist at the Grayzone, speaks at “OPCW cover-up” event[10] held at UNSC hosted by Russia.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:39, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I added a little of this into the article. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:59, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Of course, the Syria Campaign is a perfectly good source for what is disinformation and what isn't. I'm sure the NYT would agree.--79.100.144.23 (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Sources for GZ being fringe

I have to wonder how the 4 sources cited for GZ being 'generally considered to be fringe' are supposed to be more reliable than it and to demonstrate what is 'generally considered'. One is a small news platform that has been funded by NED, among others. One is an anti-PRC outlet funded by NED and Soros, among others. One is a natsec think tank funded by the Australian government, among others. And one is Business Insider, controversial for multiple reasons stated in its article. What variety! You could mostly summarise this as 'US bloc-funded media consider GZ to be bad'. Well, guess what, that's mutual - criticising the US bloc and its media is what GZ is mostly devoted to. They are considered 'reliable sources' by WP, and GZ is considered unreliable based on their reporting - well, maybe they should be considered unreliable based on GZ's reporting. A modicum of neutrality would require the article to state that GZ 'has been accused of X, Y and Z', not that GZ 'is known for X, Y and Z' as an established fact.

For 'misleading reporting' we get only what seems to be a hand-waving blanket allegation in a book by Hong Kong opposition activists discussing among themselves their best strategy to fight the PRC - hardly sufficient. Supposedly they think the GZ is misleading - well, of course they would consider a source opposing their movement to be misleading. For 'sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes', we get, again, the NED-funded platform, as well as Alexander Reid Ross, who has been forced to retract articles unfairly accusing GZ's authors, as his own WP article mentions. You can find similar accusations of being pro-Saddam against whoever opposed the Iraq war, etc. - putting them as statements of fact in the ledes of the articles about them would uncontroversially be seen as unfair (or would it?). I'm sure it would be easy to find similarly unflattering descriptions of these very sources as exhibiting 'sympathetic coverage of US Empire' and the like by GZ and (if the issue is quantity and somehow quantity is supposed to be a criterion for veracity) other anti-imperialist outlets - definitely so for Alexander Reid Ross. Sure, there will be more pro-Western establishment outlets in the end - guess if that reflects the truth or the amount of funding! As for the accusation that GZ 'is known for its denial of the Uyghur genocide' - well, even the article itself says only that the human rights abuses in Xinjiang 'are often' described as genocide; the phrasing presupposes that the mainstream view is that it is a genocide, and this presupposition is itself false.

But TBF, I'm sure pro-establishment zealots could find even what would pass for 'the best of sources' on WP to support this characterisation - it's just annoying that they don't even bother to do that. In general, it's natural that even the outlets that are the closest candidates for being 'widely considered' 'mainstream', 'non-fringe' and 'reliable', like NYT, WaPo, The Times, BBC, CNN, Guardian are by default propagandists for Western establishment opinion. Even though they have been shown to misinform multiple times (including by GZ), they still somehow 'have a reputation' for reliability ... (where, though? it seems only the Western bloc counts) - apparently just because they are the mainstream and keep reinforcing and acknowledging each other as reliable, while maligning outlets like GZ. Therefore, every source that is regularly critical of their reliability and positions will be 'fringe' by default. One has to conclude that WP's policies themselves are broken when it comes to politics. 79.100.144.23 (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Per a 2021 RfC, Coda Story is a reliable news organization. The China Digital Times is an established WP:NEWSORG with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and this is well inside of ASPI's area of expertise. Business Insider itself can probably be removed, but that The Grayzone is fringe is well-supported by RS.

Aside from being deprecated source on Wikipedia (which other sources have actually noted in their coverage of The Grayzone, and the remainder of the sources at the end of the sentence, the book plainly supports the statement in the article.

With respect to "sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes", you get a WP:GREL source, an expert author publishing in Haaretz, and South China Morning Post. Seems well-sourced to me.

The sources cited widely show that The Grayzone does indeed deny the Uyghur genocide, meaning the series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. This language is reflected in a variety of sources, including The Times (of London), Axios, among others. Would you prefer the language be changed to "denial of China's abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang".

And with respect to it seems only the Western bloc counts, just no. There are reliable sources from the Global South treated as reliable on WP:RSP (such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, Rappler, etc.), as well as ones based in the Russian Federation (Kommersant) and the Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China (South China Morning Post). The fact of the matter is that RSP is going to largely deal with English-language sources because this is the English Wikipedia, but Wikipedia very regularly uses established non-English-language news organizations in line with WP:NEWSORG. The issue with using The Grayzone to support content is that its reputation is terrible with respect to fact-checking and accuracy. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:43, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Politico article

Casalicchio, Emilio (2022-08-28). "How a retired MI6 boss, his Brexiteer friends and a celebrity Marxist became targets in Russia's war on Ukraine". Politico. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. After weeks of sitting on the internet, the cache of Brexiteer emails was picked up by fringe website the Grayzone, which promises 'original investigative journalism' on 'politics and empire' and has earned praise from Hollywood director Oliver Stone, famous for his interest in—and occasional embrace of—conspiracy theories.

Kleinpecan (talk) 16:49, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

The Grayzone has a reputation for pushing stories that match some of the narratives of Kremlin propaganda, as well as the propaganda of authoritarian regimes such as China and Syria. The leak was written up by Kit Klarenberg, a British-born reporter working in Serbia, who has credits on Kremlin-controlled sites Russia Today and Sputnik, among others… Since the start of June, the Grayzone has published a string of his articles based on leaked emails from former Channel 4 journalist Mason, and those around him. The pieces appear intent on discrediting Mason, suggesting he is a propaganda mouthpiece for the British secret services. The site highlights Mason’s efforts to fight pro-Russia narratives online, among academics and on the far left. It cites his private communications with an official working on disinformation in the U.K. Foreign Office as evidence of a nefarious plot. “Are his activities influenced by shadowy state actors?” Klarenberg asked readers of Mason in June. A later Grayzone article questioned whether an attempt by Mason to become a member of parliament was “part of a U.K. intelligence operation to destroy the anti-war left,” given his past contact with the Foreign Office. Mason has refused to comment on the content of the emails, which he said "may be altered or faked," and warned that "Grayzone’s publication has the effect of assisting a Russian state-backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign."… "The circumstances of the attack suggest it is highly likely that a Russian state or state-backed unit carried out the attack," Mason wrote in a personal blog. He declined to comment when approached by POLITICO. Indeed, the working assumption among those who have studied both hacks is that Russia's invasion of Ukraine provides the underlying motivation for the entire operation, seeking to undermine figures across the British landscape who have spoken out against Putin. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:59, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Also links to a piece in The Spectator by someone targeted in the hack and leak op. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-a-pro-brexit-group-was-hacked-by-russia Doesn’t mention the GZ but does say: I found out in April that my emails had been compromised when an ‘investigative reporter’ sent me copies of my own emails asking for comment. The reporter’s online profile quickly showed that he was someone clearly comfortable in the warmth of Putin’s pocket.Expert examination, since confirmed by Google’s security teams, indicates that this was not some spare-bedroom hacker, but an operation so sophisticated that it could only have been done by a state actor. Clearly not RS for facts, but opinion might be noteworthy if we consider the operation itself noteworthy (as some editors argued for above). BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Sources for GZ being fringe

I have to wonder how the 4 sources cited for GZ being 'generally considered to be fringe' are supposed to be more reliable than it and to demonstrate what is 'generally considered'. One is a small news platform that has been funded by NED, among others. One is an anti-PRC outlet funded by NED and Soros, among others. One is a natsec think tank funded by the Australian government, among others. And one is Business Insider, controversial for multiple reasons stated in its article. What variety! You could mostly summarise this as 'US bloc-funded media consider GZ to be bad'. Well, guess what, that's mutual - criticising the US bloc and its media is what GZ is mostly devoted to. They are considered 'reliable sources' by WP, and GZ is considered unreliable based on their reporting - well, maybe they should be considered unreliable based on GZ's reporting. A modicum of neutrality would require the article to state that GZ 'has been accused of X, Y and Z', not that GZ 'is known for X, Y and Z' as an established fact.

For 'misleading reporting' we get only what seems to be a hand-waving blanket allegation in a book by Hong Kong opposition activists discussing among themselves their best strategy to fight the PRC - hardly sufficient. Supposedly they think the GZ is misleading - well, of course they would consider a source opposing their movement to be misleading. For 'sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes', we get, again, the NED-funded platform, as well as Alexander Reid Ross, who has been forced to retract articles unfairly accusing GZ's authors, as his own WP article mentions. You can find similar accusations of being pro-Saddam against whoever opposed the Iraq war, etc. - putting them as statements of fact in the ledes of the articles about them would uncontroversially be seen as unfair (or would it?). I'm sure it would be easy to find similarly unflattering descriptions of these very sources as exhibiting 'sympathetic coverage of US Empire' and the like by GZ and (if the issue is quantity and somehow quantity is supposed to be a criterion for veracity) other anti-imperialist outlets - definitely so for Alexander Reid Ross. Sure, there will be more pro-Western establishment outlets in the end - guess if that reflects the truth or the amount of funding! As for the accusation that GZ 'is known for its denial of the Uyghur genocide' - well, even the article itself says only that the human rights abuses in Xinjiang 'are often' described as genocide; the phrasing presupposes that the mainstream view is that it is a genocide, and this presupposition is itself false.

But TBF, I'm sure pro-establishment zealots could find even what would pass for 'the best of sources' on WP to support this characterisation - it's just annoying that they don't even bother to do that. In general, it's natural that even the outlets that are the closest candidates for being 'widely considered' 'mainstream', 'non-fringe' and 'reliable', like NYT, WaPo, The Times, BBC, CNN, Guardian are by default propagandists for Western establishment opinion. Even though they have been shown to misinform multiple times (including by GZ), they still somehow 'have a reputation' for reliability ... (where, though? it seems only the Western bloc counts) - apparently just because they are the mainstream and keep reinforcing and acknowledging each other as reliable, while maligning outlets like GZ. Therefore, every source that is regularly critical of their reliability and positions will be 'fringe' by default. One has to conclude that WP's policies themselves are broken when it comes to politics. 79.100.144.23 (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Per a 2021 RfC, Coda Story is a reliable news organization. The China Digital Times is an established WP:NEWSORG with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and this is well inside of ASPI's area of expertise. Business Insider itself can probably be removed, but that The Grayzone is fringe is well-supported by RS.

Aside from being deprecated source on Wikipedia (which other sources have actually noted in their coverage of The Grayzone, and the remainder of the sources at the end of the sentence, the book plainly supports the statement in the article.

With respect to "sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes", you get a WP:GREL source, an expert author publishing in Haaretz, and South China Morning Post. Seems well-sourced to me.

The sources cited widely show that The Grayzone does indeed deny the Uyghur genocide, meaning the series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. This language is reflected in a variety of sources, including The Times (of London), Axios, among others. Would you prefer the language be changed to "denial of China's abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang".

And with respect to it seems only the Western bloc counts, just no. There are reliable sources from the Global South treated as reliable on WP:RSP (such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, Rappler, etc.), as well as ones based in the Russian Federation (Kommersant) and the Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China (South China Morning Post). The fact of the matter is that RSP is going to largely deal with English-language sources because this is the English Wikipedia, but Wikipedia very regularly uses established non-English-language news organizations in line with WP:NEWSORG. The issue with using The Grayzone to support content is that its reputation is terrible with respect to fact-checking and accuracy. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:43, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

On the WP community's decisions on which sources are reliable, all I can say is that they themselves are mistaken. The NYT is 'reliable' because 'come on, we all know the NYT is reliable', and also because 'the WP also confirms the NYT is reliable' (and vice versa). This isn't based on counting the frequency of actual inaccuracies. And then the next step is 'Coda Story is reliable, because it is cited in the NYT'. With respect to (geo-)political controversies, you can find so-called 'reliable sources' attacking and denying each other's reliability; this is not a reason to declare a source unreliable.

As for Alexander Reid Ross, by your logic, whoever is published in SCMP and Haaretz becomes automatically right about everything; I could say that Aaron Mate has been published in The Nation, a RS, thus his claim that Alexander Reid Ross is a Western imperialist hack who shouldn't be trusted becomes correct, hence Ross can't be cited.

Re 'Uyghur genocide', the point is that some so-called 'reliable sources' agree it's genocide, while others don't; a neutral statement would be something like 'GZ is known for disputing the accuracy of the view that a genocide is taking place or has taken place against the Uyghur people' (although even this presupposes that such a position is extraordinary, and it's not; the statement in the article is part of an effort to make it such).

As for GZ's reputation being 'terrible with respect to fact-checking and accuracy' - well, no, these sources don't actually bother to list a series of examples where the GZ was shown to be inaccurate, they mostly just make blanket statements and say it sympathises with the wrong governments. It's again just a case of 'come on, we all know the GZ is terrible with respect to fact-checking and accuracy'. And while cases of inaccuracy in GZ can doubtlessly be found, I don't think there are more of them than in the NYT, which nevertheless gets a pass, again, because of the 'come on' principle.

As for 'it seems only the Western bloc counts', sure, you do deign to recognise certain non-Western (and possibly even a few non-Western-aligned?) sources as reliable - I imagine, because the NYT has cited them - but that doesn't prove that they consider the NYT, not to mention all the minor sources cited here, to be reliable. The consensus that GZ is unreliable and the general echo chamber on US foreign policy certainly does not emanate from them; on many of the issues the GZ is criticised for, some of them have probably been equally 'wrong', but just haven't become the target of a smear campaign yet.--87.126.21.225 (talk) 06:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

NPOV violations and hatchet job

No one with no prior knowledge of the subject could credibly regard this article and its opening paragraph as NPOV. The first paragraph is almost entirely composed of hostile comments by journalists. Whether or not journalists have made such comments, said comments should not be remotely so prominent a focus of this article. This article is a disgrace and brings wikipedia into disrepute. 2A02:C7C:3077:9F00:C25:292D:CC77:EA63 (talk) 14:15, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Do you think that the article on Infowars is inaccurate because most of the claims in the opening paragraphs are negative? The "hostile" comments simply represent the neutral point of view about what reliable sources have to say about The Grayzone. The only people who have anything positive to say about the publication are fringe "anti-imperialist" (except when it comes to Russia) far left publications and state controlled media of Russia, China, etc, which don't represent a neutral point of view. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:28, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

So the first source the article cites is codastory.com. Who are they? I have never heard of them and they don't look mainstream to me. Indeed pretty much everything on that website seems to be a smear against someone or other. They arent neutral journalists with a NPOV policy, everything they do is smears.

The subject of this article is controversial and +disputed+. Thats what it says in the header - meaning that not all reputable NPOV sources agree with your position. When the subject of an article is disputed websites which specialise in smearing journalists should not be used as sources. 2A02:C7C:3077:9F00:C25:292D:CC77:EA63 (talk) 14:58, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Your worldview is clearly not compatible with a fact based encyclopedia. Coda Story is reliable per a consensus of Wikipedia contributors at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_337#RfC:_Coda_Story. There's no point humoring you any further. It's best if you just stop now. Otherwise all you do is end up wasting the valuable time of people who are actually here to adhere to facts, rather than to promote disinformation. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:08, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

What do you know about 'my worldview'?

That you make such sweeping assumptions about someone based on a few lines they have written makes me question your commitment to facts and role in an encyclopedia.

I won't be stopping. CodaStory is clearly not NPOV. There is a difference between whether someone gets the facts right or wrong and whether they have a neutral point of view or not. Overemphasising certain things while legalistically sticking to the facts is something many journalists who adhere to the facts while being very far from NPOV do. And it is what this article does. If you cannot see that the mandate of an encyclopedia is different from that of journalism, well, you are going to make wikipedia biased. 2A02:C7C:3077:9F00:C25:292D:CC77:EA63 (talk) 15:19, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

From the discussion you linked:

Invalid RFC per my objections above; see here for the actual dispute at issue. It is clear that this RFC is actually being used in an effort to get an answer on whether a source can be used for a specific claim that is patiently both WP:EXCEPTIONAL and WP:BLP-sensitive (and which therefore requires specific consideration), in a context where it can reasonably be considered WP:BIASED, and in a situation where nobody seems to have challenged the general reliability of the source - the actual objections there are related to WP:DUE and whether the source actually supports the statements it is being used for, yet it is obvious that, by asking for an answer to a much more straightforward question that nobody has actually raised, Mikehawk10 hopes to turn around and use that to override those very specific objections. Reliability is contextual, and while we use broad assessments of reliability for sources that come up frequently, this is a case where the context is particularly important; I would also argue that while there are a ton of sources that are so unreliable as to be barely useful outside of WP:ABOUTSELF exceptions, very, very few sources are so reliable as to be universally usable, unattributed, for any claim in any context; this source, generally reliable or not, is obviously not one of them. The claim in question, which relates to the US policy position on the Uyghur genocide and people who have questioned it, directly cuts at the source's own bias, since it is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which exists to advance US interests. Based on that I would answer the unstated question that this source - which, while probably reliable in a general sense, is also patiently WP:BIASED - absolutely cannot be used to describe or characterize positions on the Uyghur genocide without in-line citation that specifically identifies its funding, and is probably WP:UNDUE even with that in-line citation

So, generally factually reliable while being clearly biased. 2A02:C7C:3077:9F00:C25:292D:CC77:EA63 (talk) 15:28, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

YESWEAREBIASED. We are biased against bullshit, unlike you. Nobody should care what you have to say, since you clearly don't care for the consensus of Wikipedia contributors that CodaStory is reliable. Taking one persons post does't make that the consensus of the many other contributors. Dozens of IP users have come to this talkpage over the last few years to say the exact same things thing that "this is biased" when it's clearly not, and they just have a fringe worldview. Eventually they get bored and get lost, or they get blocked for failing to get the point, which is inevitably what will happen to you one way or the other. You're no different than the people who say Wikipedia is biased because it says homeopathy is pseudoscience. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:33, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Let's be clear - a person just continuing to argue and insist, on a talk page, that an article is biased is not 'disruptive editing' and no grounds for blocking. You're just bullying and threatening another user for the mere fact of disagreeing with you. And the fact that the people saying something are IPs does not make it false - contrary to your implication, IPs are not subhuman. Nor is every 'fringe' view (i.e. a small and possibly maligned minority view) necessarily also 'BS', WP's policies aside.--87.126.21.225 (talk) 06:44, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

You seem to have missed the point that the comment I have quoted is addressing CodaStory in relation to the exact topic on which they are cited in this article rather than in general.

If dozens of people have come to this talk page and said similar things to what I am saying, where are their comments? Also, if there is a firm consensus in support of your position here then why is this article flagged as controversial? 2A02:C7C:3077:9F00:C25:292D:CC77:EA63 (talk) 15:43, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

There's some at Talk:The_Grayzone/Archive_1 and some on the current talkpage (it's probably less that, looking at the actual comments). I don't think the controversy tag actually means that the current contents of the article are seriously disputed, because if that was the case then the actual article itself would have a NPOV tag, which it does not. Hemiauchenia (talk)

An RfC does not become invalidated just because an editor disagrees with the consensus that was reached. As WP:BIASED states, reliable sources are not required to be unbiased. Reliable sources are also not required to be mainstream. And, reliable sources do not have to be authored by non-journalists. The 2021 noticeboard RfC established that Coda Media has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, has been used by other reliable sources, and has jointly won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award in 2018. It is a reliable source for this article.

Additionally, your claims of bias do not hold up to further investigation. I just scanned this article, and every citation of Coda Story in this article is also supplemented with at least one other citation of a different reliable source. Many of those citation clusters contain even more reliable sources. This is not required to cite Coda Story, but it shows that the claims in this article are more strongly supported than your comments portray them to be. — Newslinger talk 08:33, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Neutrality on Wikipedia entails "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". Reliable sources overwhelmingly describe The Grayzone in negative terms, so this article does as well. See the InfoWars article for comparison; The Grayzone's reputation is similar to that of InfoWars. It would be non-neutral to whitewash The Grayzone's history to improve its appearance. — Newslinger talk 08:13, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

My concern is that all the sources used are journalists. Journalism is notorious for its tendency to exaggerate and go for shock value. This should not be replicated in an encyclopedia. 2.124.178.172 (talk) 16:43, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

This article cites high-quality academic sources including the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Boundary 2, and Reorienting Hong Kong’s Resistance: Leftism, Decoloniality, and Internationalism (published by Palgrave Macmillan Singapore). If you find other academic sources that cover the article subject, please feel free to share them. It is true that some journalism (including the content published by The Grayzone) is questionable, which is why this article only cites reliable sources. — Newslinger talk 10:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

The extensive use of Coda Story (funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a propaganda arm of the US government) and The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (funded by the Australian military, the US government, and various weapons manufacturers) as sources here is concerning. Their use should be much more restricted, and should be prefaced with some context about what these organizations are. The Grayzone is highly critical of the US government, so using sources with close ties to the US government the characterize the Grayzone (in authoritative Wikivoice, no less) is more than just a bit questionable. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:44, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Coda Story has been to RSN before, which found that the source is generally reliable for factual reporting. While you offered arguments in objection to its coverage in similar context at that RfC (with respect to the reliability of its coverage of Uyghurs), the community overwhelmingly rejected those arguments. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:14, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Consensus went against you on that one at RSN Thucydides411, remember? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:16, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Your view of Coda Story is not accepted by the majority of Wikipedia contributors, there's not point beating this dead horse at this point. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:06, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

It's not my view of Coda Story. It's an uncontroversial, factual statement: the outlet is funded by NED. It's an obvious problem when we rely so heavily on outlets with close ties to the US government, the Australian military, etc., especially to characterize critics of those institutions. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Also ASPI, reliable with attribution. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

NPOV tags

Given that this article might not adhere to a neutral point of view, should the NPOV tag be added to this article? Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 16:45, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

The IP users coming here claiming that this Wikipedia article is "biased" aren't editing with a neutral point of view in mind, having been driven here by external canvassing, including by The Grayzone itself. No reliable source has much positive to say about The Grayzone. There are people who also come to the talkpage of the Infowars article and claim our article on it is biased, but that's obvious nonsense. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, so is that a “yes” or a “no”? Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 18:56, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

The answer is "no", as there is no serious dispute about the neutral point of view amongst established editors. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Recent back-and-forth edits

I'm not exactly sure that a self-published book is the sort of thing we want to be making changes to the article on the basis of, nor the thing that warrants prominence in its own paragraph in the lead of the article. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:54, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the same goes for self-published YouTube shows. I'm not exactly sure where the claim that random political YouTube shows are reliable draws its rationale from, but it doesn't seem to be in line with WP:SPS. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:56, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Some user has deleted well-sourced content I added. I added "On the other hand the journalists of the Grayzone have also been praised for their independent investigative journalism and for offering "the strongest evidence-based criticism" off official narratives, or for doing "important work [...] exposing the official lies surrounding [issues such as] the Syrian gas attacks"." -> this is information taken from published books by highly reputable authors. So there is no justification for deleting it

Evidence:

--> Willem de Lint is a scholar and univeristy lecturer (-> [11] "Willem de Lint is Professor in Criminal Justice at Flinders University. Previously, he has served as Head of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology at the University of Windsor, Canada and as lecturer in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand."). So there is no reason, why a book that that man (a higly qualified expert), has published should not be a valid and highly respectable source to be cited in the article. It is certainly a much more solid source (a published book by an academic) than pretty much any other source used in this article (most of which are some random website articles instead of printed material you can find at a library)

And Robert Parry (journalist) was a very influential journalist. So there is also no reason why a book that collects some of his celebrated work should not be a reputable source that is perfectly suitable for the article.

So the deletion of my addition unambiguously was not justified and thus has to be undone. Zsasz (talk) 15:59, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Users have provided you with clear reasons for why your edits have been undone over the last week and a half. The user above also gave clear reasoning for not including the sources you provide here. You're not bringing anything new to the table on this talk page.

Also, it should be noted, you've done quite a bit more than simply "add sources." You've also blanked a large section of the page that is actually supported by WP:RS. You're engaging in disruptive editing and an edit war.--Hobomok (talk) 17:26, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't see where they blanked anything in the diff you provided. But I agree that their edit-warring is disruptive. Kleinpecan (talk) 17:37, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I fail to see where I blanketted anything. I at most moved text down a paragraph, but I certainly did not delete anything. So it seems that you are making a false statement, I hope due to missing something (and not by intentionally creating a false impression by making false claims that you know are false). Zsasz (talk) 17:40, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

The first link you provide is in reference to Aaron Mate's reporting in The Nation, not in the Grayzone: it is independent investigative journalists such as Aaron Maté who offer the strongest evidence-based criticism of the official narrative. Maté’s reporting was prominently displayed in the Nation, but the story is also primarily an observation that American media is ‘ignoring’ evidence of an OPCW ‘whitewash’, and cites this article.The second source is a iUniverse self-published book, which is generally prohibited as a source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 17:32, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

More context about Parry, according to his NYT obit [12]: Mr. Parry was featured in “Ukraine on Fire”, a [2016] documentary film that argued that the 2014 uprising in Ukraine, which some Western news media depicted as a people’s revolution, was actually a coup staged by nationalist groups with the complicity of the United States.. Willem Bart de Lint claims that The Grayzone was exposing "lies" about the Syrian gas attacks is definitely fringe. Springer Books is a huge publishing house, and it does publish questionable things from time to time, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_163#Springer_are_reliable_publisher? for a 2014 discussion at RSN on the topic. I think that the praise that The Grayzone receives from some elements of the left is probably due in some capacity, but we need better sourcing. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

But the self-published book is just a re-release in the form of a collection of work by a celebrated journalist (Robert Parry), that originally were published by the AP, by Newsweek etc. So, if that material was good enough to be published in leading news magazines, it seems strange that upon it's re-release it should suddenly cease to be good work, just 'cause his estate chose to self-publish the book his old articles are collected in (probably to get a bigger piece of the pie from the re-publication).

So it seems arbitrary and somewhat shady that well-sourced information is deleted here, even though it is verifiable and pertinent to the subject matter. It seems that the deletion have not encyclopedic rationale behind them but are just driven by personal POVs and proclitivities on the side of the deleting party Zsasz (talk) 17:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

@Zsasz: Given that Robert Parry died in early 2018 (around the time this entity forked off of Alternet), can you provide a page number for the quote from the book itself that you believe supports the claim that it was praised by Parry for doing "important work [...] exposing the official lies surrounding [issues such as] the Syrian gas attacks"? I'm limited in what portion of the book I can access, and I find it a bit odd that Parry would be making claims about Maté's 2020 reporting from the grave. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:32, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Robert Parry left the AP in 1987 and left Newsweek in 1990. Since then, we wrote for Consortium News, which is an unreliable source. Per WP:RSP: The outlet is known to lean towards uncritically repeating claims that are fringe, demonstrably false, or have been described by mainstream outlets as "conspiracy theories.". Additionally, Parry died before the Grayzone really took off. The full quote you're referring to reads: A new generation of journalists picked up the torch and pursued many of the stories that Dad would have likely been writing about – such as Aaron Maté’s important work at The Grayzone exposing the official lies surrounding the Syrian gas attacks. The "Dad" is Robert Parry and the author of the text is his son, Nat Parry who is not at all a distinguished journalist. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 18:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Even if Parry had said it (he didn't) and his views were noteworthy here (I don't think they are), then we still couldn't use something from a posthumous collection put out via a self-publishing platform as we couldn't be sure of its accuracy. As for Willem de Lint, I'm unclear why an Australian criminologist's views are noteworthy. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:47, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 20 October 2022

Link for citation(s) for far left are placeholder urls. The attribution of "far left" is pejorative and needs substantial citation to justify. 67.252.58.242 (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: What do you mean placeholder urls? All 11 of them seem to work fine. Cannolis (talk) 15:35, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Potential additional sources

Some recent publications:

• Amine, Rayan El (4 November 2022). "Syria rolls out the red carpet for influencers and friendly foreigners, while local reporters face death and prison". Coda Story. Retrieved 7 November 2022.

The only journalists who thrive in Syria today are those who serve as mouthpieces for the Syrian and Russian regimes. Many of these mouthpieces include American-based, far-left websites such as The Grayzone and MintPress News. Idrees Ahmed, an editor at global affairs magazine New Lines, says such friendly foreign media, even if obscure and dismissed by the mainstream, has “made the job of propaganda easier for [authoritarians].” In September for example, a Grayzone article claimed that the White Helmets, a civil defense group responsible for significant reporting on Syrian atrocities and the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives, corrupted the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) investigation into the 2018 Douma chemical attack. Among those who shared the article on Twitter was the Russian Embassy in Sweden.

• Guckert, Élie (17 October 2022). "The Grayzone : une machine complotiste au service de Poutine - L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme". Conspiracy Watch (in French). Retrieved 7 November 2022. {{cite web}}: Text "L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme" ignored (help)

The articles of The Grayzone are often relayed by other French figures of Russian propaganda and the conspiracy like the ex-senator Yves Pozzo di Borgo, or quoted in reference by the site France Soir. From one side of the Atlantic to the other, these two communities talk to each other and amplify each other. Thus, last March, the famous video of the intervention of the Frenchwoman Anne-Laure Bonnel on CNews claiming that Ukraine is massacring its own people had been taken up by Aaron Maté, one of the flagship columnists of The Grayzone, who concluded that "the United States has been fueling a war in Donbass since 2014". From conflicts to famines to the Covid-19 pandemic, everything is necessarily the fruit of conspiracies fomented in Washington, according to the “investigations” of this American site. This would be the case with the genocide of the Uyghurs like the chemical attacks committed in Syria by Bashar el-Assad or the massacres of civilians committed in Ukraine by the Russian army. The creator of this diversion machine is Max Blumenthal. Son of Sydney Blumenthal, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, Max left the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar in 2012, which he accused of being pro-Assad. In 2015, after a trip to Russia for RT's 10th anniversary – where he has appeared regularly ever since – Blumenthal made a 180-degree turn and founded The Grayzone. First a simple blog hosted on the left-wing American platform Alternet, the project then became a full-fledged company. Or almost. As US news site rating service NewsGuard notes, the site was dependent on a company registered in 2019 in the name of Blumenthal in the state of Maryland seized in 2021, for lack of tax declaration. Since then, The Grayzone has no known legal existence. While accusing many outlets of being funded by various Western intelligence services, the site refuses to answer questions about its own funding. The Grayzone played a key role in Vladimir Putin's information war in Syria. In June, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and The Syria Campaign mapped a network of 28 Russian-backed propagandists to disseminate false information on social media about the conflict to an audience of nearly 2 million. convinced. Among them, the “most prolific creator and propagator of disinformation” is none other than Aaron Maté, who thus snatches a place formerly occupied by Vanessa Beeley. Information denied by the person concerned. His articles for The Grayzone are, however, at the heart of a vast disinformation campaign launched jointly with WikiLeaks, a group of conspiratorial British academics and Russian diplomats to discredit the OPCW investigation into the Douma chemical attack in 2018. , as reported by Conspiracy Watch here and there. He has also been invited by Russia to speak in 2021 at a UN conference about Assad's "fake" chemical attacks. The ties between The Grayzone and the Russian propaganda ecosystem have only deepened over the years. Max Blumenthal, for example, has been rewarded for his work by a pro-Assad lobby and has already been identified as a friend by the official account of the Russian mission to the UN, on Twitter. Mate was caught red-handed communicating with an employee of Ruptly, RT's video agency, to obtain the personal details of survivors of the Douma chemical attack. To make matters worse, The Grayzone has recently launched its British branch, entrusted to a certain Kit Klarenberg who has written for RT, Sputnik, the conspiratorial site GlobalResearch and the Iranian state channel Press TV.

• Fiorella, Giancarlo; Godart, Charlotte; Waters, Nick (1 March 2021). "Digital Integrity". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 19 (1). Oxford University Press (OUP): 147–161. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqab022. ISSN 1478-1387.

While instances of mass amplification of state-engendered disinformation are cause for concern, equal attention should be paid to the less visible but still vociferous ‘alternative facts’ communities that exist online. Far from being relegated to niche corners of the internet populated by conspiracy theorists and their adherents, grassroots counterfactual narratives can be introduced to mainstream audiences by large media organizations like Russia Today (RT) and Fox News, which amplify and lend legitimacy to these narratives. These grassroots communities are particularly evident on Twitter, where they coalesce around individual personalities like right-wing activist Andy Ngo, and around platforms with uncritical pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad editorial lines, like The Grayzone and MintPress News. These personalities and associated outlets act as both producers of counterfactual theories, as well as hubs around which individuals with similar beliefs rally. The damage that these ecosystems and the theories that they spawn can inflict on digital evidence is not based on the quality of the dis/misinformation that they produce but rather on the quantity.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:17, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Far left

The article describes the Grayzone as far left. The Grayzone supports Vladimir Putin who is far right. Clearly the Grayzone is not far left. In practice it is far right. This article is absurd. 131.217.255.209 (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I would contend, if Wikipedia's neutral point of view was rigorously enforced, Grayzone would not be described as left or right (though I think it is far right). However, Grayzone is definitely NOT far left. 131.217.255.209 (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Agree. Scanning Grayzone's website I found a range of articles expressing support for regimes like Nicaragua, Venezuela, China, Russia, Syria, etcetera. Not quite what I'd call 'people friendly regimes'- although some still brandish a link with former communist or socialist ideology. More telling: the Grayzone website carries nothing whatsoever on subjects that would matter to 'leftist' readers (wages, unemployment, poverty, healthcare, etc.). The term 'far-left' seems to refer to the communist past of Russia and China only, not to any viewpoint of Grayzone. It's more like a media outlet of the present-day nomenklatura. JaquesWillems (talk) 19:57, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

" Wikipedia's neutral point of view was rigorously enforced". without any screening of one-sided opinions as facts is what Wiki editors consider neutral? lol. 39.110.199.185 (talk) 23:07, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Do you have reliable sources that describe this website as such? I am not able to find any. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:07, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

It does not matter what we think; it's what reliable sources say. None describe The Grayzone as far right, even if some of its idiosyncratic political positions occasionally overlap. I am reversing the edit to simply include far left absent the addition of a significant number of sources that call it far-right. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 21:51, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

this editorializing is idiotic. you either mention neither left nor right, or if you must mention them, then you must categorize them as far right. the editors trying to describe it as far-left are clearly politically motivated.[[User:Che y Marijuana|Che y Marijuana]] (talk) 22:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

The "far-left" description cites 12 sources. Schazjmd (talk) 22:30, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

The sources currently sited for "far-left" description don't even all agree on the same thing. Did nobody check before citing the sources or is it all just about quantity? 89.27.237.18 (talk) 17:36, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@131.217.255.209 RationalWiki's 'The Grayzone' has 14 citations under 'connections with far right activists'. Centre for analysis of the radical right tears into them too. The only article AllSides media bias has covered of Blumenthal is 'From The right'. This is so well documented. They're textbook right-wing stalinists. FifthAcaciaColumn (talk) 19:45, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Citing more sources doesn't make it correct, it's politically motivated to show the left as "evil". Hellbat31 (talk) 11:06, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

The Grayzone is syncretic politically considering it just seems to mostly be fake news and apologia for the dictator of the week. Doesn't seem that fair to call it far-[either side] because it doesn't have much material on actual political topics, even if reliable sources describe it as far-left. Littlepagers (talk) 11:50, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

It's nonsense, they know it's nonsense. But Wikipedia would rather smear the far-left than be accurate. 76.11.0.178 (talk) 19:12, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree, the article is nonsense and a purposeful smear, and have further commented below. Yaman32 (talk) 17:16, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

What about no qualification, it's a blog and a fringe website and is sympathetic to authoritarian regimes and that kinda covers it User:0lida0 — Preceding undated comment added 01:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

"Dictator of the week"? Wow, how "objective"! Dpm12 (talk) 01:58, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

This article is unobjective garbage. This is why I stopped taking Wikipedia seriously; it promulgates CIA and western sources

Dpm12 (talk) 01:57, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Bruh, you've been here since 2006 and made over 17,000 edits [13], if you're suddenly decided not to take Wikipedia seriously, you've wasted a serious chunk of your life. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree, the article is an unobjective smear piece. The reason The Grayzone is so hard to categorize is that their reporting is defined more by what they are against than what they are for. They are anti-imperialist, and especially anti-western imperialist, and much of what they report contradicts the standard propaganda that appears in western sources. Hence it's not an accident that much of their reporting involves entities that have been defined as "enemies" or "evil" by western sources. Yaman32 (talk) 17:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree this is a smear piece. Most of what I would say has already been said in the Talk Archive. I would only repeat that the sites calling GrayZone fringe or far-left are themselves fringe, or right-wing, or right-wing opinion columns in mainstream papers like Haaretz. I wouldn't use this judgmental language to describe a "right-wing" site either. I don't want to contribute to this entry because I don't want to get into an edit war. The comments here demonstrate that there is absolutely no consensus for using these biased, POV terms. What happens when you delete them? Do you just get into an edit war? --Nbauman (talk) 03:22, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah yes... like that fringe, right-wing Coda Story, that won an award from Columbia University for how it shed new light on the dangers of Russia’s anti-gay movement, and exposed its cynical motives. Or that famously right-wing Washington Post.

On second thought... yeah, no; this clearly isn't something that's coming only from the fringe right. It's something that there is broad consensus on among reliable sources, including quality press sources and Euronews articles. If you don't like the quality of the citations in the lead, that can be fixed, but it's frankly widely reported as a far-left fringe website. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Terms like "fringe right" and "far left" reflect political opinions, not facts. They may be stated repeatedly by "reliable sources" (again, reliable in someone's opinion), but they are still opinions, not facts. Mainstream western media, both on the right and left, is owned by private capitalists and corporations with a vested interest in certain political outcomes. Their reporting and opinions strongly reflect that. The Grayzone reporting directly contradicts those interests and hence they tend to be smeared in mainstream western media. A lie, broadly repeated, does not become a fact. Yaman32 (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

If labels like "fringe right" and "far left" merely reflect one's own political opinions, what do you mean when you say that I would only repeat that the sites calling GrayZone fringe or far-left are themselves fringe, or right-wing, or right-wing opinion columns? That you personally think that the sources are fringe or right-wing, or something objective?

Also, while it's the case that publications such as The Grayzone function on a purely ideological level, I don't think that WP:NEWSORGs are generally post-truth as you suggest. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 07:21, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Albert Einstein, writing in 1949, disagrees with you about the objectivity of the mainstream media. "...under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights." https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/ Yaman32 (talk) 17:49, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

And? Just because he's a genius physicist doesn't make him God, even with respect to his own area of expertise. There are plenty of very smart and influential people that are just plain wrong at times. For example, Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre signed the French petition against age of consent laws that sought to legalize sex between adults and twelve-year-old children on the basis of human rights—I think we can agree that most people correctly reject the false notion that such a so-called "human right" exists.

If you're looking to change the community consensus with respect with how we treat mainstream news organizations, then I would direct you to WP:RSN for specific sources or WP:VPP for the policy more generally. But I frankly don't see a good justification for doing so in this case. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Using political opinions, as had been done here, to discredit journalists is hardly an objective or constructive use of mainstream media. A more objective article would state that Grayzone falls outside of the typical range of opinion in the US mainstream media (which is just "plain wrong at times"), and leave it to the reader to make their own judgements, rather than demonizing them in favor of a particular political outlook. That's a reason. Yaman32 (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Our article on Ha'aretz says it is known for its left-wing and liberal stances. The author of the opinion piece there is definitely not right-wing. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:28, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Who else?

Who else said that The Grayzone was "a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine". It seems unlikely that two people would use these exact same words. Burrobert (talk) 03:36, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Please read the Reception section. Volunteer Marek 03:54, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. However, what is the answer to the question? Burrobert (talk) 04:23, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Anyone? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Burrobert (talk) 03:18, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Our ref says Bawer in Commentary and the passage indeed appears there. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:03, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

We don't need the direct quote twice. If we use the direct quote it should be attributed. If we want an unattributed passive voice "has been described" type sentence in the lead, it shouldn't be a direct quote but a summary of the sources. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

How is it now? Softlemonades (talk) 17:49, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

fringe

Extremely long thread that went nowhere; see RfC below Dronebogus (talk) 11:29, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

the only neutral language here is "radical fringe". any attempt to describe it as far "something" directly reflects the opinions of the editor. editors on the far left consider them far right. editors on the far right consider them far left. the wikipedia article has no place uncritically reflecting the far right categorization of them as far left. [[User:Che y Marijuana|Che y Marijuana]] (talk) 21:13, 17 December 2022 (UTC) I agree 100%. Phrases like "Far-right" and "far-left" are meaningless, inherently subjective, and definitely don't belong in an encyclopedia. This should be removed. Of course, the justification will be that "reliable sources" have called it far-left, and Wikipedia is just acting as a stenographer for these reliable sources. But my response to that is simple: just because a reliable source uses biased, subjective language, in no way implies that we need to parrot it. We don't have a responsibility to repeat verbatim every opinion-based statement a reliable source passes off as fact. What's acceptable to an editor in the newsroom of a "reliable source" is not always acceptable in an encyclopedic context. Wikipedia would be much better off if every use of "far-right" and "far-left" were removed. Hope others will discuss the points made here and in the above comment, and hope that this won't be "hatted" because some random guy doesn't like it. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:25, 12 January 2023 (UTC) I’m not here to “hat” this, but as someone with a degree in political science I’d think you’d understand that “far right” and “far left” are not meaningless terms. Maybe they should be used more cautiously, but nobody informed about the subject is going to say it’s wrong to label Communists far left or Fascists far right. Dronebogus (talk) 23:50, 12 January 2023 (UTC) You again. You seem to have turned into my biggest fan on Wikipedia. I'm fascinated that there's someone out there with enough free time to insert themselves into every Wikipedia post I make. When will you be addressing your repeated assertions that I act in bad faith? Perhaps the terms aren't completely meaningless, but they certainly are inherently subjective. What is it, exactly, that makes a person or group's rightness or leftness "far"? "Right" and "left" are already quite vague, and their meaning can vary wildly, depending on the domestic political context in which they are used, but they generally regarded as useful terms. "Far" left or "far" right, by contrast, are terms used almost exclusively in the realm of persuasive political writing. Primarily in news media, with the goal of painting a person or group as "fringe" without having to substantively address the person or group's position. In short, someone who is "right-wing" is someone who's generally politically conservative. Someone who's "far right" is someone who people find personally annoying, offensive, or dangerous. I think you would have a hard time finding political scholars who would find these terms encyclopedic, and their use is strongly discouraged in serious work produced within every institution of higher learning with which I'm personally familiar. And, to address your specific examples, Communism could probably be described as far left in casual conversation without confusion or misunderstanding - but that doesn't make it appropriate encyclopedic wording, since Wikipedia is not a casual discussion forum. Fascism is not nearly as clear cut. I see no reason for the inclusion of this phrase. It is non-neutral and unencyclopedic. Maybe an RFC would be appropriate here? Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:14, 13 January 2023 (UTC) You have provided no evidence for that and have repeatedly insulted me and wasted the time of numerous other users. To prove I’m not your “fan”, you are muted as of now. The only interaction I hope to be having is reverting any dubious edits you insist on adding to articlespace. Dronebogus (talk) 00:18, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Ah yes, the preferred strategy of everyone who feels that their arguments stand on their own merits: silence dissenting opinions. Would you like to address any of the substance of the above comments? Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:25, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Hi @Philomathes2357:, I see you've having issues with our mutual friend. I've watchlisted this article. Would you be willing to watchlist Chaos magic, Genesis P-Orridge and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth? Seems he's also yammering at WP:ANI. Skyerise (talk) 00:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Sure, I'll do that. If you want to discuss this further @Skyerise, you're more than welcome to, but could you go to my talk page or email me at the address on my main page? I don't want this thread, which I hope will continue in a productive direction, to get bogged down with personal drama. Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Wikipedia is not about recording the truth, it is a record (a stenograph, if you will) of the state of knowledge as relayed in reliable, independent sources. Those sources — many, many of them — use the phrases far left and far right, albeit with a multitude of meanings. And many use far left with regard to The Grayzone. Erasing these phrases from Wikipedia because we think they are imprecise or easy to abuse would completely run counter to the purpose of this project. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 01:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC) All of you need to stop harassing Dronebogus. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:08, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I can't speak to the dispute between Dronebogus and Skyerise, since I wasn't familiar with it until Skyerise commented here. However, I completely reject the accusation that I've been "harassing" Dronebogus. In fact, the opposite is the case, to such an extent that I've considered requesting a no-fault 2-way interaction ban. If you actually think this is an issue, @ValjeanValjean, please let me know on my talk page. As for this page, nobody has made a cogent argument in favor of using the terms "far left" or "far right". I've made what I feel is a cogent argument against using the terms, as has another user, so I'm going to remove it. If someone disagrees with this, I'm open-minded on the issue and would welcome a debate here on the talk page. Philomathes2357 (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Most of this section is completely off topic, no ones made an argument for anything youre all just yelling at each other Softlemonades (talk) 16:34, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I felt like my argument was clear: "far left" and "far right" are terms only used in persuasive political writing, and have no business being in an encyclopedia. No political scholar I have ever read, spoken with, or worked with uses these terms, unless they're writing about their own opinions in an explicitly persuasive context. Even if some source that other editors have labeled as "reliable" used this descriptor, doesn't mean the same language should or must be included here. Although we do have a commitment to source our encyclopedic claims using due weight from reliable sources, we don't have a commitment to include unencyclopedic descriptors, even if someone at a RS used the descriptor to express their opinion and passed it off as fact-based journalism. News outlets don't have the same commitment to NPOV that Wikipedia has in its policy, and using sensational, inherently subjective, and persuasion-based language here is a clear violation of NPOV imo. Is my position clear? If so, with which part of it do you take issue? Philomathes2357 (talk) 17:25, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Far left is in over 7000 articles, and has its own article. There are lots of sources. Editors experience isnt something we can cite. Thats basic policy Softlemonades (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I'm not proposing that we cite the personal experience of any editor in the article. I'm stating that "far left", whether it's in 7, 70, 7,000, or 700,000 articles, is self-evidently a statement of opinion, not fact. RS can be repeated verbatim in regards to facts, but opinions and explicitly persuasive language don't belong on Wikipedia. There's no fact-based metric for what makes the Grayzone's leftness "far" - it's just a term of derision used to insult and dismiss. My argument is that Wikipedia's commitment to NPOV does not permit us to cite opinions as facts, even if those opinions are published in an RS - and "far left" is inherently an opinionated descriptor, not a statement of fact. Perhaps an RFC would be appropriate here if we aren't able to reach a consensus. Philomathes2357 (talk) 17:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC) See MOS:FIRST, which describes the lead sentence. Usually it is nationality+neutral description, WP:FIRST says "Try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead use the first sentence to introduce the topic, and then spread the relevant information out over the entire lead. " Skyerise (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Far-left and far-right websites do exist. Period. RS describe Grayzone that way, so stop the whitewashing and deletion of well-sourced content without a solid consensus. You aren't even moving this to the body, so your deletions are wholesale inappropriate. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:42, 13 January 2023 (UTC) With all due respect @Valjean, you can assert that as if it is a fact, but what you're expressing isn't factual information, it's your personal opinion. Certainly we can agree that there are websites that are left-leaning and right-leaning. We might be able to neutrally assert that some of these websites are on the "fringes" of American political discourse, although even using "fringe" as a factual descriptor is getting into sketchy territory, IMO, although I'm comfortable leaving that be for now. But "far-left" is obviously not a neutral way to describe a person or group. Again - these terms (far left, far right) are not neutral statements of fact, they are statements of opinion that writers use in a persuasive political context to express dislike or disdain for a particular individual or group. I'd be open to removing "far-left" as a factual descriptor in the opening sentence, while including in the body something to the effect of "multiple news outlets have described the Grayzone as "far-left", citing the same sources that are currently linked in the opening sentence. Does that sound reasonable to you? We can include the content, but I cannot agree with passing off persuasive speech as fact. Philomathes2357 (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Why don't you just attribute it? That, not deletion, is one way to follow WP:Preserve. OTOH, attribution can raise doubts that the opinion is not factual. In this case we have opinion=fact in spades. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I would very much like to raise doubts that the opinion is not factual, because in my view, it clearly is not. You've asserted multiple times now, without supporting argument or evidence, that "far left" is a statement of fact. I'm open to having my mind changed here, but I just don't see where you're coming from on that, at all. Can you expand upon your assertion that "far-left" is a case of opinion=fact? Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:25, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Both left- and right-wing sources move into the "far" designation when their opinions move into misleading reporting, conspiracy theories, and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes. This happens to extremists on both sides, and they should be described as "far-whatever" "extremists". They have moved too far to the right or left for their views to be mere opinions for legitimate discussion. Their opinions are so extreme they are rebuked by fact-checkers because they are completely counterfactual lies. That's the bed in which The Grayzone lies. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:40, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Hmm. Interesting. I know you are presenting this argument in good faith, and I appreciate you actually presenting an argument, period, but I strongly disagree. Some IRL obligations demand my attention for the remainder of the afternoon, but I think the best way forward here is for me to open an RFC later this evening. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Hey @Valjean, before I create an RFC this evening, I wanted to clarify something: is the opinion you expressed in your last comment here a reflection of Wikipedia policy? Is there a policy on Wikipedia specifically about the descriptors "far" left and "far" right? Or is your comment an expression of your personal opinion about how these descriptors should be handled? Philomathes2357 (talk) 19:39, 13 January 2023 (UTC) That's a fair question for a talk page discussion where OR and opinions are acceptable factors in our decision making processes and discussions, but not editing. I'd say it's a mixture of factors that may not be expressed in any single policy as I have expressed it. I'm just one editor here. My comments are based on my understanding of how we usually apply logic here. I've been here since 2003 and helped write our most important policies, with my fingerprints still there. We know there is a Left–right political spectrum, and we're talking about recognizing and accurately labeling the extremes, in this case the extreme left. Logic and RS demand we not treat the extremes as if there are just left or right. No, they are beyond that, therefore far (or synonyms) must be used. What makes this case interesting is that there are far more extreme right-wing sources than extreme left-wing, and, as a Social Democrat (thus somewhat left-wing), I don't think we should treat extreme left-wing sources any less realistically than we do extreme right-wing ones. Whitewashing is not allowed. That's not what "neutral" in NPOV means. Both should be described as RS describe them using very non-neutral terminology. RS don't treat them gently, so we shouldn't either. NPOV justifies descriptions like extreme left-wing because RS say that. We must not neuter what they say. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:21, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Thanks for your comment. I don't foresee that we'll be able to come to an agreement here, so I will make an RFC, as mentioned, as soon as I'm able, because I've realized RFCs are a great way to overcome a strong but respectful difference of opinion such as this. I wanted to "steel man" rather than "straw man" your position, and I think you've made your position clear enough for me to be able to do that. In the RFC thread, I plan to quote, word-for-word and line-by-line, specific NPOV policy and demonstrate why I think my position is reflected in those policies more than yours. You're obviously an intelligent and articulate person, so I'm confident that you'll be able to do the same - that is, if you actually care enough about this topic to participate, which I sincerely hope you will. Cheers. Philomathes2357 (talk) 21:33, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I would have to agree with the above editors. If there were only 2 or 3 sources that described The Grayzone as far-left, then attributing those sources might be the right choice. However, the far left descriptor contains about a dozen citations and I'm confident a dozen more could be found. As such, we need to reflect those sources. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2023 (UTC) Hey Swag Lord, thanks for chiming in. Respectfully, I don't see how the number of different sources that have expressed an opinion changes the opinion from an opinion to a fact. That sounds like a bandwagon fallacy to me. I understand that we have a responsibility to reflect the weight of facts published in reliable sources. However, we do not have a responsibility to repeat *opinions* published in RS and pass them off as if they are facts, especially when those opinions are highly politically charged and controversial. "Left" or "right", though still relative and open to some level of debate, could reasonably be used as factual descriptors. I could even see a reasonable argument for words like "fringe" being used as factual descriptors. "Far" left or "far" right are, to me, clear examples of opinionated, persuasive writing of the type that doesn't belong here, even if some guys and gals at some RS papers erroneously believe that their opinions are facts and publish them as such. Lots more I could say here about NPOV policy and the inherent tensions between NPOV and giving due weight to RS, but I will not ramble on any further and will save that for an RFC, which I will hopefully have time to create tomorrow when I'm at the airport. Philomathes2357 (talk) 22:24, 13 January 2023 (UTC) You are essentially arguing that there is no such thing as "far" right or left in politics, or, if they exist, they cannot be described using those terms. That's a rather mind blowing disintegration of logical thinking and denial of the normal way language functions. I don't know how we can deal with that in a constructive way beyond simply rejecting it as "non-reasoning". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:40, 13 January 2023 (UTC) I'll take that in good faith, Valjean. I'm having an equally hard time wrapping my mind around your argument that "far left" can be uttered as a statement of fact, rather than an opinion. I'd even describe your argument as "mind-blowing" and "non-reasoning". So I think there's a big communication gap here. If this were a face-to-face conversation rather than an exchange of text, I don't think we'd be at such an impasse, but alas, we have to work with what we've got. Here's an analogy to illustrate my point: I feel the same way about "far" right and "far" left as I do about, say, the word "ugly" as a descriptor of people. Certainly, we'd both agree that ugly people do exist. We could probably identify certain people who are exceptionally physically unattractive by the standards of our society and culture, and we might call them ugly. We could even come to a consensus as a group that "person X is ugly". Someone who works for an RS could even write an article that states as fact "person X is ugly". But it would *still* not be a fact that person X is ugly. It would be a widely-held popular opinion, and it wouldn't be appropriate to include in that person's biography "they are ugly", even if some folks at an RS expressed that opinion in a journalistic piece. Maybe we could say "many news outlets, such as X, Y, and Z, have described this person as ugly", but no more. So, even though it is a fact that ugly people exist, and people can be described using that term, they cannot *factually* be described with that term: it can never be a fact that "person X is ugly", it is always an opinion. In the same vein, we might be able to agree that extremes exist on the political left and the political right, and we could probably use "far-right" or "far-left" in a conversation about politics over a cup of coffee, but it cannot be an encyclopedic fact that "person X is far-left" or "news outlet Y is far-right" - that's inherently a statement of opinion, and, frankly, given the extremely derisive and politically-charged nature of these descriptors, I'd support a lead that says "Person X is ugly" before I'd support a lead that says "Person X is far-right". Even if you still disagree, does that analogy shed any light on my reasoning here, or do I still sound crazy to you, Valjean? Dronebogus: I've asked you nicely to stop stalking my edit history and hatting/reverting everything I do. At this point, I feel like you are personally targeting me on a daily basis, and it's making me uncomfortable. I don't understand why nobody has asked you to stop, because every time I have assumed bad faith on the part of another editor, I have - rightly - been chastised and told, not asked, to stop immediately, or else there were going to be consequences. If you don't like what I have to say, you can jump into the conversation and leave a good-faith comment and push back on me, like Valjean and Swag Lord have been doing. Or you could go somewhere else and ignore me, as everyone else is free to do. Admins have expressed disagreement with you and even reverted your hatting, but you simply re-reverted and overrode the admin. If you continue, I'll have to take this to arbitration and request an interaction ban. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2023 (UTC) You keep saying the same things over and over, people refute you, you keep doing it— that’s the definition of WP:BLUDGEON. Dronebogus (talk) 01:40, 14 January 2023 (UTC) I think your analogy compares apples to oranges. Beauty is a subjective thing, yet it is a judgement call genetically programmed into babies. Then add cultural expectations and it gets more complicated, yet in a beauty contest, most people will agree that the winning girl on the extreme end of the beauty scale really is a beauty, and that opinion is also a fact confirmed by the universal opinion of lots of people, especially experts. (There will still be subjective differences of opinion about which of the many beautiful girls was really the most beautiful.) 😅 With the political scale, or rather with extremism in general, we have some objective criteria to use. Normal people on the left and right, who are still fairly close to center, will have differing opinions about what is the best policy and best way to effect change, but they still agree about provable facts. They are still tethered to reality and are not "far" from it. They can talk together and generally enjoy fine social relationships. Extremists go too far. They lose touch with reality and provable facts. They believe misleading information, lies, and conspiracy theories. They are "far" out there. Unlike beauty and ugliness, this involves provable facts, things that can be fact-checked. We're beyond mere opinion. Extremists believe Trump won the election, that vaccines are very dangerous, that Seth Rich and Ukraine (not Russia, Trump, and Wikileaks) interfered in and tried to steal the 2016 election, that Biden and the British royals are lizards, and that Democrats abduct babies to eat after using them for pedophilic purposes. So extreme distance and separation from objective facts is my objective and measurable way of defining the difference between normal left and right and "far" left and right. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:04, 14 January 2023 (UTC) I think it is clear that nobody here supports Philomathes2357's proposal that we need to remove "left" and "right" descriptors from all Wikipedia articles, and that we should start here. If anybody else takes that position, we can continue the conversation; otherwise let's move on. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:44, 14 January 2023 (UTC) Can I re-collapse this now? It’s been talked to death and as you stated there is a strong consensus that this is not supported by anyone except the proposer. Dronebogus (talk) 00:43, 15 January 2023 (UTC) When was this un-collapsed? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 03:10, 15 January 2023 (UTC) Given the RfC being opened, I think it's probably about time to close this section. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 07:36, 15 January 2023 (UTC) Please do not, I have spent all day traveling across the US, and while I don't plan on continuing the conversation in this thread, I do plan on opening an RFC on the issue, and I think it's of value for all those who participate that the above conversation be clearly visible. There's no reason to hat it at this time. If the RFC concludes in opposition to all of my proposals, I'd support collapsing this thread and only leaving the RFC. @Bobfrombrockley I have never, ever claimed that "left" and "right" should be removed from Wikipedia. In fact, I wrote above: "certainly we can agree that there are websites that are left-leaning and right-leaning." ""Left" or "right", though still relative and open to some level of debate, could reasonably be used as factual descriptors." "I could even see a reasonable argument for words like "fringe" being used as factual descriptors." I only argued against the use of "far" left and "far" right. How could you have truly read this and interpreted it as me arguing against the phrases "left" and "right"? I feel like this is a recurring issue in my Wikipedia interactions. Full disclosure, I'm autistic, and sometimes I find it hard to get my point across in way that accurately reflects it in my mind. So I write a lot. Too many words, sometimes. I know this, and I'm working on it. So, people, out of a lack of interest in the subject matter or for other reasons, simply do not read what I write, and they clearly don't spend even a moment thinking about it, much less "steel manning" it. @Bobfrombrockley, I am not accusing you of acting in bad faith in any way, but to be very blunt, your summary of my proposal is so silly and absurd that it's clear that you did not actually read what I wrote, or, if you did, you skimmed it momentarily and didn't give it any serious thought at all. And you're not alone, almost every time someone on Wikipedia characterizes what I'm expressing about something, it's so ludicrously straw manned, twisted, or detrimentally oversimplified that, honestly, it makes me very sad and makes me feel like I'm talking to a brick wall, rather than other humans. If you don't give enough of a shit to actually read what I say and at least try to give it a serious thought, why bother commenting at all? With that, I don't think there's anything else to say on this thread. RFC coming tomorrow, if you all insist that this thread is such a grave and serious problem that it needs to be hatted immediately, go for it I guess, I'll just mention it in the RFC. Philomathes2357 (talk) 03:22, 15 January 2023 (UTC) Philomathes2357 Apologies for my perhaps flippant summary of your comments, which you say came across as silly and absurd. I should have been more careful in my summary. I read and have some sympathy for your position, although it is hard to digest such a large quantity of text on a talk page. I don't understand why "far left" is any more subjective than "left", but the main point for me is that if we followed your argument, it's an issue for the whole of the WP project, where such terms are consistently used, rather than this particular article where we are simply following RSs as per WP policy, and so your long interventions are really not a positive contribution to editing this particular page. I appreciate your passion and commitment, but would urge you to step back a little at this point. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:08, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Potential sources, for review

Source for review:

• Briant, Dr. Emma L. (28 April 2022). "How Russia benefits from ill-informed social media policies". Brookings. Retrieved 17 January 2023.

[ Scott Ritter’s removal from Twitter in April 2022] was immediately accompanied by support from a reporter from The Grayzone, who claimed his voice had been censored in a widely shared tweet. Far from being “small pockets of dissenting voices,” the reach of networks of left- and right-wing accounts and outlets that adopt this position on Kremlin defenders is large. This one post still displaying the apparently ‘silenced’ Scott Ritter’s false tweet about Bucha gained 5,801 Retweets and 545 Quote Tweets. Max Blumenthal also shared it with his three hundred and five thousand followers, with currently 1,086 Retweets and 76 Quote Tweets.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:50, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Plus these other recent articles, which I posted before but they got archived prematurely:

• Amine, Rayan El (4 November 2022). "Syria rolls out the red carpet for influencers and friendly foreigners, while local reporters face death and prison". Coda Story. Retrieved 7 November 2022.

The only journalists who thrive in Syria today are those who serve as mouthpieces for the Syrian and Russian regimes. Many of these mouthpieces include American-based, far-left websites such as The Grayzone and MintPress News. Idrees Ahmed, an editor at global affairs magazine New Lines, says such friendly foreign media, even if obscure and dismissed by the mainstream, has “made the job of propaganda easier for [authoritarians].” In September for example, a Grayzone article claimed that the White Helmets, a civil defense group responsible for significant reporting on Syrian atrocities and the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives, corrupted the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) investigation into the 2018 Douma chemical attack. Among those who shared the article on Twitter was the Russian Embassy in Sweden.

• Guckert, Élie (17 October 2022). "The Grayzone : une machine complotiste au service de Poutine - L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme". Conspiracy Watch (in French). Retrieved 7 November 2022. {{cite web}}: Text "L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme" ignored (help)

The articles of The Grayzone are often relayed by other French figures of Russian propaganda and the conspiracy like the ex-senator Yves Pozzo di Borgo, or quoted in reference by the site France Soir. From one side of the Atlantic to the other, these two communities talk to each other and amplify each other. Thus, last March, the famous video of the intervention of the Frenchwoman Anne-Laure Bonnel on CNews claiming that Ukraine is massacring its own people had been taken up by Aaron Maté, one of the flagship columnists of The Grayzone, who concluded that "the United States has been fueling a war in Donbass since 2014". From conflicts to famines to the Covid-19 pandemic, everything is necessarily the fruit of conspiracies fomented in Washington, according to the “investigations” of this American site. This would be the case with the genocide of the Uyghurs like the chemical attacks committed in Syria by Bashar el-Assad or the massacres of civilians committed in Ukraine by the Russian army. The creator of this diversion machine is Max Blumenthal. Son of Sydney Blumenthal, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, Max left the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar in 2012, which he accused of being pro-Assad. In 2015, after a trip to Russia for RT's 10th anniversary – where he has appeared regularly ever since – Blumenthal made a 180-degree turn and founded The Grayzone. First a simple blog hosted on the left-wing American platform Alternet, the project then became a full-fledged company. Or almost. As US news site rating service NewsGuard notes, the site was dependent on a company registered in 2019 in the name of Blumenthal in the state of Maryland seized in 2021, for lack of tax declaration. Since then, The Grayzone has no known legal existence. While accusing many outlets of being funded by various Western intelligence services, the site refuses to answer questions about its own funding. The Grayzone played a key role in Vladimir Putin's information war in Syria. In June, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and The Syria Campaign mapped a network of 28 Russian-backed propagandists to disseminate false information on social media about the conflict to an audience of nearly 2 million. convinced. Among them, the “most prolific creator and propagator of disinformation” is none other than Aaron Maté, who thus snatches a place formerly occupied by Vanessa Beeley. Information denied by the person concerned. His articles for The Grayzone are, however, at the heart of a vast disinformation campaign launched jointly with WikiLeaks, a group of conspiratorial British academics and Russian diplomats to discredit the OPCW investigation into the Douma chemical attack in 2018. , as reported by Conspiracy Watch here and there. He has also been invited by Russia to speak in 2021 at a UN conference about Assad's "fake" chemical attacks. The ties between The Grayzone and the Russian propaganda ecosystem have only deepened over the years. Max Blumenthal, for example, has been rewarded for his work by a pro-Assad lobby and has already been identified as a friend by the official account of the Russian mission to the UN, on Twitter. Mate was caught red-handed communicating with an employee of Ruptly, RT's video agency, to obtain the personal details of survivors of the Douma chemical attack. To make matters worse, The Grayzone has recently launched its British branch, entrusted to a certain Kit Klarenberg who has written for RT, Sputnik, the conspiratorial site GlobalResearch and the Iranian state channel Press TV.

• Fiorella, Giancarlo; Godart, Charlotte; Waters, Nick (1 March 2021). "Digital Integrity". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 19 (1). Oxford University Press (OUP): 147–161. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqab022. ISSN 1478-1387.

While instances of mass amplification of state-engendered disinformation are cause for concern, equal attention should be paid to the less visible but still vociferous ‘alternative facts’ communities that exist online. Far from being relegated to niche corners of the internet populated by conspiracy theorists and their adherents, grassroots counterfactual narratives can be introduced to mainstream audiences by large media organizations like Russia Today (RT) and Fox News, which amplify and lend legitimacy to these narratives. These grassroots communities are particularly evident on Twitter, where they coalesce around individual personalities like right-wing activist Andy Ngo, and around platforms with uncritical pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad editorial lines, like The Grayzone and MintPress News. These personalities and associated outlets act as both producers of counterfactual theories, as well as hubs around which individuals with similar beliefs rally. The damage that these ecosystems and the theories that they spawn can inflict on digital evidence is not based on the quality of the dis/misinformation that they produce but rather on the quantity.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 February 2023

SoldOut22 (talk) 11:02, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

This publication is described as a “far left publication, it is a far right one! Could someone edit this it is protected? SoldOut22 (talk) 11:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: see the discussion above Cannolis (talk) 11:39, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Israel?

The lead mentions that GZ is heavily critical of the Israeli cabinet, with no ref. The only mention in the body of Israel is a quote from an opinion piece by Bruce Bawer in Commentary saying it promotes "a pro-Hamas line on Israel and Palestine". That opinion piece is not enough for the lead summary. I'll add a cn tag for now, but I don't think RSs mention Israel. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with removing the whole sentence, as it was added without any citations, and is not supported by the body. Hemiauchenia (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Use of AI in articles

I'm seeing this article from Vice, though I'm not seeing coverage on this from other publications. Has anyone seen anything else about this? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:10, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

RfC about the use of "far-left" in Wikivoice in the opening sentence

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

(non-admin closure) There is a strong consensus that "far-left" can be used to describe Grayzone, and a slightly less clear but still rough consensus that "far-left" should be used in Wikivoice in the opening sentence of the article. Proponents pointed to a long list of reliable sources describing Grayzone as far-left, which this closer evaluates as a strong argument for describing them as such somewhere. However, they often did not specifically address the issue of where to place this description, which is why I've evaluated the consensus for that point as weaker. Opponents gave a variety of reasons: some which boil down to WP:WEIGHT concerns, and some which boil down to MOS:LABEL concerns. Given the sourcing, I don't evaluate either of these concerns as particularly strong, and there were also significantly fewer of both of them combined than there were proponents. Loki (talk) 15:49, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Should the term "far-left" be used in Wikivoice in the opening sentence of this article? Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Survey: RfC about the use of "far-left" in Wikivoice in the opening sentence

No This is out of compliance with NPOV, and is an editorial expression of opinion, rather than an assertion of fact. Skip to the conclusion at the end if you don't want to read this entire text wall, but do come back and read it if you find yourself in immediate disagreement with the conclusion.

lengthy rationale continued, collapsed by User:Adoring nanny

First, we need to address the basic terms "left" and "right". Readers may think this is off topic, but it is important. "Left" and "right" are terms that most people agree can be used as factual descriptors of political ideas, rather than merely opinions. I agree with this, too. However, there is subtlety that adds an inherent layer of subjectivity to the terms - the idea of a political "right" and "left" are very new abstract Western creations. They were created at earliest in the late 18th century during the French Revolution, and they were originally a physical description of where the supporters of the King sat (on the right) and where the supporters of the Revolution sat (on the left). The terms were clear, factual, objective descriptions of where people "sat" on a specific issue. Clearly, when we describe the Grayzone as "left" or Fox News as "right", we don't mean that the Grayzone supports the ideals of the French Revolution, or that Fox News contributors are fans of Louis XVI, and we're also not describing the physical space occupied by Max Blumenthal or Tucker Carlson. So the terms have been lifted from their original context and are now abstract concepts used, not to measure political ideas scientifically or objectively, but to compare political opinions to one another within a given context. There is no "left" without a "right". Hypothetically, if 100% of people in society suddenly abandoned all of their right-wing ideas and subscribed without exception to some interpretation of left-wing ideas, it would be inaccurate to say that "everyone in our society is left-wing". Instead, there would cease to be a coherent definition of left-wing, or rather, the colloquial definitions of "left" and "right" would completely fall apart and would be rebuilt around a totally different set of political ideological differences within society. Society might still use the terms "left" and "right" out of convenience, but their meaning would have seismically shifted, such that some of what was once considered "left" would now be considered "right". One also runs into serious difficulties taking any objective definition of left and right and applying it outside the context of one single country. In the USA, the "left" is generally synonymous with the Democratic party, and the "right" with the Republican party. However, the Democratic party, were its platform and principles to be applied to a political party in Scandinavia, could reasonably be considered a "center-right" party, because of, for example, its widespread lack of interest in universal healthcare or tuition-free public universities or its unambitious policies on government-subsidized childcare and parental leave. Many of the Republican party platform and positions, in some countries vastly different to the USA, would undoubtedly be considered "left-wing", such as its permissive stance on legal homosexual marriage or its grounding in constitutional republicanism. So, I've established the context that, while I think we can all agree that the terms "left" and "right" can be appropriate encyclopedic descriptors, they are NOT universal factual descriptors, like "the capital of France is Paris", and they contain within them inherent relativity and subjectivity which is dependent on cultural context. Now for the terms "far" left and "far" right. I argue that "far" left and "far" right are statements of opinion, not fact. They are not applied using any agreed-upon definition. What, exactly, about a person or group's "rightness" or "leftness" makes it "far"? Far from what? Far from the opinions of the person expressing the "far" judgement? Far from the "center left" or "center right"? Whose center-left? As covered in the above paragraphs, those terms also don't have any real objective grounding, especially not in an international context, like the one in which the Grayzone writes. What is considered "far-left" in the United States could be considered "center-right" in a Scandinavian country, what's "right" in the United States could be "far-left" in Thailand, and, as previously noted, in many countries, the left/right dichotomy simply cannot be meaningfully applied. It's especially noteworthy that, not only are these terms (far left, far right) inherently subjective, they are exclusively used in a disparaging fashion. Nobody, or almost nobody, would describe themselves or any person or opinion with which they sympathize as "far" left or "far" right. The word "far" is always added before the words "left" and "right" to insert an explicitly negative connotation. We can see this exemplified in the sources cited in the opening sentence of the Grayzone article, a majority of which cast the subject matter in a negative light, which implies a desire to persuade the reader that the subject of the article should be viewed in a negative light. Essentially, when someone is described as "left", the tone is one of description. When someone is described as "far-left", the tone is one of dismissal and disparagement, based on the opinion of the individual using the label. Even if someone in this RFC were to complete the monumental, historic political-theoretical task of creating universal, objective, factual descriptions of "leftness" "rightness", and "farness", such that someone could be described in an article as "far-left", not as an opinion nested within the worldview of the article's author, but as an objective factual descriptor (like "the Bible is a book"), I still think "far left" and "far right" should be treated as statements of opinion on Wikipedia, as we can be certain that a definition such as this was not consulted by the authors of any of the articles cited: the authors instead consulted their own opinion and worldview. So, "far left" and "far right" are opinions, not facts. Now, on to the next aspect of my argument: the word-for-word text of NPOV. It's worth reading as much of NPOV as you can, carefully, but I have selected direct quotes from it below: NPOV states clearly "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them." "Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil." - NPOV policy "Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize. When editorial bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed." - NPOV policy note: using the descriptor "far-left" in Wikivoice disparages the subject, since this term is used with an exclusively negative connotation. Repeating the opinion expressed in RS as fact, as the opening sentence of the Grayzone article does, also implies sympathy with what reliable sources say about the subject. "An important note on using the term "fundamentalism": In studies of religion, this word has a very specific meaning. Wikipedia articles about religion should use this word only in its technical sense, not "strongly-held belief", "opposition to science", or "religious conservatism", as it is often used in the popular press." - NPOV policy From this policy on the term "fundamentalism" we can induce the following: the fact a word is used in a certain way in the popular press does not mean we should use the word the same way on Wikipedia, when the popular press uses the word with colloquial intent, not technical intent. Since there is no coherent technical definition of "far left", we can assume that it is meant in a colloquial context, and should be skeptical at best of its use. "Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tones can be introduced through how facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article...Try not to quote directly...instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone." - NPOV policy Finally, I would direct my fellow editors to the NPOV section on Anglo-American bias. I also argue that assuming that terms like "far left" and "far right" also violate NPOV by introducing Anglo-American bias, because of the inherent subjectivity and context-dependence of any definition of "left" or "right". I discuss the explicitly Western origins of the abstract concepts of a "political right" and "political left" above. If your definitions of left and right are themselves nested within your own cultural framework of understanding, how could you possible hope to describe, as "fact", the Grayzone's writings and opinions on issues in Syria, Venezuela, China, the Balkans and elsewhere using a term like "far left", which relies upon and is contextualized by your definition of "left"?

Conclusion: The answer to the RFC question is "No". the term "far left" should be removed from the first sentence, and should be replaced by a sentence in the body of the article, something to the effect of "several news outlets, including X, Y, and Z, have described the Grayzone as "far-left". This presents a significant view held by reliable sources, while avoiding the problem of presenting political opinions as fact in Wikivoice, and while also bringing the article into compliance with NPOV. I rest my case. I hope this will result in a lively discussion, and I especially encourage you to comment if you have read all of the above and disagree with the conclusion.

Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, per WP:YESPOV. While this has been discussed to death already, but the reason that we have always come to a consensus that we should label this as "far-left" is because that is what reliable sources refer to the website as, and there are no reliable sources that seriously contest this characterization. These sources include:
  1. Coda Story (RSP entry) the far-left news site The Grayzone
  2. The Washington Post (RSP entry) the Grayzone, a far-left media outlet
  3. The Diplomat (RSP entry) the far-left website Grayzone
  4. The Daily Telegraph (RSP entry) controversial far-left news website that has been accused of publishing pro-Russian propaganda
  5. Radio France Internationale far-left blog Grayzone
  6. Irish Times far-left website The Grayzone
  7. The Jewish Chronicle (RSP entry) far-left blog, The Grayzone, which is known for its pro-Kremlin editorial line and its support for the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria
  8. Business Post a far-left news website who were disinvited from speaking at Web Summit following allegations that their outlet published Russian propaganda

The only arguments presented are general arguments against (1) the academic validity of the Left–right political spectrum on Wikipedia and (2) the notion of a "far left" or a "far right" actually existing. While I understand the philosophical hesitance of the RfC creator, I don't see how this matters in light of our duty to represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 07:26, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Let me try to explain why this matters. I'm trying to fuse my philosophical hesitance with Wikipedia policy. I think this matters in light of the duty you reference because of the text of the NPOV that I quote.

namely: ""Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil."

and

"Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tones can be introduced through how facts are selected, presented, or organized."

I think my suggestion is more in line with our duty to "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

My suggestion is more fair, because it is unfair to the subject to cite an opinion written in an RS as if it is a fact when that opinion disparages the subject.

My suggestion is just as proportionate, because it keeps the phrase "far-left" in the article and doesn't remove any of the citations.

It avoids editorial bias and and introducing "inappropriate tones" by not presenting a widely-held political opinion as an encyclopedic fact,

and it retains the significant view that has been published by reliable sources on the topic - that, at the very least, several writers who write for RS believe that the Grayzone is far left.

Plus, my suggestion is, in my view, plainly more in line with much of the specific text of NPOV, which, as it said in its lead, is non-negotiable I also don't see any way how retaining a factual "far-left" in Wikivoice in the opening sentence would make the article better in comparison to my suggestion. Philomathes2357 (talk) 07:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

All of this is couched fundamentally in the idea that "far-left" and "far-right" are mere opinions rather than objective descriptors of where a particular source stands on the left-right political spectrum. But I'd be very skeptical of claims that one cannot place groups like Obraz as being far-right, and cannot objectively place groups like Shining Path as being far-left. Just because the left-right political spectrum is a particular framework, and there are ideological implications at stake in organizing the left-right framework, does not render the place of one group in that framework as being merely at the whim of opinion. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 07:58, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Yes (Summoned by bot) – because that's what the reliable sources say. The long opening comment is interesting, and if I were in debate club I'd love to engage as it's full of ideas, but this is a Wikipedia Rfc, not debate club, and the way we decide these is not by logicking our way into the way the world ought to see "left" and "right" in general, but rather, by examining the reliable sources available on the topic, checking what they say, and evaluating what is the majority view (if any), the minority view(s), and the views espoused by only a tiny minority. If one view is clearly the most frequent, then as a tertiary source, we have no choice but to follow it, and hang the logic, as well as the debating brilliancy prize. In my assessment, this question does have a majority view among secondary sources, which leads inescapably to a "yes" !vote. Mathglot (talk) 08:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes per the cogent analysis by Red-tailed hawk. Wikipedia summarizes what reliable sources say about various topics, and if reliable sources describe The Greyzone as "far left", then so too will Wikipedia. TLDR tendentious pseudo-philosophical baloney hearkening back to parliamentary seating charts during the French Revolution is an utter waste of other editor's time. Blog elsewhere, please, OP, where you can rail freely against "Anglo-American bias". Cullen328 (talk) 08:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Yes because thats what the RS say Softlemonades (talk) 10:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I think this is relevant policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Contentious_labels. In-text citation is the recommendation here, rather than in-line. Philomathes2357 (talk) 08:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Yes OP’s battle against great wrongs is baseless and features a laundry list of bad arguments, non-arguments, and disruptive argument tactics— including textwalling, the familiar misinterpretation of NPOV to mean “avoid controversy”, OR with poorly substantiated claims of being an expert (even if OP is one, experts can still hold fringe ideas), appeals to non-specific authorities (“other political experts agree with me”), bludgeoning, refusing to get the point(s), casually dismissing a ton of reliable sources, and of course endlessly filibustering the same topic to maintain a fake controversy. Recommend SNOW close and potentially a topic ban if they keep Sealioning talk pages. Dronebogus (talk) 11:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Should be in the lead, but not in the first sentence It is true that a lot of sources say this. It should absolutely be in the lead. But not in the first sentence. There is no Wikipedia policy that just because a lot of sources say something, it has to be in the first sentence. If it were up to me, I would stop doing this generally. Other bad examples I am aware of include Gatestone Institute and Dorothy Moon. I think examples that keep it out of the first sentence, such as Keith Olbermann, Noam Chomsky and others are simply better written. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes. "Far" exists on both sides. The far-left (Communists) and the far-right (Nazis) are extremists despised by the moderates on the left and right. Democrats don't like Communists, and Republicans don't like Nazis. To assert that calling such extremists "far" is just an opinion boggles the mind and all logic. The political spectrum exists, and both sides have "far" ends where the extremists dwell. RS call them "far" and so should we. The Grayzone is definitely extremist and far-left. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes because of the multitude of reliable, independent sources describing it as such. That is the basis for inclusion in this encyclopedia. Inevitably, "reliable" and "independent" sources convey information that does not conform with capital-t Truth or the true ontology of the universe. That's unavoidable for an encyclopedia: ideally, we record the state of knowledge, which hopefully corresponds with the Truth as much as it can, but we don't insert our own opinions and research. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 19:55, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes - per above. There is consensus among RS that the Grayzone is a far-left outlet and it is almost always referred to as such Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:59, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes Blumenthal, a longtime cheerleader for any anti-West cause no matter how fascist is about as "far-left" as Donald Trump, but regardless the RS call Grayzone far-left and thus so.must Wikipedia, even if the label is inaccurate. 2601:18F:107F:8C30:98A3:4835:2C5F:272C (talk) 01:10, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes per everyone else. And while I like OP's philosophizing in a late-night dorm room sort of way, I think one of the most salutary benefits of relying on reliable sources per WP:NPOV is that we are (mostly) kept from long-winded sophistical debates. Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 01:25, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes per sky is blue and all of the above. Vizorblaze (talk) 09:13, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes Wikipedia states the preponderance of what sources say. If the majority of them use the term then so does Wikipedia, quote sources in such a case would present a false balance. Even though "far left" is a nonsense term academically it's in common usage, especially in the US. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:44, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
• Yes Plenty of coverage stating as such, as shown by Red-tailed hawk. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
• Not in the first sentence. This is so exhausting. I don't know how or why we got into the business of describing people and organizations primarily by their political affiliations, but it is stupid. It is stupid when we do it for lefties, and it is stupid when we do it for righties: look at this 2016 revision versus the current article at National Review. Is it really that much of a tragedy that people have to read a whole two sentences in before they figure out whether they agree with the magazine's politics? Do we need to care about this? I would say the answer is "no". The typical argument for the inclusion is something along the lines of "a bunch of important newspapers said so" -- sure. They said that the thing was left-wing, or right-wing (in whatever country they're from, in whatever year they said it). We can include this in an article. It would be stupid not to. However, there are a lot of facts in the world: I am sure you could find George Washington's shoe size if you really wanted to, and it would be verifiable, and it would be reliably sourced, but that's not an argument for the first sentence of his article to say George Washington was an American military officer, size-12 shoe wearer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. jp×g 11:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

  This is not about shoe size. That’s not even in the same ballpark. We never talk about shoe size unless maybe someone had notably enormous shoes. Dronebogus (talk) 11:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

  If you don’t like it then OP has opened a thread complaining about it on a MOS talkpage that is going nowhere. Dronebogus (talk) 11:35, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

An analogy is a comparison of dissimilar subjects made in order to illustrate a common principle or mechanism; I apologize if the comparison was unclear. jp×g 11:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The comparison was ludicrous. Even as hyperbole. Dronebogus (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

• And stop editing my comments. Dronebogus (talk) 11:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Talk pages are for discussions about improving articles; please do not make derogatory comments about your dispute with the person who created this thread. jp×g 11:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

No, it was about my dispute with you. Dronebogus (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems that we have differing opinions here; I don't know that further discussion will be helpful. jp×g 12:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I do think there's a difference when the reason that the publication is covered tends to be more or less around it being a far-left fringe blog that flirts with disinformation, those characteristics tend to be a bit more defining and deserve more weight in the lead than a left-right characterization of George Washington would warrant. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Conditional No I agree with JPxG that we shouldn't use such a description in almost any opening sentence of any article. There might be a MOS argument here but I'm not going to try to find it if it exists. My other concern is the difference between "we found sources that say X (when doing a keyword search)" vs "sources typically describe it as X". While finding some sources is often easy, in this case I haven't seen anyone do any sort of analysis that shows this is such a common description of the source that we should treat it as a given description. For example, a list of the first 20 Google News stories that mention or are about The Grayzone, how many call the site "far-left"? I tried doing this but I don't know how to filter out hits to the site itself thus I can't provide an answer. However, if other editors can't provide it either then we shouldn't put this description in Wiki-voice. That doesn't mean we can't say "sources have described the site as X" but are we such bad writers that we feel we have to tell rather than show? It really does read like we are trying to persuade our readers with emotional language rather than solid facts. However, if some sort of systematic review of sources is shown and shows the description is common then I would support using "far-left" in the opening paragraph even if not in the first sentence. Springee (talk) 12:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Regarding I don't know how to filter out hits to the site itself, @Springee: If you're interested in filtering out The Grayzone using google search, you can insert "-site:thegrayzone.com" at the end to exclude urls from the site itself from your results. You might get some unreliable sites by just searching google news (I'm currently getting several references to Iranian state media). There's also the reliable source search engine, which is built through a whitelist of commonly discussed sources that are considered reliable and excludes this publication's website, but being whitelist-based there are websites it will exclude that don't need to be excluded. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 22:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh wow. I've always wondered how to filter out the site itself. Thanks Mr. Hawk! Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Reliable source search engine? Where is that discussed on Wikipedia? I’m always learning something new despite being here what seems almost forever! Doug Weller talk 09:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

OK, having done a search (see my edit in the next section) I don't think this should be in Wiki-voice. Sources like the Atlantic suggest "far-left" is too simplistic and doesn't really capture what they call a "campist" source. It would probably be good if the intro said something like the source has been called far-left but others disagree and feel it is anti-western etc. Springee (talk) 02:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

The particular piece in The Atlantic that you're referencing refers to them as campists, which the article notes is a segment of the sectarian far left. I don't see why this serves as an argument against the group being far-left. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Can anyone point to a book or article that provides a definition of far left? The only one I could find is from Hans-Georg Betz who said it meant the farthest left position on the left-right spectrum. But the current governments of Russia and China are markedly less left-wing than those that preceded them. Also, and we did this at one time with articles about far right groups, the description should be cited to an expert source. Journalists are not experts in political science and sociology. TFD (talk) 18:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• Yes there are a buttload of reliable sources calling it this and using similar terms. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
• 'Prefer "pro-Kremlin" as more meaningful to the reader, but failing that, Yes. Δπ (talk) 22:30, 10 February 2023 (UTC) striking sock of Nrcprm2026 — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 14:12, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

OP, I appreciate the work and the passion you've put into this topic, both here, and in previous discussions. However, now that you've started an Rfc along with a lengthy opening statement, and responded to the first !vote with another one, I'd urge you to step back now, and let the process play out, which it may do for a month unless consensus rapidly becomes clear before that. I'm just another editor and I can't tell you what to do or what not to do, but adding more walls of text after each !vote will not help your cause, imho. Unless you see a uniquely new approach that you have never considered or responded to before, just lurking and watching may be your best bet. I wish you luck. Mathglot (talk) 08:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Can I collapse OP’s extremely long vote rationale? I’m not trying to be a jerk; this is purely practical because it takes up half the voting section. Dronebogus (talk) 11:27, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

  The typical answer is no, but I've done so per WP:IAR, because that length is too extreme. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

&

It might be worth looking at WT:WTW#Proposal to add term to "contentious labels" section where Philomathes2357 is trying to get a change in the guidelines. Doug Weller talk 21:20, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Philomathes2357, while I don't think there is anything wrong, per se, with this dual-pronged approach, in my opinion the above-board thing to do would have been to give notice to the participants here of the alternate forum. As ever, reasonable minds may differ. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 21:27, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I've come here from the MOS discussion. I see we have sources that call the site far-left. Do we have a survey of sources that show the far-left label is consistently applied? If we search for news stories about "The Grayzone" (say the top 20 hits), how many will use "far-left" when describing the source? Would it be half, 5 of 20, just 1? This would help establish if we are dealing with "we can find sources that say X" vs sources consistently say X. For what it's worth, and it appears this wouldn't change consensus, I would oppose the label in Wikivoice and in the opening sentence if we can't show it is consistently used to describe this source. Even better, would be that article about this source rather than articles that reference this source use the term. Springee (talk) 23:10, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to Red-tailed Hawk's suggestion above I was able to search for news stories that mentioned/discussed The Grayzone. Here are my finding based on trying to find Google News hits that are sites that don't seem totally off base (and some probably still are):

• Newsweek[14] - "Max Blumenthal, founder of The Grayzone website, posted a clip to Twitter..."
• Bloomberg [15] - The registration wall seems to be getting me but at least the first two mentions that I can see don't call it far left. They do mention an anti-Ukrainian government narrative.
• Modern Diplomacy [16] - only refers to it by name, no labels.
• NewsMax [17] - well I don't think anyone is going to accuse NewsMax of pulling punches to the left. The one mention is just referencing the Grayzone as a source for information.
• .coda [18] - "Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor of the far-left news site The Grayzone" and later "While many of The Grayzone’s ideas push hard at the edges of left-wing discourse, it still commands a significant audience. " I would say this site supports the label.
• Global Times [19] - "Max Blumenthal, editor and founder of the Grayzone, a US-based independent news outlet, talked to Global Times (GT)" Well I guess the Grayzone has fans in China. Is that really left wing? I wouldn't consider this a reliable source BTW.
• The Atlantic [20] - "Although The GrayZone would characterize itself as an “anti-imperialist” news source, the opaquely financed publication is highly selective in the empires it chooses to scrutinize; it is difficult to find criticism of Russia or China—or any other American adversary—on its site. A more accurate descriptor of its ideological outlook is “campist,” denoting a segment of the sectarian far left that sees the world as divided into two camps: the imperialist West and the anti-imperialist rest." This seems to be more descriptive to me. The rest of the article seem to support the position that this isn't so much "far-left" as anti-imperialist/anti-west left. I would assume this source is already referenced in the article.
• Reuters [21] - " The Grayzone, a website that has published content critical of the Ukrainian government."
• Axios [22] - Nothing about far left but says, "A website called The Grayzone has made a name for itself by denying China's campaign of cultural and demographic genocide in Xinjiang."
• Jerusalem Post [23] - "explaining why she shared The Grayzone News editor Max Blumenthal's tweet"
• The Guardian [24] - "Since 2020, journalist Aaron Maté at the Grayzone is said by the report to have overtaken Beeley as the most prolific spreader of disinformation among the 28 conspiracy theorists identified. " No mention of left.

Having gone through this exercise I do not think we should use "far-left" in wiki-voice. If nothing else I would say The Atlantic, while clearly not complementing The Grayzone, seems to deny the label in favor of a suggestion of anti-western with a touch of perhaps Chinese money. So on prinicple I don't think we should use the "far-left" descriptor. Looking at a few of these sources calling The Grayzone far-left might be an unfair insult to the actual far-left. Springee (talk) 02:52, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

This is all much more intelligent and easy to swallow when the OP isn’t bludgeoning personal fringe opinions about how “far-left” doesn’t exist and violates NPOV. Dronebogus (talk) 07:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah sources with different descriptions is more useful than saying "far left doesnt exist stop denying Im right" which I couldnt understand or agree with and trying to change the first sentence to just say its a "news website" in edits which wasnt an improvement at all Softlemonades (talk) 15:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

• Leaning to No. Looking at the list of sources from Springee just above here, I would discount a couple (NewsMax, Global Times), but clearly most are strong sources. Yes, there are a number of good sources that do call GZ "far left", but many more do not, so it should not be in the first sentence. See also the newer sources I posted below, of which only one out of four uses "far-left". BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:41, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

SNOW close

Consensus has been swift and overwhelming here. It’s currently 10.5:1 in favor of keeping “far left” in the article (the “0.5” being a vote who supports slightly changing position in the article but not removal). While I appreciate the fact that Philomathes2357 is asking the community instead of endlessly bludgeoning, this is still a case of a WP:STICK that needs to be dropped. Since there is no meaningful controversy on whether to include the term “far left” in some way, I think this can be SNOW closed. Dronebogus (talk) 09:28, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Not taking any position on whether this should be SNOW or not. But it's not accurate to characterize me as a "support," or even as half a "support". On the exact question that was asked, I'm a "No". There is a big difference between being in the lead and being in the first sentence. And that's pretty much my entire objection. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:35, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I think we can let this run at least a week. This probably isn't going to need formal closure if it continues this way, but I don't see a need to close it this quickly; the way consensus is going there aren't going to be any changes to the article as a result of this RfC, and delaying the close of this isn't going to harm the article. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:09, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I was admonished for not commenting here by multiple users, but I was also asked not to comment here by multiple other users, so I'll split the difference by leaving one, and only one, remark for the next 48 hours. I'll note that by Dronebogus's criteria, I'm only a 0.5 on my own proposal here, because I do not support removing the phrase "far-left" from the article entirely under any circumstances. Since the opinion that the Grayzone is "far-left" is published in several reliable sources, it should definitely be included. I was very clear about this from the beginning, but most commenters here seem to have totally missed this.

All I've suggested is, rather than being in the opening sentence in Wikivoice, it should be elsewhere in the body (or the lead) in a manner consistent with NPOV's mandate to "avoid presenting opinions as facts". Just like the Shining Path article, which used to read "Shining Path is a far left terrorist group" but now contains a neutral, descriptive first sentence and attributes the "terrorist" label to reliable sources further down in the lead, while relegating "far left" to the infobox.

Many commenters here have offered a wide array of different opinions about what they think "far-left" means, as have different academics and popular writers, which just underscores that this label is an expression of opinion, not a statement of empirical fact. Other commenters have noted that it's actually ludicrous to factually describe the Grayzone "far left" based on things like their support for the right-wing Russian government or the right-wing Assad government in Syria. This highlights the fact/opinion divide even more strongly, and strengthens my point that these terms are used more as smears than as attempts at an empirical description of political reality.

The main argument presented here is that "reliable sources say it, therefore so should we". But I actually agree with that, so it's frustrating and disheartening to see that glibly repeated over and over as if it were a rebuttal to my position. We should present what reliable sources say, of course, the question is how to best present reliably-sourced opinions in an encyclopedic context - as empirical facts, or as views expressed in reliable sources? In Wikipedia's own voice, or attributed to its sources in the text?

Implicitly, some commenters have argued something like "if reliable sources say something is a fact, even if it's clearly an opinion, the utterance of that opinion by a reliable source makes it a fact, and we must present it as a fact, even if we privately know that doing so is ludicrous." I simply don't follow the logic there, as there are more NPOV-compliant ways to present the exact same material in a way that removes no content and neutralizes all appearances of NPOV issues.

A thorough, sound rebuttal of my proposal would argue that presenting a reliably-sourced opinion as an empirical fact in Wikivoice is unambiguously necessitated by NPOV policy & categorically superior to presenting it as simply a view held by reliable sources, as I propose. I have yet to see such a rebuttal, because if I did, I would have acknowledged it, thanked the person who offered it, and I'd have moved the heck on. Until I do see a serious rebuttal of this type, I'm going to keep acting like a gadfly and presenting the issue in the public square.

I acknowledge that some editors think I am bludgeoning the point here, but the only reason that I continue engaging and presenting my critiques in various forms is that I simply do not feel that any of my most basic critiques have been addressed, at all. If someone actually engaged, point by point, with my argument, systematically rebutting it in good faith and offering to give further responses to my counter-rebuttals, I would be thrilled. It would literally put a smile on my face and make my day. I definitely would have acknowledged it and, if it were ironclad, I would have moved on, because I'm not trolling or trying to waste anyone's time, mine or yours.

With that, I will refrain from further comments on this forum for 48 hours. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:35, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

This isn't a forum, and these talk pages are not for debates. Vizorblaze (talk) 09:15, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NOTFORUM Vizorblaze (talk) 09:14, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
• Support at this point it's very unlikely that the outcome will change. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose closure before a week has elapsed, or two days with no !votes, whichever comes first. Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
• I see that the OP has been indefinitely blocked. Doug Weller talk 12:24, 18 January 2023 (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.