User:Valjean/Essay/Reliable sources, Trump, and his editors here

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Sometimes wading through the process of teaching how to vet sources is simply too difficult a process, sometimes taking years, so I'm just going to provide lists of reliable and dubious sources. Yes, this is the lazy way, but generally it's safer to just use or avoid them. Note that word "generally", as even the best sources can make mistakes. Various resources with charts and tools to aid in evaluating sources are included.

Why is it even necessary to do this? Because in our post-truth political era, a strong ideological and cultural conflict over truth and facts is creating confusion in society and a subset of editors, and in the United States that confusion is largely created by Donald Trump,[1] and this confusion most strongly affects his supporters. Editors must not be confused about what is true and factual, because any confusion affects their editing and discussions, and we don't need that disruption.

Let me nail these facts firmly on the front door of Wikipedia:

  1. There are such things as verifiable, reality-based, facts.
  2. Trump's "alternative facts" are not reality-based facts; they are falsehoods.[2]
  3. The mainstream media are not fake news; they are working hard to report the news accurately and don't allow spin to get in the way of the facts.
  4. The "news" sources favored by Trump are invariably unreliable, inaccurately spin and distort the facts, and some are worthy of being called fake news because they only spout what's favorable to Trump, even though it's often false. He likes them because the truth hurts, and it interferes with his agenda.
  5. When Trump says "fake news", he doesn't mean "news that is untrue";[3] he means news which is negative and unfavorable to himself, even though it's true.[4][5]

No editor here should doubt any of those facts. Period. Only fringe editors doubt them.[6] Facts are facts, lies are lies, and opinions are not facts.

Moreover, even though "the facts have a well-known center-left bias",[7][8][9] that does not mean that reliably sourced facts are always the same as left-wing bias or opinion; they just happen to often reside on the same piece of real estate. That means the left is a safer place to reside if you're interested in facts and truth. By contrast, it is Trump's falsehoods[10][11][12] which are examples of right-wing political bias and opinions that are not reality-based or reliably sourced. Trump is not a reality-based person,[13] and neither are a subset of editors here who have a strong pro-Trump bias, at least not when it comes to our political articles.

Sourcing may seem a mundane matter, but the situation I mention above, and more fully describe below, is of vital importance to Wikipedia, because the basis of our editing is under sustained attack by Trump. His attacks are two-fold: he attacks the reliable sources (RS) we use by attacking the professional mainstream media, and he supports and uses unreliable sources. This post-truth Trumpian age often pits a subset of fringe editors,[6] those with a strong Trump bias, directly against Wikipedia's understanding of RS. They do not believe our reliably sourced articles, but try to twist and whitewash them to favor Trump, regardless of what RS say. They follow their leader by (1) believing his falsehoods, (2) distrusting reliable sources, (3) using dubious sources, (4) believing conspiracy theories, and (5) consuming fake news and false stories. This causes them to be incompetent for editing political articles. This situation disrupts the editing and discussions on political articles, and administrators and mainstream editors must be aware of what's going on and why. Fortunately, good sources and fact checkers frequently debunk errors and misinformation, and good editors use those sources and fact checkers.

Sources: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly[edit]

Yes, sources do come in "good, bad and ugly" versions. Let's take a look at them.

Good: Reliable sources[edit]

Main page: WP:Reliable sources

While individual articles of high quality can be found on Slate, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, etc, and I'll use them, I generally lean on the following sources, especially the center ones, for straight facts. Regardless of their opinions, their political articles are generally high quality and factually accurate, and of course they are still good for opinions, which are also part of the "sum of all human knowledge" we are supposed to document here.[14] The classifications are based on Vanessa Otero's chart.[15]

Left
Skews left
Neutral
Skews right

"The liberal bias of facts"[edit]

Liberals and RS are a natural mix, as liberals are more adverse to fake news than conservatives. Unlike right-wing sources, left-wing sources can be fairly partisan and yet rate well for accuracy. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has noted why this applies mostly to liberal sources:

  • "On the Liberal Bias of Facts"[8]
  • "The Facts Have A Well-Known Center-Left Bias"[7]
  • "Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias"[9]

There are several reasons for this: liberals tend to get their information from a much wider variety of sources than conservatives;[16] Democrats are generally better educated than Republicans;[17] and liberals tend to follow the evidence and change opinions more easily than conservatives, as their labels imply.

The consequence is that left-wingers/liberals and their sources will tend to be closer to the truth and facts than right-wingers/conservatives and their sources. In a sense, it's reassuring that the truth and facts are more favored by the common people than by the aristocracy, a connection which harkens back to the origins of the terms used for the left–right political spectrum in the French parliament, and the supporters of the American Revolution, who were left-wing liberals. The left-wingers/liberals sided with the oppressed common people, republicanism, democracy, revolution against the status quo, and human rights for everyone, while the right-wingers/conservatives sided with the aristocratic and wealthy ruling class, monarchies, autocracy, preservation of the status quo, and full rights only granted to the ruling and propertied class. And so it is today; some things never change.

The two sides are not two sides of the same coin, but are radically different in several ways. Scholarly data analysis, published in the Oxford University Press book Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics, shows that "liberals want facts; conservatives want their biases reinforced. Liberals embrace journalism; conservatives believe propaganda.... The right-wing media ecosystem differs categorically from the rest of the media environment." The authors have documented that the right-wing media ecosystem is more susceptible to "disinformation, lies and half-truths", results documented by numerous other researchers and authors.[18][19]

Another difference of special relevance to Wikipedia, especially under (and because of) Trump, is that Democrats tend to favor RS and real news, whereas Republicans tend to favor unreliable sources and fake news,[18][19] as demonstrated very clearly during the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump administration.[20][21][22] Fake news and false stories helped elect Trump. It was generally rejected by Democrats, and therefore directed mostly at Republicans, who swallowed it, with Fox News and right-wing media amplifying it. A deliberately disinformed base voted for Trump. The Russians have a long history as experts at spreading disinformation, and the Trump-Russia alliance and its production of fake news to aid Trump and fool his supporters is being investigated.[23]

Note that the name of the political party favored by the ruling class can change, as evidenced by the fact that the Republican and Democratic parties have changed their views and support base throughout history, with a nearly 100% exchange of positions since the days of the civil war.[24] (See Southern strategy for more information.)

Bad: Unreliable sources[edit]

See also: Alternative media (U.S. political left) and Alternative media (U.S. political right)

Sources on the political fringes tend to let their bias affect their reporting, so their spin can be misleading or deceptive. Some openly admit their political bias (and they should get points for that), while Fox News claimed for many years to be "Fair and Balanced",[25] thus deliberately hiding its obvious right-wing/GOP/Trump/Putin bias. (If any editor doubts that bias, just ask yourself these three questions: Do I identify as right-wing? Do I support Trump and/or the GOP? Do I believe Fox News is better than sources like CNN, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC? If you answer "yes" to those questions, you have proved my point, that Fox has a GOP bias, not some neutral bias. Myriad RS document this.)

The following sites publish very biased reporting, with some regularly publishing conspiracy theories and fake news. This also applies to Fox News. Some are listed as fake news sites, and some aren't notable enough for an article here, they are that fringe. Extreme sites on both the left/liberal and right/conservative sides should not be used at Wikipedia, as well as in real life.

Only look at fringe sources for research (What is the fringe saying?). Regularly looking at them is unsafe and will negatively affect your thinking, as the purpose of propaganda is to sneakily persuade you. Don't think you are immune or smarter than them. You will become confused and be deceived. Stick to the ones closer to the middle and higher up in Otero's chart[15] (the yellow and green boxes), and let them form and change your opinions. A positive learning curve is essential for intellectual integrity. Follow the evidence. Any editor who imbibes sites on the bottom right and left corners, and bottom two lines of Otero's chart, doesn't understand the most fundamentally important thing here at Wikipedia - how to vet sources and not believe the bad ones.

Hyper-Partisan Left - Most Extreme Left
Hyper-Partisan Right - Most Extreme Right
Hyper-Partisan Right - Most Extreme Right (cont.)
Russian disinformation
Other

Fox News as dubious, extremely partisan, source[edit]

See also: Fox News § Pro-Republican and pro-Trump bias, Fox News controversies, and Media bias in the United States § Conservative bias

Approach it with caution for political subjects. By viewing it you are entering an extreme GOP spin machine. If a story or fact is worth including here, then numerous mainstream RS will also report it, so use them instead. Likewise, when you find Fox used as a source, try to replace it with better sources. Due to the huge popularity and success of Fox News, its existence must be taken seriously, especially since anything irregular or inaccurate from it has a huge effect.

Among mainstream news sources, it is in a class of its own. Fox is a GOP propaganda channel, just as RT is a Russian propaganda channel, and is only allowed here because of tradition and its popularity and vast influence. It used to be more reliable, but our policies are slow to recognize that such is no longer the case. We should rate it much lower, as we do with The Daily Mail, which is officially deprecated here. I hope that we will some day officially deprecate use of Fox News, it's that unreliable.

Some Fox News employees have quit in disgust because of the channel's devotion to propaganda, rather than real news reporting. In March 2018, Ralph Peters, a staunchly conservative commentator at Fox, revolted:

"Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to 'support and defend the Constitution,' and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed. In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration."[26][27][28][29]

Fact checkers rate Fox News lowest for factual accuracy[30] among mainstream sources.[31] They are not a true "news" source, but are a GOP propaganda source (that was Roger Ailes's goal when he created it), and their spin controls whether they cover something, and how they do it.

Roger Ailes[32] founded Fox News because he thought the real villain of the Watergate scandal was The Washington Post, which exposed the scandal and corruption of the Nixon administration. He chose the side of the corrupt and guilty party and opposed the reliable source which exposed the crime. That says a whole lot about his character. He's gone now, but we still have to live with the consequences of his unethical decision to oppose justice and right by creating Fox News. It is still on the side of the Republican Party, right or wrong. Even today, Fox News will invariably be on the opposite side of an issue as The Washington Post, one of the most highly respected and awarded newspapers.

In broadcast media, the FCC policy of the Fairness Doctrine required broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner. In 1987, the FCC voted to revoke the Fairness Doctrine, a decision which was later upheld in court.[33] The repeal unleashed a new era of ideological broadcasting.

Fox News became the behemoth in that field, with Roger Ailes developing it as the unofficial voice of the GOP under the deceptive motto "Fair and Balanced", a motto it dropped in 2017.[25] It also moved to Fox Entertainment Group, ergo, it's not really news. Few of its staunchest viewers understand these changes, and they continue to trust Fox as a real news channel, when in fact it's an ideological propaganda channel. Besides Fox News, the right-wing alternative media encompasses many other fringe sources.

Fox News claims to follow journalistic norms, but often fails in that regard.[18] Like The Daily Caller, InfoWars, and other extreme sources, it has pushed conspiracy theories for long periods of time after they were debunked by mainstream sources and fact checkers, and no other right-wing outlets criticize and expose the false stories, unlike what happens with false stories that make it to the left-wing media. They are immediately fact checked, criticized by other left-wing media, and die very quickly, with apologies. In fact, there are "no significant Web sites on the left that parallel the chronic falsity of those on the right".[18]

Thus we see that the left- and right-wing media aren't opposite sides of the same coin, but fundamentally different in their mentality, focus, intention, and reliability. The left seeks accuracy, while the right seeks maximum propaganda effect, regardless of truth. When left-wingers say "fake news", they mean false stories masquerading as real news, but when right-wingers say "fake news", they mean news that is contrary to their biases, and for Trump and his followers, news that makes them look bad, regardless of how true it is. The concepts of "truth" and "facts" are absent from their calculations. They are inconveniences to be attacked and undermined.

As a controller of American political policies, the influence of Fox News and Fox & Friends on Trump and the GOP cannot be ignored. The tail is wagging the dog:

"Fox News is no longer the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the legislative arm of Fox News." -- David Atkins[34]

That's a very wise observation. The GOP and Democrats were agreed on a bipartisan decision on border wall funding, and Trump was bowing to accept it. Then Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh[35] criticized him and he suddenly flipped and decided that a shut down before Christmas was a great idea. Trump literally gets his ideas and makes his decisions based on what some very radical and fringe political pundits say, and the GOP bows to the same pressures from a few fringe elements who don't deserve any platform, people who should be treated as enemies of truth, democracy, sanity, and their own country. That is truly scary.

RT's use for political subjects[edit]

I don't think RT (formerly Russia Today) is always a bad source (straight news reporting is often good), but for politics it can't be trusted because it's Putin's propaganda arm, just as Fox News is the GOP's propaganda arm. Both should be officially deprecated for politics.

Ugly: No redeeming qualities[edit]

Some sources are so bad and full of disinformation that one's mind should never be exposed to them. It's not just that they have extreme spin, but that it completely dictates their approach to facts. They ignore all that debunk their POV, and twist all others. Facts are never allowed to stand alone. Some of these sources are outright blacklisted here. These are also listed above in the "Bad: Unreliable sources" to make sure they are noticed. They just happen to be bad enough to be worth their own section.

Hyper-Partisan Left - Most Extreme Left
Hyper-Partisan Right - Most Extreme Right
Hyper-Partisan Right - Most Extreme Right (cont.)
Russian disinformation
Other

An example of why we don't use these sources[edit]

Main article: Jim Acosta § President Trump press conferences

The following illustrates what happens at websites like The Daily Wire and InfoWars all the time. James O'Keefe at Project Veritas, and his trainee David Daleiden at Center for Medical Progress, are other right-wing activists who specialize in this type of deception.

The Trump White House loves this stuff and shares it. Unlike Wikipedia, they don't care if it's true or not, they just share it if it makes them look good and their critics look bad. So who is the source and purveyor of fake news? More often than not it's Trump himself. He has a long history of using planted fake stories to further his personal and business interests, often using pseudonyms for himself. If Trump and Sarah Sanders, and anyone in the Trump administration, never used these unreliable sites, or conferred with them, we wouldn't see this crap coming from the White House. But that's too much to ask from our deceptive president. This is his well-known and documented modus operandi.

On November 7, 2018, Acosta verbally sparred with Trump during a White House press conference following the 2018 midterm elections: "I will tell you that CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them", Trump said. "You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN."[36]

At one point, a White House intern attempted to take the roving microphone away from Acosta. Video of the incident showed Acosta had lowered his free arm to shield it from being taken by the intern, saying, "Pardon me, ma'am," as he brushed her arm.[37][38] Subsequently, Acosta's press pass, US Secret Service security credentials facilitating entry onto the White House grounds, was suspended "until further notice."[39][40] In a statement, CNN described the suspension of Acosta's pass as "retaliation for his challenging questions".

According to Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Acosta's press pass was removed because he put "his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern." CNN accused Sanders of lying and of providing "fraudulent accusations" and citing "an incident that never happened".[41]

The following day, the White House circulated a video which CNN claimed was doctored. The White House video matched a video posted by the Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars, widely alleged to be a relatively shallow "deepfake," edited to intentionally, if subtly, portray the brief contact with increased duration and aggressiveness.[42][43][44][45] Analysts of the clip say frames 13–15 within it are paused[46] (all three repeating the same image),[47] resulting in compression of action at the lowering of Acosta's arm. Watson said that he did not alter the clip, obtained from a GIF posted at The Daily Wire and that he republished as a compressed MP4 file after adding a zoomed-in replay.[42][48]

Trumpian problems vs RS and facts[edit]

Some editors aren't going to like this, but it is a subject of vital importance to Wikipedia. Because political ideology often affects editors and the sources they favor, I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't deal with Donald Trump. No other American president has attacked RS so vehemently and persistently, and that strikes right at the heart of Wikipedia. Therefore his influence and his supporters are described, especially a subset who edit here. What I write doesn't apply to all of his supporters, but rather to a subset of problematic editors whom I label here as "fringe" editors,[6] and mention the factors which make them worthy of identification. These editors consider the RS we use to be fake news, and that's a serious competency problem. Their bias and point of view are directly opposed to our RS guideline. Because these editors are so at odds with RS, which are the basis of all editing here, they should be monitored carefully. They cannot be trusted. They often create problems and disruption because they imbibe dubious sources. We would be very naive to imagine that Trump doesn't affect some editors' actions here. As one scholar described the results of their research: "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites – full stop."[49] That fact has consequences.

Trump's (1) dishonesty, (2) war on reliable sources, (3) promotion of dubious sources, (4) pushing of conspiracy theories, such as his own deceptive Spygate conspiracy theory, and (5) belief in fake news are all factors which affect his voters and sympathetic editors. They do as their leader and (1) believe his falsehoods, (2) distrust reliable sources, (3) use dubious sources, (4) believe his conspiracy theories, and (5) consume fake news and false stories. What is cause and effect? It appears to be a Trump/Fox & Friends "feedback loop".[50][51] Regardless of how it works, if a fringe editor walks and talks like a duck, it isn't my fault for pointing out the factors which make them edit and discuss in a disruptive manner.

Where Trump gets his "news"[edit]

This subject has been examined and researched with surgical precision, and there is no need to guess about it. Neither does Trump hide that he uses fringe and unreliable sources, even though he doesn't consider them to be such. When it comes to mainstream sources, he only uses them when they confirm his own biases.

In 2016, while Trump was a candidate, the research at BuzzFeed News showed that Trump's favorite sites "include Breitbart, Daily Caller, Newsmax, the Gateway Pundit, and the Conservative Treehouse", all of which are completely unreliable sources and not normally allowed as sources here at Wikipedia:

"When it comes to news sources, the stories tweeted by Trump (and the staffers who sometimes manage his Twitter account) suggest that he is unfazed by news of questionable accuracy, likely to rely on hyper-partisan news, and apt to promote mainstream news only when it validates his opinions.... Trump's reliance on sources and stories of questionable accuracy stands out both in frequency and in engagement. The stories shared by Trump's account throughout his campaign suggest the president-elect has constructed a powerful online filter bubble that largely flatters and confirms that which he claims to be true."[52]

He thinks that what he believes is true, and he lives in a filter bubble which insulates him from any information which could correct his errors. This is a dangerous situation in which erroneous information ferments into a dangerously misleading brew. It's an attitude which is completely antithetical to the critical thinking and skepticism needed by a world leader to figure out what's true. The attitudes that one cannot be taught anything, and that what one believes is always true, are dangerous delusions.[53]

At that time, Trump's favorite source was Twitter, and then his own Facebook page.[52] In 2017, The Washington Examiner, which is not a RS here (but on "Trump's team", so they should know...), wrote that Fox & Friends was "Trump's most trusted news source", and that seems to still be true.[54]

In 2017, some of Trump's favorite "news" sources came under FBI investigation because of suspicions these far-right websites may have "aided Russian operatives" to interfere in the 2016 election. More troubling was that then-candidate Trump "was also getting almost all of his information from such websites. In fact, he reportedly still gets his daily news from sources like InfoWars' Alex Jones and Fox News' Sean Hannity, both of whom are not journalists but conspiracy theorists, and, apparently, trusts them more than the FBI."[55][56]

The Russian interference has not stopped, and neither has Trump's cooperation with them. It continues, with a successive chain of misinformation[57] flowing from Russia to (1) Twitter and Facebook, then to (2) RT and Sputnik, then (3) right-wing US "news" sites like Infowars, Breitbart, and Fox News (and Trump), and then the (4) mainstream media. Fortunately the mainstream media usually stops the misinformation, but Trump lacks crap detectors and gets his information before that part of the chain, and thus he passes on misinformation all the time.

The Trump-Fox "feedback loop"[edit]

Fox is now essentially Trump/GOP/Putin TV. It does not serve the well-being of America and democracy. Trump literally gets many of his policy ideas and twitter content, unfiltered and not fact checked, directly from Fox & Friends, and he is thus misinformed, a dangerous situation for a world leader.

Trump is a regular viewer of Fox & Friends, and has openly praised the program on Twitter because it provides favorable coverage of his presidency. Critics have noted that Trump often "live-tweets" about stories featured on Fox & Friends as they air—which creates a "feedback loop" when the stories are acknowledged as national issues because they were discussed by Trump on social media.[58][50][51][59][60] Trump was a frequent guest on Fox & Friends before his presidency. In 2011, Fox News announced that he would appear on the show to offer commentary every Monday.[61] He even gets inspiration from YouTube stars Diamond and Silk.[62]

The degree to which Trump is misinformed by the unreliable sources he imbibes is demonstrated by the false "China hacked Hillary Clinton's private server" story. In August 2018, The Daily Caller ran a story alleging that a Chinese-owned company hacked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and successfully obtained nearly all of her emails. The Daily Caller cited "two sources briefed on the matter". After publishing the story, President Trump tweeted the allegations made in The Daily Caller's reporting. The FBI rebutted the allegations.[63][64][65][66] According to The Washington Post, the claims are without evidence.[67]

This type of thing has happened many times to Trump. By tweeting what he hears on Fox News, InfoWars, The Daily Caller, and other websites, he often becomes the most notable source of fake news, yet he dares to accuse the mainstream media of being "fake news". It doesn't help his credibility that he has used pseudonyms to produce fake stories about himself and others for decades. This is a Trump pattern of devious behavior. When the President of the United States does this, it has consequences for Wikipedia, because a subset of his misinformed supporters have the same attitudes, believe his false stories,[68] and edit here. They should be topic banned.

Philip Bump has analyzed how the "line between Trump and Fox News isn't blurry. It barely exists."[69] The Twitter feed for that article is very interesting.[70] The connection between Trump and Fox News has been tightened even more with Trump's appointment of Bill Shine as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Most of his career was spent as a producer and executive at Fox News.[71]

Matt Gertz analyzes Trump's relationship to Fox News and how it manipulates him by telling him what to think, say, and tweet.[72]

Trump supporters and fake news[edit]

See also: Fake news § 21st century

A 2018 study at Oxford University[73] found that Trump's supporters consumed the "largest volume of 'junk news' on Facebook and Twitter":

"On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, "extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together."[74]

In 2018,[75] researchers from Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Exeter examined the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Their findings showed that Trump supporters and older Americans (over 60) were far more likely to consume fake news than Clinton supporters. Those most likely to visit fake news websites were the 10% of Americans who consumed the most conservative information. There was a very large difference (800%) in the consumption of fake news stories as related to total news consumption between Trump supporters (6.2%) and Clinton supporters (0.8%).[75][49]

The study also showed that fake pro-Trump and fake pro-Clinton news stories were read by their supporters, but with a significant difference: Trump supporters consumed far more (40%) than Clinton supporters (15%). Facebook was by far the key "gateway" website where these fake stories were spread, and which led people to then go to the fake news websites. Fact checks of fake news were rarely seen by consumers,[75][49] with none of those who saw a fake news story being reached by a related fact check.[76]

Brendan Nyhan, one of the researchers, emphatically stated in an interview on NBC News: "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites – full stop."[49]

NBC NEWS: "It feels like there's a connection between having an active portion of a party that's prone to seeking false stories and conspiracies and a president who has famously spread conspiracies and false claims. In many ways, demographically and ideologically, the president fits the profile of the fake news users that you're describing."

NYHAN: "It's worrisome if fake news websites further weaken the norm against false and misleading information in our politics, which unfortunately has eroded. But it's also important to put the content provided by fake news websites in perspective. People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites – full stop."[49]

Trump's misuse of the term "fake news"[edit]

According to Jeff Hemsley, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media, Trump uses this term for any news that is not favorable to him or which he simply dislikes.[4] Trump confirmed this interpretation of fake news as negative news about himself in a tweet on May 9, 2018:

Donald J. Trump Twitter
@realDonaldTrump

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

May 9, 2018[77]

Chris Cillizza described the tweet on CNN as an "accidental" revelation about Trump's "'fake news' attacks", and wrote: "The point can be summed up in these two words from Trump: 'negative (Fake).' To Trump, those words mean the same thing. Negative news coverage is fake news. Fake news is negative news coverage."[5] Other writers made similar comments about the tweet. Dara Lind wrote in Vox: "It's nice of Trump to admit, explicitly, what many skeptics have suspected all along: When he complains about 'fake news,' he doesn't actually mean 'news that is untrue'; he means news that is personally inconvenient to Donald Trump."[3] Jonathan Chait wrote in New York magazine: "Trump admits he calls all negative news ‘fake’.": "In a tweet this morning, Trump casually opened a window into the source code for his method of identifying liberal media bias. Anything that's negative is, by definition, fake."[78] Philip Bump wrote in The Washington Post: "The important thing in that tweet....is that he makes explicit his view of what constitutes fake news. It's negative news. Negative. (Fake.)"[79]

Trump's motive for attacking the mainstream media was revealed by him during a 2016 interview with Lesley Stahl of the CBS program 60 Minutes. When she asked him why he kept attacking the press, he replied: "You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you."[80]

Trump's promotion of conspiracy theories[edit]

Trump has been involved in the promotion of a number of conspiracy theories which have lacked meaningful substance. These have included promoting Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories from 2011 ("birther" theories); claiming that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 2016; claiming that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election (in addition to his electoral college win) if there had not been "millions" of illegal voters in that election cycle;[81][82] and the Spygate conspiracy theory[83][84][85][81][82] alleging that the Barack Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to assist Hillary Clinton win the 2016 US presidential election.[86][87] It has been widely described as blatantly false.[83][88][86][89]

Trump also made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in 2017, for which the Department of Justice has said evidence has yet to be provided. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason", but the Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.[90][91] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, writing for The Washington Post, found that Trump has made over 3,000 false or misleading claims (including repeats) in the first 466 days of his presidency.[92][93]

Trump is a friend of "professional conspiracy theorist"[94] Alex Jones, and has appeared on his show. That's a big red flag. Anyone with any regard for truth would stay away from Jones and InfoWars, but Trump cares not for truth and Jones helped his election.[95] When InfoWars and Jones were banned from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson called it "censorship" and used the well-known Trump-Jones friendship as an argument: "Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump."[95]

Alex Jones's mind just makes up shit, IOW real fake news, and Trump believes some of it. The dots in his theories may be true events, people, and places, but the connections between those dots are his own invention, connections often disproven by the facts. Rather than being honest, he just ignores the evidence and plows on. That's muddled and deceptive thinking. His followers lack critical thinking skills and seem to have no crap filters. Wallowing in conspiracy theories is a bit addicting, and is often a form of childish and immature contrarian anti-authoritarianism. It's a lot more fun than the boring facts and simplest explanation based on those facts. These people feel that freedom from facts is liberty. What's sad is that, once people get deeply involved in conspiracy theories, they become impervious to any contrary facts, because, when confronted with the unverifiability of their theory, they can always retreat to the argument that "those in power are hiding the real evidence for the theory, hence the lack of public evidence".

What makes Trump supporters more prone to accept conspiracy theories? Well, according to professors J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, they are Intuitionists, rather than Rationalists: "Rationalists [are] those who make decisions more on the basis of reason and evidence... and Intuitionists [are] those who rely more on gut-level stuff like heuristics.... The Intuitionist/Rationalist split is not like other political divisions in the United States. Intuitionism poses an existential threat to democracy. It is neither benign nor temperate. It bristles against open inquiry, is intolerant of opposition, and chafes at the pluralism and compromise modern democracy requires. It is prone to conspiracy theory, drawn to simple generalizations, and quick to vilify the other." According to Oliver and Wood, the "conspiracy-addled" are not part of the "reality-based community".[96]

Trump's falsehoods[edit]

Main article: False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
See also: Donald Trump § False statements

"I think this idea that there is no truth
is the thread that will run through the rest of
the Trump presidency, as it has his entire
candidacy and his presidency so far."
-- Nicolle Wallace[97]

This is a very small portion of what's available on Trump's notoriously dubious relationship to truth, facts, and reality. There is enough material for a very large article. Every single day provides new material. There are plenty of reliably-sourced and notable opinions about the subject, as well as an abundance of solid facts. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." Trump seems not to know the difference. Lies are easily fact checked, and what fact checkers say should not be confused with opinions. We document both at Wikipedia.

As president, Trump has frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks,[98][99][100][101][102] and experience teaches that, quoting David Zurawik, we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards"[103] because he's a "habitual liar".[104] In general, news organizations have been hesitant to label these statements as "lies".[105][106][101]

Fact checkers have kept a close tally of his falsehoods, and, according to one study, the rate of false statements has increased, with the percentage of his words that are part of a false claim rising over the course of his presidency.[101] According to The New York Times, Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office,[98] 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post,[107] and 1,628 total in his first 298 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" analysis of The Washington Post, or an average of 5.5 per day.[108] After 558 days in office, the tally was at 4,229 false or misleading claims, and it had risen to an average of 7.6 per day from 4.9 during Trump's first 100 days in office.[109]

Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, told Dana Milbank that, in his six years on the job, "'there's no comparison' between Trump and other politicians. Kessler says politicians' statements get his worst rating — four Pinocchios — 15 percent to 20 percent of the time. Clinton is about 15 percent. Trump is 63 percent to 65 percent."[110] Kessler also wrote: "President Trump is the most fact-challenged politician that The Fact Checker has ever encountered ... the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up."[99]

Maria Konnikova, writing in Politico Magazine, wrote: "All Presidents lie.... But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent.... Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true."[111]

Senior administration officials have also regularly given false, misleading or tortured statements to the media.[112] By May 2017, Politico reported that the repeated untruths by senior officials made it difficult for the media to take official statements seriously.[112]

Trump's presidency started out with a series of falsehoods initiated by Trump himself. The day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. Then he proceeded to exaggerate the size, and Sean Spicer backed up his claims.[113][114][115][116] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,[117][118][119] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by stating that he merely presented "alternative facts".[120] Todd responded by saying "alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."[2]

Author, social scientist, and researcher Bella DePaulo, an expert on the psychology of lying, stated: "I study liars. I've never seen one like President Trump." Trump outpaced "even the biggest liars in our research."[121] She compared the research on lying with his lies, finding that his lies differed from those told by others in several ways: Trump's total rate of lying is higher than for others; He tells 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies, whereas ordinary people tell 2 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies. 50% of Trump's lies are cruel lies, while it's 1-2% for others. 10% of Trump's lies are kind lies, while it's 25% for others. His lies often "served several purposes simultaneously", and he doesn't "seem to care whether he can defend his lies as truthful".[122]

In a Scientific American article, Jeremy Adam Smith sought to answer the question of how Trump could get away with making so many false statements and still maintain support among his followers. He proposed that "Trump is telling 'blue' lies—a psychologist's term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.... From this perspective, lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency."[123]

David Fahrenthold has investigated Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true.[124][125] Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York.[126] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses.[127] Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump's claimed charitable giving[128] and casting "doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities."[129]

Here are a few of Trump's notable claims which fact checkers have rated false:

A poll in May 2018 found that "just 13 percent of Americans consider Trump honest and trustworthy".[140]

The Editorial Board of The New York Times took this telling sideswipe at Trump when commenting on the unfitness of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court: "A perfect nominee for a president with no clear relation to the truth."[11]

Other sources
  • "The First 100 Lies: The Trump Team's Flurry Of Falsehoods. The president and his aides succeeded in reaching the mark in just 36 days." Igor Bobic[141]
  • "Killing the Truth: How Trump's Attack on the Free Press Endangers Democracy" Philip Kotler[143]
  • The New Yorker has published a series of 14 essays entitled "Trump and the Truth". They "examine the untruths that have fueled Donald Trump's Presidential campaign."[144]
  • The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote a seven-part series about Trump's dishonesty, starting with the article "Our Dishonest President".[145]

Fact checking Trump[edit]

Trump's incessant attacks on the media, reliable sources, and truth have kept an army of fact checkers busy, the latter having never encountered a more deceptive public person. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged — resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting."[146]

Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact checkers:

"Here's the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump's lying is "off the charts." No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on. Every fact checker — Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact — finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or "pants on fire" false."[12]

Fact-checker archives
PolitiFact
  • "Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter"[147]
  • "Donald Trump's file"[148]
  • "PolitiFact designates the many campaign misstatements of Donald Trump as our 2015 Lie of the Year."[149]
  • "Fact-checking Trump's TIME interview on truths and falsehoods."[150]
  • "7 whoppers from President Trump's first 100 days in office."[151]
FactCheck.org
  • "100 Days of Whoppers. Donald Trump, the candidate we dubbed the 'King of Whoppers' in 2015, has held true to form as president."[153]
  • "The Whoppers of 2017. President Trump monopolizes our list of the year's worst falsehoods and bogus claims."[154]
The Washington Post
  • "Throughout President Trump's first 100 days, the Fact Checker team will be tracking false and misleading claims made by the president since Jan. 20. In the 33 days so far, we've counted 132 false or misleading claims."[155]
  • "Fact-checking President Trump's claims on the Paris climate change deal"[156]
  • President Trump has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims[10]
Toronto Star

The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, Daniel Dale, has been following Donald Trump's campaign for months. He has fact checked thousands of statements and found hundreds of falsehoods:

  • "Donald Trump: The unauthorized database of false things."[157]
  • "Confessions of a Trump Fact-Checker"[158]
The Guardian
  • "How does Donald Trump lie? A fact checker's final guide."[159]
  • "Smoke and mirrors: how Trump manipulates the media and opponents."[160]

NOTE: Many of the sources above are older. The situation has not improved, but is rapidly getting much worse, as described by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true."[161]

As Trump rapidly accelerates the rate of his false statements, one suspects he is following the advice of his friend and advisor, Steve Bannon:

"The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."[162]

In December 2018, The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods called the "Bottomless Pinocchio", for falsehoods that have been repeated at least 20 times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified for the category. According to The Washington Post, Trump has repeated some falsehoods so many times that he is effectively engaging in disinformation.[163]

Trump's effect on editorial perceptions of reliable sources.[edit]

The "Trump effect"[164][165] isn't just a "reverse Midas touch", alluding to the fact that whatever he touches turns to crap, whoever he associates with gets their reputation and credibility damaged, and themselves become (more) corrupt and compromised. No, it also has another meaning of special relevance to Wikipedia, because Trump's war on the media has negatively affected some editors' perceptions of reliable sources and fringe sources, and that is a serious problem.

Trump's supporters completely distrust and demonize the mainstream media, and some editors don't see the huge difference between credible sources like ABC News, CNN, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times on one side, and Fox News and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which are partisan propaganda networks, on the other. They may say the media are all equally biased, yet they completely trust a limited number of very fringe and unreliable sources, most of which are so unreliable that we don't even allow them as sources here.

The Trojan horse in this slippery slope away from reliable sources is Fox News, which they trust, because Fox consistently supports and enables Trump, rarely reports anything negative about him, and parrots one-sided stories from fringe, fake, and Russian sources which defend Trump's and Putin's nearly identical POV and agendas.

Trump's motives for attacking the media are clear. Before a 60 Minutes interview, while Lesley Stahl and her boss were sitting with Trump, he began to attack the press. She then asked him why he kept attacking the press, and she later recalled his answer: "You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you."[80] We actually have editors who are fooled by his tactic.

Worse yet, Wikipedia is complicit in this situation because we refuse to deprecate Fox for political subjects, broadly construed, even though its unreliability and partisanship is well-documented. We should send a strong signal to Fox News that Wikipedia will not lend its support to their deceptive reporting, and also a strong signal to Trump-supporting editors that they need to sharpen their crap detection skills. They should know better than to use crappy sources. Those who don't understand this are fringe editors who lack the competency needed to edit and comment on political subjects, and they should be topic banned if they get disruptive.

What editors believe is one thing, and we allow plenty of divergence there, but when they start advocating fringe views, without using RS, and start endlessly disrupting articles and discussions, we can't tolerate such disruption for long. That is when we use topic bans. That's all I'm talking about. Editors don't get topic banned for their political POV, or for their personal beliefs. They get topic banned because of disruptive behavior.

Editors with strong Trump bias[edit]

In these post-truth Trumpian[166] political times, "fringe editors"[6] often have a strong Trump bias and point of view because they adopt Trump's open animosity toward RS,[167][168][169][170][68] and believe his untruths and the fake news stories circulated in his support and attacking those he does not like, especially Obama and Clinton.

These editors consider the RS we use to be fake news. Their bias and point of view are directly opposed to our RS guideline. Because these editors are so at odds with RS, which are the basis of all editing here, they should be monitored carefully. They cannot be trusted. They often create problems and disruption because they imbibe these unreliable sources. Note that not all Trump voters are like this, but the hardcore supporters are, and a few of them edit here.

In case you're in doubt about what some Trump supporters think about RS, this one left a message on my talk page:

The truth is on the side of the Left, is it? Really? The Left that constantly lies and calls everyone it doesn't like "racist," "sexist," "homophobic," "transphobic," blah blah blah. The Left that rejects science and biology and doesn't even know how many genders there are?
Leftists like you should be banned from editing all politics-related articles. You people are fringe maniacs brainwashed by fake news, and you are completely divorced from reality. You should stop watching far-left propaganda outlets like CNN and NBC and watch real news instead like Fox. Breitbart is far more reliable than your Marxist Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vox rags. Easyblue1 (talk • contribs) 00:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Understanding Trump supporters[edit]

Trump voters can be divided into two main groups: (1) those who voted for him, and (2) those who still support him. Not all who voted for Trump still support him. Some of them have seen the damage he is doing and now regret they voted for him. The rest are those voters described by Trump when he stated: "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, ok? It's, like, incredible."[171][172] Trump seemed to recognize that it was "incredible" that such people actually exist, that they would vote for an unethical man like him, and that he could tap into, and mobilize, their worst and most violent character traits.[173] John McCain said that Trump "fired up the crazies".[172]

They are now a group of people who would still vote for him, even if he were compromised by Putin[174][175] and allowed Putin to dictate his policies, choices of cabinet members (like Putin rejecting Romney),[176] and foreign policy, as is strongly suspected and described in RS and by top intelligence officials. Such people cannot be convinced by what's in RS. They don't change their minds about Trump. That's why the current GOP has been described as a Trump personality cult.[177]

Such loyalty requires that they are naive, misinformed, and/or lack good ethics and citizenship qualifications, because their loyalty is to the president, not to the Constitution, rule of law, and the well-being of America. He knew they would stay loyal to him no matter what, in spite of (or because of?) his most shocking behaviors.[172] (Polling shows that most Trump voters are now actually siding with Russia, unlike the majority of Americans.[178]) Reasonable and patriotic voters don't act that way; only those who would support an unethical, insecure, and dictatorial leader do so, and only such a leader would require loyalty oaths of those who surround him. Americans primary loyalty belongs to the Constitution, not the President.[179]

Another trait that psychological research associates with hardcore Trump supporters is "authoritarian thinking". Such supporters "target minorities and women" and "favor domineering and intolerant leaders who are uninhibited about their biases."[173] Research shows that "support for Trump is associated with...the most toxic type" of authoritarianism: "authoritarian aggression", which favors "the use of strict, tough, harsh, punitive, coercive social control." They are "not old-fashioned conservatives who preach obedience and respect for authority. Rather, they were people who take a belligerent, combative approach toward people they find threatening." Trump voters like "domineering leaders".[173]

Their need to follow a strongly authoritarian leader is met in Trump, who defends, admires, and envies autocratic world leaders like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman, many of whom are his friends. Most are violent and murderous dictators who hate democracy and human rights. Most of them share a common ideology known as "majoritarianism" which "insists on different tiers of citizenship". It appeals to racist and anti-immigrant movements.[180] "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." "A man is known by the company he keeps."

Trump has often endorsed violence at his rallies,[181][182] including encouraging violence toward journalists, the creators of the content we find in our RS. His war against what he calls "fake news" is now directed at the people behind real news. He regularly demonizes the free press, calling reporters "scum", and stating that he "hates these people".[183] Will we soon read of journalists at his rallies being attacked, killed, or "disappearing"? The leaders whom Trump admires and envies do this type of thing, and there are no indications that Trump, when given the opportunity, will act otherwise. If he's re-elected, is it just a matter of time before this happens? Remember what happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Shortly after he criticized Trump on November 10, 2016, he was barred from writing in Saudi Arabia.[184][185][186] We know how he was later killed by the Saudis. (For clarification, there is nothing in the above that infers that Trump had Khashoggi killed.)

A systemic bias problem[edit]

We seem to have a systemic bias problem that says all opinions are equal, and that fringe editors who are misinformed by unreliable sources (and can't even vet sources) deserve just as much rope as mainstream editors who depend on RS and know how to vet sources. We really need to cut them off at the pass and force them to toe the RS line and show a positive learning curve. When we see editors suggesting the use of such sources, then they need to be educated about RS and how to vet sources. If they persist, then refer them to the Reliable sources noticeboard.

If they still insist on filling talk pages with circular arguments, IDHT behavior, and fringe conspiracy theories which obviously come from places like Breitbart, Daily Caller, InfoWars, and even Fox News, which is known to parrot info and fake stories from those sources (and Trump gets his info from Fox, Breitbart, and InfoWars), they show they are fringe editors who should be given topic bans from political subjects. Let them use their talents on other topics. It shouldn't be hard for mainstream editors to add reliably sourced content, but it often is because fringe editors are not dealt with promptly through the use of discretionary sanctions.

Editorial fringe bias affects influence and editing here[edit]

Not all editors who support Trump allow their POV to affect their editing. Some are able to put their POV aside and stick to RS and the views found in them, even when those views conflict with Trump's and their own.

Unfortunately, we more often see that, when an editor's personal POV is aligned with unreliable sources, unlike the ones we use in Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and Steele dossier, they will likely disagree with those articles and run afoul of our disdain for the efforts of activist editors who push the pro-Trump/GOP/Russia conspiracy theories found in unreliable sources.[1] Those theories allege that there is no Russian interference and/or that the Steele dossier makes fake allegations not based on serious intelligence gathering. Both theories are examples of the results of Trump's deceptive "fake news" labeling of reliable news agencies designed to alienate his supporters from reliable news and facts. They get isolated from the facts.

These activist political editors are notable for their:

  1. Refusal to acknowledge that Russia did indeed interfere in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to help Trump win the election.
  2. Acceptance of Trump's view that the Steele dossier is "fake" or spurious, rather than what the intelligence community considers a very serious piece of intelligence work, with more and more of its allegations being confirmed all the time.
  3. Blind trust of Trump and use of unreliable sources like Fox News (use with caution for political subjects), extremely conservative Sinclair TV channels (reach 72% of U.S. households), OAN, Drudge Report, Breitbart News, Newsmax, RedState, InfoWars, The Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, TheBlaze, WorldNetDaily (birther central), The Gateway Pundit, LifeZette, The American Spectator, Real News Update (Trump TV), RT, Sputnik, and Zero Hedge.
  4. Belief that all the opposition to Trump and talk about Trump-Russia issues is a plot against Trump, rather than serious news agencies doing their job, part of which: exposes his self-inflicted wounds; documents the many indictments and arrests of people around him; exposes the myriad proven connections between the Trump campaign and Russians; documents the many lies about secret meetings and contacts between Trump campaign members (and family members) and Russians; show how Russian intelligence and military agencies did use cyberwarfare to interfere in American politics to further Putin's goal to destabilize American and European democracies; and that Western intelligence agencies, and high profile leaders in them, believe and/or strongly suspect that Putin has compromised Trump and chosen him as an especially-suited ally to further these destabilization goals designed to make Russia great again.

They also tend to consistently prevent/obstruct/delete/alter any content, no matter how reliably sourced, that is negative toward Trump. They are warring against RS, the very basis of Wikipedia. They are often ignorant of the content and RS in the following articles and cause disruption when they edit there and discuss on the talk pages, simply because their background of information is unreliable sources (listed above), most of which are not allowed here:

They are way behind the curve and need to get caught up. They should not be ignorant of what the RS used in these articles have to say, and they should believe them, not oppose them.

These activist editors should not be surprised when their pushing of fringe conspiracy theories is seen as a violation of our rules against advocacy, soapboxing, and talk page abuse; their comments get redacted; and they are viewed as tendentious editors.

To avoid problems, they should base their POV and comments on what RS say, IOW, change their minds. Barring that, they should at least put aside their own POV while editing and discussing on article talk pages. That way, instead of being in conflict with mainstream editors and the reliable sources they use, they will be collaborating with them.

Blocks, topic bans, and bans[edit]

Hardcore Trump supporting editors often encounter problems here, mainly because it's an undeniable fact that an editor's political POV can negatively affect their competence to edit political subjects. While it is their editing that is the primary problem, not their political POV, it can affect their editing, and not all editors are able to separate the two. Trump's constant attacks on RS obviously affect his supporters, causing some editors to believe RS are fake news. If an editor can't vet sources, or they believe what Trump says about RS, they fail one of the most basic qualifications for editing here.

Editors who create disruption by treating Trump's conspiracy theories as fact should get topic banned, not because they are Trump supporters, but because that fact causes them to be fringe editors who advocate views found in unreliable sources. If Trump supporters don't want to be blocked for disruption, they should abandon Trump's behaviors. If such editors cause problems, they may need topic bans from the American politics articles. Ultimately, it is their behavior, not their political views, which is the problem, so, when separated from political articles, they can do much good on other articles.

Wikipedia and its sources are biased towards reality,...[edit]

... unlike alt-right sources. Basta! The following thoughts from Beyond My Ken are worth digesting:

[T]he so-called "liberal media" is biased towards reality, and the alt-right is biased towards anything that supports their ideology, which is, generally speaking, not reality-based. We are an encyclopedia, therefore we reflect reality, not any ideology. The right sees this and says "Ah, see, Wikipedia is supporting what the liberal media says, therefore Wikipedia is biased towards the left," but that's only because they see things through the filter of their POV, while we do our very best not to be biased towards anything except what is real and verifiable. The alt-right media are not, for the most part, reliable sources, since they have been shown to have been wrong again and again and again, and have an overall tendency to report whatever they believe, regardless of its relationship to reality. Thus we are forced to use reality-based media, which the alt-right sees as liberal or "leftist", which is actually ridiculous, since no mainstream American media outlet is anywhere near being left-wing -- but, then, the alt-right makes no differentiation between "liberal" and "leftist".

In short, it is wrong to point the finger at Wikipedia as being the genesis of the problem, which originates in the minds of the ideologues of the right. There is no "leftist view" to Wikipedia, that's an artifact totally created in the perceptions of rightists. Our viewpoint is centrist, just as that of the "liberal media" is. The fault is not in us, it is in those who cannot differentiate their ideology from reality. (Source)

RS bias and due weight do not favor Trump[edit]

If an editor thinks that what other editors post is biased/slanted in a direction unfavorable to Trump, there may be a legitimate reason why it appears that way. Maybe they are depending on RS which have that bias and slant, and giving those sources the due weight they deserve. Truth is not centrist. It tends to be to one side or the other, depending on the historical context. Sometimes left-wingers are more right, and at other times right-wingers are. With all-things-Trump, all the evidence and intelligence reports tend to show that the Trump administration is hiding a whole lot of activities, lying a lot, holding lots of secretive meetings with Russians, and when it's revealed, it often turns out to be illegal and/or shady activities, at times bordering on treasonous.

Only the Trump/GOP/Putin-friendly sources (Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Infowars, RT, Sputnik, etc.) say otherwise with their cover-up/distraction/conspiracy theories which fact checkers keep on debunking. Those are unreliable sources for political content, so don't use them, and frankly, don't even read them, except for research purposes ("What are the fringe wingnuts saying now?") When doing such research, be very careful, because what they write is written to convince you of false ideas. Will you be able to resist that pernicious influence? Only very well-informed people, with good crap detectors, can live up to the following adage: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

So there is, after all, a reason why the content added by experienced editors has that "bias" and "slants" that way. It's because that is the slant found in RS. Unreliable sources have a different slant, and we don't blindly cater to such sources here. Editors who constantly resist and complain about that content are revealing that they are imbibers of ideas from unreliable sources, and such editors create problems and often get blocked.

Wikipedia does not cater to what Jimmy Wales calls "lunatic charlatans",[187] nor does it allow advocacy of fringe points of view, so the fact that Trump supporters don't like these articles shows that we must be doing something right. While Jimbo's words were directed at quackery and pseudoscience, they apply just as much to fringe political POV and conspiracy theories based on unreliable sources.

We must remember that Trump's "fake news" war against RS is duplicated here by his supporters. Wikipedia suffers the consequences because it doesn't deal with editors who allow Trump's POV about sources to color their editing and talk page discussions. Unfortunately, editors are not required to pass a short course about how to vet sources. That creates a very fundamental type of competence problem that spoils their efforts on political subjects. These editors are frustrated because RS seem anti-Trump, rather than recognizing those sources are just documenting Trump's self-inflicted wounds. They then blame editors who are skeptical of Trump, rather than blaming Trump and their own poor sources.

Resources[edit]

Meet the fact checkers[edit]

Fact checkers should factor heavily into how we rate sources for factual accuracy. They are the gold standard, so use them often.

  • Holan, Angie Drobnic (February 12, 2018). "The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter: How we fact-check". PolitiFact. Retrieved October 20, 2018.

Vanessa Otero's chart[edit]

Version 4.0 of a popular chart (August 2018)[15] created by patent attorney Vanessa Otero is very carefully researched, and I highly recommend its use. Yes, it's not a RS here....yet, but it's the best I know of. Use sites in the yellow and green boxes as sources, and generally avoid the rest. She describes what's new in version 4.0 here.[188]

  • How Ad Fontes Ranks News Sources[189]

The latest version has individual charts for the programs shown on CNN,[190] MSNBC,[191] Fox,[192] and TYT Network.[193]

Some other articles about the chart:

  • 2015 "How does your favorite news source rate on the 'truthiness' scale? Consult this chart"[194] is a short article about the chart.
  • 2018 "How biased is your news source? You probably won't agree with this chart"[195]

Since then she has created an even better version, released September 4, 2018.[15] Her article about it is located here:

  • "Media Bias Chart 4.0: What's New"[188]

The chart shows the intricate relationship between opinions and facts, and how partisanship affects them. Although it's possible for a source to be fairly partisan and still factually accurate, there comes a point at which partisanship and spin begin to twist and distort facts.

The more a source allows opinions to dominate facts, the further away from the purely-factual center and the raw-news-reporting top it moves. That's why Fox News rates both low and extreme. Even sources like CNN, where analysis isn't as high as some others, still remains fairly close to center. Note the colored boxes. Have fun exploring this.

Otero's May 25, 2018 update:

  • "Why Measuring Political Bias is So Hard, and How We Can Do It Anyway: The Media Bias Chart Horizontal Axis. Post One of a Four-Part Series. May 25, 2018."[196]

Pew Research Center[edit]

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center has excellent resources:

  • "Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum"[197] An interactive diagram with a huge amount of information. Play with it.
  • "Political Polarization & Media Habits"[16]

Citation formatting[edit]

Here is a basic citation template I like to use:

  • Template: <ref name=" ">{{cite web | last1= | first1= | last2= | first2= | date= | title= | website= | url= | accessdate= }}</ref>
  • Contents: <ref name="Harding_11/15/2017">{{cite web | last=Harding | first=Luke | title=How Trump walked into Putin's web | website=[[The Guardian]] | date=November 15, 2017 | url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke | access-date=December 24, 2017}}</ref>[198]

I like to choose a unique ref name, so I use the last name(s) of the author(s) and publication date.

  • See this citation tool: Yadkard
  • An alternative date format is the ISO format: "Harding-20171115"

See also[edit]

Disclaimer[edit]

This shouldn't be necessary, but some editors fail to realize that private essays at Wikipedia have a bit more leeway than public ones, and very different requirements than actual articles. NPOV and sourcing are not required, but I have still provided far more sourcing than in most essays. This essay expresses my personal POV and, like all essays, is original research. Period. If you don't like it, create your own essay. While some of the wording may be offensive to some sensitive partisan editors, it must be said, because it's an undeniable fact that political partisanship can affect editing and discussions. That fact affects Wikipedia.

The justification for this essay is that it deals with a subject of vital importance to Wikipedia. Direct attacks on the media and RS by the President of the United States has effects,[143] and Russia's interference in the U.S. elections, which has not stopped, is causing disruption to American democracy and creating confusion[104] about what is true and whom to believe. It is alleged that Trump and his campaign conspired with Russians in this interference. Trump actively cooperated with this effort by never criticizing Putin, promoting dubious sources of information, labeling the American media and RS "fake news", and disbelieving the nonpartisan American intelligence agencies sworn to protect America from foreign interference and attack. Instead, he believes Putin, thus treasonously giving the enemy "aid and comfort". Former CIA Director John O. Brennan, who would know, considers his behavior "treasonous".[199][200] It is notable that the GOP and Trump are actively blocking efforts and funding to prevent such attacks in the future, thus holding the door open for the enemy.[201][202][203] The Russian interference has not stopped. It continues, with a successive chain of misinformation[57] flowing from Russia and Trump.

All this affects Wikipedia, because some editors succumb to the active measures, disinformation, and media manipulation emanating from the White House and Russia, and this affects their editing and discussions.

Signed,

Valjean

P.S. Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome on the talk page. Remember to ping me.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Leonhardt, David (June 10, 2018). "Opinion - Trump Tries to Destroy the West". The New York Times. Retrieved September 7, 2018.
  2. ^ a b Blake, Aaron (January 22, 2017). "Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump's team has 'alternative facts.' Which pretty much says it all". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2018.
  3. ^ a b Lind, Dara (May 9, 2018). "Trump finally admits that "fake news" just means news he doesn't like". Vox. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  4. ^ a b Gendreau, Henri (February 25, 2017). "The Internet Made 'Fake News' a Thing—Then Made It Nothing". Wired. Retrieved May 9, 2018.
  5. ^ a b Cillizza, Chris (May 9, 2018). "Donald Trump just accidentally revealed something very important about his 'fake news' attacks". CNN. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  6. ^ a b c d Fringe editors: I define them as editors who lack the competence to vet sources, and who are misinformed by, and use unreliable sources.
    Here's why I call them "fringe": (1) More people voted for Clinton, with Trump receiving 46.7 percent of the vote in the 2016 election. Trump voters were a clear minority, but "minority" doesn't necessarily equal "fringe". Things have changed since then. (2) That minority has grown even smaller, as many Trump voters have regretted their vote and are no longer supporters. (3) What's left is current Trump supporters, a much smaller group who are indeed fringe, largely because of their blind allegiance to a man divorced from truth and reliable sources. If it weren't for the fact that Trump is actually sitting in the WH, they would be ignored as a radical group of people divorced from reality, just like Trump. (4) Like Trump, they get their "news" from fringe, very unreliable, sources. Keep in mind that before Trump was elected, only 3% got their "news" from Breitbart (2014), yet Trump gets his "news" from them, InfoWars, and Fox & Friends, and he brought Bannon into the WH. Trump is a very fringe president. (5) Here we have a tiny subset of editors who try to include views from unreliable sources, and even try to use those sources as references. They lack the competence to vet sources, which seriously impacts their editing and discussions here. That is all very fringe by Wikipedia's standards.
  7. ^ a b Krugman, Paul (May 9, 2016). "The Facts Have A Well-Known Center-Left Bias". The New York Times. Retrieved September 15, 2018.
  8. ^ a b Krugman, Paul (April 18, 2014). "On the Liberal Bias of Facts". The New York Times. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  9. ^ a b Krugman, Paul (December 8, 2017). "Opinion - Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias". The New York Times. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  10. ^ a b Kessler, Glenn; Rizzo, Salvador; Kelly, Meg (September 13, 2018). "President Trump has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  11. ^ a b Editorial Board (September 7, 2018). "Opinion - Confirmed: Brett Kavanaugh Can't Be Trusted". The New York Times. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Prentice, Robert (February 10, 2017). "Being a liar doesn't mean you can't be a good president, but this is crazy". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  13. ^ Elving, Rob (July 25, 2018). "Opinion: Why 'Fact Checking' and 'Reality Check' Do Not Apply to Trump". NPR. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  14. ^ Wales, Jimmy (August 2006), The birth of Wikipedia, TED Talks, retrieved December 5, 2015
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  16. ^ a b Mitchell, Amy; Gottfried, Jeffrey; Kiley, Jocelyn; Matsa, Katerina Eva (October 21, 2014). "Political Polarization & Media Habits". Pew Research Center. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  17. ^ Willingham, AJ (March 22, 2018). "25 years ago, Republicans were more educated than Democrats. Now it's the opposite, study says". CNN. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  18. ^ a b c d Toobin, Jeffrey (August 28, 2018). "A New Book Details the Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016". The New Yorker. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  19. ^ a b Benkler, Yochai (October 25, 2018). "Opinion: Fox News, not Russians, might have swung 2016 elections to Trump". The Morning Call. Retrieved October 25, 2018. The conservative network of outlets, with Fox at its center, feeds a large minority of Americans narratives that confirm their biases, fills them with outrage at their political opponents, and isolates them from views that contradict these narratives. It is a closed propaganda feedback loop.
    "Left-leaning media, whatever the goals of some of their members, have failed to produce anything similar, our analysis found. Left-leaning news consumers have a more varied diet that includes paying substantial attention to professional journalistic outlets as well as partisan and hyper-partisan outlets.
  20. ^ Khazan, Olga (February 2, 2017). "Why Conservatives Are More Susceptible to Fake Threats". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  21. ^ Emerging Technology from the arXiv (February 23, 2018). "US conservatives spread tweets by Russian trolls over 30 times more often than liberals". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  22. ^ Ehrenreich, John (November 9, 2017). "Why conservatives are more susceptible to believing in lies". Slate. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  23. ^ Silverman, Craig (July 18, 2018). "Macedonia's Pro-Trump Fake News Industry Had American Links, And Is Under Investigation For Possible Russia Ties". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  24. ^ Wolchover, Natalie (September 24, 2012). "Why Did the Democratic and Republican Parties Switch Platforms?". Live Science. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  25. ^ a b Grynbaum, Michael M. (June 14, 2017). "Fox News Drops 'Fair and Balanced' Motto". The New York Times. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  26. ^ Namako, Tom (March 20, 2018). "An "Ashamed" Fox News Commentator Just Quit The "Propaganda Machine"". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
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  47. ^ "Channel 4 News on Twitter". Twitter. November 8, 2018. Retrieved November 9, 2018. The White House Press Secretary has shared a video of the Jim Acosta altercation that many believe was doctored. We take you through it frame by frame.
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  53. ^ It reminds me of some of the lyrics in "No Matter What", a beautiful and popular song by Boyzone. The lyrics contain a number of platitudes which sound nice, but are naive and just plain wrong when applied to just about anything but feelings of love, which are notoriously subjective: "No matter what they tell us, no matter what they do, no matter what they teach us, what we believe is true", and "I can't deny what I believe".

    Never believe that whatever you think is always true. It's not. It needs reflection and revision. Only after it is compared with RS and brought into alignment with them should one think so, and even then, adopt the attitude of scientific skeptics, which leaves the door open for changing one's mind when newer information shows a better or more correct way of thinking.

    This is a fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives. The former tend to defend the status quo and resist changing their minds, while the desire for progress and ability to change their minds are the defining hallmarks of progressives and liberals.

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External links[edit]

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