robinn_

**sent to [email protected] per their contact page on Oct. 13, 2024, as of Oct. 28 there has been no reply, nor has even the first mistake been fixed quietly

From FAQ: “I’ve seen negative articles written about MBFC. Why is that? It is simple. Highly biased websites that are not always factual don’t like us exposing them. Since we back our ratings with evidence, they don’t really have any recourse other than to discredit our website and ratings. We fully expect this but are confident the readers of this website will be able to look at the source and our ratings and decide for themselves who is credible.”

I’m writing in the hopes that you’ll correct several of your entries and work more carefully in the future.

→ Wrt Electronic Intifada, your site claims that they failed one fact-check; this is incorrect. The linked article is fact-checking a tweet by an individual (Stew Peters) that claims a particular video shows the IDF killed concert-goers on Oct. 7th. They rate this as false. The article goes on to say: “Peters referred PolitiFact to a series of news reports — some in Hebrew — that he said document ‘Israelis killing their own.’ The information he sent did not include or appear to mention the video footage he shared on X.” The word “series” links to the Electronic Intifada article named in your entry, and this is the only mention of Electronic Intifada in the article if you don’t count the same EI article being named again below in the “Our Sources” section. The article itself clearly states that this EI article has nothing to do with the video being fact-checked; this “failed fact check” entry should be removed from your page on Electronic Intifada, which should also improve their credibility rating. I’m confused as to how this even happened in the first place; please remember to manually read articles before including them in your pages as proof of non-factual reporting.

As for bias, can you explain how the headlines “Does Israel want to wipe Gaza off the map?” and “Biden’s white supremacy gives Israel carte blanche to commit genocide” employ “emotionally charged language” or “appeal to… stereotypes”?

→ Your page on The Cradle states that “articles and headlines often use loaded emotional language in opposition to Israeli policy like this[:] Cracks deepen in Israel as opposition head issues ‘ultimatum’ to Netanyahu.” Which part of this headline strikes you as using “loaded emotional language”?

→ From your page on The Grayzone: “The Grayzone publishes questionable material, stating that a Chemical Attack did not occur in Douma, Syria[:] OPCW investigator testifies at UN that no chemical attack took place in Douma, Syria.” I don’t see the point in calling material “questionable” and leaving it at that. The Grayzone cited their sources and did their analysis, and if they misrepresented something or made a false claim then that should be pointed out and specified. Otherwise, this should be an opinion that stays in the head of the editor of an “unbiased fact-checking site.”

Cont: “They have also promoted conspiracy theories, such as claiming that Pete Buttigieg is a CIA agent.” Why is there no source for this? A similar claim the next paragraph down (“editor Max Blumenthal claims that Bill Gates ran a Covid simulation before it occurred”) is sourced; either the editors of MBFC think claims like these need to be sourced or they don’t.

→ From your page on Mint Press: “Politically, Mint Press News aligns with the far-left and frequently reports negatively on establishment Democrats like this[:] WHO IS BIDEN WORKING FOR? ON ISRAEL VISIT, “ZIONIST” BIDEN WHITEWASHES ISRAEL’S CRIMES and conservative such as this[:] EMBOLDENED BY TRUMP AND NETANYAHU, JEWISH SETTLER TERRORISM IS SPIKING.” This should read “conservatives.”

Cont. “Finally, according to the Rutgers University Network Contagion Research Institute, Mint Press ‘promotes anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.’” This links to an LA Times article which proves only that the RUNCRI claims this, but where is the evidence? How can a claim like this be used against Mint Press without evidence? In other words, where are the articles in which Mint Press “promotes anti-Jewish conspiracy theories”? If you can’t find them, I would suggest deleting this portion of the page.

→ From your page on Mondoweiss: “Mondoweiss exhibits a strong pro-Palestinian bias and is extremely critical of the Israeli government. It frequently publishes content that is negative toward Israeli policies and actions, often portraying them in a highly critical light. For example, the article ‘Genocide in service of Nakba 2023’ is emotionally loaded and one-sided against the Israeli government due to its use of highly charged language and its singular focus on alleged atrocities committed by Israel without providing context or perspectives from the Israeli side.”

If your site was around as a newspaper in the early 1940’s, would it say, “For example, the article [‘Nazi genocide against Jewish population’] is emotionally loaded and one-sided against the [German] government due to its use of highly charged language and its singular focus on alleged atrocities committed by [the Nazis] without providing context or perspectives from the [German] side”?

Cont: “The piece characterizes the situation as a ‘genocidal war on Gaza’ aimed at ‘depopulation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people’ in ‘brutal but deliberate stages.’ It accuses the Israeli government of engaging in ‘widespread destruction and industrial-scale slaughter,’ cutting off essential supplies like water and food and targeting civilian areas for destruction. The article alleges that these actions are part of a strategy by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to achieve ‘complete forced displacement” of Palestinians, describing this as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ used as a means to an end. This piece is a one-sided opinion by the author.”

Which portion exactly is one-sided opinion? The genocidal intention of the Israeli govt. is well-sourced in the article, and the cutting off of essential supplies like water and food is extremely well-known, Israeli Defense Minister Yaov Gallant saying just days after Oct. 7th: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” (this same speech is cited in the form of a video in the article). And forced displacement of Palestinians has been expressly stated as a goal by Zionists since the founding of political Zionism.

Cont: “The site has been accused of presenting misleading information and promoting a narrative of ‘holocaust inversion,’ suggesting that Israelis are committing atrocities akin to the Holocaust against Palestinians. This view is nearly universally considered antisemitic as it minimizes the atrocities committed by the Nazis.” Where exactly is the citation for this view being “nearly universally considered antisemitic”? And the article cited to prove that this “minimizes the atrocities committed by the Nazis” itself lies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to downplay the oppression of Palestinians, stating, “According to Sergel’s artistic statement, Israel’s blockade and periodic bombing of Gaza—which are a response to an antisemitic Islamic fundamentalist regime’s launching of rockets at Israel—is no different from the extermination of one million Jews through the most systematic industrialized mass murder operation in history.” This obscures the origin of the conflict, putting the cart before the horse and forgetting the Zionist settler-colonialism and forced displacement which sparked “antisemitic” resistance that Israel now must respond to, and restricts Israel’s siege to mere retaliation, not factoring in the planned war against the native population Zionists not only write about today [1] [2] [3] but had written about in 1923. And of course, the innumerable news sites comparing the Oct. 7th native resistance to the Holocaust don’t deserve a similar note.

→ From your page on Radio Free Asia: “In general, story selection leans left and promotes a pro-American perspective [contradiction] such as this[:] U.S. Renews Ban on Communist Party Members Seeking to Emigrate. This story is properly sourced to the AFP and New York Times. RFA reports news factually and with a slight left-leaning bias.” Can you tell me where the proper sourcing is in this story, this one, or this one? Does the headline: Taiwan ‘determined’ to protect its democratic way of life feature only “minimally loaded language”? The practice of citing only anonymous residents (and previous RFA articles which do the same) when making concrete claims is frequently practiced by RFA when reporting on affairs in the DPRK, but with the admission of pro-American bias (i.e. bias against the DPRK, where you even mention the expressly stated aim of “advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy”), why isn’t actual evidence needed? How would articles like these be “fact-checked”? Doesn’t this cast doubt on a large portion of RFA’s reporting?

Where is the citation for RFA’s claim that “Some of the official Kim myths that have been popularized in international media include Kim Jong Un being able to drive at age three, and Kim Jong Il shooting a 38 under par round of golf with five holes-in-one in his first attempt at the sport”? The entire basis of this article (“North Korean Founder Kim Il Sung Did Not Have the Ability to Teleport, State Media Admits”) has been shown to be false, but alas, not by an IFCN fact-checker, and so it must be left out of the record.

I can’t go through every page but things need to be restructured and the reliance on IFCN fact-checking leads to favoring their selection biases. It’s strange because articles are frequently “fact-checked” manually, this being left as a note above the “Failed Fact Checks” list (ex. on The Grayzone’s page), so why wasn’t this done here? Here’s a note you can add to Radio Free Asia’s page:

Radio Free Asia publishes questionable material, frequently relying on unverified anonymous testimony when reporting on North Korean affairs, this one-sided negative reporting with a low standard of proof being due to its pro-American bias, which is a product of its being a continuation of the CIA-run Radio Free Asia (this era being left out of the paper’s “Our History” page, which revises its history to state that it was the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” in 1989 that prompted “calls to create a surrogate news service devoted to local, uncensored journalism in China” despite the original RFA broadcasting in China, and so too with ROFA up until the creation of the modern RFA in 1996). In 2020, they falsely reported that a story in North Korean state media which had been essentially published in different forms in 2015 and 2018 had for the first time “admitted” that a myth about the country’s leadership was false, the article going on, without any citations, to name numerous other myths that they claimed had been propagated in North Korea; the article also included a likely doctored quote purportedly from South Korea’s Ministry of Unification which was not found in the Korean language version of the article.

*Note: your page states that RFA was founded in 1951, which is correct, but this was when it began under the banner of the CIA; either mention this era and the newspaper’s misrepresentation of their history or alter the founding date.