this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Don't need a degree to be a critical thinker and practice good journalism. However, evidence is mounting that MBFC may not actually be unbiased or fair. Shame, as I use it as a heuristic for unfamiliar sources.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

I'm only pointing out he's trained as a physical therapist to highlight that he is not trained in a field relevant to this whatsoever, you can be a critical thinker without being a journalist or going to college, but this person just decided they would be the arbiter of what media bias was in the 2016 US election and has just run with it. Most people do not realize this is just some guy's opinions, if it was named "David Van Zandt's blog on media bias" people would probably trust it less than naming it "MediaBiasFactCheck" which makes it sound like it's not just the opinions of one random dude.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I always thought the ratings were based on a community or a team of people deciding based on hard criteria. Shame..

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, I think it's very deceptive in how it markets itself. I think the only reason you see it so much in sites like lemmy and reddit is it went viral during the 2016 US election, where discussions of "fake news" and media bias really took off for the first time and people have just been trusting it ever since.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

😂

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: This is an undisclosed bot account.

I’ve taken Van Zandt to task before:

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I try to point people toward developing real media literacy: https://lemmy.ml/comment/12094932