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What is the reliability of Mondoweiss?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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What is the reliability of Mondoweiss?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

WP:RSP has 8 discussions on Mondoweiss, but not an RfC I can see. It is cited somewhat frequently in the Israel-Palestine conflict topic area. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 07:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Mondoweiss)

• Option 4 I’m starting this RfC because since the October 7th attacks on Israel, Mondoweiss pushes extremism and disinformation. Like WP:COUNTERPUNCH or WP:UNZ, it has published extremist opinion pieces; in this case acclaiming attacks on Israeli civilians (typically considered to be war crimes). In terms of disinformation, the main propaganda narrative Monodoweiss pushes is that there is no evidence that Palestinians raped Israelis on October 7th. [2] [3][4][5]

According to The BBC, NBC news, The New York Times, AP news, The Washington Post, and Human Rights Watch, mass rapes were committed by Palestinians against Israeli civilians on October 7th. The consensus of all reliable sources is that this happened, and that there is verifiable evidence to show this. Mondoweiss is the outlier here with rape denialism against the vast majority of overwhelming sources. This is typical historical negationism; these are disingenuous claims that there is 'no evidence' for well-documented atrocities akin to Holocaust denial tactics.

Mondoweiss also published extremist opinion pieces glorifying the acts of terrorism on October 7th. Counterpunch, Unz, and the Electronic Intifada [6] were declared unreliable for similar reasons, so I believe this is fair game to criticize the source on. This also provides the 'why' as to Mondoweiss' denialism of atrocities in the ongoing war. So I’ll just grab a few choice quotes from opinion pieces to show my point.

• From the moment those fighters flew in on paramotors, disrupting the parallel reality that was this music festival, they accomplished something profound (one must wonder what it felt like for these fighters to see a party just outside where they have been trapped under a suffocating blockade). in reference to the Re'im music festival massacre. [7]
• In some ways, then, we can see the attack on the festival as the most violent of anti-colonial refusals — a refusal to let the children of a nation that ethnically cleansed one’s family party on that stolen land in peace. It violently reasserts that this land is stolen and that it can only be returned to its rightful owners through bloodshed. [8]
• Nothing can hide the determination and courage of those young people who returned to their land on October 7.[9]
• They have failed to mention that those targeted were, are, colonizers, settlers, the primary agents, actors, impellers of the colonization and genocide of Palestine. They have failed to mention that the resistance targets colonial settlements, established atop ethnically cleansed and razed Palestinian villages; it targets colonial settlers that live in stolen Palestinian houses, on stolen Palestinian land, urinate on our corpses and dance on our graves. They have failed to highlight that the term “Settler-Colonialism” is not without reason, and that a colonizer is a colonizer, in uniform or out.[10]
• The inhuman and annihilating excess of organized state force, whose untold destructive powers are now unfolding in total violence on the helpless people of Gaza, can never be morally equated with even the most atrocious acts of the colonized committed in the hope of liberation from an unbearable colonial regime. Any demand that the colonized desist from the use of armed force, a right in any case guaranteed to them under international law, becomes arrant hypocrisy in the face of the technical storm inflicted by state powers. [11]

To summarize, Mondoweiss is extremist and encourages hatred/terrorist attacks against Israelis. It argues that the killing and raping of civilians is not only justified, but actively heroic if done to advance Palestinian interests. Any of these opinion pieces, if posted by an editor on Wikipedia, would probably result in an indefinite block for racism per WP:NONAZIS. We can and should ban racist publications as sources as they have a tendency to fabricate information to fit their viewpoints. Mondoweiss proves this by publishing disinformation about the well-evidenced mass rapes committed on October 7th and repeatedly alleging that there is no evidence for these war crimes. Using it as a source would be giving credence to WP:FRINGE viewpoints. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 07:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't have time to go through all your evidence so I picked the first link, read it entirely, followed through to the Hebrew links and used machine translation to verify that Mondoweiss is indeed correct. At no point did I find the article said what you claimed it did ("pushes is that there is no evidence that Palestinians raped Israelis on October 7th"). Instead, it cast doubt on the rape of one particular victim: Gal Abdush. Their reporting is corroborated by Channel 13 (Israel) quoting that Abdush's brother-in-law says "No one knows if it [rape] happened". VR _talk 16:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Gal Abdush is the woman in the black dress filmed with her groin covered in blood. Virtually every reliable news outlet agrees that the video shows evidence of rape. Mondoweiss, which admits it has not seen the video, says the video proves nothing. Do you want me to post the video here? You can find it on Yandex in a few seconds. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:30, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

No, Mondoweiss article doesn't say "the video proves nothing". It says, "The newspaper did not link to the video but released a distant, indistinct image from it that revealed nothing". This is the image from the NYT article (article reproduced here). Indeed the image is quite unclear.VR _talk 20:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

@Vice regent: The last line of the Mondoweiss article is that In the end, it appears that the New York Times manipulated a working-class Mizrahi family in the service of Israeli hasbara in order to score a journalistic achievement, which in reality is nothing more than a repetition of fake news and government propaganda. Calling a piece "fake news and government propaganda" is pretty clear that Mondoweiss is calling the New York Times article bullshit. I would imagine they wouldn't call the New York Times "fake news" if they thought the video was credible.

Mondoweiss bases this on two things: that the video of Gal Abdush is not available to them, and so the only evidence are Abdush's relatives who dispute that this video shows she was raped.

A high-res video is result two on Bing for "woman who was raped and burned to death". I'd recommend not clicking through to the video unless you really want to verify that, but Mondoweiss didn't bother to look for the video and so I don't think their first point holds water. They say that Abdush's brother-in-law + relatives don't believe/have doubts that Abdush was raped, but this is all meaningless hearsay. What matters to the Gal Abdush story is whether or not Mondoweiss bothered to find the video evidence which can be trivially found on a major search engine. That is what the New York Times based their reporting on, and Mondoweiss' media analysis falls flat.

This would be like trying to refute theories about the JFK Assassination by looking at social media posts of people that have seen the Zapruder film instead of bothering to watch it oneself. It is the job of a secondary source to review the primary source and analyze it, not delegate that responsibility to relatives of the family member (who may not want to acknowledge that someone was raped) on social media. A source that doesn't (e.g. Mondoweiss) is not a reliable source. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I searched the video and found it on bing, and 1) its not the same video referenced by NYT (the NYT video screenshot is taken from a distance and has poor resolution) 2) the video I found is of a corpse, there is no evidence of rape (but then again I'm not an expert in these things).

And blaming a source for omissions is a standard not required of RS. Its clear NYT omitted thoroughly interviewing Abdush's family members, does that make NYT unreliable? RS sources are expected to be accurate, not comprehensive. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 05:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3, though would not oppose Option 4. Even in its news articles Mondoweiss has published false and misleading information, and when we consider its lean towards antisemitism it is not a source we can rely on.

For example, it has stuck to the narrative that Israel is responsible for the al-Ahli explosion. This is most obvious in opinion articles but it also occurs in news articles. They have explicitly stated that Israel is responsible in:

1. Do not dismiss the Gaza genocide allegations from November 19. It makes the indisputably false claim that Israeli claims as to complete Palestinian culpability have been largely debunked.
2. ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 39: Health official says Israel ‘sentencing Al-Shifa hospital to death’ as doctors dig mass grave from November 14
3. ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 15: Gaza aid trickles in amid uninterrupted airstrikes, West Bank arrests continue from October 21
4. etc

They have also implied it in a number of other articles, such as by referring to the explosion as a "bombing" and by linking to an article from the immediate aftermath of the explosion which is headlined "Massacre: Israel kills over 500 Palestinians in Gaza hospital attack" and describes an airstrike as being the cause.

1. Activists hold Israel responsible for drive-by-shooting at homes of detained demonstrators in Umm al-Fahm from December 13
2. Israel’s criminalization of Palestinian protest from November 23
3. ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 36: Al-Shifa hospital at epicenter of Gaza fighting as fleeing civilians are killed by Israeli strikes from November 11
4. etc

Their falsehoods aren't limited to that topic; they also present them on others, such as the tunnels beneath Al-Shifa. For example, in ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 46: Israeli tanks besiege Indonesian Hospital as bombardment of Gaza continues from November 21, Mondoweiss says The claims [that Hamas has tunnels underneath the Indonesian Hospital] mirror previous allegations Israel made about Al-Shifa Hospital that it has yet to provide concrete evidence of. This is false; on November 19 independent media had confirmed that tunnels existed beneath Al-Shifa.

Elsewhere, they misrepresent their own sources. For example, in Western media’s reference to the ‘Hamas-run’ Health Ministry is another dehumanizing tactic enabling Israel’s genocide they say that Reuters says that three Al-Shifa employees were abducted; what Reuters actually says is that three are missing.

In addition, I have concerns about antisemitism at Mondoweiss. For example, in "‘Atlantic’ rebrands new editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, leaving Israel, Jews, and Iraq off his resume" Philip Weiss, who is the founder and co-editor of the website, makes the problematic statement The word Jew made no appearance in the Atlantic announcement; while most of the piece is acceptable criticism of a new editor, with this line it swerves directly into antisemitism by suggesting that ones status as a Jew is relevant to ones position as the editor-in-chief of a major news organization - see Antisemitic trope#Controlling the media. Reliable sources have also documented this, such as in this Atlantic article. BilledMammal (talk) 09:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Exploring the source more generally, I find:

First, they widely use deprecated sources; see #Discussion (Mondoweiss) for details.

Second, I've found additional evidence of them misrepresenting their sources, going beyond their sources, and even making basic errors with their sources.

Misrepresenting sources:

1. In "Sadness and anger as 4 Jewish victims of Paris attack are buried in Jerusalem" they claim that The bodies of the deceased were interred in a Jerusalem commemoration after an invitation to host the burial was extended to relatives of the slain by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which later sought payment from families of $13,000 each for the ceremonies. The source they link says something very different; that the Hevra Kadisha burial society demanded Tuesday that the families of four Jewish men killed in a Paris terror attack and buried in Jerusalem each pay NIS 50,000 ($12,500) for their burials.
2. In "How the Taliban chased the West out of Afghanistan", they attribute the statement They tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac to Reuters; Reuters is careful to avoid saying so in its own voice and instead attributes it to a Russian spokesman.
3. In the same article, they cite an ODI report to say that Surveys regularly found Afghans saying that they believed corruption levels were lower in Taliban areas. However, the source makes no such claim; the source doesn't even include a survey regarding corruption.
4. In "Israel’s national airline El Al is an intelligence front for the Shin Bet" they claim that Israel uses its airlines as an intelligence front, in which Israeli security services work for the airlines as undercover employees. As evidence for this, they cite an undercover investigation conducted by Aljazeera. In doing so, they make a significant misrepresentation of the source, which discusses no undercover investigation, and avoids saying in its own voice that the airline is used as a front, instead attributing that claim to specific individuals and leaked South African cables.
5. In "Palestinians bid farewell to journalist Khalid Amayreh". It claims that he urged the Palestinian people to reject the two state solution. However, in the source provided he makes no such claim; instead, he reports that Palestinians consider it to be dead.

Going beyond their sources:

1. In "Arms, oil and Iran – Israel’s role in Nagorno-Karabakh" they say Around 75,000 ethnic Armenians fled their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh – more than half of the population. The source they use, DW, provides that number - but attributes it to a Artsakh spokesperson and does not put it in their own voice.

Making errors with their sources:

1. In "Gulf crisis could push Hamas closer to Iran, or cause it to fold under the Palestinian Authority" they say Moreover, Qatar has paid the salaries of 40,000 Hamas employees in 2016, a bill that totaled $20 million and required careful coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. What their source says is that Sheikh Tamim bin Hamd al-Thani will pay $31,030,752 for the July salaries of Gaza’s public sector employees - these are significant errors, getting both the period and the value significantly wrong.
2. In the same article, they say Last week Egypt gave 220,000 gallons of fuel to Gaza’s power plant, raising daily electrical supplies to eight hours, up from four the week before. Their source states the opposite; Despite the plant's partial resumption, residents will continue to receive four hours of electricity followed by about 14 hours off.
3. In Netanyahu bolsters Sudan’s military leaders in attempt to save normalization they claim that 72% of Sudanese oppose normalization; the figure their source gives is 68%. It's a minor mistake, and in a more reputable organization would be something we could safely ignore, but it's another piece on the pile of evidence against Mondoweiss. I misread their source BilledMammal (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Third, they have defended deprecated sources such as Russia Today and The Electronic Intifada:

1. They defend RT in a number of articles; in "The Russiagate farce" they go beyond defending it and present the claim that Russia influenced the 2016 election as conspiracy theory.
2. In "A salute to ‘Electronic Intifada’", they describe EI as a source that continues telling indispensable truths.

Fourth, they have published misinformation:

1. In "Palestinian Authority blocks dozens of websites critical of Abbas government". This source claims that QNN is an independent news source with no political affiliation. This is false; it is affiliated with Hamas (The Guardian, Al Jazeera, JNS, US State Department, VOA, ToI, etc). Bizarrely, they originally got this correct; they issued a "correction" to say that their initial statement that QNN was affiliated with Hamas was incorrect.
2. In Inside the “Wasps’ Nest”: the rise of the Jenin Brigade they claimed that Israeli attacks killed 51 people. The actual figures for the conflict is 49 killed overall, with 30 killed by Israel. See also Al Monitor.

This is not a source I am familiar with, so most of the issues I could identify were when they were contradicted by their own sources. I suspect an editor better versed in this source and the topics it writes on would find far more falsehoods.

I still prefer Option 3, but given all this I would support Option 4 as a second choice. BilledMammal (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

An overall problem with this approach is treating as "sources" what are merely links. They refer to other coverage, but that's not to say it's the sole basis of their reportage. And in any case, many of these are either cases of semantics, cherrypicked/selective quotation, or not errors at all, e.g.:

2. The Afghanistan article: I don't think it's necessarily a misrepresentation; you've quoted selectively. MW also sources the information to the Russian embassy in Afghanistan: When he fled the country, press secretary of the Russian embassy in Kabul Nikita Ishchenko told RIA Novosti, his people drove four cars filled with money to the airfield. “They tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” according to a Reuters report. It's clear they're quoting Reuters' coverage of Ischenko's remarks.

3. The report you link says (p. 17): "most [Afghans] pointed to government interference and corruption and occupation of and theft from clinics by Afghan security forces and militias as being more problematic than Taliban interventions." The fact that this came from interviews rather than "surveys" is semantic ("survey" also means To investigate the opinions, experiences, etc., of people by asking them questions which is what that report was about)

5. The Khaled Amayreh article: MW says Amayreh urged Palestinians to refuse its [the two-state solution's] false promise. In the AJ article, Amayreh says: There is just no time left for a Palestinian state. How can a state be a viable proposition when it has no control over its borders, when there is a military occupation, and when towns are cut off from each other by a system of roads and checkpoints? The two seem entirely consistent.

"Going beyond their sources": this is just a case of MW willing to say in its own voice what another source decided to attribute. It's inclined to believe the official from Nagorno-Karabakh, no different from how Israeli sources frequently parrot IDF talking points without attribution.

"Making errors with their sources"

2. The "Gulf Crisis" article: the BBC article was published four days prior to the MW article, and it's linked for the "220,000 gallons" point (not the hours of power point). An engineer interviewed by BBC stated his hope that the remaining two generators could be made "operational before the festival of Eid al-Fitr", which, in 2017, began on June 25 (the day before the MW article was published).

3. The 72% figure comes from Figure 27 of the linked article. You might have gotten it confused with Figure 26, "Attitudes towards the Palestinian cause". There was no error, minor or otherwise.

Regarding the attempt to tether MW to deprecated sources, I don't think that's compelling reasoning. As you concede below, this is only grounds for Option 3 or 4 in the context of the other evidence [you] have presented, which is amenable to various interpretations.

"Published Misinformation":

1. None of the sources you provide explain exactly how QNN is "affiliated with" Hamas; is it "affiliated" in the same way the Health Ministry is "controlled by" Hamas?

2. The Russiagate piece is presented as "Media Analysis" which is different from its News section; it has the cadence of an op-ed. I doubt this could be cited for statements of fact even if it was published in an RS, per WP:RSEDITORIAL.

So this alleged evidence is not particularly damning in any case. WillowCity^(talk) 12:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

First, you're right about Sudan; I have struck that, thank you for the correction.

Second, you've only addressed about half the issues I raised. Even if you were right about all of them that still leaves too much to allow us to consider this source reliable - it is relevant to point out here that these are just the tip of the iceberg; I found them in only a couple of hours.

However, you weren't right about all of them; half of the issues you raised could go either way, but the other half your argument is very weak (eg, arguing that Mondoweiss is right and everyone else is wrong), or I have found additional sources to disprove your interpretation.

Specific responses
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Misrepresenting sources 2. I can see how you can interpret it that way, but the sentence structure leads me to believe that it is attributed to Reuters. Reasonable minds could differ. 3. It's not only that there wasn't a survey; its that that source doesn't support the claim. It makes no statement about the level of corruption in Taliban areas, and it makes no comparison in their beliefs as to the level of corruption. 5. He's not urging anything there, in my view, he's stating his own view. Going beyond their sources: Then the correct thing to do is source the official directly. Making errors with their sources 2. Possible, but I felt it was unlikely, so I looked into it. Reliable sources from around the same time as the Mondoweiss article also gives four hours; New Arab, Al Jazeera. 3. Fair point, I misread; I've struck that line. Defended deprecated sources 2. Their articles explicitly labeled "news" also tend to have the cadence of an op-ed. I don't consider this distinction a defense. Published Misinformation 1. Your point seems to be "Mondoweiss is right, every other reliable source is wrong"; that isn't a good argument.

As you concede below, this is only grounds for Option 3 or 4 "in the context of the other evidence [you] have presented", which is amenable to various interpretations.

I don't think you understood what I was saying there. If this source was otherwise impeccable, the reliance on deprecated sources would still be enough to make a valid argument for Option 3 or Option 4, but it would be possible to argue for Option 2 - and as you implicitly concede, this source about is far from impeccable as you can get. BilledMammal (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2. Mondoweiss is primarily a publisher of op-eds. Since there is no evidence that Mondoweiss interferes with what its authors write, the reliability of each article depends on the author only. Our rules for citing opinions are perfectly adequate for dealing with it. If the author is a subject-area expert, there is no reason to exclude him/her from citation. We cite op-eds in the Israeli press which are no less biased on average. The concern being expressed here is not really about reliability; note how the two comments before this one quite openly emphasise that articles in Mondoweiss don't follow a pro-Israel line. Zero^talk 11:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  note how the two comments before this one quite openly emphasise that articles in Mondoweiss don't follow a pro-Israel line Unless you consider "not antisemitic" to be equivalent to "pro-Israel", I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of my comment. BilledMammal (talk) 12:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  It's true that I ignored the weakest part of your argument, which quotes out of context and avoids mentioning that Philip Weiss is Jewish. Zero^talk 12:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

While not disagreeing with parts of your vote,

avoids mentioning that Philip Weiss is Jewish

The idea that being Jewish automatically precludes one from holding antisemitic views is a false one. The Kip 23:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

What about Wall Street Journal, which published an editorial "Islamophobia isn't real", calling Islamophobia "normal human reaction to terror"? Even RS sometimes (unfortunately) give space to prejudice. VR _talk 04:32, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

That’s not an editorial; it’s an opinion piece. Opinion pieces shouldn’t be used as a source for facts, and WSJ publishing bad opinion pieces is irrelevant to the reliability of this outlet. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:40, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2: Per the above, it is only a host, so IT may not (technically) be an RS, the stuff its hosts might be. Slatersteven (talk) 13:38, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  FYI, that’s inaccurate; it publishes op-eds, but it also publishes its own news stories, such as most of the articles I linked in my !vote. BilledMammal (talk) 13:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Technicaly my comment still takes that into account, it is not an RS what it hosts (hosts, not publishes) maybe. Slatersteven (talk) 13:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  If I have understood you correctly, you are saying Option 2 for the opinion articles it hosts (ie, consider self published with reliability dependent on the author), Option 3 for everything else? BilledMammal (talk) 13:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  So it can be treated as a WP:SPS? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 but also wouldn't be opposed to option 4. The alleged falsehoods, at least to me, seem to be more based out of strong POV rather than outright fabrication (ex. multiple Palestinian and/or human-rights groups still blame Israel for the hospital explosion as well, and claim that the sources (mainly western intelligence/media) attributing blame to PIJ are inherently biased against Palestinians). The op-eds are also subject to author reliability on a case-by-case basis. As a result, deprecation seems a tad strong of a response.

All of that said, however, and while I understand WP:BIAS doesn't inherently make a source unreliable, the opinions expressed in the above pieces (primarily, the glorification of terrorism) and Mondoweiss' willingness to publish them strikes me as WP:FRINGE and make me heavily question the reliability of their own content and its usefulness as a proper info source on Wikipedia. The heavy usage of especially inflammatory rhetoric ("a colonizer is a colonizer, in uniform or out," "[the land] can only be returned to its rightful owners through bloodshed.") backs this up; as the nom stated, an normal editor expressing these views would more than likely find themselves the recipient of a WP:HATESPEECH complaint. Considering its in-practice status as Philip Weiss' personal blog, the news pieces seemingly amount to a WP:SPS as well, which further decreases any possible reliability. Finally, the limited overlap with Ron Unz (as described below) doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. The Kip 23:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Reading the perennial sources list, this overall seems like a pretty similar situation to Counterpunch; effectively an SPS with little oversight of opinion pieces, and some entries promoting extremist content. That one is currently listed as WP:GUNREL. The Kip 23:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

And further, as noted below; like the recently-deprecated Electronic Intifada and The Cradle, it appears Mondoweiss also has considerable reliance on multiple deprecated sources, especially Al Mayadeen and RT, as well as hosting articles from Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone. This makes me a bit more sympathetic towards deprecation. The Kip 01:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree, those are highly concerning FortunateSons (talk) 11:50, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 They primarily produce opinion pieces and the poorly articulated arguments above for deprecation seem to come down to bias arguments because of opinionated statements and not issues of actual falsehoods being produced as news. BilledMammal's is especially egregious in this regard, trying to use articles saying that Israel has some responsibility in events prior to and after October 7th (which is a longstanding topic of consideration in both the news and more academic settings) as some sort of negative factor, when it is not.

Then using the 500 dead argument, which the entirety of the news media got wrong (largely because the original health ministry reporting in Arabic said 500 casualties and the first breaking news reporters in English of that mistranslated it as 500 killed, an unfortunate case of inter-lingual telephone and why breaking news pieces should be sparingly utilized). Then BilledMammal tries to use the discussion about tunnels under Al-Shifa, which are again a matter of quite public debate, especially considering the tunnels we know Israel themselves built under there in the 1980's.

Lastly, the piece about the Atlantic is quite clearly focusing on how the Atlantic editor is extremely biased toward Israel (and promotion of lies helping start the Iraq war) and uses that bias on Israel and their cultural identity as a reason to point out said person's unreliability. Now, the article may possibly be making a very oblique reference to the nonsense conspiracy about Jewish people owning the world, but that is very unclear from just a single line like that and the article itself just seems to put that in context of the editor's massive Israel propaganda supporting in the past, including in their own book publication. So, again, the Mondoweiss article seems biased against Israel and such information, but I'm seeing no evidence of anything outside of opinions being made, because it's an opinion-publishing site. Meaning that what matters is who is making said opinion in regards to WP:RS policy. Silverseren^C 00:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

trying to use articles saying that Israel has some responsibility in events prior to and after October 7th Can you clarify where you got that impression, because that's not my argument?

Regarding the specifics, I also did not use the "500 dead" argument; the closest I came is noting that they continued to refer to a "Breaking News" article that uses that figure months after it stopped being breaking news - although, I would note that we normally consider failing to correct inaccuracies when the inaccuracies are identified evidence of unreliability.

Finally, the existence of militant tunnels under al-Shifa is no longer a matter of debate - specifics of them are, such as whether they housed a command and control center and whether they connected to the hospital wards - but their existence was confirmed by reliable sources two days prior to the publishing of the article where Mondoweiss claimed Israel had presented no concrete evidence that they existed. BilledMammal (talk) 01:20, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Most news articles didn't correct the figure across all media, though some did flip flop across multiple different claims afterwards as statements by both the IDF and Hamas were debunked back and forth (such as the IDF originally using the video of a missile from a year prior). Nothing about the hospital blast is a negative for a specific source, because everyone got it both wrong on numbers and no one still knows who exactly is responsible, particularly after the New York Times investigation showing the missile came from the direction of Israel and not the opposite direction as originally claimed.

The usage of the tunnels is very much a matter of debate. As noted, the tunnels already existed, made by Israel in the 1980's. Whether they were at all used in a militant manner remains up for debate and is still debated in the media. Especially since those tunnels in question aren't connected to the hospital complex, but to a separate set of buildings nearby. The Washington Post continues to point out the lack of actual evidence presented by the IDF in an article from December 21st, a full month after the Mondoweiss one.

So, again, you're not bringing up anything of actual falsehoods, but open points of debate in the media in general, which only present Mondoweiss as being biased against Israel by their articles. Silverseren^C 01:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Even if you want to argue that it's reasonable to argue that Israel is the culprit despite reliable sources being in consensus that this is extremely improbable, Mondoweiss goes beyond doing that. Specifically, they claim that the evidence of complete Palestinian culpability has been largely debunked - that, at the very least, is indisputable false.

Regarding the tunnels, you're right that the usage is very much a matter of debate - but Mondoweiss' claim was not about the usage but the existence. BilledMammal (talk) 01:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2. The nom raises what are essentially accusations of bias, but this does not address reliability. Essentially, a variation of "WP:IDONTLIKEIT (so it should never be used as a source for anything, ever)". The fact that some coverage may be distasteful to certain sensibilities does not make the source as a whole unreliable. It is hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to stifle or deprecate sources that depart from a preferred POV. In-text attribution is likely appropriate to address concerns regarding bias (as has been the community's conclusion in numerous prior discussions). Advocates for deprecation should familiarize themselves with what WP:RS actually requires. WillowCity^(talk) 02:55, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  With all due respect, while the original complaint has elements of IDLI, I feel as if though the nominator has since raised genuine concerns of fabrication/exaggeration in responses to Silverseren, and more importantly, as elaborated below in response to my own question, a worrisome degree of overlap with a wide variety of already-GUNREL and/or deprecated sources. This latter issue played a significant role in why Electronic Intifada and The Cradle were recently deprecated, and I would encourage you to take this into account.

  Also, regarding the sentence beginning with "It is hard to see..." I recommend you reword or strike so as not to violate WP:ASPERSIONS. Remember to WP:AGF. The Kip 03:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Did you actually read through nom's evidence? If so, please respond to my comment under theirs. VR _talk 16:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Your comment you're referencing under my !vote starts with I don't have time to go through all your evidence, so I'm not sure what the point of accusing other people of not having read the evidence is. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  I think The Kip may have confused me with the nom, given I was the one who had the discussion with Silverseren and replied them them below. BilledMammal (talk) 02:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  That would be it, my bad. The Kip 04:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 for NPOV sake, and because bias complaints like this would knock out basically all sources in the I/P area (as is well known, for example, one large German news publisher requires its European employees to take an editorial stand on Israel). All sources have bias, all sources are wrong sometimes, and all sources fail in their job from time-to-time. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. What I'm seeing in the OP's diffs can be addressed by Wikipedia's policies for op-eds/opinion pieces, rather than by total blacklisting or deprecation. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, the same isn't true for the pile of diffs that I have provided; most of those are labeled "news", and they have considerable inaccuracies - they are also the result of only a couple of hours of research, I have no doubt that are more detailed search would reveal far more. BilledMammal (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 Listed on RSP as NoCon after a bunch of discussions. Walls of text notwithstanding, this RFC appears out of the blue, rather than being referenced to some particular usage or ongoing discussion? Has MW been cited on WP for something alleged as fabrication? Biased certainly but that is not a reason to deprecate and deprecation should usually follow GU first. Its another of those news sites that mixes opinions with news so attribution will usually be necessary.Selfstudier (talk) 16:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  I thought now was a good time. We haven't had an RfC about this yet and it's cited heavily in the topic area, so I'd rather get consensus before I start ripping citations to it out of BLPs/articles. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3. The website used to be essentially a blog, first a personal one and then a group one, and older articles should be judged through that frame. In more recent years, it has professionalised to some extent. It now includes content it calls "News", most of which is summarised from other sources (both reliable and unreliable, including deprecated sources) but with some original content. The latter may be occasionally useful with attribution, but I'd say if this is the only source it's not reliable enough to use alone and if there are other sources why use this one. Then there is content it calls "Opinion", and on the whole I'd say the fact it's published at this outlet is an indicator that it is not likely to be sufficiently of note for us to include it per due weight. However, some contributors are more significant (e.g. Mitchell Plitnick is a fairly significant voice that often publishes there. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 while a few articles may indeed covered by “just” WP:Biased and/or a concerning proximity to Hate Speech, the regular presentation of things that are WP:Fringe at best and intentional misinformation at worst is worthy of depreciation, particularly in combination with the frequent use of sources that are depreciated by Wikipedia really does not help either. I am uncertain whether it can really by fully considered WP:SPS by someone who isn’t a subject-matter expert, but if it really is, that would just be the a secondary problem. In addition, based on some of the past statements linked, a use for BLP or politicised situations within the fog or war would be very reckless at best. While the concern regarding a lack of pro-Palestinian RS brought up by some is understandable, there are definitely better and more reliable sources that have the desired political leaning without the habitual misinformation.FortunateSons (talk) 01:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. I'm against deprecation which should be an exceptional measure reserved for sources regularly publishing deliberate falsehoods. My !vote is mostly due to the list of errors from u:BilledMammal's comment above (most of these errors are in news rather than opinion pieces). If they had been meticulous with their reporting, we could've lived with their extreme bias and other issues, but they aren't, and I'd rather not have to recheck their sourcing each time their articles are used. The association with and financing by Ron Unz doesn't help either. Alaexis_¿question? 12:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. I've read through the evidence, thought on this for a while, and this is where I land. I had no previous familiarity with this site, FWIW. I'm seeing evidence that a lot of Mondoweiss's content is verging on advocacy, and that a lot of their Op-Eds contain views are widely considered unacceptable and/or that contain factually inaccurate information. I'm not seeing evidence of their publishing, as news, information known to be inaccurate at the time; and that's really what we need if we're looking at deprecation. Their Op-Eds might be dreadful, but that's true of any number of news organizations, and has never been considered enough to deprecate; opinion pieces should just be treated as such, that is, unreliable for factual information and only usable at all if the author is considered a subject expert. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 A lot of different accusations have been made about the source. I have not looked at every reference but will comment on a few:

On its coverage of sexual violence by Hamas:

"In terms of disinformation, the main propaganda narrative Monodoweiss pushes is that there is no evidence that Palestinians raped Israelis on October 7th" - The first source provided is an account of how the family of Gal Abdush reacted to the NYT story about her. It includes links to her families responses which cast doubt on the NYT story. Editor VR has responded appropriately to this first article. The Mondoweiss story "CNN report claiming sexual violence on October 7 relied on non-credible witnesses, some with undisclosed ties to Israeli govt" was given as an example of Mondoweiss “cast[ing] doubt on the allegations of sexual violence” committed by Hamas. The Mondoweiss article examines the evidence cited in a CNN article about the violence. There is nothing wrong with a news source doing that type of journalism. At the end, Mondoweiss states "The analysis presented here is not meant to deny the possibility that sexual violence against women may have occurred on October 7. It is about fair reporting and about ensuring that there is sufficient and reliable evidence to support these serious allegations". Since then The Intercept has revealed that CNN runs its stories about the conflict past the IDF censor prior to publication so Mondoweiss’ scepticism about the CNN article may have been well founded.[12]

On Mondoweiss' treatment of the al-Ahli hospital explosion.

Our own article on the explosion provides no definitive apportionment of responsibility. The Mondoweiss source links to articles in NYT, Forensic Architecture and Channel 4 news which cast doubt on Israel’s evidence that Hamas was responsible.

Attempted bootstrapping of Mondoweiss based on the deprecation of sources such as RT and Electronic Intifada.

One of the cited articles does not defend RT as claimed. It says: "No doubt both Russia Insider and Russia Today are trying to make the US look bad and presumably, Kirby might be right in saying RT reporters don’t go after the Russian government when it bombs civilians" and "No doubt Russia Today is a slanted news source ...". Afaict Mondoweiss does not say Russiagate is a conspiracy theory. It may have implied that the NYT’s claim that Russia used an “adorable puppies” page on Facebook as part of its scheme was a "fringe conspiracy theory". Where do we stand on the “adorable puppies” story? 

On misinformation published by Mondoweiss.

The Mondoweiss story "Inside the “Wasps’ Nest”: the rise of the Jenin Brigade" was cited as an example. It is difficult to know whether the figure of 51 Palestinian killed by Israel is accurate. Our own article on this, Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2022, quotes the UN, OCHA Protection of Civilians Report as saying that Israel killed 41 Palestinians in the period 2 August to 15 August 2022. So the Mondoweiss figure is in the right area. Burrobert (talk) 14:14, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

On Mondoweiss' treatment of the al-Ahli hospital explosion:

The most significant issue with Mondoweiss' treatment of this is that they say that Israeli claims as to complete Palestinian culpability have been largely debunked. This is a falsehood; indeed, the opposite is true.

Attempted bootstrapping of Mondoweiss based on the deprecation of sources such as RT and Electronic Intifada:

While you mention EI in the lead of that paragraph, you make no mention of it in the paragraph - even if you're correct about RT, that means they are still considering a deprecated source with significant issues to be a bastion of truth.

As for RT, I believe you are incorrect. Looking at the totality of the article they appear to be downplaying the issues with that source, and they do present Russian interference in the US election as pseudoscience and analogous to creationism:

Like all forms of pseudoscience, Russiagate is an endlessly flexible theory. Whatever truth there might be in any of the claims, the reporting resembles the material I read as a child in some of the less rational UFO literature, or, to use another analogy, the opportunistic and incoherent arguments put out by creationists.

On misinformation published by Mondoweiss:

You're comparing apples to oranges there. The 2022 Gaza–Israel clashes took place between 5 and 7 of August, and took place in Gaza. The figures the OCHA provide cover both Gaza and the West Bank, for the period between 2 and 15 August. Even beyond that, your argument is somewhat bizarre; you're arguing that a source that provides significantly lower figures is evidence that there isn't a problem with the provisioning of these higher figures. BilledMammal (talk) 20:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

This RfC is becoming hard to read, because of the long discussions under many of the votes. I will post my response in the Discussion section. Burrobert (talk) 07:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

• Continuing from Burrobert's examples, BilledMammal also wrote "They make frequent reference to Al Mayadeen", with four examples. Note first that there is nothing at all wrong with referring to Al Mayadeen with attribution and mainstream news sources do that all the time. Here is a random selection from the Washington Post: [13] [14] [15]. Looking at BM's examples, the third doesn't mention Al Mayadeen at all(?), and the other three use correct attribution. The second and fourth one even use "allegedly" in respect to Al Mayadeen's claim. The fourth one was an Al Mayadeen scoop: the 2017 Hamas charter before Hamas published it. MW cite a confirmation from Hamas, and the charter does match what Hamas published later. So, contrary to what BilledMammal claims, these examples show MW in a good light. Zero^talk 03:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Having read through this once again, I'm actually very concerned about the users who made the first claim Burrobert highlights above. I have not examined the totality of their coverage, but that example appears to be egregious source misrepresentation, and is the sort of thing we sanction people for at AE. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:09, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

  MondoWeiss, according to its search engine, has referred to Al-Mayadeen 97 times, 77 in news pieces. I've looked through the first three or four pages of hits (about 30 articles), and on the whole I agree with Zero/Burrobert's take: almost all of the uses are appropriate, and would not look out of place in a more mainstream news outlet. (Typical examples:[16][17][18].) However, with two exceptions from my sample, there is no attempt at identifying that Al-Mayadeen might be partisan (e.g. you'd expect "Hezbollah-linked TV station" or similar, as is the case in just one 2018 article). Frequently, you get a formulation like "An analyst on Lebanese Mayadeen television reported that---"[19], as if it's a neutral source, which in my view is unprofessional and slightly dangerous. But this in itself is not a reason to downgrade the source. (Other reasons raised in this conversation are though.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:15, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

  @Vanamonde93: If by users who made the first claim Burrobert highlighted above, you mean me, the person who made the first claim that Mondoweiss casted doubt on evidence of rape, my comment represented the sources accurately. Mondoweiss said about the NY Times in the first source that Although claiming its story proves that “the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” the veracity of the New York Times story was undermined almost as soon as it was published [20] In other words, Mondoweiss didn't just say that Gal Abdush wasn't raped, they also said that there is not a broader pattern of gender-based violence on October 7th, and Mondoweiss' proof of this is that the family of one victim didn't believe she was raped. Except the YNet News interview (cited by Mondoweiss to mean the opposite of what it says) with Gal Abdush's mother and brother has them both acknowledging she was raped. [21] I would say Mondoweiss is the group pushing falsehoods here. Another source I provided has the headline Despite lack of evidence, allegations of Hamas ‘mass rape’ are fueling Israeli genocide in Gaza [22], in other words Monodoweiss pushes that there is no evidence that Palestinians raped Israelis on October 7th, so I don't see how I manipulated the source. Finally, for the CNN source Mondoweiss claims that CNN’s failure to adhere to professional and ethical standards of responsible journalism also raises questions regarding CNN’s possible complicity with a political campaign orchestrated by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office to perpetuate unverified claims of mass rape, and a larger effort to dehumanize Palestinians in order to justify the ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza. In other words, CNN is complicit with Israeli propaganda, and the claims of mass rape are "unverified". This is despite CNN's reporting being WP:USEDBYOTHERS such as the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. I think it's fair to say that Mondoweiss dismisses claims of mass rape as being Zionist agitprop, and I don't see how I engaged in source manipulation if that's what you're accusing me of.

  The other claims Burrobert says they refuted aren't mine so I won't comment further on them. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not going to get deep into the weeds here; suffice to say that you need to not conflate opinion pieces and journalistic ones (the second quote you provide is from a opinion piece) and in the first case, it is fairly clear to a neutral observer that MW is challenging that story by NYT, and not the broader narrative. Whether they challenged the broader narrative elsewhere I don't know, and don't particularly care; what I am seeing is evidence of a lack of nuance and care in reading, typically brought about by a battleground attitude. Vanamonde93 (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

  I've read the particular story [23] by the New York Times since I have a subscription. Gal Abdush is presented as a single example to introduce the story in the piece. The story then segues into: And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Ms. Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas. which leads into graphic descriptions of rape/sexual violence of several women who are not Gal Abdush. Mondoweiss' central point of contention is whether or not Hamas fighters engaged in systematic rape and sexual violence against Israeli women (this is the exact phrasing Mondoweiss used), and I think it is clear that they did.

  While Mondoweiss says a lot of true things in their story, such as the brother-in-law denying that Gal Abdush was raped, those things do not address the vast majority of evidence in the New York Times piece, such as other eyewitness testimony about the rapes from Sapir the 6 different locations the mass rapes occurred in, or Raz Cohen. It also says There is currently no trace of the video on the internet, which is patently false is it can be found with a simple web search. A Bing search for "woman who was raped and burned to death" has "hamas-massacre.net" as the second result with shows another very high-definition video of the dead body from the article. The reason why the New York Times only posted the low-resolution still image is because they cannot show a half-naked woman who has been raped & burned to death on their website for the same reason I can't directly post the link on Wikipedia. But the NY Times does mention the video in their article, and Mondoweiss is wrong on that front. Mondoweiss' finishes off the piece by then looking at a bunch of alleged social media posts from relatives and saying that because relatives may have seen the video and don't think it means rape, then the video isn't evidence of rape. In my opinion, this disproves nothing. It's Mondoweiss using hearsay instead of looking at the video to reach a conclusion themselves. It's trivial to find in a search engine in a few minutes, so I don't know why they didn't do it.

  The reason why I am getting into the weeds is because you're an admin active at WP:AE accusing me in an RfC of committing source manipulation and adding that my comment would be sanctionable there. But I think it's pretty clear that I'm saying that Mondoweiss didn't bother to look for the Gal Abdush video and their evidence refuting it is weak. And even if we believe them 100% that the video isn't proof of anything whatsoever, Mondoweiss didn't analyze the entire rest of the piece featuring other interviews + other examples of mass rape. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 01:55, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 per Zero (and my own comments scattered throughout this section).VR _talk 15:30, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 as thoroughly delineated in Chess's comments at the outset. Using this partisan propaganda outlet as a reliable source is contrary to our standards. Coretheapple (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 It is useless to cite it. Not a strong source. Its orientations and who stands behind it are known. Sakiv (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

  Could you explain why it’s not 4 with this explanation? Otherwise, I agree FortunateSons (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

  This editor has been topic-banned. Zero^talk 09:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 or 2 I think they are decent muckrakers. To give an example, the other day Yedioth Ahronoth, the leading Israeli daily, published an investigative report, authored by Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun, concluding that Israeli Defense Forces had essentially applied the Hannibal Directive on October 7 – a controversial doctrine that authorises the Israeli military to kill Israeli hostages along with hostage takers. According to Bergman and Zitun's report, it is unknown how many hostages were killed by the Israeli military on October 7, but the number appears to be substantial: in Ynet, the paper's online portal, Zitun said last month: Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF believes that beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations the soldiers were in at the time. For much of the current conflict in the Middle East, you had to struggle pretty hard to find any reporting on such matters in leading Western media outlets. My point here is that what you were able to read in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's leading daily, last week, and in Middle East Eye last month, you could have read in Mondoweiss three months ago: A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack. The English-language mainstream media pretty much refused to address how many Israelis were killed by Israeli friendly fire on Oct. 7, until very recently: New York Times Dec. 27, Haaretz Jan. 8, Associated Press Jan. 11. In conclusion, I think Mondoweiss is part of the spectrum we should cover. It is a serious site – it's not the Daily Mail publishing clickbait – and we should bear in mind that all our sources are occasionally wrong: mainstream Western sources (and Western politicians) repeated outright and inflammatory falsehoods for months. I'd rather have a broader range of opinion, including the odd mistaken view (which in any event can be balanced by others), than a situation where the truth is shut out. --Andreas JN466 15:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

  No, it is not correct that you could have read the same stuff in Mondoweiss three months ago. The Mondoweiss piece you cite is a "thumb-sucker." Pure speculation, and it is anonymous and largely based on Israeli media. It is unheard-of for a reliable source (by Wikipedia standards) to use anonymous "reporting." Even if Mondoweiss had been permitted to be used as a reliable source at the time of publication, I doubt very much that a speculative, anonymous report would have passed muster here. That is little more than a blog item and anonymous blogs are not reliable sources. We should be striving for the highest quality sources given the sensitivity of the I/P articles, and not lowering our standards so as to use blogs with an overt ideological agenda. Coretheapple (talk) 15:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 They're definitely biased but I don't think there's much evidence presented here that they're unreliable for facts in their news content. Loki (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 Indisputably a propaganda website, and we do not use propaganda websites as sourcing. In blogs such as this, the line between fact and fancy is thin, and their trafficking in fringe conspiracy theories bears this out. We don't use Mintnews for the same reason. The example above concerning the "Hannibal Directive" works against using Mondoweiss. The facts are unclear to this day, and reputable sources have dealt with that aspect of 10/7 responsibly. To no surprise, given its agenda (minimizing 10/7 and attacking Israel) it made a mention of the Hannibal Directive in speculative fashion earlier than reliable sources. This is an encyclopedia not a tabloid. We don't rush into print when the Daily Mirror or NY Post splatters something on Page One and likewise, especially in a controversial topic, it behooves us to utilize high quality sources for extraordinary claims, not anonymous speculation in a blog with an extreme agenda. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 14:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

How accurate is a statement like "we do not use propaganda websites as sourcing" I wonder? Sean.hoyland - talk 14:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

There's no question that we (the royal we, not you and me) use all kinds of crap as sourcing, and that assumes there is any sourcing at all. I recently spent considerable time and energy to obtain removal of an article on a mythical "crime family" that existed only in the imagination of the now-vanished editor who created it. There was sourcing, but none of it supported the existence of the subject of the article. I then found that that there was an entire template listing articles "related" to that mythical crime famiiy. More time down the drain. So sure, propaganda is used. Blogs are used. Coretheapple (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

We're not supposed to and this is a good first step. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:35, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure "we're not supposed to" is actually the case. The RfC:_China Daily case suggests that even when a source is operated by a Central Propaganda Department, there is wiggle room, a case by case approach to usage. Sean.hoyland - talk 04:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

That proves my point. We use outright propaganda, in much the same way as we tell our readers about "crime families" that don't exist (and we do so for many years). If Wikipedia existed during the 1930s, we might have used Der Stürmer or the Völkischer Beobachter. Hopefully we try not to have articles about nonexistent crime families, and likewise hopefully too we can strive for a higher standard of sourcing for contentious topics going forward, not using propaganda organs even if they do provide articles that aren't lies or spin on occasion. Coretheapple (talk) 16:19, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the comparison of Mondoweiss to Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter, but we would only be relying on those outlets in your counterfactual as Nazi Germany used the threat of force to make people publicly support those publications. Unlike Baidu Baike, Wikipedia does not have to take propaganda at face-value. Being hosted in the United States gives the WMF a right to delegate that authority to its userbase. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4 as per the topic starter. Using propaganda outlets is not a proper approach as it may mislead readers of Wikipedia. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 00:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 as far as I can see their news is generally reliable and I think their media analysis is especially useful even if it can sometimes be a bit off. The opinion pieces wouldn't be allowed in Wikipedia anyway. If some news appears - well I won't say exceptional because both sides have committed exceptional strocities - lets say debateable I'd say a second source which uses a reasonably independent first source would be enough to allow it. Anyway always attribute if used on its own. NadVolum (talk) 21:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. Mondoweiss is an important outlet for whatever news does not find its way into sources we regard as reliable because mainstream which, in the I/P area, means The New York Times, Haaretz, The Times of Israel, Ynet, Jerusalem Post etc., that is sources that systematically represent the standard Israeli narrative and underplay, when not ignoring or downcasing information from the Palestinian side. The reportage of the last four has been highly emotional, and times gung-ho, in its victimism (understandable, but the 93,000 deaths and casualties in Gaza are an abstraction, not a matter of in each case individual lives, as is, again understandably, the case in Israeli reportage). The point is, to what degree are we, by systematically deprecating a source like Mondoweiss, which provides a dissenting and, yes, Jewish perspective on Israel to a diasporic constituency and a general global readership, privileging the dominant Western narrative? Back in 1937, Sir Ronald Storrs in his classic Orientations wrote about the failure of the large Arab majority to have their views represented:

The Arab of Palestine therefore feels himself under an overwhelming inferiority in the presentation of his case to the conscience of the world. He is aware that he has not the ability, the organization, least of all the material resources or the audience for effective propaganda. . . . Against the scientifically controlled publicity of the two major continents he has about as much chance as had the Dervishes before Kitchener's machine guns at Omdurman'. (pp421-422)

i.e. 48 dead vs 12,000 Arabs. Things haven't changed much since Storr's day. Deprecation is to be avoided if only because it allows the lazy to repudiate very good reportage (Jonathan Ofir's use of what Hebrew newspapers write, for example).Nishidani (talk) 07:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Mondoweiss is an important outlet for whatever news does not find its way into sources we regard as reliable because mainstream... that is sources that systematically represent the standard Israeli narrative and underplay, when not ignoring or downcasing information from the Palestinian side. I want to strongly dispute the idea we need to use weak fringe sources because mainstream sources are pro-Israel. We have plenty of mainstream Western sources which have excellent I/P cover and do not represent the "standard Israeli narrative" (I'm thinking of Bethan McKernan in The Guardian, Wafaa Shurafa's reporting in The Independent, Clarissa Ward for CNN, for example); we have some strong regional media outlets (e.g. a recent RfC re-affirmed al-Jazeera as a reliable source); and editors can use independent sources such as +972 or Forensic Architecture for some of the detail that the bigger platforms might miss. In short, there's no reason to relax our standards simply because the NYT coverage is inadequate. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:23, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I also note that Jonathan Ofir's pieces are all labelled opinion, so even if we go with option 2 or 3 we'd need a very strong reason to think his opinion is noteworthy in our articles. I note he has also published in GlobalResearch[24] which doesn't give me confidence. Yes, some opinion in MW might on occasion be noteworthy so we should avoid deprecation, but this isn't the best example. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Disruptive !vote and offtopic follow-up. Further behavioral concerns can be brought to WP:AE or WP:ANI. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Option 1: (Personal attack removed) --Te og kaker (talk) 21:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC) Hey, could we please keep this civil and assume good faith? FortunateSons (talk) 22:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC) A more polite rephrasing of that would be good, I think. Selfstudier (talk) 22:44, 22 January 2024 (UTC) It seems questionable to directly accuse me of being a propagandist, especially with a derogatory term (wikt:hasbara) linked to my perceived ethnicity/nationality. Unz says Hasbara is a multi-billion dollar, tightly-coordinated Jewish campaign carried out by several Israeli government ministries and engaged in internationally by hundreds of Jewish organisations whose sole purpose is to silence criticism of anything Jewish and to promote a positive image of Israel abroad. [25] I'd appreciate it if the above !voter can clarify whether or not I'm being accused of being part of an international Jewish conspiracy to shape public opinion. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC) Let's not let this get out of hand. Te og kaker didn't mention names and only stated their concerns about "The issue here seems to be..." WP:AAGF - IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:34, 22 January 2024 (UTC) Well, Hasbara is a common antisemitic talking point/dog whistle when it comes to discussions on I/P, so I believe the question is acceptable, even if it is pointed. Citing a source that shows an antisemitic use is reasonable in this case, particularly if another reader may be unaware of the context. I could (and consciously didn’t) ask the same thing, but that was my attempt at letting them retract their statement as I commented first, and others can choose to engage with content that a reasonable person can perceive to be offensive in a variety of ways and remain within the scope of Wikipedia policy. FortunateSons (talk) 23:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC) WP:ASPERSIONS, WP:AGF - IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC) According to the page on casting aspersions you linked, An editor must not accuse another of misbehavior without evidence, especially when the accusations are repeated or severe. This especially applies to accusations of being paid by a company to promote a point of view (i.e., a shill) or similar associations and using that to attack or cast doubt over the editor in content disputes. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC) This feels like an argument rather than a productive discussion. It is clear that @FortunateSons and @Chess are casting apersions against @Te og kaker suggesting they may be motivated by anti-Jewish racism without evidence. It is less clear whether or not @Te og kaker is casting aspersions with the concerns they have raised. Another user mentioned similar concerns saying "what I am seeing is evidence of a lack of nuance and care in reading, typically brought about by a battleground attitude." and mentioning "egregious source misrepresentation, [...] the sort of thing we sanction people for at AE." I myself have similar concerns about this. - IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Aspersions require the accusations to be “without evidence”. This is not the case here. If you disagree, feel free to take the appropriate measures. FortunateSons (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2024 (UTC) And what evidence do you have to suggest that @Te og kaker is an antisemite? An incredible thing to suggest. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Me and others have elaborated above and below, and as the issue is resolved, I don’t believe that continuing this conversation is productive. FortunateSons (talk) 00:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC) The issue of the aspersions cast on @Te og kaker has not been resolved. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:39, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Also I don't know why this "Unz" definition of hasbara is being presented. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC) I have redacted the attack on other editors. I assume this !vote will be given the weight any !vote that does not address the source is generally granted. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC) I don't agree that was a personal attack and I don't believe it should have been redacted. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:17, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Calling those who believe that a source is not reliable Israeli propagandists is clearly an attack. They didn't state their concerns, they directly attacked other editors. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Thank you! FortunateSons (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4 per above, particularly BilledMammal etc. JM (talk) 01:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 I don't think there's much evidence presented here that they're unreliable for facts in their news content. per Loki and amalysis above by Burrobert and comments by VR. Additional general obsevation about coverage of sexual violence, both on and off WP. People are speaking as though either all the alleged sexual violence is either wholly true (regardless of how improbable and/or uncorroborated), and to approach the topic with a measure of caution and scepticism is somehow inherently despicable, rather than being the proper job of journalism, or all of it is wholly false. Very little forensic analysis has occurred and it will probably be some time before the true extent of such violence is known. Accusations of sexual violence are commonplace in the early days of conflicts, ocassionally, though not often, they turn out to have been understated. Pincrete (talk) 06:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 - zero basis for deprecating or even listing it as generally unreliable, not liking a significant viewpoint does not somehow make it less significant, and Mondoweiss frequently publishes significant viewpoints. Not liking a stance on any topic, be it Syria or Israel and Palestine, has nothing to do with reliability. And thats whats been presented here, individual articles that individual editors object to for whatever reason. That is emphatically not a reason to deprecate. nableezy - 20:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2: As a site that principally hosts opinions, the usual provisions apply. Otherwise, no strong evidence has been provided that the site seriously misleads or plays loose with the facts in non-opinion material; instead, the emphasis of the case brought against it is one of bias and spin, which has limited bearing on reliability. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:30, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 - Mondoweiss is biased, but I did not see significant evidentiary support for the proposition presented here that MW are unreliable for facts in their news reporting. I think Mondoweiss is usable, depending on context. Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:09, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 - The current status of Mondoweiss in WP:Perennial sources is that "Editors consider the site biased or opinionated, and its statements should be attributed." However, a close examination of the evidence provided, particularly by BilledMammal, underscores significant concerns about Mondoweiss's tendency to engage misrepresentation of sources, and publication of information with minimal fact-checking. For example, Mondoweiss's coverage of issues such as sexual violence and its approach to reporting on the Al-Ahli hospital explosion demonstrate a pattern of editorial practices that do not meet basic standards for reliability and verifiability. Such practices include the uncritical reliance on sources that are themselves unreliable or have been deprecated by Wikipedia, as well as the publication of speculative analyses without adequate support from credible, independent sources. Given these concerns, Option 3 (generally unreliable) seems completely justified. However, the extent and nature of the issues observed with Mondoweiss combined with the frequency of its current use in articles, could warrant Option 4 (deprecation). Marokwitz (talk) 07:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 per Zero. I am a little worried about BilledMammal's classification of MondoWeiss's excellent piece on the deficiencies of the New York Times' reporting on the death of Gal Abdush. Most of the article relates to the way the American paper misled the family of the victim and published fabricated quotes by them.--Boynamedsue (talk) 16:15, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4. It's a propaganda website or collection of blogs. It isn't reputable. Chess convicingly points out how it publishes disinformation since October 7. Researcher (Hebrew: חוקרת) (talk) 16:59, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
  • I mean, even if that's true, it's rather extreme to blacklist an entire site because they've been publishing bad information for the last 6 months. That's a reason not to use anything written in the last 6 months, it's not a reason to ban everything this publication has ever published from being linked on Wikipedia, which is what you're voting for.
• 2 or 3. Same as E-I, I don't trust their news as reliable, but they are cited by scholars. I did the same as E-I, searched my little pile of PDFs, and I see Mondoweiss cited by Ronit Lentin, Nadim Rouhana, Nur Masalha, Rashid Khalidi, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, and Rosemary Sayigh among others. I'd allow its use for WP:EXPERTSPS and for articles cited by scholars. It's not generally reliable but don't deprecate. Levivich (talk) 17:14, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 Pr Zero, and Boynamedsue. Off course it has a POV, like all other media focusing on Israel/Palestine, hence there will always be people with WP:IDONTLIKEIT-views. Huldra (talk) 22:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. The normal considerations for biased sources apply, but there hasn't been convincing proof that its non-opinion writing suffers from factual accuracy issues. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 03:28, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Mondoweiss)

• With the caveat that I've never read Mondoweiss in my life; the vast majority of links I'm seeing above are to opinion pieces, already covered by WP:OPED. Is there evidence that Mondoweiss's journalistic pieces contain misinformation? Vanamonde93 (talk) 07:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  @Vanamonde93: These opinion pieces are cited in talk pages in the topic area to support claims about the conflict. [26] [27] [28] [29] They are also cited in multiple articles. [30] [31] [32] [33] Ditto for their "media analysis" pieces. [34] WP:RSEDITORIAL is a guideline and you can say that it should cover this, but in practice it has and does not. An WP:RSP entry would make it clearer. How would you feel about deprecating their opinion pieces? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  More examples of their opinion pieces being cited in Wikipedia articles. [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] These are all 2023. I can find more if you'd like. I think 'media analysis' should also be deprecated if that is a workable compromise. I think we should be explicitly deprecating Mondoweiss opinions in order to prevent their improper use in articles. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:21, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not opposed to adding an RSP entry about their opinion pieces assuming there is sufficient discussion here, but what would that achieve? Bad sources that are marked as such at RSP are frequently used in talk page discussion and in articles, and deprecation won't stop that, only blacklisting would. I don't yet see evidence of the need to deprecate media analysis pieces. The one you link [40] appears to be based on an opinion piece in Haaretz; certainly it shares a POV with that opinion piece. Are we talking about deprecating Haaretz too? I assume not; we just treat their OpEds with caution as well. Vanamonde93 (talk) 08:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  It would achieve a blanket rule that Mondoweiss opinion pieces are bad and make them easier to remove in a very contentious topic area. I don't think we should treat Mondoweiss OpEds with caution, I think they're so extreme and contain enough disinformation that we should be blanket discouraging them from articles. Sort of like how WP:COUNTERPUNCH had to be explicitly declared as unreliable despite exclusively being a vehicle for opinion pieces, as it was heavily used in this topic area as a source. [41] Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:39, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  “The one you link” is a little confusing here as Chess linked multiple examples and I can’t actually see where this one is cited on WP. But this particular example is a good example of why a MondoWeiss opinion piece (blog post) is rarely due. It’s Philip Weiss’ personal take on an op Ed published in Ha’aretz. Why would we cite this fringe person’s opinion rather than the more noteworthy Ha’aretz op Ed? Designation as generally unreliable wouldn’t stop that, of course, but it would create a red flag that would lead to it being replaced or removed more quickly. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

  I’m opposed to deprecating their opinion content. I think there could be times when opinion there might be due (eg if by a notable commentator or received secondary attention). Designation as generally unreliable is sufficient signal that opinion there can be presumed not to be due, while allowing for exceptions. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:21, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

  Their efforts to cast doubt on the allegations of sexual violence extends beyond their opinion articles; for example, CNN report claiming sexual violence on October 7 relied on non-credible witnesses, some with undisclosed ties to Israeli govt BilledMammal (talk) 09:21, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Wanted to share something I found while researching this. Mondoweiss has received grants from Ron Unz. This comes from a conservative think-tank but I checked one of the 990 forms and Mondoweiss is indeed there. Of course he's a well known Holocaust denier whose Unz Review has been deprecated. Interestingly, Mondoweiss stopped disclosing their donors lately [42]. Alaexis_¿question? 10:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

That same 990 shows a $10,000 donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. The UNZ Foundation was dissolved in 2017 and Mondoweiss did not receive money from it in that year or since. Zero^talk 13:27, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation to my knowledge has not acclaimed the killing of Jewish people. Mondoweiss on the other hand shares that with Unz, so it's a more plausible they've been financially influenced by neo-Nazis. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Speculation. Selfstudier (talk) 19:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Both Mondoweiss and neo-Nazis agree that murdering Jewish people in Israeli is OK. They have a lot more in common. Weiss has also cited Unz News before, [43] including noted Holocaust denier Philip Giraldi to say that Jews control the United States. [44] [45] Weiss is a fan of Unz on a personal level as well and published opinion pieces supporting him after the big donation. [46] Columnists such as John Mearsheimer have published in both Mondoweiss and Unz. [47] [48] People in this discussion are going to bring up that Philip Weiss is Jewish, but so is Ron Unz. That didn't stop Unz from creating a news site with columnists like Andrew Anglin denying the Holocaust and it doesn't mean Philip Weiss' site can't be part of the same antisemitic network as well. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:21, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Putting Mondoweiss and neo-Nazis in the same basket is really quite disgraceful. But anyway this is just a distraction. Do we investigate the writings of the editor of the NYT to decide whether the NYT is a reliable source? Zero^talk 07:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

The editor of the NYT also has considerably less power over what the paper doesn’t and publish as opposed to Philip Weiss and his personal blog. This also again leads into (in my opinion) one of two genuine issues here that present an argument for GUNREL, rather than just bias - Mondoweiss is in many ways a WP:SPS, rather than a proper media outlet.

The other issue is its considerable overlap with other GUNREL and deprecated sources, but BilledMammal’s entry below elaborates further on that. The Kip 08:54, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

You have no evidence that Weiss changes the content of articles that Mondoweiss publishes, except those he writes himself. He probably chooses which articles to publish, but that concerns bias and not reliability. The bottom line is that authors are responsible for what they write and there is nothing written so far to challenge that. Zero^talk 12:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, your position is to treat it like we treat WP:COUNTERPUNCH? BilledMammal (talk) 16:01, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Chess mentions John Mearsheimer, as a 'columnist', and not the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, as if that were proof of their remarkable theories about Mondoweiss. Good grief. His name is proof of the quality of many contributions to Mondoweiss.Nishidani (talk) 07:52, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago is a lot longer than columnist, so I didn't feel like using his full title (I'm not his student so I don't have to use honorifics). Anyways, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor Mearsheimer is also as of January 4th, 2024, OK with having his content published in Unz. [49] Either he's not selective of where he allows his content to be published or he likes to publish in anti-Semitic outlets. Both of these possibilities count against Mondoweiss. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Thats a reprint from his substack. Please dont make such insinuations about living people, it is both factually wrong and against our BLP policy. nableezy - 18:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The article says at the bottom (Republished from Substack by permission of author or representative). In other words, he gave his permission to be published in Unz. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Or he didnt and he just allows articles on his substack to republished by anybody who wants to. nableezy - 20:31, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

If he just allows articles on his substack to republished by anybody who wants to, then that's identical to what I said, which is: either he's not selective of where he allows his content to be published or he likes to publish in anti-Semitic outlets. It's one or both of the two. If it's the first one (as you say), then his name being in Mondoweiss is not proof of the quality of Mondoweiss. If it's the second (which I will concede is less likely), it's more evidence of Mondoweiss' bias.

Either way, this isn't a BLP violation as I provided inline citations to all of the claims I'm making, unless you don't believe Unz is anti-Semitic. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Except the fact that he wrote the column for Mondoweiss and they did not simply republish something he wrote elsewhere. Mearsheimer has never written anything for Unz, despite the characterization above that he has published work for both Mondoweiss and Unz. No, he has not, Unz has reprinted material he wrote and published elsewhere, whereas he actually has written for Mondoweiss. nableezy - 05:27, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't, as a desultory reader of one or two pieces a day in Mondoweiss for nearly two decades, find anything vaguely supporting this absurd attempt to pass it off as some anti-semitic, holocaust-denying, pro-Nazi pastiche. Unbelievable. have you any idea of the contrarian vigour of Jewish and Israeli thinkers, journalists and others?Nishidani (talk) 08:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

• I suppose this is somewhat covered with the above information on Unz, but one thing I do have a question about: one of the key things that led to the recent deprecations of The Electronic Intifada and The Cradle, which covered the same topic area as Mondoweiss, was their overlap with/reliance on other already-deprecated sources, such as RT, Sputnik, The Grayzone, Al Mayadeen, and others. Is there any similar overlap between Mondoweiss and other deprecated sites? The Kip 23:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  It seems they do.

  They cite Electronic Intifada regularly, in both news and opinion articles (eg. 1, 2) and in 2021 published this salute to ‘Electronic Intifada’, where they described their activities as "truth telling".

  References to the Grayzone are less frequent but they do still happen (eg. 1). They also share a number of authors with that site, including Dan Cohen (Mondoweiss profile, Grayzone profile), Hamzah Raza (Mondoweiss profile, Grayzone profile), and Max Blumenthal himself (Mondoweiss profile).

  They make frequent reference to Al Mayadeen (eg. 1, 2, 3, 4)

  They republish works, both in whole and in part, from Counterpunch under their "News" header (eg. 1, 2, 3)

  They make frequent reference to Press TV (eg. 1, 2, 3)

  They make frequently make use of Russia Today, including through extensive excerpts, and have defended the source (eg. 1, 2, 3)

  Effectively, it seems if we have a deprecated source that aligns with their bias, they have almost certainly have a connection to it; for example, it seems they also use Telesur and The Unz Review - this last one is particularly relevant, given the evidence Alaexis presented above them receiving donations. I wasn't able to check for Sputnik or The Cradle, as both of those terms returned too many irrelevant results when searching for them.

  I will note that I haven't checked the accuracy of the claims they are using these sources for - but I don't think that's overly important as relying on extremely problematic sources is a huge red flag. BilledMammal (talk) 01:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Well, that’s rather concerning. The Kip 01:49, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  I agree, that reliance is highly concerning. FortunateSons (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  I don't see how this calls for deprecation. I really dislike this daisy-chaining approach. This doesn't seem like grounds to deprecate the source as a whole; rather, an editor could simply go to the MW source that's cited, see if it relies on/cites to a deprecated source, and then, if so, use that as a basis to remove individually-offending pieces. We're all grown-ups here who shouldn't be afraid of a little legwork. WillowCity^(talk) 18:21, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Part of being a reliable source is knowing how to identify sources which peddle misinformation; if you’re unable to do so then that raises serious questions about your own reliability, as it suggests that the editorial process behind all your articles, including those that don’t explicitly rely on such sources, is flawed.

  On it’s own, perhaps this wouldn’t be enough to justify Option 3 or Option 4 - reasonable minds could differ - but when we consider it in the context of the other evidence I have presented, of Mondoweiss misrepresenting sources and peddling misinformation, it is. BilledMammal (talk) 02:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  Are you saying unreliable sources or deprecated sources are false 100% of the time? Of course not. So could Mondoweiss not be citing Press TV etc when these sources are true and not citing them when these sources are not? VR _talk 07:04, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  How do you know when a deprecated source, a source that peddles misinformation, is presenting factual information? BilledMammal (talk) 08:07, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  RS regularly cite Press TV: BBC News[50][51], CNN[52][53] (in both these examples, CNN bases the entire article based on Press TV reporting) VR _talk 15:27, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  It could be, but I don’t think it is here. Citing something critically can be done well, but based on the size of the org and what is linked here as well as the regular reliance on only one or two unreliable sources, it doesn’t appear to be good enough at determining truthfulness to be considered even close to reliable. FortunateSons (talk) 16:11, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Below are my responses to a post made under my vote above:

• Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion: An editor has said that it is “indisputably false” that evidence of complete Palestinian culpability for for Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion has been largely debunked. Since the meaning of the claim is unclear I will stick to what Mondoweiss says in its article published on 9 November. “The New York Times has shown how Israel’s supposed evidence did not add up, and so have Forensic Architecture and Channel 4 News”. So its article is pointing out that, as at 9 November, reliable sources had dismissed the evidence provided by Israel that the explosion was the result of a Palestinian missile. It was a reasonable position to hold.
• Use of Deprecated sources by Mondoweiss: One of the arguments used by editors against Mondoweiss has been that it uses deprecated sources such as RT. I looked at one reference provided by these editors and found that the article was in fact dismissive of RT, saying "No doubt both Russia Insider and Russia Today are trying to make the US look bad and presumably, Kirby might be right in saying RT reporters don’t go after the Russian government when it bombs civilians" and "No doubt Russia Today is a slanted news source …”. In a follow up, an editor said “in the article [Mondoweiss] appear to be downplaying the issues with [RT]”. Since the editor did not provide an example of this, I can’t respond. The editor also said Mondoweiss “present[s] Russian interference in the US election as pseudoscience and analogous to creationism”. Firstly, this appears to have nothing to do with RT. Secondly, some quite respectable sources have expressed scepticism of the arguments about used by Russiagaters. Thirdly, Mondoweiss does not say that Russiagate does not exist (“Whatever truth there might be in any of the claims”). Its criticism is of the reporting and “the opportunistic and  incoherent arguments” made regarding it.
• Counting the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in 2022: An editor took issue with Mondoweiss’ statement that “The Israeli onslaught on Gaza … took the lives of 51 Palestinians”. The article was published on 8 November 2022. To refute the figure the editor used sources dated 13 August and 24 August 2022. Given that the Mondoweiss article supports its statement by linking to an article dated 9 October, the figure of 51 refers to casualties from August onwards and so articles published in August cannot be used to disprove the figure. Burrobert (talk) 07:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Just a point about Mondoweiss's reportage on rapes. The core issue these pieces reflect critically on is the extremely diffuse meme, from day 1, that Hamas made mass rape one of the orders of the day to their militants. I have no reason to doubt many such cases exist, but scrupulous reportage would note that many of the early accounts are extremely confusing and contradictory. On wikipedia we have accepted that Hamas engaged in deliberate mass rape, that is the accepted narrative. But, and this is not by any means to be read as some attempt to exculpate Hamas from the terroristic killings they enacted that day, the invasion consisted apparently of trained Hamas operatives given specific plans, and a very large number of Gazans who exploited the destruction of the separation barrier, many of whom also ran amok. And, at least one Israeli eyewitness (whose account is still confused) states that Hamas militants did not undertake the rape he saw (Technical accounts tell us the core Hamas groups were supposed to have retired back to their tunnels by 10:30 am, within 4 hours).

"And that's it, and we hid in the bush for 9 hours bush with terrorists around us. These terrorists were not from the Nukhba unit [Hamas' elite force]. They were Gazans, civilians, with knives, axes, I don't think they had firearms, but there were many terrorists around us who did have firearms," he (Raz Cohen) said. Nir (Shoko) Cohen, 'He pulled out a knife, stabbed her, continued to rape her a bit more, and then he let her go' Ynet 17 January 2024

News outlets like Mondoweiss rightly highlight anomalies, contradictions (trauma militates against accuracy, naturally) in the major narrative set in concrete by the mainstream. That is not denialism. It is simple professionalism, allowing their contributors to clarify that much of what we are told is (as it is to me) confusing, despite the unanimity.Nishidani (talk) 10:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Reliability of news reporting

Since a few editors have noted that many of the examples come from opinion pieces, I've looked specifically at news published by MW. They have reporters on the ground in Gaza and in Israel, and I'm sure that most of what they write is true (however that's also the case for RT). The problem is their news also read like a blog rather than a normal news source. In particular they are prone to making rather extreme statements in their news articles too. Here are some examples, I don't think this is something we'd want to add to Wikipedia based on MW

• all Zionist parties ... can be proud of ... converting Israel to a Full-Dictatorship [54].
• There is apparently intensification of fascist persecutions against critical voices in Israel [55]

They write that Mondoweiss editors select content for the site on the basis of our shared commitment to news professionalism as well as justice for Palestinians. This is more fitting for an advocacy organisation rather than a media outlet. Alaexis_¿question? 13:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• The full quote is When the last Netanyahu – Ben-Gvir government was established, they proudly labeled themselves a Full-Right government. Now, with full public unity between all Zionist parties for the destruction of Gaza, they can be proud of a much bigger achievement, converting Israel to a Full-Dictatorship.
• The second quote is an editor's comment explaining why the author of an article requested that their name not be published. Using the term "fascism" is provocative, but reliable outlets have published stories about the backlash against those outside Israel who have criticised Israel's actions. Some have termed it McCarthyism.[56] [57][58] The relationship between McCarthyism and Fascism has been remarked upon.[59][60] The Intercept has published articles about censorship/crackdown within Israel. It reported that there are "eight subjects the media are forbidden from reporting on in Israel". Also, "Since Israel’s war on Hamas started, more than 6,500 news items were either completely censored or partially censored by the Israeli government". Full censorship is not required because "People self-censor, people do not even try to report the stories they know won’t get through ... And that is really showing right now in how little regular Israelis are seeing in the press about what is happening in Gaza to Palestinians".[61] In November last year the Israeli Chief Military Censor "issued a complaint with senior IDF officers that sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have exerted extraordinary pressure on him to prevent publication of various events in the media".[62]
• The support for "justice for Palestinians'" is admirable and an indication of the outlet's bias, which editors would take into account when assessing its articles. A similar bias exists for Jewish outlets. For example, The Forward states that it "acquires and publishes informative, enlightening content that expresses its enduring commitments to social justice, Yiddish and Jewish culture, and the welfare of the Jewish people worldwide ".[63] Another admirable sentiment. The Times of Israel says "We aim for the site to serve as a platform for constructive debate regarding the challenges facing Israel, the region and the Jewish people.[64] Nothing wrong with that attitude, just a bias that editors would assess when using the outlet. Burrobert (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Re the first item, this is the full quote indeed, but my concern was with the characterisation of Israel as a dictatorship. This is a pretty extraordinary claim, as fascist dictatorships are not usually known for allowing courts to strike down the dictator's powers [65]. Of all criticism levied at Israel (human rights violations, apartheid, etc), this is pretty rare. I'm not sure whether they mean it as a rhetorical device or as a serious characterisation - but that's precisely the problem as reliable sources usually don't use such language without really strong evidence or attribution. And it's their reliability that we're discussing. Re the third point, fair enough. Alaexis_¿question? 19:28, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  @Burrobert, you're right that many reliable sources focus on a certain region or topic and it's perfectly okay. The issue here is that MW only focus on one aspect of justice for Palestinians. Having looked at dozens of their news articles I haven't seen any criticism of Hamas and the criticism of PA, when it does appear, is mostly about their collaboration with Israel. Alaexis_¿question? 09:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with Burrobert’s third bullet point here. Partisan sources can be reliable. But the first two bullet points affirm the key issue Alaexis was raising: that items tagged as “news” are (at least sometimes) in fact opinion pieces. As a minimum, what we should take from that is that the site should be treated as opinion site and not routinely used as a source for facts. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

What is interesting is that "news" and "opinion" are intermixed. For example, "Tracing my queer consciousness from Palestine to the US, and back again" is labeled as "news" but it is quite self-evidently nothing of the sort. I think at the very least we need to treat the entire site as opinion pieces. BilledMammal (talk) 16:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis: plenty of news reporting is often biased and mixed with opinions. For example, Israeli newspapers (including Times of Israel) have been casually calling "terrorist" any Palestinian who acts violently (sometimes even said Palestinian is not affiliated with any group[66]). That's obviously POV language we wouldn't use on wikipedia per WP:TERRORIST. This is in contrast to more professional news organizations, like BBC News, which explain that using such words implies taking sides in a conflict. VR _talk 17:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I have very little faith in their editorial review which go beyond WP:BIAS and regularly WP:Fringe. At best, they really shouldn’t be used for anything related to BLP, Russia and Israel, at worst (and IMO this part is most likely) a full depreciation may be in order. FortunateSons (talk) 16:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Addition, as brought up above: even insofar as the source is not generally depreciated, anything that comes from an anonymous contributor should absolutely not be used. As there is a history of at least highly questionable reporting and intentional or unintentional failures in the editorial process (discussed at length above), a lack of ability to identify the contributor would make any further considerations effectively impossible. FortunateSons (talk) 15:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Regarding "fascist persecutions" of critical voices in Isreael, The Observer, which functions as the Sunday edition of The Guardian, reported the following story a couple of days ago:

• "‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’: teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concern about Gaza deaths – Meir Baruchin, who was fired and jailed for criticising the military, says that many who agree with him are afraid to go public"
• Quote: "An unlikely charge of intent to commit treason landed Meir Baruchin, a grey-haired, softly spoken history and civics teacher, in the solitary confinement wing of Jerusalem’s notorious “Russian Compound” prison in early November. The evidence compiled by police who handcuffed him, then drove to his apartment and ransacked it as he watched, was a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge."
• Needless to say, the man was also fired from his job.

Andreas JN466 09:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

If The Observer is used as a source, at that time we can deal with their reliability, and whether they meet the high standards that we should strive for in contentious topic areas.. Mondoweiss is the topic of this discussion. Coretheapple (talk) 15:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the point is not to challenge the reliability of The Observer but to assert that Mondoweiss's claim of "fascist persecutions" isn't as implausible as the OP made it sound. Loki (talk) 15:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed; that's the takeaway I got. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 16:25, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

But note the Observer doesn’t use the word “fascist”; it presents the facts. An opinion piece might then argue that this is “fascist”, but a serious news organisation wouldn’t casually use that word in its own voice in a report. The MW report is labelled news, and the content of it appears factual, but MW add an editorial caveat at the start, using “fascist” in their own voice, blurring the news/opinion distinction. This is a reflection on their editorial judgment, that undermines any potential news value in the content they publish from Palestine, and why they should be seen as an opinion blog not a news source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The word "fascist" wasn't actually used in the Mondoweiss article. It was part of an editorial note explaining why the author of that piece wished to remain anonymous.

As for The Observer, they called it a "witch hunt" in their article. Either way, you are talking about someone getting a knock on the door and being fired from their job for criticizing their government on Facebook. Andreas JN466 22:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as I said, MW add an editorial caveat at the start, using “fascist” in their own voice, blurring the news/opinion distinction. This reflects on the editorial quality.

no, The Observer didn’t call it a witch hunt. They quoted somebody calling it a witch-hunt: they reported factually. (And of course the gap between “witch hunt” and “fascist” is huge.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:12, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a long established principle here (see WP:BIASED) that the tone of a source and whether it's reliable for facts are two totally separate things. I agree that Mondoweiss is a biased source, but that doesn't mean it's unreliable for facts. That its factual reporting seems to match with that of mainstream sources except that its wording is more stridently anti-Israel seems to exactly confirm my vote above: Option 2 because it's strongly biased but there's no evidence that it's unreliable for facts. Loki (talk) 23:43, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Morning Star (UK)

Here's a severe failure at understanding basic facts about peace processes and international agreements and basic English semantics by the Morning Star (British newspaper), which already has several earlier discussions linked at WP:RSP, with currently no consensus status.

• The MS says on 12 Feb 2024, concerning Vladimir Putin's speech from a few days earlier (called an "interview"), that Putin confirmed that, just prior to Johnson's visit, a signed agreement had been reached ratified by the representatives of both Ukraine and Russia and counter-signed by France and Germany.
• The closest thing in the source - wikisource:Interview to Tucker Carlson - that vaguely resembles this is Putin stating, per the official Kremlin transcrip, "Davyd Arakhamia even put his preliminary signature on the document I am telling you about. But then he publicly stated to the whole world: 'We were ready to sign this document, but Mr. Johnson, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, came and dissuaded us from doing this saying it was better to fight Russia. They would give us everything we needed to return what was lost during the clashes with Russia. And we agreed with this proposal.'"

I searched the Putin transcript carefully, and this was the best I found.

Misleading wording:

• omission of the word "preliminary" to describe Arakhamia's would-be signature (per Putin), which is misleading in describing what Putin said;

Failed verifications:

• nothing at all in Putin's statement about a Russian representative signing;
• nothing at all about ratification, which, in the context of international formal agreements between states, is much stronger than just signing;
• nothing about counter-signatures by representatives of the French or German states.

We do have a whole section on the 29-30 March 2022 peace talks, so any new reliable sources would be helpful. But to me this is either outright fabrication or severe incompetence in reporting on an extremely serious issue.

This is just one incident of what appears to be outright fabrication, but if people have noticed other factual failures by MS (UK), it might be worth reconsidering its WP:RSP status. Boud (talk) 20:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

• I don't think that this is as significant as you make out. This is an editorial, and we don't know whether it is based solely on the Putin interview. However, it is substantially accurate in its main claim, which is that Putin says that Johnson scuppered an agreement between Russia and Ukraine (Putin is not the only person who says this, there are many less dubious sources). The editorial can not be used to source a claim that France and Germany had literally counter-signed a deal, as it looks to me that both "ratified" and "counter-signed" here are metaphorical. If not this would be an extraordinary claim, as it implies that the deal was literally in force but Johnson somehow scuppered a ratified treaty between sovereign nations post-facto. It seems to me that it is clear that the editorial is not claiming that.

As it stands, after an RfC we are at "no-consensus" on MS's reliability, I personally think it should be classed as generally reliable. If we are seeing problems with the way the MS is being used, I am open to reconsider.Boynamedsue (talk) 22:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The Morning Star is a tabloid newspaper, I would be cautious in using it for anything that could have BLP implications. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:39, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The Morning Star is in a tabloid format, but it does not engage in tabloid journalism. Certainly less so than the Telegraph or the TimesBoynamedsue (talk) 22:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how "ratified" and "counter-signed" can be seen as metaphorical. I agree that the claim is extraordinary, given the lack of evidence: that's my point. If the reader is expected to see well-defined legalistic words like these as metaphors, then that makes it difficult to use as a source. True that it's an editorial rather than a regular news report. And true that in the interview, Putin says that Johnson scuppered a deal, but a loose informal deal is very different from a deal with well-defined wording and signing, ratification, and counter-signatures of witnesses/guarantors; especially in this case where the parties have low trust levels in each other. The meaning changes radically depending on what sort of deal was scuppered. I'm not aware of this particular editorial being used as a source in Wikipedia. Nevertheless, this particular case suggests a low standard of editing. Boud (talk) 01:59, 14 February 2024 (UTC) (clarify) Boud (talk) 02:08, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Imprecise language in a single editorial is not enough to substantially say that a source is unreliable. I don't think a reasonable person reading that could suppose it is literally claiming Johnson had the power to abrogate signed and ratified international treaties. As it is, a claim sourced to an editorial from a publication that is currently in the "no consensus" on reliability column is not going to make it into the article in case of disagreement. So there's no problem here.Boynamedsue (talk) 04:19, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

This piece is indeed problematic, including the use of the word "confirmed" which implies that Putin is telling the truth. But it's an editorial, which we wouldn't normally use as a source for facts, so this is less important than if it was a news article making misleading claims. However, with a generally reliable source, we'd expect unsigned editorials to be stringently fact checked, so this is a good example of why we shouldn't see MS as generally reliable. Are there problems with actual news articles that might push this into the generally unreliable category? (My view is we might want to use news articles from the MS on topics that might be underreported in mainstream media, such as trade union issues or protests, but should avoid it for non-UK topics and absolutely avoid it on topics related to Russia's geopolitical interests.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC) I also agree with Boynamedsue on the "tabloid" question: paper size is not an indicator of reliability. It is not a "tabloid" in the sense that The Sun is. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:41, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Electronic music sources

WP:ALBUMS/SOURCES has quite a few sources, but almost none of them are about electronic music, which is a pretty big genre. I am currently working to get an electronic album to FA and I'm trying to use only the ones I'm sure are reliable, like the dance division of Billboard, but the following are the biggest websites focused solely on the genre, so I'd like to request opinions on them too.

• YourEDM (apparently no about page) - seems to be the largest EDM website, but this discussion and this one indicates that it is possibly unreliable.
• Dancing Astronaut (about page / wiki article)
• EDM.com (about page)
• We Rave You (about page)

There are other big websites, but I feel these are the main ones, and others already felt clearly unreliable for me. Skyshiftertalk 23:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any particular knowledge of the field or these websites, but a couple of things on their about pages made me raise an eyebrow. The biggest was on EDM.com, where the about page reads in part: "In the interest of journalistic integrity we here at EDM.com are committed to the transparency of our business model. A portion of our content is sponsored by advertisers and we cover music released by the record labels with which we partner." Notably omitted from that is any committment to disclose which articles have been sponsored - maybe they do, but I haven't been able to find an example of what that looks like. If I were reviewing an article at FA which used these as sources, I would absolutely be asking the nominator to justify their use. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I had a look at WeRaveYou, and picked a random news story posted today - this one. It doesn't have a writer byline and a quick Google found this story, posted 36 hours earlier by reliable source Mixmag. The WeRaveYou one is practically identical. Black Kite (talk) 10:01, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a list of sources at Wiki Project Electronic Music here but not all of them have linked discussions, Atlantic306 (talk) 19:50, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I've just encountered that. It seems that most of these were added without any kind of discussion. Skyshiftertalk 00:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@Black Kite it actually does have a by-line off to the right, "Written by Lewis Mulligan" though they are not a listed staff member. Both articles are based from the BBC's press release so churnalism. S0091 (talk) 21:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I come across these as an AfC reviewer and am skeptical of all them. YourEDM as previously discussed is not reliable. DancingAstronaut touts itself as "brand" and if you look at their articles, they are all either press releases/announcements or are glowing coverage, even articles marked as "[Review]". We Rave You offers " tailored promotion and marketing strategies and campaigns to grow your brand." EDM.com is the most promising of the bunch but as Caeciliusinhorto states above, disclosure of sponsored/partner content is not clear so it might be worth emailing them to ask.

With this said, it also depends on your use of these sources. I think any of them are likely fine as a primary source, meaning probably ok to support an event occurred, the line-up, etc. or that a song/album was released but not much more. S0091 (talk) 20:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

It is sad that this is the situation for the biggest EDM websites honestly, but yeah, unfortunately it is what it is. I did think of using them for some strong claims (although it is supported by other reliable sources, I won't use that one). Even if I used them for simple stuff, I'll probably avoid them anyways considering how harsh FA reviewers tend to be sometimes in regards to sourcing. Skyshiftertalk 00:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)