Talk:The Daily Caller/Archive 5

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Misleading "Misleading video about NPR"

The Daily Caller broke a story that was later proven to be wrong, if I understand it correctly? That's not out of the ordinary.

ABC and NPR themselves both reported on the same information on the same day. Unless I'm not getting something, I don't see how this is noteworthy. Somewordswrittendown (talk) 23:25, February 3, 2020‎ (UTC)

Somewordswrittendown, this is New Page Review. I think you want WT:NPR which is about National Public Radio. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:21, 4 February 2020 (UTC)Whoops. This appeared right next to a NPP related update on my watchlist and I got them mixed up. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Barkeep49: No, Somewordswrittendown is in the right place. This is the talk page about The Daily Caller, which has a section Misleading video about NPR, with text that User:Snooganssnoogans added in September 2018. Somewordswrittendown is also right to complain, although I doubt that the words can be easily removed. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Eh, the source gives it a paragraph; it's worth a sentence here. XOR'easter (talk) 14:54, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
It's supported by a reliable source. That makes it a question of editorial judgment. So it's acceptable to challenge that judgment, but not "right" to complain that it's "misleading" because it isn't. Guy (help!) 15:30, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Article has too many minor details in negative sections, let's fix it

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I see an issue with this article, and I have ideas on how to fix it. This article contains way to much intricate detail of minor disputes and situations among its 10+ sections dedicated to negative content. We should summarize that content better and put it into a dedicated section, like most Wikipedia articles do.

I understand that some people oppose this organization, its methods and what it's trying to accomplish. I also understand that some will neither oppose it, and of course there will be those who support it.

That being said...

The issue:

  • This article looks like a negative hit job on this organization. Regardless of politics, if you simply skim down the article, it's almost all negative. There are over 10 *sections* dedicated to negative content.
  • Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia of knowledge. I cannot imagine any credible encyclopedia containing much of the content found in those sections of the article.

How to fix:

Here are my two ideas. I would strongly recommend each:

1. Build a strong-enough "Controversies" section: Summarize the main overall points of the negative content sections, and compose those into a new Controversies section. Make sure the section is long enough to be in line with the gravity, weight, and frequency of the negative angles, but avoid hashing out every minor detail of each dispute or situation.

2. Re-arrange the order of the article: Make it similar to other articles about U.S. political-leaning magazines. The categories can serve as a guide, such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_conservative_magazines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alternative_magazines

There does not seem to be uniformity on the American political magazine articles yet, but we can borrow ideas.

Input? What do people think? Jeremydavis255 (talk) 18:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Controversy sections are strongly discouraged, so the present method of placing such content in the relevant sections is perfectly proper. Also, avoid anything that can be seen as whitewashing. That is not allowed here. Many editors, especially newbies, assume that NPOV means "no point of view". No, "neutral" refers primarily to "editorial" neutrality, not source or content neutrality. We are supposed to use all RS, including biased sources, and editors must remain neutral by not censoring or neutralizing the opinions from those sources.
We must document any biases accurately, and headings should accurately describe the contents of a section, including the use of words that accurately describe the content. That will mean the heading may appear biased because it described biased content. Whitewashing is not allowed. -- BullRangifer (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
To add to what BullRangifer said, this article was fairly recently reorganized to eliminate a "Controversies" section. Its organization is patterned on the article for the UK tabloid The Sun. XOR'easter (talk) 18:51, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Okay, I got it. Thank you for your help. Jeremydavis255 (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
I just read WP:BIASED. You're right about the biased sources, sorry I was unaware prior. I do like how WP:BIASED says it's fine to clarify who said it ("as in "Feminist Betty Friedan wrote that..."; "According to the Marxist economist Harry Magdoff..."" etc.). Thanks. Jeremydavis255 (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

2012 interrupting Obama section

It is embarrassing that this section suggests that interrupting a President once during a press briefing is a controversial and disrespectful act. Current press briefings each seem to contain multiple incidents of reporters arguing with the President. Some context should be added to this section now that interrupting the President to argue with him has become such a frequent and celebrated act. There are tens of articles on Yamiche Alcindor alone. Anyone reading this section as it stands, without independent knowledge of current events, would be left very misled.

Obviously, there aren’t going to be new articles describing this incident. Nor are we likely to find Articles recontextualizing this incident. That speaks to how minor it is. It’s inclusion implies that it is important to the story of the Daily Caller, which it isn’t given modern context. If this section can’t be given context, delete it for being an irrelevant, tiny, inconsequential, and forgotten controversy over an act that is no longer uncommon, controversial, or noteworthy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.230.244.84 (talk) 04:57, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Typo

There is a typo in "The video clip was set to a cover of Ludacris' "Move Bitch." and set to a cover of Ludacris' "Move Bitch."[36]". I think the bold part should be deleted. The Deadly Algorithm (talk) 07:36, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

 Done Fixed. Thanks. XOR'easter (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

CARES Act funding

Some of the material added here and removed here looks include-able to me (though perhaps, being about funding, it would better go in "Staff, contributors and organization"). A variety of secondary sources reported on it [1][2][3][4][5], so a sentence or two here seems fair. XOR'easter (talk) 18:00, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Seems like basic finances stuff that would uncontroversially go into the article of any organization. Getting rescue loans from the government is notable, as borne out by the RS coverage. If 5 different sources covered a large loan by an organization or individual to the Daily Caller, we'd add that too. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
The fifth source mentioned above says that over 4.9 million organizations received something, and The Hill has a less selective list which shows that a great heap of media companies, including some with rather different politics, received similar or greater sums. I'm not saying they all should have sections about their grants (and my random sampling indicates that apparently most don't). I'm saying that shows how trivial this is when one considers that it applies to a great heap, and how the words "seems fair" don't apply when there is special treatment. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:33, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I'd be happy with adding a mention of CARES Act funding to the article on any organization for which the funding was reported by multiple WP:RS. A whole section would be overkill (and I think the addition to this article was longer than needed). "Who funds whom?" is generally the kind of information that a good encyclopedia article should provide, regardless of the political alignment of the recipient (i.e., this goes for Media Matters as much as TDC or Newsmax [6]). XOR'easter (talk) 20:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I agree. It's not that it's a big scandal that TDC took the money, but it is notable, and in this case it's certainly gathered more headlines than necessary to justify it. I've added it to left-leaning orgs, churches, pizza shops and tech orgs. So, I appreciate the feedback on this topic and on the larger topic. Note that while there are almost 5mm recipients, there are only 660k larger than $150k, and it follows a curve as they get larger. My feeling is a sentence is warranted on all orgs that are notable enough to have an article. tedder (talk) 20:32, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Tedder, I asked "Is it deemed necessary to add stuff for every person or organization who received anything via CARES? If not, what is the criterion?" and I think you are being clear about that -- a sentence i.e. one sentence for every organization that has a Wikipedia article. You don't say "person", you don't say "every media organization", you don't say "which received more than $150k", and you don't say what the sentence is. Will you make it clear that you want to make all these edits? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't see passing mention of the Daily Caller as one of many groups that received funding to establish significance. In order for that to happen we would expect multiple articles specifically about the Daily Caller receiving the money. TFD (talk) 21:25, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
In my view, succinct statements in half a dozen different sources are enough to merit a mention here. There's not much more to say than what they said about it, but they all chose to say it. XOR'easter (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
That applies to 4.9 million organizations that received funding. Are you going to post this information to all of them? I only add information if sources find them important in relation to the subject, not if they are mentioned in passing. TFD (talk) 22:57, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
How many of those 4.9 million organizations have Wikipedia articles? And out of those, for how many was their receipt of CARES Act funding described by Politico, CNBC, the Washington Post, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among others? At that point, I think a sentence would be warranted on any such article. TDC isn't the headliner, but I don't think it has to be. XOR'easter (talk) 23:04, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Those articles are not about the Daily Caller, they are about CARES loans, which is where this should be mentioned. It's like stories about Studio 54 will mention famous celebrities who visited, which may be important to the article about the club but not to the articles about each person who visited. I suspect the interest in the Daily Caller's loan is that it can be seen as hypocrisy for a publisher that rails against government handouts and it may be an indication of weak finances. If these observations gain attention in reliable sources, we will be able to present the information in a neutral manner. TFD (talk) 23:48, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be some overstatement about WP:N being needed for every sentence in an article. I don't think companies are BLP, so WP:PSTS is a fairly good guide. It talks about using primary sources without applying analysis (e.g., keeping it very factual). To me, this applies to ProPublica as a source, as they are simply formatting the data, not analyzing it in any way. A secondary source would be Politico, CNBC, CJR, etc., but that isn't necessary for inclusion. tedder (talk) 02:04, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
WP:N is about whether articles should exist, not what is in them. And it's quite central to policy that Wikipedia should not be the original source of criticism of subjects and that readers should not expect to find analysis here that has not been published elsewhere. TFD (talk) 18:45, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Arrest of Shelby Talbot

Hello,

I'm not experienced at editing Wikipedia, but I thought the recent arrests of Daily Caller reporters who were covering protests in Louisville might be worth including in this article's page (since I came here looking for information about the Daily Caller in the wake of reading about the arrests). In case it's helpful I'm using this talk page to suggest it and link to the recent story about the arrest. Apologies if I went about this wrong or if this isn't important enough to include! https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/28/exclusive-louisville-arrest-daily-caller-reporters-kettling-black-lives-matter-protest/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:67AB:880:4577:4B37:CCCB:9ABB (talk) 12:58, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. When we add information to this article it should be referenced to reliable sources. Since the Daily Caller is specifically listed as an unreliable source, then the story would have to be sourced from another publication. So far, the only reliable sources that I could find that covered the story were Fox News and a few other sources, but otherwise has been ignored by mainstream media. So I don't think it is important unless the Daily Caller was singled out. From the reports it appears everyone present was arrested. The fact this included a Daily Caller reporter isn't significant. TFD (talk) 14:14, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
I could argue that WP:ABOUTSELF applies here, but won't unless multiple other editors think it's worth mentioning. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:25, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced and POV Characterizations in the Lede

I made this edit to remove unsourced and clearly POV characterizations from the lede.

It was reverted, without explanation, other than that I should discuss it here.

While we could argue about the basic accuracy of the characterizations, they are unsourced allegations and clearly are not the defining characteristics of the subject, except perhaps in the POV of some editors.

It is not encyclopedic or helpful to the reader to comment "The Daily Caller has frequently published false stories" - especially when the body of the article doesn't support that broad assertion.

Certainly, the specific allegations, once properly sourced, would be appropriate fodder for the body of the article.

If there are sufficient examples to suggest false stories are published with any frequency, the reader can figure that out for himself. John2510 (talk) 18:05, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Last year there was a proposal to make changes in this area which would have included changing to: "and some stories have been proven false". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
The same could be said of any media news source, of course. Blatantly POV statements like that discredit Wikipedia more than they discredit the subject. John2510 (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
"Frequently" might be debatable — I'm not convinced it's obligatory, and I'm doubtful that it's misleading — but the rest of the lede looks like a solid summary of the body text, which is what it's supposed to be doing. XOR'easter (talk) 22:10, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
The number of stories cited in the article where the accusation is that they were "false" certainly don't add up to "frequently." John2510 (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
"Certainly" is a higher level of certainty than I can attain on this point. XOR'easter (talk) 15:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Jorm: You're the reverter. What's your objection? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
You were bold, changing a line that had a hard fought consensus. I reverted you. Now you discuss. There was much discussion about this. You ignored or did not read the discussion. That's it. That's the reason.--Jorm (talk) 16:15, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Jorm's accusation is false, I did not change the line. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Peter Gulutzan, Sorry. Not you; John2510. Jorm (talk) 15:41, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Why do you claim the material is "unsourced"? It's not. Everything in that paragraph is supported by the body. It is not required to cite material in the lede, though it is not prohibited either. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
We can use terms such as frequently and sometimes only when there are sources that make that determination. Otherwise it is a violation of no original research and weasel-wording. I appreciate that some editors rightly or wrongly see the Daily Caller as a right-wing propaganda organ that routinely publishes false or misleading stories in order to discredit Democrats. However we cannot say or imply that unless we can should that is the consensus opinion in reliable sources. I cannot find many sources for this article and suggest that it's best presented as a stub: it's a news source, this is who publishes it, this is its political orientation, this is its circulation or reach, the end. It's not up to us to make up for the lack of sources with our own analysis. TFD (talk) 14:21, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Negative tone

This is the second article on a conservative organization that I've surfed into recently and found only limited negative information on its activities. This is inappropriate for Wikipedia, which should maintain a neutral encyclopedic tone. There should be more on the organization of the firm, about its association with the Daily Caller News Foundation and other financial and political ties. This currently looks like a hit piece, contains very little background info, and needs further development to make it read like an encyclopedia article. Pkeets (talk) 05:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I read this only after my discussion on the lede below. What you've said is quite true. The article is nothing more than a smear. Articles written in this fashion discredit Wikipedia and suggest that POV is going unchecked. Perhaps that's for the best after all. Let the reader understand the level of bias in the opening. John2510 (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
Pkeets, John2510 I agree, this article is a disgrace. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 03:06, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 January 2021

there is no proof or facts to support a majority of claims on this definition of Daily Caller. You have an obligation to your readers to only provide factual information about any and all subjects on your website. 143.79.138.211 (talk) 21:48, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Please suggest changes in the form "change X to Y", with reliable sources to support the suggested modifications. XOR'easter (talk) 21:49, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 February 2021

The lede asserts that

The Daily Caller has frequently published false stories.

The rest of the statement is sufficiently supported by the body of the article, but "frequently" needs a proper source, or else to be changed to something less strong, like "on multiple occasions" (or simply removed). Searching for the word in this talk page shows that this point has been raised and generally endorsed previously, but the actual change was never made, it seems.

- 2A02:560:4260:8900:8C14:426D:399:1F20 (talk) 13:59, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

 Done. I've changed "The Daily Caller has frequently published false stories." to "The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions." in Special:Diff/1005207099. Thanks for suggesting this. — Newslinger talk 14:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

POV

As other editors have pointed out, the current article is a POV mess. With a lede that only chooses to summarize the most negative aspects of the article and essentially characterizes the subject as racist fake news, to use of words like "bogus" and "legitimate news outlets" in the main body, this article is basically a hit job. Like TFD said: "some editors rightly or wrongly see the Daily Caller as a right-wing propaganda organ that routinely publishes false or misleading stories in order to discredit Democrats. However we cannot say or imply that unless we can should that is the consensus opinion in reliable sources". Keepcalmandchill (talk) 03:25, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

The article is something of a mess, but not for POV reasons. Most of the WP:RS coverage (what there is of it) has a negative tone, and so that naturally translates over here, regardless of the supposed partisanship of the editors who have worked on it. When they hired a lawyer a while back to come here and suggest ways to change the article, we looked for sources documenting that the Caller had broken significant stories or generally done things taken seriously. There wasn't much (I recall the lawyer suggested stories they'd done on the Sackler pharmaceutical family, but nobody could turn up WP:SECONDARY coverage on that — I'd have no objection to incorporating it if such sources did turn up, of course). A more fundamental issue, I'd say, is that the article is rather long and overstuffed. Condensing down excessive details of years-past incidents might be a good idea. XOR'easter (talk) 03:56, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, Well then there is the option of doing what the aforementioned editor also suggested, which is to have it "presented as a stub: it's a news source, this is who publishes it, this is its political orientation, this is its circulation or reach, the end". I would prefer not to do that since I'm generally an inclusionist, but it would solve both problems. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 04:15, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
That sounds to me like it would omit too much. My own guess is that there's a happy medium to be found somewhere. XOR'easter (talk) 04:17, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, I suggest a three-section structure (1) History, which covers all organisational and staff topics; (2) Political stance, with reliable sources on the political leanings of the site; and (3) Controversies; which covers all notable incidents that the website has been criticized for, with a focus on more recent cases. The lede should then give equal coverage to all three. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 04:22, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
The article was deliberately rewritten in 2019 to avoid a "Controversies" section, per fairly standard practice. The model in mind was the article on the UK tabloid The Sun. XOR'easter (talk) 04:34, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, Okay, then we can put it under History and keep the Staff & Organisation where they are. I don't see how having a general controversies section is POV, but having two sections devoted to specific controversies is not. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 04:42, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Most media coverage of the media, celebrities and some other subjects are mostly negative. That's because reporting is generally happens when they fail. No one's going to write a story for example about how CNN accurately reported the news last night. I think in this case we should look to tertiary sources as a template for determining the weight of different aspects. There is an article by Aaron Moore, who is an associate professor of journalism, in the Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (SAGE Publishing 2013), p. 345,[7] which could help establish the weight to provide different aspects of this topic. Of course it would be better to get something more recent. TFD (talk) 04:47, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
The Four Deuces, Thanks for that resource! They seem to focus on characterizing general aspects of the site (with a focus on social media due to the nature of the publication), so this should probably be the main direction here, as well. Using other news sources as the main reference for content seems problematic because of (1) the nature of newsworthy topics, which you alluded to, as well as (2) the fact that they are literally competitors, and hence have little incentive to be fair. I think media watchdogs and other sources without a dog in the fight should be the priority. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 05:02, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
2013 was ... a long time ago in American politics. I'm not sure that particular source is very helpful, though WP:TERTIARY would in general be the way to go. Also, I don't quite follow the "competitors" bit; it seems to me equally reasonable to say that watchdogs have, well, a "dog in the fight" because they need to criticize in order to be profitable. XOR'easter (talk) 05:08, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, I guess there are some dogs that are more looking for fights than others, but in any case, I think we should determine the appropriate structure of the article before getting into appropriate sources. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 05:22, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
It should be possible to find more recent comparable sources, although they probably aren't readily accessible on Google books. Although 7 years is a long time in politics, I don't imagine that the general view of the DC would have changed. A lot of the negative information in this article is from 2011-2013, so would have been known by Moore.
As for the competitors bit, my point was that using media stories to establish weight may not be right, because news media are more likely to focus on negative stories. That's not because they are competitors but because it is more newsworthy. It's Man bites dog: "an aphorism in journalism that describes how an unusual, infrequent event (such as a man biting a dog) is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence with similar consequences, such as a dog biting a man.
Keepcalmandchill, we can't determine the structure of the article before getting into sources, since sources should determine the structure of the article per weight. How else could we determine the structure of the article?
TFD (talk) 05:45, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
The Four Deuces, Well, I suggested above having a three-section approach: History, Staff & organisation, and Political leaning. The current content could be organised under those labels, and then slowly replaced with sources that are most appropriate. This would provide some immediate relief to the current issues of the article, while allowing a more thorough rewriting to take place over a longer period of time. It seems to me the alternative is to rewrite everything from scratch, which would be a very intensive process if done within a reasonable timeframe. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 05:57, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
A three-section approach like that sounds fairly similar to how the article is organized now, apart from some details (e.g., "Environmental issues" might as well be a subsection or two of "Political stances"). Sorry if I'm not following — it's often tricky to discuss such things without an actual draft in hand. Cheers, XOR'easter (talk) 06:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, Yes, it's not too different from now, making for an easy first step. I mainly object to having separate sections for the two controversies for reasons I laid out above. Some of the content under "overview" in History could go under the Staff/organisation section, as well, but that's not a POV problem. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 06:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
We stick to RS coverage of this organization, as well as what the body of the article says. A substantial part of the body focuses on this organization's promotion of false stories, as well as the white supremacists behind the website. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Giving separate sections to climate denialism and white supremacist connections is already WP:UNDUE. They should be covered by the existing sections, maybe Political leanings for environmental issues, and Staff & contributors for the white supremacists. The POV language that I highlighted is not justified by the sources even as they are. Keepcalmandchill (talk) 13:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
I also wonder which of the sources says they publish "false" stories "frequently"? Keepcalmandchill (talk) 13:09, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
There is no source for "frequently." That's a judgment of Wikipedia editors and violates no original research and WP:WEASEL. We can of course say they "frequently" publish such stories if reliable sources say that. Technically, all news sources "frequently" publish publish false information, which is why the NYT publishes a corrections section every day. An expert however would only use the term if the degree of inaccuracy was relatively high, particularly if retractions were not published. So lets leave that to experts to determine. TFD (talk) 14:15, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Snooganssnoogans, there is a distinction between reliable sourcing, which you brought up, and weight, which is what we were discussing. Weight is the degree of attention that we provide for each aspect of the publication. I have suggested we use a tertiary source, per WP:TERTIARY: "Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources." A suitable tertiary source would be similar to the one I presented - an encyclopedia published by an academic publisher, rather than say its entry in Correct the Record. The problem with the source I found is age, it's from 2013. But other editors with better access to more recent sources could be helpful in finding recent tertiary sources. TFD (talk) 07:21, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
Since I don't see this discussion as having resolved itself, I'm reinstating the template. Keepcalmandchill (please ping in responses) (talk) 02:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Keepcalmandchill As per the template's own guidelines, This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true: In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant. The template was removed because the discussion went dormant - it does not matter whether or not it was "resolved." To avoid the discussion becoming dormant, I suggest that you propose a specific, actionable change to the article, which can then be specifically discussed and consensus reached on it one way or the other. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:43, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
As Keepcalmandchill has failed to propose actionable changes and the discussion is clearly dormant, I have removed the tag. Further attempts to replace the tag without the meaningful discussion and actionable proposals required by policy ought to be considered tendentious editing. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:04, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Mention in article of deprecation

This was removed; I think I see the concern, but ultimately it seems fair:

In late 2019, The Daily Caller was deprecated by the English Wikipedia community for publishing "falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories".[1]

It's referenced to an adequate secondary source, which is what we need before we can write about Wikipedia and its community goings-on. I'd change the quotation to a paraphrase, on general principles, and I'd bring it more in line with the source by mentioning the other deprecated outlets that the Haaretz story includes. They don't single out TDC, and neither should we. XOR'easter (talk) 15:39, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It was added in a bold edit today by Isi96, which I partially reverted explaining "... A quote of some Wikipedia editors, without attributing it to some Wikipedia editors, is against WP:RS/QUOTE. ..." The words are inside quote marks in the Haaretz article, the complete sentence is: "Among the sources newly named as unreliable for Wikipedia were a number of pro-Trump outlets – for example, One America News, The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit – which were banned due to their coverage of American politics and for disseminating “falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories”. It's not from this RfC but is the exact wording used by an essay-class Wikipedia page for One America News. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
That's the exact phrasing used in the WP:RSP entry for One America News, and describing the consensus recorded at WP:RSP as the view of "the English Wikipedia community" is adequate, I'd say. On the whole, I tend to prefer paraphrasing bits like this (they're not exactly deathless prose that needs to be preserved), but apart from tweaks of that sort, the statement seems fine for inclusion here, particularly if we make clear that TDC wasn't the only publication affected. XOR'easter (talk) 23:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Is this a better way of saying it?
The Daily Caller, along with One America News Network and The Gateway Pundit, were deprecated in late 2019 by the English Wikipedia community, with the consensus for One America News Network being that it publishes "falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories".[2] Isi96 (talk) 00:11, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
That's not bad. I might shorten it to ...community, for publishing misinformation about American politics (summarizing that paragraph and the next in the Haaretz article). XOR'easter (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, I'm not really a fan of self-referential material like that. Better to use the references in the deprecation discussion to document its unreliability, and leave it at that, IMO. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:09, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't particularly like self-referential material, but in this particular case, I think there's enough of an intermediary that it's acceptable. XOR'easter (talk) 15:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I support this phrasing. I also support the original phrasing in Special:Diff/1016975615, with no preference between the two. Either phrasing paraphrases the content in Haaretz, a reliable secondary source. — Newslinger talk 13:09, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
I added these edits: Special:Diff/1017933778, Special:Diff/1017934670 Isi96 (talk) 12:10, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Isi96, thanks for clearly suggesting an alternative. Though it's possible that Mr Benjakob was looking at something other than the essay-class page that I mentioned, we can't find it, so it seems we agree that the quote is about One America News. If so, it is not about The Daily Caller. Therefore the only words in the sentence that definitely refer to The Daily Caller are "pro-Trump" and "banned due to their coverage of American politics". And it wasn't "late 2019" if a February 2019 RfC is meant, and "Wikipedia community" is hurrah wording, and putting Wikipedia inside double brackets is overlinking. So a validly-sourced sentence would be: "In 2019 The Daily Caller was banned from Wikipedia for political reasons." Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:57, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
"Political reasons" is awfully vague; the Haaretz source is clear that the reason was not some nebulous notion of political unacceptability, but factual unreliability on political matters. Omitting the direct quote avoids the tricky point that it's specifically about OAN instead of TDC. (The WP:RSP entry for the former mentions falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories; for the latter, it says false or fabricated information.) Describing the result of an RfC as a "community" decision seems neutral enough. XOR'easter (talk) 15:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
XOR'easter, yes, I don't have any problem with the way it's represented, I just feel uncomfortable with it generally (see above). Guy (help! - typo?) 19:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I do not support this phrasing, which is written vaguely enough to carry a negative connotation against Wikipedia, whereas the source article is describing Wikipedia positively, saying that Wikipedia is more effective at fighting fake news than Facebook and Twitter. — Newslinger talk 13:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Isi96 has now added "In 2019, The Daily Caller, along with One America News Network and The Gateway Pundit, were deprecated by the Wikipedia community for publishing false information." It's neither correct nor sourced but I won't advocate reverting unless other editors do. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Benjakob, Omer (January 9, 2020). "Why Wikipedia is much more effective than Facebook at fighting fake news". Haaretz. Retrieved April 10, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ Benjakob, Omer (January 9, 2020). "Why Wikipedia is much more effective than Facebook at fighting fake news". Haaretz. Retrieved April 10, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

Politifact cite

To support the article's statement that the Daily Caller "has published false stories" Isi96 added a cite of the Politifact item Conservative website wrongly ties Clinton Foundation to bad HIV/AIDS drugs. This concerns me. First, compare Politifact's claim about what Daily Caller said In a story headlined as an exclusive, a Daily Caller reporter wrote "Former President Bill Clinton and his Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) distributed ‘watered-down’ HIV/AIDS drugs to patients in sub-Saharan Africa." to the Daily Caller sentence which has no period after "Africa", the sentence goes on for a while and actually ends with ... according to a draft congressional report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Second, a later source appeared saying, much like what the report said, that a company did send bad HIV/AIDS drugs to Africa and there was an association with the Clinton Foundation: read the transcript of an interview with a journalist covering the pharmaceutical industry (Katherine Eban). I did not revert Isi96's bold edit, I am checking first whether anyone else would agree with me that it's bad. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:59, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

TDC removed the "likely" qualifier from their own source (Marsha Blackburn's draft said the "Clinton Foundation likely facilitated the distribution of watered-down HIV/AIDS medications"). The transcript seems to cover events that wrapped up in 2013, and has less detail about the HIV/AIDS drugs than the PolitiFact item originally did. And, as PolitiFact noted, TDC didn't cover the Clinton Foundation's response to "the cloud around Ranbaxy" (no longer buying Ranbaxy themselves, except for "two specialized compounds"; warning others not to buy from them and to step up their testing if they did). PolitiFact putting a period where they did is probably house style for an American publication punctuating a quotation. XOR'easter (talk) 19:47, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Grinberg

Isi96: You added cites for "scientific studies", starting with Grinberg et al Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election . I have seen a high-level statement about the conclusion: The team began by creating a formal definition of fake news outlets as sources that “lack the news media’s editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information,” defining “fakeness” as an attribute of a publisher rather than an individual story. But how did they determine this? Please share an excerpt of the section where they explain why Daily Caller lacks those things. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:19, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Peter Gulutzan, the additional PDF included with the study (link) mentions The Daily Caller as an example of an "orange" fake news website on pages 18 and 21, and the study's methods for identifying fake news sites are outlined in pages 15-19. Hope that clears things up. Isi96 (talk) 22:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, it does. So they took stories from snopes.com (and categories from Buzzfeed, FactCheck and Politifact) and passed to "independent annotators". I couldn't find out what an annotator is -- sometimes they say "we" but more often it's nameless third persons -- and the only clear mention of how they assigned was about the tweets rather than the sources, i.e. "All tweets we selected for hand-labeling were annotated by at least two workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk". Maybe rather than "scientific studies" one could have speculatively said "some anonymous Amazon Mechanical Turk workers using Snopes", eh? However, Science accepted it, so unless someone else thinks it's undue etc. I'll say no more. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:38, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Greer details in lede

If Greer wrote articles that were not published in The Daily Caller at all, then that should at most be in the body rather than the lede. As far as I am aware, we generally do not delve into extracurricular activities of media part-owners in the lede of the article on that media. BD2412 T 03:41, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

If there is no comment on this, I am going to move this item out of the lede shortly. Cheers! BD2412 T 18:38, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
Agree. GenQuest "scribble" 13:11, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

"Threatened lawsuit against Louisville Metro Police Department"

As discussed to some degree in previous sections, I am concerned with how this is being presented in the article. To recap, two Daily Caller reporters were arrested by Louisville police while reporting on the shooting of Breonna Taylor by officers of the Louisville police department. It is undisputed that the reporters were exercising the constitutional freedom of the press in doing so. The Daily Caller asked that they be released, and the police refused. The Daily Caller threatened to sue, which is entirely within their right, and in fact is morally commendable. Nevertheless, this is portrayed as a controversy for the Daily Caller as opposed to a controversy for the police who blatantly violated the freedom of the press. This should be presented in a way that does not appear to take the side of saying that police departments should be able to arbitrarily arrest and detain journalists reporting on wrongdoing by those departments, and that it is controversial for an outlet to threaten to sue them for this. BD2412 T 21:14, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I rewrote the text to be flatter. Andre🚐 21:59, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm not looking for it to flatter, just to reflect the reality of the situation. BD2412 T 22:36, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
Your edit is fine. I meant flatter as in more flat. Andre🚐 22:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
I am fine with calling this objection resolved. I am off for family night and will likely review additional content for suggested changes in the next few days. BD2412 T 22:58, 17 December 2022 (UTC)