Is there a more neutral site to report on this?
Detailed Report
Reasoning: Propaganda, Conspiracies, False Claims Bias Rating: FAR LEFT Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Founded in 2015 by Max Blumenthal, The Gray Zone is a far-left news and opinion website that produces long-form journalism. Max Blumenthal is a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He also is a journalist, author, and filmmaker who is a regular contributor to the Questionable Russian news sites, RT and Sputnik. According to their about page, “The Grayzone is an independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire.”
Look at this person who thinks that media fact check is somehow unbiased themselves. Here I think we have a picture of them in our emoji store:
Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year olds he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.
The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method to develop a methodology to support his assessments.
If you’re going to discredit a source, please try to do the legwork of actually discrediting it. A guy with a Bachelors in Physiology and being “fascinated with politics since high school (a long time ago)” cannot be considered a reliable source, nevermind one who claims to follow the “scientific method” which he, presumably, learned while studying to become an occupational therapist or through his 20-year journey of reading political news.
If you have photos of this man, any record of interviews with him, records that support his credibility/the incorporation of his company, records of his job in occupational rehabilitation, details about his team, or anything else, please feel free to share them. Please do not confuse him with Dave E. Van Zandt (Princeton BA Sociology, Yale JD, London School of Economics PhD, ex-managing editor of the Yale Law Journal, ex-Dean of Northeastern’s School of Law, ex-President of The New School).
There’s no reason a random dude with a bachelor’s in physiology can’t be good at media criticism. It’s not like the big nerds that go into journalism or join think tanks are beacons of truth. Media criticism is about flexing your skeptical and investigative muscles and being highly informed about the topics in question so that you can do the hardest thing in it: identify what was left out, what was neglected, and what articles were not written instead of what is before you.
That said, this particular random dude physiology major is not good at media criticism.
Thing is, even if he is good at media criticism, there’s no stakes for him. Nobody knows who he is, what he looks like, he has nothing on the line, and his credibility in his primary occupation cannot be harmed if he is wrong.
Nevermind that he lacks the credentials nor any legitimate scientific expertise, and yet claims that his Bachelor’s in Physiology was sufficiently advanced to teach him everything he needs to know about the scientific process.
A site or source has to earn the credit before it can be discredited.
You can attack the one making the critique all you want and it doesn’t establish actual credibility for the original source. The grayzone’s weaknesses in misleading coverage and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes is well noted in academic journals and other sources cited the references on their Wikipedia page.
Buddy nobody is impressed with your media criticism process of regurgitating Media Bias Fact Check and Wikipedia. It’s actually an announcement that you have no familiarity with any of this and don’t know how to critically consume media yourself. Ironically you’re going to mislead yourself by simply uncritically accepting what is written in those two websites.
Rather than searching around for someone else to tell you what to think about The Gray Zone, why not critically engage with the content? What do they cite? What topic are they discussing? Do you know anything about it? To what are they responding? Are their criticisms valid?
That would be literally devastating if I had cited Wikipedia itself instead of using it as a way to point you to a long list of citations from far more authoritative sources without wasting my time typing them all out again.
Good effort though.
Wikipedia’s sources are in no way curated to fit a specific narrative.
I’ve been watching the Five Eyes governments and Anglosphere corporate media try to squelch The Grayzone for years.
It would be devastating if you were to read Inventing Reality or Manufacturing Consent.
Buddy you just cited Wikipedia. If you wanted me to believe you’d read the “long list of more authoritative sources” that the article contains, then you would have cited the articles instead of Wikipedia. This is the bare minimum you dumbass, you’re below high school level right now.
Actually, it still wouldn’t have been devastating because it continues to ignore the credibility of The Grayzone as the subject matter of the comment thread. It’s just doubling down on the original tangent.
I’m completely appreciate that it’s the reason I put it in italics, I was trying to convey sarcasm but acknowledge that I may have been far too subtle.
I find it incredibly fascinating that in the over nine hours, since this has been posted, nobody has taken up the opportunity to post another source that backs up this reporting they just continue to attack the critique
It’s not like this was a secret trial. Reuters, Oct. ’23: Ukrainian court sentences ex-police officers over 2014 Maidan shootings
We’ve known this was a US-backed coup for nearly a decade. The story has been beaten to death.
- Reuters, Feb. ’14: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- Consortium News, Jul. ’15: The Mess that Nuland Made
- Consortium News, Apr. ’19: The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West
- Jacobin, Feb. ’22: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, Oct. ’23: The Maidan Massacre, Censorship & Ukraine
.
Our government and our corporate media fed us a load of bullshit about it being an organic “color revolution” for “freedom and democracy.” It’s what they always do. The blueprint of regime change operations
Citing Wikipedia is lazy and reflects a lack of effort. Do better.
You didn’t read a single reference on their Wikipedia page, just the fact that they’re there is enough for you. Regardless, I fail to see any evidence of “misleading coverage,” and “sympathetic coverage” is a non-issue except for the fact that these are “authoritarian regimes.” What this means is unknown, since the main examples cited (Syria, China, and Venezuela) each have a much lower amt. of prisoners per-capita and in totality (significant because of China’s population) than the U.S., and China has a significantly lower amt. of police per-capita.
You did cite Wikipedia itself.
Did… did you forget? Already?
Citing Wikipedia? Lmao
Lol, wikipedia.
Well it’s certainly a more neutral site than mediabiasfactcheck.
Anyone that tells you they’re “neutral” or “unbiased” is a fucking liar.
Everyone has a bias, and if you believe otherwise you’re either gullible or a propagandist.
As I’ve said before, Media Bias/Fact Check is a joke:
I hope you’re aware that “objective”, “unbiased”, “neutral” journalism is a myth and a complete impossibility. Any reporting on reality requires that the reporter takes a stance on how to report that reality. While some news sources are completely untrustworthy (Radio Free Asia for example) you should not believe ANY news source is ever unbiased. You should remain sceptical no matter what you read, and instead of blindly consuming the “good” news media, you should instead attempt to independently verify the claims made.
Remaining sceptical means looking into things yourself instead of going to mediabiasfactcheck.com lol.This article is completely fine, it’s not writing falsehoods or making up shit, nor is it in any way any more opinionated than your average mainstream drivel - it’s just negatively opinioned on groups that larger news media is supportive of.
‘questionable news sites like RT’ C’mon man. The hells this bullshit. Yall so propagandized that anything to the left of let’s nuke Iran is ‘far-left’
Seriously tho get non US media. The corporate media in the US will say anything is 'not credible ’ if it contradicts the powers that be. Babies from incubators in Iraq? Remember that? From the 'totally credible ’ US media establishment
Tell us about their “anti-corporate bias” next. I was just making fun of the same page you cite when I was discussing this site other day.
There is no such thing as neutral. That site is a good example of it: they’re personally highly biased towards “centrist” liberal positions to the point that they conflate it with writing “just the facts”. They have no consistent methodology, they’re just showing you their own inability to detect bullshit when it’s something they agree with.
For example, as it has often done in its history, The New York Times has been carrying water for fascistic settler colonial narratives, including hiring an obvious racist to write implausible articles about alleged sexual assaults by Hamas on October 7. Articles contested by the people interviewed, the families and friends of those who died. They censored their own attempts to admit fault and their workers creating media about the errors. Only in the last week have they fired the author in question, which will surely be used to imply that this is the only thing wrong with their consistently biased coverage that focuses almost exclusively on interviewing state department officials, Zionist NGOs, and Israeli government officials.
Did you find any of that on “media bias fact check”? Did it rank the NYT lower than The Gray Zone on its ability to report factually? For having a Zionist bias? Even this one example I’ve provided is far more damning than anything you’ve listed.
You can’t outsource media criticism, you have to do it yourself and engage with it.
We’ve known this was a US-backed coup for nearly a decade. The story has been beaten to death, just not on corporate media.
- Consortium News, Jul. ’15: The Mess that Nuland Made
- Consortium News, Apr. ’19: The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West
- Jacobin, Feb. ’22: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, Oct. ’23: The Maidan Massacre, Censorship & Ukraine
.
Our government and our corporate media fed us a load of bullshit about it being an organic “color revolution” for “freedom and democracy.” It’s standard operating procedure: The blueprint of regime change operations
