[Puck]

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 01:34 AM, said:

Khellendros, on 01 December 2017 - 01:16 AM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 30 November 2017 - 11:41 PM, said:

H. D., on 30 November 2017 - 11:30 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 30 November 2017 - 11:22 PM, said:

Not sure what is eating you Nevyn. Are you a journalist or related to one?

That's cheap. It's the same thing I said earlier about sources but more nuanced and particular.

Why does this rile you up so much? What investment do you have in this other than to protect a friend? (See how that comes across? Not well.)

Perhaps, but I am getting a little more of a personal vibe off of what Nevyn is saying, hence the question. What you said earlier was also discussed eloquently by EM. I know I am pressing buttons here, and i have guesses as to why, but I still am not entirely sure from where the rage comes.

Moreover, your early comment was very confrontational. I am not sure why you are accusing me of playing cheap.

I don't see any rage. Nevyn's comment struck me as perfectly sensible. Perhaps a little frustration that you don't seem to see that the same things you ascribe to the media could as easily be applied to you, your friend, or any individual or group. The notion that news groups report the news but also may favour a certain point of view is not new or surprising. The idea that anyone independent of a professional media organisation could do an objective or 'factual' job is naive, even when compared to the blatant political mouthpiece organisations - people report and spread the news which is of interest to them, and therefore consciously or unconsciously put something of themselves into that reporting. And that's a response with no investment in this and no connection to or with journalism Perhaps only a historian's background, trained to always be asking my sources: 'Why are you telling me this? What's in it for you, and how can I find that out?'

Ah but I do. I barely, if ever, trust myself, let alone other people or organizations. That is why I am always double checking and asking others their opinions. I try to get as much info as possible.

And there, right there, is your problem. If you find yourself unable to at least trust yourself and your own judgement, you are standing at the top of a downwards spiral into conspiracy and mistrust towards everyone and everything around you. Unless you want to give up everything that is your current life to trawl the world's news sites day in and day out, 24/7, and learn all the languages out there, you need to accept that you will never reach the level of understanding of the world you are craving right now (and let's be honest, even doing that 24/7 would not give you that understanding). A responsible consumer of news sources trusts their own judgement to find sources they trust as much as they can, while being aware of the way the source's biases slant and the fact that only so many people can work there producing only so much content and that content is often chosen for a gazillion of reasons over other content (local news over international unless it's hugely important - American hurricanes are closer and more immediate news to the Western part of the world than Asian typhoons and chances are, it was the other way around in Asian news media; news which create more add revenue over those which don't, as unfortunate as that is; and so on).

Another problem with your apparent inability to trust your own judgement is that you perceive insult where there is none and expect others to provide you with the solution to your problem of - as you perceive it - a lack of reliable news sources, when the issue is that you are throwing ALL journalism into the same pot as Breitbart and Fox News. Journalism, at its core, is NOT about providing you with the truth and if you expect that, you're on the track to, as has been said above, citing Youtube videos as 'truth'. 'Truth', in this context, is an illusive concept predestined to reinforce biases, and journalism, at its core, is about providing you with all the facts available to put you in a position to make up your own mind about what is going on. I don't know about America, but here we are taught in school to read between the lines and ask ourselves whether what we perceive from a piece of communication is really what the person doing the communicating might have meant and that communication is not as straightforward as many people think. By being prejudiced against ALL media you are shooting yourself in the foot in that regard rather than being as open as you claim to be. Individuals with an internet connection are by far less reliable as there are exactly zero checks on what they're claiming (I like to cite that hilarious Breitbart article where someone claimed Muslims had tried to set a church on fire on New Year's Eve, a church I walk by almost daily and it's doing just fine, really) and everyone is biased no matter how much they may claim otherwise. It's human nature.

Madness lies in the direction of second guessing everything. You can be a responsible consumer of media and news without working yourself into that.

This post has been edited by Puck: 01 December 2017 - 11:09 AM

[Gust Hubb]

One of my favorite phrases is, "life is change, and only in death does one find status quo."

A few points to yours above Puck. First, if you know my history, you know that my life has been one worldview shift after another: grew up conservative, fundamentalist Christian and now socialist agnostic; married for 9 years until the wife came out as lesbian and now alone in a new city; confident my mother would outlive my father, but the car versus bike situation did not agree. And while these life events are not uncommon (probably experienced in one manner or another by people all over the forum), they have formed in me a particular way of processing the world.

When I say I don't trust myself, I say I am frequently wrong or mistaken. As a result, I try not to assume that what I currently believe is truly the way things are. I also look to bring in as many other viewpoints as possible to help inform my own. Part of the purpose of the thread was to seek out people or means to use this group query technique for world events (for instance, having your real life experience walking by that church).

When I say I wish to question ALL media, I say that as a peak goal, just like we say we want to be successful and satisfied in life. Of course, there is no way to sanely review and cross check every piece of news crossing one's path, even for one country as Ment pointed out. However, my ultimate goal is to be able to see the world clearly and as it truly is, even if this is completely impossible for one person (hence seeking out a group of people with direct connections and experiences).

What I challenge is the beliefs we feel more comfortable with. I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts. To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

So, what I am training myself to question everything believe and then seek out new worldviews to understand those beliefs more thoroughly and deeply, understanding that regardless of from where my information is found, it will be biased and flawed as well.

[Morgoth]

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

What I challenge is the beliefs we feel more comfortable with. I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts. To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

This might be at the heart of your issue Gust. This is not an actual thing.

Journalists try to present you the world as they understand it. Asking for someone to report just the facts is like asking for objective video game reviews. It's not actually something that anyone can provide you.

[Nevyn]

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts.

You might first want to dig into where you got the idea that this article definitely skewed the facts, or that it was written or published the way it was due to an agenda.

That has been the most puzzling thing. You had this major reaction to the story and crisis of faith about what you are being told, and you don't even know for sure that the story was wrong, or that there was any malice or agenda in publishing it.

Quote

To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

My friend the plumber has a sister who has a friend who has cancer, and says her online database entry was all wrong. Is your trust shattered?


In the meantime, we probably shouldn't even get started on the topic of history books, including the texts you were taught with.

Quote

So, what I am training myself to question everything believe and then seek out new worldviews to understand those beliefs more thoroughly and deeply, understanding that regardless of from where my information is found, it will be biased and flawed as well.

There is nothing wrong with questioning things and being skeptical.

What has been weird has been your acceptance of your friend's version, and the level of your reaction to a story which specified exactly where the information was coming from, that it was not independently verified, and that the government had denied it. And it is about a story you would probably never have bothered reading in the first place if you had not spoken to this friend.

If your whole point was just that we should be careful about what sources we believe, then duh. But early in the thread you were also pitching pie in the sky half baked ideas to fix the 'problem', which would not work.


And to answer your earlier question, no I am not, nor do I have friends in, media. You just told a weird story to pitch a weird idea, and I am trouble seeing how the story established the need, nor how the idea would resolve it.

This post has been edited by Nevyn: 01 December 2017 - 04:10 PM

[Gorefest]

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

What I challenge is the beliefs we feel more comfortable with. I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts. To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

So there's a few things here that are worthy of consideration. First and foremost, it is important to realise that everyone has an agenda. Newspapers are not in the business of selling you the truth, they are in the business of selling you papers. The same goes for a lot of (especially commercial) TV news broadcasters.

Obviously if one of these sources is found to often be untruthful, it will steadily lose consumers over time, so for most of these news outlets (unless they are bankrolled by an organisation with a very specific agenda) it is important for their business model to at least achieve a minimum standard of truthfulness.

As you rightly state though, you can package a 'truth' in various formulations to make the reader's (or viewer's) interpretation of that truth be coloured towards a certain view of society. An extreme version of that at least in the UK is the tabloid press, who very blatantly frame their headlines and content to elicit an emotional response from the reader or viewer instead of trying to inform them objectively (think the Daily Mail or the Sun). However, even respectable newspapers or broadcasters who claim to strive to be objective and ethical will usually still have some bias. Again to take the UK as an example, the Guardian is considered a "left-wing" newspaper whereas The Times can be considered to be leaning more towards the right. They will both provide you with mostly factual information, but their interpretation of events can be quite divergent all the same.

The answer to this is not to do away with such sources of information, because there is no alternative. Crowd-sourcing is just about the worst thing you can settle on as an alternative because it is completely unchecked and open to lobby group abuse. Just look at lots of comment sections or news forums where there is a strong suggestion that interest groups or even whole countries (e.g. Russia) set up fake accounts to affect the general sentiment or steer general opinion.

Instead, what you should be doing if you want to minimise bias and get a more accurate picture of 'true' events, is to identify several fairly trustworthy sources (e.g. the aforementioned Times and Guardian, or the BBC as a nationally funded but otherwise independent broadcaster) from opposite ends of the political or social spectrum. So when you read or see a news item that piques your interest, try and obtain more information about it from a different trusted source and see if they present the same facts aznd where the information might be coloured. This really is the only way to achieve what you are hoping for in my opinion.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 01 December 2017 - 04:46 PM

[Gust Hubb]

Morgoth, on 01 December 2017 - 04:00 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

What I challenge is the beliefs we feel more comfortable with. I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts. To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

This might be at the heart of your issue Gust. This is not an actual thing.

Journalists try to present you the world as they understand it. Asking for someone to report just the facts is like asking for objective video game reviews. It's not actually something that anyone can provide you.

Part of the problem is recognizing how a journalist is seeing the world or what they are being paid to do or not do. To me, understanding these motives is necessary to further inform my understanding of the media I consume. For instance, now knowing that Al Jazeera is a state-funded news organization in Qatar changes my view of their articles and choices of topic. This doesn't mean I don't find reading their articles informative, it just means I am that much less naive to the biases they hold unconsciously or consciously.

[Gust Hubb]

Nevyn, on 01 December 2017 - 04:01 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts.

You might first want to dig into where you got the idea that this article definitely skewed the facts, or that it was written or published the way it was due to an agenda.

That has been the most puzzling thing. You had this major reaction to the story and crisis of faith about what you are being told, and you don't even know for sure that the story was wrong, or that there was any malice or agenda in publishing it.

The idea came from this Eritrean friend. And one of the reasons it came up was I asked him about the article since he was from there and I was looking to see what additional insight he could provide. The reason I put so much weight into what he says has less to do where he is from and what his friends say and more to do with the logical points he brought to the surface:

1) Al Jazeera is a state run news organization based out of Qatar which has been in conflict with Eritrea.
2) The opposition reporting the incident is a militant group actively trying to overthrow the Eritrean government.
3) The article was published without evidence beyond what this militant group said and if you try to find a follow up story, it is actually hard to find any further discussion of such a dramatic event.
4) The news, based on this one source, was disseminated widely throughout the media organizations without much additional analysis or review. How many other stories get disseminated as such?

Quote

To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

My friend the plumber has a sister who has a friend who has cancer, and says her online database entry was all wrong. Is your trust shattered?
Yes. Especially when these online databases inform how I report on cancers for future patients. Humans are not perfect, but there is always a concern as to how much misinformation is out there and how to catch it before it harms a future patient.

In the meantime, we probably shouldn't even get started on the topic of history books, including the texts you were taught with.
We could! Knowing many sides to the history of a people or country really helps flesh out why world events happen as they do. Sticking to the event discussed in the thread, there is much I do not know about middle east history and politics. To me, having both access to people within the region and outside the region is valuable and to be sought out. I already know that members of this forum have had a profound influence on how I evaluate data from this region.

Quote

So, what I am training myself to question everything believe and then seek out new worldviews to understand those beliefs more thoroughly and deeply, understanding that regardless of from where my information is found, it will be biased and flawed as well.

There is nothing wrong with questioning things and being skeptical.

What has been weird has been your acceptance of your friend's version, and the level of your reaction to a story which specified exactly where the information was coming from, that it was not independently verified, and that the government had denied it. And it is about a story you would probably never have bothered reading in the first place if you had not spoken to this friend.
Very true, but also kind of the point. To me, it is exciting to encounter a new source of knowledge and way of thinking that I have never encountered before, and I relish the opportunity to explore regional history that has not been taught to me or crossed my perspective.

Most of my pushing on thread regarding this story is asking why you would just stop there with the article and not dig deeper? I mean if you do not care or want to care about that region, no problem. That isn't your thing and the chance that you will effect it or it will effect you is slim to none. But I am not satisfied calling Eritrea a dictatorship that should be crushed in the manner we currently are doing. It brings up larger issues like, are sanctions actually a good form of diplomacy? What would be the alternative to overthrowing the government or is that the only way? Why is the government in power still? Is is strictly military based or is there more complexity to the situation? And if there is complexity, what are the issues?

And these thoughts can be reimplanted on any news story about a country. We often see the viewpoint of the most powerful, most vocal side without actually being on the ground, present with the people directly involved. And, it is possible that we never will in most circumstances.

But we also support, directly or implicitly, powerful countries' policing of the world and how they portray those who oppose them. Is the USA doing right by Eritrea? Are we doing more harm than good? Is the USA really "the good guy" (I would hazard that in many circumstances, America harms more than helps those countries it meddles in)?

That is not to say that I support governments that have human right violations, abuse their power at the expense of their citizens, or coerce other governments to better their own lot at the expense of others...

If your whole point was just that we should be careful about what sources we believe, then duh. But early in the thread you were also pitching pie in the sky half baked ideas to fix the 'problem', which would not work.
Half-baked is why I created the thread in the first place. I know there is no way I alone can figure out how to best to improve my knowledge and evaluation skills.

And to answer your earlier question, no I am not, nor do I have friends in, media. You just told a weird story to pitch a weird idea, and I am trouble seeing how the story established the need, nor how the idea would resolve it.

Ok, thank you. I asked because I sensed you were defending the media institution against attacks on its integrity. I was not sure how, or if, I was pressing a particular button that had parallels in your life, which would have changed the approach of the discussion.

This post has been edited by Gust Hubb: 01 December 2017 - 05:14 PM

[Gust Hubb]

Gorefest, on 01 December 2017 - 04:42 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 01 December 2017 - 02:51 PM, said:

What I challenge is the beliefs we feel more comfortable with. I want to dig into why I get all prickly when I find out that an article skews the facts and has an agenda as opposed to just reporting the facts. To me, such things are initially a betrayal, taking my trust and using it to steer my perceptions toward a certain worldview. And when I start to trust something, I find later, regardless of if it is a cancer database online, a well established scientific methodology or a world news source, that I should have not been so accepting.

So there's a few things here that are worthy of consideration. First and foremost, it is important to realise that everyone has an agenda. Newspapers are not in the business of selling you the truth, they are in the business of selling you papers. The same goes for a lot of (especially commercial) TV news broadcasters.

Obviously if one of these sources is found to often be untruthful, it will steadily lose consumers over time, so for most of these news outlets (unless they are bankrolled by an organisation with a very specific agenda) it is important for their business model to at least achieve a minimum standard of truthfulness.

As you rightly state though, you can package a 'truth' in various formulations to make the reader's (or viewer's) interpretation of that truth be coloured towards a certain view of society. An extreme version of that at least in the UK is the tabloid press, who very blatantly frame their headlines and content to elicit an emotional response from the reader or viewer instead of trying to inform them objectively (think the Daily Mail or the Sun). However, even respectable newspapers or broadcasters who claim to strive to be objective and ethical will usually still have some bias. Again to take the UK as an example, the Guardian is considered a "left-wing" newspaper whereas The Times can be considered to be leaning more towards the right. They will both provide you with mostly factual information, but their interpretation of events can be quite divergent all the same.

The answer to this is not to do away with such sources of information, because there is no alternative. Crowd-sourcing is just about the worst thing you can settle on as an alternative because it is completely unchecked and open to lobby group abuse. Just look at lots of comment sections or news forums where there is a strong suggestion that interest groups or even whole countries (e.g. Russia) set up fake accounts to affect the general sentiment or steer general opinion.

Instead, what you should be doing if you want to minimise bias and get a more accurate picture of 'true' events, is to identify several fairly trustworthy sources (e.g. the aforementioned Times and Guardian, or the BBC as a nationally funded but otherwise independent broadcaster) from opposite ends of the political or social spectrum. So when you read or see a news item that piques your interest, try and obtain more information about it from a different trusted source and see if they present the same facts aznd where the information might be coloured. This really is the only way to achieve what you are hoping for in my opinion.

I think that is definitely a good start, having multiple sources with opposing bias. But I am asking if there are even better or different ways in addition (I find it hard to swallow this is the "only" way)

Again, I think perhaps crowd sourcing is the wrong term. I consider what I have here on the forum to be a form of crowd sourcing. I throw an idea out and any member can comment and provide input. Currently, this pool of members is enriched with people I know and more than half the members here are from a different country entirely.

I see you all as a hub of viewpoints and interested parties who each have a perspective that I will never have and post sources of information I don't necessarily know about until you do. But being greedy, I seek out more. I would love to have more people from countries and cultures outside my normal spheres (eg. my previous Syrian gf and all her friends), and discuss with them both world events and events from where they have lived. I figure some of the members here on this forum have accomplished this to varying degrees and I seek out their input and direction.

[Gust Hubb]

From the Toronto Sun:

Peter Worthington's interview of Eritrean President, 1998.
My link

[Morgoth]

And what, if anything, does that interview tell us, Gust? Are you using it as an argument of some kind?

I don't really understand what's going on with you.

Eritrea is not a nice place and it's run by a violent and oppressive dictator.

Quote

GENEVA — President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea has imposed a reign of fear through systematic and extreme abuses of the population that may amount to crimes against humanity, a panel of United Nations investigators said on Monday.

The harsh actions of the government have prompted hundreds of thousands of Eritreans to flee the country, a major driver of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, the panel concluded.

“We seldom see human rights violations of the scope and scale as we see in Eritrea today,” Sheila B. Keetharuth, one of three members of a United Nations commission of inquiry, told journalists in Geneva.

Torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, forced labor and sexual violence are widespread and systematic, the panel said in a report that it will present to the United Nations Human Rights Council this month.

https://www.nytimes....&pgtype=article

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 06 December 2017 - 08:55 PM

[Tsundoku]

If you crowd source "truth", then whose truth gets printed? Because someone is always in a position to select what gets out there.

This just an opinion piece, but it's from the Wikipedia co-ounder - who admittedly sounds like a bit of a right-winger, but still the principle holds.

https://www.news.com...6ae2c542258b28c

Wikipedia co-founder says site is now ‘propaganda’ for left-leaning ‘establishment’
The website can no longer be trusted, according to the site’s co-founder, insisting it’s now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment”.

Lee Brown, NY Post
JULY 18, 202112:47AM

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted – insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment”.

Mr Sanger told UnHerd’s Lockdown TV on Wednesday that he started the “encyclopaedia of opinion” in 2001 purely on the basis it would offer true neutrality and offer “multiple points of view” on “hot button issues”, the NY Post reports.

Now, he insisted, conservative voices are “sternly warned if not kicked out” if they try to add a different take on establishment views – which Mr Sanger deemed “propaganda”.

“You can’t cite Fox News on sociopolitical issues. It’s just banned now,” he insisted of the apparent clampdown on respected conservative voices. (Say what? Emphasis mine)

“It means that if a controversy does not appear in the mainstream centre-left media, then it’s not going to appear on Wikipedia.”

Now you can only rely on the site to “give an establishment point of view”, rather than the diverse range of opinions it was set up to give, he said.

“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” he added.

“And they do that. There’s a very big, nasty, complex game being played behind the scenes to make the article say what somebody wants them to say.”

Mr Sanger said there are “all sorts of tricks people can play to win it”, including the use of dedicated PR companies to influence listings.

The Wikipedia co-founder cited the entry for US President Joe Biden, noting that it “has very little by way of the concerns that Republicans have had about him”.

“So if you want to have anything remotely resembling the Republican point of view about Biden, you’re not going to get it from the article,” he said.

He noted there was just a short paragraph on the “Ukraine scandal” involving the President’s son, Hunter, despite the political outrage it created.

“Very little of that can be found in Wikipedia. And what little can be found is extremely biased and reads like a defence counsel’s brief,” he said.

And it’s not just politics, he said, noting that the site only reflects “establishment mouthpieces” like Dr Anthony Fauci as well as government health groups in its coverage of Covid-19.

“There’s a lot of Nobel prize winners and distinguished doctors whose views are not only not welcome on Wikipedia – they’re literally censored on YouTube and sometimes Facebook and Twitter because they contradict the narrative,” Mr Sanger said.

“There’s a global enforcement of a certain point of view on issues like Covid,” he insisted, calling it “amazing to me a libertarian, or a liberty-loving conservative”.

Wikipedia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Aptorian]

While I can certainly agree that overall the internet and social media, has a heavy leftist slant (one might argue that's because reality has a leftist slant) - I don't like this dudes examples. Fox news is not a trustworthy medium. Sure, as far as I've heard they do have legitimate news coverage and good journalists, but are those parts of Fox the sources most likely to get cited in what ever Wikipedia article about American politics or economics?

Similarly, just the phrasing "establishment mouthpiece" used aboyt Anthony Fauci and Government health groups suggests this dude is all the way down the rabbit hole of vaccine scepticism and far into the Q-anon realm.

In a similar vein, lately we'vc had a debate about social studies her in Denmark and whether Universities are too biased towards elements centered around woke culture. Whole fields of study are excempt from criticsm because it's not politically acceptable to ask questions about scientific rigour or how funding is being spent.

It's hard to have that kind of debate without it devolving into ad hominims and accusations of right and left wing agendas.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 17 July 2021 - 06:04 PM

[Cause]

Tsundoku, on 17 July 2021 - 04:33 PM, said:

“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” he added.

I can’t really argue with the founder of his intent when he made the website but it describes itself as a free encyclopedia anyone can edit. Encyclopedia record knowledge, not opinions and their is only one version of facts.

[Aptorian]

Facts are interpreted by people, those people decide what facts are important and which are not. Which facts serve their purpose and which are inconvenient.

Just look at every day politics for examples of that.

[Cause]

Aptorian, on 18 July 2021 - 04:30 AM, said:

Facts are interpreted by people, those people decide what facts are important and which are not. Which facts serve their purpose and which are inconvenient.

Just look at every day politics for examples of that.

Your not wrong but that’s not what an encyclopedia is for. The Encyclopedia will tell you that joe biden won the presidency. A small section might mention that this was disputed and mention no evidence was found. Everything should be referenced.

A small section on hunter biden laptop being mentioned is appropriate as per of the whole election controversy. Since it was never proved to be his, or what’s on it it doesn’t belong in an encyclopedia in great detail.