94
Petition to add Politico (and Axel Springer media in general) to the banned media list
(discuss.tchncs.de)
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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We use Politico all the time as a generally reliable source on Wikipedia. The sponsored content is obviously shitty, but it's clearly distinguished by its "Sponsored" mark. If that goes, then banning it as a source might be a level-headed response.
And yet, if you read Wikipedia's own pages on Politico and Axel Springer it is clearly not a reliable source...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE
We're keenly aware of Politico's controversies when we use them as a reliable source. We consider them to have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and sorry to say, we're generally better at sussing that out than most people โ not inherently but because that's what years of writing encyclopedic prose does to a mf.
In your list, Politico is classified as a reliable source specifically on the topic of american politics. This community is only about american politics when they are affecting Europe directly. And if I understand your definition of a reliable source correctly it is about whether events and relevant topics are mentioned and not about how they are framed, right? So take the facts out of sources but do not automatically accept the framing of the facts from the source, am I correct?
Also, this isn't only about the factuality and bias, it is also about denying Axel Springer the clicks.
Yes, that's correct. "Base" Politico is a publication about American politics. For European politics, we turn to the sister publication Politico Europe. We use Politico Europe all the time as a reliable source for European politics. The reason it's not mentioned on that perennial sources list is because the list is for oft-discussed sources, and Politico Europe isn't that discussed, mainly because "base" Politico has functionally the same reputation for accuracy and fact-checking and is therefore treated as a proxy.
You have the right basic idea, but it's more complicated than that. We acknowledge that literally every source we're going to use has a bias; what we don't tolerate is a source letting its bias interfere with factual accuracy โ not just on the individual points but the cohesive whole of the work. Dishonest framing that takes verifiably true individual points and turns them into an inaccurate whole makes for a bad source, and we try not to use sources that do this.
We also strongly examine conflict of interest, what other sources with good reputations for reliability are saying, etc. If we feel a biased source has reliability for accuracy, the rest falls more into our neutral point of view (NPOV) policy. It's hard to summarize, because the RS and NPOV pages, despite their length, already summarize these source guidelines about as well as you can without stripping away important nuances.
I'm still wondering if you understand that Wikipedia and a news forum are different contexts. I don't undeestand why you apply the same criteria you use for one context to another. For example, you might be fine with native ads, because you analyze every bit of information. For a news forum where people scroll through casually, it's really bad because native ads are designed in a way that readers should miss these tiny hints and take it not as an ad. Different context, different approach to consumation, different issues with such things.
And even if Politico was perfect itself, it's still owned by a shit corporation that shouldn't get our clicks.
Is the average social media user capable of sussing out fact from fiction as rigorously though?
This discussion is about their potential for propaganda and viewpoint manipulation on Lemmy after all, not as a citation in an encyclopaedia.
Of their many daily articles how many would be deemed acceptable to Wikipedia and how many not? There must be a ratio where Wikipedia calls time. As Wikipedia only picks the parts that are relevant, the untrustworthy articles would be ignored. That's not the case on social media though where some users are spamming articles as if it's an RSS feed.
As Lemmy/PieFed grows in users, the likelihood of bogus articles climbing up people's feeds, legitimising the articles, also increases.
This is an issue that needs nipped in the bud earlier rather than later IMO.
That page says
So maybe that small number of editors is correct
Well, you shouldn't.