Talk:Raw Story

Raw Story Rated as Left-Biased

This website is becoming more popular, and it should be reflected accurately, and that is as a news source with a left orientation. That assessment comes from the MediaBiasFactCheck, which rates it as "left" on their scale of "Left/Left-Center/Least-biased/Right-Center/Right" scale.

The MediaCheck website itself is pretty straightforward, though I think somewhat kind -- they rate the NY Times as only "Left-Center" when it is hard left these days, and Fox News as "Right" when it is far more right/center in any real universe (editorially right -- but news, more objective). This is the website source:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=Raw+story

Since Wikipedia itself has fallen prey to the left in many of its articles, with certain administrator/editors colluding to skew political articles to their own viewpoint, somehow I doubt this recommendation will be well met, at least by them -- and they can and do manipulate the system adeptly. Still, I am giving it a shot.

Biased attempt to hurt company

Here's the situation. A user who is, according to a Wiki employee, a known problem decided to political go after our site. We have no issue on the full disclosure of all information. But, as you can see from the August 9, 2021 version, this person is intent on destroying the company's reputation, not by adding new information, but by pushing positive information down the page and elevating negative information. Who can help with this. Why is this allowed to go when Wiki is aware (one only need look at the person's history to see just what is going on here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.244.209.131 (talk • contribs)

The Knock-Out Game

It looks like Raw Story pubbed a story that the Knock-Out Game was bunk around the same period. https://www.rawstory.com/2013/11/you-can-assure-your-relatives-this-thanksgiving-that-the-knockout-game-is-mostly-hype/

The report cited on this page, if you read it, says that police were concerned the phenomenon was happening. This is true, they were concerned, if you actually read the click-thru links from Buzzfeed and Raw Story. For example: https://kdvr.com/news/nationalworld-news/video-knockout-game-becoming-disturbing-trend-spreading-west/

Spoonpassport (talk) 23:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• I'll revise it a bit. But BuzzFeed News doesn't state that Raw Story later revised its reporting so we can't add that in. We would need a secondary source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 23:41, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

But, Buzzfeed doesn't even say what you say it said ("with little evidence" is your editorializing). And the Raw Story report linked doesn't say what Buzzfeed says it said, either. Why use sources that don't check out? As far as "revised its reporting," Raw Story didn't revise anything. One story says, "Cops are concerned that X" and the second story says "This isn't really a thing." Spoonpassport (talk) 00:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

"And the Raw Story report linked doesn't say what Buzzfeed says it said, either. Why use sources that don't check out?" The community has determined that Buzzfeed News is a WP:RS (see WP:RSPSS) and that "The Raw Story is generally unreliable for factual reporting". The suggestion, therefore, would be that we privilege an unreliable source over a reliable source. Further, in this case, because the passage is referring to a specific TRS article, the article itself is a primary source and we generally prefer secondary sources over primary sources. For us to conclude that "... the Raw Story report linked doesn't say what Buzzfeed says ..." would require editors to engage in original research through process of textual analysis. Chetsford (talk) 02:15, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

This still doesn't answer the question as to why the Wikipedia page says something the Buzzfeed article does not say. And why another editor wouldn't correct what's going on here Spoonpassport (talk) 04:56, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

The BuzzFeed article states: "Three days ago, Raw Story picked up local news reports claiming The Knockout Game was spreading west, writing that Knockout videos were being shared online amongst teenagers, increasing the game's popularity. The problem with that theory is there's almost no evidence to support that teenagers are uploading Knockout videos." Our article states: In November 2013, The Raw Story, citing a local news report, claimed that teenagers were playing the "knockout game" and sharing the videos online. There was almost no evidence to suggest that teenagers were uploading videos of the knockout game. I fail to see the discrepancy or the error our article makes. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 05:09, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

The local news reports were claiming. The police were claiming. Raw Story didn't claim anything. Reporting what people say isn't the same as saying them. The "most favored nation status" Buzzfeed writer didn't quite get it right and was inartful in his sentence structure. Spoonpassport (talk) 05:35, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

"Buzzfeed writer didn't quite get it right" Do you have a WP:RS that says Buzzfeed's article is wrong? Chetsford (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Of course I don't because no one in the real news world is going to write an article about how someone used the wrong gerund. That kind of thing only happens here. Spoonpassport (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

check out what they're doing to Palmer Report. You wont believe it. 2600:6C65:7E7F:B93E:A85C:5C92:ED1B:E538 (talk) 07:19, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

LOL

Now you're quoting from people's self-published books? People who worked for the RNC? That's just ... hilarious.Spoonpassport (talk) 06:26, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Cyrus Krohn is the former publisher of Slate. But since I can't find a lot of info about the publisher, I'll try to replace it with a different source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 06:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

He's obsessed. 2600:6C65:7E7F:B93E:A85C:5C92:ED1B:E538 (talk) 07:16, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Infobox request

Hello editors, my name is Nathalie and I work for Raw Story. I've spent some time reviewing the rules of Wikipedia and know that I can't make edits directly because of my conflict of interest, but I'm hoping that editors on this Talk page will find my requests acceptable improvements to the encyclopedia.

I have several requests I hope to implement, but for starters, I was hoping we could update the infobox. The Raw Story is owned by Raw Story Media, Inc. It was founded by John K. Byrne and Michael Rogers, as mentioned in Plus and The Oberlin Review. Could we remove John and Michael from the list of owners and add them to a Key people line in the infobox? I think this will make the infobox more aligned with other articles for news outlets. Please let me know! Thanks in advance for your help. Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:32, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nathalie at RS:  Done 1063774814 It should be noted that although some of the links you provided suggested Rodgers as a founder he is not actually listed that way in the website's Masthead nor in his Staff Bio page there. —Uzume (talk) 21:27, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the help, Uzume.Nathalie at RS (talk) 20:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

History request

Hello! Nathalie here again with another request. I have an alternative draft for the History section I was hoping editors might review. I hope you'll find this version is more complete and more accurate, fleshing out the timeline of the outlet through 2019 and clearing up the details surrounding the founding of the site, as well as offering a few improved sources while not changing the existing text too much.

Extended content

Byrne, the former editor-in-chief of The Oberlin Review, founded The Raw Story he graduated from Oberlin College in 2003. The outlet officially launched in 2004, with Rogers joining the site the same year. The Raw Story was a finalist in the Online News Association's Online Journalism Awards in 2008 in the "Investigative, Small Site" category. The site was nominated for the article "The permanent Republican majority", about improper partisan influence in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman following Siegelman's conviction for felony corruption. In 2017, The Raw Story was accepted as a member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. In April 2018, Byrne and Rogers acquired AlterNet via a newly created company, AlterNet Media. The outlet partnered with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston in 2019, providing funding for Johnston and his outlet, DCReport. References

I won't make any edits directly because of my conflict of interest. Uzume, you were kind enough to review the last request I had, might you also take a look at this one? Thanks in advance for your help! Nathalie at RS (talk) 20:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nathalie at RS, could you explain your rationale for removing the cited paragraph "An August 2017 study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society found that between May 1, 2015, and November 7, 2016, The Raw Story was the fourth and fifth most popular left-wing news source on Twitter and Facebook, respectively. The study also found that The Raw Story was the 9th most shared media source on Twitter by Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2016 United States presidential election.[18] During the election, The Raw Story was heavily shared by Twitter accounts operated by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm known for spreading fake news online.[19]"? I have marked your request as declined for now; after replying, please reopen the request by removing the "|D" from the {{request edit}} above. Spencer^T•C 23:03, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Spencer, great question! I suggested we remove the Berkman Klein source for a few reasons. The main reason is that its inclusion seems like it goes against what Chetsford said when responding to our founder, John Byrne (I had some trouble getting a link to this specific response, but it's a few replies down in this discussion.

• "indiscriminate, routine information that does not add any encyclopedic value violates our WP:NOT policy"
• "a glancing mention that is insignificant...Our NOT policy says that "A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.""

I've gone through the source, and Raw Story does appear on a few lists and in the infographics embedded in the study, but the outlet isn't discussed in depth at any point in the paper. It seems like including these sentences (about being shared by Clinton supporters in 2016 and being shared often on social media) in the Raw Story Wikipedia article would be a violation of that rule, though maybe I am misunderstanding it. I'd love another perspective! It also seems to me that people sharing Raw Story content isn't really part of our history, making that irrelevant to the article, but again, I am open to alternative arguments. I'd also note that the study is not present in the The Daily Beast's article, for example, despite the Beast also appearing in the study.

As for being shared by the Internet Research Agency, again, I'd argue that who shares our content is not really part of our history and isn't really encyclopedic content. I'd also note that the cited paper only mentions Raw Story in passing a total of four times and that it is a data report and was not peer reviewed that I could find. Here's an updated link to the report. I think it's also worth noting that NYU specifically separates their data reports from their scholarly/academic article (NYU website). This report did happen, but again, it really isn't part of Raw Story's history and I'm not sure a website being shared by the IRA on social media really holds a lot of encyclopedic value. I am a little concerned that its placement and the phrasing of the sentence is being used to discredit Raw Story for something that we cannot control, but again, I am open to other interpretations/discussion! Thanks again for taking the time to review, I appreciate your help, Spencer! Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:46, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

 Partly done Hi Nathalie, I went ahead and partially implemented your suggested edit, doing the following: 1. Added additional detail regarding founding 2. Removed the Byrne quote from the MotherJones article since it does not mention The Raw Story and thus wouldn't be directly relevant to this article. 3. Added a revised version of the sentence about DCReport (I added some additional detail about what the partnership entailed, and removed "Pulitzer prize-winning" since that seemed a little flowery and wasn't directly related to The Raw Story.

I will leave the request open for another editor to review regarding the Berkman Klein Center and Internet Research Agency. To me, given the context of the whole article about how content has been used by different politically oriented groups especially during a major election, it seems relevant to me (in contrast with your statement that "people sharing Raw Story content isn't really part of our history"). Furthermore, a main motivation behind removal is due to concern that "its placement and the phrasing of the sentence is being used to discredit Raw Story" which is problematic. If you have alternative suggestions about wording and placement within the article - rather than carte blanche removal - I encourage you to make a suggestion about what you think would be better reflective of the sources. Best, Spencer^T•C 17:08, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Spencer, thanks for taking the time to explain! I think one of the bigger problems with the text in that section is the phrase "a Russian troll farm known for spreading fake news online." The direct implication there is that Raw Story produces fake news, which I and my coworkers naturally take issue with. Perhaps we could cut that phrasing and move the study to the Content section as a compromise? I really appreciate all your help with this. It's tricky and I'm trying to make sure I follow all the rules. Thanks! Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:36, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

That's fair. I have reworded this sentence; let me know what you think. Spencer^T•C 16:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

This works for me. Thanks for all your help on this. Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Staff update request

Hello editors, Nathalie here with another small request. I was hoping someone might help me update the Staff section? This will make it more up-to-date, accurate, and fix some typos. What I was hoping for is below.

Extended content

According to the site's masthead, the editor and publisher of the site is Roxanne Cooper as of June 2021. Other editors include managing editor Eric W. Dolan and senior editors David Edwards, Travis Gettys, Sarah Burris, Bob Brigham, and Tom Boggioni. Editorial staff are members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. Notable former editorial staff include New York Times senior staff editor Michael Roston, NBC News political reporter Sahil Kapur, and former Village Voice executive editor Tony Ortega. References

Please let me know if you have any questions. Since I have a conflict of interest, I won't make any edits myself. Spencer, you were so helpful with the last request, would you be willing to take a look at this one? Thanks in advance for your help!Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:36, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done I'm not necessarily sure that all of the senior editors should be listed or "notable former editorial staff" without an article should be listed, but this is already in the article so I will make the change as requested. However, this could potentially be trimmed by another editor later. Spencer^T•C 16:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

That's understandable. I appreciate your help on this! Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Editorial stance request

Hello editors, Nathalie here again with another edit request. I noticed a lot of news publications have a section called Editorial stance (like The Daily Beast) and was wondering if you might consider making a similar section in this article, pulling the second paragraph from the Content section and adding this sentence: "The outlet describes itself as bringing attention to stories they see as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets." (based on the Wall Street Journal source already used). Could we place that section above the Content section, then? It looks like that is the way it's done in similar articles, something like this:

Extended content

Editorial stance In 2005, the site was described by Newsweek as: "Muck, raked: If you're looking for alleged GOP malfeasance, the folks at rawstory.com are frequently scooping the mainstream media." In 2014, then-executive editor Tony Ortega described The Raw Story's editorial mission as trying to "expose" people "who try to exploit American ideas about fair play and equality by rigging things through their immense wealth or their discriminatory cultural myopia." The outlet describes itself as bringing attention to stories they see as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets. Content References

Please let me know what you think! Spencer, you've been so helpful, would you mind taking a look at this request as well? Thanks in advance for all your help! Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

 Not done but I will leave this open for another editor to review and see what they think. The Newsweek quote is more sensational than specifically descriptive, doesn't tell me much about what RS does editorially, and veers toward un-encyclopedic (I also was not able to access the link provided); the second quote is from an interview with the founder making a self-proclaimed statement that is also somewhat vague, I think this may possibly be okay in the context of third party sources offering an outside view of the editorial stance of RS; the third seems something along the lines of what is described in Wikipedia:Avoid mission statements, and again is vague (and to me doesn't really seem to be an editorial stance per se?). For an example of what an editorial stance section looks like in a WP:Good Article, I would encourage you to check out Mumbai_Mirror#Editorial_stance or Port_of_Spain_Gazette#Editorial_stance. Spencer^T•C 23:32, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Spencer, what you said makes sense. I re-used the Newsweek source from the live article, but also could not access it. I essentially added a sentence to the second paragraph of the Content section and moved into its own section. Maybe based on what you've said here, it would be better just to remove that paragraph and close this request? I didn't find any sources that would work to create an Editorial stance section similar to the links you provided. I've also got some ideas for possibly making some additions and reorganization to the Content section that I think would be an improvement on the balance and sourcing of the article. I made a little draft page here if you'd be interested in taking a look. Prior to posting my draft on my page, I published the live article's content, so you can review a diff if you want to see exactly what I've done. This is really tricky to navigate and looks like a lot (though many of the changes are reorganization rather than removal), so if you'd prefer I can make smaller requests for changes as well. Thanks for all the help! Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:57, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nathalie, I will leave the editorial stance for someone else to review before I unilaterally remove it. There may be an online archive (e.g. Wayback Machine) for the Newsweek source. For the draft, if you could post paragraph-by-paragraph (or shorter, esp if the paragraphs are >6 sentences) comparisons with rationale, that helps reviewers better see the specific proposed changes. Of note, I will not be available to review the request for the immediate future, so the {{request edit}} template will be the best way to have this reviewed. Spencer^T•C 04:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Spencer, thanks for responding! I really appreciate it. I couldn't pull up the Newsweek source even through Archive.org, it looks like it was originally linked back to an old library sharing system that no longer exists. Totally understand about doing the smaller piece-by-piece requests. I really appreciate all the help you've given me so far! Thanks again! Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Content section update

Hi editors, Nathalie here again with another request, this time to update the Content section. I was hoping we could update the opening sentence to read:

The Raw Story is an alternative news site that aggregates stories from around the web and produces original journalism.

References

I'd like to make this change (mostly the removal of the phrase "mostly aggregates") because Raw Story does a significant amount of original journalism and it really isn't accurate to say that we are mostly content aggregators. This change also rescues the Palm Beach Post source, which had a broken link. Most other sources refer to Raw Story as an "alternative news" site, however, I understand that editors may prefer to keep language about content aggregation present. Please let me know if you have any questions, and thanks in advance for your help. Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:14, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Untitled.docx, I noticed you made an edit to the article. Might you be willing to look at this request? I'd really appreciate it! Nathalie at RS (talk) 20:51, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done Looks good, I've made the revision. Feel free to ping me if you need any more help. Untitled.docx (talk) 00:39, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the assist! Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Introduction request

Hi editors, Nathalie here again with a small request to update the introduction. I'd propose the introduction reads similar to what follows, with the necessary citations already in place elsewhere in the article:

The Raw Story (also stylized as RawStory) is an American progressive news website and online tabloid. It was founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne and is owned by Byrne and Michael Rogers.

I think this helps bring the introduction more in line with the guidelines on introductions. Ideally, I'd like to remove the entire second paragraph because many of the citations don't really reference Raw Story directly, but perhaps we could move it to the Content section as a compromise?

I'd also note a few issues with the sources used in the introduction.

• Source 1 is the source code for Raw Story's website, which doesn't seem like a proper source by Wikipedia standards
• Sources 5-9 seem to be an example of reference bombing. Raw Story is not mentioned at all by name in source 8, has a brief mention buried in an appendix to source 9, and has a passing mention in an infographic of hyperpartisan outlets in source 6.
• Source 10, related to the CJR sentence, says Raw Story is classified as a clickbait site by CJR, but it was actually classified as such by Open Sources (CJR aggregated the research of others for its list). I looked and found Open Sources deep in archive.org and it seems the information on there has largely been crowd sourced. It also seems the site has been taken down entirely, though I didn't see any evidence of a formal retraction.
  • The site even has a disclaimer that says "We have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained in this site and in our downloadable data is reliable; however, we are not responsible for any errors, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information in this site is provided “as is” and “as available,” with no guarantee of accuracy, reliability, completeness, or of the services or results obtained from the use of this information. "
  • I'd be in favor of removing the CJR sentence for this reason, but am open to discussion!
• Source 11 is indeed from Oxford, but sources 12 (Nieman Lab) and 13 (Financial Times) spend a lot of time talking about the flaws in the Oxford report, with Nieman noting that Oxford did not distinguish between junk and partisan news. Again, I'd be in favor of removing this, as well as the reference to the Humboldt study in the Content section, which relies heavily on the Oxford methodology that is, at best, contested. However, I am open to further discussion.

Untitled.docx, I know this is quite a long message but hopefully my reasoning helps make it a little more palatable and that you are still willing to help! I've also uploaded a diff for the changes I hope to make to the Content section, but am happy to make smaller requests if that is easier. Thanks so much for taking the time to take a look. Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

 Partly done I left one citation at the end of the second sentence of the intro paragraph to be safe. For the second paragraph, I did move it to contents because I found it seemed partial to include it in the introduction. The Oxford sentence was already in the contents and I left it untouched as is, and I moved the hyperpartisan sentence down to the first paragraph of that section. I removed the Wired article citation and source 8. I don't want to remove those things to maintain NPOV. Untitled.docx (she/her) 🗩 20:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the assistance! I may circle back to the Oxford study later in a separate request. Thanks again! Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Content section update

Hi editors, Nathalie here again with another request to update the Content section. First, I'd like to propose adding two short paragraphs following the paragraph on the United Mine Workers of America reporting about some of our additional reporting that has been covered in national and international news outlets, something like the following:

In 2011, The Raw Story was among the first outlets to report on the Apple assistant Siri apparently directing users away from abortion clinics and emergency contraception, instead providing results for the definition of emergency contraception or clinics far from the user. The assistant, still in beta testing at the time, could, however, provide users with methods to acquire Viagra or use escort services. In response to the report, Apple said it was still working to improve the product.

The same year, The Raw Story was the first to report on a United States Air Force contract to create fake social media profiles as a means of psychological warfare to be used against terrorist cells.

References

I'd like to add these because I think this reporting has received appropriate coverage in national and international sources to be included in the article.

I'd also propose that we remove the word "controversial" from the sentence about Megan Carpentier, as it seems to me that the word shifts the sentence out of a neutral point of view. I also have several other suggested edits for this section that I have posted in my user space if any editors would like to take a look.

Untitled.docx, would you mind also taking a look at this request? I'd really appreciate it! Nathalie at RS (talk) 17:42, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done: With one addition included. I added the two paragraphs, and removed the word "controversial" from the transvaginal ultrasound sentence, but added one additional part (in bold):

In 2012, then-executive editor Megan Carpentier wrote about undergoing a transvaginal ultrasound procedure in response to recent legislation in Virginia requiring an ultrasound prior to an abortion procedure.

References

I wanted to add some context to the situation to replace the "controversial" part. Sorry for the delay in a response; I was away last week.

Untitled.docx, no worries, I know you are busy as well. Thanks so much for your assistance and additional diligence! Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:59, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

One more small content request

Hi editors, Nathalie here again with another request. This time, I'd like to propose two changes. First, I'd like to add this sentence after the one on Jennifer Mascia's column:

• The same year, the outlet broke news of the connection between San Diego State University running back Adam Muema and Raymond "Lord Rayel" Howard-Lear. Howard-Lear claimed to be a prophet and made apocalyptic predictions online. Muema left the 2014 NFL Scouting Combine early and did not attend the San Diego State Pro Day while sending cryptic messages to reporters.

And I'd like to propose adding these sentences to the end of the Content section, just before the current False claims subheading:

• The outlet has also reported on far-right extremists, including a report on January 6, 2021, hours before the attack in the U.S. Capitol that "predicted exactly what would happen," according to Editor & Publisher. The Raw Story was among the first to report on instigators of the riots, including an attempt to get then-President Trump to declare martial law using the Insurrection Act.

References

I'd like to make these changes as these stories were well-reported in reliable sources. I won't make these changes myself because of my conflict of interest. I really appreciate the help! Untitled.docx, would you be willing to take a look at these changes as well? Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:59, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nathalie, I want to verify the Editor & Publisher source before I go ahead and put the second paragraph you included in (I just haven't heard of them before), but for your first paragraph, I'm not certain on the notability of the subject. I looked up Adam Muema and there were a couple sources on him, but I'm not sure what's important about it, especially unsure why it should be included in a summary of your reporting. Can you explain why you think this should be included? Thanks! Sorry for responding late, I forgot about it. Untitled.docx (she/her) 🗩 04:24, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Untitled.docx, thanks for taking a look at this! Editor & Publisher is a trade magazine that I thought met the threshold for reliable sources. It, for example, lists its staff (at least in the print/online edition found here, on page 4, though I understand if this source may not quite meet all the requirements.

As for the Adam Muema story, I believe it's an important story for a few reasons. It shows that new cults are still cropping up and that even people with bright futures (it was thought that Muema may be drafted into the NFL) can be pulled into them.

From the perspective of why this should be included in a summary of Raw Story's reporting, I think it's notable because it has generated what I'd call significant coverage. Both ESPN and Sports Illustrated did fairly in-depth investigations, which I would say are significant coverage, and the ESPN story goes into some detail about the additional reporting we did related to Raymond Howard-Lear. It's my understanding that an event is noteworthy when it generates significant coverage. Though I don't believe this counts toward notability, Vice also linked back to Raw Story's original investigation into Muema and Howard-Lear. I'd like to think that ESPN and SI count as significant coverage (and both mention Raw Story's reporting directly in the text of the articles). I'd argue this story was at least as notable as the Jennifer Mascia column that's currently in the article, but I'm always open to other interpretations!

Thanks again for getting back to me, I really appreciate it! Let me know if you have any other questions! Nathalie at RS (talk) 17:08, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done: with one addition. I decided to include the Adam Muema story, and I included the January 6 paragraph, but putting "alleged" in the Insurrection Act sentence as the source you provided reported it as alleged. I'm not entirely confident that the sentence about RS's Jan. 6 report is neutral enough, but I'll allow it because the source appears acceptable as far as I can tell and you did include "according to Editor & Publisher." Just explaining my rationale in case of disagreement. Untitled.docx (she/her) 🗩 22:16, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the help, Untitled.docx! Nathalie at RS (talk) 02:45, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

False claims request

Hi editors, Nathalie here again with another request. I'd like to propose a few changes to the False claims subsection.

• First, I'd like to propose we rename the section Controversies and make it its own full section, as I have seen that more frequently than False claims across Wikipedia.
• Second, I'd like to propose moving the sentence in the Content section on the satirical piece we did related to the Surgeon General to this new Controversies section. Alternatively, I'd also be perfectly okay with removing that sentence entirely, as I am not sure the actions of other outlets based on Raw Story's satire count as encyclopedic content, but I am open to other interpretations!
• Third, I'd like to propose the following revision to the sentences about the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. I think these changes help make the sentence more neutral in tone and rescue a broken source.
  • In October 2017, The Raw Story picked up a false story that claimed that the chief deputy for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office was a white supremacist who wanted "to rape and kill a black man or a Jew." The story was later found to be false, and activist Tim Wise, who had shared the Raw Story article on Facebook, said he would no longer share stories from the outlet due to their failure to fact-check. The story was later taken down.
• Fourth, I'd like to propose some changes to the back half of the paragraph on Meghan McCain, to fit better with Wikipedia Manual of Style guidelines:
  • McCain, the daughter of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, previously disputed The Raw Story's assertion that she "drank through" her father's cancer treatment.
• Finally, I'd like to propose removing the See also section. Raw Story is not affiliated with Ora TV and I am not sure why that is here.

References

I'm always open to discussion on any or all of these points. Please let me know if you have any questions. Untitled.docx, you've been so helpful with other requests, would you consider taking a look at this one as well? I'd really appreciate it! Nathalie at RS (talk) 02:45, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

"I'd like to propose we rename the section Controversies" and make it its own full section In general, we avoid creating standalone "Controversy" or "Criticism" sections. It's also not clear that there was actually any controversy here, rather that these were fairly straightforward false claims. It seems more appropriate to have it integrated into the Content section, as it is, and title it in a straightforward manner that directly communicates what is contained in the section rather than vaguely hinting about it.

"I'd like to propose some changes to the back half of the paragraph on Meghan McCain, to fit better with Wikipedia Manual of Style guidelines" The proposal in question is problematic as it massages a straightforward fact into a He Said/She Said dispute. We have a RS (USA Today) directly stating the claim in question did not occur; this is a matter of fact and reality. The MOS guidelines always give way to policy, which directs that: "the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested".

Palm Beach Post -- I have a problem describing this as "the story was later found to be false" as the source does not state that either directly or indirectly. To write "the story was later found to be false" would involve WP:OR that compared the date of the Palm Beach Post story to the date of The Raw Story story and then made several inferences about the availability of information before and after the reporting.

"I'd like to propose removing the See also section" Done. Chetsford (talk) 18:23, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Chetsford, thanks so much for the quick response! I had a couple of quick clarifications and questions.

• Regarding the Meghan McCain paragraph, the only change I was suggesting there was removing the parenthetical about John McCain and making it part of that main sentence. It's my understanding that MOS guidelines prefer to have articles read as fluid prose. The rest of the sentence remains unchanged and uses the "previously disputed" phrasing that is currently in the live article. This is separate from the previous claim which the USA Today is used as a source for. Would you reconsider making the change in light of that?
• Regarding the Palm Beach Sheriff story, the Palm Beach Post says, about midway through its story, "But the report is entirely fake, The Post found." This was after the story was posted by Raw Story, evidenced in the text from the Post saying Raw Story had posted the story and citing Tim Wise saying he wouldn't share things from Raw Story again, so wouldn't it be correct to say it was later found to be false? I'd love to hear your interpretation. This is the direct quote about Raw Story sharing the story:
  • But that didn’t stop bloggers and news sites from picking it up. The most notable was Raw Story, a site that primarily aggregates news from around the web and has more than 1 million followers on Facebook.
• I was also curious about your thoughts on the general shortening I proposed of that paragraph. It seems redundant to me to say the story claimed the PBSO chief deputy wanted to do those things, then say the headline said the same thing, but I'm open to other interpretations!

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this request! I know it's a tricky one and I want to make sure I'm not accidentally breaking any rules, so I really appreciate the attention you paid to this! Nathalie at RS (talk) 20:16, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Untitled.docx, while Chetsford is reviewing this, I was wondering if you had any thoughts? I'd love to build some consensus on this. Please let me know! Nathalie at RS (talk) 13:38, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

- I also oppose adding a controversies section. There's not really any controversy I've seen other than false claims being made. On the other hand, about 50% of the article size is on criticism of RS. I'd think merging with content and reanalyzing the notability of each false claim/criticism would be appropriate in order to balance out the undue weight shown.

- I'm not sure about the inclusion of the satirical piece. It may be more notable on the articles which republished the piece, but on The Onion, instances of their satirical content being republished by news organizations is included in their article. So I'm gonna leave that up to the other reviewer.

- I can see how including "the story was later found to be false" could be considered WP:OR, but I believe simply removing the "later" solves the problem, as it says in the article: "the report is entirely fake, The Post found."

- There is nothing wrong with your proposed change on the paragraph about Meghan McCain. The only issue is with the content already included in the Wikipedia article you are proposing changes to, so I'd leave it alone until the dispute is resolved. @Chetsford, how exactly does the inclusion of McCain's prior dispute over the "drinking through father's death" headline contest with the claim that the bomb threat comparison story was false? I'm not quite sure how those two contradict each other, but it may just be my interpretation.

Hope I was of some help. Untitled.docx (she/her) 🗩 17:18, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@Untitled.docx:, thanks for chiming in! I appreciate the feedback. I'd also prefer not to have a Controversies or False claims section. My main thought was to try to make it look like other Wikipedia articles I had seen, but I would much prefer distributing the content through the Content section like you had suggested. There are several other things I'd like to contest in this section (e.g. the Bill O'Reilly paragraph–Raw Story never made that claim, Occupy Democrats did) but I will do that in a separate request. Happy to post that soon if you would like to take a look!

I also appreciate your thoughts on the Palm Beach story and think your suggestion would work well. Did you have any thoughts on the redundancy of the headline and the article claims?

I really appreciate the answer! Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:24, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood the McCain edit. Based on further explanation, that seems fine to me. I think Untitled.docx's suggestion of dropping "later" and making the "found to be false" edit is fine, too. From a readability perspective, I have issues with merging all of the False Claims content into the larger section as it would make it unusually unwieldly which would significantly break precedent for the structure of similar articles. Because publication of misinformation and false claims appears to be a major component of what TRS does, using that as a section break seems as good a place as any to break up extremely long content. Chetsford (talk) 04:57, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

No worries! Would you or Untitled.docx be willing to make the changes to those two sentences now that we have consensus? I think they would be a net improvement but I won't make the changes myself due to my conflict of interest. Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:05, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I made the changes to the Palm Beach sheriff and Meghan McCain paragraphs. Thanks @[[User:Chetsford|Chetsford] for your reply! Untitled.docx (she/her) 🗩 12:44, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

@Untitled.docx: Thank you so much for your help! Nathalie at RS (talk) 14:01, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Recent additions

Hello editors! It looks like there were several recent edits made that don't seem to quite be neutral in tone and/or encyclopedic content. I'll address a couple in this request and I hope that Dr. Swag Lord, Ph.d can offer some insight into why these additions were made.

• First, I'd like to address the Kushner family sentence. This is listed as COVID-19 misinformation in the Wikipedia article, but coverage of attempts by groups to profit on the pandemic is not misinformation.
  • The cited source says that the phrase "cashing in on" could mean multiple things, but this is not in itself misinformation. Many words and phrases have multiple meanings. We do not accuse agriculture reporters of spreading misinformation when they write about animals "in a pen" when they mean a corral and not a writing utensil. The Snopes piece that the journal article references does not reference the multiple meanings asserted by the journal piece. Presently, these sentences are accusing Raw Story of spreading misinformation when it's really an argument of semantics.
  • It's also worth noting that though Snopes calls this a "report", it is clearly labeled as an opinion piece and has the same information about the company as the Snopes piece.
  • Furthermore, neither the original Raw Story piece nor the Snopes article mentioned by the study make any mention of "public damage." The Snopes article clearly notes how this company connected to the Kushners could have profited through a legal process related to COVID aid bills being discussed at the time. The claim of public damages is a baseless assertion made by the authors of the study based on an interpretation of the article headline and lead based on a potential connotation of the phrase "cashing in on."
  • I can see no way in which this is misinformation (the journal article cites it as an example of the "fallacy of ambiguity and vagueness", but headlines are intentionally vague to attract readers, that's kind of the point, and vagueness is not misinformation) and feel that including it in the "False claims" section, when, again, it is an opinion piece with information verified by Snopes, is non-neutral. I would suggest this be removed entirely, but could also see moving it into the main Content section.
• Second, I'd like to address the previous sentences about how often the Raw Story articles were tweeted.
  • First, at no point in that study does it say the story about Republicans blocking the bill is fake news, incorrect, or otherwise considered misinformation. The journal article discusses only web traffic and tweet traffic to that story. It is simply incorrect to cite this source as a mention of Raw Story spreading COVID-19 misinformation or making a false claim and placing it where it has been placed is neither accurate nor neutral.
  • Second, while the article does make mention of fringe sources being associated with misinformation and other issues, I think it's important to review the entire quote in context.
    • Whereas the exact identity of the alternative media that was documented in this study (eg, Raw Story) might not necessarily be important in a historical perspective, these processes of agenda setting have both theoretical and practical implications for public health efforts. Unfortunately, in this context, prominence of these fringe sources is also associated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and vaccine-opposing messages.
  • I'd argue that the current wording of this paragraph in the Wikipedia article which identifies Raw Story as a spreader of misinformation and vaccine-opposing messages a) is not directly supported by the text and b) is an example of synthesis. For what it's worth, Raw Story's vaccine coverage has consistently been in favor of vaccination and vaccines.

Given the length of this request, I'll stop there for now. Dr. Swag Lord, Ph.d, can you clarify why you added these sentences? I'm just not sure I see how these constitute false claims or misinformation. Chetsford or Untitled.docx, any thoughts? I'd love to build some consensus here. I won't make any direct edits due to my conflict of interest. Thanks in advance for taking a look! Nathalie at RS (talk) 21:05, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

 Not done I'm closing this edit request as Not Done since it's unclear to me what the actual requested edit is. General discussion does not require use of the edit request template. Chetsford (talk) 21:41, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nathalie I hope you are doing well. Let me see if I can address your concerns.

• Firstly, misinformation is defined as incorrect or misleading information presented as fact, either intentionally or unintentionally (per our article on misinformation). This is exactly what the Raw Story has done in relation to COVID. If you're alleging that the Kushner family is profiting off the pandemic via Oscar--without evidence--then that is misinformation and is obviously related to COVID.
• It's also worth noting that though Snopes calls this a "report", it is clearly labeled as an opinion piece --It's clearly not. I see a small "commentary" label in the byline but that's about it. You should make it more obvious to separate your news articles from your opinion ones. (see the Washington Post, for example.)
• Furthermore, neither the original Raw Story piece nor the Snopes article mentioned by the study make any mention of "public damage." The Snopes article clearly notes how this company connected to the Kushners could have profited through a legal process related to COVID aid bills being discussed at the time. The claim of public damages is a baseless assertion made by the authors of the study based on an interpretation of the article headline and lead based on a potential connotation of the phrase "cashing in on." -- Firstly, please do not disparage the authors of the study. The authors are two university professors who are experts on online misinformation. They stated that: In our dataset, vagueness, when identified in broadcast media, often resides in the titles of the news, which allows for twisted interpretations. An example is offered by the Raw Story report entitled ‘Here’s how the Kushner family is cashing in on the coronavirus’, where the phrasal verb ‘cashing in on’ could be interpreted both as merely getting financial revenue from a situation or taking advantage of a situation in an unfair way. As underlined by Snopes, while it is true that the Kushner brothers are co-founders of the health insurance start-up Oscar, which released an online tool to locate COVID-19 testing centres in some areas, there is no evidence that the startup is linked to any public damage. Therefore, the use of polysemous terms in news titles shall be avoided since potentially misleading for the majority of readers who are used to getting their daily news feed scrolling through news titles.
• If the authors of this studied concluded that there is no evidence that the startup is linked to any public damage, then that is exactly what we say in this article. Your interpretation of the facts is not relevant.
• If you want, I could insert in this article something like The Raw Story used a vague headline with polysemous terms. But that seems a bit too WP:TECHNICAL for the average reader.
• First, at no point in that study does it say the story about Republicans blocking the bill is fake news, incorrect, or otherwise considered misinformation. Okay, fair enough. I can move it to a different part in the article.
• But I have to push back on the other part. It is quite clear the article is talking about Raw Story as an example of "fringe sources." I'm not sure how this is "synthesis." Synthesis is when you combine multiple sources to make a claim not found in either. This is not the case here: Twitter has also given rise to nontraditional, digital-only content. These nontraditional sources typically reached salience in terms of website sharing when a story they published became viral. For instance, Raw Story, a digital tabloid [109], featured the most-tweeted website in its story of Republicans blocking a bill in order to protect pharmaceutical companies from limitations on vaccine-related profits. The salience of nontraditional sources demonstrates an intermedia agenda-setting process that provides a platform for individuals who were previously blocked from entering the elite spaces to disseminate their messages [15,110]... The content of the URLs shared over Twitter represented, to a great degree, an alternative agenda. In this agenda, stories that advanced political motives that went beyond the issue of vaccination were featured prominently...Whereas the exact identity of the alternative media that was documented in this study (eg, Raw Story) might not necessarily be important in a historical perspective, these processes of agenda setting have both theoretical and practical implications for public health efforts. Unfortunately, in this context, prominence of these fringe sources is also associated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and vaccine-opposing messages. Raw Story is literally the only source the authors mention in this section. Thank you. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 22:00, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for the lack of clarity, Chetsford! I am requesting that this content be removed or altered to make the text more representative of sourcing and increase the neutrality and accuracy of the article.

Dr. Swag Lord, thank you for responding so quickly!

• I am willing to compromise on the Kushner content. The chief assertion made by this source is that Raw Story spread misinformation through the use of a vague headline. If this content is to remain, I think it is critical to explain this in the article text.
• As it stands, the sentences in the Wikipedia article make it seem Raw Story made claims of public damage that this study then debunked, but those claims are not present in the column and it is a misrepresentation of what was actually published by Raw Story to say so.
• Perhaps we could replace the current text with something like the following:
  In a study published in April 2022, researchers said that Raw Story spread misinformation about the Kushner family attempting to profit off the pandemic through Oscar Health by publishing a commentary with a vague headline that used polysemous terms.
• I feel that you may be putting words into my mouth. I have said nothing about the authors of the study personally nor their credentials and have disparaged no one. I am focused solely on the arguments or assertions being made. Arguments can and should be discussed independently of the people making them, and experts can get things wrong, even in peer-reviewed studies.
• The fact remains that the column did not claim the Kushners caused public damage of any kind. Many phrases taken out of context can be construed to mean different things, that's why context is critical. It is false to say that Raw Story claimed the Kushners caused public damages via Oscar.
• Finally, regarding synthesis and the tweet sentences, I would argue that though synthesis is usually for different sources, the principle still applies here because the Wikipedia article text combines two sentences from the same source to make a contentious claim not explicitly made in the source material. It is true that Raw Story was lumped in with anti-vax outlets, but Raw Story's reporting has consistently been pro-vaccine. For example: this story amplifying the need for vaccines or this story that notes vaccine mandates lead to higher intention to get vaccines. I would argue that this should be removed as the source does not explicitly say Raw Story spread vaccine-opposing messages. It simply is not true to say Raw Story has spread anti-vaccine messaging.

Thank you again for your response! I really appreciate the detail you went into with it and hope what I said makes sense. I am happy to keep working on this and hope we can reach an agreement on something that is the most accurate and neutral it can be. Please let me know if I've misinterpreted anything! Nathalie at RS (talk) 14:55, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

• The chief assertion made by this source is that Raw Story spread misinformation through the use of a vague headline.- Okay, I think I can include something like this in the article.
• In a study published in April 2022, researchers said that Raw Story spread misinformation about the Kushner family attempting to profit off the pandemic through Oscar Health by publishing a commentary with a vague headline that used polysemous terms -- The issue for this is the word "commentary." Neither the peer-reviewed study nor Snopes called the article "commentary." I know you feel that "report" is an inaccurate word, but there is nothing we can do here. We are obligated to follow reliable sources.
• ...experts can get things wrong, even in peer-reviewed studies. --This maybe true, but it always seems like someone else is at fault. Whenever the Raw Story makes a false claim, it's never their fault. It's always this journalist misinterpreted what Raw Story was saying or these experts are making baseless accusations about Raw Story. When your boss was making edit requests, he had a habit of making these accusations too and it was getting very tiresome.
• It is true that Raw Story was lumped in with anti-vax outlets, but Raw Story's reporting has consistently been pro-vaccine. -- So you admit that the study did include Raw Story as an anti-vax outlet? It's seems like you're only opposed to the words "vaccine-opposing messages." Would you be comfortable, then, if we wrote that: According to the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the prominence of "fringe sources" like The Raw Story is associated with misinformation and conspiracy theories.? Thank you, Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

References

Dr. Swag Lord, Ph.d, thanks for responding so quickly again. I am trying really hard to do this the right way and appreciate the dialogue!

• Thanks for being willing to revisit the phrasing of the headline sentence. I think it will be clearer that way.
• I do not agree that Raw Story is associated with misinformation or conspiracy theories. I was attempting a shorthand but I can see how that may have caused confusion, so you have my apologies. Raw Story always tries to publish correct information the first time and if things change or aren't quite right, corrections are published. I cannot and will not say that Raw Story spreads misinformation or conspiracy theories, and I think to include that in this article requires a source that says that plainly.
• Snopes and the study call the piece a report, I will grant you that, but the piece was and remains an opinion piece. "Report" implies that it was presented as regular news and it was not. In the reliable sources guideline you linked, it says that unreliable sources may be used as sources about themselves. Could we add "commentary" to the sentence and link back to the live article under that policy?
• I can certainly understand being frustrated with this sort of nitpicking of the sources, but I am not doing so for the sake of doing so. I think at least some of the objections I've raised would be raised by others making a similar close reading of the source material. My only goal here is to make this article as accurate and neutral as possible and ensure things are accurately represented, particularly in the cited sources. I think we share that goal, even if we disagree about the particulars of how to get there.

Thanks for your attention on this! Nathalie at RS (talk) 18:46, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

• Sorry, I'm not going to use a primary source to refute the wording present in two separate reliable, secondary sources. This would violate policy (see, for example, WP:PSTS). Please stop making such a request. Thank you, Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 11:31, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
• "I cannot and will not say that Raw Story spreads misinformation or conspiracy theories, and I think to include that in this article requires a source that says that plainly. Sorry, I haven't been following this conversation too closely, however, I think we're okay if individual editors are uncomfortable with specific words used in the article, as long as sources support them. From my reading of the Discourse & Society and Scientific Reports papers, this is said coherently enough and part of our role is to distill sources to a plain and readable level. The tabled structure of the two papers does not lend itself to direct quotes but we can still elicit their clear and obvious meaning. Chetsford (talk) 13:28, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. Dr. Swag Lord, Ph.d, can you update the Kushner sentence based on what we talked about here? Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 10:22, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

If it's Dr. Swaglord good luck. He appears obsessed with editing left-wing sites, and other people are complaining too. Check out his site history. (not a personal attack, just a fact.)

2600:6C65:7E7F:B93E:A85C:5C92:ED1B:E538 (talk) 07:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

O'Reilly sentence

Hi editors, Nathalie here with a little correction request. I was checking through the sourcing and I couldn't see where in the cited source it ever says that Raw Story accused Bill O'Reilly of abusing his ex-wife and led to losing custody of his children. The cited Snopes article says that Occupy Democrats is the publication that made the assertion, and Occupy Democrats cited Raw Story in its report. However, Snopes notes that neither Raw Story and Gawker (which Raw Story cited) suggested custody was lost due to abusive behavior. See below (emphasis mine)

• Occupy Democrats cited Raw Story, which in turn cited Gawker, which reported that O’Reilly had “lost custody” of his children in February 2016, but that article, again, did not suggest that O’Reilly was denied custodial care of the children due to violent behavior

This is the only mention of Raw Story in the Snopes article. Can we remove the paragraph on Bill O'Reilly? It is not supported by the sourcing to say Raw Story asserted violent behavior by O'Reilly led to losing custody of his kids, and it doesn't seem to me that being cited incorrectly by Occupy Democrats belongs in the Raw Story Wikipedia article. Please let me know what you think! Nathalie at RS (talk) 16:43, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I think we can keep it in. Chetsford (talk) 02:11, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

DCREPORT no longer affiliated with Raw Story

The relationship ended in November 2021. Please update, David Cay Johnston. 98.10.53.190 (talk) 12:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 21:26, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Grorp (talk) 04:57, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Undue weight for unavoidable mistake; relied on incorrect court transcript

Removed the sentence: In January 2022, The Raw Story falsely claimed that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch had said the seasonal flu killed "hundreds of thousands of people every year." What Gorsuch really said was that the "flu kills — I believe — hundreds, thousands of people every year. The Raw Story later issued a correction.[1]"

Reason: undue weight. The citation that is presented (by Snopes) mentions "And though the transcript initially released by the court temporarily compounded the mistaken attribution, a corrected transcript was released on Jan. 10". On the same day, Raw Story issued a corrected version of the article. [2] (The original article had been issued just 3 days prior.[3]) News agencies typically issue corrections when shown their information is incorrect. In this case, Raw Story relied on an incorrect court transcript; that is an unavoidable mistake, not a false claim in the sense that has been presented in this article (as if it was intentional misinformation). Thus undue weight.

Grorp (talk) 00:26, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

@Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d: Per WP:ONUS, "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." You initially inserted disputed content [4], then re-inserted this disputed content [5] after it had been removed [6]. Above, I stated my reasons for removal. After reading the Talk page now, I see that you and one other were at odds about this content right from the start, and I see no one defending your position. Therefore this has always been "disputed content". Please tell me how this content is NOT undue weight. I reiterate, the original version of the Raw Story article was based off an incorrectly transcribed court transcript. The moment the court transcript was corrected, Raw Story also corrected their article. How does this sort of ordinary procedure by any publisher rate any coverage in a Wikipedia article at all? Does not the inclusion of the original publication error yet no mention of the publisher's correction skew the incident to non-NPOV? Per WP:BALANCING, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. For example, a description of isolated events, quotes, criticisms, or news reports related to one subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic." Grorp (talk) 02:11, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't really have time to read that wall of text. If you want to remove that sentence, be my guest. But please be mindful that this talkpage has been riddled with COIs & sockpuppet accounts who constantly attempt to whitewash this article. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:38, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d: Thanks for the DS/AP notice; I see you got one too. [7] Discretionary sanction policies apply both ways. New tool for my toolbelt. From what I've read of this talk page, some people have tried to clean up blackwashing. Regardless, I found this article to be seriously out of order long before I read any of the talk page; the talk page discussions just cement my original opinion about the state of the article. Grorp (talk) 01:25, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

There is no "blackwashing" in this article and this is certainly not an attack page. Everything in the article is thoroughly sourced and neutrally written. Attempting to re-write this article to make Raw Story appear more positive would be a violation of neutrality. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 02:30, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Synth removed

Removed: Between February and June 2020, The Raw Story was the most tweeted website domain that posted about COVID-19. The Raw Story engaged in politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the prominence of "fringe sources" like The Raw Story is "associated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and vaccine-opposing messages."[8]

The statement consisted of WP:SYNTH since the cited study (Cruickshank) did not label Raw Story's article 'misinformation' or false in any way, and simply lumped Raw Story into a category of websites that are often "associated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and vaccine-opposing messages" without mentioning Raw Story engaged in any of that. The study authors repeatedly called Raw Story a digital/online tabloid and their seeming definition of 'fringe source' includes "nontraditional media outlets, such as tabloids, vlogs, and other social media", as opposed to traditional news sources.

The book "Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics" [9] (which Cruickshank cites) shows rawstory.com as one of the top tweeted websites as far back as 2017 but, according to Cruickshank's Figure 4, Raw Story did not figure prominently in tweets during their 20-week study period except for one single article (this one). Raw Story gained a distinction in Cruickshank because of that single article which was the most-tweeted in the first half of 2020 (the 20-week time period of the study), and it was used as an example of how "new media" websites were politicizing the pandemic, and the study was about politicizing the pandemic ("agenda setting"), specifically via Twitter. However, Cruickshank does not point out anything false in the Raw Story article, and certainly nothing that fits within Wikipedia's classification of COVID-19 misinformation.

SYNTH occurred when a Wikipedia editor merged the ideas from Cruickshank of (a) non-traditional news sources engaged in agenda setting during the pandemic, with (b) the prominence of the single article from Raw Story which was highlighted as an example in the study, with (c) "these fringe sources [are] also associated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and vaccine-opposing messages." However, it's a far cry from those three ideas to 'Raw Story engages in COVID-19 misinformation'.

Grorp (talk) 01:19, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Removed "In 2013, a hoax claiming..."

Removed: In 2013, a hoax claiming that "oculolinctus," an eye-licking fetish, was proliferating in Japanese schools. Author and journalist Mark Schreiber was the first to debunk the credibility of the story. Schreiber contacted various media outlets to have them take the story down. The Raw Story refused to take down the hoax because The Guardian had not. When Schreiber contacted The Raw Story, an editor of the site responded: "We didn't write the story, dude. It's a syndicated story."[10][11][12]

Raw Story appropriately corrected the article when the source article, a syndicated Guardian story, was corrected. Also, RS removed it from the internet a few months later. Removed here for WP:UNDUE.

Details: The removed paragraph paraphrased and shortened the actual quote of "'We didn't write the story, dude. It's a syndicated story,' was how Raw Story's editor responded, advising me that if it was good enough for the Guardian, it was good enough for her." The Raw Story article was corrected the same day Guardian issued a correction, and was removed from the RS website later; last appearing on the Wayback Machine on January 26, 2014.

The Guardian's retraction (first of the 3 citations provided) mentions it was published by HuffPost and The National Student; the Huffpost article is still online with a small correction note at the end; the National Student article has been removed. Yet none of the Wikipedia articles for The Guardian, HuffPost or The National Student mention the eyeball article incident, nor do any of those articles contain a "false claims" section as seen in The Raw Story. The original breakthrough article that the story might have been a hoax was written by a Japanese-based journalist who mentioned another handful of other news agencies who published the same story, including a medical bulletin board.

Corrected and retracted news articles are not usually mentioned in Wikipedia articles, and rarely still if the retracted article was based on a source which Wikipedians consider a reliable source. Therefore this is WP:UNDUE to include in this article.

Grorp (talk) 00:08, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Removed "In November 2013..."

Removed: In November 2013, The Raw Story, citing a local news report, claimed that teenagers were playing the "knockout game" and sharing the videos online. There was almost no evidence to suggest that teenagers were uploading videos of the knockout game.[13]

The choice of words/language in the Wikipedia paragraph presents a further twist to an already-twisted accusation, making the paragraph false.

Details:The original Raw Story article appears 5 times in the Wayback Machine between Nov 16th and Nov 24th, presumably removed from the internet around that time.

It was based off a KDVR article ("It’s a growing trend among bored teens, police say. After a string of seven similar attacks were reported in New York... There are widespread reports of similar attacks taking place in the Tri-State area, especially in New Jersey... There are reports of similar attacks in St. Louis and in Pittsburgh") which cites a PIX11 article ("After a string of attacks in predominately Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn..."). This 2015 article mentions a conviction of knockout game antics in Texas from 2013. These articles show me that there was indeed a growing rash of this sort of crime all around the country at the same time.

The Wikipedia article contains "There was almost no evidence to suggest that teenagers were uploading videos of the knockout game" citing the BuzzFeedsNews article which contains the sentence "Three days ago, Raw Story picked up local news reports claiming The Knockout Game was spreading west, writing that Knockout videos were being shared online amongst teenagers, increasing the game's popularity." But that is a twist of the original Raw Story article which said "[NYPD suspects] that the teens are trading videos of their “knockouts” via social media." The RS article also didn't mention any concept like Buzz's "increasing the game's popularity". RS reported what the PD said, but Buzz reported like RS had said it and lied.

The KDVR and WPIX11 articles are still on their websites, but the Wikipedia articles KDVR and WPIX do not mention the knockout story nor do they have a 'false claims' section, leading me to conclude that this content was added to The Raw Story article in violation of WP:NPOV & WP:WWIN guidelines.

Grorp (talk) 00:08, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Stop removing well-sourced content. This is getting disruptive. Raw Story posted false content and this well-established by RS. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 02:09, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Dr. Swag Lord, While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Being well-sourced is not sufficient for keeping material. Grorp has laid out a clear and reasonable rationale for their changes to the article. You have not done likewise. --Jayron32 17:01, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jayron32 Normally, I would have provided more detailed responses, but this article has been heavily disturbed by sock-puppets, declared and undeclared COIs over the years--in a direct attempt to remove anything slightly negative about this article. I am not at all accusing Group of being affiliated with Raw Story. But they're regurgitating the same lengthy arguments as the prior socks & COIs. And, frankly speaking, it's quite exhausting to repeatedly respond in length to such arguments. @Grorp instead of laying out a WP:WALLOFTEXT, could I kindly request that you make your removal rationales more succinct in the future? This would help the consensus-making process flow better. Thank you! Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:28, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

@Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d: Your fatigue from prior editors' edits is no excuse for you to summarily revert my edits while complaining that you are not even willing to read my not-so-very-long explanations. Per WP:ONUS, "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." Your argument that the content has been that way for a long time is irrelevant, as is your complaint of wall-of-text and any complaints of behavior of other prior editors — all red herrings. You need to present a rational and logical reason why you think any content I removed should instead be included. Grorp (talk) 03:49, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

• I have not summarily reverted your edits. You have removed massive amounts of sourced text: [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. I have reverted you twice on two seperate edits and on one of those you decide to undue my revert--initiating an edit war. If you are familiar with WP:BRD then you would know that reverts are part of the consensus-building process.
• Wall-of-texts complaints are not irrelevant. It is good practice on WP to present your arguments in a concise manner or you may violate WP:BLUDGEON. You have only started editing on this talk page about 10 days ago and yet you are the 4th largest contributor by byte count--over 13,000!
• I'm not really arguing that long-term text has consensus. A lot of the material you're removing has been discussed before and was found to have consensus. For instance, this discussion found consensus to include the knock-out game story
• You need to present a rational and logical reason why you think any content I removed should instead be included--I have. Raw Story has a pattern of repeatedly reporting false or misleading news stories. This fact is well-sustained in reliable sources. In fact, the majority of third-party reliable sources on Raw Story are usually about how Raw Story presented a factually incorrect claim or how they're a hyperpartisan news outlet. Since WP is based on reliable sources, we are obligated to follow what most sources say about Raw Story.

Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 07:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Swag: My response to your arguments:

Re I have not summarily reverted your edits — No? Your first interaction with me was to revert my edit, tag my user talk page with AP2 discretionary sanctions notice, and tell me "I don't really have time to read that wall of text" while hinting I'm COI or a sock, followed later by several "Stop" commands, accusing me of being disruptive, and yet more COI and sock hinting. You have repeatedly expressed refusal to read my edit explanations, which aren't particularly lengthy, while reverting my edits anyway.

Re You have removed massive amounts of sourced text — Removing 2 short paragraphs one day and 2 others 10 days later is hardly "massive amounts". And regardless of being 'sourced' they were/are SYNTH, OR, UNDUE, exaggerated or false. Several other paragraphs on the page suffer from the same shortcomings (but I haven't researched them fully yet).

Re wallotext, ranking and bludgeon — That page you link to ranks me 8th, not 4th, with just 6 edits. You, however, rank number 1 with 43 edits. You seem to have misinterpreted the meaning and purpose of WP:BLUDGEON. Though I explained why I removed certain content, including presenting my evidence and logical argument, I had included far more explanation than usual because this article's talk page contained a lot of discord and WP:OWNBEHAVIORs; to pre-emptively protect my edits from a summary revert (though that didn't help).

Re consensus — You refer to an earlier discussion, which I just now read, and I don't find any consensus there (certainly no community consensus on a wider scale). Consensus isn't a vote; "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue". That discussion had 2 for inclusion, 1 for exclusion, but the quailty of arguments presented for exclusion are logical and the 2 for inclusion are not (at best they represent a 'blindly rote' execution of Wikipedia policy). The older exclusion argument seems similar to mine ("BuzzFeedNews got it wrong"), whereas you and another editor were merely stating 'BuzzFeedNews is reliable source and Raw Story isn't, therefore we go with Buzz even though they wrote it incorrectly". What is worse, someone paraphrased Buzz's false/incorrect statement and wrote it in wikivoice, and the wrong part is what some editor chose to include in the article! Those choices make the editor's neutrality suspect. I'm quite sure there's no Wikipedia policy that excuses that sort of editing/content and tells us to not use our common sense. And even if some of these paragraphs were included by an earlier consensus, consensus can change.

Re Raw Story has a pattern of repeatedly reporting false or misleading news stories. — You haven't presented any source which says that. Show me one; better yet show me several. Don't simply present your synthesized conclusion by typing the heading "False claims" and then listing a dozen or so "mentions" of individual incidents (many of which have since been corrected or retracted). Show me where an independent third-party reliable source describes the concepts of "pattern of" and "repeatedly" for Raw Story's reputation. Or show me a [non-opinion] source which says that Raw Story routinely publishes false claims while failing or refusing to correct or retract. If you cannot, then your claim is original research, and most (if not all) of the section "False claims" should be deleted as UNDUE. After all, with hundreds or thousands of articles published per month by Raw Story, a dozen or so retracted articles spanning 9 years shouldn't warrant half the length of a Wikipedia article. And if there are several reliable sources that discuss in detail about Raw Story's reputation as regards mistakes, corrections, retractions, then you add content related to that — you don't concoct a list of unrelated incidents as a framework on which to hang [mostly politically partisan] comments in order to lead readers to conclude what hasn't been presented here by any source (by virtue of the shear volume of negative information — about 50% of the article's length). Per WP:WEIGHT, "Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, the quantity of text, prominence of placement, the juxtaposition of statements, and the use of imagery."

To date, you haven't presented any evidence or rational and logical reasons why you think any content I had removed should instead be included in the article — a reason which counters my arguments. You have only presented opinion and the curt "because some third party RS said it once". On balance, that's just not enough. I repeat (for the third time), per WP:ONUS, "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content."

Grorp (talk) 02:28, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I see you have totally ignored my simple request to concisely express your statements. This is quite unfortunate and it will be quite difficult to build consensus on this article with you. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 05:21, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Swag: You have yet to present any source which says what you are alleging: "Raw Story has a pattern of repeatedly reporting false or misleading news stories." Neither have you yet presented any logical argument to counter any of my original arguments (re the 4 paragraphs). Grorp (talk) 00:55, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Grorp, this study by the Oxford Internet Institute labels Raw Story as one of the "Top 30 Junk News Sources on Twitter," along side other highly unreliable sources like Breitbart News, InfoWars, Lifenews, and the Gateway Pundit. The researchers, including the noted Philip N. Howard, define Junk News as sources that "deliberately publish misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture. This content includes various forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial news and information". Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 04:11, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Swag: Just an update since I haven't responded in two weeks. My preliminary evaluation is that there is a logic flaw at play here. I have sent an enquiry to Howard's office (he seems to be out for holiday) to identify and locate which one of his many publications describes how each of the 30 outlets came to be on his 'list' (which would include Raw Story). I am also independently reading the various studies/articles cited in this Wikipedia article to figure out who is calling Raw Story "fake news" or "hyperpartisan". So far, most of the studies/articles seem to be using the same 'Howard list' without any further evaluation (therefore, not another independent source). If that's the case, then we only have one source making the allegation. Even if there are several, then really all that can be said is the label itself; the inclusion of incident after incident is only a Wikipedia editor's attempt at 'proving it is so' and really has no relevance (UNDUE). Grorp (talk) 07:13, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

"Junk news" and "hyperpartisan"

I looked at Fox News and "junk" is not a word found in that article. "Hyperpartisan" is also not found in that article.

So why the discrepancy? And "junk news" is not defined in the article. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:13, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Timeshifter. I added a section regarding junk news below and would love your input. [Please note that while my username discloses my conflict of interest, I would again point out my conflict of interest as a point of fairness in trying to achieve consensus or fair agreement.] Thanks in advance for any consideration. JByrne404 (talk) 04:56, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

JByrne404. I don't have a lot of time nowadays for Wikipedia.

Looks like Grorp has since replied, and thoroughly covered the issues.

The current sentence in the first paragraph of the article would never be allowed as is in a biography article. Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. So why should we use lesser standards here?

Raw Story is considered a hyperpartisan media outlet and has been described as junk news.

It is an attack on a media organization in Wikipedia's voice. It violates WP:NPOV.

The correct way is A describes B as C. Based on ...

That lets the readers decide.

And it should not be in the lede after everything Grorp has found.

--Timeshifter (talk) 18:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

You (and i mean all of the partisan hacks disguised as editors) are not really seem to be care about non leftist people and media organizations. Just read any lead in articles of non leftist ppl or media orgs.

For example this lead is nice and neutral and then there s a damn long section called false claims. Why this is not called fake news etc? I just saw ISI96 contributed to this article largely yet his other erticles are considered a crusade against non leftist media orgs.

What do you call someone who always depicts leftist ppl and orgs nice or neutral at worst and non leftist ppl and orgs bad, unaceptable or neutral at best?

U r all biased partisan hacks as the whole wikipedia project by now. 94.21.109.32 (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Change article name from "The Raw Story" to "Raw Story"

Per WP:NAMECHANGES and WP:THE, I suggest that the article name be changed from "The Raw Story" to "Raw Story" because "The" stopped being used as part of the name in 2014 in favor of simply "Raw Story", around the same time the logo changed (dropping the "The"). Prior to a change of the logo from this logo to this logo in September 2014 (according to my rummaging through archive.org), the use of "The" wasn't consistent, however after the logo change the use of "The Raw Story" was extremely rare, whereas the use of "Raw Story" is ubiquitous.

• The use of the form "Raw Story" on the rawstory.com website is consistent on all of their organization pages (non-story pages). [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]
• Pre-2015 articles (from the extant citation list) which use "The Raw Story" include: 2008 [27], 2011 [28] [29] [30], 2014 [31] [32] [33]
• Pre- and post-2015 articles (from the extant citation list) which DO NOT use "The Raw Story" include: 2011: [34] [35], 2013: [36], 2014: [37], 2016: [38], 2017: [39], 2021: [40]
• There are numerous uses of the word "the" (no capital "T" and not part of the name) when used to describe something which belongs to Raw Story, such as: "the Raw Story website" [41] or "the Raw Story daily newsletter" [42].
• Occasionally I have seen a "branded name" which uses "The" at the front end and another noun at the end, such as "The Raw Story Podcast". [43]
• I have found no use of the word "The" for the parent company (Raw Story Media, Inc.) which was incorporated on November 10, 2004 in Massachusetts. [44] [45]

An internet search of my own doesn't find any current use of the form "The Raw Story" in news stories, articles, or papers, whereas I find exclusively the form "Raw Story".

Since the use of the form "The Raw Story" fell out of favor around 2014 and wasn't even used consistently before that time, the title of this article should change from "The Raw Story" to "Raw Story".

Grorp (talk) 00:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support Although Raw Story uses "the" somewhat inconsistently (see their FaceBook), the definite article does not seem to be part of Raw Story's official name. As per WP:Article Titles#Avoid definite and indefinite articles, we should drop the definite article. Grorp, since this is pretty uncontroversial name change, you can probably just move the page yourself, as per WP:RMNOT.

Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 03:57, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Swag: The Facebook page was created in 2008, long before "The" was dropped. I will post the request at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests#Uncontroversial technical requests. Grorp (talk) 04:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

 Done It is done. Grorp (talk) 00:21, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Freedom of Information Award - History request

Hi there! I'm not able to resurface my Wikipedia password at the moment, but I'm John Byrne, the owner of Raw Story, and I have a conflict of interest. I may need to create a new account.

I wondered if someone might consider adding that our article about Kristi Noem, mentioned in the History section (footnote 35), was a finalist for Florida's 2022 Barbara A. Petersen Freedom of Information Award, which "honors a journalist or news organization for outstanding use of public records in reporting or advocacy of rights such as press freedom and public access." The listing for the 2022 awards are here: https://spjflorida.com/sunshine-state-awards/ and the description is here: https://spjflorida.com/awards-categories/. Thanks for your consideration. 2601:147:4780:59E0:2C6F:4DC5:CFF5:B11E (talk) 15:49, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Grorp (talk) 01:42, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@2601:147:4780:59E0:2C6F:4DC5:CFF5:B11E: If your old account is no longer available to you, you are allowed to create a new account, per WP:COMPSOCK instructions. If your old account was the one which was "verified by the Volunteer Response Team", and if you do that again, I'm sure the team would be able to lock the old account and put a note on there pointing to your new account. Who knows, maybe they can somehow get your old account back for you. Grorp (talk) 01:42, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Grorp thank you for considering my suggestion and advising on creating a new account. I forget how to reach out to the verification group -- can you advise? And thank you for looking at other edits made on our page. A lot of the false claims seem to be about other organizations' content. I think the "Junk News" label might merit more review, particularly as the sources that refer to Raw Story in this way don't explain in any way why Raw Story might merit a "junk news" label. As as a conflict of interest observer, I can understand labeling Raw Story as partisan (hyperpartisan seems like a made up term, particularly if Fox News doesn't merit the appellation), but junk news seems to dismiss the decade or so of reporting Raw Story has done to attempt to undermine false claims made by Fox, Alex Jones, and others.

As a random aside, changing the entry to Raw Story makes sense. It's not something we would have thought of, but it's probably smart. Our Facebook page "The Raw Story" is based on a permanent URL created by Facebook we can't change. — JByrne404 (talk) 03:57, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Removed paragraph about satire article

I removed a paragraph that was WP:SYNTH, and if cleaned up would be WP:UNDUE. Full explanation is below. Brandolini's law is in play, again. For those interested in the evidence, keep reading; if not, then don't. Grorp (talk) 07:14, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

In 2016, Raw Story wrote a satirical piece (archived) that was obviously tongue-in-cheek ("We at the Raw Story Stomach Pump Incident Prevention Desk would like to warn you..."). Silverman of BuzzFeedNews wrote an article called "Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate". In it, Silverman mentioned the Raw Story satire piece as the source of U.S. Uncut's also-satirical story (obviously copied from Raw Story, but changed sufficiently to avoid copyright claims, and doesn't cite, link to, or even mention Raw Story), which was then pointed to by posts on Facebook pages Occupy Democrats (post is gone) and The Other 98%.

Silverman had written:

Alarmingly, we found examples of pages on the left and on the right presenting fake news articles as real. Two left-wing pages, Occupy Democrats and The Other 98%, posted a link to an article on U.S. Uncut that claimed the surgeon general of the US warned that drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in "acute alcohol poisoning." That story was an aggregation of a satirical Raw Story article with the same information, published earlier that day. ("Please do your fact-checking as responsibly as possible," joked the U.S. Uncut article that unwittingly presented false information as true.)

Some Wikipedia editor took Silverman's example and twisted it (WP:SYNTH) to allege here in wikivoice that Raw Story wrote a fake article that other outlets published as real news.

In September 2016, Raw Story published a satirical article claiming that the Surgeon General of the United States warned that "drinking every time Trump lied during the first presidential debate could result in 'acute alcohol poisoning.'" The fake story was aggregated by Occupy Democrats, US Uncut, and other outlets as real news.[46]

The elements of the SYNTH are:

• the source (Silverman) never said Raw Story's article was a "fake story"; it was referred to as "satirical"
• US Uncut didn't aggregate it, they copied from it
• Silverman alleged US Uncut's article "unwittingly presented false information as true", but doesn't allege the same for Raw Story's version. (Go ahead and read US Uncut's and Raw Story's articles; they are quite different.)
• Occupy Democrat and The Other 98% merely "shared" an article on Facebook, but they shared US Uncut's article, not Raw Story's
• wikivoice says "and other outlets" when the only other outlet mentioned by Silverman is The Other 98%. This misleads the reader into thinking that perhaps even non-partisan or mainstream outlets may have picked up a fake story.
• The sum of all the pieces, the SYNTH, leads Wikipedia readers to think that Raw Story deliberately misled their readers (when they did not), and that they were the cause of false information being spread across the internet (they weren't).

Even if the wikivoice SYNTH was cleaned up, the result would be that Raw Story wrote a satirical article, another outlet altered it, two other outlets linked to the alteration. There's no story here. There is nothing WP:DUE that should be included in this wiki article.

Silverman may have used the series of events as an example to make his point of how quickly something can spread across the internet, and that satire can be presented as truth, but the incidents don't merit mention in this Wikipedia article.

Grorp (talk) 07:14, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion of 'junk news' apellation

Hi again. I have a conflict of interest as an owner of Raw Story. I'd asked the Wikipedia volunteer group how to get it attached to my account and this Talk page, and if anyone can advise further on the appropriate way to make a request here (I know Nathalie's requests declared her conflict), that would be great.

One of the 'junk news' citations cites a Chatham News article that references the two prior studies but doesn't add anything new (in fact, the article provides a detailed recounting of the story Jordan Green broke, that was also confirmed by another news outlet. I would suggest that this not be an additional footnote since it is only referencing the first two. It also seems odd to cite Raw Story as junk news when the article itself reveals the article was confirmed by a local television station.

If it is Wikipedia policy to include references that don't provide evidence, than the Humboldt Study makes sense to include. It seems a bit extreme, however, to include it at the very top of the entry as fact when there isn't evidence in this source as to why Raw Story specifically was included.

The Oxford study refers to Raw Story in a table at the conclusion of a document, also without any specific description or reason as to why. Notably, it cites a single article. Again, if Wikipedia's practice is to cite studies that don't provide evidence, this inclusion makes sense. But again, it seems quite strong for the second sentence of the entry to refer to Raw Story as "junk news" based on one URL and one study that doesn't explain why Raw Story has been categorized as junk news.

The "junk news" citation in the Chatham news article, in fact, is likely an unfortunate product of the Wikipedia entry and the inclusion of these studies (which provide no evidence Raw Story is junk news).

I'd love to hear others' input as my familiarity with Wikipedia policy and rules is scant. Thanks! — JByrne404 (talk) 17:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I took a look at the Chatham News case. The Chatham News article was written on May 18, 2022. It was referring to a Raw Story article of May 14, 2022. I found WRAL's article of May 16, 2022. WRAL and RS are not similar stories (one isn't a copy of the other), though they cover the same incident -- Gallardo receiving hateful racist and homophobic messages and in-real-life harassments.

However, what is most interesting is that the Wikipedia page for Raw Story on May 14 included the label "online tabloid" (with no citation for that wording) as well as the phrase "has been described as "junk news".[5][6]" with two studies, which is exactly what Chatham uses in their article -- which tells me that Chatham used the Wikipedia article to describe Raw Story. See WP:REFLOOP for reasons why that isn't okay.

Interestingly, the two studies are Bradshaw and a Howard study. Howard was, at the time, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute and Bradshaw's study discloses "FUNDING: The author is grateful for support in the form of a Doctoral fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Additional support was provided by the Hewlett Foundation [2018-7384] and the European Research Council grant “Computational Propaganda: Investigating the Impact of Algorithms and Bots on Political Discourse in Europe”, Proposal 648311, 2015–2020, Philip N. Howard, Principal Investigator." Bradshaw also cites 11 Howard publications, including 6 which she's a co-author on. So not only is there a funding relationship and a close-knit professional relationship, but Bradshaw does no independent evaluation of Raw Story. In fact, she writes "Rather than chasing a definition of what has come to be known as “fake news”, researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute have produced a grounded typology of what users actually share on social media." You can read further, but basically she uses Howard's list of "junk news domains". Therefore, Bradshaw is not a separate determiner for the appellation.

So far, the only thing I've found are a few chunks of text in Howard publications describing how they come to determine that "a" website is junk news. I have been unable to find any publication which describes how Raw Story came to be on Howard's list, nor whether the list is fluid or static (never changes). Howard has published a lot of studies over time and each time refers to his methodology of determining a junk news outlet, but even though he mentions his data set changing (Twitter or Facebook or articles about 2016 or 2018 elections or which country's elections) he never answers the question of whether he re-determines his list each time or whether he uses the same old list. Here is the text from the Howard study:

Howard's Junk News Classification

5. Junk News Classification [47] These sources deliberately publish misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture. This content includes various forms of propaganda and ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial news and information. For a source to be labelled as junk news at least three of the following five characteristics must apply: Professionalism: These outlets do not employ the standards and best practices of professional journalism. They refrain from providing clear information about real authors, editors, publishers and owners. They lack transparency, accountability, and do not publish corrections on debunked information. Style: These outlets use emotionally driven language with emotive expressions, hyperbole, ad hominem attacks, misleading headlines, excessive capitalization, unsafe generalizations and fallacies, moving images, graphic pictures and mobilizing memes. Credibility: These outlets rely on false information and conspiracy theories, which they often employ strategically. They report without consulting multiple sources and do not employ fact-checking methods. Their sources are often untrustworthy and their standards of news production lack credibility. Bias: Reporting in these outlets is highly biased and ideologically skewed, which is otherwise described as hyper-partisan reporting. These outlets frequently present opinion and commentary essays as news. Counterfeit: These outlets mimic professional news media. They counterfeit fonts, branding and stylistic content strategies. Commentary and junk content is stylistically disguised as news, with references to news agencies, and credible sources, and headlines written in a news tone, with bylines, date, time and location stamps.

In other words, the current citations #5, 6 & 7 are all using the same data set (which I have yet to find any description as to why Raw Story was included). At minimum, Bradshaw and Chatham should be removed. I am still researching the Howard citation. If it turns out that Howard is the only one using that appellation, then it should likely be removed from the lead paragraph (as UNDUE there) and mentioned with inline citation in the body of the article that one research body calls RS "junk news". Grorp (talk) 06:25, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Grorp, thank you for looking into this. Clearly you have a depth of understanding here that I do not. (I want to again reiterate my conflict of interest.)

This one "junk news" reference appears in a study that doesn't explain why Raw Story was included. However, there are numerous other references to Raw Story in national publications. Raw Story is often referred to as an investigative news site, including by NBC and ESPN and by Sports Illustrated as an "an independent progressive news website that frequently investigates hoaxes." The New York Times referred to Raw Story as an "alternative news site", The Atlantic as a "progressive site" and the LA Times as a "left-leaning news site." The San Fransisco Chronicle refers to Raw Story as a "political Web site," while The Washington Post refers to Raw Story as "the website Raw Story."

In addition, other large national news organizations that suggest Raw Story has credibility include The Associated Press, which referred this year to Raw Story as a "news site" (the story referenced was a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalist award), The Atlantic, which cited Raw Story here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, | here, here, here, here, here and here, Business Insider, CBS News, The Cleveland Scene, CNBC, CNN here, here and here, Fast Company, The Guardian here and here, The UK Independent here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, the LA Times here and here, Mic, The Military Times, Mississippi Today, MSNBC, NBC News here and here, The New York Times here, here, here and here, Politico here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

There are additional references to Raw Story reporting in the San Fransisco Chronicle here, here and here, Talking Points Memo here and here, TIME, The Today Show, Reuters, SB Nation, Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, The Verge here, here, here, here, here, here and here, Vox here, here, here and here, the Washington Post here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, The Week and Wired here and here.

The question I would pose is whether one study that doesn't explain why Raw Story is junk news should be included in the lead, when there are dozens of references to Raw Story by reputable national U.S. and global news sites that trust Raw Story's reporting enough to include it in their news articles. If Raw Story were junk news, one would expect that references to Raw Story in major media outlets would also disparage Raw Story's reporting or otherwise question whether to include its name in their reports. They do not. Instead, rather than question Raw Story's reporting, they cite it by name. Thank you (as always) for considering any changes. — JByrne404 (talk) 00:14, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

You've got a point there. That's a lotta links; I'll look through them later. Grorp (talk) 00:39, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Grorp. Apologies for throwing all that information at you in an unhelpful way. Perhaps it would be better simply to make a request. I would suggest based on the balance of sources that cite Raw Story's reporting or dub Raw Story a news or investigative news site (NBC) (ESPN) that the junk news reference be removed from the first paragraph of the article as UNDUE. In addition to the above sources, The Columbia Journalism Review included Raw Story in its must-reads of the week (here) and called a Raw Story piece "well-done," Editor & Publisher interviewed Raw Story noting our partnership with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, and we were a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalist award this past year.

Further, if you think it's worth including, I would propose changing the first sentence in "Content" to refer to Raw Story as an investigative news site based on the NBC and ESPN references above. Thank you again for your consideration (and your time). JByrne404 (talk) 18:36, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

@JByrne404: I went thru all of those links and made some changes to the page that I felt were warranted. Grorp (talk) 03:32, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Grorp. Thank you for your attention and time. There were a lot of links, and I probably shouldn't have hit you with so many. Let me again reiterate my conflict of interest as being an owner of Raw Story. I want to ensure that any editors who come after us can review my requests fairly.

In the "Reception" section, you've said Raw Story has broken many stories but cite only one footnote. To better support this assertion, one might include the story about Adam Muena in ESPN ("first published") and the piece about Gov. Kristi Noem noted by AP ("first reported"). In the third sentence, I might add "the" before Associated Press, as it is typically referred to as "the Associated Press." I might also add "news" before "agencies such as Reuters," for clarity. Also, for readability, "progressive," "left-leaning," "alternative," and "independent" might appear before "investigative news site," so that "news site" is not duplicated in the sentence.

In one of the prior notes on this talk page, someone wrote, "DC Report no longer affiliated with Raw Story." I can confirm this is true. Raw Story ended its partnership with DCReport in 2021. It was noted on Raw Story's website here.

Thank you again for taking the time to review my comments on the talk page. JByrne404 (talk) 02:13, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

@JByrne404: I added "the" before AP, "news" before Reuters, and put an ending date to the DCReport content.

LOL on the links. Yes, it took me about a week to go through them all and decide what to do with the information.

Re "investigative news site": If the sentence started "Raw Story is" then I would agree with your suggestion. But it starts "outlets have called Raw Story" and I think it sounds fine (or better) with "news site" twice. They are each individual labels rather than adjectives to the final noun ("news site"). "Investigative" without "news site" or "alternative" without it, just didn't sound right.

The "broken stories" citation is a double-citation (2 sources), and the Muema and Noem ones are used elsewhere in the article with their own kudos there. I tried to limit each 'label' to only two citations, though there were definitely more available that were applicable for each. For each label I tried to select the best ones, or an early and recent pairing, or ones that were good references but hadn't already been used in the article. Grorp (talk) 04:53, 30 October 2022 (UTC)