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Re-righting Wikipedia

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By Newslinger

"It is widely known that Wikipedia smears and lies about many conservatives (including The Gateway Pundit) and promotes leftist dogma. [...] Only legal action will prevent these far left hacks from censoring truthful news to the public", retorted the owner of The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that was deprecated by the Wikipedia community as an unreliable source in 2019, one month before his message. "Wikipedia has been and always will be fake news, and they know it. They believe facts are subject to a democratic process, and the only people with a vote are the bubbled leftists who edit Wikipedia", insisted the editor-in-chief of the far-right website Breitbart News shortly after the Wikipedia community deprecated it in 2018.

Is there any merit to these allegations?

A quick search reveals that media outlets tend to respond negatively when they are deprecated, regardless of their political orientation:

All of these deprecated media outlets accuse the Wikipedia community of having a bias that is opposite to the websites' own political orientations. But there is only one English-language Wikipedia. Deprecation is like a mirror: a source's response to being deprecated reflects its own bias more than it says anything about Wikipedia itself.

Recently, The Critic, a "contrarian conservative" magazine, published an article in October titled "The left-wing bias of Wikipedia", in which two pseudonymous authors who identify as American academics criticized Wikipedia editors for deprecating more right-wing sources than left-wing sources. What does this tell us about Wikipedia and its treatment of American media?

America's media landscape

In a highly-cited 2017 report from Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation", researchers Robert M. Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler examined the United States media landscape in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using a corpus of 4.5 million Twitter posts, these researchers measured the "candidate valence" of popular websites, which was determined by comparing the likelihood an article was shared by users who also retweeted posts by either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. (Less than 1% of users in the data set retweeted both Trump and Clinton.) On a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, the candidate valence of a website shows how likely the website was to be aligned with Clinton or Trump supporters in 2016, with a score of -1.0 (left) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Clinton supporters, and a score of 1.0 (right) indicating that it was almost exclusively shared by Trump supporters.

The Berkman Klein Center report identified Wikipedia as a "center-right" website on the candidate valence scale throughout the 2016 U.S. elections. Wikipedia was quite lonely – among the top 75 websites, there were only 3 sources with a center-right valence in the American media landscape during this time period: Wikipedia, RealClearPolitics, and the National Review. Based on the number of link shares generated by sources across the left–right valence spectrum, far-right and center-left valence sources dominated public discourse, with far-right valence sources obtaining the highest number of link shares, while center-right valence sources received the lowest amount of attention. In particular, The Wall Street Journal, an acclaimed conservative newspaper with a centrist valence, was usurped in popularity by Breitbart News, an Internet-native far-right publication with a far-right valence.

The dearth of center-right sources is confirmed in the current version of Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart, a graph that shows the political bias and reliability of popular English-language publications as reviewed by Ad Fontes analysts. The Media Bias Chart portrays the American media landscape as a bell curve in which centrist sources tend to be most reliable, while an increase in a source's bias is correlated with a decrease in the source's reliability. In the chart, there is a discontinuity in the center-right region, which has a mere sprinkle of sources, while the center-left and far-right regions are much more densely populated.

The Critic uses the Media Bias Chart to point out that Wikipedia deprecates more right-wing sources than left-wing sources in community discussions. This is true, and results from a feature of the American media landscape: among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources. In December 2018, I compiled a table of all sources rated by Ad Fontes as "Nonsense damaging to public discourse", and compared their political bias ratings to their Alexa ranks. Although there were low-quality sources on both ends of the left–right political spectrum, there was no comparison in terms of popularity. Hyper-partisan right-wing sources were considerably more popular than hyper-partisan left-wing sources, with no left-wing equivalent to sources such as Breitbart News, which had an Alexa rank of 253. The most popular hyper-partisan left-wing source with a low reliability score was AlterNet, which was less popular with an Alexa rank of 14,007.

Popularity and political bias of low-quality sources

Almost two years have passed since I posted the December 2018 list, so it is time for an update. The following table details all of the sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart, which includes the following categories: "Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info", "Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info", and "Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion":

Sources with a reliability score under 24.0 on the Media Bias Chart
Source Status Overall source reliability Political bias Alexa rank
The Gateway Pundit Deprecated 14.5 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.8 Hyper-partisan Right 521
InfoWars Deprecated Blacklisted 12.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.5 Hyper-partisan Right 2,413
Newsmax Deprecated 18.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 2,621
PJ Media N/A 19.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.4 Hyper-partisan Right 6,459
RedState N/A 21.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,577
WorldNetDaily Deprecated 18.8 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.1 Hyper-partisan Right 6,680
The Federalist N/A 23.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.1 Hyper-partisan Right 7,308
One America News Network Deprecated 20.1 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.1 Hyper-partisan Right 8,430
American Thinker N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 11,845
Twitchy N/A 15.4 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 22.6 Hyper-partisan Right 12,267
Palmer Report N/A 16.9 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -27.6 Hyper-partisan Left 13,119
Before It's News Blacklisted 4.7 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 25.8 Hyper-partisan Right 15,728
Natural News Generally unreliable Blacklisted 8.3 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 31.8 Most Extreme Right 17,368
American Greatness N/A 18.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 26,521
AlterNet Generally unreliable 23.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -20.1 Hyper-partisan Left 31,744
The American Spectator N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 25.6 Hyper-partisan Right 37,759
The Right Scoop N/A 20.2 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.7 Hyper-partisan Right 42,248
The Daily Signal N/A 20.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 22.0 Hyper-partisan Right 50,975
Big League Politics N/A 19.3 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 29.4 Hyper-partisan Right 51,674
NewsPunch N/A 13.9 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 27.2 Hyper-partisan Right 54,839
Bill O'Reilly N/A 21.4 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.9 Hyper-partisan Right 55,910
LifeZette N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 26.1 Hyper-partisan Right 58,147
Glenn Beck N/A 21.7 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 24.9 Hyper-partisan Right 65,138
Occupy Democrats Deprecated 21.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -25.7 Hyper-partisan Left 74,059
Wonkette N/A 15.0 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info -29.1 Hyper-partisan Left 77,446
WorldTruth.TV N/A 7.0 Contains Inaccurate / Fabricated Info 11.7 Skews Right 78,653
Life News N/A 23.6 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion 23.6 Hyper-partisan Right 96,231
Bipartisan Report N/A 19.0 Selective or Incomplete Story / Unfair Persuasion -24.6 Hyper-partisan Left 218,772
National Enquirer Deprecated 8.8 Propaganda / Contains Misleading Info 10.8 Skews Right 362,156

Among the 29 lowest-reliability sources rated by Ad Fontes Media, 5 are "Hyper-partisan Left", 2 "Skew Right", 21 are "Hyper-partisan Right", and 1 is in the "Most Extreme Right". The Critic disapproves of how Wikipedia has not yet deprecated AlterNet, a website classified as "Hyper-partisan Left", but fails to note that there are six "Hyper-partisan Right" sources that are more popular than AlterNet which have also not yet been deprecated or blacklisted. Over the past decade, the prominence of hyper-partisan right-wing sources has been a key feature of the American media landscape. Considering the lack of popular low-reliability sources in the left, it is hardly surprising that a significant proportion of deprecated sources on Wikipedia are right-wing sources.

Re-righting America

Wikipedia editors try to apply the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guideline evenly to all sources, regardless of the sources' political orientation. Although a significant subset of political discourse in American politics centers around content published in low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing sources, Wikipedia cannot use those sources in most cases because they do not meet the encyclopedia's reliability standards. Wikipedia is a reality-based encyclopedia, which means that false and fabricated information is correctly excluded from Wikipedia, even when it is disproportionally published by media outlets with a particular direction of bias.

As the neutral point of view policy states, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[a] Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects."

The lack of high-quality center-right sources is a problem in the American media landscape, and you may be wondering how you can fix this issue. Currently, conservative media outlets have a stronger financial incentive to publish content that is less reliable. Look no further than Newsmax, which recently increased its viewership by a factor of nine after it started publishing baseless claims of fraud regarding the 2020 U.S. elections, with most of the new viewers migrating from the more reliable and less partisan Fox News. This apparent preference for disreputable media is sparking a crisis in American journalism.

To correct the situation, the American public can return to prioritizing high-quality information over partisan misinformation. Specifically, Americans who want to see a more balanced media landscape need to:

  1. Reject low-quality, hyper-partisan right-wing media. These sources currently dominate conservative discourse in American politics on the Internet, and are gradually siphoning attention from more moderate conservative sources in traditional media. To reverse this trend, conservative media outlets that reduce the quality of their content need to suffer a decrease in their audience.
  2. Embrace high-quality center-right media. These sources are few and far between in the American media landscape, and their influence is declining. Market conditions have been too hostile for more center-right outlets to flourish, and this will not change unless the general American public becomes more receptive to high-quality conservative news reporting.

As an individual, whether you are a Wikipedia editor or reader, it is unlikely that anything you personally do would make a significant difference to the state of the American media landscape. However, all demographic changes are dependent on individuals taking action to support the changes they want to see. What Wikipedia desperately needs is a larger selection of high-quality conservative sources that represent the underserved population of Americans who align with the center-right. Once those sources are available, Wikipedia editors will be able to use them to rebalance articles that could benefit from more content that reflects a conservative perspective.

And only then can we re-right Wikipedia.

Notes

  1. ^ The relative prominence of each viewpoint among Wikipedia editors or the general public is not relevant and should not be considered.
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BTW, for those interested, WP:UPSD will highlight whenever most of these sources are cited. There are some exceptions: Life News, Bill O'Reilly, The Right Scoop, The Daily Signal and The American Spectator, aren't highlighted because it's either not immediately obvious that they are unreliable (you can be partisan without inventing things for example), or lack an WP:RSN consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can I tag this article with {{Globalise}}? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, but if you want to do the same type of thing with the UK, or France, or Germany, or ... Please just submit an article. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While this very well-written article definitely defeats the right-wing talking point about everything being biased against them, we might need to discuss how your research also implicates Wikipedia in general for having a bias which leans right. Why would that be? Is it our demographic base? Is it that the insistence on reliability and established sources also contains within it an implicit bias towards the status quo, and thus more conservative basis? Food for thought. Gwen Hope (talk) (contrib) 21:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of comparing the total number of deprecated left-leaning and right-leaning sources, I think it would be more meaningful to compare the threshold of reliability below which sources may be deprecated. The Daily Mail and Breitbart are deprecated with, respectively, reliability scores of 31.17 and 28.60. Has the same threshold been applied when deprecating left-leaning sources? The only deprecated left-leaning source, Occupy Democrats, has a reliability score of 21.59, and a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard decided against deprecating AlterNet, which has a reliability score of 23.16. So the threshold for deprecating left-leaning sources appears to be much stricter. Vitreous humour (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Vitreous humour: the issue usually reflect actual need to take a position on specific sources. For example WorldTruth.TV at 7.0 and NewsPunch at 13.9 are completely unmentioned at WP:RSN, because no one is trying to use them. WP:RSN reacts to usage (both in how widespread usage is, and the nature of said usage) in Wikipedia, it does not anticipate it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another example: according to [1], Jezebel (website) is a "marginally reliable" source, meaning it may or may not be used depending on the context. According to that page Jezebel has been discussed at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard twice, and that was the conclusion of those discussions. Jezebel has a reliability score of 26.25, lower than both The Daily Mail and Breitbart. Why did the Reliable Sources noticeboard decide that Jezebel may be used as a source, even though it is less reliable than deprecated right-leaning sources? Vitreous humour (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my point, I'm saying that this unequal threshold can't be explained by the fact that some sources escape deprecation by never being challenged. All of the sources I mentioned (The Daily Mail, Breitbart, AlterNet and Jezebel) have been challenged at RSN, and so have other sources of about the same reliability such as CounterPunch and The Daily Kos. But only the right-leaning sources are deprecated as a result of those challenges, despite being slightly more reliable than the other sources I mentioned. Vitreous humour (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Again, deprecation vs general unreliability vs whatever else depends on how Jezebel is used and what it's used for. Breitbart was used to push lunacy as fact. Jezebel is used mostly to source opinions. It doesn't make Jezebel reliable, but there hasn't been a need to deprecated it because their is no widespread effort to use it to push for lunatic conspiracy theories. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:40, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Headbomb, you have noted the disparity between ratings by Ad Fontes Media's Media Bias Chart and our deprecation of sources. That is partially because the Media Bias Chart is not an official RS for our reliability decisions. Someone might mention it, and others might say "that's interesting," but it has no weight....yet. Who knows what the future may bring? I personally think it's pretty darn good most of the time. -- Valjean (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If I would like to notice something, most far-right sources are the most loud in declaring Wikipedia is biased. SMB99thx my edits! 00:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's not to say that conservatives are bad. There are many categories of people in the US:

It's just sad how bad apples ruin the rest. We need diversity of good opinions and more neutrality in today's society. Firestar464 (talk) 01:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yesterday, Breitbart published an overview of the various studies about Wikipedia's political bias. Breitbart articles apparently can't be linked to directly, but the article can be found by searching for the title, "5 Times Studies Proved Wikipedia’s Left-Wing Bias". I understand that Breitbart itself is considered unreliable, but this article is merely providing a summary of existing studies conducted by other people. There are many possible ways of measuring political bias, but as far as I know every effort to quantify it at Wikipedia has produced more or less the same result, and that result is not that the bias is right of center. Vitreous humour (talk) 04:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not referring to Conservatism in the United States. I'm referring to the definition of "conservative" as "marked by moderation or caution". Wikipedia exercises moderation in its coverage of topics via its policies of verifiability and neutrality. It maintains existing viewpoints on topics until there is reliable evidence to suggest a change. It does not pounce at breaking news and developments. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 04:37, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As an anecdote, I'd point to The Economist, traditionally considered a centrist publication. The Economist promotes social process by espousing ideas from both the left and right of the political spectrums in the US and UK. Wikipedia is more conservative than The Economist. Unlike The Economist, which argues in favor of or against certain viewpoints on political and social issues, Wikipedia strives towards a neutral point of view policy and does not partake in political advocacy. If we treat The Economist as lying in the center, Wikipedia is right of center. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 16:51, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Vitreous humour: Your last sentence means you have forgotten about the study you read about in this Signpost article. However, I'd ask which country you're talking about. Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, but most studies I've seen are American. And the so-called "left-wing" candidate in America is often further right in many respects than the right-wing candidate in my country (UK). As for Breitbart articles on Wikipedia, they're written by a far-right misogynist who was banned from editing Wikipedia due to harassment of other editors. I notice he uses as evidence in his whining that "right-leaning editors have [...] been found to be six times more likely to face sanctions". He of all people understands that this figure is disproportionately affected by Nazis and trolls who harass other editors. Why would I trust him to not have a selection bias in the content he presents, even if I were to wrongly accept that content as factual?
Anyway, Vitreous humour, you should note that WP:BADSOCK disallows "Editing project space" as an action of a legitimate sockpuppet, under the only possible SOCKLEGIT justification you could have for this account, privacy. — Bilorv (talk) 10:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
All very good points, feminist. — Bilorv (talk) 10:48, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How do we burst the bubbles of consumers of right-wing media? How can we rehabilitate them and get them to trust Wikipedia effectively? How can we encourage them to write about (US) conservative politics using fact-based sources instead of their opinion-based alternatives? Giving up is not an option because these people are likely voters in America; I'd even suggest it's a duty for editors of one of the most visited sites of a country to ensure the viability of America and its institutions. feminist (talk) | free Hong Kong 03:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Newslinger, thanks for such a good analysis of the situation. You really get it.

It is a frequent daily occurrence that clearly right-wing editors and visitors complain about the left-wing bias here, and mistakenly conclude that our choice of sources is because of personal bias, and not because most right-wing sources are not reliable, as noted above by Newslinger. Some editors are well aware of the article at The Critic and actually believe its mistaken premises. That's sad.

One editor recently resorted to accusing other editors of creating "barriers of entry" as a means to "own the topic" and "control the narrative,"[4] rather than recognizing that their own favorite sources were so extreme that they were not reliable enough for us to use.

Does Wikipedia have "barriers to entry?" Yes, we do have them. They are called RS, and source reliability is judged by accuracy, not by any particular bias, be it left or right.

As is always the case with politically relevant facts (IOW not all facts) and how sources relate to them, there are those sources which agree with those in power, and those sources that do not. This is a factor in what's known as "disinformation laundering": "The U.S. media ecosystem features several spheres that partially overlap and constantly interact with each other....The mainstream media... The conspiratorial media... and Disclosers."

Currently, with few exceptions, the right-wing media has become (especially since Trump) so extreme that it is the described "conspiratorial media," with some extreme left-wing sources also in that group. At some other point in history, the roles might be reversed. It all depends on which narratives, true or false, are favorable to those in power. With Trump and the GOP, they have clearly chosen disinformation and conspiracy theories to stoke Trump's base, and he often gets those narratives from sources like Fox News, Daily Caller, Breitbart, RT, Sputnik, and Russian intelligence efforts to plant propaganda and fake news, which he then repeats. He literally "launders" that disinformation.

My points:

  1. Yes, Wikipedia does have "barriers to entry," and we should be thankful for them, not criticize and undermine them.
  2. When people buy into Trump's "All RS are fake news!" mantra, they follow him down a rabbit hole that excludes RS, so they cannot self-correct. He allows no crack for "the light to get in". Being a die-hard Trump supporter has serious consequences here. This extreme media bubble of falsehood does not exist on the left, as left-wingers tend to use a much wider variety of sources, so they discover errors and self-correct fairly quickly.
  3. What lessons does this situation have for editors here? Are we willing to do anything about it?

Valjean (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The rhetoric of journalistic objectivity supplies a mask for the inevitable subjectivity that is involved in news reporting and is supposed to reassure audiences who might otherwise be wary of the power of the media. It also ensures a certain degree of autonomy to journalists and freedom from regulation to media corporations (Entman 1989: 32; Nelkin 1987: 94). However, news reporting involves judgements about what is a good story, who will be interviewed for it, what questions will be asked, which parts of those interviews will be printed or broadcast, what facts are relevant and how the story is written:

value judgements infuse everything in the news media … Which of the infinite observations confronting the reporter will be ignored? Which of the facts noted will be included in the story? Which of the reported events will become the first paragraph? Which story will be prominently displayed on page 1 and which buried inside or discarded? … Mass media not only report the news – they also literally make the news. (Lee and Solomon 1990: 16)

Journalists are free to write what they like if they produce well-written stories ‘free of any politically discordant tones’, that is, if what they write fits the ideology of those above them in the hierarchy. A story that supports the status quo is generally considered to be neutral and its objectivity is not questioned, while one that challenges the status quo tends to be perceived as having a ‘point of view’ and therefore biased.

id say it would be hard to get conservatives to trust Wikipedia as it technically isn't a reliable source, anyone can edit it, and it is just as fallible as a peer reviewed study. a long time ago I was just as liberal as many Wikipedia Editors are, and after being attacked attacked, smeared, hated, vilified for holding different viewpoints that were once considered LIBERAL a decade ago, I understand how conservatives feel and ended up becoming one much to the ire of my own mother who tried very hard to put in an anti conservative bias into me. Most people do not understand what it means to be a conservative or what a conservative really is. we get called fascist just for being for american jobs staying in america, protecting American labor, protecting american energy independence and calling out poorly legislated welfare pieces that exist to move money upward to the rich... its silly but that is how society treats us.

Wikipedia had shown conservative leaning people in the past with biased pages on things such as "Gamergate" that allowed for the activity of trolls to override a movement led by activists who wanted transparency and ethics in gaming journalism. but because the press was slandering the movement, it got biased pages on Wikipedia. in general there are a lot of bias amongst the left where they support things that generally moderates and conservatives see as entirely wrong, yet the press, the media, celebrities and influencers peddle it daily thinking its nuanced because they do not challenge their own views. Even Glenn Greenwald spoke out about the state of journalism, many journalists have been irk'd by the pay for play/reporting and the general misinformation campaigns led by a dying legacy media who takes money on the site to back up private corporate and political interests. so in short, there are tons of reasons conservatives do not trust Wikipedia, and its not just because of the tabloids that conservatives pass off as news...

there are many sources just as bad as conservative rags, fake news sites and right wing tabloids that Wikipedia trusts as a news source. many opinionated pieces are marked as sources on Wikipedia, many editorials and smear campaigns are considered factoids to be tagged onto pages. places like snopes that have lied about many things, and put out misinformation by manipulating the claims they "fact check" are considered valid and truthful sources even tho the internet at large considers them to be ultra biased and propaganda. even sources like buzzfeed are trusted more than the DailyCaller for some reason. and despite the lawsuits of Libel, the Southern Poverty Law Center is still considered a valid source for info about "Hate groups" and hateful people, despite the obvious smears. there are a lot wikipedia could do to maintain neutrality, mainly on the political end. a lot of internet users some reason think politics is black and white, no middle ground for truth, no groups taking money for putting out an occasional smear piece or deceptively edited video like AJ+, NowThis, and buzzfeed puts out.

much of the media IS biased against conservatives, many in the media grew up constantly thinking conservatives were the bad guys because of how the media framed it, and now those who grew up on said media continue the trend and stereotyping of conservatives. 0.6% of the population that is actually white supremacist get painted as if they represent all conservatives, the small portion of firebrand evangelicals and baptists get painted as if they speak for all Christians and Catholics. Not every Bigot is a monolith for the entire spectrum of the right, we are fine with black people, tons of us love gay and trans people and are gay or trans themselves. Because of this bias, many feel as if conservatives are the bad guys and that everything the left does is good, intended to be good and will have a good outcome as if somehow our legislative process cant be lobbied foreign or domestically if someone has a (D) next to their name on the ballots. Conservatives realize this, they understand not everyone in a party they like will be a good working class advocate and that the system lies for its own profit, which is why many do not vote. Even tho they care about working class issues, they don't vote because nothing changes despite what party is in power.

I understand this is an OLD OP-ED piece but I hope this viewpoint from another perspective outside of yours helps. In 2021, conservatives more rely on commentators than legacy media and online news articles and FYI Fox News is just as bad as CNN and MSNBC, both lie their butts off everyday through half-truths and misrepresentation, only difference is that one bias is obvious to you, the others get praised due to confirmation bias. You have the privilege of being within the pop-culture, not the counter culture. remember, just because idiots fall for tabloids and rumor mills, doesn't mean you should entirely discount policy and economic opinions of a spectrum of people on that side because you other them. and what we do now, echoes forever in eternity.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -Groucho Marx

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right." -H. L. Mencken

"If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it." - Mark Twain Daggerfella (talk) 12:52, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]




       

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