this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
509 points (98.5% liked)

politics

25961 readers
2435 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to the nonprofit operator of Wikipedia alleging a pattern of liberal bias in articles on the collaborative encyclopedia.

"I write to request information about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation," Cruz wrote to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander in a letter dated October 3. "Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. That's what makes reports of Wikipedia's systemic bias especially troubling."

Citing research from the conservative Manhattan Institute, Cruz wrote that "researchers have found that articles on the site often reflect a left-wing bias." Cruz alleged that "bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia's reliable sources/perennial sources list" because it describes "MSNBC and CNN as 'generally reliable' sources, while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a 'blacklisted' and 'deprecated' source that Wikipedia's editors have determined 'promotes disinformation.'"

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 40 minutes ago

It must not be protecting pedofiles hard enough

[–] wolfeh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 minutes ago

To quote "Stephen Colbert" (the character) at one of the George W. Bush White House Correspondants Dinners:

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

[–] _AutumnMoon_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 hours ago

wikipedia just tells the truth it just happens that the truth has a left-wing bias

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 hours ago

I think most of the world is considered left wing compared to the US.

Hell, even our "extreme right" would be more left leaning than the US left.

So yeah, any website that has international contributors, will be "left wing" from the perspective of the US.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Cruz alleged that “bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia’s reliable sources/perennial sources list” because it describes “MSNBC and CNN as ‘generally reliable’ sources, while listing Fox News as a ‘generally unreliable’ source for politics and science.

Fox News, the one that successfully argued in court they they were for entertainment purposes only and not actual news? That Fox News?

[–] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Here's an opinion piece about this, in case anyone is curious: https://niemanreports.org/fox-dominion-lawsuit/

[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

Any publisher of truth exhibits strong anti-fascist bias. That's because fascism is inherently anti-truth

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

I love it when this comes up in internet arguments. The mob often agrees with an individual's statement that Wikipedia is bad, and then when asked for an example it's always 100% something absolutely insane. The logical conclusion is that we're all wrong in different ways, but some people simply refuse to accept it and argue with the encyclopedia.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 72 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Left wing bias = says objectively true things about me I don’t like.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

This is literally where we are right now.

My MAGA parents told me that they consume news "from both sides". When pressed to name a single source that they consider on the left, they could not. They didn't even try to say "CNN" or some shit, they simply could not come up with a single source.

So thankfully, they recognized their irrationality, and are no longer MAGA.

Lol jk 🥲

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] voxthefox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 1 day ago

Not false. Reality is proven to have a left-wing bias.

[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 day ago

Reality does not have a right-wing bias. Reality does not have a left-wing bias. But when the right has festered into such an anti-scientific culture as to be at war with truth and reality itself to the point at putting us all at an accelerated risk of a new dark age - then reality is maybe just a little more biased in favor of literally everyone else.

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do not treat this as just a tantrum. It's the right's playbook of moving the overton window to the right by taking extreme positions and invoking the golden mean fallacy. It certainly has worked on MSM.

[–] jve@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

golden mean fallacy

Ooh that’s a new one for me.

Asserting that given any two positions, there exists a compromise between them that must be correct.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Argument-to-Moderation

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

The truth has a left wing bias.

[–] 0ndead@infosec.pub 193 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ted Cruz thinks we should stop attacking pedophiles

[–] frunch@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago

Anything he does from now on is an attempt to distract us from that uncharacteristically candid statement

[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 day ago

Reality has a liberal bias

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 36 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I recently looked into this on another forum where someone shared some articles supposedly proving bias. One article was itself highly biased to the right, so not particularly credible.

The other article, from an organization that ranked the bias of news sources, was very neutral and objective, took accusations of bias seriously, went into detail, and removed the "unbiased" classification from Wikipedia, but didn't conclude any provable bias, leaving it unranked. The best example of bias they had was the fact that articles on socialism and communism didn't list Soviet atrocities, but those atrocities have their own pages and are also mentioned on pages of the countries involved, so that was not a great example.

All these accusations are just the result of a massive right-wing campaign against facts and reality-based reporting. Everything that doesn't follow their propaganda is biased, according to them.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago

Everything that doesn’t follow their propaganda is biased, according to them.

This is really what it comes down to.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 153 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

Cruz alleged that "bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia's reliable sources/perennial sources list" because it describes "MSNBC and CNN as 'generally reliable' sources, while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a 'blacklisted' and 'deprecated' source that Wikipedia's editors have determined 'promotes disinformation.'"

It's kind of funny how when your goal becomes to present factual information, there aren't many especially right-leaning sources. I wonder why that might be.

Can you think of why that might be the case, Ted?

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] PixeIOrange@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

To fascists like Cruz, "left wing bias" means "they are reporting unbiased data instead of compliantly rewriting everything to align with our centralized propaganda machine."

[–] balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Now seems like a good time to do a backup.

For local use: https://www.howtogeek.com/260023/how-to-download-wikipedia-for-offline-at-your-fingertips-reading/

If you have a server: https://blog.stefan-koch.name/2024/11/14/self-hosting-wikipedia

(Kiwix-serve is what you're looking for)

Unfortunately I can't vouch for either of these instructions as I followed instructions from a now defunct privacy podcast.

[–] emmanuel_car@fedia.io 67 points 1 day ago (1 children)

while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science.

You mean that Fox News that argued it’s an entertainment show that no reasonable person would take seriously?

[–] ultranaut@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is this the same Fox News that had to pay out a $800,000,000 settlement for lying about the 2020 election?

[–] maccentric@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did they ever pay that? Where’d the money end up?

[–] ultranaut@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Yep, they paid Dominion Voting Systems who sued them for libel and then during discovery exposed that they had intentionally misled their audience. They paid various others for lying too but Dominion was the most consequential.

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I continue to think its extremely insensitive to call him Ted. He doesn't believe in preferred names. Use his real name Rafael Edward Cruz. Yes its /s but I'm serious. Call that POS Rafael.

[–] PodPerson@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

Whatever his preferred name is, I think we can all agree that he is 100% human.

https://www.tedcruzforhumanpresident.com/

[–] saimen@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago

Sounds like the modern equivalent of burning books to me.

[–] Naevermix@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Sorry Ted, no one will ever forget how Trump made your suck his cock after he insulted your wife.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If reality is left of you, maybe your position is far too right?

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

No it's obviously reality that's to blame!

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why are we still taking these right wing fascist morons seriously?

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Because they have a fuckload of power right now? Now, it’s really nore that we should take the problem seriously and the people should be dragged through the streets, so if that’s what you’re getting at then hell yea.

[–] crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You mean Rafael Cruz, who uses the chosen first name of Ted?

[–] balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That's a mighty deportable first name. Would be a shame if people reported him to ice until they managed to find someone so ignorant they try to arrest him.

[–] Jumbie@lemmy.zip 56 points 1 day ago (13 children)

The point of him making this dumb comparison is to quietly sell the idea to The Stupids that Heritage, Fox and other propaganda places deserve equal consideration as reality.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 45 points 1 day ago

Reality has a left wing bias

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 38 points 1 day ago

"Wahhhh! They don't let us lie to you and treat us as reliable sources!"

I can't stand these scum...

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Ted Cruz picks a fight with mirror, accusing it of falsely making him look like Grandpa Munster grew a beard.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 23 hours ago

Interesting, is it not, that .ml also started beefing with Wikipedia exactly as this becomes a thing for conservatives.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Attacking Wikipedia can not be normalized, we must protect it.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›