“We’re shutting it down,” Elon Musk said over the weekend in reference to USAID, the country’s main aid agency, which oversees around $40 billion a year in spending and has been around since the early 1960s. Following two weeks of chaos across the aid industry after the new US administration ordered a 90-day freeze on nearly all foreign assistance, it appears the Trump administration is attempting to move forward with a plan to close the agency and merge its responsibilities with the State Department, though legal challenges are likely.
    • Garibaldee@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      11·
      12 days ago

      https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/about/

      Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year-olds, he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.

      The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method to develop a methodology to support his assessments.

      After years of people telling him to launch a website, in late 2015, Mediabiasfactcheck.com was born from a combination of many different experiences and exhaustive research. For the last 9 years, Dave and his team have refined their methods and improved their reviews to the point where the website receives consistently high traffic levels and is considered a top authority in rating media bias and credibility.

      You are trusting the opinions of a physical therapist who identifies as a “Non-Affiliated” voter, I’m not saying you have to like PressTV, it is perfectly valid to not trust their reporting if you have reasons not to, but I think you can determine whether you trust it on your own, instead of relying on this “Non-Affiliated” loser to inform your opinions.

      • psyklax@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        21·
        12 days ago

        Don’t need a degree to be a critical thinker and practice good journalism. However, evidence is mounting that MBFC may not actually be unbiased or fair. Shame, as I use it as a heuristic for unfamiliar sources.

        • Garibaldee@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          6·
          12 days ago

          I’m only pointing out he’s trained as a physical therapist to highlight that he is not trained in a field relevant to this whatsoever, you can be a critical thinker without being a journalist or going to college, but this person just decided they would be the arbiter of what media bias was in the 2016 US election and has just run with it. Most people do not realize this is just some guy’s opinions, if it was named “David Van Zandt’s blog on media bias” people would probably trust it less than naming it “MediaBiasFactCheck” which makes it sound like it’s not just the opinions of one random dude.

      • psyklax@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        41·
        13 days ago

        Guess I’ll have to reconsider trusting mediabiasfactcheck. Going to carefully read their analysis and factcheck later on when I have time. That particular article doesn’t seem like misinfo to me. As I like to say, facts are facts, regardless of the source. If the article is citing sources and I can trace it back, then I will decide to trust the site.

        Sucks that it’s so much work to get reliable info these days

        • Garibaldee@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          5·
          12 days ago

          Press TV is Iranian state media, I don’t think you should either implictly trust what they are reporting or implictly distrust what they are reporting, you have to look at what is being claimed in an article by article basis and decide whether what they are saying is well sourced and seems accurate. You shouldn’t just “trust the site” for any news source in general, that is the opposite of critical thinking.

    • psyklax@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      21·
      13 days ago

      This reply is not meant to be an attack on you or your article. Just additional relevant information to consider.