Politico is owned by the german Axel Springer SE, a publisher that also owns Bild, Fakt (polish) and Welt among others.

The publisher and its news outlets (with the aforementioned Bild, Fakt and Welt most prominent) is a main driver for a news coverage and reporting that is jointly responsible for the rise of the far right in Germany and Europe.

Politico itself has published so-called Native Ads, a form of advertisng that is designed like op-ed articles and other opinion pieces in a way that is hard to differeentiate from regular, non-sponsored content, mostly for fossile fuel companies but also healt insurance, finance and weapons industries. (Source 1, Source 2).

That sums up to a news outlet that should not be shared, not be trusted and hence, not be posted here. It was not an issue mostly since this outlet wasn’t posted here often , but recently, Politico articles are getting posted very frequently again, so I suggest the ban now.

Edit: lost a word

Edit 2: it should be noted that there is another publisher with a similar name (Springer Nature with several subsidiaries), but that company os not affiliated with Axel Springer SE and has different issues.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    Is there any option between banning and doing nothing? I do get the impression that some of their articles are decent, and I would agree that they’re not that right wing in general (in contrast to Bild and Welt).

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    We use Politico all the time as a generally reliable source on Wikipedia. The sponsored content is obviously shitty, but it’s clearly distinguished by its “Sponsored” mark. If that goes, then banning it as a source might be a level-headed response.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        We’re keenly aware of Politico’s controversies when we use them as a reliable source. We consider them to have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and sorry to say, we’re generally better at sussing that out than most people – not inherently but because that’s what years of writing encyclopedic prose does to a mf.

        • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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          1 month ago

          In your list, Politico is classified as a reliable source specifically on the topic of american politics. This community is only about american politics when they are affecting Europe directly. And if I understand your definition of a reliable source correctly it is about whether events and relevant topics are mentioned and not about how they are framed, right? So take the facts out of sources but do not automatically accept the framing of the facts from the source, am I correct?

          Also, this isn’t only about the factuality and bias, it is also about denying Axel Springer the clicks.

          • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            In your list, Politico is classified as a reliable source specifically on the topic of american politics.

            Yes, that’s correct. “Base” Politico is a publication about American politics. For European politics, we turn to the sister publication Politico Europe. We use Politico Europe all the time as a reliable source for European politics. The reason it’s not mentioned on that perennial sources list is because the list is for oft-discussed sources, and Politico Europe isn’t that discussed, mainly because “base” Politico has functionally the same reputation for accuracy and fact-checking and is therefore treated as a proxy.

            And if I understand your definition of a reliable source correctly it is about whether events and relevant topics are mentioned and not about how they are framed, right? So take the facts out of sources but do not automatically accept the framing of the facts from the source, am I correct?

            You have the right basic idea, but it’s more complicated than that. We acknowledge that literally every source we’re going to use has a bias; what we don’t tolerate is a source letting its bias interfere with factual accuracy – not just on the individual points but the cohesive whole of the work. Dishonest framing that takes verifiably true individual points and turns them into an inaccurate whole makes for a bad source, and we try not to use sources that do this.

            We also strongly examine conflict of interest, what other sources with good reputations for reliability are saying, etc. If we feel a biased source has reliability for accuracy, the rest falls more into our neutral point of view (NPOV) policy. It’s hard to summarize, because the RS and NPOV pages, despite their length, already summarize these source guidelines about as well as you can without stripping away important nuances.

            • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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              1 month ago

              I’m still wondering if you understand that Wikipedia and a news forum are different contexts. I don’t undeestand why you apply the same criteria you use for one context to another. For example, you might be fine with native ads, because you analyze every bit of information. For a news forum where people scroll through casually, it’s really bad because native ads are designed in a way that readers should miss these tiny hints and take it not as an ad. Different context, different approach to consumation, different issues with such things.

              And even if Politico was perfect itself, it’s still owned by a shit corporation that shouldn’t get our clicks.

  • catharso@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    i think it is necessary to occasionally see what ‘the other side’ is pushing, just to be prepared.

    so i’d say autotagging posts pointing to certain domains with a “warning” label (like for example https://ground.news/ is doing) might be the better approach.

    but lemmy afaik does not have a feature like this; so banning might be the next best thing 🤷🏻‍♀️

    • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      1 month ago

      I wouldn’t care if it was every now and then, but recently the frequency of Politico articles being shared here has skyrocketed - mostly by a single user, but I have seen them being posted by others, too.

      • CAVOK@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Is it me? Am I the offending user?

        I don’t think there’s enough content on lemmy yet to ban news outlets based on ideological purity of the owners, and its doubt there will ever be.

        I think it’s a good enough source and should not be banned.

        • Dynamo Maus@feddit.org
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          6 days ago

          What are we talking about?

          You are talking about “Banning newspapers”. The Rest is criticizing a news publisher and wish to not be confronted with it as often.

          You can scroll the Press reprimands of the quality management of German press and look how big the role of springer is in shitty journalistic standards they straight up lie: https://www.presserat.de/ruegen-presse-uebersicht.html

          By the way - I also think less Springer in my timeline is good - I would still not want it to be banned.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    13 days ago

    The publisher and its news outlets (with the aforementioned Bild, Fakt and Welt most prominent) is a main driver for a news coverage and reporting that is jointly responsible for the rise of the far right in Germany and Europe.

    Is there any proof for that? I keep hearing the claim often but never once is any kind of proof presented.

    • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      12 days ago

      What do you want to have evidence for? That BILD is Germany’s medium reaching the most people? Here, evidence. That repitition of positions influences people’s opinions? Yep, proven. That BILD distributes right wind populism? Tadaa. Now put the puzzle together, it’s not hard.