Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 333

Link: [1]

Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a US government funded news source. They almost only publish news critical of enemies of the United States. The articles regularly do not cite their sources, which makes their reporting unreliable. For example, this report (https://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/beatings-01222021193838.html) refers to "RFA’s source" and "Tibetan sources say." I think that RFA should be depreciated in line with a number of other state media sources.

Edit: Here is another example of an article that I would not consider entirely reliable: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/cosleeping-10312019160528.html . Again it contains no named sources and it ended up being picked up by other media https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/this-is-mass-rape-china-slammed-over-program-that-appoints-men-to-sleep-with-uighur-women/news-story/ed45cd065e39690354b6402d02904557 . Just because it does not contain any named sources does not mean that it is fabricated, but I feel like, at least on a case by case basis, it might make sense to depreciate some articles from RFA that seem like they can't be authenticated. I don't know if there is any precedent for this.

Dhawk790 (talk) 00:25, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to say yes, deprecate, or at least generally unreliable. Not only a source of political propaganda, even their non-political claims are unreliable. For instance, this piece claims that boxer Abudureheman Abulikemu stopped competing in 2003, but in fact he continued competing in 2005, 2008, and 2009. —Granger (talk · contribs) 08:00, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger: Wow! I didn’t know you were literate in Uyghur, you should definitely add that to the brag boxes on your user page. Do you mind if I ping you in the future? We get a surprising number of Uyghur sources but have almost no editors literate in that language for verification. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:25, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi Horse Eye's Back, the ping didn't work but fortunately I checked back on this discussion. Unfortunately I am not literate in Uyghur (I wish I were!). I used Google Translate, cross-referenced with other online translation tools, to see what that source said. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:45, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh ok, what interested you about that particular article in the first place? Did a third party point to it as containing an inaccuracy? I’m only fluent in one language so my personal judgement of RFA is based primarily on their publications in english. If theres a significant difference between the reliability of their different language services that would probably be important to note. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:50, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I have the Abudureheman Abulikemu article on my watchlist, so I saw when it was added as a reference. It's conceivable that there might be a difference in reliability between languages. My impression of the English version is that it's basically propaganda. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Quick question: I'm using google translate (like you) and I'm getting that the source reported that he had some spinal injury in 2003, rather than he ceased boxing altogether after that point. What are the other translation tools you've been using? I know translations of Uyghur by machines is rough, so I'm interested in learning more about the methods used. —

talk

) 18:57, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I also used Glosbe, Uighur Dictionary, and Uyghurche. As far as I can tell " مۇسابىقىگە قاتنىشىشتىن توختاپ" means something like "stopped participating in competitions", but I'd be happy to be corrected. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I think you’ve pulled a segment too small to be useful. I get "Well-known boxer Abdurrahman entered the tournament in 2003 with a back injury” from "تونۇلغان بوكس ماھىرى ئابدۇراخمان 2003-يىلى بەل ئومۇرتقىسى زەخىملىنىپ مۇسابىقىگە" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Also I think you pulled your segment from the wrong line, you pulled it from the following line “قاتنىشىشتىن توختاپ قالغاندىن كېيىن مەشقاۋۇللۇق قىلىپ كېلىۋاتقان ئىدى." which translates as "He had been coaching since he stopped attending.” or something like that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) When I copy the full sentence instead of just that phrase, Google Translate gives me "Internationally renowned boxer Abdurrahman has been coaching since 2003 when he suffered a spinal cord injury and stopped competing." In any case, this was just one example that came to mind. My overall impression of RFA is that it's a propaganda outlet, and I would not rely on it for factual claims. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable : Political propaganda, funded by the US Gov. Even our own article links without opposition to Propaganda & Psychological warfare.
  talk
  ) 11:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• unreliable; per
  WP:GLOBAL, we should not privilege US state propaganda media over those of other countries, such as Russia and China. NightHeron (talk
  ) 12:02, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

We should treat government controlled news organisations like RFA on a case by case basis and not kneejerk rank them as unreliable. RT and Sputnik had a long history of dubious reporting when it came to issues that contradicted Russian interests, i.e. Syrian use of chemical weapons, MH-17 and the Skripal poisoning to name a few. I'm not familiar enough with RFA to make a judgement, but evidence needs to be given of its unreliability. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:58, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Question: Is it known for actually fabricating news, or simply skewing it in a pro US bias? Blueboar (talk) 17:47, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

There is no history of fabricating news but I think the pro-US/pro-Democracy bias is significant enough to impact reliability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:50, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

If the bias does not result in fabrication or fake news, I don't see why we should classify it as unreliable (see

WP:BIASED).--JBchrch (talk

) 19:04, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

The impact is minor, I wouldn't use them in wikivoice (especially for a BLP claim) but I don’t see a problem using them with attribution. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Good question. My problem is that they report in such a way that makes it difficult to determine whether it is outright fabrication or just creative reporting. See the Wuhan Crematorium story, which as far as I know, has not been backed up by other reporting. They refer to social media posts without linking or even citing the platform. They also regularly use extremely vague sources such as "A source close to the funeral industry surnamed Ma." https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wuhan-cremations-04062020143043.html Dhawk790 (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Reuters appears to have reported that cremations were happening en masse, with families not allowed to see bodies before they were burned. Bloomberg also reported (link to content republished by Time) along a similar vein to RFA. France24 seems to have done so as well. —

talk

) 20:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't know about direct fabrication of stories whole-cloth, but RFA does have a tendency to publish sensationalist claims that are poorly sourced (for example, relying heavily on social media). One recent example is their article claiming that tens of thousands of people died of CoVID-19 in Wuhan, based on a conspiracy theory from social media: Estimates Show Wuhan Death Toll Far Higher Than Official Figure. The story was prompted by social media speculation about the number of urns given out by crematoria in Wuhan after the 76-day lockdown ended (tens of thousands of people die in a city of 10 million in any given 76-day period). RFA began with that speculation, then did some interviews with various people identified as "Wuhan resident[s]" who provided evidence-free speculation, and then quoted a supposed "source" who said that there were people who died at home without seeking treatment (as happened all around the world). The article spitballs a few different numbers: 46800, 40000, 2000/day, etc., all based on extremely flimsy reasoning. The point of the article was to suggest that the "real" death toll was 10-20 times larger than reported. Subsequent studies, including seroprevalence studies published in Nature and PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases, have estimated the total number of people infected in Wuhan, finding results that are completely incompatible with RFA's wild estimates (unless you assume that CoVID-19 has a staggering infection fatality rate of 10-20%). Basically, RFA amplified wild social media speculation that turned out to be false.

The example I've given is in line with RFA's historical mission. The Radio Free X outlets were historically set up in order to broadcast negative stories about the United States' Cold War foes (as opposed to Voice of America, which was supposed to project a positive image of the US). They typically publish stories in the local language first (the urn conspiracy theory story was first published in Mandarin and Cantonese, for example), with the goal of impacting public opinion in the countries they cover. They've undergone various reorganizations since, but the material they put out still follows a similar pattern as before. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable but attribute, their significant pro-US/pro-Democracy bias means that they should generally be used with care with appropriate attribution. That being said they have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. They also have much more editorial independence than those outlets in Russia and China which NightHeron mentions and are headquartered in a country with the rule of law (something neither Russia or China has), I think NightHeron’s argument is a false equivalency. Also unlike the deprecated outlets from those countries RFA doesn’t habitually publish disinformation. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:55, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

So the US has the "rule of law" and its principal adversaries do not? Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "rule of law"? Do you mean a country that consistently follows international law in its dealings with other countries? Do you mean a country that enjoys a peaceful transfer of power? Do you mean a country whose population faithfully observes state and local emergency public health laws? In the latter case, note that China, thanks to its citizens' strict adherence to the law, has kept COVID-19 deaths to about 3 per million population, while the US is currently at about 1500 deaths per million population. Many Americans might see their country as the shining example of rule of law and faithful dissemination of the truth, but

WP:GLOBAL asks us to try to take a more international perspective. NightHeron (talk

) 20:13, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

By rule of law I mean rule of law, I apologize if you’ve never encountered this concept before. Strict adherence to the law =/= rule of law. Neither China or Russia has an independent court system or a legal system which applies equally to the citizenry and the government (in China the CCP is literally above the law). Also if you want to talk about a country that has both a population which faithfully observes state and local emergency public health laws as well as the rule of law might I point you to Taiwan, which also has a much lower death rate than China. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

No need to apologize; I know what "rule of law" means. But which country is better or worse is a matter of opinion. Many people, including many Americans, do not consider the US to be an exemplar of equal treatment of citizens under the law -- rich and poor, powerful and powerless, white and racial minority. Also, I wasn't suggesting that only adversaries of the US have been doing a good job controlling the pandemic. New Zealand's done great, as has the US state of Hawaii.

Getting back to RFA, although some Americans like to think of US propaganda as benign advocacy for democracy, that POV is not a global perspective. NightHeron (talk) 16:31, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Its true that "Many people, including many Americans, do not consider the US to be an exemplar of equal treatment of citizens under the law” but rule of law is a low bar... Remember you’re comparing America to two of the worst countries in the world in this regard. For instance on the Press Freedom Index the United States is #45 with a score of 23.85 (low is good), Russia is #149 with a score of 48.92, China is #177 (four from the bottom) with a score of 78.48. America’s state media wouldn't look good if you weren’t comparing it to the worst of the worst. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Well, it's all a matter of opinion. Is it worse for the CCP to be largely above the law in China, or for the rich and powerful to be largely above the law in the US (or for prosecutors whose misconduct sends innocent Black men to death row to have impunity, per today's NY Times)? Many Western sources might say that the former is worse, but, again, that's not a global perspective.

Much of the Western press, including the NY Times, has been complaining that the Chinese government and media have been spinning the COVID-19 story in China into a narrative of success, rather than telling the truth. I scratch my head when I read this. Three per million dead from COVID aot 1500 per million. What's not to like? A friend from Iran told me that China has been a life-saver for the people back home, who would otherwise be cut off from assistance because of sanctions. Of course, China's humanitarian assistance is motivated by national self-interest, just as the US's is.

My only point is that we as Wikipedia editors should try to see things globally, free of a pro-US bias. NightHeron (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

That doesnt appear to be your only point, you also seem to be making a point about the reliability of RFA. I don’t think anyone takes Chinese COVID numbers any more seriously than they took SARS numbers (or Chinese government statistics in general for that matter), we know the Chinese are lying... We don’t know what the real numbers are but we do know that China has been fibbing about the numbers since day 1. If China’s response had been successful we wouldn't have a pandemic. The Chinese government and media have been spinning the COVID-19 story in China into a narrative of success, thats backed up by reporting in a plethera of both western and non-western media. It is in fact the truth. If you say otherwise we’re going to need sources which support that fringe opinion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:39, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's any indication that the numbers put out by the National Health Commission in China are any less accurate than the numbers put out by other countries. All countries suffered from similar issues early on (e.g., not enough testing capacity), and as a substantial fraction of cases are mild or asymptomatic, many people who get infected (in any country) never get tested, and therefore never show up in the official statistics. However, there have been several studies of seroprevalence within China (e.g., in Nature and PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases). From these studies, it's impossible for true mortality to be that much higher than the official figures, unless you make extreme assumptions about the infection fatality rate (i.e., far greater than 1%). One of the ways that RFA's biases have affected its factual accuracy over the last year is that it has published truly wild claims about the number of CoVID-19 deaths in Wuhan. RFA ran this story, based largely on social media posts and speculation from random residents of Wuhan that RFA says it contacted, which threw around numbers like 42,000 and 46,800 deaths in Wuhan, which are an order of magnitude higher than the totals suggested by seroprevalence (you'd have to assume an infection fatality rate of over 10% to get death totals that high). Essentially, RFA amplified wild social media speculation that turned out to be way off. Given the history of RFA as a Cold War propaganda outlet, that's not surprising. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

You’ve seen no indications that China has issues with the accuracy of government statistics, government transparency, and academic freedom? Well then, carry on. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:09, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

As I said, I've seen no evidence of significant problems with the CoVID-19 statistics. On the contrary, seroprevalence studies are consistent with the death tolls reported by the National Health Commission, but importantly for this discussion, are completely inconsistent with the numbers the RFA hypothesized in the article I linked above (and not just by a bit - we're talking about RFA inflating the numbers by a factor of 10). -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:37, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Just think I should also note in this thread that the RFA article in question is accurate for what it is. It could be used as a source for a claim that many people were skeptical of the official death statistics, but it could not be used to cite claim about the actual death toll. Furthermore, even if it did report a death toll that later turned out to be incorrect, that's not evidence that RFA is unreliable, rather it's

WP:RS AGE in action. Furthermore it's not unwarranted to look at PRC statistics skeptically, especially when there are political implications to them, because even senior PRC officials consider them unreliable, see Li Keqiang index for an example. GretLomborg (talk

) 05:34, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll be blunt: the RFA article we're discussing here was essentially disinformation. It's one thing to express skepticism about any government's statistics, but RFA went far beyond that. RFA engaged in completely unfounded speculation about the death toll, proposing figures that were, even based on what was known at the time, completely unreasonable. There was absolutely no indication, at the time, that anywhere near 40,000 people had died of CoVID-19 in Wuhan. If the shoe were on the other foot, and a Chinese state outlet were to write an article that amplified social media conspiracy theories about the death toll in the US, and which engaged in its own speculation that the death toll might be 10x higher than reported, what would you call that?

This is not an issue of

WP:RS AGE, in which reasonable reporting has been superseded by newer information that renders it moot. This is a case in which the reporting was unreasonable from the start: it was based entirely on wild speculation from social media and from random residents of Wuhan that RFA supposedly interviewed. Studies have continued to come out (such as this study in The BMJ just a few days ago) showing that Wuhan's CoVID-19 death toll was roughly what was officially reported. But the fact that RFA published its story before these studies came out doesn't mean that RFA's reporting was reasonable at the time. If one speculates, with essentially no evidence, that the death toll is 10x higher than reported, one shouldn't be surprised when subsequent studies show one to be wrong. -Thucydides411 (talk

) 17:43, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Multiple RS have used RFA as their sources, including The Wall Street Journal (1, 2) and The New York Times, which has both cited it as the basis of their reporting (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and directly republished stories written by RFA. As can be noted by clicking through the links, these sources cite RFA even when China is the subject of the events depicted in the articles themselves.

There are reliable sources that have explicitly upheld the reliability of RFA as it pertains to issues of controversy, including the

Uyghur genocide. According to The Atlantic, "from the day China’s detention campaign began in earnest, RFA’s Uighur Service—the only Uighur-language news outlet in the world that is independent of Chinese government influence—has frequently been at the tip of the spear of coverage. From the RFA offices in Washington, D.C., its team of 12 journalists has broken hundreds of stories, sometimes bearing sole witness to China’s alarming and escalating crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in the country." The magazine regularly cites reporting from RFA as a source for news in China, even on topics of controversy (1, 2). In other times The Atlantic has reported

that RFA provides "independent news to many rural Cambodians".

The Financial Times has also used RFA's reporting in order to write its own stories (1, 2, 3, 4).

The RS that report this are not limited to those RS that are based within the United States and the United Kingdom.

Al-Jazeera has also repeatedly used RFA as a source for their reporting on topics of controversy within China (1, 2, 3, 4) and Burma (1). Spain-based El País has used RFA as a basis for its reporting on the events in Xinjiang. RFA has even been cited by Argentina-based Clarín on topics

involving North Korea.

The Economist has also praised the quality of RFA's reporting (See: 1 and 2). - Amigao (talk) 19:01, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• This Salon (website) is a reliable media source reporting on RFA bias and how it creates an eco-chambers with US politicians. https://www.salon.com/2020/04/20/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-go-from-the-margins-to-the-mainstream_partner/ Dhawk790 (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Just FYI thats a reprint from FAIR not a Salon piece, it is however reliable enough. I don’t see anything about echo chambers in there though. I also don’t see them criticizing RFA’s reliability. Reliable sources are allowed to be biased. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Note, "There is no consensus on the reliability of Salon." according to

  WP:RSP. (t · c) buidhe

  19:41, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

  A biased source does not mean an unreliable source. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:02, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable; probably should use attribution. RFA provides a lot of unique sources of information and perspectives when it comes to oppressed communities such as the Tibetans. It was actually the first to report the 2008 Tibetan unrest (see, e.g., the WSJ's article). It has also won awards such as the Radio Television Digital News Association's Edward R. Murrow Award for multiple times (see, e.g., last year's list of winners). Normchou ^💬 19:36, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable the above evidence suggests that the outlet has a strong reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. May need attribution in some cases. (t · c) buidhe 23:55, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable. I do not see any real indications it is not reliable. "is a US government funded news source". Well, good for them, that does not affect reliability. Of course if they were funded by Putin, it would be different story. "They almost only publish news critical of enemies of the United States"? This is BS, none of these countiries is an enemy of US. My very best wishes (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

How about "geopolitical rivals"? Certainly, all of the countries they report on seem to fit this description, and (oftentimes more repressive) regimes that are aligned with the US seem to get a pass. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Not unacceptable, if properly attributed I tried to find coverage of this event in other international media, and most of what I found was virulently anti-Chinese sources, so I'm naturally skeptical. Moreover, the date of his arrest for the flyers seems to be contradicted by several of these other sources.[2][3] All of these sources are published by entities that either directly have, or are owned or overseen by governments that have, their own "beef" with Beijing, which would not be a problem if we attribute their views/claims appropriately, but why does the RFA source seem to have its information contradicted by The Hans India and The Tibet Post? It might be a translation telephone game, since I doubt Richard Finney (by whom the linked article was "written in English") has any direct access to primary sources. It would, of course, depend on the context in which it is being cited; the RFA website seems to consider "Tibet", "Uyghur" and "China" to be separate countries, which certainly does not align with NPOV or the official foreign policies of any country anywhere in the world. On a more general note, RFA certainly doesn't seem to be free of US government interference: doing a Google News search for "Radio Free Asia" -site:rfa.org right now brings up, on the first page, several articles published immediately after Biden's inauguration that either accuse the Biden administration of ousting Trump appointees or praise the Biden administration for giving these outlets back their previous editors.[4][5][6] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  Re the RFA website seems to consider "Tibet", "Uyghur" and "China" to be separate countries, which certainly does not align with NPOV:

  WP:NPOV is a requirement for editing articles. It is precisely because different sources have different POVs that Wikipedia requires NPOV to "[represent] fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". Normchou ^💬

  04:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

NPOV is a requirement for our articles, not our editors. If we use excessively biased sources, we need other reliable sources to balance/fact-check them. Excessively biased sources are not outright banned by our normal editing practices, but said editing practices require that we use such sources with care. Anyway, it's super-weird for me, a 16-year Wikipedia veteran to be talked down to about our policies and guidelines by so many new editors who seem to be themselves somewhat unclear on the points they are discussing. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Re NPOV is a requirement for our articles, not our editors: in your comments above, you were citing NPOV and applying it to a source—not even editors. Looking at

WP:NPOV#Explanation of the neutral point of view, one can see it is clearly describing the proper behavior of editors when editing articles. I have no comment regarding your "16-year Wikipedia veteran" thingy though. Normchou ^💬

15:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@

talk

) 04:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Please refrain from pinging the same user multiple times in succession. Anyway [7] Tibet, a formerly independent Himalayan country which was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950; as for Xinjiang, it's weaker, but this article does imply that the region [hadn't] come under Chinese control [until after] two short-lived East Turkestan republics in the 1930s and 1940s (i.e. following the Warlord Era and during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, none of which seem to be mentioned, nor the Protectorate of the Western Regions). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting they’re unreliable because they didn’t mention ancient history (that would be like saying an article about Brexit that doesn’t mention the roman occupation of Britain renders its publication unreliable)? Also I believe you’re misinterpreting NPOV, even if RFA treated them as three separate countries (they don’t) it wouldn't be an NPOV issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:50, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Any source that implies Turkic peoples and followers of Islam have lived in the northeast region of China longer than it has been part of China (rather than it having been part of China before either of those entities existed anywhere), and thus reinforces Anglo readers' biases that see "China" as a monocultural entity, that always has been thus, and only exists in "non-Chinese" territories because of 20th-century imperialist aggression on the part of the CCP, is unreliable, yes. And frankly, I can't figure out what you are trying to say with that bizarre Brexit analogy: did you mean to type something else? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:43, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: You bring up three links to back up your claim that RFA "doesn't seem to be free of US government interference". I'm not sure that the articles you chose actually back up this claim.

Having looked, and even per your own brief analysis here (before the borderline

No True Scotsman argument), RFA doesn't appear to being calling these separate modern countries at all. Note that it refers to Xinjiang as a region, and never as a country; similarly, they are not claiming that Tibet is still an independent country. Hijiri88, I think your assessment that they regard either of these places as "separate countries", as you say, may be a bit flawed. And as the other two editors pointed out, NPOV isn't a policy applicable to sources. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk

) 06:13, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

RFA clearly states that Tibet was an independent country pre-1950. This is a very controversial statement, given Tibet's lack of international recognition at the time. Tibet was de facto independent, but internationally recognized as part of China. This was during a time of civil war in China, so much of the country was beyond the control of the central government. Yet RFA makes a definitive statement that Tibet was an independent country. Given the historical purpose of RFA, there appears to be a political motive behind this claim, just as there would be if a Russian state outlet were to refer to South Ossetia as an independent country, omitting the fact that it is internationally recognized as part of Georgia. This is an example of the type of area in which RFA's reliability is affected by its political objectives. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:45, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

As you note, it was a de-facto independent country. What is stated is simply factual. And no, the international community absolutely did not see Tibet as a part of China, and there was in fact a consensus in place to keep China from annexing Tibet, and to keep the Tibetan government independent of Chinese rule. But Tibet was isolationist, and thus the international community recognized the de-facto suzerainty of China, as Tibet wasn't interested in international affairs beyond its continued independence and a promise of non-interference. Regardless of all this, your reading of a political motive in RFA's acknowledgement of the political reality before the establishment of the PRC is just that: you inferring a political motive where I think none is implied. There's also no need to bring up a hypothetical whataboutism. The "historical purpose" of RFA was to provide factual reporting in places where none existed, due to government censorship and propaganda. It's not nefarious. RFA (and its sister organization, VOA) is internationally recognized as an outlet for reliable factual journalism, and has garnered a veritable cornucopia of awards in journalism over the years to prove it. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 19:30, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

If you are not willing to cite sources, preferably from reputable scholarly publications rather than popular news outlets that may or may not be intended as propaganda mouthpieces, in support of your quite-outlandish claims, I don't see what point there is in attempting to engage in discussion with you. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:43, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

If a Russian state outlet were to say that

Transdnistria, the Republic of Artsakh, etc.) as "independent countries" in an unqualified manner would be misleading. Given RFA's role as the US government's broadcaster in Asian countries the US has poor relations with (and its history as a CIA propaganda outlet), I don't think this is an innocent mistake. -Thucydides411 (talk

) 18:07, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

The United Nations did not yet exist in most of the time period you’re talking about (perhaps you’re thinking of the League of Nations?), and for the short time in which Tibet was both independent and the UN extant it was the ROC not the PRC which held the seat. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

The operative word there is "most". The UN was founded in 1945, with the Republic of China as a Security Council member, and early maps produced by the UN showed Tibet as part of China - which was in line with how it was internationally recognized. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:04, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Also you are mistaken about Tibet’s status during the Qing... They gave up their suzerainty but they remained independent if not entirely sovereign. From an international relations standpoint your argument is a nothing burger, I hope it looks meaningful through whatever political lens you’re looking through. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Suzerainty isn't even a concept in modern international law. It's a feudal relationship from the pre-modern era. When Qing China was forced to deal with modern European nations, Tibet came to be treated as a part of China. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:07, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

But we aren’t talking about modern international law, we’re specifically talking about pre-1950 history here. Also its not a

feudal relationship, I’m not really sure were you’re getting that from. Horse Eye's Back (talk

) 00:32, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

If we're talking about "independent countries" then we're talking about the modern conception of states that developed in Europe, not the old feudal relationships that existed between Qing emperors and various vassals in pre-modern times. "Suzerainty" does not fit into the modern state conception. But if you do instead want to use pre-modern concepts, calling a vassal state of the Qing dynasty an "independent country" still makes no sense.

Without getting into an arcane discussion about what sovereignty is, it's enough to say that after the revolution in China in 1911, Tibet was similar to modern unrecognized states that are de facto independent, but which lack international recognition, like South Ossetia or the Republic of Artsakh. Calling them "independent countries" without qualifiers would be highly misleading, and would betray a certain bias (pro-Russian or pro-Armenian, respectively). -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:58, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890). Undertaking a treaty with Tibet as a nation-state, and prohibiting Chinese rule, annexation, or authority in Tibet, tacitly acknowledged its independence and sovereignty. Later, with the Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting Tibet, Britain delegated suzerainty to China, but reaffirmed its previous prohibition on Chinese rule. China rejected the first convention, but accepted the second, which is only slightly modified. China may have still made claims on Tibet, but they nonetheless respected the treaty, essentially granting Tibet independence--- except for the purpose of conducting foreign affairs on its behalf, and defending its borders, as demarcated by the British. I'm sorry, but it was de-facto independent. And to my knowledge, no other nation in the world disputed this arrangement. And Hijiri88, if you want scholarly sources essentially stating what I just said, I'm willing to provide them. Calling what I stated "quite-outlandish claims", and pre-emptively shutting down any further conversation except on acceptance of your conditional terms, is ridiculously rude. Everything I said is factual, and my relatively even-handed description of these historical events is likewise fairly typical of how most scholars throughout the western world describe the situation of that time period. Current POVs and worldviews may differ, but the essential facts of history speak for themselves (and I've said nothing "outlandish" or even that controversial, outside of it being slightly at odds with the PRC's official preferred interpretation). Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk

) 00:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

"Whataboutism" is not simply the use of analogies. It's essentially a synonym for tu quoque (e.g., "Sure, what I'm doing is bad, but you're doing even worse things!"). I pointed out that there are many unrecognized (or only partially recognized) states around the world, and that referring to them as "independent countries" without qualification would be extremely misleading. I don't see any tu quoque in that.

As for Tibet, it is true that the British empire made attempts to pry it away from China in the late 19th Century. You have to keep in mind that this is a time during which European powers generally were demanding (and obtaining) special rights and spheres of influence in various parts of China. However, British attempts to take control of Tibet from China failed, and Britain recognized Chinese control over Tibet (e.g., in the Sino-British Convention of 1906, which you mentioned). After the revolution in China in 1911, Britain did not recognize Tibet as a sovereign state (nor did any other major country). Like most of China, it was beyond the effective control of the central government, making it analogous to modern states with no or limited recognition (e.g., Abkhazia, a de facto independent state that has its own flag, issues its own passports, but which is recognized by only five countries, and which is internationally recognized as part of Georgia).

Getting back to the point, Radio Free Asia's description of Tibet (Tibet, a formerly independent Himalayan country which was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950) is highly misleading. In the most charitable interpretation, it's a strongly POV description of history that leaves out key context. This reading of history is, however, in line with the bias you might expect from an outlet with close ties to the US state, and which functions partly as an arm of US foreign policy.

I'm not saying that RFA should be deprecated, but I am saying that we should be aware of its biases, and use it with caution in subject areas that the US government has a strong interest in (Tibet would certainly be one such area). -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:33, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I do want scholarly sources that support your outlandish claims. And (since experience has taught me to address this preemptively) I do know that the writings of mid-C20 anti-communists writing in different fields (like Joseph Campbell's Oriental Mythology is one I recently listened to on Audible having not read it since my teenage years) often implicitly create the impression that Tibet had been a separate "country" from China throughout history until their authors' own lifetimes, but (i) their authors are not historians or political scientists (i.e., their claims on these matters are no better than non-scholarly sources like RFA) and (ii) their authors had self-confessed political biases (as for JC being an anti-communist, the description of "Ritsumei University" in Sake and Satori is evidence enough of that). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:24, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

The first article you are citing show that VOA and RFA worry about the perception changing due to the Trump Administration's (failed, per "Pack had vowed to break down the legally guaranteed firewall against meddling in editorial decisions" and the article being about Pack resigning) attempt to undermine their editorial independence. It doesn't say that Pack succeeded in doing so (and it implies that his resignation ensured quite the opposite), but the article primarily is focused on cataloguing the potential for reputational damage that the journalists there worry about. In other words, the article doesn't actually say that the outlet has become less reliable, but its showing that journalists worry that it will be perceived as less reliable due to the Trump Administration's attempted meddling.

The second article you cited actually serves to affirm the claim that RFA and VOA have historically been reliable (at least prior to Pack), as it says, that Pack "intended to turn venerable U.S. media outlets into pro-Trump propaganda machines". There's an implication here that RFA and VOA were reliable before Pack, and that Pack tried to undermine that.

The third article is identical to the first article, as it was written by AFP and then republished by both of the news agencies. I'm not sure why you included it, since it doesn't add any additional information (aside from labeled photos of reporters for VOA and RFA). Why did you choose to tack this link on? —

talk

) 04:35, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I apologize if I misinterpreted anything. I noticed a trend in the GNews results when I tried to verify the claim made by a number of people further up this RFC (including you) that a plurality of third-party media consider RFA to be a generally reputable/trustworthy source. I was, of course, unable to find anything that supported your assertions, and indeed, even if what I found didn't explicitly discredit your assertions, that doesn't support the positive claims you made above (that various other media rely on RFA) and are now making (that RFA's being funded by the US government and being a direct successor to a CIA domino theory operation doesn't imply they are a US government mouthpiece). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Generally Reliable RFA and VOA were specifically founded and structured to bring RS-quality news media to regions/languages where it didn't exist, because spreading RS-quality news-media and demonstrating the benefits of press independence is a US foreign policy goal. It's specious to treat all government-funded news organizations as equivalent, because the real distinction is what purposes they serve and what processes they have. RT doesn't produce unacceptable propaganda because it's government funded, it's unacceptable because Russian foreign policy is to spread disinformation and lies to weaken its adversaries, and it's well-documented that RT does that. What really matters is the processes that RFA has, and they are those of a reliable news outlet. Furthermore RFA and VOA are important sources for Wikipedia, because the often attempt to do RS-quality reporting in regions that are extremely hostile to it. Also, other RS trust it enough to rely on its reporting, for instance: [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]: "Radio Free Asia (RFA), a US-backed news group whose journalists have produced some of the most detailed reporting on the heavily securitised region of Xinjiang", [13], [14]. - GretLomborg (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the Radio Free X stations were founded by a CIA front organizations, and were tasked with broadcasting negative stories about the Soviet Bloc and other foes of the US into the respective countries. The history is discussed here. They've been reorganized over time, and claim to be editorially independent of the US government, but both recent events (namely Trump's blatant influencing of government broadcasters) and a casual glance at the coverage of these broadcasters (it's a who's who of countries the US government does not like, such as Cuba and Iran) should give editors pause. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Negative stories aren't bad things, in fact I'd say they're a key function of journalism: shining light on the bad things no person or organization would willingly reveal about themselves. Given the whole point of RFA is to be beamed into areas where RS journalism isn't allowed (due to political control) and to demonstrate its value, I'd actually expect an excess of negativity, since that's where the need is. Pravda and Xinhua can be trusted to tell the positives stories, even if they're lies. Negative stories are only bad things if they're untrue or deliberate lies. I did have a lot of concerns about what was going on at VOA/RFA towards the end of the Trump administration, and I may have voted differently if Trump gotten a second term, but Biden has cleaned the Trump stay-behinds out [15] and replaced them with long-serving agency staff, so and I don't have any concerns for at least the next four years. - GretLomborg (talk) 19:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Negative stories aren't in themselves bad, but we should be cautious about a US government outlet whose main purpose is to make foreign governments that the US regards as foes look bad. That often leads RFA to promote poorly sourced stories, such as its wild claims about the death toll from CoVID-19 in Wuhan. As I explained in a comment above, RFA took a conspiracy theory from social media, then spoke with a few random Wuhan residents, and wrote a story speculating that over 40,000 people had died of CoVID-19 in Wuhan. This turns out to be about 10 times higher than any reasonable death toll one could estimate from the seroprevalence in Wuhan. You say that their purpose is to provide independent, reliable reporting in places where it is lacking, but an alternative view is that their purpose is to promote negative content, often with little regard for the strength of the sourcing, in countries that the US has poor relations with (typically old Cold War foes). This is something that editors should be aware of when considering whether/how to use RFA. When RFA reports on countries that are perceived by the US as foes, it would be prudent to include in-line attribution for RFA's claims. -Thucydides411 (talk) 09:03, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

RFA's "main purpose" is not "to make foreign governments that the US regards as foes look bad." It's to bring western-style, skeptical journalism to places where it's not allowed by the authorities. Now that's a difficult job, because of interference and intimidation by those same authorities. Given that interference, censorship, and an important, unfolding story; reporting on what's said on social media isn't that unreasonable. Also, your comparison above that you referenced is pretty specious: you're comparing an early news report on social media chatter with scientific estimates from a few months to almost a year later. One, the RFA report was pretty clear it was reporting on social media speculation, and two, you can't reasonably expect breaking news to be as accurate as later scientific analysis with no timeliness constraints. That's a limitation of the news in general, not a specific source, and it's captured in the policy

WP:RS AGE supersedes that reporting and better estimates are now available. - GretLomborg (talk

) 03:58, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

The RFA's reporting was not at all reasonable at the time. There was never any serious indication that the death toll in Wuhan was anywhere near 40,000. It's irresponsible to take completely unfounded claims from social media and to report them as serious estimates of the death toll. What would you think of a news agency that took unfounded conspiracy theories from Twitter about NY city's death toll being 20 times larger than reported, then called up a couple of taxi drivers for their opinions, and then wrote an article mixing those opinions with its own wild speculations? That's essentially what RFA did for Wuhan. It was no surprise when further scientific studies were completely inconsistent with the RFA's estimates - that's what happens when you replace factual reporting with conspiracy theories from social media.

RFA's article came out on the same day as the US surpassed China in cumulative confirmed cases, and as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans began to suggest that China's epidemic had been much larger than reported ([16]). Maybe that's a coincidence, but I'm doubtful.

You keep repeating the mantra that RFA exists to provide reliable coverage, but that's simply inconsistent with what I see here. I see the RFA amplifying wild speculation that's damaging to a government the US views as a foe. Chinese media, by the way, covered this story much more reliably than RFA. Caixin did actual reporting on the handing out of urns in Wuhan. RFA took that kernel of truth and added in the social media speculation about 40,000+ CoVID-19 deaths in Wuhan. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:50, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable and biased. In addition to the uses by various RS enumerated by
  Mikehawk10 above, they do correct stories when they get something wrong.[17][18] At the same time, the US gov't bias is clear. Adoring nanny (talk
  ) 10:02, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
• RFA often publishes rumors from unverified sources and these rumors have been used for
  WP:INTEXT attribution for it. --MarioGom (talk
  ) 14:54, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable for insider stories, reliable for verifiable claims: The main problem I see with RFA is that a lot of its own reporting falls under extraordinary claims, yet is based on unverifiable, "anonymous RFA sources". Obviously every source is biased, government-sponsored ones perhaps often moreso than others (and that in itself is fine), but it does become problematic when a lot of the own reporting of a government-sponsored outlet is simply unverifiable (example 1, example 2, example 3) but used for extraordinary claims and then presented as fact. If it is kept, I would say that given the US itself has banned RFA from targetting American audiences under the Smith-Mundt Act, it should never be used for any claims that are based on "anonymous RFA sources" and can therefore in no way be verified. Sarrotrkux (talk) 20:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I like this formulation. We use reporting, because reporting goes to the primary sources and can theoretically be verified. In a lot of instances, that is not possible with RFA when they use anonymous or vaguely referenced sources. I feel like it would be sensible to have a policy about not citing stories that rely on these types of sources if (as you suggest) it is not also reported by another source. Dhawk790 (talk) 00:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm confused. Here doesn't a verifiable claim mean one that can be sourced to an RS and not just to RFA? If so, then shouldn't the RS and not RFA be cited? How's "reliable [only] for verifiable claims" different from just plain unreliable? Or am I missing something? Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 00:53, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

My wording was confusing. When I was discussing sources within an RFA article, I meant the person cited as making a claim. So for example, person Y said X. Y would be the source. In cases when person Y is anonymous or only vaguely referenced, I feel that the reliability of the RFA article should be questioned. If another source (meaning from another news outlet) has similar claims and includes a named source, I think it would be okay to cite RFA. But you are right, it may be more sensible to just cite the other article and disregard the RFA article. Dhawk790 (talk) 16:40, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

It's worth noting that the Smith-Mundt Act article itself says the restrictions you mentioned have been repealed: "The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012...amended the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be disseminated (widely spread) within the United States." And that restriction, when it existed, doesn't say anything about the quality of RFA's reporting, but rather the role it was meant to play. Towards the end of the article, regarding one of its provisions, the article states states: "...Rep. Karl Mundt (R-SD) and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs William Benton stated clearly: as private media stood up, government media would stand down." It is not meant to be a government competitor to private media, which the US had (and has) plenty of. - GretLomborg (talk) 06:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

• Generally reliable. RFA stories are generally factually accurate. As with other reliable sources, additional considerations apply when RFA cites anonymous sources. Jancarcu (talk) 19:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
• Additional considerations apply: Radio Free Asia is not similar to BBC, NPR and other public broadcasters that are generally considered reliable.

First, a bit of history: Radio Free Asia was originally founded by a CIA front organization, in order to broadcast propaganda into countries that the US viewed as foes during the Cold War. As the CIA itself noted at the time, "The programs are principally anti-Communist propaganda, except for news and music" ([19]). RFA was the Asian counterpart to the CIA's propaganda outlets in Europe (Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty) and Latin America (Free Cuba radio). These outlets broadcast in local languages (Russian, Chinese, Spanish, etc.), and focused on negative stories about the US' Cold War opponents, with the aim of generating opposition to those governments. The history of the "Radio Free X" stations is described in this paper and this NY Times article. RFA was shut down in 1955, partly because it was considered ineffective (most households in China didn't have radios at the time). The US government reorganized its "Radio Free X" broadcasters in 1994, and re-established Radio Free Asia. While the 1994 legislation claims that these broadcasters are supposed to provide reliable information, it also repeatedly stresses that they should advanc[e] the goals of United States foreign policy ([20]). A glance at the reporting of RFA shows that, 1. It publishes almost exclusively on countries that the US has poor relations with, and 2. It overwhelmingly publishes negative stories about those countries.

Next, I'll give an example of why RFA's reporting should be treated with caution, especially for subjects that the US has a strong interest in (after all, RFA is explicitly tasked with advancing US foreign policy objectives). Over the past year, RFA has pushed a wild, highly speculative claims about the CoVID-19 death toll in China. These claims are based largely on social media claims and RFA interviews with random, anonymous people (e.g., random residents of Wuhan, with no discernible expertise). Worse yet, these claims contradict scientific research into the extent of CoVID-19 cases and deaths in China, published in respected international scientific journals. RFA's estimates of the death toll in China are anywhere from 10 to 50 times the scientific estimates.

• "Estimates Show Wuhan Death Toll Far Higher Than Official Figure" (27 March 2020): This article is based on a social media conspiracy theory. After the 76-day lockdown in Wuhan ended, there were long lines at crematoria in Wuhan of people waiting to pick up urns of deceased family members. Of course, in a city of 11 million people, tens of thousands of people die in any given 76-day period. But RFA took a couple of "estimates" from social media and random Wuhan residents it interviewed, and added some of its own speculations. RFA speculated that more than 40,000 people had died of CoVID-19 in Wuhan.
• "Pension Figures From China's Hubei Spark Doubts Over Virus Deaths" (17 February 2021) repeats the urn conspiracy theory, and explores a new conspiracy theory, that the supposed removal of 150,000 people from a list of pension recipients points to a far higher death toll. Again, RFA engages in wild speculation that the death toll might be orders of magnitude higher than reported, with essentially no evidence.

Contrast these articles with actual scientific studies, such as this recent one in The BMJ, which estimates a CoVID-19 death toll of approximately 4500 in Wuhan. Studies of seroprevalence in China published in Nature and PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases have given results consistent with this death toll of approximately 4500 in Wuhan. Yet RFA continues to promote "estimates" that it picks up on social media, which are 10 to 50x higher. RFA's reporting here can only really be described as disinformation, or at best, a reckless promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories that are contradicted by rigorous scientific studies.

Finally, I'll leave you with what Dan Robinson, a long-time correspondent and foreign bureau chief for Voice of America, has to say in the Columbia Journalism Review about the independence of US government broadcasters (VOA and "Radio Free X", not NPR and PBS):

The impression often given in media reports is that programming by VOA and other government-funded media is not influenced, directed, or shaped by foreign policy objectives of any administration. This is just absurd. Among other things, the revered firewall certainly didn’t stop officials from standing up the Extremism Watch Desk.

He concludes,

But the fact remains that every two weeks they accept government paychecks. And at the end of the day will be progressively more enmeshed with the national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States. Government-paid journalists can no longer pretend they are just like their friends at CBS, NBC, AP, NPR, Reuters, and others, or expect to be seen as such by those working for non-government media. That’s simply living in delusion.

RFA is a biased source, and its connection to the US government should be taken into consideration by editors thinking of using it. There may be cases in which it provides valuable reporting, but it should generally be treated with caution. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

From

WP:USEBYOTHERS

, widespread citation without comment for facts is evidence of a source's reputation and reliability for similar facts. As I laid out in my comment above, it looks like RFA has been cited by some of the best of reliable sources for facts on issues involving China, which provides evidence to their generally good reputation for factual reporting on issues involving human rights abuses in China. You've mentioned that the "Radio Free Asia" that was initially established by the CIA was shut down in 1955. I'm not sure it's fair to compare documents about the RFA that was abolished in 1955 and the RFA that was created in 1994, since they seem to be organizations that share the same name but do not share operational continuity.

Per

generally reliable in its areas of expertise is that a source has a reputation for fact-checking, accuracy, and error-correction. I believe that the general use of RFA by mainstream reliable sources that I have listed in my !vote above help to establish that the organization possesses a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, while Adoring nanny

has provided examples in which RFA engages in error-correction when they get things wrong.

I understand that you have concerns regarding their reporting on COVID prevalence within China. I don't really have much of a response on this count, except to say that early reporting on COVID from RS tended to be filled with great uncertainty about the numbers, in part due to China's repeated changing of the counting mechanisms and that reliable sources also independently reported on the urns story.

This above part obviously doesn't concern the article you have listed that was published in 2021. I'm not sure the peer-reviewed scientific articles are as forward in claiming what they conclude they do (the first states that it "had several limitations" because the "study population was not drawn by random sampling, the estimation of the seroprevalence was subject to potential sampling bias... the observed seroprevalence in our study could potentially underestimate the true prevalence rate of the disease." Neither the first nor the second paper provides an estimate for the true number of deaths, though I understand why we might reasonably use seroprevalence as a proxy by which to estimate the true number of deaths). The two papers also conclude fairly different rates of seroprevalence due to their different methods, so I'm not exactly sure where the scientific consensus is (if such a consensus exists), though it appears that you're right in that these papers would suggest that the death rate is not as high as the allegations from a transparency activist that RFA includes in their report. That being said, we would typically prefer epidemiological papers over news reporting for epidemiological claims anyway, so I'm not sure this poses an enormous hurdle to RFA's general use as a source.—

talk

) 22:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Re: Use by others: That says more about the generally poor level of reporting on China and issues of systemic bias than it does about RFA's own reliability. The fact that various other outlets picked up RFA's urns story - a story that was implausible from the beginning and sourced largely to social media speculation - illustrates this problem.

Re: continuity: RFA itself was shut down in 1955, but its sister/brother "Radio Free X" radio stations continued to broadcast propaganda throughout the Cold War. When RFA was re-established in 1994, it was during a general reorganization of the US' Cold War propaganda stations (note the timing, just after the end of the Cold War). As is clearly laid out in Congress' 1994 reorganization of government broadcasters (which I linked to in my above comment), RFA, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, etc. are explicitly tasked with advancing US foreign policy interests. These outlets are not the equivalent of the BBC or NPR. They're much more directly government mouthpieces, as Dan Robinson noted in the Columbia Journalism Review (which I also cited above).

Re: "concerns" about their reporting on CoVID-19 in China: I have much more than just "concerns". RFA has repeatedly published demonstrable falsehoods about the death toll in China. Its latest article, just a few weeks ago, speculates about a possible death toll of 150,000, which is more than 30 times the latest scientific estimate from a high-quality medical journal. As for limitations of studies: yes, they can have sampling bias, but they're not off by a factor of 30. You note that the two seroprevalence studies conclude "fairly different rates", but "fairly different" in this case means 3.2%-3.8% in one study vs. 1.68% in the other. In order to get in the ballpark of RFA's estimate of over 40,000 deaths, you'd need about 40-80% seropositivity. To get to RFA's newest speculative death toll of 150,000, you'd need every single person in Wuhan to have been infected, and you'd additionally need the virus to be far deadlier than generally assumed. The BMJ paper's scientific estimate of the CoVID-19 death toll in Wuhan is 4,500, which is roughly in line with the seropositivity studies, and a factor of 10 to 33 times smaller than RFA's various estimates. In other words, RFA is indulging in absolutely wild speculation. There's really no other way to describe RFA's reporting on this issue as anything other than disinformation. If a Chinese state outlet were engaging in the same sort of behavior with respect to the US, we'd know what to call it.

Re: uncertainty in Western reporting on China's numbers: this does not justify RFA promoting wild conspiracy theories that it picks up from social media. It's true that some Western outlets have imputed sinister motives to China's National Health Commission's modifications to diagnostic criteria early on in the pandemic, when knowledge about the virus was rapidly developing. Whether or not that reporting is fair (and it probably isn't - there were good reasons for the modifications, and the most significant modification actually made Hubei province's definition of a "case" much more expansive than the definition used anywhere else in the world), there's no excuse for promoting outright disinformation about China's death toll, as RFA has done. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:05, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

• Generally reliable, as so adequately demonstrated by
  Mikehawk10 here. Thomas Meng (talk
  ) 22:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
• Generally reliable. Although it is U.S.-government funded, it appears to have a reasonable degree of editorial independence. Sources reflect this: this 2020 Atlantic article notes that RFA, although funded by the U.S., is journalistically independent. As Mikehawk10 noted, there were real concerns under the Trump administration about the risk of RFA being manipulated or made into a hard-edged political tool, but that appears now to be a threat that has passed (or, at the least, has much diminished) given the end of the terms of Trump and Stephen J. Yates. See also this 2001 work on media in southeast Asia which states that in Cambodia, a country lacking a free press, "The Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, both funded by the US government, are important alternatives for Cambodians seeking more independent news." If sources conflict, or if there is some specific use case at issue, then of course that should be the subject of case-by-case discussion. Neutrality^talk 17:20, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable - This is the mirror image of the China Daily discussion above. Yes, they are state-owned, but as far as I know they tell you directly when they are broadcasting and US gov editorial and have reasonable levels of editorial independence, which is key. Any publication may publish information that is not true by mistake, it is the degree to which they are held accountable for doing so, and which they go to correct mistakes that is important. FOARP (talk) 12:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• Usable as acknowledged propaganda, with attribution. Radio Free Asia was founded as a "C.I.A. broadcasting venture", and while it officially ended its relationship to its founder (!) in 1971, it's still funded by the US government with a mission to advance US foreign policy objectives, and is still publishing false and conspiratorial propaganda about China [21]. -Darouet (talk) 13:27, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable based on what RS say about it (and use them as a source) and based on my knowledge/experience. People mention the fact, that the source was a propaganda tool, but it was true 50 years ago. Now it's not (at least it's not affecting it's reliability). It is funded by the US government - yes, but there are many aspects, not only financing, when it comes to things like this. Judging by financial aspect only - not acceptable.--Renat 17:28, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• unreliable
  WP:GLOBAL

I can't find an obvious part of the

talk

) 01:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I don't think that the [statement at the beginning of this RfC is
  talk
  ) 21:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)