You said it's obvious where the article was pulled from. How the hell do you figure that cuz I haven't a clue. What's wrong with calling it Wuhan Virus? Didn't it originate in Wuhan? Does this have some negative connotation that I'm (surprise) clueless on?
Originally Posted by: Zero2Cool
Calling it the Wuhan Virus, Chinese Virus, Kung Flu, etc carries with it racist connotations, whether intentional or not. There has been a certain amount of racist hysteria related to Covid-19, with some assuming they were more likely to get the virus from Asain people. This resulted in cases of random Asian people being berated or assaulted, especially if they were wearing masks (mask-wearing is common in Asian culture whether you're sick or not). Now that mask-wearing is more generally accepted I think this has calmed down to some extent.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52714804 https://www.adl.org/blog/reports-of-anti-asian-assaults-harassment-and-hate-crimes-rise-as-coronavirus-spreads Generally speaking, legitimate news organizations will avoid throwing in Wuhan or Chinese or other slang to try and avoid stiring up these racist sentiments, while less trustworthy sources will use names that they know will resonate with a certain type of reader. So yes, you can sometimes infer the political leaning of an article by weather the virus is referred to by it's medical/scientific name, or by some sort of slang. The Wuhan/Chinese virus wording is often a dog-whistle to folks who have an already poor opinion of Asians and of China in particular.
There's a huge market for misinformation these days, with entire networks detected to it (ie: OAN). As far as how you might figure out the political leanings, or general reliability of websites or news outlets, there are some good resources.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ seems to be a reliable source. For instance, they list
MSNBC as left-leaning with mixed factual accuracy, while
Fox News is equivalent to MSNBC, but on the right. Unsurprisingly,
OAN shows extreme-right bias and low factual accuracy.
Real news organizations like
Reuters (very low bias),
WSJ (moderate right bias), and
NPR (slight left bias) get high marks for accuracy - generally speaking, they report the news with minimal spin.
This
OffGaurdian website gets poor marks for accuracy and is known to post conspiracy theories, pseudoscience articles, and Russian propaganda. So yes, AADP's instinct that this is a biased and potentially unreliable source, was correct. That doesn't necessarily mean the article in question is incorrect (I haven't looked into it personally so I don't have an opinion), but it's a good practice to know where your news comes from.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings