I don't see what use you could have for it other than "If we put this on a spectrum from Breitbart to Cumtown, where would it go?" which is usually not that useful of a metric. That is then made much worse by the fact that it equates being "unbiased" with being nearer the center, which is arguably even worse than the usual "fact checking" assholes who merely imply that massively correlate the two without necessarily linking them.
Ultimately it just tells you "How much does a centrist Democrat profess to dislike this source relative to other sources?" with a left/right flourish.
Case in point: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cuba-media-profile/
It gives Cuba a Freedom rating of "Total Oppression" with a media bias somewhere between "Left" and "Extreme Left". As an aside, notice the spectrum displaying the center as the "least biased". You can fish some helpful bits of information out of the rest of the report, but nothing you couldn't get elsewhere.
I know some people really hate Grayzone because one of its main writers became a complete crank (I don't really follow that stuff) but what I have read from it I have only ever seen to be highly substantiated. I can pick things out for you, but I think if you just look at it yourself you'll see that the article is as desperate to give it the lowest rating that it can manage, citing things like "anti-corporate bias" and literally Radio Free Asia
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-grayzone/
"Alright, but what about them being deceptive? How is it substantiated?"
Failed Fact Checks
A third-party fact-checker has not directly fact-checked them.
Overall, we rate The Grayzone Far-Left Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of propaganda, conspiracy theories, and consistent one-sided reporting. (D. Van Zandt 9/25/2021)
Nothing except this citation with no link. Wonderful. Let me know if you can find where this Van Zandt person's report is, because I sure can't find it.
Edit 53: They do ding the Editor-in-Chief for appearing on another show and saying Gates people ran Covid simulations prior to the pandemic (which it says is false, I don't care to investigate so let's just go with that), though the media is broken and, again, that is not a Grayzone publication.
Edit 72: Alright, I had to check MoonOfAlabama, who I have mixed feelings on, but I wanted to share this gem, bold mine:
Moon of Alabama utilizes questionable sources such as RT News, Fox News, as well as credible sources such as Bloomberg, NY Times, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, Politico, cisac.fsi.stanford.edu, and blogs such as johnhelmer.org.
You really don't think it's at all useful to see at a glance whether something's , , or ? I kinda just like the convenience, I've already encountered all of these problems. That's why I don't follow MBFC blindly.
Well, I don't think it's even all that great for that because it has a weird affect of anti-Ukraine being "right bias", left-of-Bibi-Zionism being "left bias," and so on. If it actually just said "how much of a Marxist [derogatory] is this source?" then it might be more useful, but going to MBFC piecing through why it rates something the way it does is genuinely more effort than just looking at the article and making a determination from that.
You know, the more you say the more I'm starting to feel like MBFC is just some baggage I've been carrying with me since my liberal-brainwormed late-teens, that I've kept justifying to myself despite its lack of any actual use... I mean, I haven't even used it for two months since my laptop doesn't work, and half of the news sources I look at are unrated anyways.
For what it's worth, I'm not trying to attack you for using it or anything, I'm just taking the question "Is MBFC useful to a communist?" at face value and trying to answer it. Maybe you have fluency with it (my condolences) that makes the relation of effort I mentioned before not hold. I get a little focused on conversation topics like that sometimes . . .
Is it... Is it bad that I use MBFC? Like, I don't follow it blindly, of course, I know it's got a bias itself, but I still find it useful.
I don't see what use you could have for it other than "If we put this on a spectrum from Breitbart to Cumtown, where would it go?" which is usually not that useful of a metric. That is then made much worse by the fact that it equates being "unbiased" with being nearer the center, which is arguably even worse than the usual "fact checking" assholes who merely imply that massively correlate the two without necessarily linking them.
Ultimately it just tells you "How much does a centrist Democrat profess to dislike this source relative to other sources?" with a left/right flourish.
Case in point: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cuba-media-profile/
It gives Cuba a Freedom rating of "Total Oppression" with a media bias somewhere between "Left" and "Extreme Left". As an aside, notice the spectrum displaying the center as the "least biased". You can fish some helpful bits of information out of the rest of the report, but nothing you couldn't get elsewhere.
I know some people really hate Grayzone because one of its main writers became a complete crank (I don't really follow that stuff) but what I have read from it I have only ever seen to be highly substantiated. I can pick things out for you, but I think if you just look at it yourself you'll see that the article is as desperate to give it the lowest rating that it can manage, citing things like "anti-corporate bias" and literally Radio Free Asia
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-grayzone/
"Alright, but what about them being deceptive? How is it substantiated?"
Nothing except this citation with no link. Wonderful. Let me know if you can find where this Van Zandt person's report is, because I sure can't find it.
Edit 53: They do ding the Editor-in-Chief for appearing on another show and saying Gates people ran Covid simulations prior to the pandemic (which it says is false, I don't care to investigate so let's just go with that), though the media is broken and, again, that is not a Grayzone publication.
lmao, RadioFreeAsia has a rating of "HIGH" Factuality and a "Center-Left" bias. Fucking clowns. In case you are wondering, it does not hunt down the people in charge and look for the "most biased" things they are ever recorded as having said, which really makes you think.
Edit 72: Alright, I had to check MoonOfAlabama, who I have mixed feelings on, but I wanted to share this gem, bold mine:
Glad to see Zionism isn't too biased
Everyone on this site should be issued a ranking on that scale.
You really don't think it's at all useful to see at a glance whether something's
, 
, or 
? I kinda just like the convenience, I've already encountered all of these problems. That's why I don't follow MBFC blindly.
Well, I don't think it's even all that great for that because it has a weird affect of anti-Ukraine being "right bias", left-of-Bibi-Zionism being "left bias," and so on. If it actually just said "how much of a Marxist [derogatory] is this source?" then it might be more useful, but going to MBFC piecing through why it rates something the way it does is genuinely more effort than just looking at the article and making a determination from that.
You know, the more you say the more I'm starting to feel like MBFC is just some baggage I've been carrying with me since my liberal-brainwormed late-teens, that I've kept justifying to myself despite its lack of any actual use... I mean, I haven't even used it for two months since my laptop doesn't work, and half of the news sources I look at are unrated anyways.
For what it's worth, I'm not trying to attack you for using it or anything, I'm just taking the question "Is MBFC useful to a communist?" at face value and trying to answer it. Maybe you have fluency with it (my condolences) that makes the relation of effort I mentioned before not hold. I get a little focused on conversation topics like that sometimes . . .
I mean, I do kinda feel fluent with it, yeah.
You're cool, the issue is the lanyard libs who use it to just bury their heads in the sand.
Is a "lanyard lib" supposed to be like the opposite of a card-carrying communist?
Kinda, yeah. The ideological true believers of capitalism that carry a lanyard swearing their fealty to a corporation. The
folks.
There are lanyard communists too, the lanyards are for furry convention badges
Think a DC liberal, so kinda
MBFC isn't even an organization, its just a random centrist blogger.