> Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as all the major conservative news sources.
Source?
My personal rule-of-thumb is that an international news source is likely to be fairly reliable so long as it's not reporting on something that they have a conflict of interest in (eg home country/demographic).
> Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
> Al Jazeera's live blogs should be treated with caution, per the policy on news blogs.
The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used. Wikipedia doesn't really have any policy of avoiding biased sources; see WP:BIASED.
The live blog warning is mostly ignored in practice, even though it reflects a broader policy (WP:NEWSBLOG). Al Jazeera's live blog alone is probably used more than any other source in the topic area.
> The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used.
If you actually edit in this topic area, you should know that its bias comes up all the time. Almost every talk page on I/P is littered with endless debate over whether Al Jazeera covered this or that accurately.
> From a very particular pool of sources. Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as most of the major conservative news sources.
This is a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy. In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
Unreliable sources may still be cited as a reliable source of the source’s author’s opinion of a matter. So they are not, in any real sense, “banned.”
> Meanwhile Al Jazeera has the highest status, and is the top source for most articles in the topic area. . .
This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
> Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-funded news organization and in the 2024 RfC there was consensus that it is generally reliable. Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
It's not a policy, it's a summary of past community discussions.
> In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
They're not narrow at all, they're essentially the only areas that are relevant to the ADL. It's like "narrowly" banning CNN, but only for news.
Al-Manar (Hezbollah's propaganda arm) has a similar carve-out for example. It doesn't really matter; even deprecated sources are generally useful for basic uncontroversial information about themselves and what not.
> This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
Which part do you think is incorrect? If it's the RSP part, GREL is indeed the highest status, and the note about bias is inconsequential since there's no particular policy basis for avoiding biased sources (see WP:BIASED).
There is an abundance of allegations and testimony from not exactly neutral sources and a few isolated cases that have actual evidence going for them - which have been investigated and prosecuted by authorities.
