Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Hi,

From WP:JOURNALIST:

Authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, and other creative professionals:

1. The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors; or

2. The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory, or technique; or

3. The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews; or

4. The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.

So, clearly, the only chance an editor would have in establishing Pepe Escobar as a notable "journalist" is via avenue 1, which would presumably entail the collection a range of reliable sources, from over his 3-decade-long career, featuring "peers" or "successors" (i.e., other journalists) widely citing him, indicating he is "regarded as an important figure". I would write that as "an authority" or "acknowledged expert" or something, but, at any rate...

HouseOfChange argues that:

== Notability, per NJOURNALIST 1: "widely cited by peers" ==

Pepe Escobar's peers would be other journalists who take an interest in world affairs. Based on multiple citations from multiple journalists over multiple years, he meets WP:NJOURNALIST #1, widely cited by peers.

• 2012 The Atlantic^[1][2]
• 2013 Mercury News^[3]
• 2015 The Week^[4]
• 2016 Oliver Stone in Interview magazine^[5]
• 2019 Jacobin and Secret Notes from Iran^[6][7]
• 2021 Times of Malta^[8]

The article needs more third-party sourcing and better content, but Escobar is clearly a notable journalist. Of course, it is always a problem to Google material ABOUT journalists because there is typically so much more material written by said journalists. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The second reference to him in the 2012 The Atlantic piece is more than trivial. He is quoted, somewhat derisively:

"In Thailand's Asia Times, Pepe Escobar gives a somewhat poetically ominous depiction of what goes on at AIPAC. "The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) get-together in Washington takes place in an intimidating, cavernous Colosseum where the wealthy crowd ululates in unison for Iranian blood." Ululates, eh? Escobar laments the state of U.S. foreign policy saying "the graphic proof that Israel exercises virtual complete control of US foreign policy was the sight of an American president defensively addressing the AIPAC Colosseum." - Hudson, John (March 5, 2012). "World Reacts to Obama's Security Pledge to Israel". The Atlantic.

Other than that, Refs 1, 7 and 9 simply mention his name in a list of others, the very definition of a "trivial" mention (WP:TRIVIALMENTION).

Then he has a couple of single sentence quotes in minor publications (2013 in Sane Jose's The Mercury News, again, mostly for comic effect, amidst half a dozen quotes from more serious "analysts"; and 2015 in something called The Week, same sorta thing, comical quote, amidst the input of others.

Ref 5 is an atrocious source (Oliver Stone name checks Escobar - along with fellow RT/Sputnik/Press TV/ traveler Robert Parry - in a publication called Interview Magazine).

Which leaves us with Ref 6, his 2019 quotation in JacobinMag, which is nowhere close to being a RS, and proves it in this very instance by not directly quoting Escobar himself, but simply hyperlinking to the article where he made the statement: Globalresearch.ca a haven of crackpots and conspiracy theorists that Wikipedia has long blacklisted, so technically this source shouldn't be allowed on those grounds alone.

So, has HouseOfChange proven that Pepe Escobar is "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors" in the field of, I don't know what, international journalism and/or as a geopolitical analyst? I would maintain he hasn't. He's been at this game for three decades now, and he's yet to have a single byline (article published) in a mainstream reliable source. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 01:21, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep Escobar is just barely notable enough that we do our readers a service by having a short encyclopedia article about him. I believe that he meets the low bar of "widely cited by peers," with said peers being other journalists. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:46, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: And this exemplifies what I see as a fundamental problem with how the culture of "inclusionism" and off the charts recentism. I could cite WP:NOTNEWS and WP:NOTDATABASE and WP:BLP policies every day until the cows come home, but obviously the policies aren't being adhered to, as there are an seemingly infinite number of these type of BLPs on Wikipedia the fail the very basic requirements of notability.

As, the fundamental objection I have to this page and many pages like it, is just calling yourself something ("journalist", "analyst", etc doesn't make you one). In what sense is here an actual journalist? The definition is pretty simple: "a person who writes for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or prepares news to be broadcast" but in the age of blogs, self-published presses, and websites and TV stations of extremely dubious credibility and reliability (for e.g. Press TV, Al Jazeera, Sputnik, Middle East Eye, Middle East Monitor, FOXNEWS, Salon, Slate, the Daily Beast, I could go on forever) then literally anyone can start calling themselves a "journalist" in a matter of months, they wouldn't even have to leave the house. They'd just have to choose the team, and spin their narrative from their laptop.

So even if Wikipedia was a database (which it is not per WP:NOTDATABASE), the only way he would be included in any database of journalists would be as an example of one of the many of these fringe figures who've managed to eek out a career working almost exclusively for dubiously-funder outlets who adhere to very low levels of editorial standards. He, in particular, among this rather large and ever-growing crowd of online-only "journalists", would be a fact-checker's nightmare: a single piece of his may contain half a dozen fails (references to long debunked theories, 9/11 denial, various ongoing popular conspiracy theories, with AIPAC and Mossad and the CIA all secretly orchestrating everything that happens - most of this isn't even marked for the read as "opinion" or "commentary" btw).

EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 03:07, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

He is certainly no fan of AIPAC, but he can separate fact from opinion well enough that scholarly sources cite his articles e.g. (looking at Google Scholar only for English publications 2020 and later) American Journal of Public Health 2021(footnote 31 goes to a 2020 article by PE), University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis 2020 (footnote 2 on p. 10 to a 2017 article), Journal of Security and Strategic Analyses 2021 (footnote 11 to a 2018 article). HouseOfChange (talk) 04:44, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 08:32, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Brazil-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 08:33, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 08:33, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Confusingly for an AfD, the nominator does not actually put forward a deletion rationale; the person who created the AfD is not suggesting that this be deleted nor be turned into a redirect but instead that the article be kept. Such an nomination should be speedily kept, but somebody responded with a deletion rational before anybody got around to making this a speedy keep, so here we are.

  The nominator puts forward an argument about being cited by peers. I personally don't buy arguments that, for purposes of notability, widely cited by peers means that eight sources report that you reported on something and trivially mention your name. The provided references additionally don't actually cite him for facts in any meaningful way. Rather, they trivially mention that he was among a group of people or they mention a very short blurb of his—that simply isn't the threshold of widely cited; being widely cited means being cited in a wide range of sources, not being infrequently cited in newsletters or only very occasionally being referenced in academic literature. (Academics aren't peers of journalists either, for that matter).

  EnlightenmentNow1792 argued above that the individual doesn't pass WP:NJOURNALIST (a particular SNG), but this isn't a valid deletion rationale on its own. The subject of the article would also need to fail WP:NBASIC for the article to fail WP:NBASIC. I am unable to find WP:SIGCOV of this individual, so I think that the article fails WP:BASIC as well. For the reasons I state below, I believe that the coverage coverage in each of the eight sources that mentions him by name fails to contribute towards passing WP:NBASIC:

  1. The first source mentions his name as a part of a list and provides no coverage of him whatsoever besides that his name doesn't sound like that of a Muslim extremist.
  2. The second source briefly quotes his reaction to a particular foreign policy decision by Barrack Obama. The coverage is not in-depth, nor is it actually from The Atlantic (it's content from The Wire).
  3. The third source quotes a sentence of his but doesn't actually provide any significant coverage of Escobar as a person. The source also refers to him as a Brazilian analyst, which isn't the same thing as a journalist that some of the people supporting the article being kept are saying.
  4. The fourth source says that Escobar wrote something about Medvedev, but the coverage of Escobar as a person is not significant there.
  5. I have no clue if the fifth source is even reliable for the words of who it interviewed, but a random shoutout that consists solely of Escobar's name isn't WP:SIGCOV regardless.
  6. The sixth source coverage of Escobar consists of a two sentence quote of Escobar's with extremely limited commentary. It's also very clearly an opinion piece, which isn't necessarily a reliable source.
  7. The seventh source does very little except mention Escobar's name. It doesn't even really cite him for anything; he's just put on a list along with TeleSur and "Global Research Foundation" among others.
  8. The eighth source is an opinion piece whose only reference to Escobar is that he once appeared as a guest of a Michael Brooks production.

Simply being name-checked by a bunch of sources doesn't make a person notable under WP:NBASIC. The specific references above also don't show that Escobar is widely cited as a journalist, which is what WP:NJOURNALIST would require. Getting one's opinion pieces quoted is few publications is simply not evidence of widespread citation, nor is being referenced cited in three academic journals (one of which . If there are multiple in-depth articles about Escobar he'd pass WP:BASIC. If his work were widely cited, it would be easy to show. Unfortunately for those who want to keep the article, it doesn't appear that anybody can actually show that this individual meets any relevant notability guideline. As a result, his article seems fit for deletion. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]