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In the last part we discussed so called "fake news" and dissected a short guide about how to spot them. This part is about a lucrative business that has sprouted in response to this "post truth" era.
With the scary spread of fake news it makes sense that fact checkers are hired en masse at media organisations. Here are a few dedicated fact checkers.
Among the sources they check are statements by US politicians, mainstream media, social media such as instagram posts, and even viral images. That doesn't set the bar high, does it? The reliability of the story is evaluated with a "truth-o-meter" with alternatives such as mostly true, false, or pants on fire. Although these fact checks may be useful, they mostly concern details, even trivial and unimportant details that may deflect from the bigger narrative. However, they also provide some more analytical articles that try to set things in a slightly larger context. Facebook and TikTok are listed among their biggest donors.
The International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) has developed a set of principles for fact checking that are widely adhered to by other organisations.
Works with facebook. Maintains a list of websites that have published "false or satirical articles".
So, the criticism one could raise against these fact checkers is that they go after the easy ones, the burning pants variety of fake news, memes, and statements. They do not ask questions about the appropriateness of the media coverage. Nor do they ever point out the deafening radio silence around news that should be blasted out but are instead ignored, that's not their job.
It is reasonable to ask whether the fact checkers are biased. Ideally, there should be a team of fact checkers of various political inclinations who complement each other's blind spots and partisan loyalties. Even then, if the team is too homogenous it can have other biases as a group, such as holding official accounts to be more reliable than independent sources.
Many news media sites have their own fact checkers, such as this one at Rappler:
https://www.rappler.com/disinformation
Readers can respond by clicking on buttons to say how the story makes them feel. It is unclear what function that would serve, other than creating a sense of engagement perhaps?
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Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC), the project of Dave Van Zandt, reviews news sources and evaluates their left-right bias as well as how factual their reporting is.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com
Media that rank as "least biased" are those that are situated in the centre of the American left-right spectrum. As Noam Chomsky often has pointed out, the American political duopoly has shifted so far to the right the last few decades that there is no longer any party representing the left. On their Methodology page MBFC admits that the political scale looks different in other parts of the world.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/
As for credibility and factuality, they stress the use of credible sources (typically established news media), referencing claims with hyperlinks, avoiding loaded language, and transparency about ownership and funding. The credibility rating is also affected by the traffic to the site; the more the merrier. In view of how Google's search algorithm tweek made the traffic plummet to several independent sites a few years ago this doesn't seem to be a fair criterion at all.
One criterion that is completely missing is that old-fashioned ideal that journalism hold power to account. MBFC doesn't rate media sites according to their distance from power (and they're not alone in that regard). On the contrary they implicitly favour the mainstream media with its known close ties to politicians, whereas they appear to view independent media and low traffic sites with more skepticism. Moreover, there is little discussion of the important distinction between relevant news and entertainment or distraction, except that parody sites are included in their list.
There is also a companion site:
News Facts Network will only publish news summaries that are certified to be factual according to the editor of Media Bias Fact Check.
"Neutral wording" is highly valued at MBFC. Their examples of "loaded language" include many widely used, rather innocuous journalistic clichés. The idea that a neutral voice is a premise for credibility seems exaggerated. Roland Barthes held a one semester seminar on the Neutral, a much too complex work to comment on here, except that I invite anyone who believes a neutral presentation is always desirable, let alone possible, to reflect a bit more on the whole concept.
There are also organisations that trace funding and lobbying, rather than engaging in fact checking as such. Inasmuch as money is free speech studying the money flow can be revealing. "Millionen stehen hinter mir", to quote the title of a famous John Heartfield photo montage.
https://sunlightfoundation.com/
Discrediting someone based on who finances their work can be a convenient shortcut for actually checking the veracity and plausibility of their claims. Failure to disclose sources of funding and potential conflicts of interest always is a cause of suspicion. It is reasonable to be cautious with, let's say, scientific studies of the effects of GMOs funded by corporations that modify genes for a living. The studies may follow stringent scientific methods and still fail to investigate factors that cast a negative light on the product (although that would qualify as cherrypicking, which is inimical to scientific standards).
Available as a browser extension that turns green or red depending on the "nutrition" value of the site. NewsGuard has been met with lots of criticism. At least they are transparent about it.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/feedback/publisher/
Many revealing (and some very irritated) replies here, in particular the ones from the following media outlets:
Ruptly and the Iran Front Page (IFPNews) patiently explain that reporting what government officials say is something news agencies are supposed to do when they have access to them. Yes, it's really at that level. Acrimed's and SNANews' responses are more openly sarcastic.
The French site ACRIMED (ACtion CRItique MEDias) is not a fact checking organisation per se, but engages in media criticism. In their response to NewsGuard's evaluation of them, Acrimed writes:
La mise en avant de la lutte contre les « fake news », les fausses nouvelles en bon français, est un leurre, une diversion, qui vise à faire oublier l’essentiel : le problème démocratique que pose la concentration des médias entre les mains d’une poignée de milliardaires se souciant davantage d’acheter de l’influence que de produire de l’information de qualité.
(The fight against fake news is a diversion that tries to make us forget the essential point: the democratic problem posed by the concentration of medias in the hands of a few billionairs who care more about buying influence than to produce quality content.) Their complete reply is worth reading, but it's a bit long so I won't reproduce it here.
The French journal Le Monde launched their own credibility rating app DĂ©codex in 2017. It classifies whole sites rather than individual news items in the categories Trustworthy, Not so trustworthy, Not trustworthy at all, Uncertain, and Satire.
https://www.lemonde.fr/verification/
They also provide a short media litteracy guide that explains what is newsworthy and what is not, how to verify information by checking several sources and assessing their credibility, how to trace the sources of images and videos, how to read polls and more, all at a rather elementary level. For example, in the section about source verification, they list:
Le Monde : vérifier les sources d’une information
Not surprisingly, Décodex has been criticised too. Here is a short article about them in Libération by Daniel Schneidermann:
Le Monde is at once the judge and a party, as Schneidermann observes.
Jusqu’à présent, les fact-checkeurs se contentaient de fact-checker au détail, article par article, rumeur par rumeur, photo par photo, assertion par assertion, chiffre faux par chiffre faux. (...) Désormais, donc, le Monde décode en gros. (...) Depuis que l’extension est entrée en service, les critiques ont été nombreuses, essentiellement de la part des classés rouges.
(Until now, fact checkers restricted themselves to fact check in detail each article, rumour, photo, claim, and number. From now on, Le Monde checks coarsely. Since the extension appeared the critics have been numerous, essentially from those classified red). Schneidermann has three main objections:
1. DĂ©codex will only convince those who are already convinced, those who trust Le Monde's judgement. But there are those who are unsure, who vacillate and doubt, who may find it useful.
2. On the other hand, the labelling of "doubtful" sites will have no effect, or even a reverse effect. Their warnings will only reinforce the perception among those drawn to alternative media that the sites that this mainstream media journal rejects are worthy of their trust.
3. Le Monde categorises with an axe; on one side professional media and journalists with press cards receive a green label, whereas all the others are labeled red.
The most serious objection, however, is that a news source judge how trustworthy its competitors are.
This organisation differs by combining credibility scores by verified journalists and the public. Anyone can contribute a review of an article's credibility. Their journalist and public ratings are shown separately as percentages of positive reviews. There is generally no commentary, fact checking or more verbose explanations of the ratings. Their open rating system would seem vulnerable to being gamed, but reviewers also receive ratings.
Here is credder's own guide to reviewing articles, full of good explanatory examples of rhetoric and logical fallacies:
How to review articles on credder
Let me just cite what they list as aspects of credible reporting:
Investigative reporting is what it sounds like: pursuing the topic in depth, doing research over an extended period - months, or even years. Well-sourced journalism includes links or references to expert sources. Balanced journalism includes multiple perspectives and preferably avoids to favour one side. Providing context can mean to put the story in its historical perspective or adding other relevant information.
Of these points, the one about balanced reporting needs further comment since it lends itself to abuse. Probably the most famous cases of such abuse can be found in climate change debates, where skeptics often have been given as much time as climate scientists.
Although fact checking organisations may achieve a balanced perspective on a left-right axis, they may have other biases or they may not consider the full political spectrum. Independent journalists may feel threatened, and perhaps rightly so, by the power of fact checkers to act as gate keepers.
Fact checking organisations have become increasingly prominent in recent years in an effort to counteract the spread of inaccurate reporting and false stories. However, fact checking can be misused to sow doubt about the legitimacy of independent media and to further marginalise them. There is also a risk that fact checkers in Western countries align themselves with an official Western narrative and automatically question the legitimacy of news agencies based in other countries.
It should be realised that the evaluation of a media outlet necessarily involves subjective elements at some level, even when the evaluation follows a strict methodology. And, given the enormous number of publications which each publishes scores of articles, podcasts, and videos, the amount of material a fact checking organisation needs to sift through is forbiddingly large. They have to take shortcuts such as focusing on outlets with large enough traffic, evaluating them on the basis of a limited number of articles, and a glance at their About page. Evaluation criteria may be chosen so as to allow for quick decisions. To really assess the the trustworthiness of a media site, however, one may have to put in some effort and spend some time evaluating their content – unless it's obviously quack.
The fact checkers themselves may be interested parties with their own biases. The ones discussed above try to be transparent about ownership and funding as this is something they also look for in the outlets they scrutinise. They usually explain their methodology and standards. Nevertheless, many of them tend to favour mainstream media over independent sources. Indeed, the most salient criticism raised against them has to do with their financing, who sits on their boards, and what other corporations they collaborate with.
Critical thinking has never been easy, but there's no reason to outsource it to fact checkers!
In the next part we will briefly discuss a study about trust in news media.
Fourth part (this page)
Seventh part (Information flow)
The Oxymoronist Media Guide is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
This part first published on September 11, 2021
Updated on September 20, 2021