An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
Mainstream fact checkers have had a terrible October so far in 2020. Their poor performance prompts this answer to the Poynter Institute’s “Factually” newsletter and its “The Week in Fact-checking” with what we’re tempted to call “The Weak in Fact-checking.” FactCheck.org Whitewashes Steele Dossier Annenberg Fact Check (FactCheck.org) chastised Republicans for citing an unverified intelligence report from Russia saying the…
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Mainstream fact checker Snopes.com on Sept. 28, 2016 (tweeted out on its four-year anniversary) published a fact check on whether Donald Trump said not paying federal taxes made him smart. The fact check exemplifies one of the semantic games mainstream fact checkers end up playing: Interpreting claims to fit a narrative instead of giving them a natural contextual interpretation. The…
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The International Fact-Checking Network has updated its system for verifying fact-checking organizations’ compliance with its “Code of Principles” in 2020. But in practice so far the new IFCN system seems no better than the one Zebra Fact Check tested in 2019. In 2019 the review of PolitiFact failed to mention complaints Zebra Fact Check submitted. The IFCN failed to deliver…
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Things have come full circle at the Poynter Institute in the past 10 years. Jim Romenesko ran a popular journalism blog for the Poynter Institute journalism school until 2011. Romenesko’s blog highlighted stories relating to the field of journalism. But eventually assistant editor Erika Fry of Columbia Journalism Review noticed that Romenesko was using verbatim quotations in his summary blurbs…
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Zebra Fact Check documented the International Fact-Checking Network’s 2019 failure to hold its stable of “verified” fact-checking organizations to account. PolitiFact, which shares ownership with the IFCN, was notable in escaping scrutiny. The IFCN has yet to explain those failures, but coincidentally or otherwise it revised its Code of Principles in December 2019 along with its methods for verifying compliance…
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Recently we chanced on the Science Feedback evaluation at Media Bias/Fact Check, a website that uses subjective ratings to score the bias and accuracy of various websites (including Zebra Fact Check). Apparently blinded by “Science,” Media Bias/Fact Check gave Science Feedback its highest rating for factual accuracy. Indeed, Media Bias/Fact Check proclaimed Science Feedback a “Pro-Science” source. Yet in 2019…
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A pair of April 3, 2020 fact checks from CNN cry out for critical attention. CNN produced two versions of the same fact check, one in video format and the other in text, where both contain flaws and one disagrees with the other. Both fact checks looked at President Trump’s April 1, 2020 claim about the effectiveness of scarves compared…
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This week PolitiFact, with its franchise partner Kaiser Health News, published what was, in effect, a fact check of a prediction by President Barack Obama. “PolitiFact Health Check” awarded Mr. Obama a “True” rating for his prediction. Spoiler: For good reason, fact checkers usually try to avoid doing fact checks on predictions. A Trump Lawsuit Seeking to Overturn the ACA?…
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For whatever reason, we encounter very few examples of Facebook’s fact-checking effort while using Facebook. An example today renews our concerns about that effort, with the system flagging a picture the fact-checking system associated with false content. “See Why”? Let’s. The photo of two women wearing facemasks supposedly counts as false information because a “Viral poem about staying home was…
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Today for the first time we reported a post on Facebook as “False News.” The Facebook post was from PolitiFact Wisconsin, linking a Feb. 28, 2020, fact check of a claim from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.). As pointed out in a post at PolitiFactBias.com by this author, the Pocan fact check claims real wages have increased while failing to keep…
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