An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
On Jan 9, 2017 the Daily Caller broke a story about Google’s search engine providing media information apparently slanted against conservative websites. Conservative websites like The Daily Wire and Newsbusters quickly echoed the Daily Caller’s story. Mediaite also joined in. Here’s how Mediaite’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn described the situation: When searching individual websites that have a blatant political slant, two…
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Email correspondence between Zebra Fact Check and the Raw Story corrections team on January 3, 2017 : Dear RawStory corrections team, Headline: Trump supporters far more likely to read and share ‘fake news’ on social media: study Story (bold emphasis added): They’re still measuring the degree to which fake news impacted the 2016 election, however, this study only measured how…
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Thanks to problems with appearances after a theme update, we are changing to a different one. The prime consideration was finding a theme that preserved most of the old site’s features while making quoted material stand out from the rest of the text. We were very happy with the way the old theme accomplished that, with the caveat that it…
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Well, the latest update of our layout template went awry. We’re disabling the landing page partly for that reason and partly because it was making the site load slowly. Zebra Fact Check may stick with the blog appearance for the foreseeable future. The tabs remain functional, enabling users to look at only one category at a time, such as fact…
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One of the most obvious signs of bias in mainstream news stems from the failure of a story to back its headline. Often in such cases the headline supports a media narrative but flies in the face of the reported facts. Raw Story produced a good example of this with a Jan. 2, 2018 story reporting on research from Dartmouth…
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A funny thing happened when the International Fact-Checking Network recognized The Weekly Standard Fact Check as a verified signatory of its statement of principles. Liberals such as economist/columnist Paul Krugman and Media Matters noticed that the IFCN does not stringently enforce its standards for compliance with its statement of principles. Krugman, from his Dec. 8, 2017 op-ed in The New…
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Media Matters For America attacked the International Fact-Checking Network, headquartered at the Poynter Institute, for verifying The Weekly Standard Fact Check. A Dec. 8, 2017 article by Cristina López G. noted the IFCN gave verified status to the conservative Weekly Standard’s fact check effort despite the concerns of an independent assessor. López makes one particularly valid point despite otherwise providing…
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How well do fact checkers fact check? Each of the “elite three” mainstream media fact checkers, PolitiFact, the Washington Post Fact Checker and FactCheck.org, has had the opportunity to weigh in on the effects of the GOP’s health care reform proposals. The “Affordable Care Act” passed under the administration of President Barack Obama applies a tax to individuals and families…
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On Nov. 27, 2017, the Washington Post published a story about a woman who pitched to it a false allegation about Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore. The story associated the woman, identified as Jaime T. Phillips, to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. Project Veritas uses undercover sting operations to help expose liberal media bias. Who comes out ahead, the Post or…
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“White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that immigrants coming to the United States through the diversity visa program are not vetted before their arrival.” —PolitiFact, from a Nov. 2, 2017 fact check of Sarah Huckabee Sanders Summary PolitiFact may have misled its readers about what Sanders was saying. Background facts After an immigrant acting in the name…
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