Media Bias/Fact Check

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Named as an outlet of "Fake News" by PropOrNot.

360
The MBFC take on Wikispooks as of December 2019
Website.png https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
Started: November 2015
Founder: Dave Van Zandt

In its own words:
"Dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practices"
Constitutes: “fact checker”

Main focus: fake news, bias, media

Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is a "fact-checking" website which scores websites by left- or right wing bias (each website is ranked from "extreme left" to "least biased" to "extreme right") and by quality of factual reporting (each website has a "conspiracy level" and a "pseudo-sci level"). MBFC has browser extensions for both Firefox and Chrome.

Official narrative

MBFC reports that it was started by Dave Van Zandt[1] in 2015[2] and has some volunteers who perform source research, writing and assist in fact checking.[3] Van Zandt has a small internet footprint.[4]

Endorsement

The Atlantic Council have used data from MBFC.[citation needed]

The site was used by researchers at the University of Michigan to create a tool called the "Iffy Quotient", which draws data from Media Bias/Fact Check and NewsWhip to track the prevalence of 'fake news' and questionable sources on social media.[5][6] The site was also used by a research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in initial training of an AI to fact check and detect the bias on a website.[7][8]

Criticism

File:Media Bias Fact Check cosmopolitan.png
An image from the critical report by the Palmer Report

The Palmer Report published an article in April 2017 entitled Scam site “Media Bias Fact Check” caught cribbing its ratings from Wikipedia.[9]

The Poynter Institute wrote that "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."[10]


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References

  1. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/about/
  2. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/contact/
  3. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named FAQ
  4. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-20/exposing-9-fakest-fake-news-checkers
  5. Dian Schaffhauser. "U-M Tracker Measures Reliability of News on Facebook, Twitter -- Campus Technology". Campus Technology. Retrieved 2018-12-03.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  6. Paul Resnick; Aviv Ovadya; Garlin Gilchrist. "Iffy Quotient: A Platform Health Metric for Misinformation" (PDF). School of Information - Center for Social Media Responsibility. University of Michigan. p. 5.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  7. Verger, Rob (2018-10-04). "This AI can help spot biased websites and false news". Popular Science. Retrieved 2019-01-01.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  8. Template:Cite conference
  9. https://www.palmerreport.com/politics/scam-site-media-bias-fact-check-caught-cribbing-its-ratings-from-wikipedia/2342/
  10. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2018/heres-what-to-expect-from-fact-checking-in-2019/