Media Bias/Fact Check
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
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]
References
- ↑ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/about/
- ↑ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/contact/
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-20/exposing-9-fakest-fake-news-checkers
- ↑ 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").
- ↑ 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").
- ↑ 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").
- ↑ Template:Cite conference
- ↑ https://www.palmerreport.com/politics/scam-site-media-bias-fact-check-caught-cribbing-its-ratings-from-wikipedia/2342/
- ↑ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2018/heres-what-to-expect-from-fact-checking-in-2019/