That’s the only way to get the full picture, because any particular … “fact checking” source isn’t going to give you that.
I’m not following. Are you suggesting that fact-checkers are responsible for giving you the news too? That’s not their job.
Individuals don’t have the time, energy, or know-how to do proper fact-checking on an entire news site, let alone hundreds of them, to determine if it’s trustworthy overall. We outsource that to people who can. The process is not simple and most likely requires formal training and at the very least a degree in journalism or equivalent to do a proper job. To give you an idea, fact-checking a single claim can take up to 30 minutes or more and there are many claims in one article and you need to check dozens of articles. It’s a monumental task for any one person for questionable results.
And yes, I agree that one should read more than one source. But make sure that you can trust them because they were vetted by various independent groups. This multiple sources argument also goes for the fact-checkers, where they should mostly agree.
As do the people they’re “fact-checking” but it doesn’t stop those people from publishing lies
No, news sources’ interests are vastly different than the fact-checkers’. MBFC is used in research as a benchmark and isn’t profit-driven. And even if it were like NewsGuard, their value proposition is accuracy.
With all due respect, I think you’re not getting what the role of fact-checking is in journalism and how sites like MBFC fit that role.
Then how do they determine if the “fact-checker” is trustworthy?
There’s a large degree of coincidence in their independent evaluations. As I said, some things cannot change no matter the bias.
At the risk of citing Wikipedia, I’ll use it to illustrate my point:
“Scientific studies[19] using its ratings note that ratings from Media Bias/Fact Check show high agreement with an independent fact checking dataset from 2017,[15] with NewsGuard[20] and with BuzzFeed journalists.[21] When MBFC factualness ratings of ‘mostly factual’ or higher were compared to an independent fact checking dataset’s ‘verified’ and ‘suspicious’ news sources, the two datasets showed “almost perfect” inter-rater reliability.[15][16][22] A 2022 study that evaluated sharing of URLs on Twitter and Facebook in March and April 2020 and 2019, to compare the prevalence of misinformation, reports that scores from Media Bias/Fact Check correlate strongly with those from NewsGuard (r = 0.81).[20]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Chec#Reception
As you can see, an 80% of overlap in its independent evaluations are not due to chance. And 20% discrepancy says that they’re not copying each other, either.
If I start a “fact-checking” site today, would you just instantly trust me to report only facts and be unbiased?
Why would I do that if I’m telling you otherwise? I’m not sure how you got that. For your fact-checker, you’d need to build a good reputation first by providing highly accurate data that can be compared and we’ll go from there.
You seem to be suffering from the idea that “fact checkers” are somehow inherently more trustworthy than the publications
I’m not “suffering” from any ideas, but I’m not sure you’re getting what I mean. As I said, fact-checkers are subject to a large degree of scrutiny, probably more than the publications they check.
I’m not following. Are you suggesting that fact-checkers are responsible for giving you the news too? That’s not their job.
Individuals don’t have the time, energy, or know-how to do proper fact-checking on an entire news site, let alone hundreds of them, to determine if it’s trustworthy overall. We outsource that to people who can. The process is not simple and most likely requires formal training and at the very least a degree in journalism or equivalent to do a proper job. To give you an idea, fact-checking a single claim can take up to 30 minutes or more and there are many claims in one article and you need to check dozens of articles. It’s a monumental task for any one person for questionable results.
And yes, I agree that one should read more than one source. But make sure that you can trust them because they were vetted by various independent groups. This multiple sources argument also goes for the fact-checkers, where they should mostly agree.
No, news sources’ interests are vastly different than the fact-checkers’. MBFC is used in research as a benchmark and isn’t profit-driven. And even if it were like NewsGuard, their value proposition is accuracy.
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With all due respect, I think you’re not getting what the role of fact-checking is in journalism and how sites like MBFC fit that role.
There’s a large degree of coincidence in their independent evaluations. As I said, some things cannot change no matter the bias.
At the risk of citing Wikipedia, I’ll use it to illustrate my point:
“Scientific studies[19] using its ratings note that ratings from Media Bias/Fact Check show high agreement with an independent fact checking dataset from 2017,[15] with NewsGuard[20] and with BuzzFeed journalists.[21] When MBFC factualness ratings of ‘mostly factual’ or higher were compared to an independent fact checking dataset’s ‘verified’ and ‘suspicious’ news sources, the two datasets showed “almost perfect” inter-rater reliability.[15][16][22] A 2022 study that evaluated sharing of URLs on Twitter and Facebook in March and April 2020 and 2019, to compare the prevalence of misinformation, reports that scores from Media Bias/Fact Check correlate strongly with those from NewsGuard (r = 0.81).[20]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Chec#Reception
As you can see, an 80% of overlap in its independent evaluations are not due to chance. And 20% discrepancy says that they’re not copying each other, either.
Why would I do that if I’m telling you otherwise? I’m not sure how you got that. For your fact-checker, you’d need to build a good reputation first by providing highly accurate data that can be compared and we’ll go from there.
I’m not “suffering” from any ideas, but I’m not sure you’re getting what I mean. As I said, fact-checkers are subject to a large degree of scrutiny, probably more than the publications they check.