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Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

sourcedfact.com

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Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#121
Hey everybody, I just want to point out that I'm working on a similar project to document evidence for and against claims: https://www.wikiclaim.org

The tech is dumb (MediaWiki on Heroku), but it's been sufficient to allow me to spend several hundred hours creating probably about 200 hundred wiki pages so far.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#123
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

Paul Graham is entitled to his opinion. I am a professional journalist and I disagree.

Journalists use the word "embattled" the way Merriam-Webster defines it: "characterized by conflict or controversy."

Typically it applies to a person who has been heavily criticized, or accused of wrongdoing at length or by many people.

Accurately describing a person as such is not at all the same as the journalist declaring a person guilty, and it's certainly not a "press code word."

He is seeing bias that isn't there.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#124
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

You'll notice that on this platform every proven fact is annotated. As a result, proven statements stand out from unproven statements. This forces the writer to be upfront about which assertions are proven, and which are speculation/opinion.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#125
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Claas Relotius, the Der Spiegel journalist who won CNN's journalist of the year award who was revelead to be completely inventing stories about people to make enticing click bait. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiege...

He either invented sources or made up quotes from real people he never met. How do you expect this platform to remedy that?

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#126
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

Well, yeah. And "fact checking" won't fix that.

Interesting you mention libel. Libel law, of course, is a tremendous motivation to not posting actual lies in journalism. And courts are more flexible than "fact checking".

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#127
Sadly this "platform to open source factchecking" is not itself open source, as the site's source code is not available and the user content license restricts commercial use (see point 3 https://sourcedfact.com/terms_of_service and https://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/24/why-share-alike-licenses-ar...)

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#128
post #112
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

The most recent and obvious case in my mind: Covington Catholic Incident: almost every major mainstream media outlet ran with the narrative that the boys were harassing the Native Americans which was based solely on one video clip. No traditional investigative work was done. No one was interviewed (until the damage had been done). Nothing was fact checked. It was just one video, and boom: instant headlines.

I disagree. Whether they were harassing is a matter of opinion. Whether there was a confrontation is a matter of fact, confirmed by the video and photos.

If you want to claim the "narrative", you need a link to an actual article with actual quotes. That's how fact-checking works, and your response is failing it badly.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#129
post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Claas Relotius, the Der Spiegel journalist who won CNN's journalist of the year award who was revelead to be completely inventing stories about people to make enticing click bait. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiege...

This is actually a very good example of press failure. But also possibly one which shows how difficult it would actually be for "open source" fact checking based on consensus voting to pick up blatant lies. Relotius got away with his spiel for a long time and won awards because none of the people he claimed to have interviewed read his articles (especially not the people who didn't actually exist!). It's also reasonable to imagine that Relotius wouldn't have volunteered to put his stories on a fact checking platform, but more importantly even if somebody else did, very few online volunteers would have been in a position to actually validate them. Most of the stuff he made up was personal details about individual ordinary people, and even the trivially falsified stuff like a town he visited not being surrounded by forest and not having a town sign emblazoned with "Welcome to Fergus Falls, home of damn good folks" isn't the sort of stuff fact checkers like to get their teeth into. And the latter would be the sort of thing you'd want to establish by asking one person who lived there, not getting a consensus of netizens.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

Paul Graham is entitled to his opinion. I am a professional journalist and I disagree. Journalists use the word "embattled" the way Merriam-Webster defines it: "characterized by conflict or controversy." Typically it applies to a person who has been heavily criticized, or accused of wrongdoing at length or by many people. Accurately describing a person as such is not at all the same as the journalist declaring a pers…

You're not engaging with the actual criticism at all. Nobody is disputing that "embattled" is in the dictionary; instead, he's saying that it's journalism jargon that is not actually used in real life.
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