97-660: Snopes ( / ˈ s n oʊ p s / ), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages , is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture . In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become Snopes.com . Snopes
194-469: A GoFundMe campaign to raise money to continue operations. They raised $ 500,000 in 24 hours. Later, in August, a judge ordered Proper Media to disburse advertising revenues to Bardav while the case was pending. In July 2018, Snopes abruptly terminated its contract with Managing Editor Brooke Binkowski, with no explanation. By the time Snopes co-founder and CEO David Mikkelson confirmed the termination to her,
291-409: A " backfire effect " whereby correcting false information may make partisan individuals cling more strongly to their views. One study found evidence of such a " backfire effect ", but several other studies did not. A 2015 experimental study found that fact-checking can encourage politicians to not spread misinformation . The study found that it might help improve political discourse by increasing
388-481: A control without tags , but only modestly". A Dartmouth study led by Brendan Nyhan found that Facebook tags had a greater impact than the Yale study found. A "disputed" tag on a false headline reduced the number of respondents who considered the headline accurate from 29% to 19%, whereas a "rated false" tag pushed the number down to 16%. A 2019 study found that the "disputed" tag reduced Facebook users' intentions to share
485-458: A crowd-sourced GoFundMe effort and received $ 100,000 from Facebook as a part of a fact-checking partnership. Snopes also offers a premium membership that disables ads. On February 1, 2019, Snopes announced that it had ended its fact-checking partnership with Facebook. Snopes did not rule out the possibility of working with Facebook in the future but said it needed to "determine with certainty that our efforts to aid any particular platform are
582-811: A desire to appear objective". The term "fact-check" is also appropriated and overused by "partisan sites", which may lead people to "disregard fact-checking as a meaningless, motivated exercise if all content is claimed to be fact-checked". Fact-checking journalists have been harassed online and offline, ranging from hate mail and death threats to police intimidation and lawfare . Operators of some fact-checking websites in China admit to self-censorship . Fact-checking websites in China often avoid commenting on political, economic, and other current affairs. Several Chinese fact-checking websites have been criticized for lack of transparency with regard to their methodology and sources, and for following Chinese propaganda . Among
679-451: A fact-check about a false anti-abortion claim after receiving pressure from Republican senators. In 2022 and 2023, many social media platforms such as Meta, YouTube and Twitter have significantly reduced resources in Trust and safety , including fact-checking. Twitter under Elon Musk has severely limited access by academic researchers to Twitter's API by replacing previously free access with
776-484: A factor in the decision. BuzzFeed, Inc. refocused news efforts into HuffPost , also indicating that some employees previously hired at BuzzFeed News may be rehired either there or at BuzzFeed.com. BuzzFeed News states in its editorial guide that "we firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women's rights, anti-racism , and LGBT equality , there are not two sides" but also says that "when it comes to activism, BuzzFeed editorial must follow
873-418: A fake news story next to the fake news story link whenever it is shared on Facebook. Based on the findings of a 2017 study in the journal Psychological Science, the most effective ways to reduce misinformation through corrections is by: Large studies by Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood found that misinformation propagated by Donald Trump was more difficult to dispel with the same techniques, and generated
970-528: A fake news story. The Yale study found evidence of a backfire effect among Trump supporters younger than 26 years whereby the presence of both untagged and tagged fake articles made the untagged fake articles appear more accurate. In response to research which questioned the effectiveness of the Facebook "disputed" tags, Facebook decided to drop the tags in December 2017 and would instead put articles which fact-checked
1067-470: A greater impact on reducing support for a politician than fact-checking of individual statements made by the politician. Individual readers perform some types of fact-checking, such as comparing claims in one news story against claims in another. Rabbi Moshe Benovitz, has observed that: "modern students use their wireless worlds to augment skepticism and to reject dogma." He says this has positive implications for values development: Fact-checking can become
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#17328685887181164-507: A large catalog of historical news sources with their veracity scores to encourage other researchers to explore and develop new methods and technologies for detecting fake news. In 2022, researchers have also demonstrated the feasibility of falsity scores for popular and official figures by developing such for over 800 contemporary elites on Twitter as well as associated exposure scores. There are also demonstrations of platform-built-in (by-design) as well browser -integrated (currently in
1261-464: A learned skill, and technology can be harnessed in a way that makes it second nature... By finding opportunities to integrate technology into learning, students will automatically sense the beautiful blending of… their cyber… [and non-virtual worlds]. Instead of two spheres coexisting uneasily and warily orbiting one another, there is a valuable experience of synthesis.... According to Queen's University Belfast researcher Jennifer Rose, because fake news
1358-595: A loss of third party tools often used for content moderation, and the difficulty for academic researchers to access Reddit data. Many fact-checkers rely heavily on social media platform partnerships for funding, technology and distributing their fact-checks. Commentators have also shared concerns about the use of false equivalence as an argument in political fact-checking, citing examples from The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Associated Press where "mainstream fact-checkers appear to have attempted to manufacture false claims from progressive politicians...[out of]
1455-499: A net positive for our online community, publication and staff". Snopes added that the loss of revenue from the partnership meant the company would "have less money to invest in our publication—and we will need to adapt to make up for it". Snopes publishes a yearly summary detailing expenses and sources of income. Fact checking Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after
1552-420: A non-partisan neutral source such as PolitiFact . A 2022 study found that individuals exposed to a fact-check of a false statement by a far-right politician were less likely to share the false statement. Some studies have found that exposure to fact-checks had durable effects on reducing misperceptions, whereas other studies have found no effects. Scholars have debated whether fact-checking could lead to
1649-863: A number of high-profile scoops , including the Steele dossier , for which it was strongly criticized, and the FinCEN Files . It won the George Polk Award , The Sidney Award , the National Magazine Award , the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting . On April 20, 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced that BuzzFeed News would be gradually shut down as part of company-wide layoffs. BuzzFeed, Inc. refocused its news efforts on HuffPost , which
1746-501: A party in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Subsequently, numerous other men alleged that Spacey had sexually harassed or assaulted them. As a result, Netflix indefinitely suspended production of Spacey's TV series House of Cards , and opted to not release his film Gore on their service, although it was already in post-production at the time. Spacey was replaced with Christopher Plummer in Ridley Scott 's film All
1843-661: A potential step to a solution, the authors suggest the need of a "scientific community" to establish falsifiable theories , "which in turn makes sense of the facts", noting the difficulty that this step would face in the digital media landscape of the Internet. Social media platforms – Facebook in particular – have been accused by journalists and academics of undermining fact-checkers by providing them with little assistance; including "propagandist-linked organizations" such as CheckYourFact as partners; promoting outlets that have shared false information such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller on Facebook's newsfeed ; and removing
1940-470: A pseudonym, "Jeff Zarronandia". The BuzzFeed inquiry prompted Snopes to launch an internal review of Mikkelson's articles and to retract 60 of them the day the BuzzFeed story appeared. Mikkelson admitted to committing "multiple serious copyright violations" and apologized for "serious lapses in judgment." He was suspended from editorial duties during the investigation, but remains an officer and stakeholder in
2037-399: A salient threat." Fact checking may also encourage some politicians to engage in "strategic ambiguity" in their statements, which "may impede the fact-checking movement's goals." One experimental study found that fact-checking during debates affected viewers' assessment of the candidates' debate performance and "greater willingness to vote for a candidate when the fact-check indicates that
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#17328685887182134-443: A sample of Snopes 's responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush , Sarah Palin , and Barack Obama , and found them to be free from bias in all cases. In 2012, The Florida Times-Union reported that About.com 's urban legends researcher found a "consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses" and that Snopes' cited sources and numerous reputable analyses of its content confirm its accuracy. Mikkelson has said that
2231-615: A satirical website, rating them "False". The decision resulted in Facebook adding warnings to links to those articles shared on its site. Snopes added a new rating called "Labeled Satire" to identify satirical stories. In 2019, Snopes was embroiled in legal disputes with Proper Media , with a court case scheduled for spring 2020. By then Proper Media had become a co-owner of Bardav through acquiring Barbara Mikkelson's half-interest share, intending to take overall ownership of Snopes for its own "portfolio of media sites". The move failed as David Mikkelson had no intention to sell his share. As
2328-522: A section of the BuzzFeed site to its own domain, BuzzFeedNews.com, with a Trending News Bar and programmatic advertisements. In January 2019, it laid off 15% of its staff, putting an end to its national news desk. In May 2020, Smith left BuzzFeed News to become a media columnist for The New York Times . Schoofs succeeded him as editor-in-chief. BuzzFeed announced that it would be closing its Australia and United Kingdom news operations. In March 2022,
2425-488: A series of articles detailing how international investors were using the investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) to "undermine domestic regulations and gut environmental laws at the expense of poorer nations". Beginning with his article "The Court That Rules the World" and continuing for an eight-article series , Hamby detailed alleged abuses of power of the court. The Pulitzer Prize nomination cited this as bringing attention to
2522-463: A subscription that starts at $ 42,000 per month, and by denying requests for access under the Digital Services Act . After the 2023 Reddit API changes , journalists, researchers and former Reddit moderators have expressed concerns about the spread of harmful misinformation, a relative lack of subject matter expertise from replacement mods, a vetting process of replacement mods seen as haphazard,
2619-534: Is a monolith." David Spiegelhalter , the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University , argued that "behind closed doors, scientists spend the whole time arguing and deeply disagreeing on some fairly fundamental things". Clarke further argued that "The binary idea that scientific assertions are either correct or incorrect has fed into the divisiveness that has characterised
2716-553: Is created with the intention of misleading readers, online news consumers who attempt to fact-check the articles they read may incorrectly conclude that a fake news article is legitimate. Rose states, "A diligent online news consumer is likely at a pervasive risk of inferring truth from false premises " and suggests that fact-checking alone is not enough to reduce fake news consumption. Despite this, Rose asserts that fact-checking "ought to remain on educational agendas to help combat fake news". The term fake news became popularized with
2813-437: Is gaining momentum. However, fake news detection on social media presents challenges that renders previous data mining and detection techniques inadequate. As such, researchers are calling for more work to be done regarding fake news as characterized against psychology and social theories and adapting existing data mining algorithms to apply to social media networks. Further, multiple scientific articles have been published urging
2910-731: Is impossible to apply absolute terms such as "true" or "false" to inherently debatable claims. In September 2016, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey found that "just 29% of all Likely U.S. Voters trust media fact-checking of candidates' comments. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe instead that news organizations skew the facts to help candidates they support." A paper by Andrew Guess (of Princeton University), Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth College) and Jason Reifler (University of Exeter) found that consumers of fake news tended to have less favorable views of fact-checking, in particular Trump supporters. The paper found that fake news consumers rarely encountered fact-checks: "only about half of
3007-444: Is ineffective against propaganda for at least three reasons: "First, since much of what skillful propagandists say will be true on a literal level, the fact-checker will be unable to refute them. Second, no matter how well-intentioned or convincing, the fact-check will also spread the initial claims further. Third, even if the fact-checker manages to catch a few inaccuracies, the larger picture and suggestion will remain in place, and it
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3104-547: Is most often followed by a written report of inaccuracies, sometimes with a visual metric provided by the checking organization (e.g., Pinocchios from The Washington Post Fact Checker, or TRUTH-O-METER ratings from PolitiFact ). Several organizations are devoted to post hoc fact-checking: examples include FactCheck.org and PolitiFact in the US, and Full Fact in the UK . External post hoc fact-checking organizations first arose in
3201-493: Is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim. In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the Internet as authority, Snopes assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that it termed "The Repository of Lost Legends". The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the definition of the word troll , meaning an internet persona intended to be deliberately provocative or incendiary. In 2009, FactCheck.org reviewed
3298-462: Is sometimes criticized as being opinion journalism . A review of US politics fact-checkers shows a mixed result of whether fact-checking is an effective way to reduce misconceptions , and whether the method is reliable. Sensationalist newspapers in the 1850s and later led to a gradual need for a more factual media. Colin Dickey has described the subsequent evolution of fact-checking. Key elements were
3395-429: Is this suggestion that moves minds and hearts, and eventually actions." They also note the very large amount of false information that regularly spreads around the world, overwhelming the hundreds of fact-checking groups; caution that a fact-checker systemically addressing propaganda potentially compromises their objectivity; and argue that even descriptive statements are subjective, leading to conflicting points of view. As
3492-523: Is when a correction increases the their belief in the misconception. One reason is that it can be interpreted as an argument from authority , leading to resistance and hardening beliefs, "because identity and cultural positions cannot be disproved." In other words "while news articles can be fact-checked, personal beliefs cannot." Critics argue that political fact-checking is increasingly used as opinion journalism . Criticism has included that fact-checking organizations in themselves are biased or that it
3589-692: The 2016 United States presidential election , fake news has been a popular topic of discussion by President Trump and news outlets. The reality of fake news had become omnipresent, and a lot of research has gone into understanding, identifying, and combating fake news. Also, a number of researchers began with the usage of fake news to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. One research found evidence of pro-Trump fake news being selectively targeted on conservatives and pro-Trump supporters in 2016. The researchers found that social media sites, Facebook in particular, to be powerful platforms to spread certain fake news to targeted groups to appeal to their sentiments during
3686-606: The COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, many people tried to "educate themselves on the coronavirus" and find "any comfort, certainty, or hope for a cure [for the coronavirus]". Snopes has around 237 COVID-related fact-checking articles. On August 13, 2021, BuzzFeed News published an investigation by reporter Dean Sterling Jones that showed David Mikkelson had used plagiarized material from different news sources in 54 articles between 2015 and 2019 in an effort to increase website traffic. Mikkelson also published plagiarized material under
3783-666: The Journal of Politics found that "individuals consistently update political beliefs in the appropriate direction, even on facts that have clear implications for political party reputations, though they do so cautiously and with some bias... Interestingly, those who identify with one of the political parties are no more biased or cautious than pure independents in their learning, conditional on initial beliefs." A study by Yale University cognitive scientists Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand found that Facebook tags of fake articles "did significantly reduce their perceived accuracy relative to
3880-513: The Reporters' Lab at Duke University's focus on providing resources to journalists. The adaptation of social media as a legitimate and commonly used platform has created extensive concerns for fake news in this domain. The spread of fake news via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram presents the opportunity for extremely negative effects on society therefore new fields of research regarding fake news detection on social media
3977-522: The TPP . The former was stripped of its ISDS provisions and the latter was rejected by the United States. On January 10, 2017, CNN reported on the existence of classified documents that claimed Russia had compromising personal and financial information about President-elect Donald Trump . Trump and President Barack Obama had both been briefed on the content of the dossier the previous week. CNN did not publish
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4074-468: The 2016 United States presidential election, causing concern among some that online media platforms were especially susceptible to disseminating disinformation and misinformation. Fake news articles tend to come from either satirical news websites or from websites with an incentive to propagate false information, either as clickbait or to serve a purpose. The language, specifically, is typically more inflammatory in fake news than real articles, in part because
4171-571: The 2016 and 2018 Online Journalism Awards . BuzzFeed News was a finalist for the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting . In 2021, BuzzFeed News won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for its coverage of the Xinjiang internment camps as a part of China's campaign against the Muslim Uyghurs . BuzzFeed News was a member of the White House press corps . BuzzFeed News
4268-585: The 2016 presidential race. Additionally, researchers from Stanford , NYU , and NBER found evidence to show how engagement with fake news on Facebook and Twitter was high throughout 2016. Recently, a lot of work has gone into helping detect and identify fake news through machine learning and artificial intelligence. In 2018, researchers at MIT's CSAIL created and tested a machine learning algorithm to identify false information by looking for common patterns, words, and symbols that typically appear in fake news. More so, they released an open-source data set with
4365-460: The Americans who visited a fake news website during the study period also saw any fact-check from one of the dedicated fact-checking website (14.0%)." Deceptive websites that pose as fact-checkers have also been used to promote disinformation ; this tactic has been used by both Russia and Turkey. During the COVID-19 pandemic , Facebook announced it would "remove false or debunked claims about
4462-605: The Mikkelsons, Snopes predated the search engine concept of fact-checking via search results. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner ) in AFU. In 2002, the site had become known well enough that a television pilot by writer-director Michael Levine called Snopes: Urban Legends was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. However, it did not air on major networks. By 2010,
4559-515: The Money in the World , which was six weeks from release. On January 17, 2019, BuzzFeed News published an article in which the authors accused Trump of ordering his personal attorney, Michael Cohen , to lie to Congress about the timing of a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The article states that Trump was given updates by Cohen at least ten times and cites texts, messages, and emails as sources. In
4656-613: The President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony." BuzzFeed News issued an update to their original story stating, "The Mueller Report found that Trump did not direct Michael Cohen to lie." Ben Smith, then-editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News , responded by releasing notes from the FBI interview with Cohen, which said "Cohen told OSC (Mueller's office) he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers." Smith said, "Our sources – federal law enforcement officials – interpreted
4753-618: The Russian chief of the technology company XBT, and a figure named in the dossier, sued BuzzFeed News for defamation . The suit centered on the allegations from the dossier that XBT had been "using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'altering operations' against the Democratic Party leadership". In response, BuzzFeed redacted the name of the company and official in its published dossier. In May 2017, Mikhail Fridman , Petr Aven , and German Khan –
4850-540: The US in the early 2000s, and the concept grew in relevance and spread to various other countries during the 2010s. External post hoc fact-checking by independent organizations began in the United States in the early 2000s. In the 2010s, particularly following the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US President , fact-checking gained a rise in popularity and spread to multiple countries mostly in Europe and Latin America. However,
4947-555: The US remains the largest market for fact-checking. One 2016 study finds that fact-checkers PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post's Fact Checker overwhelmingly agree on their evaluations of claims. A 2018 paper found little overlap in the statements checked by different fact-checking organizations. This paper compared 1,178 published fact-checks from PolitiFact with 325 fact-checks from The Washington Post ' s Fact Checker, and found only 77 statements (about 5%) that both organizations checked. For those 77 statements,
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#17328685887185044-486: The behavior, in general, of both the speaker (making them more careful in their pronouncements) and of the listener or reader (making them more discerning with regard to the factual accuracy of content); observations include the propensities of audiences to be completely unpersuaded by corrections to errors regarding the most divisive subjects, or the tendency to be more greatly persuaded by corrections of negative reporting (e.g., "attack ads"), and to see minds changed only when
5141-576: The benefits of printing only checked copy is that it averts serious, sometimes costly, problems. These problems can include lawsuits for mistakes that damage people or businesses, but even small mistakes can cause a loss of reputation for the publication. The loss of reputation is often the more significant motivating factor for journalists. BuzzFeed News BuzzFeed News was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published
5238-425: The candidate is being honest." A study of Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign found that while fact-checks of false claims made by Trump reduced his supporters' belief in the false claims in question, the corrections did not alter their attitudes towards Trump. A 2019 study found that "summary fact-checking", where the fact-checker summarizes how many false statements a politician has made, has
5335-562: The category of Public Interest. Other awards won by BuzzFeed News journalists include 2014 and 2016 National Press Foundation awards, 2015 Sidney Award , 2017 British Journalism Award, and 2018 George Polk Award . BuzzFeed News staff won the 2021 award for the Pulitzer Prizes in International Reporting ; in addition, BuzzFeed News staff were finalists for this award in 2017, 2018, and 2021. BuzzFeed News also won
5432-402: The company announced that it was in the process of cutting staff positions in an attempt to position itself for profitability. Editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs, deputy editor-in-chief Tom Namako, and executive editor of investigations Ariel Kaminer announced their departures. Staff buyout offers were made to reporters on the investigations, science, politics and inequality desks. Approximately half of
5529-424: The company had acquired in 2020. BuzzFeed News discontinued adding new content on May 5, 2023. As of November 2024 there continue to be new celebrity gossip articles being posted to the buzzfeednews.com domain. BuzzFeed News began as a division of BuzzFeed in December 2011 with the appointment of Ben Smith from Politico as editor-in-chief. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Schoofs of ProPublica
5626-442: The company's 100 reporters were offered buyout deals. On April 20, 2023, BuzzFeed announced it would shut down BuzzFeed News as part of a 15% workforce cut. Approximately 180 jobs were at that time reported to have been expected to be cut, and the shutdown was at that time reported to be expected to be gradual. According to Digiday , changes to news-related policies of social media platforms such as Facebook were indicated as
5723-496: The company. On September 16, 2022, David Mikkelson stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by shareholder and board member Chris Richmond . Richmond and fellow shareholder Drew Schoentrup together acquired 100% of the company, ending the ownership dispute which began in 2017. Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN , MSNBC , Fortune , Forbes , and The New York Times . By March 2009,
5820-665: The court, and the articles were cited in a question to the European Parliament . In the articles, Hamby dives into cases such as Sajwani v. Egypt allowed investors who made deals with corrupt regimes to keep those deals after the fall of the regime. He also exposed how the threat of the court is used to prevent fines and expensive environmental cleanups, such as the leak of lead into the groundwater in Sitio del Niño, El Salvador . The ISDS provisions were controversially included in NAFTA and
5917-595: The day following the release of the report, many prominent Democrats called for impeachment if the accusations were true, including former attorney general Eric Holder . The office of Robert Mueller disputed the report on January 19, calling it "not accurate". With the release of the Mueller report in April 2019, the report found that while there was evidence that Trump was aware that Cohen had provided false testimony to Congress, "the evidence available to us does not establish that
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#17328685887186014-531: The dossier, or any specific details of the dossier, as they could not be verified. Later the same day, BuzzFeed News published a 35-page dossier nearly in-full. BuzzFeed News said that the dossier was unverified and "includes some clear errors". The dossier had been read widely by political and media figures in Washington. It previously had been sent to multiple journalists who had declined to publish it as unsubstantiated. The next day, Trump responded, calling
6111-457: The establishment of Associated Press in the 1850s (short factual material needed), Ralph Pulitzer of the New York World (his Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, 1912), Henry Luce and Time magazine (original working title: Facts), and the famous fact-checking department of The New Yorker . More recently, the mainstream media has come under severe economic threat from online startups. In addition,
6208-608: The evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president 'directed' Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not." In September 2020, Buzzfeed News , alongside the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists , released the FinCEN files, a collection of 2,657 documents leaked from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). BuzzFeed News received a 2016 National Magazine Award in
6305-416: The fact-checking had an impact. A 2019 study in the Journal of Experimental Political Science found "strong evidence that citizens are willing to accept corrections to fake news, regardless of their ideology and the content of the fake stories." A 2018 study found that Republicans were more likely to correct their false information on voter fraud if the correction came from Breitbart News rather than
6402-544: The fact-checking organizations gave the same ratings for 49 statements and similar ratings for 22, about 92% agreement. Different fact-checking organizations have shown different tendencies in their choice of which statements they publish fact-checks about. For example, some are more likely to fact-check a statement about climate change being real, and others are more likely to fact-check a statement about climate change being fake. Studies of post hoc fact-checking have made clear that such efforts often result in changes in
6499-440: The field further to find automatic ways in which fake news can be filtered out of social media timelines. Lateral reading, or getting a brief overview of a topic from lots of sources instead of digging deeply into one, is a popular method professional fact-checkers use to quickly get a better sense of the truth of a particular claim. Digital tools and services commonly used by fact-checkers include, but are not limited to: Since
6596-437: The following recommendations: A 2019 meta-analysis of research into the effects of fact-checking on misinformation found that fact-checking has substantial positive impacts on political beliefs, but that this impact weakened when fact-checkers used "truth scales", refuted only parts of a claim and when they fact-checked campaign-related statements. Individuals' preexisting beliefs, ideology, and knowledge affected to what extent
6693-602: The forefront of media issues. The holiday is held on April 2 because "April 1 is a day for fools. April 2 is a day for facts." Activities for International Fact-Checking Day consist of various media organizations contributing to fact-checking resources, articles, and lessons for students and the general public to learn more about how to identify fake news and stop the spread of misinformation. 2020's International Fact-Checking Day focused specifically on how to accurately identify information about COVID-19 . Research has shown that fact-checking has limits, and can even backfire, which
6790-529: The form of addons ) misinformation mitigation . Efforts such as providing and viewing structured accuracy assessments on posts "are not currently supported by the platforms". Trust in the default or, in decentralized designs, user-selected providers of assessments (and their reliability) as well as the large quantities of posts and articles are two of the problems such approaches may face. Moreover, they cannot mitigate misinformation in chats, print-media and TV . The concept for International Fact-Checking Day
6887-427: The general BuzzFeed site), 65 were positive, 34 were neutral, and one was critical. The report described BuzzFeed's coverage of Obama "creepy" and "almost uniformly uncritical and often sycophantic". In June 2020, BuzzFeed News senior reporter Ryan Broderick was fired after it was revealed he had "plagiarized or misattributed information in at least 11 of his articles." On August 28, 2016, Chris Hamby published
6984-569: The individual in error was someone reasonably like-minded to begin with. Studies have shown that fact-checking can affect citizens' belief in the accuracy of claims made in political advertisement. A 2020 study by Paris School of Economics and Sciences Po economists found that falsehoods by Marine Le Pen during the 2017 French presidential election campaign (i) successfully persuaded voters, (ii) lost their persuasiveness when fact-checked, and (iii) did not reduce voters' political support for Le Pen when her claims were fact-checked. A 2017 study in
7081-472: The internet media management company Proper Media. On March 9, 2017, David Mikkelson terminated the brokering agreement with Proper Media, which was also the company that provided Snopes with web development , hosting , and advertising support. The move prompted Proper Media to stop remitting advertising revenue and to file a lawsuit in May. In late June, Bardav—the company founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 2003 to own and operate snopes.com —started
7178-832: The journal Journalism , which compared news articles by BuzzFeed and The New York Times , found that BuzzFeed News largely followed established rules of journalism. Both publications predominantly used inverted pyramid news format, and journalists' opinions were absent from the majority of articles of both. Both BuzzFeed News and the Times predominantly covered government and politics, and predominantly used politicians, government, and law enforcement as sources. In contrast, BuzzFeed News devoted more articles to social issues such as protests and LGBT issues, more frequently quoted ordinary people, less frequently covered crime and terrorism, and had fewer articles focusing on negative aspects of an issue. On July 18, 2018, BuzzFeed News moved from
7275-416: The journal Science , saying a new investigation is needed because 'theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable." The policy led to an article by The New York Post that suggested a lab leak would be plausible to be initially labeled as "false information" on the platform. This reignited debates into the notion of scientific consensus . In an article published by
7372-561: The lead of our editors and reporters who come out of a tradition of rigorous, neutral journalism that puts facts and news first." Some commentators have criticized BuzzFeed's editorial guide as internally inconsistent, arguing that BuzzFeed News cannot claims to be neutral while also endorsing positions on controversial political issues. The media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that in 100 BuzzFeed stories about Barack Obama in 2016 (most from BuzzFeed News , but also from
7469-744: The left who criticized the assumptions of American imperialism", rebuttals that may not be factual themselves, issues of general media bias , and "the near ubiquitous refusal to identify patterns, trends, and ... intent in politicians' ... false statements". They further argue that political fact-checking focuses exclusively on describing facts over making moral judgments (ex., the is–ought problem ), assert that it relies on public reason to attempt to discredit public figures, and question its effectiveness on conspiracy theories or fascism . Likewise, writing in The Hedgehog Review in 2023, Jonathan D. Teubner and Paul W. Gleason assert that fact-checking
7566-406: The medical journal The BMJ , journalist Laurie Clarke said "The contentious nature of these decisions is partly down to how social media platforms define the slippery concepts of misinformation versus disinformation . This decision relies on the idea of a scientific consensus. But some scientists say that this smothers heterogeneous opinions, problematically reinforcing a misconception that science
7663-470: The news. There is also many social context features that can play a role, as well as the model of spreading the news. Websites such as " Snopes " try to detect this information manually, while certain universities are trying to build mathematical models to assist in this work. Some individuals and organizations publish their fact-checking efforts on the internet. These may have a special subject-matter focus, such as Snopes.com 's focus on urban legends or
7760-556: The novel coronavirus which created a global pandemic", based on its fact-checking partners, collectively known as the International Fact-Checking Network . In 2021, Facebook reversed its ban on posts speculating the COVID-19 disease originated from Chinese labs, following developments in the investigations into the origin of COVID-19 , including claims by the Biden administration, and a letter by eighteen scientists in
7857-433: The owners of Alfa Bank – filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News for publishing the unverified dossier. It alleged financial ties and collusion between Putin , Trump, and the three bank owners. In January 2018, one year after the dossier became public, Trump's lawyer Michael D. Cohen , who was also named in the dossier, filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News . The same day, Ben Smith again defended
7954-401: The pandemic." Several commentators have noted limitations of political post-hoc fact-checking. While interviewing Andrew Hart in 2019 about political fact-checking in the United States, Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson discuss what they perceive as an unspoken conservative bias framed as neutrality in certain fact-checks, citing argument from authority , "hyper-literal ... scolding [of] people on
8051-771: The publication in a New York Times op-ed, calling it "undoubtedly real news". In February 2018, BuzzFeed News sued the Democratic National Committee to obtain their internal investigation documents regarding the hack of their server during the presidential campaign in order for the journal to better defend itself against Gubarev's lawsuit. In April 2018, Cohen dropped his defamation suit. An exposé by BuzzFeed News , published on October 5, 2017, documented how Breitbart News solicited story ideas and copy edits from white supremacists and neo-Nazis , with Milo Yiannopoulos acting as an intermediary. Yiannopoulos and other Breitbart employees developed and marketed
8148-440: The purpose is to confuse and generate clicks. Furthermore, modeling techniques such as n-gram encodings and bag of words have served as other linguistic techniques to estimate the legitimacy of a news source. On top of that, researchers have determined that visual-based cues also play a factor in categorizing an article, specifically some features can be designed to assess if a picture was legitimate and provides us more clarity on
8245-475: The rapid spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories via social media is slowly creeping into mainstream media. One solution is for more media staff to be assigned a fact-checking role, as for example The Washington Post . Independent fact-checking organisations have also become prominent, such as PolitiFact . Ante hoc fact-checking aims to identify errors so that the text can be corrected before dissemination, or perhaps rejected. Post hoc fact-checking
8342-468: The reputational costs or risks of spreading misinformation for political elites. The researchers sent, "a series of letters about the risks to their reputation and electoral security if they were caught making questionable statements. The legislators who were sent these letters were substantially less likely to receive a negative fact-checking rating or to have their accuracy questioned publicly, suggesting that fact-checking can reduce inaccuracy when it poses
8439-519: The site had more than six million visitors per month. David Mikkelson ran the website from his home in Tacoma, Washington . Mikkelson has stressed the reference portion of the name Urban Legends Reference Pages , indicating that the intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well. Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" when there
8536-521: The site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias, but added that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. In 2016, Snopes said that the entirety of its revenue was derived from advertising. In the same year it received an award of $ 75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation , an organization formed to debunk paranormal claims. In 2017, it raised approximately $ 700,000 from
8633-467: The site was attracting seven million to eight million unique visitors in an average month. By mid-2014, Barbara had not written for Snopes "in several years" and David hired users from Snopes.com 's message board to assist him in running the site. The Mikkelsons divorced around that time. Christopher Richmond and Drew Schoentrup became part owners in July 2016 with the purchase of Barbara Mikkelson's share by
8730-529: The situation was still not clear. In early 2019, Snopes announced that it had acquired the website OnTheIssues.org , and is "hard at work modernizing its extensive archives". OnTheIssues is a website that seeks to "present all the relevant evidence, assess how strongly each piece supports or opposes a position, and summarize it with an average" in order to "provide voters with reliable information on candidates' policy positions". In 2018 and 2019, Snopes fact-checked several articles from The Babylon Bee ,
8827-581: The text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking . Research suggests that fact-checking can indeed correct perceptions among citizens, as well as discourage politicians from spreading false or misleading claims. However, corrections may decay over time or be overwhelmed by cues from elites who promote less accurate claims. Political fact-checking
8924-405: The values and tactics of these groups, attempting to make them palatable to a broader audience. In the article, BuzzFeed News senior technology reporter Joseph Bernstein wrote that Breitbart actively fed from the "most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right ," and helped normalize the American far right . MSNBC 's Chris Hayes ranked the article as "one of the best reported pieces of
9021-419: The website a "failing pile of garbage" during a news conference. The publication of the dossier was also met with criticism from, among others, CNN reporter Jake Tapper , who called it irresponsible. BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith defended the site's decision to publish the dossier. BuzzFeed News faced at least two lawsuits as a result of publishing the dossier. In February 2017, Aleksej Gubarev,
9118-472: The year". The Columbia Journalism Review described the story as a scrupulous, months-long project and "the culmination of years of reporting and source-building on a beat that few thought much about until Donald Trump won the presidential election." On October 29, 2017, BuzzFeed News published the original story in which actor Anthony Rapp accused actor Kevin Spacey of making sexual advances toward him at
9215-456: Was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, which mainly presented search results of user discussions based at first on their contributions to the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (AFU) where they'd been active. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to
9312-481: Was hired as head of investigative reporting. By 2016, BuzzFeed News had 20 investigative journalists. The British division of BuzzFeed News was headed by Janine Gibson , formerly of The Guardian . Notable coverage included a 2012 partnership with the BBC on match-fixing in professional tennis, and inequities in the U.S. H-2 guest worker program , reporting of which won a National Magazine Award . A 2017 study in
9409-555: Was introduced at a conference for journalists and fact-checkers at the London School of Economics in June 2014. The holiday was officially created in 2016 and first celebrated on April 2, 2017. The idea for International Fact-Checking day rose out of the many misinformation campaigns found on the internet, particularly social media sites. It rose in importance after the 2016 elections, which brought fake news, as well as accusations of it, to
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