User:Cfdrury/sandbox

The whole existing wiki page is a Frankenstein assembly of different ideas that don't have a coherent flow. If I could rewrite and publish the whole thing from scratch I would rewrite and organize it like this:

ALL WRITING AND SOURCES ARE MINE

Fact-checking in journalism refers to the internal procedures for verifying facts prior to publication or correcting mistakes post-publication. Fact-checking also has contemporary applications which involves evaluating the truth of statements from politicians, journalists, or other public figures.

Fact-checking didn't emerge as journalistic common practice until the beginning of the 1900's. Early newspapers put a larger emphasis on opinion and polemic over objectivity. This changed with the advent of wire services. The need to limit characters caused news agents to shorten their messages and only report the essential facts; allowing individual newspapers and magazines to spin them in any way they wanted. Fact-checking saw its first formalization with Ralph Pulitzer's creation of the Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play in The New York World in 1913. However, this Bureau predominantly focused on post-hoc fact-checking, only issuing corrections after publication. Ante-hoc fact-checking was introduced and cemented as journalistic best-practice during the early years of Time (magazine) which was the first news magazine to formalize a research department. That research department reflected the magazine's desire to ensure "every printed word was objectively verifiable," and became the standard for American fact-checking. The New Yorker, in turn, began rigorously checking their facts and expanding their research department in 1927 after a highly erroneous story resulted in the threat of a libel lawsuit.

Fact-Checking in Journalism

Newspaper and Magazines

Dedicated fact-checking is much more common in magazines than in newspapers or broadcast news. This is attributed to the fact that magazines have more time and money at their disposal to invest in fact-checking. Daily news cycles operate on stricter deadlines, forcing the truncation of review processes. The pressure of issuing a correction also plays a role in the type and scope of fact-checking an organization with utilize. Where online or daily news outlets can issue a correction the instant it is discovered, magazines could have to wait weeks until they can print a correction, therefore urging a stricter review process prior to publication.

Social Media

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 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 the field further to find automatic ways in which fake news can be filtered out of social media timelines.

Contemporary Applications of Fact-Checking

Political fact-checking

One of the media's most essential role's in democracy is holding politicians and government accountable by ensuring there is a well informed electorate. This idea has taken new form as fact-checking evolved as its own disciple in media reporting. Fact-checking in this domain concerns investigating claims are already published as a new story. Profession reform movements, driven by poltical reporters as a response to the fragmentation of American public life, urged a new genre of fact-checking to emerge.

3 main fact-checking media groups: polti-fact, factcheck.org, washington post's Fact Checker.

Criticism

Questions of efficacy in correcting misperceptions

Research:

(Fact-checking as a means of public accountability and correcting misconceptions).

The systematic identification of inaccuracies in news

The determinants of "fact" are what decides whether something qualifies as fact or fiction. "Fact: an item of information reported in the spirit of objectivity without interpretive commentary, based on direct observation or on the testimony of more than one reputable source, and meaningfully related to other facts."

History

Fact-Checking in Magazines

Dedicated fact-checking is much more common in magazines than in newspapers or broadcast news. This is attributed to the fact that magazines have more time and money at their disposal to invest in fact-checking. Daily news cycles operate on stricter deadlines, forcing the truncation of review processes. The pressure of issuing a correction also plays a role in the type and scope of fact-checking an organization with utilize. Where online or daily news outlets can issue a correction the instant it is discovered, magazines could have to wait weeks until they can print a correction, therefore urging a stricter review process prior to publication.

Freelance Fact-Checking

Staff Fact-Checkers

In Journalism

New Applications

"The internet has ushered in unprecedented amounts of publishes information at an astonishing rate, and that information is readily accessible to any one who can get online. That doens't mean the Internet is to blamke for all our current fact-checking woes. Still, as publications move online--and other web-only outlets and self-publishing platforms launch seemingly daily--fact-checkin is forwing less common. " (Chicago book)

John Cook (Gawker's Editor in cheif) told the NYT in 2013: "We are dealing with a volume of information that is impossible to have the strict standards of accuracy that other institutions have."

"If journalism is a cornerstone of democracy, then fact-checking is its building inspector, ensuring that the structure of a piece of writing is sound."(Chicago book)

Fact-Checker's Role and Responsibility

"It is the FC's job to unbraid the pieces of the story and examine each strang, testing its strength and probing for weak points; in the process, fact-checking also attempts to uncover whether any vital pieces of the story are missing . The FC takes a hard look at the writer's sources to assess if they are trusworthy; decides whether the writer used the facts fairy and accurately to build the story; and pushes back against the writer and ditor, who are now invested in the story and its structure, if the evidence doesn't support the way the story is written" (Chi book).

"Head of Research" --> research is a term used synonymously with fact-checking

Copy editor vs Fact-checker: a copy editor is responsible with ensuring the correct spelling of names and other grammatical concerns but copy editors are not responsible for verifying the broader factual accuracy of a story (Chi book).

Notable Figures

Fake News and Social Media

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 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 the field further to find automatic ways in which fake news can be filtered out of social media timelines.