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.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiege...
For whatever reason, the official police report implied that a passenger struggled with the driver causing the disaster. The next day, video footage of the entire event was released (from the security cam inside the bus), showing a different story. The driver pretty clearly decides to go over the edge, turns the wheel, and does not flinch or turn it back as they go over.
After the video came out, dozens of major outlets covered the story. Almost all ran with "passenger hits driver causing crash", one or two did not specify a cause. No major outlet suggested [what seems to me to be] the most likely account, which is "driver deliberately drives bus off of bridge during argument with passenger".
In contrast, on youtube / other social media, most commentators pointed out that the driver seemed to crash deliberately, changing course many seconds after the passenger hits him on the arm with her phone.
* It shows how automated the echo chamber is. The real crash cause is a more interesting + rare story. (though needs A/B testing) * It shows how short-lived major coverage is. While most passengers unfortunately perished in the crash, _both the driver and the arguing passenger survived_, and will end up in court once they recover. This was mentioned by very few outlets, but will eventually help inform understanding of the event.
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.
Right now, outlets are basically asking you to trust their assertions based on their brand. Fewer and fewer readers are inclined to give their trust based on brand (I'm guessing this is because there are just so many outlets/brands now). The way forward is for journalists to earn their readers' trust by showing their work on as many fact checks as possible. It won't be possible for every fact check (such as those involving anonymous sources) but where possible, it'll add a great deal of value.
An example from the new york times from yesterday. Obviously not an earth shattering error, but there it is. Something trivially easy to be detected by anyone who cared to check.
For more check out https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections
Making a mistake is not the same as lying.
The Supermicro """backdoor""" story of late last year, where Bloomberg alleged that the company had surreptitiously placed small microchips on nearly all their products on behalf of China without anyone noticing
That could well fall under he said she said.
Is it? Maybe it once was but the collapse of local news and the massive drop of talented writers and support staff like editors and fact checkers seems to have changed the environment. Most news today is little more than Twitter posts cobbled together.
Edit: I had originally misunderstood the parent comment. Responded again here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19576185
I wrote a story that became a legend. Then I discovered it wasn’t true: https://www.cjr.org/first_person/tinazzi-motorcycle-mont-bla...
You mean something like a lie by omission? That is pretty easily solved with some form of source control and public pull requests. An equivalent to git blame would be pretty helpful (cue Sinclair Broadcast Group NPC script reading). Just watch http://newsdiffs.org/ for a while, these people regularly modify stories without editor's notes. It is kind of funny that further below you discuss the embarrassing conduct of the media in their coverage of Covington Catholic... do you remember what was in the news cycle right before they breathlessly pounced on a non-story? The media was getting embarrassed by a very rare direct denial from the DoJ in relation to their latest reporting on the Trump collusion conspiracy theory.
I agree with your broader point though: this won't improve the media. They're not even pretending to be unbiased and have no shame in telling laughably obvious lies about the most ridiculous thing - like koi ponds. Their motivation is clear: short sighted servicing of those needing confirmation bias conforming stories. This isn't a scheme hatched in a smoke filled back room, it is just a very foolish business plan.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/358983-media-shows-w...
Every news source reported on the inconsistencies in Jussie Smollett's story, and continued to update their reporting as the facts turned against him.
They're newspapers, not oracles.
There have been many of these recently. One striking one was the Boston Rally for which the mainstream news pushed a "white supremacist" narrative. This was odd, as the few people who managed to come out included a large proportion of brown people, including one South Asian senate candidate. The fact checking seems to go out the window, so long as the story pushes one of the "sacrosanct" narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wWeksF6XZs
Another example was the coverage of the public harassment incident at VidCon between Anita Saarkesian and Sargon of Akkad. The way it was reported, it sounds like Sargon did something, whereas videos online show that all the harassment was done by Anita Saarkesian. You may not like Sargon, but the fact that the news narrative goes 180 degrees against the truth on the ground should disturb everyone.
I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves.
Manufacturing Consent covers how western media entirely fits a "Propganda Model" of operation through presentation alone. However in recent years, even facts are thrown out in favor of narratives which run entirely counter to the facts.
And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.
Not so much. I recall reading a NYT article about a storm-in-a-teacup thing involving who gets to walk first as valedictorian. The article was amazingly nearly fact free. It seems that articles and reports get a free pass, so long as they are pushing the "right" narrative. It has been this way for a very long time (re: Manufacturing Consent) but the quality of fact checking and the quality of the writing used to subtly spin the facts has gone down.
People complained mightily about how all of the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" evidence was one big circle-jerk of "Citogenesis."
Now, the same media organizations are involved in the same circle-jerks of "Citogenesis," but it's given a pass for tribal reasons, because the narrative supports "our side."
Help me understand why you were even paying attention to this drama? Do you really find Shiva Ayyadurai to be a sympathetic figure? I assume no, right?
He had been involved in a long harassment campaign against her, and then shows up in the front row at her panel. That is not an innocent act.
I don't think any of these are what the question was about.
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.
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".
I'm a bit jealous because I had nearly the same idea back when I worked in public radio, but didn't have the time to implement it. Basically it was about having facts and quotes exist as embedded units within articles, all with their own individual records of verification and relationships to all the articles in which they were used. I'm really glad someone is taking a shot at this, even though I have my doubts as to whether journalists will take it seriously.
YazIAm: If you want any further inspiration, here's my old github issue where I wrote about this concept: https://github.com/SCPR/SCPRv4/issues/718
I don't know what all the criteria are, but you should consider applying for a Knight Foundation grant: https://knightfoundation.org/apply/
Remember Wikipedia is a centralized and under control of single entity, fact that they rely on donation doesn't change anything.
Coding this wasn't actually that complicated, figuring out a design that enables readers to review the fact checking as easily as possible and enables fact checkers to collaborate easily took a lot of experimentation though. Although even that is still very much a work in progress.
That way if a story needs to be expanded upon at a later date, the next journalist can dig deeper easily picking up the trail where the previous journalist left off.
As one problem is solved, it starts hinting at solutions to subsequent problems. This is not a problem with a silver bullet. It's going to take a fundamental shift in how we understand and verify truth.
Still, it seems valuable to make it easy for readers to view the supporting or contradictory evidence. That might’ve stymied many notable media hit-pieces. Of course, many newsrooms wouldn’t want this (at least I can’t imagine The Guardian and it’s ilk would want to draw attention to their own impoverished fact:BS ratios), so it would have to be a browser plugin or similar.
If you've ever been interviewed by a modern journo, you know you just get the same question reworded a dozen different ways. The reason is that they decide what story they want to write up front, and then just go shopping for facts to support it. That story is usually dictated by market pressures, which presently reward sensationalism to feed the addiction of a dwindling number of listeners in an echo chambers.
And current fact checkers are typically checking material put out by others, which is completely broken. They have all the same incentives as anyone writing a hit / puff piece, except they put a phony "truth number" at the top and other sites will tally those up as though it means something.
There is, of course, the social issue of convincing people that this is important, but the underlying issue is in part a technical one. I don't think it's fair to disqualify a solution based on the fact that involves technical work.
I am not trying to disqualify the solution, more like observing that the existence of provable facts has not yet been any sort of antidote for 'fake news' (whether that refers to the real deal, or the position many people take that any news they don't like is fake news).
Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker. I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing good promise.
1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they have practiced this their entire lives. Richard Feynman cautioned us in saying that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." That caution was aimed at scientists who are already among the most objective of us, yet they can still suffer from this ailment.
2) When people talk about the facts, they rarely just lay out the facts dispassionately and without judgement. Humans need a motivation to tell a story, and most people's motivations include convincing other people to support their ideology, or else berating those who dont. Facts are organized within a mental framework of the ideology of the teller, wrapped up in beliefs, desires, and biases andcarry additional information about which ideological position you ought to hold -- sometimes they are even intended to mislead and manipulate the listener.
The modern news media is composed of businesses in search of profits. That goal is often not aligned with a straight reporting of facts. By pandering to an audiences ideology they increase ratings. By reporting on salacious and exciting news, even if incorrect, they get ratings. Buyer beware.
A certain percentage of the population does not have critical thinking skills and never will. However a project like this is useful for those of us who do. If journalists don't disclose their data and reasoning its hard even for those of us inclined to verify or fact check anything, leaving us susceptible to propaganda.
I would divide media roughly into three classes:
1. The worst: those who make up things with no base in reality at all
2. The standard: those who don’t make up things willfully, but manipulate through selective focus (leaving out certain topics while pushing others)
3. The good: those who carefully try not to lie and try to avoid selection based manipulation, while clearly marking the border between facts and opinion.
This concept would only really prevent the behaviour of the worst – IF they would care about getting caught in a lie. The fact that there _are_ watchblogs that point out lies with no effect shows probably that only technology is not a practical solution.
What kinda works is having a national press council that has the power to sue media plattforms to print corrections when they get things wrong. Even the most uneducated would think about changing the newspaper when ever other issue starts with a correction notice. Let alone the advertisement partners.
Technology like this is cool, but must always be emmbeded in some powerful institution.
Actually, people have been calling out media organizations and getting them to print retractions and even suing them. When they do retract, they do it in a way where it doesn't get much space and much attention. (The mainstream media is particularly bad about covering this sort of thing.) Some (even mainstream) organizations in 2018/2019 would simply ignore the claims. Some (even mainstream) even quietly edited articles without retraction.
In any case, I don't think most media organizations care, because most of the time, the retraction isn't nearly as viral as the initial clickbait story, and even if there was outrage, that would still ultimately benefit them by ultimately generating more attention.
Reporter reports
Just some feedback that might or might not be useful for your messaging, depending on your goals :)
Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker. I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing good promise.
In my experience, there are few good colours that remain readable on text, and I personally find serif fonts visually displeasing in most cases, although there are some exceptions (https://www.nytimes.com/) and even then, the light grey on white background is pretty displeasing.
I wish you all the best in your endeavour!
In other words, enabling journalists to "show their work".
Thanks for the feedback about the colours, I'll play around with it!
It's clean and easy to use and I don't necessarily see a huge problem with "noise" diluting the "facts".
I certainly appreciate both the goal and work you've done to accomplish it.
Moreover, how do you replicate work like calling sources to verify statements before publication?
I wrote a short piece for Wired once and had to go back and forth with their fact checker on the most picayune details. In an article about balancing online work and travel I had mentioned in passing searching under a hotel bed for an outlet, and she wanted to know what hotel it was, what country it was in, when I stayed there, etc. The process was exhaustive and not something I would go through with a bunch of Internet randos. It was also done before publication and involved a fairly high level of trust.
As for "how do you replicate work like calling sources to verify statements before publication?" Good question. Currently this is only designed to open up the fact checking which involves public primary sources. I think that a platform that focuses on doing that subset of fact checking really really well can add a lot of value to the public discourse.
Currently this is only designed to open up the fact checking which involves public primary sources.
Limiting the scope to this is wise. It's a tractable problem and it's better journalism. The types of journalists who write "this unnamed source implied that this other unnamed source had implied to another unnamed source..." articles won't like this sort of tool, but those journalists should be encouraged to change careers.
Some might not realize that articles like that are fairly common. For an example, I went to NYT homepage and this was the first article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/politics/william-barr-...
First sentence: "Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations."
This sort of crap gets swept under the rug within a couple of weeks, but we're certainly paying attention to it now.
To turn its slogan into an analogy: the New Yorker is high quality closed source software. If you disagree with the New Yorker, you can't file a bug report.
You might say, "I wouldn't want to," either because of something on your end, or something on the New Yorker's end. Continuing the analogy, there are closed-source models, open-source-but-closed-development models, and open-source-community-driven models.
I'm typing this because the problem this solves for me is I often disagree with the news, and I would like to fact check them. Perhaps not--as you mention--by calling sources, but by citing other evidence.
Every news source has bug reports too. They're called "letters to the editor".
1) Some primary sources are dubious, or manipulated. See the multiple versions of Acosta getting kicked out of a White House press briefing.
2) What happens when you have an article that repeatedly cites dubious secondary opinion pieces, but the reader accepts these pieces as fact?
Court cases are as good as we have for determining facts, I suppose. (Though the error rate in court cases is quite high!) But 99.9999% of reporting isn't about court cases. Most reporting isn't about issues that will ever be litigated, and even those things that will be litigated, haven't been at the time of the reporting.
"Mitch McConnell had oatmeal for breakfast this morning, according to sources."
There, that's a fact. Now, tell me which court case I can refer to in order to verify that fact?
Fact-checking is an impossible endeavor. The essence of journalism is reporting things no one knows. That's what news is! This is completely at odds with "fact-checking". A good news story CANNOT be fact-checked by the public because if the public knew it, it wouldn't be news. There is an extremely limited genre of "news by trawling public but little-known documents", such as reporting on old court cases. Almost zero news fits into that category.
I find the present day's fact checking wave is a misnomer. In a world where something is false, but sourced, most of what we call fact-checking would only reinforce mistruths.
e.g.
The ratio of circumference to diameter is exactly three to one [1][2][3]
[1]: the Bible.
[2]: pious scholars.
[3]: low-tech experiments.
Consensus checking is of course also an interesting problem, albeit a pretty different one.
However as others have said a reputation system for participants is absolutely key. Any platform like this has to assume it is going to be flooded by bots trying to influence opinion on behalf of corporations, foreign governments and activists.
A reputation where users gain reputation slowly (through work, by verifying sources, etc..) become more able to influence opinion, but the reputation drops quickly if they are found to be misleading people. How this actually works is harder than it seems if you want a truly robust system.
When I think of platforms like this I think of Galileo[0]. He was perceived as a troll or heretic in his time, but of course he was right. How do you create a platform that allows correct ideas to flourish even when they go against conventional wisdom?
As for "How do you create a platform that allows correct ideas to flourish even when they go against conventional wisdom?" Great question, however my goal here is a bit more modest, it's to create a platform that allows facts which are provable by public primary sources to stand out from everything else. I think a platform that focuses on simply that can add a lot of value to political discourse.
There is also the problem that humans will probably tend to upvote "facts" that they agree with, and visa-versa. I'm not sure that reputation is the solution.
And yet "expert" verification introduces trust. I'm not sure what the solution is.
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.
Having said that, the usual strategy when I hear a new claim I'm not sure about is to google it; so is the Google search engine itself the competition for this site? It does try to give an "answer" at the top of search results these days. Then there is Quora.
The main advantage Wikiclaim has is that, like Wikipedia, the info can be moderated and updated, and hopefully can become an improving source of truth. Godspeed, devinplatt!
In time I hope that Google will surface Wikiclaim higher in its search results (whether URL or even answer box), so in my mind the competitor is also the ally :)
I don't think the strong suit of Quora (information based personal experiences) overlaps with what I'm trying to do with Wikiclaim (information from numerous reliable sources, editable by anyone), so no issues there either.
Not only do you have to account for what those sources say, but also, a reporter reporting what an anonymous source said can be 100% factual (Yes, the anonymous, valid source was indeed reported accurately), but maybe the anonymous source is incorrect. The reporting is accurate. The source is not.
Basically, a lot of grey area. And with that comes the issue of anything not "fact checked" by a service like this could be dismissed. What harm does that do?
Not a dismissal of a service like this. Rather, just open questions.
Anonymous sources certainly have value within journalism, but the goal of SourcedFact is to make facts that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt with public primary sources stand out from everything else.
I hope the author is able to grow their service through marketing, licensing, and contracts with media agencies. Open-sourcing the service's software would be a distraction from that goal and would create fragmentation of its database when clones of the service are created. What's important for a service like this is open data, not necessarily an open-source stack.
If Wikipedia can't be factually accurate due to editors personal politics, how do you keep those personal politics out of a fact checker?
However, I'd argue that even without such a feature, having an open standard for facts openly verified from primary sources will add a lot of value to current public discourse.
Mostly-rational people can be swayed by evidence and arguments, yet often disagree with each other because they doubt the truth of the other side's statements (fact checking), they believe the other side has missed important context in their argument, the other side has implicit assumptions that they disagree with (this is something that should be explored as a sub issue, then).
I'm very happy to see this. I'd love to see more of this kind of thing in the future.
The tech is dumb (just MediaWiki on Heroku), but it's been sufficient to allow me to spend several hundred hours creating about 200 wiki pages so far.
I'd prefer if the currently selected fact text remained highlighted when the mouse is not hovered over it. That way you know what the active "Investigate >" link is referring to.
Also, for accessibility and convenience, it would be nice if you could tab through the instances of the fact text blocks.
I definitely also want to address the first issue, the tricky part is coming up with a solution that also works when there are multiple assertions on one line, but I'll give it more thought.
It seems like its less for fact checking, which would happen prior to publication, than for fact proof?
The whole fact checking process actually happens within the system, the facts you see on there were collaboratively fact checked by a team of 7 to 11 vetted fact checkers. So that may also provide an incentive for journalists.
Net Neutrality - https://sourcedfact.com/a/net-neutrality-how-we-got-here
Cell Phone Privacy - https://sourcedfact.com/a/cell-location-data-without-warrant
Israel Boycotts - https://sourcedfact.com/a/government-measures-against-israel...
"transparency" is the word you are looking for. It's more general and predates "open source" by far.
It's also a term that seems to be used similarly to the post title in contexts outside of software. For example, I subscribe to a podcast that covers arms control, where they frequently use the term "open source" to describe analysis derived publicly available sources and methods.
Source threads:
- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000072092769964033 - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000080833678528512
1. Anyone who answers a question regarding whether the claim is "fully" proven by a source or whether the source is valid for the claim must or should (debatable) provide proof of their own interpretation by citing either specific instances in the source in question supporting it. For example, in the Net Neutrality article, Yatz states this: The adopted principles in this statement are at the top of page 3 in a response to does the source fully prove the claim. It would be nice if that was linked to the actual location in the document or identified through highlighting or some other mechanism to get full context for the response. There also should be uses for outside sources to be attached when evaluating these questions that are suppose to validate a source. This is because someone could submit a response to these source validity questions and cite an external source or internal quote of the source in question for their reasoning that doesn't support their answer.
2. Having some sort of expertise verification is extremely important and should be weighted either separately as in Experts: Yes Experts: No category and should be more important. It distinguishes this from random anon answers that have no training in how the source should be interpreted.
3. Having anonymous people do this seems rather dubious and the current platform seems like it would make it prone to Youtube comment syndrome. Maybe have some reputation system to gate keep like StackOverflow?
4. Sources usually require appropriate interpretation in order to be taken in the right context and be considered correct. Sometimes there's no single source or any source, philosophically, that fully proves a claim. I'm guessing that's what supporting documents are for?
5. Why is the original articles claim allowed to be edited?
I have a couple comments to make as a former newspaper reporter:
* Many important stories use anonymous sources that are impossible to verify via crowd-sourcing or by linking to official documents. Much of what happens in the world is not publicly documented nor is it widely known (until a reporter publishes a story). That gap between events and any record of those events is one of the structural problems that allow "fake news" to occur.
* Timing matters. Reporters working for the dwindling number of publications that employ fact-checkers or editors have their facts checked before they publish. For that small group of outlets, this diminishes the number of falsehoods they are responsible for unleashing online. Fact-checking a story after its release is useful, but the cat's already out of the bag. The lie is already speeding around the world at the speed of viral outrage.
* As with any platform where better information leads people to make different choices, there are lots of incentives for publications not engage in crowd-sourced fact-checking. Why do people lie or distort the facts on their dating profiles and job applications? Why do companies put forward their most utopian face? They are trying to shape the world with information. And so are media outlets such as Fox News, to name just the most egregious.
* Fact-checking is a lot of work, and can descend into epistemological quibbles. Most people don't have time do engage in it, or even to understand the debate around a given fact. This is why, in the past, we outsourced this work to the editorial staff of the fourth estate. While this would bring more transparency to the process, I am not sure who would have time to take advantage of that transparency, anymore than the normal reader will closely follow the "talk" tab on a Wikipedia article.
I think there is an underlying assumption that the general world cares about things like "primary sources" and "logical fallacies" enough to bother hovering over the text or viewing the content, and that there isn't an intentional manipulation of these things by media organizations to fit a narrative. Maybe if this was a browser plugin that came with <major browser> by default and automatically highlighted fact checked statements in exiting articles. That way folks wouldn't have to opt in, but as it is, whats the incentive for either the populace or the media to participate? Think of it this way- how did the fact checking in the examples get done? Someone spent 2 minutes on their favorite search engine. People willing to do that will do it if they have the time, and people not willing probably aren't interested in information that would contradict their opinions anyway - unless it comes from a source they already trust, like someone in their bubble. My own experience with this is that the folks who will care exist but are rare. Others, you can literally watch their eyes glaze over the moment you introduce a little cognitive dissonance.
For instance, I clicked on Net Neutrality. It's tough to truly appreciate the "net neutrality" dynamic of the past few years without understanding the backstory of Reed Hastings battling the ILECs (https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Netflix-CEO-Comcast-Want...), buddying up to Obama (https://www.businessinsider.com/house-of-cards-obama-2013-12), getting the law changed in his favor (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-releases-n...), and now rewarding Obama in kind: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/us/politics/barack-obama-....
It's almost as if it had nothing to with actual "net neutrality" at all since none of the horrible things have come to pass that were predicted.
Broadband isn't as good as it could or should be, but it isn't getting worse.
I've had a few related thoughts, on the off chance you find them useful:
1. It would be interesting, variously for journalists and the reading public, if it was possible for journalists to generate, disclose, and research cryptographic sourcing identifiers that enable them to figure out when they share a source. This could, critically, help journalists identify sources with a record of feeding other journalists bad information.
It'd be nice if the same work could help the rest of us unravel citation chains based on a small number of unique sources, but I'm not sure there's a way to achieve that without it being fairly simple to re-identify sources via brute-force.
2. If we can drill enough to find some bedrock, I think it might be useful to have virtuous-cycle user tools, like browser extensions that warn users when visiting an article by writers/publications (and potentially even sources, per above) with repeated sourcing/attestation problems. I don't think of this as purely a journalistic thing. In the sciences it could apply to methodology, data-collection/statistical integrity. With some bedrock, tooling in place, and established trust/community practice in place here, it might also be possible to expand the scope a little and address things like headlines that aren't at all moored to evidence.
You can pretty well do fake news by stating a list of true facts (and omitting a few other, fundamental, true facts).
Example:
Published news : person A killed person B by pushing a knife on his stomach, at a time when person B was unarmed.
Non-published statements : just before being killed, person B and a group of three friends armed with knifes attacked person A, which was unarmed at the time, and started cutting him. During the struggle, person A managed to get hold of B's knife and fought back, harming B. The friends of B were scared and ran away. Person A finally survived his injuries, but person B didn't.
I suppose everybody agrees that publishing the first statement alone is a clear example of fake news.
- Write each sentence on a different line.
This allows for better change tracking, commentary etc in a number of tools including github.
- Inline sources and compile into a references section.
I want to see that a claim is backed by more than one piece of supporting work whenever possible.
- Have a compiled / formatted version for holistic evaluation.
After you've done the hard work of writing factual statements the piece also needs to be readable. This is an orthogonal view into the same information however and should be presented as such.
People construct reality with things they want to believe. Most people aren't interested and/or skilled enough to be reasonable and think logically.
How could someone like that orange ape become POTUS???? This is just one major indicator for the fall of reason.
The enlightenment has failed and instead of a mass of mature citizens who are able to govern the world via consensus like the democratic system needs it to be we are driven by emotions.
Keep on doing this and I hope it may still have some impact.
It would also be nice to have some color coding when reading articles, so you can know what's the majority opinion on the validity of the piece.
Hopefully once you have gathered enough data, you can get one of these NLP bots to check the fact in an even more neutral way.
Good luck!