Checking Fact Checkers

As of last month Google News attempts to highlight fact check articles. Content from fact checking organisations will be tagged so that their contribution to on-line debate can be more clearly identified. I think this is a great move and a first small step towards addressing wider concerns around use of the web for disinformation and a “post truth” society.

So how does it work?

Firstly, news sites can now advertise fact checking articles using a pending schema.org extension called Claim Review. The mark-up allows a fact checker to indicate which article they are critiquing along with a brief summary of what aspects are being reviewed.

Metadata alone is obviously ripe for abuse. Anyone could claim any article is a fact check. So there’s an additional level of editorial control that Google layer on top of that metadata. They’ve outlined their criteria in their help pages. These seems perfectly reasonable: it should be clear what facts are being checked, sources must be cited, organisations must be non-partisan and transparent, etc.

It’s the latter aspect that I think is worth digging into a little more. The Google News announcement references the International Fact Checking Network and a study on fact checking sites. The study, by the Duke Reporter’s Lab, outlines how they identify fact checking organisations. Again, they mention both transparency of sources and organisational transparency as being important criteria.

I think I’d go a step further and require that:

• Google’s (and other’s) lists of approved fact checking organisations are published as open data
• The lists are cross-referenced with identifiers from sources like OpenCorporates that will allow independent verification of ownership, etc.
• Fact checking organisations publish open data about their sources of funding and affiliations
• Fact checking organisations publish open data, perhaps using Schema.org annotations, about the dataset(s) they use to check individual claims in their articles
• Fact checking organisations licence their ClaimReview metadata for reuse by anyone

Fact checking is an area that benefits from the greatest possible transparency. Open data can deliver that transparency.

Another angle to consider is that fact checking may be carried out by more than just media organisations. John Udell has written a couple of interesting pieces on annotating the wild-west of information flow and bird-dogging the web that highlight the potential role of annotation services in helping to fact check and create constructive debate and discussion on-line.