Picture/Credit: Anne-Marie Miller/iStock.com
Everyday we are bombarded with massive amounts of information from news outlets, our social media feeds, podcasts and more. It was a foregone conclusion that a subsect of journalism would form, which served the sole purpose of helping people traverse the treacherous landscape often laden with "fake news." Sites likes Politifact and Snopes serve as two of the biggest fact checking sites on the internet, most often fact checking the words of politicians and media figures. Even the big news media outlets have their own versions of "fact-checkers" such as CNN's Facts First or AP's Fact Check.
However, these fact checkers pose a potential problem. When organizations with obvious political leanings, such as CNN, run a fact checking site which states "CNN holds elected officials and candidates accountable by pointing out what’s true and what’s not.", the following questions must be asked, "Who is doing the fact checking?" and "Can they be trusted?" Critics have also accused the aforementioned, self described non-partisan fact checking sites Politifact and Snopes as being biased in giving their determinations over statements that are not simple matters of fact.
It would appear that there is still work to be done on finding an agreeable non-partisan source of fact checking that offers the level of transparency needed to truly combat misinformation.
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