Public Editor is New and Different
People are asking how Public Editor is new, different, or better than other projects addressing misinformation. Here’s our response.
Public Editor –– Provides nation-scale media literacy training (active and passive). We label each dubious word in articles, so newsreaders know precisely how specific content is misleading while they are reading. We use a totally transparent, scientific, people-powered process for labeling and scoring articles. Our Newsfeed provides multi-dimensional article credibility scores. And we’re working on integrations with Facebook and other ‘interactive service providers.’ We’re always free to the public, always non-partisan. And we’ve been independently (under)funded since 2015.
Below, we briefly describe some other projects taking other approaches to the misinformation problem:
News Literacy Project –– Trains people to become more literate, more capable of effectively noticing bogus content on their own. (Provides no way for people to systematically share their corrective notations at scale.)
None of the credibility service providers below label the actual words in articles that are mistaken. None of them train & improve public literacy. And none of them empower people to learn what misinformation looks like in news articles and work together to correct it at scale.
NewsGuard, The Trust Project, BitPress –– evaluate news websites and provide info about the trustworthiness of each article’s source. (Research by David Rand suggests the public already knows how to do this.)
Factmata –– evaluates news articles with a black box algorithm looking for right-/left-bias and hate speech. Provides red, yellow, green article evaluation. Newsreaders must read the article & try to determine which words & phrases are biased or hateful.
Politifact, Snopes, FactCheck.org –– research particularly dubious claims in the news and write reports that people can read and share. Newsreaders must read the original article and the fact check report to determine where the latter applies to the former.
AllSides, OurNews –– provide a newsfeed that labels the biases of news websites and includes fact checks when available. Newsreaders must read the original article and the fact check report to determine where the latter applies to the former.
NewsMetrics/CUNY_Newmark_School_of_Journalism –– received funding from Facebook to provide brand safety and news credibility scores for paying advertisers. No products for the public provided.
First Draft News –– provides coordination tools for newsrooms working to dispel misinformation all the time, and especially around elections and other misinfo crises.
We’re big fans of a lot of these other projects. But we think it’s pretty clear that there is space for a tool that BOTH improves individual media literacy and empowers people to take on misinformation directly and effectively. So, we’re proud to be a member of this larger ecosystem. To join Public Editor or donate to our nonpartisan, nonprofit, independently (under)funded cause, please go to https://publiceditor.io.