The week in fact checking: Test your fakery radar; the truth about kiwis; worst election ever?

Research
This week, the American Press Institute published a first round of research on fact checking and its impact on citizens and politicians. You could sum it up this way: Readers like fact-checking and accountability journalism, and they learn from it. Read more in an Upshot article by researcher Brendan Nyhan, at Poynter’s MediaWire, and at FactCheck.org.

Behind the fact check
What’s fueling the growth in fact-checking in U.S. politics and around the world? If you guessed rumors, innuendo and flat-out lies on the Internet, you’re on the right track. The American Journalism Review takes a look at efforts to combat the flood of misinformation in the digital age. Read it.

What? Something is fake on the internet? 
Gizmodo’s “Factually” blog helps us out once again, diving into a pile of fake photos that are clearly bogus yet will be infinitely shared on social media. And pray that the person who thought Albert Einstein had an endorsement deal with Mentos candy never sits in the emergency exit row on your flight. Read it.

The technology of fact checking
People have been lying on resumes since the days they were created with Underwoods and vellum. (Look it up, Millennials.) So of course they’re lying on LinkedIn, too. But that could end if LinkedIn’s new patent application is approved. Fortune reports that the proposed technology could fib-flag a resume, effectively taking LinkedIn users off the current honor system. Read it.

The fact-checking gold mine
Many pairs of pants are being set on fire over at Fox News, thanks to PunditFact’s “Truth-O-Meter” ratings of statements made by pundits and opinionists. According to the fact-checking organization’s latest look at truthiness ratings for top TV news networks, Fox News/Fox News Sunday has more mostly-false-and-worse ratings than CNN, MSNBC, and “Meet the Press” combined. Read it.

Extreme fact checking
What one columnist is calling “the most dishonest election ever” has professional journalists and volunteer fact-checkers working around the clock to examine the manipulated statistics in campaign ads. Sue Cameron of The Guardian blasts the “lying toads” and “scaremongering.” Read it.

Fact-checking quote of the week
“…in terms of gatekeeping, credibility, fact-checking, the legacy media stand shoulders above social media. So what we see going forward is a collaborative effort, in which the legacy media can make the social media more responsible in terms of gatekeeping and fact-checking. I see a marriage. I don’t see any one without the other.”  — Sunday Dare, political media adviser in Nigeria, after the country’s recent presidential election.

Not just for politics
Is it more expensive for school cafeterias to serve healthy food to kids? Arguing against new fruit and vegetable requirements for public school lunches, a representative for the The School Nutrition Association says yes. Take kiwis, for example. They cost 80 cents each and are too expensive for large-scale food service, she said. So a health analyst for the Committee of Concerned Scientists went on a fact-checking shopping trip to Harris Teeter and Whole Foods in Washington, D.C., and…Read it.

This week’s fact-checking test
Which one of these statements is true?
1. A man in England is in trouble with police because he’s been slapping people who sneeze in public.
2. A fatality caused by genetically modified foods has been confirmed by doctors.
3. One of the new Apple watch models is priced at $19,999.
Get answers.

 Prefer to receive this weekly column via email newsletter? Sign up here.

The post The week in fact checking: Test your fakery radar; the truth about kiwis; worst election ever? appeared first on American Press Institute.

from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/1FjkRnZ