By Dave Van Zandt
Our inbox has been overflowing with anger toward Poynter Institute for publishing a list of alleged fake news sources. We have been asked to rate them Questionable or Mixed for factual reporting due to this one publication. We will do neither. Poynter met our criteria by removing the article and then following it up with an explanation of their mistake and a dedicated effort to get it right. That is responsible journalism and how it should be done. Mistakes happen and we make them too and correct them.
From our ratings and perspective, most of the sources on their list were accurately portrayed, however, Poynter did not provide evidence to support their claims, which is what we do on this website. We are not sure why they would not want to use our evidence based Questionable list, but instead chose OpenSources, which does not provide any evidence to support their designation of bias, conspiracy, fake news, etc. Since Poynter controls the signatories of the International Fact Checking Network it is concerning that they would publish this list without ample evidence to back the designations of UnNews. Poynter did the right thing by removing the article and explaining the error. Hence, we will not change their rating of High factual reporting.
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Agreed. The Poynter Institute for Media Studies made a BIG mistake in publishing (what only looks like / is in effect) a plagiarized assignment by their students. Half the initial work was automated. HOWEVER; they owned up to it and took it down until they “are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria.” That is responsible journalism. Personally; I trust Poynter to get it right the next time.
Thanks to MBFC for linking to the original article for refrence via the Internet Archive.
Bullshit!