Google News Launches Fact Check Ahead Of Election Day To ‘Divine Fact From Fiction’
The presidential election is now just weeks away and while America is fairly divided between the two main candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—one thing most people should be able to agree on is that politicians lie. Some more than others, sure, but with all due respect to your candidate of choice, neither of the aforementioned presidential nominees are 100 percent honest 100 percent of the time. Unfortunately, it's the nature of the political beast, and it's led to a rise in fact checking, a practice that Google is now adopting for articles that appear in Google News.
"In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we’ve heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types. Earlier this year, we added a 'Local Source' tag to highlight local coverage of major stories. Today, we’re adding another new tag, 'Fact check,' to help readers find fact checking in large news stories," Google stated in a blog post.
The tagged articles will appear in the expanded story box on news.google.com and the Google News & Weather apps for iOS and Android, at least for users living in U.S. and U.K. Google may expand to include other locations around the world, though it didn't say when.
As with many of Google's products and services, there's an algorithm at play here. Google isn't doing the actual fact checking, but employing a two-part process that includes checking to see if stories are using the ClaimReview markup, and also looking for sites that "follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks." How many of those sites have been incorporated into the process isn't something Google divulged, though it says that sites that qualify as a fact checking service can apply to be included in the mix.
"We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin," Google added.
This probably won't make our presidential candidates and politicians at large be more truthful, but hopefully it will help separate legitimate claims from ones that are bunk.
"In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we’ve heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types. Earlier this year, we added a 'Local Source' tag to highlight local coverage of major stories. Today, we’re adding another new tag, 'Fact check,' to help readers find fact checking in large news stories," Google stated in a blog post.
The tagged articles will appear in the expanded story box on news.google.com and the Google News & Weather apps for iOS and Android, at least for users living in U.S. and U.K. Google may expand to include other locations around the world, though it didn't say when.
As with many of Google's products and services, there's an algorithm at play here. Google isn't doing the actual fact checking, but employing a two-part process that includes checking to see if stories are using the ClaimReview markup, and also looking for sites that "follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks." How many of those sites have been incorporated into the process isn't something Google divulged, though it says that sites that qualify as a fact checking service can apply to be included in the mix.
"We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin," Google added.
This probably won't make our presidential candidates and politicians at large be more truthful, but hopefully it will help separate legitimate claims from ones that are bunk.
