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As Just Facts grows in prominence and reputation, an increasing number of scholars, major organizations, and eminent people have cited and recognized the quality work of Just Facts. With this higher profile, Just Facts has also been subject to deceitful attacks. A recent example of such comes from “Media Bias Fact Check,” an “independent media outlet” that claims to be “dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practices.”

In the opening paragraph of her review of Just Facts, Media Bias Fact Check contributor Faith Locke Siewert writes:

On their article http://www.justfacts.com/racialissues.asp#affirmative, they use the Richard Sander’s (law professor at UCLA) essay “A Systematic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools.” To support much of their hypothesis, obviously against affirmative action (seeming also to support the notion of black intellectual abilities being inferior).

Those two sentences contain three demonstrable falsehoods:

  • “A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools” is not just an essay. It is a peer-reviewed journal paper that was published in the Stanford Law Review. Big difference.
  • Just Facts does not use this paper to support “much of” its research on affirmative action. The research contains more than 60 footnotes, and this paper is just one of them. Just Facts’ full research on racial issues has 498 footnotes, and this paper is two of them.
  • Just Facts does not offer any “hypothesis” in this research, much less “support the notion of black intellectual abilities being inferior.” To the contrary, the opening section of Just Facts’ research on racial issues covers the topic of science and presents multiple facts that challenge that notion.

The flagrant and simplistic nature of these bogus critiques suggests that Media Bias Fact Check is either inept and/or dishonest.

 

https://www.justfactsdaily.com...petent-or-dishonest/

 

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Bob Helms on  said:

I used to believe MBFC was a great resource in finding out information about specific websites. After a few years of using the website however, I noticed glaring inconsistencies regarding their conclusions about websites. Popular conservative leaning websites were pushed further to the right than expected, regardless of the user votes, and usually given a “Mixed” rating for honest reporting. Popular liberal leaning websites are nearly always a couple of clicks closer to “least biased” than their conservative counterparts, and nearly always listed as “High” rating for honest reporting. Usually the ratings conflict with the “user voted” ratings. So I emailed the website, and was told that, while the user votes are taken into account, the actual rating is done by “Media Bias Fact Check staff”. Problem though, when Huffington is given a “High” rating for honest reporting, yet Fox news is labeled “Mixed”, you know there is a major problem. I’m not arguing on the validity of either outlet in terms of high or mixed reporting, but on face value, both support the same types of articles, the only real difference being that one supports a liberal view, the other conservative. But oddly, the liberal viewpoint is given much higher marks for both validity, honesty, and being least biased. If Media Bias Fact Check were to be given a rating, they would be “Left” with “Mixed” honesty. Interestingly enough, they don’t rate themselves. Not that it matters, they’d certainly put themselves squarely in the middle as “Least Biased” with “High” ratings for honesty, neither of which are even remotely true. Uproxx, Vox, Daily Beast, Newsweek, all well known for left leaning reporting, are all listed as “High” for factual reporting. Problem is, looking at a list of articles on any given day, most on these sites are rife with opinionated articles that are poorly supported, or not supported at all by any source other than the article author’s own obvious personal bias. So I MBFC again, and pointed out some glaringly opinionated unsupported articles on both Newsweek and Huffington. Surprise surprise, this time MBFC ignored my email and never responded. So at this point I’ve given up on any idea that MBFC being “unbiased”. They most certainly are very biased. The problem with a website such as theirs is that you can fall into a tunnel vision trap, where your own political beliefs push your agenda left or right, despite good intentions, and you are stuck in your own bubble of self assumed intellectual arrogance, so much so that you refuse to accept the reality of the situation even when glaringly pointed out to you.

Last edited by Jutu

Hmm, what does Media Bias Fact Check really say about Just Facts?  And, check out the very last paragraph.

RIGHT-CENTER BIAS

These media sources are slightly to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information, but may require further investigation.  See all Right-Center sources.

 
  • In summary, this is a factual website from a sourcing standpoint and impressively researched. It does however convey a right leaning bias through story selection that is more favorable toward conservative causes and more negative toward liberal policy.

Detailed Report

Factual Reporting: HIGH
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180

History

According to their about page “Just Facts Daily is a project of Just Facts, a nonprofit institute dedicated to researching and publishing verifiable facts about public policy. Just Facts Daily typically covers topics that have not been accurately and thoroughly covered by other organizations.” The website does not list an editor, but it is known to be edited by James D. Agresti.

Funded by / Ownership

Just Facts Daily is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization owned by James D. Agresti. Just Facts Daily does not have advertising and is funded through donations.

Analysis / Bias

Just Facts Daily (JFD) is a news, opinion and fact checking website with a right-center bias in reporting. JFD’s tagline is “Be Informed, Not Just Opinionated.” This website is certainly informative, but it also appears to be quite opinionated.

First, lets look at factual reporting. We could not find any evidence of JFD making certified false claims. Each article is also impeccably sourced to credible information to convey their narrative. Therefore, we rate them high for factual reporting. The right-center bias designation comes from multiple factors. First, there is excessive use of loaded emotional words in the headlines. The following loaded words (words that attempt to influence through positive or negative emotion) were found in the first 15 headlines: Incompetent, Dishonest, Catastrophically, Deceitful, Brazen Lie, Smearing, Deadly Falsehoods. Most of these words appeared in headlines when the topic was about liberal politicians or liberal policy. Further, the headlines that described conservative policy did not contain these negative connotations. They were mostly neutral in wording.

In order to keep this short I will discuss only one article. The article is entitled “Clinton and Obama’s Brazen Lie About the Iraq Withdrawal.” The loaded language, “Brazen Lie” does not fit the content of the article. Clinton and Obama cite the SOFA agreement as the reason for our troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. This is true and not a brazen lie. There is however, more to the story and JFD did a good job of showing that they could have legally extended the troops time in Iraq, but chose not too. Overall, the article is well sourced and for the most part is accurate. The bias is conveyed through the author’s attempt to show that Obama and Clinton are mostly responsible for the rise of ISIS, due to abiding to the SOFA agreement signed by former President Bush. In 2011, at the time of the troop withdrawal, ISIS was not considered a threat and it could not be predicted that they would increase in size and strength in such a short period of time. Essentially, the entire article is an attempt to blame the Obama administration for something that was unforeseen at the time.

In summary, this is a factual website from a sourcing standpoint and impressively researched. It does however convey a right leaning bias through story selection that is more favorable toward conservative causes and more negative toward liberal policy. There is also extensive use of loaded negative emotional words when describing the left. This is the opposite approach that a fact checker should take, when instead they should be using neutral language. We rate this source Right-Center Biased.

It should be noted that Just Facts Daily wrote a negative article regarding Media Bias Fact Check that was based on a review by a former reviewer, who is no longer affiliated with our organization. (D. Van Zandt 4/26/2017) Updated (7/13/2018)

Source: http://www.justfactsdaily.com/

 

Jutu posted:

LOL! An alarm must have gone off.

Seem to be that Faith Locke Siewert did not live up to the standards that MBFC expected of her, so they 'let her go.'

Now, my questions for Jutu is, if we can't rely on anything online, how do we filter out 'fake news'?  How do we differentiate factual news reporting and the garbage that some websites offer as fact, and some people buy into without question?   

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