The Development of MediaReview:
An Open Process
The Reporters’ Lab and its partners began work in 2019 on a consistent system for labeling and tagging fact-checks of manipulated images and videos. The proposed Schema is based on a taxonomy proposed by The Washington Post. The first draft of this effort is available with comments here.
Following an open feedback period, the Reporters’ Lab incorporated suggestions into a second draft of the taxonomy. This draft was emailed to all signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network's Code of Principles on October 17, 2019, and was made available for public comment.
We incorporated suggestions from that document into a draft Schema.org proposal and began to test MediaReview for a selection of fact-checks of images and videos. Our internal testing helped refine the draft of the Schema proposal, and we shared an updated version with IFCN signatories on November 26. We also re-shared this draft, seeking comment, in the IFCN Slack on December 4.
On January 30, 2020, the Duke Reporters’ Lab, the International Fact-Checking Network, and Google hosted a Fact-Checkers Community Meeting at the offices of the Washington Post. 46 people, representing 21 fact-checking outlets and 15 countries, were in attendance. We presented slides about MediaReview, asked fact-checkers to test the creation process on their own, and again asked for feedback from those in attendance.
The Reporters' Lab began a testing process with prominent fact-checkers in the United States (FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post) in April 2020. We have publicly shared their test MediaReview entries, now totaling more than 300, throughout the testing process.
On June 1, 2020, we wrote and circulated a document summarizing the remaining development issues with MediaReview, including new issues we had discovered through our first phase of testing. We also proposed new Media Types for “image macro” and “audio,” and new associated ratings, and circulated those in a document as well. We published links to both of these documents on the Reporters’ Lab site (We want your feedback on the MediaReview tagging system) and published a short explainer detailing the basics of MediaReview (What is MediaReview?)
We again presented on MediaReview at Global Fact 7 in June 2020, detailing our efforts thus far and again asking for feedback on our new proposed media types and ratings and our Feedback and Discussion document. The YouTube video of that session has been viewed over 500 times, by fact-checkers around the globe, and dozens participated in the live chat.
We hosted another session on MediaReview for IFCN signatories on April 1, 2021, again seeking feedback and updating fact-checkers on our plans to further test the Schema proposal.