The world has recently awakened to the problem of “fake news.” Unfortunately, this is merely a grouping in the taxonomy of “bad news,” or “untrustworthy news.” The easy problem is to rid the world of fake news. The hard problem is finding the truth in what remains.
Good journalism should be considered the reporting and argumentation that is the most factual, relevant, fair, and transparent. I posit that a consequence of capitalism is that the quality of journalism steadily erodes, like being on the loser’s side in a game of Monopoly.
Any entity expecting to flourish should create forces with checks against itself. As the body produces fevers to fight infections, a healthy government should invest in journalism designed to critique itself. Even journalism can invest in critiquing itself. This paradigm is the basis for what Things Relevant does.
Once the topic became a media attraction, many projects working in this industry came to light; most of which impart short-term solutions that can be potentially gamed. Each section provides valuable insight towards the verifiability or trustworthiness of a given source of news. Together, the hope is not only to bring about a seminal systematized way to judge truth, which is most likely impossible, but, more realistically, to grow to the point where it becomes influential for media to be responsible truth-tellers.
This project at times may appear arbitrary and even biased as I work with many different sources, but is never intended to exert influence, only educate, and I will be as transparent as possible as all journalists should. It is only natural that I live and work to the same standards that I hope I may hold journalists and publishers to.