Wondering if a news article you came across is worth your time to read? Is its tone objective? Is it well-researched? Is it written by a reporter who is an expert in their field?
The Factual’s automatically evaluates the credibility of every news article based on four factors:
1. Diversity and extent of sources
2. Level of opinionatedness
3. Author expertise on topic
4. Site’s historical reputation.
The Factual’s grades are instantly displayed on any news article in your browser and even injected directly into your Facebook or Twitter feed.
Get the most credible stories on trending news topics via a daily newsletter at thefactual.com or in-realtime at thefactual.com/news in your new tab (option to turn on/off).
FAQ: http://www.thefactual.com/static/extfaq.html
Note on privacy: The Factual only analyzes news related sites and ignores all other sites. Any information collected is anonymous and not shared with anyone.
Support: [email protected]
Most news sources bring up no rating. I installed and tried clicking on various news article on the Google News page. Many such as CNN and USA Today showed no rating. I do not find any value from this extension.
With the amount of reading I do and news I consume, this extension is the best. Hands down, Factual is a simple addition to guide me and others to higher quality pieces. Good luck to the team.
Much better than what Newsguard has done, this evaluates the article not the news company. Albeit the way it rates the articles are pretty simplistic.
has lots of room for improvements. and so far great extension for news reading.
Edit: After more research I have found a few issues. Labels Far-left websites such as CounterPunch as reputable and have good journalistic standard which is completely incorrect. While seemingly having a left bias so that most of the conservative websites have low standards which is also incorrect. Good thing this is still in Beta as it still has quite a bit of work to do but i think they will get there!
Many times the it get to N/A results on Cato Institute among others. Hope to see it out of Beta and fully working soon!
Vox news is far from being reputable, they skew facts to fit their opinion as their website is mostly opinionated website. They very rarely or barely correct their mistakes that they have put especially if it’s political. They even went so far as to justify the needless violence, against people who were misclassified as white supremacist or even escalated a peaceful gathering, perpetuated by Radical Leftist/neo communist, ANTIFA.
There also appear to be a miscalculation of how many references there are on a certain webpage take for example Vox’s House Bill article, it says that Vox is very divers sources and links. The article has 2 links and one of them refers back to their own website. At least you got the rating for Buzzfeed and Vice (both of them being relatively similar) are correct!
Al Jazeera is a state run news agency it skews facts and misrepresents them to better represent themselves. It’s funny that RT News is rated poorly but AL Jazeera which is just as bad is rated very well.
Thoughtful, well-designed, and minimalist extension that lets me know when the stories I’m reading are rough.
Biased stories is something I almost never think about, until I started using this chrome extension. Love it!
Our prejudices come from seeing only one side, from allowing ourselves to blindly believe all that our one trusted/like-minded source tells us. With CivikOwl, each news item can be viewed objectively, based on its own merit and credibility, irrespective of where it is coming from. That can get us closer to the truth. Thats why I believe CivikOwl is making a big contribution towards making the world a better place.
Last year, while serving two presidential administrations as a White House Fellow, I went through a spell where I stopped reading the news altogether. I felt overwhelmed by the unceasing barrage of sensationalistic news on both sides of the political spectrum. Moreover, I didn’t have the bandwidth or the patience to ensure that I was reading the highest quality news available so that my perspectives and policy recommendations were as well informed as possible.
In the midst of that, someone suggested I take a look at the work that CivikOwl was doing. What I found was refreshing and exciting.
The CivikOwl team is committed to encouraging thoughtful civic discourse through high quality news. Their Chrome extension does exactly what I need: it ensures that I make the most effective use of my time by not only providing instant feedback on the quality of the news I’m reading, but also suggesting the best related articles from both sides of the political spectrum. I have been so excited about the work that the CivikOwl team has been doing that I asked to be on their advisory board so I could be a part of this exciting journey they are on.
We all have biases. There is wisdom in recognizing them. CivikOwl helps us avoid our tendency to read only news that aligns with our existing biases by making us smarter and more efficient news consumers.
Keep up the great work CivikOwl!
The CivikOwl team has developed an incredibly smart and thoughtful solution to help people consume news more intelligently.
I’ve been advising the company. I got involved because assessing the bias and trustworthiness of news today is challenging. CivikOwl helps me assess the biases and quality of the news I am reading and introduces me to other high quality articles to balance out the biases. It does all this in a simple, clean, unintrusive way.
Great work CivikOwl! I can’t wait to see how the product continues to evolve.
relevant and interesting suggestions, love it.
With CivikOwl filter, I can trust what I read is real and relative with my interest.
Suggestion: if I can control when the news popup schedule, therefore I can have better time management about when to read news.
Great JOB!
I’m in love with the insights into your news reading habit. There’s so much potential here!
Being a fairly regular consumer of news and articles I have come to realize just how much biased news has skewed my perception of content quality and online reading experience. This extension is a great tool and a step in the right direction. Not only does this tool help me understand the quality/credibility of content out there, it also enables me to have healthy discussions on topics that I am passionate about. Kudos to the team on building this much needed resource.
A really useful and valuable extension. Highly recommended.
Good one
This is a great way to be able to know what you are reading and how credible it is. Nowadays news is convoluted and riddled with lies and misconceptions and CivikOwl is like a filter.
Perhaps you could add some kind of prompt for when people are falling behind on their “reading” schedule?
Great job! The very simple format is perfect!
Cool extension! You install it and then get this rich information on whatever you are reading. It tells you the quality of news and give you other perspectives on the same topic. Very cool!!!
CivikOwl has been a great addition to my online news reading. It’s a fun, lightweight extension with a serious purpose — helping us understand the sources of our online content better and raising the overall quality of discussion on and off the web. Highly recommended.
In my TEDx talk I identified the ability vet content as a key skill for the 21st century. The CivikOwl extension is a BIG step in right direction. It gives you a sense of the quality of the content but also makes you aware of potential bias present.
Install it now and let’s all do a better job of consuming and sharing content.