Rest of World retracts story on India fake news tools

Rest of World, a website that covers technology and its impact around the globe, has retracted a story from its website headlined “Fake news verification tools fail the test during elections in India” published last week.

Editor in chief Anup Kaphle writes, “As part of our reporting for this story, Rest of World ran an experiment by sending AI content through a number of verification tools built by fact-checking organizations, and called out repeated failures to identify “fake” material. Rest of World failed to reach out to all of the organizations named in the story to account for, or respond to, perceived lapses in their fact-checking systems. As a result, we failed to identify potential flaws in our own reporting methodology. After publication, a number of the fact-checking organizations featured in the story noted that our queries were flagged as spam by their tip lines. Our story also contained inaccuracies about the number of queries sent to the tip lines, the number of accurate responses, and the response time from the tip lines.

“We deeply regret any harm that our reporting has caused. Rest of World is dedicated to upholding the highest editorial standards, and we take full responsibility for the oversight. Our commitment to our readers is to provide accurate, reliable, and thoroughly verified news. We fell short of this commitment.”

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