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factcheck
Credit: Courtesy of Eugene Kiely

In response to heightened public concern over viral fake news, the Annenberg Public Policy Center announced on Thursday that its political fact checking website, FactCheck.org, will be among the fact-checking organizations to identify and label fake news stories flagged by Facebook users. 

FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and winner of the 2016 Webby Award for Best Political Blog/Website, will be notified when stories have been flagged by Facebook users as questionable and will then provide Facebook with links to fact-checking articles if a story's claims are false. 

These debunked stories may then be flagged as “disputed,” appear lower in the News Feed and be accompanied by a link to a fact-checking story.

On Nov. 17, FactCheck.org and several other prominent fact-checking organizations published an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which they urged Facebook to engage with the fact-checking organizations in a conversation about how to create a “more accurate news ecosystem” on the platform’s News Feed.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 64 percent of American adults say fake news stories cause “a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events.” Of those surveyed, 71 percent said that social networking sites and search engines have "some" or "a great deal of" responsibility in preventing fake news from gaining attention.

FactCheck.org was founded in 2003 to “reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” While it has worked to debunk false viral news since the 2007 launch of its Ask FactCheck feature, the organization’s primary mission is to fact-check statements made by politicians.