How it works?

The Akhbar Meter team makes its methodology available to journalists, academic researchers, and audiences to rely on in identifying concepts and standards related to media ethics, as well as measuring the degree of media professionals’ commitment to media ethics.
“Akhbar Meter” is the first digital media observatory in Egypt and the world, evaluating the content of media sites according to their credibility and commitment to professional and ethical standards since 2014. The observatory is an initiative founded by a group of young Egyptians in response to the spread of unprofessional and unethical professional practices in the media scene, which seeks to identify unprofessional and unprofessional coverage; which in turn affects the integrity and accuracy of the information provided to the public, and its freedom from misleading, propaganda, and human rights violations.
The “Akhbar Meter” team monitors and evaluates the credibility and professionalism of the most prominent news that deals with issues of interest to the public within the content issued by the ten most widely read news sites in Egypt; According to the websites "Similar Web" and "Alexa", which specialize in website statistics, these websites are updated once a year in January.
The team selects content based on its importance and relevance to readers' daily lives, or with the aim of pointing out professional errors that readers are accustomed to reading without paying attention to because they are not specialized in that, and the fallacies and errors in it that may reach the level of human rights violations or going out of context; accordingly, followers of "Akhbar Meter" find that the content varies among all types of journalism, including politics, economics, local, art and culture; in an attempt to get closer to readers' interests.
The work team evaluates the content based on a scientific methodology that was developed based on local and international media codes of honor, and under the supervision of academics and practitioners in the field of media work. The team extracted a number of questions that determine the extent of the news editor's commitment to three criteria: "professionalism, professionalism, credibility and respect for human rights."
The team answers these questions by commenting on the mistakes made by the content writers, and each piece of content earns a number of points for each question, and based on that, the site automatically calculates the percentage of the digital newspaper's commitment to professional and ethical standards.
If the news contains incorrect information, the site places a warning sign that highlights the presence of some incorrect information in the news content so that the "AkhbarMeter" reader is aware of it, and the site guarantees the right to respond to journalists whose content on the site has been evaluated by the team, and publishes those responses on the evaluation page itself.
The "AkhbarMeter" team issues a monthly analysis of the performance of each media site; based on the average news ratings, in addition to three in-depth reports representing the best, worst and average performing news content; with the aim of detailing professional and ethical practices and identifying the sources of the rise or fall of news content.
Frequently asked questions
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How are articles rated on AkhbarMeter
The team evaluate news articles by answering a series of questions (19 questions) that are available here. These questions are derived from international and local media code of ethics and professional standards . The questions are categorized into three sections, the first section is concerned with violations of law conduct and human rights. The second section is concerned with manipulation techniques used by media channels, whereas the third section is concerned with professionalism in news reporting and content writing. For more information click here.
What does the rating percentage refer to?
All rated articles get a score from 0 to 100%. This score reflects the degree to which the news article aligns with professional standards and code of ethics. The score is calculated automatically after each article is rated by one of our reviewers.
What is the fact checking unit?
AkhbarMeter team believes that professional and ethical violations are not the only threat to public awareness and societal peace, and that fake news and rumors have a significant impact on social peace and cause confusion among the public. Accordingly, the team established a special unit to monitor fake news and rumors spread on social media and other news sites starting in 2020 under the name "Unreal News". The unit consists of two fact-checkers to verify successive news and rumors online and is supervised by the observatory's chief news evaluator. For more information about the methodology, click here

Do all criteria have the same influence on the final rating score?

The three different categories of questions (professionalism, violations of law conduct and human rights, and manipulation) do not equally influence the public.

Professionalism
The extent to which the question damages public opinion determines its weight in the score.
Credibility
The questions in the category of legal and human rights violations have the highest weight among all the questions, and then come the questions related to manipulation and propaganda
Human Rights
finally the questions of professionalism and code of ethics, which AkhbarMeter team is keen on promoting.
What are the questions that we base our rating on?
Does the author refer to the source when quoting or paraphrasing?
Is there any false information in the article?
Did the editor balance between different point of views?
Did the editor present sufficient information about the topic?
Is there any tampering with information or its context in the article?
Is there any insult, defamation or slandering for individuals or groups in the article?
Does the author refer to the source of the images used in the article clearly?
Is there a violation of privacy in the article?
Is there a conformoty with the right of presumption of innocence in the article?
Is there any hate speech in the article?
Is there any violence-instigation message in the article?
Is there any discrimination or/and stereotyping against individuals or groups in the article?
Did the editor refer to the sources of the information used in the article?
Do the sources represent more than one point of view?
Did the editor use relevant sources in the article?
Did the editor mix between facts and his/her personal opinion?
Did the editor get a permission from the owners of the visual/written content before publishing?
Is the headline objective and precise?
Does the visual content match with the article?
How do we evaluate articles and news papers?
Download our news report today.
Below you can download AkhbarMeter's handbook for reviewing news articles. The handbook illustrates the methodology in full details with examples that helps to understand each question and its answers