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.