Fact-checking and accountability journalism project
The American Press Institute’s Accountability Journalism and Fact-Checking Project aims to increase and improve fact-checking and other accountability journalism practices.
The project, which began as a grant-funded initiative, supports research to improve political fact-checking, and works with news organizations to significantly increase and improve accountability journalism practices as well as contribute to public debates on the topic.
You can follow the work of the project here, and get top advice from experts on our Better News fact-checking resource page. Sign up for the weekly newsletter or enroll in our free online course. For more information or to be involved, contact Susan Benkelman, director of the program, at susan.benkelman@pressinstitute.org.
Factually: A day to recognize fact-checkers
Today, on this fourth annual International Fact-Checking Day, it’s time to celebrate those who work hard to bring you reliable information and, therefore, they help you make better decisions. On this day, we recognize that fact-checking is indispensable for journalism and for every citizen. It’s also time to pressure the powerful and demand transparency in public […]
Factually: Coronavirus deniers spread a deadly message
The coronavirus has killed more than 20,800 worldwide, and still there are people denying it exists. These are people who, ignoring not only facts but also others’ grief, find time (probably during their quarantine) to push disinformation online about COVID-19. From a fact-checkers’ perspective – and also from a humanitarian point of view – I would suggest […]
Factually: The power of rumors in a fast-moving crisis
Once President Donald Trump declared on Friday that he would use a federal law known as the Stafford Act as the basis for an emergency declaration to assist states with their coronavirus response, it wasn’t long before misinformation started circulating on social media and in text messages. The law essentially allows federal resources to flow to […]
Factually: What happens when a fact-checker is in quarantine
On Tuesday, at 9 p.m., those who attended the latest NICAR conference — the annual data journalism summit held in New Orleans — received an email from the Investigative Reporters & Editors group with an alert that one of the participants had tested positive for the 2019 coronavirus. From that moment on, I and about 1,000 other data journalists […]
Factually: The difficult choices in coronavirus reporting
News organizations are tracking coronavirus cases as they are confirmed. But what happens when there are suspected cases? Should they be reported too? On the one hand, reporting cases that are suspected but not confirmed could perform a necessary public service for audiences who might have read about the cases on social media or wonder why a school […]
Factually: What exactly was that Bloomberg video?
U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s recent campaign video portraying other Democratic candidates as dazed and confused in response to a question he posed during last week’s Las Vegas debate generated considerable discussion in the misinformation and media worlds. The video wasn’t a fake, exactly, but it was edited in a misleading way. The imagery in the footage […]
Factually: Fact-checking on coronavirus far exceeds that of Zika
A recent study published by Science Advances raises an interesting question: when it comes to health information, do “interventions aimed at combating false and unsupported information really work?” Researchers from Dartmouth College, IE University in Spain and other institutions studied how Brazilians responded to corrective information about outbreaks of the Zika virus and yellow fever in recent […]
Factually: The cynical lure of fake screenshots
The surge of misinformation accompanying the coronavirus outbreak has included several cases in which people have been deceived by fake screenshots. In one case, people circulated a manipulated screenshot of a disease tracker from the Chinese tech company Tencent with death toll numbers significantly higher than the official ones. The number purported to have captured the accidental […]
Factually: A busy week tests U.S. fact-checkers
It was one of the busiest weeks for American politics in recent memory. On Sunday, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg aired dueling ads during the Super Bowl. Monday was the Iowa caucuses, which kicked off the primary election season (as of this writing, we still don’t have all of the results). On Tuesday, Trump delivered the annual […]
Factually: Fact-checkers band together on coronavirus
Three weeks ago, China officially reported the first death caused by the 2019 coronavirus. But since then there has been a distinct lack of quality data from the Chinese government about the origins of the new disease and the official steps authorities are taking to find a cure for it. The information void has led to widespread […]