Fact-Checking 1: How Fact-Checking Works

Fact-checking and debunking

Every major news media employs fact-checkers: people who make sure that their output—the eight o'clock news, a newspaper, a documentary—does not contain mistakes or misinformation.

There are also independent fact-checking organisations, like Bellingcat or PolitiFact (US), whose investigations take on fake news, mis- and disinformation, online and in the real world.

Fact-checking

To investigate (an issue) in order to verify the facts. (Oxford Dictionary)

Pointing out that a piece of information is incorrect or highly misleading using evidence is called “debunking”. Being able to discern between reliable and unreliable information online is an essential skill now that most young people are getting their news from the internet.

Debunking

To show that something is less important, less good, or less true than it has been made to appear. (Cambridge Dictionary)

Researchers at Stanford University showed that professional fact-checkers were faster and more accurate at evaluating online information than historians and undergraduate students. “The fact checkers read laterally, meaning they would quickly scan a website in question but then open a series of additional browser tabs, seeking context and perspective from other sites,” this article about the research explains.

Those fact-checkers were not born with a hyper critical eye. Fact-checking is a method of looking differently at information, and asking certain questions. Anyone can learn how to fact-check.

Five fact-checking questions

Fact-checking starts with asking additional questions about what you are seeing. To answer these questions, it is important to also search beyond the piece you are fact-checking.

The five questions of fact-checking are:

1. Who is behind this information?
2. What are the main claims they are making?
3. What is the evidence for their claims?
4. How is this evidence being used to substantiate their claims?
5. What do other sources say about the organisation and its claims?

Nested in these questions are other questions you want to find an answer to. Your goal as a fact-checker is to answer them as fully as you can.

Usually, it helps to break down the five fact-checking questions further to get a more complete answer:

Who is behind this information?

1. Is it a news organisation with a reputation of being reliable, a stranger, or perhaps a promoted post on social media?
   1. Find out what you can about the source by reading the “about section” on their website or by looking at their profile.
2. Why are they sharing it? What motivates them?

What are the main claims they are making?

1. What is the point that this piece of media wants to communicate?
2. Does this information seem more like a factual claim or an opinion?

What is the evidence for their claims?

1. Has the information been backed up with evidence?
   1. If there are no sources, it becomes more difficult to check the claims and the information is more likely to contain inaccuracies.
   2. If there are sources, go to the next question.
2. Are the sources reliable?
   1. Use a search engine to see if claims correspond with trustworthy media. Trustworthy media are media that have a good journalistic reputation and are known to rectify their mistakes, like The Guardian (UK), The New York Times (US), Le Monde (FR), Deutsche Welle (DE), El País (ES), et cetera.

How is this evidence being used to substantiate their claims?

1. How does the presented evidence support the claims?
2. Are there any problems or fallacies in the way the evidence supports the claims?

For example: data that people eat less meat does not explain why gas prices are going up. The evidence (meat eating) used does not support that gas prices are going up, because people are eating less meat.

What do other sources say about the organisation and its claims?

1. Does the organisation have a reputation for a certain bias, ideology, or political goals?
2. Are there other organisations that agree or disagree with them?

By assessing the answers to the fact-checking questions, students conclude whether they think the article is trustworthy. Although the answer is not always straightforward (for example: the article is factually correct, but the author has a strong bias), it helps to judge how a piece of media should be read.

Fact-checking on social media

This is very nice and easy if the article you are fact-checking is on a website that clearly states the organisation’s mission (“our goal is to show everyone that the earth is flat!”).

However, answers to the fact-checking questions are not always so evident. For example, if you want to check a video on social media. The user who shared it might be anonymous and not have an insightful bio on their profile.

This is where some more techniques of the fact-checking arsenal come out: reverse image search, geolocation and chronolocation, which will be discussed in the next lesson.

For now, we will focus on fact-checking some articles on the internet using the above fact-checking questions.

Fact-check one of the articles with the entire class as an example.

Students will now use the five fact-checking questions to critically assess one online article in groups of two. Students’ findings will then be discussed with the class.

1. The class is divided into 6 or 9 groups.
2. Groups are assigned one of the three selected news articles. Make sure that every article is assigned to the same number of groups
3. Groups fact-check one example article by answering the fact-check questions as well as they can. Additional online research is key to be able to answer the questions well!
4. After fact-checking the articles, the three articles and the groups’ findings about them, are discussed in the class.

Example articles

Other news stories could be used too, but it is recommended to keep them short and well documented.

• Lunar Eclipses and the Shadow of the Earth by John Davis, 2016, The Flat Earth Society
• These Coloradans say Earth is flat. And gravity’s a hoax. Now, they’re being persecuted by Graham Ambrose, 2017, The Denver Post (first 10 paragraphs).
• Despite world-leading nature laws, European biodiversity continues to plummet, WWF

Discuss the fact-checked articles with the students.

1. Can fact-checkers be impartial?
2. Who is responsible for fact-checking: writers or publications?
3. Why is “lateral reading” a key activity while fact-checking? See the section about the Stanford research about fact-checkers.
4. What should a fact-checker do if information is not verifiable through fact-checking?
5. Is it a problem if somebody motivates something that is true with evidence that doesn’t support the claim?