Fact-Checkers Work Toward Launching New Association

In the age of the internet, accuracy is harder than ever to come by.

So, it only makes sense that the fact-checkers of the world—working against a constant tide of misinformation from politicians, casual Twitter users, and rumor-mongers—would want to unite.

The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit educational organization that focuses on the journalism community, held an event in London this week with the goal of bringing these fact-checkers from around the world under a single roof.

And by the time the Global Fact-Checking Summit ended on Tuesday, the attendees had voted to launch an association of their own.

“The meeting showed there is a passionate community of fact-checkers that is growing around the world,” said Duke University professor Bill Adair, a Poynter faculty member, according to a news article on the organization’s website  (opens in a new tab). “The association will keep the fact-checkers in touch with each other and help them learn from each other.”

A Global Movement

Adair knows a thing or two about this need. See, he’s the founder of perhaps the best-known of the world’s fact-checking websites, PolitiFact  (opens in a new tab), a site that launched while he was a bureau chief at the then-St. Petersburg Times. (The publication, owned by Poynter, changed its name to the Tampa Bay Times in 2012. We made sure to fact-check that.)

But PolitiFact is far from the only such site out there. The Italian media outlet Pagella Politica  (opens in a new tab), the Ukrainian site StopFake.org  (opens in a new tab) (which has been working to correct misinformation about the crisis in the region), and the British site Full Fact  (opens in a new tab) are only a few examples.

The summit drew dozens of attendees  (opens in a new tab) from 21 countries and six continents. That doesn’t mean they agree on everything, however: A hot topic, according to Poynter, was whether rating systems such as PolitiFact’s “Truth-O-Meter  (opens in a new tab)” and the Washington Post‘s “Pinocchio Test  (opens in a new tab)” benefit readers or the public.

The jury’s still out on that one.

(iStock/Thinkstock)