Fact-checking: The future of journalism

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I was watching a Tamil movie titled Boys (2003) by S Shankar. In this movie, there was a homeless man who lived in front of a temple. He had a notebook in which he wrote the schedules of providing free food to different temples. A boy came to him and asked how he lived without doing anything. The homeless man said that he needed to do nothing as he had accurate information in his notebook. Indeed! If you have accurate information, life becomes so easy. Information is such a powerful thing whether it is true, false, or fabricated. Accurate and solid information gives the audience a right direction in life. False and fabricated information has a bad impact on society. We have seen that fake information legitimised the US and its alliance NATO to attack Iraq in 2003.

We are living in a digital world surrounded by myriads of information. Sadly, there is a lot of false, fabricated, and untrue information circulating on the internet. Some fabricated information is going viral on social networking sites, and people believe such information as they don’t have proper media literacy. In such a situation, what should we do? We should uncover what is true, and what isn’t. This is what the fact-checking organisations do by checking facts of myriads of reliable sources. Thus, it is said that the fact-checking is the future of journalism that fights against fake news.

The fact-checking organisations are getting popularity from the 2016 US presidential campaign between the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump and the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. In the campaign, Trump criticised mainstream media severely for providing fake news against him. His captious rhetoric against mainstream media persuaded fact checkers to do more fact checks regarding the both candidates. Hillary Clinton also called to check facts in her televised debate. People continuously checked facts regarding the US presidential candidates during the campaign. Several US newspapers including The New York Times formed an external cell to check facts during the presidential campaign.

Are fact-checkers journalists? Of course! Journalists are treated as truth-seekers. Their main duty is to find facts, interpret the importance of facts, and then share that information with the public. We know that journalists have to work with the pressure of a deadline. Thus, most of the time, it’s not possible for them to check a fact properly. It is also true that a journalist might work as an ideological state apparatus of a party or country. Sometimes people fabricate journalists’ authentic reports by digital manipulation. Thus audiences are confused over what is true and what is fake. Journalists can play a constructive role by checking facts as part of their daily routine works.

In the age of digital reproduction, anyone can reproduce news by using information and communication technology tools. Social networking sites and blogs offer some opportunities that anyone can manipulate information and can disseminate that information to the public. Thus, it is very difficult to discern authentic news on the social media. Most people cannot identify fake news as a lack of media literacy. Journalists, especially citizen journalists, should be aware of such fake news stories and provide accurate information to the public. Social networking sites like Facebook are engaging fact-checker organisations to identify fake news on their timeline.

First fact-check

Fact-checking is an American phenomenon. Though the first fact check article was published in 1923 in the TIME magazine, the actual process was started in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Editors and reporters pored over their articles to find errors. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, especially in the time of sensational and yellow journalism, American journalism began to focus on myriads of facts. They maintained ethics for the journalists by checking accuracy, impartiality and objectivity. In 1993, Ralph Pulitzer, the son of Joseph Pulitzer, and Isaac White established the organiation Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play. The bureau focused on complaints from the public, by looking “to correct carelessness and to stamp out fakes and fakers.”

According to Fabry (2017), the phrase "fact-checker" can be found in an advertisement for TIME in a 1938 issue of Colliers, which mentions the expansion of ‘its researchers and fact-checkers from ten to twenty-two.’" The first fact checker was Nancy Ford of TIME magazine in the early 1923. Her job was to verifying basic dates, names, and facts in TIME articles. Ford and her women colleagues were encouraged to challenge male editors and writers of TIME magazine. Though, Ford started first fact checking job, she didn’t finish the job as she left the office after a few months. At the end of the year, there were three fact checkers in the TIME magazine. The New Yorker started their fact checking process in 1927. The Newsweek, another American weekly magazine, started fact checking in 1933.

According to the Duke Reporters' Lab (Adair, 2014), there are 114 fact-checking teams in 44 countries until February 28, 2017. Fact-checking organizations are popular in the US and Europe. In the US, there are 43 fact-checking organisations who are working independently. Most of the organisations are checking facts of the public speeches of politicians. In Europe, most of the fact-checking organizations are not affiliated with media outlets. These projects are often taken by different non-governmental organisations, universities or research centers. In South Asia, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have fact-checking initiatives, and they are working independently.

Fact-Checking in Bangladesh

The BD Fact Check is the first fact-checking organiation based in Bangladesh. According to its website, BD Fact Check “monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by the political party leaders, journalists, intellectuals in the form of media and public places.” Their goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship and to increase public knowledge and understanding. If journalists work as a fact checker, they will be able to provide accurate information to the public.

*The writer is the founder and CEO of BD Fact Check