Overview of this campaign

PolitiFact had considered the possibilities of business-to-business (B2B) research prior to 2025. However, as a nonprofit newsroom primarily focused on fact-checking journalism, it was never key to our strategy. In short, PolitiFact is a newsroom of about 20 fact-checkers — all journalists — supported by the Poynter Institute, which provides shared services like HR, finance, marketing, and facilities. While we were aware that people might pay for research, it wasn't core to our business, so we didn't spend much time thinking about it.

The loss of the Meta partnership and its funding in January 2025 created an existential threat to PolitiFact. However, it also created an opportunity that we knew we needed to seize. Necessity helped create momentum. Building on that need, we quickly pivoted to explore how to expand, find new clients, and create operational efficiencies to generate significant income through B2B research to support our journalism.

This transition wasn't easy and required us to rethink our organizational structure. We created a separate division within PolitiFact with its own policies and procedures to handle research queries and the B2B approach. We also began developing marketing and sales materials to showcase our work.

Our fundamental belief is that every business needs a fact-checker. Whether it is a law firm preparing briefs based, a Fortune 500 company publishing marketing materials, a journalism organization publishing a big investigation, or a CEO delivering a speech, all of this work must be vetted for accuracy. In this day and age, accuracy is vital because it provides credibility to an organization.

We developed this new business unit over a three-month period, structured to operate independently from the PolitiFact editorial product. We received a small amount of seed money through a grant from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which was crucial because it gave us the runway to get off and running.

Results for this campaign

The success of this expansion has been quick and dramatic. In 2025, we landed a significant research contract with a major technology company that, on its own, largely fills the funding gap left by Meta's departure.

Currently, PolitiFact provides research services to a major technology company regarding the marketing and commercial promotion of its products, particularly those involving artificial intelligence. Our team of researchers provides daily fact-checking services to verify materials used in marketing, television and advertising campaigns across a variety of topics.

This work maintains all the hallmarks of PolitiFact:

• Understanding the genesis of the material.

• Providing expert, objective and nonpartisan feedback.

• Verifying the accuracy of claims in English and at least five other languages.

In addition, PolitiFact partners with TikTok to provide credibility assessments for videos entering the platform’s "STEM” feed. Our work ensures that these videos are age-appropriate, topic-specific, and contain verifiable learning outcomes for global users. According to TikTok, over the last three years, almost 10 million STEM-related videos have been published on TikTok, with STEM-related hashtags amassing over 110 billion views. PolitiFact researchers vet thousands of videos each month.

We have now built a dedicated team of Digital Research Analysts who work with private companies on research requests daily. Further, our news researcher, Caryn Baird, trains other journalism organizations to vet the accuracy of stories published in local newsrooms.

PolitiFact ended 2025 generating nearly $3 million in revenue, covering the deficit created by Meta’s departure.

We see great hope and prospect in this new line of work. Fact-checking organizations need to identify diverse streams of revenue to remain sustainable and to insulate themselves from the potential shifts of social media platforms. In the 2024 IFCN State of Fact-Checking Report, a survey of 141 fact-checking organizations found more than 70% generated revenues of less than $500,000 per year. In addition, Meta’s Third Party Fact-Checking Program was the leading revenue source for all fact-checkers globally.

Contact

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