Fact-checking predates Facebook and isn’t reliant upon it, but social media is where many people get information — and therefore is a crucial place to fact-check that information. 

“I don’t believe this is going to be the end of fact-checking by any means,” Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said of Meta’s decision. “I believe the pendulum is going to swing back because fact-checking is so needed for an Internet era.”

Aaron Sharockman, executive director at Politifact, said he sees some positives in the Meta decision. “It gives great opportunity to rethink what we are as fact-checkers and how we present that information,” he said, referencing different platforms and ways to reach users.

Here are a four things news organisations should consider with fact-checking:

1. Fact-checking can help readers make sense of an issue

Sharockman said he believes when the media focuses on covering “all sides” of an issue and simply quotes different perspectives, that abdicates responsibility for helping readers understand what is true. 

“You, of course, talk to everyone on all sides of an issue, but journalists went through a phase of just quoting people equally and letting readers decide,” he said. “In reality, journalism is giving people accurate information and telling them what is true.” 

The key to fact-checking, he said, is creating a process and being transparent.

2. Fact-checking is about more than politics

When we consider fact-checks, we often immediately think of those involving politics and politicians. That arena is ripe for fact-checking, of course. But fact-checking works well for many other topics, both nationally and locally, Sharockman said. 

PolitiFact experimented with fact-checking in local communities, for instance, over the course of eight months and focused on such issues as roads, water issues, and downtown development. 

“We can do effective fact-checking that people trust and believe,” Sharockman said. “There is still something there for journalism organisations even if you remove politics from fact-checking.”

3. Pick the right facts to check

Fact-checking is a rigorous and exhaustive process — it can take days or even weeks to get one fully reported and vetted, Sharockman said. So it’s important to find the right claims to fact-check. 

For instance, if a fact is readily available online from multiple credible sources, it may not make sense to further fact-check it. 

“Understand that it is a commitment,” Sharockman said. “So you don’t want to pick gotchas or things that seem trivial. You want to be looking at claims and narratives that your audience thinks are important. You need to be cautious and thoughtful about what you pick.”

4. AI doesn’t have a significant role in fact-checking — yet

We’ve seen people duped by AI-generated images and know AI has the potential to spread false claims — but does AI also help in fact-checking? 

Drobnic Holan said AI can be challenging in a fact-checking context. 

“In our experience so far, it has not been great at making determinations of factuality,” she said, noting AI is currently better as a language tool than as an arbiter of facts. 

However, she said AI is being used in other ways: IFCN has created a database of fact checks and added an AI interface to access it. The idea is that someone enters a question into a chatbot — like “does Vitamin C cure COVID?” — the chatbot will return results from the database of fact-checks.

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