This History and Current State of Fact Checking

The history and currentstate of fact checking in 15minutes or less* *Go ahead and time me, fact checkers

In the beginning...“Any bright girl who really applies herself tothe handling of the checking problem canhave a very pleasant time with it and ﬁll theweek with happy moments and memorableoccasions” — Edward Kennedy, Time (1920s)

Magazines Catch On 30s to 70s• New Yorker, Esquire, New York, The Atlantic, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek etc. add checking departments.• Closed process• Job was a stepping stone

Watchdogs Emerge• Accuracy in Media, 1969• FAIR, 1986• Media Research Center, 1987 (NewsBusters)• Honest Reporting (2000), CAMERA (1982)• Media Matters for America, 2004

Emergence of Dedicated Checking Orgs• FactCheck.org, 1993• PolitiFact, 2007

Decline of Magazine Checking Depts.• Newsweek eliminates checkers, 1996• Fortune, 1997• Cutbacks and outsourcing hit other publications

Weaponization of Checking• “We can fact check your ass” — Ken Layne• Rathergate• Blogs + crowdsourcing = new, collaborative checking

Fetishization of checking

New Players, New Technology• Report An Error Alliance/Fact Check box• Hypothes.is• MediaBugs• NewsTrust/TruthSquad• Storyful• SwiftRiver• Truthy• WikiFactCheck

Future of Fact Checking?• Open, collaborative systems• Mixture of human and machine intelligence• Need new tools, and to spread skills/ training• Will still be used for partisan purposes, which means more noise and clutter in the space

One View“In 20 years, I think we will have figured out howto identify quality and credibility among thethousands and thousands of news sourcesvying for some of my attention ... Along thosesame lines, my news tools will fact-check everynews story I read, highlighting mistruths,mistakes, bias, etc., and providing citation linksto back up highlighted problem areas in thecontent.”— Steve Outing

http://www.buzzmachine.com	25496
http://www.cjr.org	2491
http://www.regrettheerror.com	2347
http://storify.com	1578
http://www.scoop.it	828
http://feeds.feedburner.com	190
http://digmag.tumblr.com	125
http://buzzmachine.com	48
http://seenthis.net	42
http://www.newsblur.com	37
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	34
http://88.191.117.162	24
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	17
http://lj-toys.com	15
http://paper.li	13
http://www.twylah.com	11
http://www.hanrss.com	5
http://www.pylonsounds.com	5
http://ivo.max-ritscher.de	5
http://buzzmachine.com.	3
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	3
http://www.seowerkt.com	1
http://205.188.242.4	1
http://rss.ameba.jp	1
http://studytools.psych.und.nodak.edu	1
http://blekko-webcache.com	1
http://feedproxy.google.com	1
http://207.46.192.232	1
http://cache.baidu.com	1
http://www.frontpage.dev.desk.no	1
http://frontpage.dev.desk.no	1
http://www.scapade.de	1
http://forums.cocoaforge.com	1
http://www.washingtonsblog.com	1
http://xianguo.com	1

This History and Current State of Fact Checking

by Craig Silverman on Nov 15, 2011

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