More than a year after the global pandemic became official, local journalism still grapples with the fallout — not only from the coronavirus but also by an intense nationwide racial reckoning, regional disasters including fires and storms, and ever-present gun violence and mass shootings. The flood of news events over the past year also exacerbated […]

Worldwide, the lives of most journalists have been consumed over the past 12 months by cataclysmic events both anticipated and unexpected. But no media organization has been battered more than the local newsroom. Journalists in America’s towns and small cities were the first responders to massive COVID-19 outbreaks, police shootings, protests, violent demonstrations, fractious political […]

As the Trump era comes to a close, a big question for fact-checkers and other journalists covering the next administration is whether his mendacity has diluted the standard of truthfulness that we can expect from American leaders. Will fact-checkers call politicians on their falsehoods only to hear them repeated again and again? Has President Trump […]

Last week, Facebook announced it would be taking a more proactive role in fighting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in an effort to support public health efforts to address the global pandemic. However, in an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” First Draft co-founder and U.S. director Claire Wardle argued that much of the misinformation about the pandemic response may fly […]

One of the most revealing moments in American fact-checking in 2020 occurred in September when CNN’s Daniel Dale was asked about President Donald Trump’s claim on Fox News that Joe Biden’s campaign was run by people “in the dark shadows.” Dale just shook his head. “It’s almost too stupid to fact-check,” he told his CNN colleague […]

Fact-checking is a form of journalism, and journalism is, at heart, a competitive sport. But when faced with this year’s dual fire hoses of political and COVID-19 misinformation, fact-checkers have had little choice but to work together. The Paris Peace Forum, a yearly gathering of world leaders and nongovernmental organizations working to solve global problems, highlighted […]

Pfizer’s announcement this week that it had a 90% effective vaccine against COVID-19 provided a glimpse of the wave of mis- and disinformation that could engulf any effort to bring about broad distribution – and acceptance – of such a vaccine. The announcement itself was the subject of a conspiracy theory: that it came out […]

This tweet from Factually’s founding father, former IFCN director Alexios Mantzarlis, sums it up perfectly — the longer we go without a definitive presidential election winner, the greater the opportunity there is for misinformation. Nowhere is that phenomenon clearer than in Pennsylvania, a swing state whose results are expected to take longer than most. As New York […]

Humans make mistakes, and this year’s election – run by humans – will bring plenty of them. Poll workers are managing the vote during a pandemic. Laws are changing, sometimes late in the game because of court rulings. A greater number of people are voting by mail. And with the inevitable mistakes comes a whole […]

Amid all the discussion over coordinated disinformation campaigns from both foreign and domestic actors aimed at this year’s elections, a fake email in Iowa reminds us that falsehoods don’t really need to be that complicated. After an Oct. 15 debate between incumbent Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and her Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield, critics pounced on […]