Liar, Liar: Pants on Fire
The Challenge of Fact-Checking in Today’s Digital Environment
The topic of we covered this week in our Social Tools class at CUNY was “Social Media Verification.” We live in an age of skeptisim, and it’s no wonder, since there’s an enormous amount of false information being spread throughout the Internet. Trying to navigate our way through digital territory that is outside of our control is a huge challenge for a journalist. The need for accountability journalism has never been greater.
Fact-checking on the Internet has become a major concern, not only for journalists, but for readers. The Princeton Fact-Check was just launched by Plant Princeton last Thursday, because readers asked for it.
Also, just this week, The American Press Institute (API) wrote an interesting article on the subject of verification: “The Week in Fact-Checking: What’s your impact?” In the article, API mentioned that a fact-check conference took place last week: The Tech & Check conference sponsored by Duke Reporters’ Lab and Poytner’s International Fact-Checking Network, where journalists collaborated with developers from companies that included Google, IBM, NBC News, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Full Fact, and the WRAL-TV along with academic computer scientists from major universities to discuss the latest innovations to make fact-checking faster and easier.
Existing projects were shared that automate some aspect of fact-checking, such as IBM’s new project, Watson Angles, which is able to extract information from internet articles and distill it into a summary that shows key players as well as a timeline of events. Attendees collaborated on new ideas and came up with a promising idea they named, “Parrot Score,” which is a website that would track the frequency of claims made by politicians.
This reminded me of the design thinking workshop we taught last month for our Community Engagement class. As a social journalist, it’s exiciting to see how design thinking principles are being used in innovative ways that will serve the public. The tech conference is also a great example of the role of “civic innovation,” our topic of discussion in last week’s Community Engagement class.
We always have interesting speakers at CUNY. This week we had the privilege of hearing from a wonderful guest, Heather Landy, the Global Editor for Quartz. She was warm and approachable, and she talked openly about the importance of verification and transparency from an editor’s perspective.
Heather discussed the role of journalists to aggregate information and then use their writing skills and wit to tell a complete story. She emphasized that reporters should never rely strictly on other reported media without checking out the facts for themselves. For instance, if a news organization reports a story saying that “Company A” is buying “Company B,” then it’s important to call the company being bought or sold to confirm. It also gives us an opportunity to ask them to comment.
We heard about reputable news organizations who have unintentionally published stories that turned out to be false, putting journalists in a precarious position. Stories reported without verification can undermine our reputation as journalists — one that is based on trust. If a mistake is made, it’s just as important to own up to it. Transparency is for the reader.
According to Heather, exercising common sense and intuition are important — if something doesn’t “smell” right, check it out. Ask yourself, “who said so?” Follow up in every area you can to verify that it’s true. Companies like LinkedIn and FaceBook are not good ways to fact-check because people can make up profiles. Twitter has helped to resolve this problem with Twitter verification.
Breaking stories are at higher risk for misinformation, because life and death situations put pressure on media organizations to publish quickly. However, this is when verification matters more than ever.
As social journalists, we’re trying to build trust with our readers and the communites we serve. Heather stressed that we cannot afford to be the media outlet or journalist that keeps giving out bad information. It’s worth an extra 10 minutes to verify and get it right — our readers deserve that from us.
Two sensitive areas she said to exercise extra caution are:
- Life or death situations
- Things that affect another person’s reputation
Heather left us with two practical questions to always ask ourselves when reporting: 1)”How do I know this?” and 2)“How else do I know this?”
Wise words from an experienced editor — thank you Heather Landy.
I’ve appreciated the multiple opportunities we’ve had to apply the lessons learned in one class to our practical assignments in another. While writing articles for my “Information Gathering and Reporting” class, I’ve been able to ask the questions Heather has suggested. I’m seeing the reasons why a link to a news article is not enough verification and why it’s important to go directly to the source quoted in the news article. We’re required to interview major sources and provide their name, age and contact information. While these requirements may sometimes pull me out of my comfort zone, I know that good reporting, backed by verified facts, is essential to building trust within my community.
