The week in fact-checking: Hey, how much for that fact check?

The American Press Institute presents a roundup from the world of fact checking, debunking and truth telling — just in case you haven’t been paying as much attention as we do.

Quote of the week

“I’ll summarize my prescription in four words: Less speed. More transparency.” — New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on an error-ridden Hillary Clinton story.

Behind the fact check
Many reporters have an Alan Gingras amongst their fans. You know, that eagle-eyed reader who sends you notes like: “Dear obit people: In 1960, Comfort moved his family to Tanganyika, not Tanzania. Tanzania did not exist then. In 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.” Here’s how one newspaper learned to appreciate its biggest fact-checking fan. Read it.

What? Something is fake on the internet?
A study by API researcher Andy Guess shows that misinformation on Twitter outpaces any attempts to correct it by a sad ratio of 3 to 1. So we wish Paulo Ordoveza had a little more time on his hands. The brains behind @PicPendant researches and corrects bad information on Twitter only “when he has down time, or is bored,” reports Columbia Journalism Review. Read it.

Behind the fact check
Many reporters have an Alan Gingras amongst their fans. You know, that eagle-eyed reader who sends you notes like: “Dear obit people: In 1960, Comfort moved his family to Tanganyika, not Tanzania. Tanzania did not exist then. In 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.” Here’s how one newspaper learned to appreciate its biggest fact-checking fan. Read it.

The business of fact-checking

Accountability journalism can be expensive, and charging for the service is one way to fund it. Fact-checking organizations have come up with creative ways to keep the bills paid. Read it.

Fact-checking tips
Here’s a tip as we plunge into the 2016 election season: If a candidate’s TV ad, statement or talk-show rhetoric seems designed to scare the pants off you (“Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history”), be afraid. Not of the candidate, but of a potential lack of facts. Writing for The Conversation, historian Tony Ward reminds us that “dire warnings” can indicate a fact-less agenda. Read it.

Fact-checking science
When politics get mixed up with crustaceans, you get a fact check on the sex life of crabs. After Gov. Terry McAuliffe stated this week that Virginia actually is the birthplace of the so-called “Maryland crab,” PolitiFact Virginia treated us to a lesson on the mating habits of crabs. And used every crab-sex pun they could get away with. Read it.

Fact-checking Hollywood
If you like a little shade with your facts, you go right ahead and believe “Shady Music Facts” when it tweets that Paris Hilton makes $1 million per night as a DJ. And don’t read BuzzFeed’s analysis of the popular Twitter account, whose motto is: “Our tweets are 100% facts and we are completely unbiased.”  Don’t read it.

Fact-checking around the world
“Falsehoods come in many languages. Now, so does the truth.”  Students at Duke University’s Reporters Lab have created a video that shows the impressive (and sometimes entertaining) efforts by journalists around the globe who are working to improve accountability in their government. Watch it.

Do you teach journalism, politics or communications? Join the American Press Institute and panelists for a workshop in San Francisco next week. Read more and sign up here. 

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