Fact-Checking Movement

The fact-checking movement refers to organized efforts to promote, support, and institutionalize the practice of external fact-checking by journalists and other civil-society actors. External fact-checking consists of publishing an evidence-based assessment of the truthfulness or accuracy of a political claim, a news report, an online rumor, or any other public text. (In contrast, conventional, internal fact-checking by journalists or others aims to correct errors prior to making a text public.) This activity goes by different names depending on the focus; for instance, among practitioners, “debunking” most often means exposing online misinformation such as false news stories or doctored photos, while verifying claims by politicians and other public figures is sometimes called political fact-checking.

Fact-checking began to take shape as an occupational movement in the United States ...