Fact-Checking in Journalism Is More Important Than You Realise

When discussing or writing about anything, finding accurate and up-to-date information is crucial. Content that has been well-researched provides a diversity of opinions and consists of facts that are poised to impact society as a whole and empower readers positively. This is especially true in media organisations that report on specific topics that are in the public’s interest. Many studies have shown that fact-checks affect people’s beliefs (SOURCE).

But with the recent emergence of AI and social media, fact-checking is becoming a lot more complex to perform for a lot of organisations and industries. They are essentially causing information overload for people and various industries. It is slowly becoming the norm and this affliction the web is suffering from is what we like to call “enshittification”.

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Fact-Checking In Bare Bone Terms

Fact-checking is Establishing the legitimacy of the information contained within a piece of content. There are two main types, Post hoc fact-checking and Ante hoc fact-checking

Here Are The Two Main Types of Fact-checking:

Ante hoc fact-checking

• Ante hoc aims to identify errors so that the text can be corrected before dissemination, or perhaps rejected.
• Many news organisations have internal fact-checking teams that sift through each claim made in the pre-approved content.

Post hoc fact-checking

• Post hoc fact-checking is often followed by a written report of inaccuracies, sometimes with a chart or metric provided by the fact-checking organisation.
• There are a plethora of organisations that specialise in providing services like this, particularly in politics and social issues of high public interest.

This seems pretty simple, so why should there be worry about fact-checking right now?

Like with every work produced by humans, there is room for error. fact-checking errors are particularly troublesome for organisations and individuals to deal with. When fact-checking goes wrong, it has the potential to introduce a lot of harm to organisations in certain industries. Fact-checking errors bring about a series of financial and reputational risks for organisations.

Here’s what happens when Fact Checking goes wrong:

To best illustrate why fact-checking is important, it's best to use real-life examples of scandals involving world-famous news organisations: CBS and CNN.

CBS

Firstly, for CBS, they had the “Killian documents controversy”. In 2004, during a 60-minute segment on CBS, they presented a series of allegations that President George W. Bush received preferential treatment during his time at the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s. They presented 6 specific documents and showed the details of the treatment he supposedly received (SOURCE).

Mere hours after the broadcast, though, analysis was done on internet forums about the validity of these documents. It was discovered that they were forgeries and that CBS had not performed any thorough fact-checking on these documents.

This resulted in a public apology from CBS and resignations from senior news executives working at the company (SOURCE).

CNN

Next, we have CNN, which published an article that claimed Congress was investigating a Russian investment fund with ties to government officials appointed by Trump. The story suggested that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into a Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) with alleged ties to Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent Trump ally at the time.

However, the story quickly turned into controversy as it was based on a single anonymous source, and other news organisations were unable to verify the information. After scrutiny, CNN deleted the story from its website and issued an apology to Scaramucci. The organisation also accepted the resignation of three journalists involved in the report (SOURCE).

What can we learn from these two controversies?

These two controversies hopefully showcase why fact-checking sources for stories is incredibly important. Both controversies left these news organisations vulnerable to financial and reputation damage. Improper fact-checking practices lead to situations like the ones above.

So organisations perform this process for one main reason.

Fact-checking protects an organisation.

Okay. This seems like it’s a relatively simple mindset to adopt. Traditional fact-checking methods have sufficed in journalism for the past number of decades, so all organisations have to do is maintain those standards. However, there has been an uncomfortable realisation about fact-checking in recent years and that it's becoming harder to do.

Why Fact-Checking is becoming harder to do?

Social Media

Social media can be seen as a tool for public service announcements. As time goes on, there are higher rates of people who primarily obtain news about social issues from social media platforms.

News organisations have tried their best to provide journalism on these platforms, but the nature of these platforms means that anyone can claim to be a journalist.  

The content users post is near-endless and provides social media feeds with hundreds of 24-hour news cycles.

Traditionally, dedicated programs for pundits and other news segments rely heavily on well-documented research, which takes a lot of time.

However, social feeds mix opinions and facts a lot of the time. And the more outlandish a “story” posted by a user, the better it does. This results in traditional journalism being drowned out and unable to conduct fact checks on a story of high public interest.

Generative AI Models

Generative AI models only add to headaches for people trying to fact-check sources on these social media platforms. Content is being produced at an increasingly rapid rate.

In Jan/2023, ChatGPT is probably outputting at least 110x the equivalent volume of Tweets by human Twitter users every day (Source).

Fact-checkers simply cannot keep up with all this content and verify if the content AI-generated.

It's creating a game of cat and mouse but the mouse is getting exponentially getting faster as time goes on. The cat won’t be able to keep up soon.

Fact Checkers and news organisations need better tools to protect themselves and provide factual information about public stories of interest.

Who has the best tools for Fact-Checking? Factiverse!

We have established that fact-checking is a must for future-oriented media organisations. Ensuring the integrity of information is a challenging process. Fortunately, Factiverse offers the best tools to aid organisations in fact-checking.

Factiverse offers a tool called Factiverse AI Editor, a comprehensive fact-checking tool that empowers users to swiftly and effectively verify the information. This tool integrates seamlessly into the organisational workflow. It's also, available as an API for more streamlined incorporation.

By enabling users to access credible sources at various stages of their processes, Factiverse’s AI Editor and API quickly validates information through popular search engines like Google, Bing, and Semantic Scholar. This proactive approach empowers organisations to work with the most accurate information, aiding their fact-checking processes.

Factiverse serves as a shield, protecting organisations from the reputational risks of the challenging landscape of fact-checking with the rise of social media and AI. If your organisation is keen on enhancing its fact-checking process, connect with the Factiverse team by clicking here.

References:

• CNN - CNN retracts Tailwind coverage (Link)
• Washington Post - CNN Settles Lawsuit With Operation Tailwind Producer (Link)
• NBC News - CBS News admits Bush documents can’t be verified (Link)
• The Guardian - CBS apologises for 'mistaken' story of Bush's military service (Link)
• Fiver Thirty Eight - Fact-Checking Misinformation Can Work. But It Might Not Be Enough (Link)
• American Journal of Political Science - The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators (Link)
• Politico - 3 CNN staffers resign over retracted Scaramucci-Russia story (Link)
• Life Architect - GPT-3.5 + ChatGPT: An illustrated overview (Link)
• Reuters - Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023 (Link)

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