
As journalism students, Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank ran into tricky questions about fact-checking and journalism ethics that they couldn’t find answers to. Now, they lead the Truth in Journalism Project, an initiative to design and propose high standards of verification for today’s journalists. The Truth in Journalism Project’s Fact-Checking Guide offers new, inclusive ways to think about checking facts, affirming truth, and building trust in an age of disinformation.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
What is the Truth in Journalism Project Fact-Checking Guide, and how did it come about?
Allison: Viv and I met in first-year journalism school. We followed a similar path and spoke a lot to each other about things that we were struggling with in our work. As fact-checkers, in particular, we were coming up against the same issues over and over again, and we couldn’t find resources that really answered our questions.
For example, one thing that kept coming up for us was how a fact-checker should approach a story with a first-person account of sexual violence. We knew instinctively that it shouldn’t be fact-checked in the same way we would fact-check a story about a politician or something like that. But how exactly to do that?
In the summer of 2021, we were awarded the Michener – L. Richard O’Hagan fellowship for journalism education to conduct research on best practices in editorial fact-checking, and we became journalists in residence at Carleton University (in Ottawa, Ontario). For over a year we researched and interviewed almost 60 people, including journalists, but also academic researchers, community-based researchers, lawyers, historians, sociologists. We asked about how they conduct research and approach ethical quandaries to see if we could apply the way they work to a journalistic context.
So that became the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide. The first two chapters situate you in the history of editorial fact-checking and what editorial fact-checking is. And it goes into how to fact-check in the ideal circumstances: If you had all the resources in the world, this is how, step-by-step, to fact-check something. And then the majority of the guide focuses on the larger ethical implications of fact-checking and these questions about how to fact-check in a trauma-informed and compassionate way – and how to navigate power dynamics in the relationship between journalist and source or organization. We made the guide free and easily accessible because it was something that we had always wanted.
To launch the guide, we hosted a two-day conference that brought together people working in the areas of journalism, fact-checking, and ethics. The conversations were great, and all of the conference sessions are available for free on YouTube. Since then, we’ve done a lot of workshops and trainings in newsrooms and in universities, talking about editorial fact-checking and the guide.
With all of the challenges facing news organizations, some people might feel this is a difficult time to affirm high standards of fact-checking. Why is now the right time for rigorous fact-checking?
Allison: I don’t know that there’s ever been a wrong time. Fact-checking has always been important because journalism is a discipline of verification. If you don’t have verification, you aren’t really doing journalism.
But at this time, fact-checking may have particular importance because there’s such a lack of trust in media. Fact-checking is inherently an exercise in trust-building between the organization and the audience, between the reporter and the source. When an audience or a source knows the work is going to be vetted, and the claims in the story are going to be verified, and the context is going to be double-checked, and there’s a whole team working to make sure we get this right, they’ll trust it, and in turn, hopefully they’ll trust the organization. And then, we can try to start rebuilding that trust in media generally.
Fact-checking holds us all accountable. You’re ensuring accuracy by addressing issues of misattribution, misleading texts or claims, or misquoting pre-publication. And you’re looking at the larger context in which a story is being written and making sure that the most authoritative sources are being used, that important perspectives aren’t being ignored, and that sources feel like they’ve been heard and respected by giving them the chance to review and correct information pre-publication. All of these things, I would argue, contribute to healthier public discourse.
How is the TIJ Fact-Checking Guide different from existing guidance about checking facts?
Allison: The guide builds on so much great work that has already been done, including Cynthia Brouse’s After the Fact and Brooke Borel’s Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking. Most existing guides focus on either fact-checking methodology or journalism ethics. So, I think one thing that sets us apart is that we tried to weave those two things together and emphasize how inextricably linked fact-checking is to journalism ethics and responsible communication. We achieved that, in part, by speaking with experts from so many different perspectives and research backgrounds – not just journalistic perspectives.
Ultimately, I think it’s the principles that most set the guide apart. Instead of setting rules or strictly defined steps, we wanted to present principles that would be as adaptable as possible. An example of how this works is the Authority Principle. So, instead of thinking of primary and secondary sources in the guide, we talk about thinking of authority as a better way of evaluating sources. We recognize the various constraints of newsrooms and that not everybody can engage in such rigorous fact-checking all of the time. And we also say in the guide: it’s not a question of whether we’re going to fact-check something, but how we do it. That can be flexible, and it should be.
Viviane: I think one of the other ways in which we’re really different is that we emphasize collaboration between journalists and sources – the idea that when you’re fact-checking something, it’s not just you on your own deciding how it’s going to be fact-checked. You can actually speak with your sources and speak with the communities in question and say, “I need to fact-check this. How can I do this?” And that can be part of the fact-checking process, which is not something that’s typically discussed in other guides.
What worries you the most about our information environment?
Viviane: I wrote a piece a few years ago about fake news, where it comes from, and how it relates to fact-checking. Reviewing some of the social science and philosophy research, I found that polarization is really the big factor – what community we’re part of, what kind of information environment we’re in. And that makes things really difficult, because that means misinformation is not something that you can fix just by going around fact-checking claims.
In the face of that, we still have this very rationalist stance, where we say, “Well, truth is still really important and still out there and still identifiable and still something that we can strive toward.” And maintaining that line, I think, can be quite tricky. Fact-checking and truth are really important, but alone they’re not able to address such complicated problems in the messy world.
How do you think the Fact-Checking Guide can help address the challenges of disinformation?
Viviane: Research is telling us that fake news is often not only a problem of false information, but also a problem of social bonding and of knowing how to communicate. So, we focus on the skill of being able to identify certain sources as authoritative, or being able to identify sources as appropriate or inappropriate for checking a certain fact. Those are the kinds of epistemic skills that we hope to foster. It doesn’t always lead to you thinking only true things, but it does lead you to question, think critically, and be more conscious about how you manage information.
We do this skill-building because fact-checking on its own is not going to be able to do all the work that we need to do when addressing disinformation and misinformation. Having this agreed-upon public record of facts is really nice, but we don’t want to be just hammering people with facts, or tallying their mistakes, or rejecting the legitimacy of certain perspectives or communities. We want to do broader work.
Ultimately, we focus on transparency, collaboration, and setting a model for what the communication of truth might look like, because we think of that as journalists’ role. I don’t think journalists’ role is to stop disinformation, but it’s actually just to communicate well and serve as models for what kind of responsible, accurate, inclusive communication looks like.
What additional resources would you suggest people check out?
Allison: We love that people are engaging with the TIJ Guide, and we’d love to highlight some additional resources for journalists and others.
In terms of mis- and disinformation, Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network have trainings, guides and grants for people doing research in this area. Also related to disinformation, our colleague Craig Silverman has just edited the Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation.
Two incredible journalism professors, Eternity Martis and Nana aba Duncan, just launched a research project on reporting in Black communities, and it’s going to become a first-of-its-kind reporting guide. And Pacinthe Mattar just gave a really great talk, Objectivity, Press Freedom, and the Palestine Exception, which we highly recommend watching.
Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank are the project leads for the Truth in Journalism Project, an initiative to advance principles of fact-checking, ethics, and inclusion in journalism. Allison is Head of Research at The Walrus magazine, where she oversees fact-checking, verification standards, and training for early-career journalists. Viviane is a journalist and philosopher based in Scotland, where she is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews.