Fact checking
Fact checking means testing a public claim against verifiable sources. Its two forms, its method, and the questions it cannot settle.
Fact checking means testing a claim against verifiable sources and publishing the result of that test. It is not a genre of opinion: the output is meant to be reproducible by anyone following the same trail.
The term in fact covers two distinct jobs:
- Internal verification, before publication: every name, date and figure in a piece is checked before it goes out. Invisible work, and the older of the two.
- Published fact checking: a claim already made by a public figure, an advert or a viral post is tested, with the method and sources laid out.
Its limit is sharp and often ignored: fact checking settles facts, not disagreements about values. "Unemployment fell by two points" can be checked; "this policy is the right one" cannot. A piece claiming to fact-check an opinion has left its remit.
Related reading
- Primary sourceGlossary
A primary source produces the information first-hand, with no intermediary. What makes one, and why "primary" does not mean "neutral".
- Secondary sourceGlossary
A secondary source reports, summarises or analyses what another established. Its real use, its limit, and the trap of the citation chain.
- How do you verify information?Guides
Get back to the source, date it, cross-check, identify who's speaking: the method newsrooms use, turned into simple steps you can run yourself.
- How do you spot fake news?Guides
Effective false information is rarely a big lie: far more often it's a displaced truth. The mechanisms behind it, the markers to look for and the reflexes that defuse them.
- The difference between news and informationGuides
Not everything is information, and not all information is news. A simple distinction that explains how you can follow everything and understand nothing.
- News vs opinion: telling the difference in thirty secondsComparisons
One reports what's verifiable, the other argues a position. The signs that separate them, why the line blurs, and how to find it again as you read.
- Right of replyGlossary
The right of reply lets someone named in a report have their own version published. A legal right in Switzerland and France, absent in other jurisdictions.