What People Get Wrong This Week: How Fact Checking Works
April 2 was International Fact-Checking Day, “a global initiative recognizing the important role of accurate information in an interconnected world.” (In my family, we celebrate by leaving gifts for each other under the fact-checking tree, but we don’t think they came from some mythical arctic elf.)
Fact-checking and media ethics authority Poynter is behind the initiative, and they’re marking the occasion with the release of the annual State of the Fact-Checkers report , a survey of 137 organizations in at least 69 countries that strive to ensure the media is accurate. Good luck, guys!
Below are some of the most interesting findings from the 2023 State of the Fact Checkers report.
There is not much money in fact-checking
In 2023, 35% of fact-checking organizations that responded to the survey said they work with budgets between $100,000 and $500,000. Only about 12% have budgets of more than $1 million per year; about 10% work for $20,000 a year or less. Sixty-eight percent of fact-checking organizations have 10 or fewer employees.
Bottom line: If you’re hoping to get rich as a fact-checker, you might want to consider a career in international finance.
Mark Zuckerberg is the king of fact-checking payouts
The main source of this sweet fact-checking profit is Mark Zuckerberg, or more accurately, the Third Party Fact Checker Meta . More than 63% of surveyed fact checkers participate in the Meta program. Another source of income: grants. It’s no surprise that 83% of fact-checking organizations cite “funding” as the biggest challenge.
Almost no one fact checks TikTok
Despite TikTok being the world’s most popular social media platform, very few members of the International Fact-Checking Network partner with TikTok: only just over 14% participate in TikTok’s third-party fact-checking program .
The report does not specify why fact checkers surveyed prefer Meta’s fact checker to TikTok. But that’s probably only because they don’t want to reveal that an international cabal of globalist reverse vampires is pulling the strings in Poytner’s fact-checking racket to shape history and ensure Joe “Obama” Biden wins the 2024 election. . Check these facts, idiots!
(If you want to dispel myths about TikTok, check out Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki ‘s column “TikTok Myth of the Week.”)
Almost all fact checking concerns political and health issues.
More than 95% of fact-checking organizations surveyed cover the topics “elections and politics” and “public health.” The exact percentage of fact checkers covering “weird things your aunt posts on Facebook” (as I do in this column) is unknown, but 29.93% of fact checkers say they cover “other.”
Twitter/X is truly the worst
Unsurprisingly, when it comes to hotbeds of weaponized disinformation, fact-checkers are most concerned about Twitter/X, with 36.50% of respondents placing Elon Musk’s digital garbage dump at the top of the disinformation charts. Next comes TikTok, which 21.17% are concerned about, followed by YouTube, which raised eyebrows at 13.14%. Fact checkers were least concerned about Instagram—or at least less than 1% named it as the platform they were most concerned about. Get down, Instagrammers.
The thought of fact checking is truly depressing.
I know that members of the International Fact-Checking Network aren’t the only fact-checkers in the world: many major publications have their own fact-checkers, and let’s not discount the efforts of wild fact-checkers like me and CallofDutyRulez4206969. on Reddit. But it’s hard not to view the entire collection of fact checkers as a tiny bunch of barely paid weirdos, probably with bad haircuts, pitted against a vast network of shady politicians, crooked media sources and immoral corporations who don’t care. about the truth in general, just to lie more profitably.
However, there is reason for hope: According to a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, there was a huge decline in the number of Americans visiting fake news sites in 2020 compared to 2016. About 44% of Americans surveyed reported visiting questionable sites during the 2016 US election. cycle, up from 26.2% in 2020. Another study concluded that “shifting attention to the concept of accuracy” led people to share less misinformation on social media.
So keep nitpicking the facts, fellow precision freaks. You may be making pennies and you may have to beg Mark Zuckerberg for even that, but at least you can be satisfied that you are right on the Internet . Isn’t this more important than money? (Fact check: this is not true.)