The work of fact-checkers, like that of all journalists, is scrutinized for accuracy and fairness. Signs of bias can damage an organization’s credibility.

That’s why fact-checking organizations commit to policies that promote nonpartisanship, such as prohibiting their staff from publicly participating in the political process. This means journalists at fact-checking organizations don’t show support for political parties, politicians or political candidates — no yard signs, no bumper stickers, no volunteering and no campaign donations.

A viral story published by a conservative news website tries to show fact-checkers are biased, pointing to campaign donations that favor Democratic candidates. Other conservative news outlets picked up the story, and billionaire Elon Musk amplified it on Twitter.

The report is highly misleading, conflating two different types of fact-checkers who do different things.

The June 13 article appeared in The Washington Free Beacon, a strongly conservative news website. The story claimed that “nearly 100% of political contributions from fact-checkers go to Democrats,” citing a set of federal campaign finance disclosures from the past four election cycles. The disclosures, totaling $22,683.30, showed donations from self-identified “fact-checkers,” at Reuters, The New York Times, New York magazine, CBS News and more outlets, to Democratic campaigns.

The Free Beacon said its findings “contradict claims of neutrality from top fact-checking operations.”

Here’s a closer look at why the underlying data is misleading and what “fact-checking” roles can mean across publications. We’ll also look at the ethics policies of news organizations that prohibit political involvement.

The author, Robert Schmad, said in an email, “Our reporting speaks for itself.”

Who made the donations?

The article criticized journalists who fact-check statements in politics and on social media for a general audience. Some of these fact-checkers participate in Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, which is mentioned in the Free Beacon story.

There are other types of fact-checkers who don’t publish reports but who review articles for accuracy before they are published. Their audience is the journalistic outlet themselves, and they are not connected to social media platforms’ anti-misinformation efforts, such as Meta’s third-party fact-checking program.

Outside of the media, fact-checkers also work in sectors including academia and tech.

Of the 83 fact-checkers named in the data set the Free Beacon used, 21 listed their employer as “self” or “self-employed.” A few people who reported their occupations as fact-checkers were employed by schools such as Cornell University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or the education platform Coursera. Some worked for tech companies like Google and Spotify.

Others worked for magazines such as The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Bookforum. Magazines have a long-standing history of using fact-checkers to vet articles internally before publication, and they rarely, if ever, publish fact-check articles intended for the general public.

More than half of the overall donations — about $12,807 out of $22,683 — stemmed from William Getlein, who listed the intelligence company Leadership Connect as his employer.

We searched the names of 37 people who listed working for a publication or as a freelancer through Lexis-Nexis, a tool that collects articles from over 39,000 sources around the world. We did not find any stories that fact-checked a subject in the way a story on PolitiFact or FactCheck.org would. The bylined stories we found in Nexis from names that matched those in the dataset included a mix of lifestyle and culture features as well as news articles.

The Code of Principles

The type of fact-checkers the Free Beacon article was criticizing tend to belong to Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network. The network publishes a Code of Principles that requires signatories to avoid declaring or showing support for any party, politician or political candidate.

Only one person in the Free Beacon data set worked for a signatory of the code.

Carrie Monahan, who is cited in the Free Beacon article, worked for Reuters from February 2020 to May 2021 and produced fact checks, her LinkedIn profile says. She is the daughter of TV journalist Katie Couric. The data the Free Beacon used showed $350 in donations to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform; the employer was listed as Reuters, but the donor is listed as “Katherine Couric.” Monahan, if she was the donor, is no longer working with Reuters or fact-checking, according to her profile.

Other news outlets the Free Beacon cited, including CBS News and The New York Times, do sometimes run fact-check articles, but they are not IFCN signatories and are not part of Meta’s third-party fact-checking program.

The Free Beacon story mentioned one New York Times fact-checker named Cecilia Nowell. Her LinkedIn profile says she is a freelance reporter and researcher who accepts fact-checking assignments from The New York Times and other outlets. That phrasing suggests that she does internal fact-checking for the Times, and a Nexis search for her name yields no published articles for the Times under her byline. Nowell made $15 in contributions to ActBlue.

Meanwhile, CBS News associate producer Samantha Rappaport was also listed as a donor. Her LinkedIn profile lists work for CBS as a “control room fact-checker” from 2019 to 2020. She wrote in her profile, “As the last set of eyes on our reports, I went through scripts, story bars, and graphics in real time from the control room, checking copy live and alerting producers, writers, and/or senior-level staff of potential errors.”

Rappaport contributed $5 to ActBlue.

We looked at some of the other fact-checkers listed in the Free Beacon article and found that none is employed in the kind of role that would involve writing fact-checks about political statements. Four people who worked for National Geographic, New York Magazine and The New Republic collectively donated $512.

To work with Meta, organizations must be certified through the International Fact-Checking Network to be fact-checking partners.

The Washington Free Beacon report also criticized fact-checks from fact-checking organizations like Lead Stories, The Washington Post, and Poynter’s PolitiFact, which are signatories of the Code of Principles and maintain their commitment to nonpartisanship. However, the data set shows no partisan donations from those outlets.

PolitiFact’s ethics policy, which is visible on its website, forbids its journalists from making political contributions or working on campaigns. Also, PolitiFact does not accept donations from political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office.

Lead Stories’ website says: “None of our writers or editors are members of political parties, currently support any parties or candidates for office or have made donations to political organisations while under our employ and we ask them to refrain from doing so.”

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker also stipulates that “no one working on The Fact Checker may engage in partisan political activity or make contributions to candidates or advocacy organizations.”