In an age of massive disinformation campaigns, social media echo chambers and fact-challenged political candidates, high-quality fact-checking is indispensable.
More than 100 fact-checkers and academics from 41 countries will meet in Buenos Aires this week to discuss the growth of the fact-checking movement worldwide and its many challenges. The conference, on June 9 and 10, is a project of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter.
Participants will be representing almost all of the world’s leading fact-checking initiatives, including Africa Check, Chequeado, Factcheck.org, Full Fact, PolitiFact and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker.
Keynoting the event will be Natalia Hernández Rojo, head of the fact-checking unit at Spanish TV show El Objetivo. The show’s elegantly produced fact checks could inspire other fact-checkers to make the difficult leap from the computer screen to the TV screen. El Objetivo was also a reporting partner on the Panama Papers investigation.
The current map of active fact-checking initiatives resembles an inverted “7” that covers the Americas and Europe most densely, but Global Fact 3 participants also hail from countries well outside these two regions, including India, Iran, Kenya, Myanmar and Nepal.
The choice of Buenos Aires as the venue for the conference is reflective of a regional boom in fact-checking initiatives in Latin America. While the doyen of regional fact-checking, Argentina’s Chequeado, was launched in 2010, many new initiatives have been established in the past few years. This includes three fact-checking platforms in Brazil as well as projects in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia.
Global Fact 3 will be preceded by the second regional summit of fact-checkers, Latam Chequea.
For more during the event, follow #GlobalFact3 on Twitter and Poynter’s fact-checking channel.
