ROME — More than 200 people from 56 countries gathered at the St. Stephen's School in Rome from Wednesday to Friday this week for the fifth annual Global Fact-Checking Summit.
During the three-day conference hosted by the International Fact-Checking Network, fact-checkers, academics, technologists and other experts will convene to exchange best practices and learn more about the fight against misinformation. Topics run the gamut from reaching out to skeptical audiences and Russian disinformation to debunking hoaxes on messaging apps and fact-checking during a humanitarian crisis.
Of course, not everyone who’s interested in fact-checking can be in Rome this week. That’s why, throughout Global Fact, Poynter and a three-student team from St. Stephen’s will be publishing notable tips and takeaways to this live blog, which will be updated on an ongoing basis.
Check out all the sessions here, and follow @factchecknet and #GlobalFactV to join the conversation.
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Day 1
“Five years ago, no one was doing conferences on fact-checking. Today, everyone is," Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said during his opening remarks at Global Fact.
That fitting intro gave way to a day full of show-and-tells, panels and small group meetings about fact-checking and how to combat misinformation. Below are some takeaways from the day, broken up by talk. Learn more about the panels here.
#GlobalFactV is starting. Amazing worldwide growth of fact-checking in just four years since that first meeting in a small conference room in London pic.twitter.com/X8WuD62KdZ
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) June 20, 2018
Opening remarks
- Poynter is now creating fact-checking programs for middle and high school students in order to help them be able to differentiate between fact and fiction, President Neil Brown said.
Neil Brown, president of the @Poynter Institute: the next few days at #GlobalFactV are all about how we can elevate the craft of #factchecking in the interest of truthful storytelling. #GlobalFactV #factchecking @factchecknet pic.twitter.com/oFcYeYoTaW
— Lucinda Beaman (@Lucinda_Beaman) June 20, 2018
- The gender ratio of leadership in fact-checking is more equal than in other parts of the media. Almost two out of five IFCN verified signatories have a female editor or director, Mantzarlis said.
- There are now 149 active fact-checking projects around the globe, Duke Reporters' Lab co-director Bill Adair said. (Disclosure: The Reporters' Lab helps pay for Global Fact.)
- The Reporters' Lab has now expanded its FactStream app to compile fact checks from (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact, Factcheck.org and The Washington Post Fact Checker all the time — not just during live events.
Formats, Impact & Research
- In order to reach out to skeptical audiences, PolitiFact traveled to three U.S. states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. It also fact-checked 54 local claims in Alabama, West Virginia and Oklahoma. “We don’t do a good enough job, probably, of explaining how we do what we do,” said Aaron Sharockman, executive director of PolitiFact.
Fascinating talk by @asharock on how when @PolitiFact did education outreach & local fact checking faith in fact checks dramatically improved. See also https://t.co/o36xkIZy8O #GlobalFactV pic.twitter.com/fi8XSwN5TI
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 20, 2018
- Sharockman said his team could try to do something like this again, and that the entire project had three main takeaways:
- It was resource-intensive for a small staff
- The actual fact-checking work is more difficult on a local level
- It had more impact in local markets
- Maldito Bulo uses an app to distribute its debunks to mobile phone users, said Clara Jiménez Cruz, founder of the fact-checking project — an easy, straightforward and viral process. It also publishes photos and videos to reach a larger audience on platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram.
.@cjimenezcruz explaining simple and viral format for fact-checking including using simple tools like 'Paint' #FactsMatter #GlobalFactV pic.twitter.com/hEhXj41LbH
— Wafaa Heikal (@WafHeikal) June 20, 2018
- Facebook conducted original research to figure out what users think when they encounter a debunk on the platform. The aim was to figure out what was going well for them and what was not, said Grace Jackson, a UX researcher at Facebook. (Disclosure: Being a signatory of the IFCN's code of principles is a necessary condition for Facebook's fact-checking partnership.)
- What Jackson said she found was that, since people often scroll really quickly and get distracted while using Facebook, they often make incorrect assumptions about posts — particularly those that had been labeled as fact checks. So they tweaked the feature slightly to include ratings in headlines and a "fact-checker" badge.
Facebook found people didn't understand what fact checks were so made changes after doing some research. Structured headlines were key. #GlobalFactV pic.twitter.com/3sPQxLfywS
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 20, 2018
- Giovanni Zagni, director of Pagella Politica (which was co-founded by Mantzarlis), said the project's persistent debunks about mandatory vaccination eventually got an Italian politician to drop the claim.
I love this example by @giovannizagni of the gradual dropping of a false claim on mandatory vaccination by Matteo Salvini. Impact might not come with a bang, but a gradual petering out #GlobalFactV pic.twitter.com/YUgXyhe5Af
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) June 20, 2018
Russian disinformation: Pervasive or NBD?
#GlobalFactV @peterpomeranzev Soviet Union used #misinformation as a tool for foreign policy. Very well crafted stories, lot of effort. Nowadays it's as easy as putting cheap videos on conspiracy networks pic.twitter.com/GgnEwnXG5N
— Lorenzo Marini (@zlorine) June 20, 2018
- Anna Zafesova of La Stampa talked about Russian disinformation, how Russians view it as normal and how wars and other historical events gave way to it. She identified a key problem: Russians think other countries are lying while they think Russia is lying. “The very nature of truth starts to disappear,” she said.
- When Russian President Vladimir Putin goes on TV and says there are no Russian troops in Ukraine when they're clearly are, he's saying that truth doesn't matter, said Peter Pomerantsev of the London School of Economics and Political Science. "They don’t even try to make it look real — they don’t particularly care if it’s false," he said.
“In a world where truth has been relativised, and people are risking their lives for it, truth matters” #GlobalFactV
— Orna Young (@OrnaYoung) June 20, 2018
- Glenn Kessler, who runs The Washington Post Fact Checker, said that since Russian disinformation never really stops, it can be hard for fact-checkers to keep up. But what they're doing isn't really unique — Pomerantsev said that most public relations companies employ the same strategies during marketing campaigns.
- Most Russians get their news from TV, so that's where foreign journalists should focus their efforts when combatting misinformation, said Liepa Želnienė of 15min.
#GlobalFactV Take-away from panel on Russian disinformation / propaganda: it's not about getting people to believe in what's true, it's about confusing people, making people think that everybody lies @rapplerdotcom pic.twitter.com/ZpHZBITmFP
— Gemma B. Mendoza (@gemmabmendoza) June 20, 2018
Brace for the Coming Fake Videogeddon (or Not)
- Computer graphics can perform visually plausible live edits to someone's appearance in video, said Christian Reiss of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. One example is Face2Face, which re-renders a speaker with another person’s facial expression.
Manipulated videos may not be that big in terms of fake news and misinformation, but it is contributing to the crisis. #GlobalFactV pic.twitter.com/KuALyxvp7C
— Eric Mugendi 🇰🇪 (@mougendi) June 20, 2018
- Reiss said researchers can use machine learning techniques to detect manipulated videos, but that can be thwarted depending on the quality of the video. Denis Teyssou of the Agence France-Presse said the InVid browser plugin is one good way to do that by running a reverse image search on keyframes.
Strong point by @post_fact: threat of deepfakes isn’t the videos themselves but the threat to fact-checkers capacity to use video as ultimate evidence (something @holden has told me too) #GlobalFactV
— Alexios (@Mantzarlis) June 20, 2018
- When it comes to detecting deepfake videos, tools are great, but classic fact-checking is still a good place to start, Teyssou said. Look for not-so-subtle alterations to the subject's face and do a Google search to see if the video has been covered by mainstream outlets.
Deep fake & video manipulation is scary and it is great tools are being developed to detect it but let's not forget that our processes for verification esp. analysis of both source and content will still work. You still have to know where content comes from. #GlobalFactV
— Fergus Bell (@fergb) June 20, 2018
- Reiss said he thinks deepfakes were an expected form of misinformation. But he said that the technology is still fairly rudimentary and they're limited to a very specific set of cases — because making a deepfake is pretty hard for normal people.
Deepfake videos are a concern for fact-checkers, but they're not as easy to create as the media let on. We should know — we tried to create one https://t.co/fEQEglSLoe #GlobalFactV
— IFCN (@factchecknet) June 20, 2018
The Chequeado Story
- Chequeado is a fact-checking project that cropped in a country where the government was messing around with official statistics, Mantzarlis said. Its story has many takeaways for other fact-checkers.
One of the most inspiring fact-checking groups and arguably the coolest! The amazing @lauzommer tells the story of @Chequeado at #GlobalFactV. pic.twitter.com/CtzCIxGQaz
— Farhad Souzanchi (@Farhadist) June 20, 2018
- When Chequeado first started, they had no sources of funding and almost shut down after a year, said Laura Zommer, executive director of the organization. But through persistent fact-checking, as well as drawing upon questions from the public and publishing in a humorous way, they were able to find an audience.
Un año después de empezar @Chequeado estuvieron a punto de cerrar porque no tenían financiación. Fueron los periodistas jóvenes del equipo los que decidieron seguir, y ahí llegó @lauzommer: a liderar y a conseguir fondos #globalfactV pic.twitter.com/3vUgnPgW2W
— Clara Jiménez Cruz (@cjimenezcruz) June 20, 2018
- Zommer said Chequeado's biggest success is in teaching people how to fact-check and encouraging them to engage with data and facts. "The second part of secret: we aren’t going to win, we are going to pair up – we think that is the best way to do it," she said.
- Chequeado has partnerships with some of the biggest media companies in Argentina, which broadens its reach and brings in more income. The outlet has turned potential competition into alliances — and the increased attention has made politicians more transparent with their facts.
En Argentine, raconte @lauzommer, le cabinet du président Macri a envoyé au fact-checker @Chequeado son discours sur l’Etat de l’Union qu’il allait délivrer AVANT qu’il le prononce avec pour CHAQUE fait CHAQUE source.
Très intéressant exemple.#GlobalFactV— Guillaume Daudin (@GuillaumeDaudin) June 20, 2018
The Future of ClaimReview
- Over the past year, Google has been surfacing fact checks in search results using the Schema.org ClaimReview markup. It's become a key traffic-driver for fact-checkers around the world.
ClaimReview is an essential part of getting fact checks in Google search results, @BillAdairDuke says. Here's some background on the feature https://t.co/O9I5MJZcse #GlobalFactV
— IFCN (@factchecknet) June 20, 2018
- Google now accounts for about 60 percent of PolitiFact's traffic, Adair said — a huge percentage of which is due to ClaimReview.
Adding ClaimReview markup is an easy way so that if your fact check article appears in Google, it gets a special snippet highlighting it as a fact check. I wish more publications would add it to their fact checks #GlobalFactV https://t.co/XhrzGLO8QR
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 20, 2018
- In search results, fact checks get a rich text format with the claim, who said it and the verdict all appended to a link. But Milka Domanovic of Istinomer said that feature isn't translating her fact checks from English. Google's Simon Baumgartner said he'd look into the problem.
.@MilkaDomanovic makes a great point about ClaimReview: @istinomer's fact checks only show up in Google search results in English — not Serbian.
Baumgartner says he will look into getting those labels translated.#GlobalFactV
— Daniel Funke (@dpfunke) June 20, 2018
- Adair asked: Would Google consider prioritizing fact checks from IFCN signatories in search? Baumgartner said it sounds like a good idea, but it's a slippery slope.
Fact-checking in the Classroom
- Not all claims are easily checkable, and that makes it hard for instructors to teach students how to tell truth from falsities.
Fact Checking in the Classroom: To kick off we are making tricky questions, some checkable and uncheckable, to understand better the nature of fact checking in the classroom. Watch the video to see one group try to answer the other group’s questions #GlobalFactsV pic.twitter.com/Gmv6TwCrTb
— Christian Rosolino (@Chris_Rosolino) June 20, 2018
- "Media literacy is too often seen as a silver bullet that could solve our fake news issue," said Gabriela Jacomella of the European University Institute/Factcheckers.it. At the beginning, it felt empowering — but it puts a burden on teachers and creates expectations.
- Media literacy, including fact-checking, is very volatile. Pushing to solve media literacy without a budget is hard for teachers, who don’t have enough time or money, so nothing is happening. Here are some potential solutions:
- Lobbying for a more structured presentation of media literacy and education fact-checking in school curricula and making it compulsory.
- Interdisciplinary research and strategic coordination
- Collaborative efforts to produce and share tools and materials for a network of diverse cultures and teaching environments.
Factcheckers del mundo jugando chequeable-Nochequeable conmigo y con @gab_jacomella en el workshop de educación del #globalfactv @factchecknet pic.twitter.com/N7hOD4IrLY
— Hache (@Hache_Ariel) June 20, 2018
- Chequeado has split fact-checking concepts into several different lessons for students:
- Fact and data versus biases and opinions
- Types and qualities of reliable sources
- Identifying misinformation
- How to build databases
- “It's better to go to high school teachers because they already realize the problem of fact-checking among their students,” Jacomella said.
Regional breakouts
.@govindethiraj leading a regional breakout session at #GlobalFact4 — fact-checking units from across Asia Pacific discussing the unique challenges they face, and looking for opportunities for cross-border collaboration. #factchecking #mediacollaboration #journalism @factchecknet pic.twitter.com/e6431LrB5y
— Lucinda Beaman (@Lucinda_Beaman) June 20, 2018
- Fact-checkers in the Asia breakout talked about potential ways they could collaborate across borders, such as creating a shared database of previously debunked hoaxes — especially videos and images from WhatsApp. However, bridging language barriers is a challenge.
Au #GlobalFactV à Rome, @greglemarchand de l'@afpfr anime la table ronde régionale sur les initiatives de fact-checking en Europe pic.twitter.com/K137f69TA2
— Guillaume Daudin (@GuillaumeDaudin) June 20, 2018
- Some schools in Europe don’t do fact-checking, and 18 schools across Europe are now helping to develop a new methodology to improve fact-checking.
- Ucheck is a crowd-sourced fact-checking platform where users can put up facts that they believe to be incorrect. Then all the users can vote to say if they believe the fact to be fake news or not by providing reliable sources, with a moderator deciding the outcome.
Lots of discussion of crowdsourcing in factchecking at #GlobalFactV. Here's my take.
(TL;DR Crowdsourcing can't solve the checking bottleneck, it might even make it worse, but it could help in the activities around factchecking.)https://t.co/BqIgr78lgb
— Mevan (@MeAndVan) June 20, 2018
Day 2
"Somewhere between lies and the truth lies the truth."
That Damien Hirst quote, which displayed during The Whistle's presentation of its content management system on Thursday, is a fitting summation of the second day of Global Fact.
With sessions spanning from more show-and-tell to a talk on misinformation in East Asia, here are the highlights from the day.
Formats
- Michal Sella and Boaz Rakocz from The Whistle showed off their "Integrated Fact-Checking System," a CMS for the Israeli fact-checking project. Rokocz said it was important to have accessible, user-friendly systems because "in Israel we have to monitor everything and everyone.”
La seconda giornata di #GlobalFactV si apre con The Whistle, l'unica organizzazione di #factchecking in Israele pic.twitter.com/kQkfr5jfVZ
— Giovanni Zagni (@giovannizagni) June 21, 2018
- The qualities of The Whistle's system are:
- User-friendly
- Searchable
- Centralized and customized
- Generates two databases at once
- Advanced search
- Creates metadata
- Aggregates items and accumulates topics
#GlobalFactV Interesting. The Whistle's CMS allows them to distinguish "items" (processed) from "facts." Very structured. =) @rapplerdotcom @factchecknet pic.twitter.com/B1PIBi63IB
— Gemma B. Mendoza (@gemmabmendoza) June 21, 2018
- Derek Thomson of France 24 Observers talked about how the network of verifying images has helped the fact-checking project, which publishes online in French, English, Arabic and Persian — as well as on TV shows. “Our main utility is our network of observers … we quote ordinary people in their own words," he said.
- The observers are:
- Ordinary people who become trusted local sources
- Recruited s