ST. PETERSBURG, FL (June 22, 2023) – Angie Drobnic Holan, editor-in-chief of PolitiFact and a noted leader in the field of fact-checking, has been named the new director of the International Fact-Checking Network based at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Holan, 50, will take the helm of the IFCN, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated organization dedicated to supporting fact-checkers who battle misinformation worldwide, effective immediately, the Poynter Institute announced Thursday.
“Angie Holan’s background as one of the founders of the international modern fact-checking movement, deep knowledge of the community, high standards and dedication to the fight against misinformation make her the perfect choice to lead IFCN’s next chapter,” said Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute.
Ferdi Ferhat Ozsoy
Brown also announced that IFCN program director Ferdi Ferhat Özsoy, 37, who has been with the organization since 2020 and served as interim director for the past six months, was promoted to the role of deputy director.
Holan will be welcomed into her role June 28-30 in Seoul, South Korea at the GlobalFact 10 gathering of IFCN signatories, the world’s largest fact-checking conference. Holan replaces Baybars Örsek, who resigned in December.
Holan said she is excited to lead the IFCN at a pivotal time. The community is growing in strength and respect, and fact-checking is established as an essential part of the ecosystem to fight harmful misinformation. However, she said: “Misinformation is still on the march. Indeed, its influence seems to be growing.
“Dictators and authoritarian governments increasingly use disinformation as another tool in their arsenal of oppression. They spread lies to gain power and suppress fact-checking, as well as all independent journalism,” Holan said. “Fact-checking is under imminent threat in some parts of the world.”
Against this backdrop, the IFCN will continue evolving to empower the fact-checkers seeking to bring accurate and truthful information to people everywhere, she said. Among her early goals as director are to improve communications, both among signatories to the IFCN’s Code of Principles as well as with the general public; to streamline the process for becoming a signatory; to ensure the timely distribution of grant funding; and to put additional focus on training and mentoring.
“A more effective IFCN means more empowered fact-checking organizations around the globe. The IFCN draws its strength and vitality from fact-checkers themselves, and fact-checkers must remain always at the center of all the IFCN does,” Holan said.
Holan has served as editor-in-chief of the U.S. fact-checking site PolitiFact for the past 10 years, with a focus on federal elections, legislative issues, and the presidency, and has made numerous media and public appearances on the organization’s behalf. Before taking the top role, she was an editor and reporter for the site, and was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2009. She has been a member of the IFCN advisory board since its inception in 2015 and helped formulate its Code of Principles.
Holan has traveled and trained at fact-checking conferences and gatherings around the world, including in Germany, Brazil and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has led dozens of briefings of international journalists visiting the United States on professional development tours, from countries such as Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Moldova, Morocco and India. She is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland and holds an EU passport.
For the past year, Holan has been a visiting fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, researching democracy and authoritarianism around the world, studying under Professors Steve Levitsky and Pippa Norris, among others. She also organized a major survey of the state of academic research on fact-checking and its application.
Prior to her work with PolitiFact, which is also based at Poynter, she was a news researcher at the Tampa Bay Times and Tampa Tribune newspapers in Florida and has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a master’s of library science from the University of South Florida.
“The work of the IFCN is more vital now than ever before,” Brown said. “Fact-checkers provide an enormous service to free expression across the world, and the IFCN, in turn, provides the support, network, funding and knowledge to help the fact-checking movement grow and thrive.
“Building on the work of Baybars and Ferdi, as IFCN’s leader, Angie Holan will both help it grow in its service to the fact-checking community and help citizens around the world increase their understanding of the value of accurate, truthful information for a free society,” he said. “We are so fortunate to have her in this important role.”
Holan has relinquished her role with PolitiFact, and Brown said that organization will turn its attention quickly to filling the top editor position.
Media Contact:
Jennifer Orsi
Senior Director, Publishing and Local News Initiatives
Poynter Institute
(727) 350-2588
About the International Fact-Checking Network
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter was launched in 2015 to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world and advocates of factual information in the global fight against misinformation. We enable fact-checkers through networking, capacity building and collaboration. IFCN promotes the excellence of fact-checking to more than 100 organizations worldwide through advocacy, training and global events. Our team monitors trends in the fact-checking field to offer resources to fact-checkers, contribute to public discourse and provide support for new projects and initiatives that advance accountability in journalism. We believe truth and transparency can help people be better informed and equipped to navigate harmful misinformation.
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and community building, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is a gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.
The Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise and PolitiFact are all members of the Poynter organization.
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