For decades, the job of fact-checking was mainly a responsibility for staffers at large American magazines like The New Yorker and Fortune. Today, some digital operations like Upworthy and Medium have full-time fact checkers on their payroll, but for the most part, fact checking remains a freelance or volunteer endeavor.
The Duke Reporters’ Lab keeps track of fact-checking projects around the world, and the number of such sites has climbed steadily for years. But the booming growth has now slowed to more of a trudging pace, just as political lies and other forms of misinformation seem to be hitting voters worldwide harder than ever.
As of early 2023, there were 424 locally focused fact-checking projects in operation worldwide, compared to just 111 in 2008. The vast majority of these are independent, but several operate as state affiliates of national organizations such as PolitiFact (the nonprofit organization run by the Poynter Institute) or Gigafact, which is supported by the Repustar news outlet in Wisconsin.
One way to spur more local fact-checking would be to incentivize a model like the one used by Gigafact, which paired with partner news outlets in Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin in producing dozens of structured, 140-word “fact briefs” that were shared during election season. Expanding that model to more states and other regions could quickly fill in many of the “fact deserts” we’ve identified. And a new initiative to develop technology that could assist fact-checkers with their work would be a good starting point, too.