How checking facts got political Fact checking has been described as cleaning up a sewage spill with a teaspoon. What happens to truth when someone takes the teaspoon away?

From Time magazine’s pioneering research department in the 1920s to the New Yorker’s renowned and rigorous fact-checking department, verifying facts is as old as journalism itself. The rise of the 24-hour news cycle, ubiquity of social media and subsequent spread of online misinformation and disinformation have since demanded more from journalists and editors. It has forced newsrooms to improve their internal verification processes but has also led to the proliferation of specialised fact-check outfits like AAP FactCheck in Australia or AFP Fact Check, which now has a network of 150 journalists across 26 languages publishing checks on everything from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to COVID-19. (read on)