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Hello from wherever you are!
We’re halfway through (virtual) Global Fact 7, which was initially slated for three days this week in Oslo, Norway. But like all things, COVID-19 changed that. So the world’s fact-checkers are spending five days talking shop and talking about the future from wherever a stable internet connection can be found.
This year’s conference features over 150 speakers in 17 time zones.
So far we’ve had panels looking at fact-checking during the coronavirus crisis, the relationship between fact-checkers and technology companies, as well as the latest research into the most effective methods of fact-checking.
Here are some themes from the conference so far:
COVID-19–– The reason we’re all “here”
The conference began with a celebration of the work of fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the COVID-19 crisis. International Fact-Checking Network Director Baybars Örsek interviewed United Nations Under Secretary General For Communications Melissa Fleming who said COVID-19 has taught the world the importance of quality information.
IFCN Associate Director
Cristina Tardáguila spoke
with members of the CoronaVirusFacts
Alliance about lessons learned so far in the pandemic. Project Coordinator
Jules Darmanin said the alliance is confronting a greater number of conspiracy
theory fact-checks, which are more difficult to debunk.
Fact-Checkers and tech platforms deepen their relationship
Global Fact’s 2020 State of Fact-Checking report released Monday showed more fact-checking organizations all over the world are becoming for-profit organizations. The report’s findings suggest this may be related to more investment from technology companies like Facebook and Google.
At a panel Tuesday, fact-checkers said tech platforms will need to be more transparent about their processes and data if they want this relationship to survive.
Tijana
Cvjetićanin, fact-checking and research coordinator at Bosnian fact-checking
organization Istinomjer,
said this transparency is essential for fact-checkers to maintain their
credibility and independence.
First Draft’s Claire Wardle in a later
panel added platforms must do more to share data with researchers and
fact-checkers, which would help them find more approaches to checking
misinformation.
What do the researchers say?
Wednesday’s academic panels focused on trust in media, the presentation of fact-checks and methods to fact-check health misinformation.
Rasmus
Kleis Nielsen from the Reuters
Institute for the Study of Journalism said there is broad trust in
mainstream news organizations, but still a sizable minority of citizens
avoiding the news all together.
Full
Fact Researcher Dora-Olivia Vicol said conspiratorial thinking stems more
from an individual’s worldview than a lack of access to accurate information,
and that much more research is needed to understand this distrust.
–
Harrison Mantas, IFCN
. . . technology
- Google is adding fact-checks to image search results, the company announced this week.
- “Now, when you search on Google Images, you may see a ‘Fact Check’ label under the thumbnail image results,” wrote Harris Cohen, the company’s search product manager. “When you tap one of these results to view the image in a larger format, you’ll see a summary of the fact check that appears on the underlying web page.”
- Twitter added a label to another post by President Donald Trump this week, saying it violated its policy against abusive behavior. In the tweet, Trump threatened “serious force” against any protesters who might try to set up an “autonomous zone” in Washington.
. . . politics
- ProPublica’s Eric Umansky has an excellent rundown this week of how federal agencies have adapted their policies to align with misinformation coming from President Trump.
- No, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) did not tweet that businesses should be kept closed until after the 2020 presidential election. Here’s the fact check from Snopes. This is another case of a faked screenshot.
. . . science and health
- Misinformation about COVID-19 across Africa is complicating efforts by the health care systems to get a handle on the virus, Quartz reported. More than 277,000 cases have now been recorded across the continent, where health systems as well as front-line medical workers are already stretched thin.
- Yomi Kazeem reported broadcasts on WhatsApp about fake cures and remedies were reminiscent of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, when two people died and several were hospitalized in Nigeria after “cures” involving salt baths circulated on social media.
President Trump has said several times that violence at anti-police protests across the United States is the work of antifa, the anti-fascist, leftist activists who confront neo-Nazis at demonstrations. The Washington Post this week wrapped his statements up into one multi-faceted fact-check to show that there is little evidence for his claims.
The
Post has made fact-checking Trump’s falsehoods into something of a specialty,
and in fact has published a whole
book about them. Debunking the antifa claims, however, was challenging. It
required looking at arrest records in various cities, speaking to eyewitnesses,
reviewing videos and photos from the scenes and talking to expert witnesses
about the degree of coordinated antifa activity they were seeing in the
violence.
In the end, reporters Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels concluded, Trump provided no
support for the antifa claim, and much of the evidence they found actually
contradicted his assertion.
What we liked: The work that went into this fact-check matched the high stakes of the conclusion. In a complex situation like the protests, it might be tempting for people to believe the easy answer that one group is responsible for violence. This fact-check was worth the effort to show the hollowness of the antifa claim. The package also showcases The Post Fact-Checker’s emphasis on video.
– Susan Benkelman, API
- The New York Times traced how false messages about antifa spread across the United States to create a perception of a “threat that never appeared.”
- Trump’s supporters have been sharing a photo of a large outdoor crowd, saying that it was from the president’s rally in Tulsa on June 20. It’s actually a photo of a “Rolling Thunder” event in 2019, wrote FactCheck.org.
- TikTok has signed onto the European Union’s Code of Practice on disinformation. TechCrunch has a good plain-language description of what it means to agree to the code.
- NPR interviewed disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz about her recent argument in Wired magazine that Facebook groups are “destroying America.”
- The outdoor retailer REI has joined The North Face, Upwork and Patagonia in pulling ads from Facebook, saying it has not done enough to rein in misinformation and hate speech on the platform.