Fact check

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The fact check describes a journalistic concept that checks the statements of one or more people on the basis of verifiable, rational and objective facts . Verbatim or written statements are compared with the researched facts. Fact checks are also carried out in the scientific analysis of political processes.

The term is also used outside of journalism, for example by investigative authorities or social groups or parties in their own media, although the traceability of evidence is not necessarily guaranteed here.

Examples in German-language media

With the increase in political talk shows on German television , the importance of this method has also increased. The show hart aber fair (ARD) with presenter Frank Plasberg offers a fact check of important statements of the show on the net after each broadcast. The talk show Maischberger felt compelled to offer a “fact check” on the following day after the talk show for the program Chosen and Excluded - The Hatred of Jews in Europe , which was criticized as “consistently tendentious”. It is "more of an ideology check", "which is no pretext to shame", "to relativize the theses of the authors".

In the 2016 US election campaign, German media also carried out fact checks after the candidates' television debates.

Finally, in April 2017, ARD launched the “Anti-Fake News Portal” fact finder at tagesschau.de . In order to better recognize falsified reports, the portal wants to be “a hub in the ARD network…”, “… to collect such phenomena.” Some ARD stations such as B. Bayerischer Rundfunk now offer fact checks as part of their regular reporting.

In the Austrian ZiB2 news program , the statements of the top candidates in election campaigns, as well as highly regarded or controversial interview statements (not only from politics) are subjected to a fact check at irregular intervals. The analyzes of journalists together with the studies of experts such as social and economic scientists lead to an assessment of the truthfulness of the original statement with a summarizing tendency (e.g. true, rather / predominantly true / untrue, false). The ORF fact check is often received in print and online media and taken up in journalistic terms.

Fact checks on controversial statements are also published on Swiss radio and television in all media (television, radio, online). The Tages-Anzeiger publishes fact checks taking into account the analyzes of various media, whereby one main aspect is highlighted from each of the received media. A summarizing tendency towards truth content is published for each individual journalist analysis on the same topic.

Examples in US media

The Washington Post , on the other hand, developed a differentiated “ rating ” and divided the truthfulness of statements into four classes from “some things not correctly presented” to “completely wrong and a lie”. The “Pinocchio Ratings” in this newspaper are one of the most famous fact checks for politicians and were developed for the newspaper by editor Glenn Kessler.

In the 2016 US presidential election campaign , untruths were spread via social media . Fake news sites like the USA Newsflash led to Barack Obama commenting on the phenomenon and a. Facebook managing director Mark Zuckerberg took a position against the usual company reluctance and promised improvements. According to a study by the Pew Research Center (PEW), 44 percent of all Americans read the messages shown on Facebook's personal timeline. Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis sees the fact check as one of the most important tools against deliberate false reports.

After the 2016 presidential election, many media outlets carried out regular fact checks to verify statements made by the Trump administration . The US news agency Associated Press (AP) has published a list of falsehoods by the US government under the heading The Nonsense of the Week since Trump's election .

Sociology professor Todd Gitlin pointed out that fact checks are necessary but also have consequences. "A reporter who checks all the trash and nonsense from Trump for the truth is one less reporter who can report on what is going on in the government apparatus."

Methodological limits and criticism

In July 2018, the New Responsibility Foundation criticized the methodology of the fact check. The concept is like a “fire brigade without water”. Is criticized u. a. that the often emotionalizing fake news has a much greater reach than serious information from fact checks. They addressed “only the symptoms of disinformation, not the reasons why disinformation is spread in the first place. Removing fake news from the social breeding ground should therefore have higher priority. "

Web links

Wiktionary: Fact check  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Christoph Lerch: fact check: country-specific findings in eight election campaigns. Election campaign in the federal states. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 2014. 229-278.
  2. ↑ Thomas Unnerstall: Fact check energy transition: concept, implementation, costs - answers to the 10 most important questions. Springer-Verlag, 2016.
  3. ↑ Example: Munich police do the fact check on Twitter. Stuttgarter Nachrichten , October 24, 2016
  4. ↑ Example: Internal security fact check. CDU / CSU parliamentary group , accessed on November 22, 2016
  5. ↑ www1.wdr.de
  6. ↑ 360 degrees: "Chosen and marginalized": No anti-Semitism, nowhere! , Quotemeter.de , June 23, 2017. Accessed July 19, 2017.
  7. ↑ Aziza Kasumov, Los Angeles: Fact check on the TV debate: Trump's box of fairy tales and Clinton's half-truths . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . October 10, 2016, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 21, 2016]).
  8. ↑ Hakan Tanriverdi, Sebastian Gierke: Fact check: who lied in the TV duel and when . In: Süddeutsche.de . September 1, 2016, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed November 21, 2016]).
  9. ↑ With “faktenfinder” against targeted false reports: ARD launches anti-fake news portal ›Meedia. April 3, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Rainer Hazivar : The ZIB 2 fact check - we keep an eye on everyone. ORF , August 28, 2013
  11. ↑ Christian Böhmer: Can the President dissolve the National Council? A constitutional law expert gives the answer. Courier , March 30, 2016
  12. ^ W. T .: ORF fact check: Häupl log. Currently , October 7, 2015
  13. ↑ Example of a fact check: When should Switzerland pull the plug on nuclear power? , Tages-Anzeiger from October 29, 2016
  14. ^ NDR : Fact check at the "Washington Post". Retrieved November 21, 2016 .
  15. ↑ www.washingtonpost.com (Engl.)
  16. ↑ Benjamin Breitegger: US election: When propaganda wins. In: Zeit Online. November 14, 2016, accessed November 21, 2016 .
  17. ↑ buzzmachine.com (Engl.)
  18. ↑ USA - The media are bracing themselves against Trump's propaganda machine . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed on February 12, 2017]).
  19. ↑ Alexander Sängerlaub: Fire brigade without water? (PDF file, 241 kB) Possibilities and limits of fact checking as a means against disinformation. New Responsibility Foundation , July 2018, accessed on August 17, 2018 .