The Truth in Journalism Project is led by Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank. The creation of the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide was supported by an Advisory Committee made up of journalists, academics, and stakeholder community members, and the research was conducted during our 2021–2022 residency at the Future of Journalism Initiative at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication.
Editorial fact-checkers are essential to the success of contemporary journalism: their job is to verify every factual statement included in an article before it is published. This involves calling back every source who was interviewed for the piece, going through every primary and secondary document referenced, and researching the context behind every evaluative claim.
In theory, this kind of fact-checking may sound like a simple, though laborious, task: the fact-checker need only confirm that all available evidence supports each factual claim. In practice, however, journalists often struggle to agree on what counts as fact and as evidence, and how to present both. The kinds of sources available to “confirm” a fact will change based on context—and a journalist or fact-checker who abides too stringently by ill-informed standards of verification may cause needless harm. Editorial fact-checkers often encounter serious methodological and ethical questions. For example, how should a fact-checker approach a story about first-person accounts of sexual violence? Or about an individual’s lived experience with disability? Or about a community’s account of historical trauma? These questions have rarely been discussed explicitly or publicly by journalists, and this silence has led to serious problems in the industry.
In the summer of 2021, we (Allison and Viviane) were awarded the Michener L. Richard O'Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education to conduct research on best practices in editorial fact-checking. The idea was to produce an expanded version of the editorial fact-checking guide used by The Walrus, which Viviane wrote in 2019 and which focuses on ethical methodology for stories of sexual violence and stories based in Indigenous communities. We partnered with Brett Popplewell to conduct this research at the Future of Journalism Initiative at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication, where we were appointed as Journalists-in-Residence.
Over the following year, we consulted with journalists, academic researchers, and community experts about the most pressing challenges—and possible solutions—regarding gathering and verifying journalistic facts. We paid particular attention to fact-checking stories that involve trauma, stark power dynamics, marginalized communities, and questions of identity and lived experience. The Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide is the result of those conversations.
We think of the Truth in Journalism Project as a collaborative endeavour that includes journalists, researchers, educators, students, and the subjects of journalistic pieces. We hope to encourage interdisciplinary discussions about editorial fact-checking, accuracy, and journalistic objectivity.
The Truth in Journalism Project is focused on the verification process that makes something a work of fact-checked journalism. In our fact-checking guide, we are not articulating guidelines for establishing all kinds of truth or publishable content, nor are we articulating guidelines for good reporting more generally, which would encompass questions that go beyond the scope of our work. A fact checker cannot decide which stories are covered or how they are covered or by whom. But many issues in journalism can be addressed in the domain of fact-checking and accuracy alone.
We made the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide public and free so that journalists can point to certain sections of this guide when speaking with others about the fact-checking process, to make sure that everyone understands what participation in a fact-checked project entails. In this way, we hope the guide will inform and empower everyone involved in the production and consumption of fact-checked journalism.
Research for the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide was conducted between May 2021 and October 2022 and involved interviewing academics from various fields about ethical research methods; community-appointed experts about best practices for reporting within their communities; and some of the leading journalists in the industry about their own reporting practices. (Most are credited at the end of Chapter One.)
In July 2022, we sent a first draft of the fact-checking guide to the eleven members of the Truth in Journalism Advisory Committee, all of whom are credited below. Based on their respective expertise, these (paid) advisers each read several chapters and provided feedback. Their comments were incorporated into the final published version of the guide.
We hired two fact checkers to check the guide in its entirety, adhering to the general principles formulated within the guide itself (though of course our editorial team was much smaller than the ideal; we had no editor or head of research to oversee our work). Because we consider the guide to be more collaborative in nature than some other works of journalism, we allowed all of our interviewed sources to review their quotes during the fact-checking process and to make modifications as desired. We also allowed them to change their mind about participating in the project or being named in the acknowledgements page at any point during the process.
We intend for this guide to be a living document, one that will be updated with any necessary revisions and corrections. Any changes made to the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide will be recorded on the website.
Allison Baker is the head of research at The Walrus. From 2016 to 2024, she produced Mi’kmaq Matters, a podcast about the Mi’kmaw people, politics, land, and water of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). She is the former copy editor at Xtra Magazine and has written and fact-checked for The Walrus, Toronto Life, NPR, Canadaland, and Reader’s Digest, among others. She also fact-checked Eternity Martis’ bestselling memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun (McClelland & Stewart, 2020). In fall 2018, she helped launch The Walrus Fact-Checking, an initiative created in response to the growing awareness of misinformation online. From 2019–2021, she was a program officer at Historica Canada, where she worked with academic and community consultants to create multimedia content and educational guides, including the podcast series Residential Schools.
Viviane Fairbank has written, edited, and fact-checked for The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, the Literary Review of Canada, Reader’s Digest, Historica Canada, TVO, Harper’s, and NPR. In 2017, she was nominated for Best New Writer at the 2017 National Magazine Awards, and from 2017 to 2019, she worked as the associate editor and head of research at The Walrus. She has spoken on several panels about the importance of editorial fact-checking and has guest-lectured about fact-checking, ethics, and longform writing to journalism students at several Canadian universities. She is also a PhD student in philosophy.
Brett Popplewell is an associate professor of journalism at Carleton University. He has won multiple National Magazine Awards, and his work has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing, Bloomberg Businessweek, Mother Jones, The Walrus, Maclean’s, Toronto Life, Reader’s Digest, and more. He is also an author and the founding director of The Future of Journalism Initiative.
Erin Sylvester joined The Walrus in 2016 as an editorial fellow. Since then, she has served as the copy editor and the head of research and is now the managing editor. Previously, she was the deputy editor and a history columnist at Torontoist. She always has too many books on hold at the library and, in her spare time, enjoys trying new recipes. She’s a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s journalism program and also holds a degree in history and medieval studies.
Cassius Adair is a media producer and academic from Virginia. His interests include digital labour, transgender media, and audio documentary.
Denise Balkissoon is the Ontario bureau chief at The Narwhal and former executive editor of Chatelaine. She has also been a columnist, reporter, and editor at the Globe and Mail, where she co-hosted and co-produced the podcast Colour Code, about race in Canada. She has been recognized by the Urban Alliance on Race Relations for her longstanding commitment to integrating racial justice into Canadian journalism.
Saima Desai is the editor of Briarpatch Magazine, a national publication of grassroots politics and social movements. She’s a settler living on Treaty 4 territory, and her family is originally from Gujarat, India.
Duncan McCue is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and a current journalist-in-residence at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the creator and curator of Reporting in Indigenous Communities, an online educational guide for journalists, and the author of Decolonizing Journalism: A Guide to Reporting in Indigenous Communities (fall 2022).
Lauren McKeon is deputy editor at Toronto Life and the author of several books, most recently Women of the Pandemic: Stories from the Front Lines of COVID-19. (Photo credit: Yuli Scheidt)
Amanda Morris is the disability reporter for the Washington Post. She was previously the inaugural disability reporting fellow for the New York Times and has also worked as a science reporter for the Arizona Republic. She is a hard-of-hearing woman who uses ASL with her two deaf parents.
Craig Silverman is a national reporter for ProPublica and the editor of the Verification Handbook series. He founded the Regret the Error blog in 2004, covering fact-checking and media inaccuracy, and authored a 2007 book of the same name, which won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism from the National Press Club.
Kory Stamper has been a lexicographer for over twenty years and is the author of the bestselling Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Her writing on language use and language change has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Boston Globe, and other publications.
Lisa Taylor explores the intersections between journalism, law, and professional ethics. A former lawyer and CBC journalist, Taylor is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, past chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists’ ethics advisory committee, and the editor of The Unfulfilled Promise of Press Freedom in Canada, published by University of Toronto Press in 2017.
Tara Williamson is an independent researcher, writer, educator, and consultant who has worked with and for Indigenous communities and organizations at the local, regional, provincial and national levels. A member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, she is currently research director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit at the University of Victoria and a research fellow with the Yellowhead Institute.
Jan Winburn is a journalist and professor in the University of Georgia’s MFA program in Narrative Non-Fiction. She was the 2021 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana, where she taught trauma-informed journalism and narrative writing.
Jonah Brunet is the copy editor at Toronto Life. He has also worked with The Walrus, the Toronto Star, and Véhicule Press.
Tobin Ng is a fact checker and journalist based in Ottawa. They've fact-checked for The Walrus, Maclean's, and Maisonneuve, and their writing has appeared in Xtra Magazine, Broadview, and CANADALAND, among other publications. In 2022, they won the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s inaugural bursary for graduating BIPOC journalism students.
Lucy Uprichard is a freelance writer and fact checker originally from the UK and a settler in Tiohti:áke (Montreal). She writes about arts, culture, feminism, and social justice topics, with articles featured in Dazed, Vice, The Walrus, Chatelaine, and other publications. As a fact checker, Lucy has worked with publications across Canada, including Reader's Digest, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Maisonneuve, Briarpatch, and This. She is currently an archives student at McGill University.
Chris Grass is a software developer based in Toronto. He previously worked at CommerceBear, Kobo, and Palomino Inc.
Natalie Vineberg is a designer on the curation team at the Washington Post. Prior to that, she worked at The Walrus for almost four years. While studying at McGill University, she was the photo editor and then creative director of The McGill Tribune.
We would like to thank Allan Thompson, head of the journalism program at Carleton University, and the university’s administrative staff for supporting our project during our time as journalists-in-residence at the Future of Journalism Initiative. The art and marketing teams at The Walrus—including Meredith Holigroski, Paul Kim, and Monita Mohan—provided invaluable support in the form of promotional and marketing material for the Truth in Journalism Conference.
We are especially grateful toward the hard-working students at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication who served as research and production assistants at different periods during the course of our project. Their names are (in alphabetical order) Hafsatou Balde, Lahari Nanda, Tobin Ng, Mark Ramzy, Uday Rana, and Angel Xing.