1. Introduction

The Truth in Journalism Project

There are many ways to tell a story. Journalism is just one of these ways, and its distinctive methodology makes it unique: as Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach wrote in The Elements of Journalism (2001), journalism is essentially a "discipline of verification," which journalists use to find not just the facts but also the "truth about the fact." A journalist (or team of journalists) reports a story, they weave their findings into a narrative, and then, before sharing it with the world, they check that what they've created stands a test of accuracy—whatever they've decided that test should be.

In the twentieth century, the fact-checking practices of magazines such as Time and The New Yorker embodied a thorough version of this verification discipline, which we call editorial fact-checking. Before a story is published and after the reporter and editor have signed off on it, an editorial fact checker independently verifies every factual statement included in the story and flags any necessary corrections. At the time, these magazines had well-resourced fact-checking departments. The New Yorker staffers developed such an "obsession with facts," as the Columbia Journalism Review put it, that they defined themselves primarily by their ability to catch every mistake in a story, no matter how small.

Over the past three decades, however, the practice of editorial fact-checking has been in decline. Magazines that once had robust fact-checking departments have shrunk them or closed them entirely, relying instead on freelance fact checkers, whose methodologies can vary widely. Some magazines selectively check only certain stories or facts; others check nothing at all. In an informal survey of ten longform outlets in North America conducted over the summer of 2021, we found that, due to limited time, dwindling resources, and other practical constraints, only two fact-checked every story they published (in the traditional sense of fact-check as described in this guide).

We began our journalism careers several years ago, working as editorial fact-checkers; we have freelanced for various publications in North America, and we have both worked (at different times) as Head of Research at The Walrus, a general-interest publication in Canada that does fact-check all of the journalism it produces. In recent years, we've seen the term fact-checking skyrocket in popularity, but in reference to a very different kind of practice: political fact-checking. Brooke Borel, author of The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, describes this practice as "a watchdog endeavor that checks information after it has already published." To "fact-check" a politician's statement, for example, is to find all relevant primary sources (such as budget documents or election results) and then publish an article exposing the factual errors, if there are any, for others to see. In 2014, there were fewer than fifty active political fact-checking initiatives around the world; today, there are almost 400. The result of this shift is that journalists now fact-check other people's work much more than their own. The "fact-check" label is increasingly being used without a common understanding of what it signifies.

Due to a lack of transparency and collaboration across the industry, as well as a lack of fact-checking education in journalism schools, different journalists have different standards for what counts as verification. As a result, the industry has overlooked important conversations about sourcing, record-keeping, and ethics.

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Journalists tend to agree that fact-checking is vital to their discipline. But few are taught to think about it as a distinct step in their reporting methodology—one that intersects significantly with journalism ethics. We believe that, if fact-checking is the essence of journalism, then journalists need to learn how to do it without perpetuating inequitable standards of verification. 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 an Indigenous community's account of historical trauma? These questions have rarely been discussed explicitly or in a public-facing way, and this silence has led to serious problems in recent years, such as the infamous retraction of Rolling Stone's 2014 investigation into an alleged sexual assault on a university campus.

Editorial fact-checking is important not only for the sake of journalistic accuracy but also as a tool for addressing broader issues of trust and inclusion. Reporters who operate with a problematic conception of objectivity as "the view from nowhere" (as endorsed by philosopher Thomas Nagel) often choose to distrust certain voices because of their backgrounds or experiences. They hold that someone's personal experience with a certain topic may prevent them from understanding or describing it accurately. The result of such attitudes is that, too often, the industry has failed to acknowledge the voices of marginalized communities and to treat their testimonies as credible. And this has led to what writer and producer Pacinthe Mattar calls a "crisis of credibility" in media.

Questions of sourcing and methodology in fact-checking, therefore, are intricately related to questions of equity and inclusion—including whether some voices are treated as more authoritative than others. In the post-truth era, when many have become more conscious of the fragility of "objectivity," it is important for journalists to learn how to acknowledge the close relationship between accuracy and ethical practice.

In 2021, we were awarded the Michener-L. Richard O'Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education to conduct research on best practices for editorial fact-checking. As Journalists-in-Residence at Carleton University's Future of Journalism Initiative, we spent one year consulting with journalists, academics, and community representatives about the most pressing challenges—and possible solutions—for 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. This guide is the result of that research.

We agree wholeheartedly with those who say that rigorous fact-checking is an integral part of journalism. But, in this guide, we want to emphasize that it's how journalists fact-check that matters most. The traditional conception of the journalist as an individual investigator who can identify "the truth" all on their own is outdated and impractical. The idea at the foundation of this fact-checking guide is that journalism is a social activity, made possible by a community, including reporters, their editors, their publishers, their sources, their fact-checkers, their audience, and anyone else involved in the production of a story or affected by its content.

We've been inspired to think this way by many of the impressive journalism initiatives that exist today, including by alternative media publications, who have thought with depth and nuance about how to practise journalism with integrity while navigating the entrenched power dynamics of the industry and of journalistic practice. Our aim is to articulate guidelines for editorial fact-checking that are inclusive, rigorous, and informed by interdisciplinary expertise. With this guide, we hope to begin to answer the question: How can journalism reestablish and maintain its essence of verification while allowing for a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of factuality and truth?

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In this guide, we think of fact-checking as an independent editorial process, which takes place after a story has been reported and edited and before it is published. Our fundamental motivation is what we call the Two-Layer Principle for fact-checking (see Chapter Three), which holds that there are always two distinct steps to establishing a statement in a journalistic story: first, reporting; then, verification.

An editorial fact checker works on a story after it has been reported. They link each fact in the story to its source, note any required changes, and record their work for the publication's internal records, thus confirming that no part of the published article can be objected to on factual grounds. Fact checkers usually call back every source who was interviewed for a piece, go through every document referenced, and research the factual context behind every evaluative claim. While some publications rely on interview recordings or transcripts, we believe that the fact-checker's responsibility to speak with everyone who was involved in the reporting of a story is at the heart of the relationship between accuracy and ethics. Peter Canby, who was head of The New Yorker's fact-checking department for nearly three decades, until 2020, thinks of fact-checking as a "moral act"—a process that is concerned not only with truth but also with journalists' responsibility to be transparent toward their sources and to treat them with integrity.

Because of its rigour and emphasis on self-reflection during the editorial process, editorial fact-checking in the sense we've just described pushes journalists to confront certain norms of the industry directly and to question whether they are actually useful in terms of accuracy. For example: How much of a quote (if any) can be shared with a source in advance of publication? When (if ever) can a source modify their participation in or withdraw completely from a story? What kinds of consent conversations should take place between the journalist and the source before reporting begins? Answering these questions can help us identify what journalism, as a discipline of verification, requires; which accommodations can be made without harming the integrity of the practice; and which haven't been made in the past simply because they were difficult or inconvenient.

Of course, editorial fact-checking cannot solve every problem in journalism. The fact checker's scope is limited to the domain of accuracy; they cannot decide which stories are covered or how they are covered or by whom. An individual fact checker is always constrained by the practical realities of their assignment, including the time they have, the resources they are given, and how much support they receive from the rest of the editorial team. But we think many issues can be addressed in this domain alone. Fact checkers play a special role as the arbiters of journalistic facts, including which sources are fit to confirm or contest them.

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This guide is focused on the verification process for a piece of journalism. We are not articulating guidelines for establishing all kinds of truth, storytelling, or publishable content; we're articulating guidelines for the publication of fact-checked journalism.

We have written this guide with the hope that it can be read by anyone interested in editorial fact-checking, including journalists, journalism educators, students, and members of the wider public. Fact checkers can use this guide as a foundational reference for how to practise their day-to-day work. Reporters can use this guide to adapt their reporting practices so that they meet fact-checking requirements, paying particular attention to the ethical considerations touched on in Chapters Four to Eight as well as to the Reporter's Guidelines in Appendix A. Editors and publishers can use it to incorporate fact-checking into the newsroom, including by having editorial conversations as a team before fact-checking begins. Heads of research employed at publications that already fact-check may also benefit from this guide, especially from its discussions of particularly challenging situations that often arise for fact checkers. And journalism educators and students can use this guide to ground their knowledge of editorial fact-checking and of sourcing and research standards more generally. (The guide has been formatted so that it can be read over the course of a semester.)

Transparency and informed consent are at the foundation of responsible journalism. To that end, we have made this guide public and freely accessible. When speaking with sources about the fact-checking process, journalists can point to certain sections of this guide to make sure their sources understand what participation in a journalistic project entails. In this way, we hope the contents of this guide will also inform and empower the subjects of journalistic stories.

Of course, practical constraints mean that not every publication can accommodate such an admittedly lengthy and costly practice as editorial fact-checking. Still, we hope that the mindset articulated in these pages will be helpful for journalists across the industry. As we emphasize throughout this guide, collaboration between different players who understand their respective roles ensures that journalism—and editorial fact-checking in particular—is helpful, effective, and practiced with integrity.

An Overview of Guiding Principles

Several themes emerged over the course of our research, and we have formulated eight principles that we consider foundational to the practice of editorial fact-checking. We've already mentioned the Two-Layer Principle; we'll use the rest of this section to briefly outline the remaining seven. Don't worry if they don't quite make sense yet: we will spend the rest of the guide elaborating on the ideas presented here.

We begin with the Internal/External Fact Distinction, which informs much of the discussion in this guide. Say you have a statement attributed to a source—either an interviewed source (a person the reporter spoke with) or a gathered source underline (a record, documentary or otherwise, the reporter consulted). According to the Internal/External Fact Distinction, this statement is made up of two kinds of facts: internal and external. And we maintain that these two kinds of facts need to be checked differently.

Internal facts are internal to the source: the very fact that the source confirms them means that you can consider them checked. In principle, no other source—neither interviewed nor gathered—is fit to check an internal fact; that's what makes it internal.

Internal facts attributed to an interviewed source include that person's interpretations of events, their feelings, and their personal identity. If someone tells you their pronouns, for example, then you have confirmed their pronouns; there's nothing else you need to do to consider the fact of their pronouns checked.

Internal facts attributed to a gathered source are facts about the source itself—for example, what a document is said to contain. If a reporter writes that a website has a big red logo, and you see the website, and it has a big red logo, then you need go no further: what the website looks like is an internal fact about the website.

External facts, on the other hand, are facts about the world outside of the source—facts about anything other than the source that may contribute to the statement's accuracy. That doesn't mean the source can't be used to confirm those facts, but more care is needed: in theory, they could be mistaken about them, and other sources may be required to check them.

If an interviewed source tells you about their experience navigating their employers' workplace policies, for instance, they are providing you with an account of external facts, which you will likely want to corroborate with their employer directly. (The source's experience of those policies is an internal fact, but the policies themselves are an external fact.) And, if a political watchdog's website contains information about the inner workings of a political party, then that information is external to the website and should be corroborated elsewhere—ideally from someone representing the party itself.

The Internal/External Fact Distinction applies to various fact-checking contexts, such as language, identity, and lived experience. Most factual statements include a mix of internal and external facts; it is the fact checker's job to parse them as best as possible and check them in the most appropriate way. We spend much of the guide discussing how to do this, informed by the guiding principles we introduce throughout the next chapters.

The Authority Principle holds that a source is always authoritative on its internal facts but only sometimes authoritative on its external facts, depending on the source's relationship to those facts and on how the facts were gathered. And the Independence Principle holds that every fact should be checked with at least one authoritative source or, if that is not possible, several independent non-authoritative sources.

During your work as a fact checker, you will encounter facts situated in a variety of forms of knowledge—including printed records, oral records, lived experience, data and statistics, and scientific research, among others. The Knowledge Principle holds that fact-checking requires you to navigate these different forms of knowledge comfortably. It is the fact checker's responsibility to understand the context in which a fact is stated—and how you carry out your fact-checking will consequently depend on the kind of facts you're working with. You should confirm a fact grounded in oral records, for example, by using oral verification methods.

The Personal Principle is concerned with inclusion and respect toward others; it holds that a fact should be checked with every person it involves, regardless of how the reporter originally reported it. And the Collaboration Principle holds that, although all facts need to be checked before they are published, the fact checker can and should collaborate with the people and communities who are the subjects of journalistic stories to determine how the facts pertaining to them will be checked.

Finally, the Power Principle calls for fact checkers to be mindful of the power that comes with being the arbiters of truth in journalism. As a fact checker, you should handle facts with care, think about relationships among people and communities, and treat all forms of knowledge as equally valid.

The Structure of the Guide

In Chapters Two and Three, we provide an overview of editorial fact-checking based on the methodology practised at The Walrus and established, historically, by The New Yorker. These two chapters contain everything you need to know in order to fact-check a straightforward work of journalism.

In Chapter Two, we explain the motivations for editorial fact-checking, outline the various editorial roles involved, and situate fact-checking within a publication's editorial process.

In Chapter Three, we provide instructions for the basic steps of editorial fact-checking, including isolating the facts in a story, gathering and preserving sources for the record, and suggesting corrections. We conclude by suggesting how journalists might modify these guidelines based on various practical constraints, such as the time restrictions of daily news.

After outlining the basic methodology, we spend the rest of the guide focusing on topics that previously published fact-checking guides have not covered: the cases where ethical and other considerations make straightforward fact-checking counterproductive. Throughout, we encourage readers to reconsider the limits of many of the guidelines established in Chapters Two and Three, while being guided by the principles listed above. The goal of these later chapters is to teach journalists to think critically about their practice, to prepare for the complications that may come up during editorial fact-checking, and to adapt their work to different situations while maintaining standards of accuracy, integrity, and transparency. We include quotes from the journalists, subject-matter experts, and community representatives who have informed our thinking on these issues. We also include a series of checklists and guidelines (throughout the guide but especially in Chapter Four) that can be used as handy resources for fact-checking particular types of stories.

In Chapter Four, we examine the role that official documents, digital sources, data and statistics, oral history, research expertise, and scientific consensus play in editorial fact-checking. As we emphasize in this chapter, a fact checker should be ready to discuss, assess, and reconsider the authority of each source used to fact-check a particular story. An integral part of editorial fact-checking is the ability to understand why one source is more reliable than another on a particular topic. Thus, a fact checker should not default to established sources of authority without reasoned consideration, especially in the context of systemic injustice.

In Chapter Five, we address the relationship between language and accuracy. We argue that the division between the domains of the copy editor and the fact checker boils down to the relationship between the word and the world: a copy editor confirms spelling and addresses issues of style and grammar while a fact checker is responsible for ensuring that the right terminology is used and that it accurately reflects a source or community's reality.

Chapter Six turns to one of the most contentious topics in fact-checking: how to check lived experience. If fact-checking personal stories is approached insensitively, it can be harmful and offensive to sources; but, if fact-checking is avoided entirely, the resulting lack of verification can jeopardize the story and damage the credibility of its sources, author, and publisher. We argue that the pertinent question isn't whether lived experience should be fact-checked but rather how it can be fact-checked appropriately. The fact checker should always collaborate with the source, check for credibility if they can't check for truth, and think of fact-checking someone's personal story not as an act of skepticism but as a sign of respect.

In Chapter Seven, we focus on the fact checker's interactions with other people, especially those who have experienced harm. We discuss how a fact checker can give individual sources agency in the fact-checking process while maintaining standards of accuracy and precision, and we outline the kinds of accommodations that can and cannot be made for sources during fact-checking.

Finally, in Chapter Eight, we examine the role of power dynamics in the context of verification. We discuss journalists' responsibilities when navigating power imbalances between sources, between fact checkers and individual sources, and between fact checkers and communities. We encourage fact checkers to think of factuality as a practice more than as a goal and to think of their work as a way of engaging more relationally with sources and communities.

In the Appendices to this guide, we provide (A) guidelines for reporters who are working on stories that will be fact-checked according to the methodology outlined here and (B) a glossary of terms.

Acknowledgements

The Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide would not have been possible without the participation of our many consultants and advisers. We want to thank each of them for sharing their time, knowledge, and expertise.