6. Fact-Checking Lived Experience

Journalism about lived experience is often a challenge for fact checkers. Traditional fact-checking practices, which prioritize rigour, detached investigation, and skepticism, can seem ill-suited to meet the goal of verifying statements without perpetuating problematic injustices. Done wrong, fact-checking someone's personal experience can be offensive or even be the cause of secondary victimization; the person may feel that the validity of their experience is being questioned or downright rejected. But, done right, fact-checking is a sign of respect, collaboration, and protection.

Although fact-checking will not always be a comfortable or particularly easy process for someone whose lived experience is being reported on, they should always understand the purpose and nature of the fact checker's work, and fact-checking should never put them in danger or be the cause of trauma; this is what we mean when we say that fact-checking should avoid causing or perpetuating harm.

For any statement about someone's lived experience, the internal facts are about that person's experience, and the external facts are about anyone or anything mentioned in their telling of their experience. The internal facts need to be checked with the source during fact-checking to ensure that the source is accurately represented (including personal word choice, as previously touched on in Chapter Five), and often the external facts need to be corroborated with additional sources to ensure that others are accurately represented.

A lack of verification of external facts can lead to substantial errors—not because the source has lied about their experience or misremembered details (though memory is certainly fallible) but because the publication did not hold the source's story to the same standards of accuracy, transparency, and integrity to which they hold other statements they publish. It is the journalist's responsibility to ensure accuracy. Therefore, as we emphasize below, the question isn't whether lived experience should be fact-checked but rather how it can be fact-checked appropriately.

In the chapter after this one, we will expand on the fact checker's interactions with people who have experienced trauma, including how to communicate with sources and conduct fact-checking interviews in a trauma-informed manner. But, first, in this chapter, we provide guidelines for verifying and corroborating any story of lived experience, regardless of whether it involves trauma. We outline the editorial process involved, offer a general methodology, and conclude by considering the special case of memoirs. The guidelines we propose can be summarized as follows: (1) collaborate with the person whose story is being told; (2) understand why you're using the sources you're using; (3) check for credibility if you can't check for truth; and (4) think of fact-checking someone's personal story not as an act of skepticism or invalidation but rather as a sign of respect.

The Importance of Reporting Accurately on Lived Experience

Reporting on lived experience is an essential part of journalism, particularly when journalists aim to amplify the voices of marginalized communities or of people who have experienced harm or injustice. A story of lived experience includes what happened to someone, how they felt about it then, how they feel about it now, and what it means to them. It often includes personal information that only they have the factual authority to speak on. But it also includes external facts about the world in which they live.

In this chapter, we understand lived experience as something personal and often politicized. While everyone's experiences count as lived experience, of course, most people whose testimonies are labelled as such by journalists are treated this way because they have not had the opportunity to record their experiences in more formal ways—likely due to exclusion from official record-producing institutions such as mainstream media, academic research institutions, and government services. For example, due to a variety of access and safety reasons, someone who experienced police violence may not be able to file an official report establishing this fact, whereas the police officers involved likely have written notes from the encounter and will have filed an internal report about the altercation; they may even hold a press conference about the incident so that their version of events is distributed by media.

In this way, power dynamics come into play when defining lived experience. For the purposes of this chapter, we understand lived experience as belonging to people who do not have the power and resources to record their experiences in "official" ways, who have little motivation to lie, and who may feel that the resources of fact-checked journalism are not available to them because they have no "hard evidence" of what happened to them. We won't spend much time discussing how to fact-check the experiences of powerful people, not because this need not be done but because reporting on powerful people and holding them accountable is something journalists know how to do relatively well, and most of the principles already mentioned in this guide will help you to do just that.

What is the motivation for fact-checking stories of lived experience? From our perspective, doing so is a sign of respect. Journalists aim to reflect a person's story and truth as accurately as possible; the version of their story we publish should be as close to their understanding of events and the truth as we can get. Presumably, there's a reason why a source decided to speak to a journalist about their experience as opposed to posting about it on social media or simply discussing it with their friends. Whatever that reason, it likely includes the desire to have their story told accurately and authoritatively. Though there are sometimes dishonest sources (and fact-checking can indeed help to identify them, though not always), it's much more common for sources to simply misremember or forget details about the past. Getting the details right—no matter how small—shows a level of care and concern for everyone involved. Especially when the experience is sensitive or potentially contentious, fact-checking protects the most vulnerable sources from undue scrutiny and pushback.

We corroborate someone's personal account in order to strengthen it and ensure that no nuance or accidental error is missed—there's no reason we should treat lived experience as any less factual than other kinds of information.

I would advise a reporter to include people's lived experiences [in their journalism] but not to expect lived experience to be the only work that they do in gathering data for a story: their role as a reporter is to do other heavy lifting. That includes letting people's experiences stand as they are while also conducting research and engaging in other interviews that round out the work.

—Jackie Wong, Senior Editor, The Tyee

Some works of journalism focus on recounting someone's lived experience in depth—for example, an investigative feature about one university student's experience pressing charges against a peer for sexual assault, or an essay that describes trans people's experiences coming out to their parents. Other works of journalism may include someone's lived experience only in one or two phrases, as a way of contextualizing a broader issue—such as a short clip from a local fisherman about their experience of the decline of the local salmon population in a documentary about the fishing industry.

The guidelines provided in this chapter focus on the first kind of case—the more detailed, in-depth telling of lived experience—though they can in principle be applied to any situation. A single quote about someone's experience likely does not need to be fact-checked to the same extent as ten paragraphs on the same experience. It's up to the fact checker to decide how much they need to corroborate someone's story in the context of a particular piece, accounting for pragmatic considerations such as how central the source's lived experience is to the piece, whether anyone other than the source would be affected by a published inaccuracy, and what the consequences of such an inaccuracy would be.

Some statements about lived experience are grounded only in internal facts—for example, how someone felt when they woke up this morning. As we saw in the previous chapter, checking such facts is largely a question of confirming that the appropriate language is being used to describe them.

But most statements are a mix of internal and external facts, including the chronology of the source's story and their assessments of external events. Take a statement describing how someone felt as they were writing a public response to a Supreme Court ruling, in collaboration with several colleagues, on behalf of an advocacy organization whose leaders believed that their legitimate objections were not taken seriously by the judge. In that case, you should corroborate all of the external details (about the Supreme Court ruling, the advocacy organization, the leaders' feelings, etc.) on top of checking the internal details about how the person felt as they were writing the public response.

Most importantly, any element of the story that concerns someone other than the person telling the story should be checked with the other person too. We call this the Personal Principle a fact should be confirmed with every person it involves, regardless of who told it to the reporter. Essentially, a person is an authoritative source on only their own experiences. That means the person to whom the story is attributed has final say on the internal facts of their lived experience but not necessarily on the external facts—and certainly not on those that would be considered internal to someone else. (Remember the Independence Principle and the Authority Principle: all facts should be confirmed with an authoritative source, and a source is always authoritative on its internal facts.)

Consider the phrase, David always gets his elbows caught in the sleeves when he tries to take off his sweater. This sentence could be checked in a variety of ways (by asking witnesses, for example), but there's one person it should always be checked with: David. Now consider the phrase, David used to always get his elbows caught in the sleeves when taking off his sweater, but recently, his partner taught him a new trick for slipping it off. Some of the facts in this sentence involve a new person: David's partner. The Personal Principle dictates that you confirm the relevant facts with them too. Of course, in this case, the fact is quite innocuous and not likely to lead to disagreements between sources—but the principle becomes more important the more significant the facts are.

Imagine that, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into abuse at a certain school several decades ago, someone recounts the abuse they suffered as a child, and they tell a story involving their younger sibling, who attended the same school. Regardless of how else the facts are checked (for this kind of story, the reporter will necessarily have conducted extensive research and cited a number of different sources), you must also check the relevant facts of the story with the sibling.

In practice, the Personal Principle pushes the fact checker to acknowledge the variability and multiplicity of human experiences. Different people may understand the same event differently, or their understanding may change over time, and that doesn't mean only one person at one time is "right" or telling the truth. Outside of journalism, other industries have learned to embrace this plurality. Sociologist Sarah Schulman describes her and her colleagues' research as "wanting to understand somebody's own interpretation of the world, which often does not correspond with facts of the system. We think that it is incredibly relevant to understand how somebody themselves has come to make sense of it, even if that is not the official account of others in their life." Similarly, fact-checking people's lived experience can be partly understood as trying to accurately represent the tapestry of human experience. Knowing as many versions of the truth as possible can help you piece together the bigger picture—which you also must corroborate with all the evidence available to you.

Rather than 'Did we get it right or wrong?' the question is: 'Do people feel like this story is something that reflects them?'

—Sarah Schulman, InWithForward

When a story that I'm working on centres around someone's lived experience of a system, it's their story and I am there to listen to them, to listen to the critical points that they're making, and then to verify the facts that they've given me and hold folks accountable who are relevant to the story that they're telling. They own their story...I feel like, when they've come to us and they have a story that's in the public interest, our job is to make sure that they feel heard and respected throughout, and if they don't feel like that, then we've done them a disservice.

—Brielle Morgan, freelance journalist

Just because you're upholding the Personal Principle by reaching out to everyone who is related to a particular fact, that doesn't mean you need to subsequently give everyone's perspective equal weight in your assessment of whether a correction is necessary. The reporter has already decided whom to interview and quote about a certain fact; all you are doing as a fact checker is making sure that you at least know of potential disagreements and can determine whether anyone else's perspective should be acknowledged. You want to be confident that, once the story is published, no one will be able to object to it on purely factual grounds. The published story should present facts in a way that does not unfairly exclude even the possibility of someone else's experience.

On the other hand, in the case of disagreements, you don't need to (and sometimes shouldn't) decide for yourself that one person's truth is more accurate than another's; you can always suggest that the reporter present differing accounts of an event side by side if they seem equally authoritative and credible.

If multiple people can confirm that they have seen David struggling with his sweater, but David disagrees, you and the reporter will get the best (and most accurate) sense of the situation by talking not only to David but also to people who know him. David may simply understand the situation differently than most—it's up to you (and the reporter) to see how reasonable varying interpretations are, if and when they do come up, and you may end up suggesting a correction such as: Multiple people close to David agree that he often gets his elbows caught in the sleeves when he tries to take off his sweater, and indeed many of David's sweaters have tears along the sleeves, though David denies facing any such difficulties while undressing. You could even suggest including a new quote from David, explaining why he thinks so many people misjudge his sweater-removal methods.

We should be willing to capture and express nuance within a story and understand that people are going to have different experiences within the same situation or experience the same space differently. It's important to acknowledge people's power dynamics and the biases they may be bringing into those accounts while at the same time honouring their experience as they've described it. This is not an endorsement of "both-sides" journalism or printing provable falsehoods from one side and treating them as equal to actual facts from the other, but when people have good-faith differences in perspective, there's a way to capture those nuances responsibly within a story by including context. That said, when there's a clear injustice, we are much more likely to err on the side of prioritizing the perspective of more marginalized folks.

—Ashton Lattimore, Editor-in-Chief, Prism

As we've seen over and over again, people in positions of power, especially perpetrators of harm and violence within marginalized communities (like state authorities, police, and other arms of the criminal legal system), often have an incentive to mischaracterize and lie about their conduct. It is important to counter what often happens in mainstream media and to give marginalized voices more space in our reporting and more quotes...It also means not simply regurgitating the press releases of state-sanctioned sources. At Prism, we do give more room to the voices of migrants, workers, survivors of violence, incarcerated folks, and other marginalized people because it's our responsibility as a BIPOC-led newsroom to shift how mainstream (or white-led) newsrooms function when they're beholden to capitalist interests and maintaining power structures in their favour. Our fact checker ensures that our sources' quotes are accurate and that we did our due diligence in asking for, or including, one quote or comment from the people, companies, or structures that are being reported on.

—Lara Witt, Editorial Director, Prism

Accommodating lived experience in fact-checked journalism boils down to reasoned flexibility. Someone's lived experience may never line up perfectly with others' or with the external facts, but that's not necessarily a reason to reject them from the world of journalism. We do not mean to imply that journalists should never publish anyone's story until we can prove it independently; rather, we should never publish something until we've at least tried our best to corroborate it, found reason to consider it credible, and adhered to the Personal Principle. If we do that and make our efforts clear in the piece, we can likely go forward with publishing the story in question. It's also acceptable to publish some parts of a story while not including other parts that couldn't be checked or that were the subject of serious disagreement, as long as they were not integral to the story. But, if someone's story cannot be verified or even vetted for credibility, then no part of it can be published as fact-checked journalism. This doesn't make their story any less worthy of being communicated in another form (such as a work of art or literature).

Editorial Process

As we have emphasized in the first chapters of this guide, the reporter is the first person responsible for the accuracy of the work of journalism they create. During their reporting, they will have conducted the necessary research to verify a source's lived experience, with their informed consent. They will also have told the source about the requirements of fact-checking, including the possibility that the fact-checker will conduct further research to corroborate the source's story. Ideally, this information will all be included in the research package you receive, so it won't require much additional work on your end when you start fact-checking.

If the necessary conversations have occurred and you are satisfied with the sources the author has provided for an account of lived experience, you can begin fact-checking directly. If not, and if you think you'll have to do additional research yourself, you should consult with the reporter, the handling editor, and/or the head of research before getting started. That way, you can ensure that your fact check of the lived experience aligns with the publication's standards and any arrangements the reporter may have previously made with the source.

More than anything, what we've been learning is that it doesn't work to have a blanket policy about fact-checking. Not to say we don't have any standards, but every story really needs a specific moment where we are meeting as a group and where the editor and reporter and producers talk about what we need to do, why we are making the choices we're making, why we are approaching the people we are, and why we aren't approaching others. It's really hard to standardize that across stories.

—Liana Simstrom, Supervising Producer, Enterprise Storytelling Unit, NPR

Generally, it's up to the publication to set its fact-checking standards, and publications' policies tend to vary widely when it comes to lived experience. While we believe in rigorous verification, what's most important is that the standards, whatever they are, are clear to the source and to readers; that they remain consistent and well-reasoned; and that they do not put the source, or anyone else involved in the story, in harm's way.

As mentioned, avoiding harm does not mean avoiding discomfort; fact-checking need not always be a comfortable or particularly easy process for someone whose lived experience is being checked, but they should always understand and feel respected by the fact checker's work, and it should never put them in danger or be the cause of trauma. Briarpatch, for example, does not check immigration status as a rule, but they are transparent about it with their readers and sources, and they are willing to accept the consequences of not doing so by issuing detailed corrections when necessary.

A lot of mainstream outlets would ask a source for proof of their immigration status before they publish an article about the source's immigration status. At Briarpatch, that's something that we do not want to do. We know that many people with precarious immigration statuses justifiably fear being deported if they provide those documents to the media. Undocumented people—by definition—do not have documents that prove that they are a citizen of a particular country. We think that requiring proof of immigration status would be a huge barrier to people telling their stories in our publication. So we're not going to do that. We're not going to put up the same kind of barrier that so many social services do, that are designed to bar undocumented people from accessing those services.

What we can commit to doing for our readers is continuing to check other facts in the story that do not involve asking for documents that could get sources deported. What we will always commit to is being transparent with our readers when we make a mistake. And readers will have to trust that we'll be honest about mistakes that we've made and that we're not intentionally misleading them, even though we are choosing not to fact check as invasively as we possibly could.

—Saima Desai, Editor, Briarpatch

Being transparent about what exactly was or wasn't directly corroborated in a published story allows readers to make an informed decision about how to interpret information in the story. The editorial team may sometimes decide to disclose, in the text of a story, information about sourcing decisions made during the reporting or fact-checking processes.

Usually, corroborating sources for lived experience do not need to be cited explicitly—for example, even if you spoke to a source's close friend to corroborate their account of trauma, you typically don't need to say you did so in the published story. But, other times, it is more important to mention explicitly how a fact was corroborated—for example, if you agreed to check someone's medical diagnosis by speaking with their family instead of by looking at medical records. Whenever you think sourcing decisions are important or relevant to readers, you should suggest including them in the story.

Throughout the fact-checking process, it's important to remember the Collaboration Principle you are collaborating with the source to fact-check their story, not working against them. The interviewed source knows how to corroborate their own story best, and they are well positioned to offer you additional sourcing if needed, though the reporter may also have gathered some corroborating evidence independently. (Of course, power dynamics may affect how much you are willing to collaborate with certain sources compared with others in order to confirm a fact. See Chapter Eight for discussions of how to navigate power imbalances between sources.)

The first step is to contact the source, introduce yourself, and ask to schedule a fact-checking interview (as outlined in Chapter Three). If you think it will be a sensitive conversation, you may want to arrange a pre-fact-checking conversation, and you should refer to the guidelines for compassionate fact-checking in Chapter Seven. If you already know which sources you will use to check their story (because the reporter already gathered them), you should disclose that to the source at the beginning of your communication with them for the sake of transparency. In most cases, it is practical to fact-check with the gathered sources that have been provided to you first, before conducting the fact-checking call, in order to be as prepared as possible. This is especially helpful if you're fact-checking a substantial account of lived experience and not just a few light sentences or quotes. But this order of events may change if your source needs special attention and care, which often happens with stories that involve trauma or other sensitive topics. It's also advisable to speak to the source first, before corroborating details with people close to them, so that they won't be surprised if they hear about your work from others.

You should begin the fact-checking call by letting the source know that you are planning to check the "external facts" about their story, explaining why you need to do so, and asking them if they have any suggestions or preferences for how you go about doing so, given the constraints of fact-checking as we outline them below; not every suggestion will be possible to accept. It's important to emphasize that none of the additional details and sources used for corroboration will necessarily be included in the published story—they'll just be used in your records as evidence for the accuracy of the story that's printed.

If you already know that their account has been contested, you should not hide that from the source but instead include it as a point of discussion (the reporter should have already informed them about it and included those facts in the story—if they haven't, you can suggest their doing so in your corrections).

Working closely with the source in this way emphasizes the collaborative nature of the endeavour, gives them agency, and ensures that you are fact-checking their experiences appropriately—which is especially important if fact-checking with the wrong person could somehow harm the source. For example, if you are fact-checking a story about someone's experience filing a complaint of racial discrimination against their employer and they have not yet disclosed to their colleagues that they filed a complaint, it would be problematic to use their colleagues as corroborating sources without asking the subject first. Not only would these colleagues not know the information you're hoping to verify, but more importantly, you would be disrespecting the subject's autonomy by outing them, and potentially putting them in danger if the situation at work is extreme. (You can certainly ask to speak with their colleagues, and you will eventually have to try speaking with their employer and reading their filed complaint, but this should all be done with their informed consent.)

Once you have agreed on how to check the external facts of their story, you can move on to the internal facts, which should be checked with them directly. You can either conduct the fact-checking interview right away, arrange another time to speak once you've had a chance to conduct the corroborating research, or plan to break up the fact-checking call into several sessions touching on different topics.

It's reasonable to ask how to fact-check information where a primary source is a reporter's personal experience of witnessing or living through an event first-hand, but a better question is whose first-hand accounts get treated as valid and sufficient and whose don't. If a white reporter happens to be on a scene and witnesses an instance of racism or racial violence, for example, many editors are more likely to take their word for it and leave it at that than if a reporter of colour said they witnessed the same thing.

—Ashton Lattimore, Editor-in-Chief, Prism

When teaching interviewing, one of the things I told students was that people are going to tell you stories that you're going to have to verify, and this is one of the hardest conversations that you're going to have to have with a trauma survivor. Because you have to explain that, in journalism, we have processes for checking information, and it's important to say something like, 'My asking questions about verification does not imply doubt. I'm asking because we do have to verify that there's some consistency in the way these events unfolded.'

—Katherine Reed, Director of Education and Content, Association of Health Care Journalists

Methodology for Fact-Checking Lived Experience

Recall the Internal/External Fact Distinction. Lived experience involves two levels of verification:

1. Internal facts: Does the reporter's rendition of the story reflect the person's truth?
2. External facts: Does the person's story accurately reflect what really happened?

The following two sections provide guidelines for both levels of fact-checking. A fact checker should always strive to achieve the first level of accuracy, even if they can't determine the second—though achieving both is, of course, ideal. Confirming that something is strictly true can be extremely difficult when it comes to lived experience; what's most important regarding external facts is that you have done your due diligence to make sure that whatever the source has described is credible. But confirming the internal facts requires only a conversation with the source, which should always take place.

Here is an overview of the steps you should take to fact-check someone's lived experience. We have outlined the preliminary steps in the previous sections. In the following sections, we will outline the last five.

Checking the Internal Facts

To know whether the reporter's account of someone's story reflects the source's lived experience, you need to speak with the source and go through every pertinent detail with them. Remember the Personal Principle anything in the story that concerns someone should be fact-checked with them. While there may be other ways to corroborate the source's experience (such as personal records they may have kept), it's best to speak directly with them as well so that you can ask clarificatory questions and include any updates.

During the fact-checking interview, go through the story fact by fact—both the external facts and the internal facts—to ensure that the reporter's characterization of the source's experience sounds right to the source. (See Chapter Three for general guidelines on how to do this and document the call.) Any information that concerns the interviewed source, whether the reporter attributed it to them or not, should be checked with them.

If what the source says contradicts external sources or what they had told the writer previously, then you should gently bring that up during the call—not as an accusation of deceit but as an invitation to cooperate. You can tell them that you have a source with different information and ask if they were aware of that while emphasizing that you have not made any assumptions about their credibility or that of the other source. In order to address the discrepancy in the story, you need to know where the discrepancy originated and whether it can be rectified. They might respond by explaining why that conflicting source is inappropriate or not credible, or they might correct themselves, or you might simply conclude that there is no way to determine a single "fact of the matter" in that case.

It's important to have this kind of discussion with the source, both so that you can later explain the situation to the editorial team if needed and so that the source is aware of any correction or clarification you may end up suggesting to the reporter's account of their story.

Preserving the language someone uses to describe their experience is often crucial to ensuring the accuracy of the piece. Wherever word choice is relevant to the source's experience, make sure to explicitly fact-check those choices with the source during the call. For example, if a reporter writes that the source felt "upset" about something, make sure to repeat that word during the fact-checking call. The source may agree that they were generally unhappy but then clarify that they weren't upset but rather disappointed. Word choice can also be meaningful for a source's self-determination—for example whether to describe an act committed against them as racist, or whether to call them a survivor or a victim. As discussed in Chapter Five, when word choice is a matter of personal identity or self-understanding, we should defer to the source.

But, when language relates to the external world, it usually requires external verification—and we typically do not defer so categorically to the interviewed source during fact-checking. One example of this is the word diagnosis. If someone tells you that they have a medical condition, but they never received an official diagnosis, then you need to clarify in your corrections that this is an informal, personal diagnosis. That doesn't change anything about the medical fact in question (such as whether they are experiencing symptoms), but it does affect the language that can be used to describe it. For the sake of informed consent, be transparent with the source about these kinds of requirements (just as the reporter should have been before you).

Sometimes, an interviewed source can't or won't corroborate information in the piece during the fact-checking call. Whenever possible, a fact checker should respect people's agency over their own story and their right of refusal (see Chapter Eight), but the source should also understand that, if a fact can't be corroborated externally and they refuse to confirm it during the call, then it might not be published. In rare and exceptional cases, the fact may still be included in the published piece alongside a disclosure that it wasn't verified—but that decision should be made in conversation with the head of research (or, for publications without a head of research, whoever is in charge of the editorial team). You should never pressure a source to provide personal documentation, nor should your publication publish something that hasn't been fact-checked without, at the very least, acknowledging that in the piece.

Checking or Corroborating the External Facts

Points of verification allow you to corroborate the source's experience via additional sources (as much as is appropriate for the story), ensuring that the story's external facts are credible. Most (but not all) external facts should be corroborated; the level of corroboration you seek will depend on the focus of the story. If the piece is about someone's journey through the immigration system, then verifying details of their immigration status (in this case, perhaps asking for documentation) makes sense. If the piece is about their life as a painter and they mention in passing having received their citizenship in the late 1990s, asking for immigration documentation is likely unnecessary—but it would be reasonable to check that, for example, there wasn't a hiatus on granting citizenship at that time for some reason. The point is that, even if you don't directly corroborate external facts, you should work to assess their credibility.

The best strategy is to gather as much detail as possible about the story and then do background research to make sure things line up. Even if those details and sources aren't included in the published version, they can be helpful for corroboration. For example, if you're working on a story about cancer screenings and the reporter has included a short quote from a patient about how the screening process has been delayed by the pandemic, you likely don't have to ask for their medical records to confirm that they actually needed a cancer screening. But you could ask when their screening happened and where, to make sure there were no exceptional circumstances. Small details like this help to solidify the credibility of their story—and, in some cases, they can alert you to important red flags that would otherwise be missed.

Again, how you fact-check and the kind of corroboration you apply to a fact varies substantially based on the situation and the context of the story, including the considerations of authority and power dynamics mentioned in other chapters. As we discuss later on, for example, it would be inappropriate to rely on a police report alone to fact-check someone's account of police violence. But you still want to keep that report in your records in order to ensure that the small details, such as date, time, and location, line up with other sources.

There are stories that don't involve sensitive personal information or that involve the retelling of something that is very well and publicly documented. Those stories just don't require the same level of fact-checking and careful combing through, as, say, a story where someone is talking about a really personal, sensitive matter, where getting a fact wrong could really severely impact somebody's life, or where you're trying to uncover something that's going on right now, where there's limited information in the public sphere. Those kinds of stories absolutely necessitate a deeper and more involved fact-checking process.

—Liana Simstrom, Supervising Producer, Enterprise Storytelling Unit, NPR

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the lived-experience topics that typically come up during fact-checking and our advice for how to approach them.

1. Biographical facts

   Most of the time, you can take personal details about a source—such as their age, where they grew up, their sibling's name, etc.—at their word. But it's always a good idea to get as much detail as possible from the source during fact-checking. Where appropriate, you may use those details to help you verify the external facts. For example, if a source says they attended a specific high school, you should ask for that school's full name and then check that it really does or did exist and that it was in operation during the years in question—even if you don't check that they actually attended it. The more specific the source gets about the details in the story, the more specific the fact-checking.

2. Identity

   Identity is a complex case for fact-checking. The internal facts about someone's identity—namely the fact that they identify as they do—can and should be fact-checked with them. But the external facts about their identity are more difficult. Sometimes, they cannot be fact-checked; other times, they should not be fact-checked; and yet other times (more rarely), they really should be fact-checked. A fact checker may not be able to differentiate between these cases on their own, particularly when it comes to someone's claim of social identity, such as their race or ethnicity.

   As we discussed in Chapter Five, identity statements can be (roughly) separated into personal identity language (how someone thinks of themselves), social identity language (how the social group to which they belong refers to itself), and external facts (whether their identity claim is accurate). Personal identity is an internal fact that does not need to be corroborated with external sources. If someone is trans, for example, that identity certainly does not need to be "verified" externally using medical records or other such documents. (If the story in question is specifically about medical transitioning, however, and you've been given permission by the source to ask about their medical experience, then medical records may be appropriate—but they still aren't used to determine identity.)

   It's rarely a good idea to refer to institutional sources in order to verify someone's personal identity; you should check with them directly—or, if that's not possible, with people close to them, or in some cases with their personal social media profiles. You should never base a description of someone's sexual orientation or even their name spelling on what was included in a police report, for example.

   Social identity language, on the other hand, should be checked with community style guides or representatives—particularly if and when it conflicts with someone's personal identity language.

   Finally, identity statements may sometimes (though not frequently) require external corroboration—usually in cases where there is a chance that someone's identity claim could be false or mistaken. If a source identifies as being part of a certain First Nation, for example, and this fact is relevant to the story, then you may want to check that the First Nation in question does indeed recognize that person as a member. The source may show you their status card, put you in touch with friends or family members who can speak to their relationality within the community, or even show you their mother's published biography about her experience living on the local reserve. None of these sources are necessarily more or less authoritative; the important thing is that they are corroborating the Indigenous identity that the source in question is claiming.

   Remember the Power Principle: the way you fact-check someone's identity will be affected by considerations of the power dynamics between journalists, interviewed sources, and communities. Depending on the circumstance, journalists may take on more or less responsibility. (Especially relevant are the pragmatic considerations listed above: how central the source's lived experience is to the work of journalism, whether anyone other than the source would be affected by a published inaccuracy, and what the consequences of such an inaccuracy would be.)

   I think a very pointed concern is around identity. Okay, someone claims to be a Black person from Barbados, for example. Would people in Barbados see you as being, in any way, shape, or form, related to that claim, either by citizenship, ancestry, or whatever? I think the failure to answer those kinds of questions should raise red flags...We use identity claims to authenticate stories and narratives, [so] it is important to test [them]. By test, I mean that the identity claim cannot only rely on the person making it. It must be made in relation to others who would make the same claim. This is not a recipe for "both sides" but rather a demand for the ethics of who gets to speak for whom, who gets to be representative of which group.

   And this is particularly important because, for example, poor or queer or disabled Barbadians might have a very different perspective on, let's say, employment discrimination than a heterosexual, university-educated person who is also experiencing employment discrimination. Their issues might not be representative of the larger group even though [they are] often presented as if so. Testing the identity claim allows for the conversation and thus the information to be both broader and more specific. We get a better and more accurate story then.

   —Rinaldo Walcott, Director, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto 

   For Indigenous identity specifically, we know that people present themselves as Indigenous who aren't seen that way by the community, or present themselves as closer to an Indigenous community than they actually are. I was definitely hesitant earlier in my career to parse out someone's Indigenous identity, and quite honestly it wasn't until I was, I think, fooled or semi-fooled that I realized I had to learn to do it in order to do my job properly. So I started asking Indigenous journalists and sources and people what they thought about how a non-Indigenous journalist should navigate that. What I heard over and over again is that someone who is genuinely Indigenous is not going to be offended by that question, that among themselves, that's how people interact and relate, to say what their connections are. It should be totally above board to ask who your community is and how you're connected to that community. And I had one young woman in foster care tell me that she didn't know, but it was clearly genuine—and heartbreaking and sad—but she wasn't offended by the question. 

   Through this, I've come to realize that, with many communities generally, it's important to verify that someone is representative of the community they claim to represent. Often the "spokespeople" who are eager to connect with media aren't really the ones the community would choose, if it chose to interact with you. 

   —Denise Balkissoon, Ontario Bureau Chief, The Narwhal

3. Family stories and childhood memories

   Family stories are usually repeated over the course of a lifetime, even passed down for generations. Over so much time, details of a family story may change substantially. When fact-checking such a story (childhood memories among siblings, for example), you may not be able to find any external corroborating evidence—nor do you necessarily need much, depending on the nature of the story. But it's important to uphold the Personal Principle: and consult with all members of the family who are involved in the story—not so that you can determine the "truth" of the matter, necessarily, but so that you can make sure nothing overtly wrong or needlessly offensive will be published.

   When it comes to uncontroversial personal memories, little details, such as the colour of a car and the name of a neighbour, are often corrected during fact-checking. These details may seem minor, but they can also be significant for the people who are closest to those facts. When it comes to collective family memories that have been passed down over time, facts tend to be slightly exaggerated and misremembered. (Family stories can be thought of as a form of oral record, but they typically do not have the kinds of verification and collaboration processes that make oral records authoritative; see Chapter Four.)

   Testing the story of how your parents met, which you and your siblings have been told your whole lives, against external evidence—if any is available—may show that the timeline was slightly off or expose other such small discrepancies. In some cases, you may discover that the story is inaccurate in more fundamental ways—or even an outright fabrication. Family stories are often examples of how false narratives, repeated over time, can become historical fact (not necessarily intentionally). This is why it's important to try to corroborate information attributed to family stories in other ways, especially if the facts included are central to a work of journalism.

   In some cases, external verification is possible—for example, if the story was reported on in local newspapers at the time, or if other documentary traces of the events remain. Always uphold the Personal Principle and try to acknowledge people's versions of the story as well as the external sources.

   In July 1980, Esquire ran an article about the invention of the vibrator and interviewed its inventor, Tex Williams. He said he had come up with the vibrator because his wife at the time had trouble reaching orgasm. Ava Plakins, the checker working on the piece, called Williams's ex-wife to confirm the tale. "That son of a bitch!" the woman exclaimed. "Did he tell you that the reason I couldn't have an orgasm was because he was a premature ejaculator?" Plakins ended up getting the former couple to speak and resolve their issues. The published story included both of their points of view.

   —Craig Silverman, Regret the Error (2007)

   When it comes to more serious personal and family memories—such as stories of family abuse—then following the Personal Principle may be problematic: reaching out to the accused abuser may put others in danger. In these cases, follow the guidelines provided in the bullet point on "allegations of abuse, harassment, and discrimination" below as well as Chapter Seven.

4. Health

   Many ethical concerns are raised by journalists asking for medical records. Often, sources do not want to share this personal information with journalists or fact checkers, and it's not always necessary or appropriate to ask for them. But some medical details do need to be fact-checked, especially when they're central to the story the reporter is telling. What's important is that you collaborate with the source. They should understand why you need to corroborate their story, what exactly you're looking to confirm, and what their sourcing options are.

   The kind of sourcing you can use depends on the circumstance. Instead of using someone's medical file to confirm the details of their chemotherapy treatment, for example, you might use copies of invoices or receipts from the hospital, or you might speak with their doctor. They could also send you their file but black out any other information they would prefer not to share. The more detailed the story's information about someone's health situation, the less helpful it would be to confirm it with non-professionals, who may not know or understand the medical details.

   It's important not to automatically defer to someone's doctor to describe or confirm their medical condition; the interviewed source is still the first authority on their own experience of health. Problematic power dynamics often come up in cases of disability and mental health (see Chapter Eight), and while a doctor may be a helpful point of verification regarding medical information, they cannot tell you how a patient feels better than the patient can.

   If doctors haven't given people a diagnosis, I can't write definitively that they have specific medical conditions, because I'm not a doctor and cannot diagnose people based on symptoms they tell me they're experiencing. But I can choose to believe them when they tell me about their personal experiences and feelings about their health. Sometimes, I encounter people with disabilities or other medical conditions who distrust the media because they feel we only listen to their doctors and not to them. I don't think you can do a story where you're only trusting the word of doctors and not the word of patients as well. You need to do both.

   For example, I worked on a story about people experiencing symptoms of long COVID, and one woman I had interviewed had medical records of her pneumonia-like symptoms. But, in some of her medical records, doctors had written that she was likely "anxious" after she complained that she couldn't breathe, and they didn't believe she had long COVID...I knew that, if I was overly skeptical of the woman's experience, then I would only contribute to the way that the medical establishment had made her feel, and I also knew it was plausible that she could have long COVID but not be able to get an accurate diagnosis...

   My editors and I planned to write the story in a way that described what she said she was experiencing (which I had verified with people who lived with her), explain the doctor's responses and what her current diagnoses were, and make it clear that getting a diagnosis can be tricky and many patients aren't believed about their symptoms. This gives readers the full context of the woman's story and every piece of information that I knew to be true.

   —Amanda Morris, Disability Reporter, the Washington Post

5. Allegations of abuse, harassment, and discrimination

   The Personal Principle is especially important for stories that involve allegations of conflict and abuse. If someone in the story you're fact-checking is accusing someone else of something, you'll need to check the details of that accusation with both of them. This is partly for legal reasons—to help defend the publication and its journalists against libel lawsuits—but not exclusively. It's also just good practice.

   Any source who is making allegations against a person or institution should know ahead of time that the reporter will have to reach out to anyone named or identifiable in the story (see Chapter Eight). That way, long before fact-checking begins, the source can make an informed decision about whether to participate. They may also decide not to identify the accused (which means withholding their name, personal information, and any other identifying details). But just because you are fact-checking a story with every person involved does not mean the published story will give every voice equal weight—what's important is that every person is consulted and given the chance to speak, not that they are treated as equally credible.

   Some exceptions to the Personal Principle can be made if there is sufficient available documentation and reporting on the allegations to cite in your fact-check. If reaching out to someone may put others in danger, there's certainly good reason to reconsider the principle. But those cases are rare, and it's better to reach out to everyone whenever possible.

   The external facts of allegations should also be corroborated with external sources as much as possible. Many journalists, for example, use points of verification to fact-check sources' allegations of sexual assault and harassment before publication. Reporters will collaborate with sources to fact-check their stories by reading their old diary entries, speaking with their therapists and doctors, digging up old police reports, reaching out to their friends and family, and more.

   Most of the time, points of verification cannot confirm that the alleged abuse or discrimination actually took place, but they can confirm corroborating details and the credibility of the source. For example, can you verify that the person was where they say they were when the incident took place (perhaps by taking a picture of their agenda, looking through social media photos, or speaking with event organizers)? If they say they reported their experience to others at the time, can you speak with those people to confirm the timeline?

   It's tricky because you want to give [people being accused of abuse in a story] the same chance to air their denial and give whatever justification that they want to give. But it has to be weighed differently, and a lot more context has to be given in that case.

   —Meghan Herbst, Research Editor, Wired

   You don't want to build an entire story on one person's claim of harassment if you have no additional evidence of that. But we also have tons of evidence from society that this is a thing that happens, that people are harassed by the police, especially people of colour. So I think that a specific person's claim can't exist in a vacuum in a story, but it can be one piece of a broader set of evidence. Just like for any other story, you should do the reporting to corroborate a claim. Say we have someone who says that, in 1990, the police did X to her. You can also look for the police report, or other witnesses, or people whom she may have shared that story with when it happened. Can we at least prove that there is an interaction between the police and this person using other sources? Or, if not, we can write into the story both her account and the fact that there's no other record. There are ways to add context respectfully and still do our jobs.

   —Brooke Borel, Articles Editor, Undark

6. Marginalized populations

   Accommodations can and should be made for people who are in some way marginalized—for example, folks who are unhoused or who use drugs—especially because it can be difficult to get back in touch with them during fact-checking. You may need to get creative about how you communicate and devote more time to fact-checking such stories in order to make sure they're done with care.

   Here's an example from a fact checker working at a magazine. The fact checker was hoping to speak with a source who was unhoused and living in a different city. The source didn't have access to a phone or computer and was therefore very difficult to reach. With the permission of the head of research, the fact checker sent the reporter the list of facts that needed to be verified; the reporter, who lived nearby, arranged to meet up with the source to go over the fact-checking questions, and recorded the exchange to share with the fact checker. (Another, preferable option would have been for the reporter to call the fact checker with the source and then step aside while the fact-checking call was conducted.)

   It can be difficult to check external details about someone's lived experience of houselessness, drug use, and refugee status, in part because of the fact that documentation is not always available for people in these situations. Instead of looking for paper sources, we advise speaking with peers and other community members who are close to the source in question.

   Be aware that, by searching for particular details or documents, you can harm sources and even put them in danger. For example, you should not call immigration authorities or a police department to confirm that someone in the country has not been granted legal status and is working "under the table," nor should you call someone's landlord to confirm that they sometimes use drugs at home. Again, you should always consult with the source before seeking external sourcing for their lived experience.

   It can be extremely difficult to prove or disprove someone's lived experience of marginalization, and it can be offensive and harmful to try to do so. If someone says that they are marginalized and that sounds credible to you in the context of the story, you don't need to do more, fact-checking wise, than confirm the fact with them. But, if they present specific, detailed examples, then you should check those external facts much like we described above.

   When someone says they are marginalized, they mean they are a member of a group that's oppressed on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, etc. There's plenty of publicly available research to back up the claim that racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, etc. have real and detrimental impacts on individuals, which a fact checker can and should reference. (Though fact checkers should be careful that a source is not claiming "reverse discrimination"—for example, a white person claiming they experience "reverse racism." One can similarly find plenty of research to show that "reverse discrimination" does not exist.)

   So then it really becomes a matter of fact-checking the source's identity—their claim that they are part of the marginalized group—more than fact-checking their claim that the group is a marginalized one. If a source provides specifics about their experience of marginalization—for example, accounts of abuse, harassment, discrimination, or microaggressions—then fact checkers can and should check those accounts.

   —Saima Desai, Editor, Briarpatch

   Borderless makes sure to not specify a person's immigration status unless it is relevant to the story. Immigration laws are complex, and our storytelling format doesn't state as a fact that someone has violated the law without sufficient attribution. Our narratives seek to provide relevance and context and avoid being careless with language. We strive to be specific whenever possible in describing an individual's status by using phrasing like, "She entered the country to attend college but overstayed her student visa" or, "He was brought here as a child by his parents, who entered the U.S. without a visa."...Fact check in a respectful manner, keeping in mind that an immigrant may not be able to share their whole story with you due to immigration proceedings or concerns for their safety.

   —"Best Practices," Borderless Magazine

7. War, violent conflict, and natural disasters

   Verifying people's stories of war, violent conflict, or natural disasters can be challenging or impossible—there may be no authoritative evidence to corroborate the details of their experiences. But as in other cases, there are often ways to check the credibility of people's claims, even if the details cannot be directly confirmed.

   Particularly when the journalist has reported on people and events located far away from them, adherence to the Independence Principle during fact-checking is key: make sure that the different non-authoritative sources used to check a fact (or to confirm its credibility) are truly independent of one another.

   Two interesting examples of the fact-checking challenges of reporting on conflict zones come from the Toronto Star and the New York Times.

Nine Steps to Fact-Checking Lived Experience

• Step One: Identify a case of lived experience in a story.

• Step Two: Separate the internal and external facts that need to be checked.

• Step Three: Assess the sources provided by the reporter for those facts in the research package.

• Step Four: Consult with the editorial team about the best approach and ask about any missing sourcing or sensitivities. When appropriate, practise compassionate fact-checking (as outlined in Chapter Seven) and consider proposing fact-checking accommodations.

• Step Five: Conduct a pre-fact-checking conversation with the person whose lived experience is being checked. Discuss the external facts that require corroboration and the requirements of the Personal Principle.

• Step Six: Using gathered and interviewed sources, check or corroborate all external facts.

• Step Seven: Conduct the fact-checking call with the person whose lived experience is being checked. Check the internal facts with them and bring up any external facts that you couldn't confirm. Talk through any substantial corrections you think you will suggest.

• Step Eight: Address any external facts that remain after the call.

• Step Nine: Suggest corrections and clarifications to the story while prioritizing accuracy, integrity, and transparency.

Fact-Checking Memoirs

A fact checker should generally treat a reporter's personal story or memoir the same way they would treat any source's account of their personal experience. The main difference is that the fact checker doesn't have to conduct an interview with the reporter to verify how they have described their own experiences—they of course already know and approve of what will be published, since they created it.

So the internal facts are already taken care of. The checking of external facts, however, should be conducted as described above. The Personal Principle applies to memoirs just as much as it applies to sources' lived experience. The fact checker should reach out to people cited, named, or otherwise identifiable in the piece, even if the author knows those sources personally (for example, a family member, friend, or colleague). When it comes to memoirs, the main job of the fact checker is to corroborate the external facts and make sure that no one involved in the story will be surprised by what is published, nor will they be able to object to it on purely factual grounds.

The purpose of fact-checking memoirs is not to question the reporter's memories or personal truth; the intention is to publish the story while upholding verification standards, journalistic integrity, and respect toward every person involved. That means making sure the version of events we publish is at least credibly accurate.

However, some special considerations may lead the publication to reconsider its approach to fact-checking memoirs, particularly if the memoir is about an experience of trauma or is written by a member of a marginalized community. These considerations are closely related to the issues of power dynamics discussed in Chapter Eight; an author writing about their own experience of marginalization may not be able to provide the corroboration typically demanded by a fact checker.

As always, you should adhere to the Collaboration Principle. Instead of declaring that certain memoirs cannot or should not be fact-checked, ask what can be fact-checked and how. Some possible accommodations for fact-checking memoirs include allowing the reporter to participate more actively in the fact check, sending parts of the memoir to people included in the story so that they can verify the facts themselves, and deciding not to fact-check it at all (and including a note to readers explaining that decision). These are not decisions that you can or should make on your own; the responsibility lies with the publication and head of research. But, as you discuss possible accommodations, your priorities should be to uphold the Personal Principle, watch for any legal sensitivities, and protect the author of the story from serious inaccuracies.

Memoir is special and delicate. If someone has already relived their trauma in the writing process, asking them to do that again could definitely be insensitive. A lot of this should start with the assigning editor, who should have told them what fact-checking is and entails from the beginning so it's not a surprise for them. The editor should get them to gather any documented proof ahead of time, if there are things on paper that you can go through at all, which reduces the amount that they have to interact with you. 

Then, deciding how far to go is a bit of a gut check—Do you believe the person 100 percent? Does your editor believe them? Do you have reason to believe that their community believes and supports them in how they're framing their story? Can you check with friends or family members versus the writer directly? If you're willing to skip over checking one fact box for the sake of sensitivity, ask yourself why. Is it because you really believe them and genuinely feel demanding proof is inappropriate? If it's actually because someone might be mad, that's not a good reason.

Again I just come back to the idea that what's fair, particularly to a marginalized or misrepresented community, is to tell their story accurately and well and not contribute to whatever misinformation is out there about them. 

—Denise Balkissoon, Ontario Bureau Chief, The Narwhal

To me, memoirs seem subtly different from reported pieces. There's a difference between a writer writing about their own experiences and a reporter asking their subjects about their experiences. I mean, there's an act of trust in assigning a story. And I think if you can't trust the writer enough to think that they've had cancer or whatever, then maybe it's not something you assign to begin with. I think at a certain point, more stuff has to be "on author" than maybe is traditionally allowed if you want a certain kind of memoir to be published, because so many details of your life are not documented by an outside source. Most experiences you have in life you're not going to be able to document. So it does seem different than having a writer interview subjects, which kind of feels like there are two levels of trust that you need to establish.

—Nicholas Hune-Brown, Senior Editor, The Local

When it comes to memoirs, a fact-checker should do everything they can to understand the decisions the reporter made for a piece. Why did they write what they wrote, and structure it the way they did? A fact-checker won't be able to make appropriate fact-checking decisions or decide what is appropriate about sourcing and verification until they can answer the "why" question.

In fact-checking, the idea is to trust, but verify. And for a memoir, the scale might tip between trusting and verifying depending on what I've written in my memoir and how reasonably the facts could be checked. Memories are never exact. And there's a natural hesitation and maybe discomfort about the idea of a fact-checker poking inside your life, like the dentist with that little tool on your teeth. So [when writing my memoir], I was deliberately vague about things I had only hazy recollections of. If I didn't know something for sure, or couldn't figure out ways to confirm it, then it didn't make it into the final draft.

—Stephen Trumper, magazine editor, writer, and instructor