Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking.
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, started as a co-founder and investor in BuzzFeed and is now the executive chairman.
The Mirror Awards are annual journalism awards recognizing the work of writers, reporters, editors and organizations who cover the media industry. The awards were established by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2006.
Margaret M. Sullivan is an American journalist who is the former media columnist for The Washington Post. She was the fifth public editor of The New York Times and the first woman to hold the position. In that role, she reported directly to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. as the "readers' representative". She began her tenure on September 1, 2012, joining The New York Times from The Buffalo News, where she had been editor and vice-president. Her first column in The Washington Post ran on May 22, 2016. On Nov. 2, 2023, Sullivan was named the executive director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at the Columbia Journalism School.
BuzzFeed News was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strongly criticized, and the FinCEN Files. It won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, the National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Rob Fishman is an American entrepreneur and writer.
The Western Journal, previously known as Western Journalism, is an American conservative news and politics website based in Phoenix, Arizona. It was founded by political consultant Floyd Brown in 2008.
Fake news websites are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, fake news websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain. Such sites have promoted political falsehoods in India, Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines, Sweden, Mexico, Myanmar, and the United States. Many sites originate in, or are promoted by, Russia, or North Macedonia among others. Some media analysts have seen them as a threat to democracy. In 2016, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning that the Russian government was using "pseudo-news agencies" and Internet trolls as disinformation propaganda to weaken confidence in democratic values.
Fake news websites target United States audiences by using disinformation to create or inflame controversial topics such as the 2016 election. Most fake news websites target readers by impersonating or pretending to be real news organizations, which can lead to legitimate news organizations further spreading their message. Most notable in the media are the many websites that made completely false claims about political candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as part of a larger campaign to gain viewers and ad revenue or spread disinformation. Additionally, satire websites have received criticism for not properly notifying readers that they are publishing false or satirical content, since many readers have been duped by seemingly legitimate articles.
Kelly B. McBride is an American writer, teacher and commentator on media ethics.
World News Daily Report (WNDR) was a satirical fake news website purporting to be an American Jewish Zionist newspaper based in Tel Aviv and dedicated to covering biblical archeology news and other mysteries around the globe.
Mark Schoofs is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and was the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. He is also a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
The People's Voice is an American fake news website based in Los Angeles. The site was founded as Your News Wire in 2014 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and his husband, Sinclair Treadway. In November 2018, it rebranded itself as NewsPunch. Your News Wire was revived as a separate website in November 2020, and has continued publishing hoaxes similar to those in NewsPunch. In 2023, NewsPunch adopted its current name, The People's Voice.
Hurricane Shark and Street Shark are nicknames for several claimed instances of a live shark swimming in a flooded urban area, typically in the aftermath of a hurricane. For more than a decade, all media purporting to document such claims—most notably an image of a shark swimming on a flooded freeway—were debunked as fabrications. However, during Hurricane Ian in 2022, the Associated Press verified a video taken by Dominic Cameratta of a shark or other large fish swimming in flooded Fort Myers, Florida; one consulted expert concluded that the fish was "a juvenile shark" while another was unable to determine whether it was a shark. Both the re-emergence of the hoax in hurricane after hurricane and the eventual appearance of a plausible claim have been the subject of commentary and amusement; Daniel Victor of The New York Times described the Associated Press's findings as "like discovering Bigfoot is real".
True Pundit is a far-right fake news website known for publishing conspiracy theories. According to The Atlantic, True Pundit had "a well-known modus operandi, perfected during the 2016 U.S. election: running baseless stories and then asking leading questions". In 2021 True Pundit stopped publishing new content.
