A look at how fact checking stared at American magazines and has spread and evolved over time. By Craig Silverman of RegretTheError.com.

1. The history and current
state of fact checking in 15
minutes or less*
*Go ahead and time me, fact checkers

2. In the beginning...
“Any bright girl who really applies herself to
the handling of the checking problem can
have a very pleasant time with it and fill the
week with happy moments and memorable
occasions” — Edward Kennedy, Time (1920s)

3. Magazines Catch On
30s to 70s
• New Yorker, Esquire, New York, The Atlantic,
Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek etc. add checking
departments.
• Closed process
• Job was a stepping stone

4. Watchdogs Emerge
• Accuracy in Media, 1969
• FAIR, 1986
• Media Research Center, 1987
(NewsBusters)
• Honest Reporting (2000), CAMERA (1982)
• Media Matters for America, 2004

5. Emergence of
Dedicated Checking
Orgs
• FactCheck.org, 1993
• PolitiFact, 2007

6. Decline of Magazine
Checking Depts.
• Newsweek eliminates checkers, 1996
• Fortune, 1997
• Cutbacks and outsourcing hit other
publications

8. Weaponization of
Checking
• “We can fact check your ass” — Ken Layne
• Rathergate
• Blogs + crowdsourcing = new, collaborative
checking

9. Fetishization of
checking

10. New Players, New
Technology
• Report An Error Alliance/Fact Check box
• Hypothes.is
• MediaBugs
• NewsTrust/TruthSquad
• Storyful
• SwiftRiver
• Truthy
• WikiFactCheck

11. Future of Fact
Checking?
• Open, collaborative systems
• Mixture of human and machine intelligence
• Need new tools, and to spread skills/
training
• Will still be used for partisan purposes,
which means more noise and clutter in the
space

12. One View
“In 20 years, I think we will have figured out how
to identify quality and credibility among the
thousands and thousands of news sources
vying for some of my attention ... Along those
same lines, my news tools will fact-check every
news story I read, highlighting mistruths,
mistakes, bias, etc., and providing citation links
to back up highlighted problem areas in the
content.”— Steve Outing