PolitiFact founder Bill Adair: fact-checking is necessary evolution in journalism
PolitiFact Australia, the first international licensee of U.S-based PolitiFact, Election FactCheck and the soon-to-be-launched fact-checking service at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) are gearing up for Australia’s federal elections later this year. Each service states that its mission is to hold political powers to account by establishing the veracity of declarations made by political figures. It’s the kind of objective you might think would endear such sites to any journalist keen to verify reports from the electoral trail. However, the apparent need for these sites has provoked questions about the state of journalism as a whole. Indeed, in an article for The Guardian journalist Bronwen Clune asks: are fact-checking sites indicative of the media’s failure to fulfil its primary function?