Fact-checking has never been so necessary. This journalistic discipline that became popular in the 2000s involves verifying a statement, whether it comes from a public figure or anyone else. From Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine to climate change and contested elections: misinformation or disinformation (terms that we prefer to the overused "fake news") is spreading.
"Facts are under heavy attack," said Baybars Orsek, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, which brought together some 500 journalists and researchers for a congress in Oslo, Norway, at the end of June. Fact-checking appeared to be in full boom and also stricken with doubt at the same time.
The pandemic represented a Sisyphean task.
"Seeing anti-vax rumors shared 25,000 times a day and, despite our work, finding just as many the next day, was trying for my own mental health," said Tijana Cvjeticanin, a journalist from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Helplessness and an enraging sense of writing in a vacuum – both feelings shared by many fact-checking journalists.
"We have corrected a lot of false information. And yet, people still believe it. It's fascinating, but strange at the same time," said fact-checking journalist Alec Dent on the American website The Dispatch.
Confirmation bias
The limits to fact-checking's effectiveness are well known. One of them is psychological: confirmation bias. Faced with contradiction, perceived as unbearable, the human brain tends to ignore an argument that is too upsetting. It is a phenomenon that has something almost "religious" about it said Alec Dent, commenting on Trump supporters' stubbornness over the "stolen" election claim. This stubbornness is also often accompanied by a form of aggressiveness towards fact-checking journalists themselves, compared to a "ministry of truth" by their critics when they are not the target of defamation or harassment.
"But why don't they like us?" one fact-checker despaired, eliciting bitter laughter and tense smiles.
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