The Watchdog Role of Fact-Checkers in Different Media Systems

Abstract

The article aims to capture the diversity of emerging practices in fact-checking by exploring, on the one side, journalists’ self-perception of the watchdog role they believe to perform and, on the other, the effective occurrence of such a role in different media systems. Data regarding the perception of the watchdog role stem from the Worlds of Journalism Survey, whereas evidence concerning the presence of the watchdog function derives from a content analysis of 2,792 fact-checks published by FactCheck.org (United States), Pagella Politica (Italy), Correctiv (Germany), and Lupa (Brazil). While fact-checkers working for Correctiv rarely addressed declarations by political agents, those contributing to FactCheck.org prioritized verifying statements by former President Trump. In turn, Pagella Politica fact-checkers recurrently used assertive labels to stress the falsehood of public remarks, whilst “true” is the most used label in the Lupa case. There is correspondence between professionals’ conceptions about their role and the watchdog stance agencies perform in most cases. The manuscript also discusses how idiosyncrasies featuring each professional culture and specific traits of media systems influence fact-checkers’ work. Lastly, we hold that in some settings fact-checking may outline new frontiers for the notion of watchdog journalism, taking the journalistic voice to unprecedented levels of adversarialism.

Keywords:

• Fact-checking
• media systems
• news organizations
• online news
• political journalism
• role performance
• role perception
• watchdog journalism

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Edna Miola, Jackeline Teixeira, and the anonymous referees for their helpful criticisms and comments on earlier versions of this article. Dr. Marques expresses his deepest gratitude to the Michigan State University’s School of Journalism, especially Dr. Tim P. Vos, for the research opportunities provided in East Lansing.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See: https://www.dw.com/pt-br/rejei%C3%A7%C3%A3o-a-checagem-de-fatos-no-brasil-surpreende-facebook/a-44285129.

2 See: https://worldsofjournalism.org/data-d79/data-and-key-tables-2012-2016/..

3 See: https://www.factcheck.org.

4 See: https://www.pagellapolitica.it.

5 See: https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/lupa/.

6 See: https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/.

7 See: https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/.

8 See: https://reporterslab.org/global-fact-checking-up-50-percent/.

9 One example is the fact-check about the information disclosed by the Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany, published on September 9, 2017. See: https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2017/09/09/ist-doch-nur-satire/.

10 In Italy and Germany (countries with a parliamentary system), the parties comprising the governing coalition were considered government parties. In Brazil, parties participating in the government coalition or having ministers in office were considered as government parties. The American two-party system facilitates the identification of government and opposition parties.

11 Since agencies use slightly different labels in their respective languages, equivalent labels have been grouped together to allow for a comparison (see Appendix C).

12 To avoid a false impression of accuracy regarding percentages, we followed the rule that five or greater is rounded off to the next higher number.

13 See: https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/artikel-faktencheck/2017/09/06/joggen-im-sperrgebiet/.

14 See: https://correctiv.org/ruhr/faktencheck-ruhr/2017/07/10/wird-afd-mann-pretzell-doppelt-bezahlt/.

15 See: https://www.ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/know-more/the-commitments-of-the-code-of-principles.

16 See: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2021/04/juiz-determina-que-aos-fatos-exclua-checagens-que-mostram-desinformacao-da-revista-oeste.shtml.

17 See: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2020/08/folha-lanca-video-e-musica-em-campanha-pro-democracia.shtml and https://www.aosfatos.org/noticias/por-que-ninguem-esta-ganhando-com-o-assedio-judicial-contra-o-aos-fatos/.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Brazilian National Scientific Council (CNPq) (310724/2020-1) and by the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) (001 and 88887.478242/2020-00).