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Fact-checking organizations from six continents gathered at the London School of Economics on Monday for the start of the Poynter Global Fact-Checking Summit \u2013 the first-ever worldwide meeting of fact checkers.FCP logo \u201cThe world needs more clarions of fact-based truth,\u201d Poynter president Tim Franklin said in his welcoming remarks. And increasingly around the world, those clarions are not actually\u00a0journalists.<\/p>\n
While U.S. readers who follow politics are likely familiar with\u00a0PolitiFact<\/a>, the Washington Post\u2019s\u00a0Fact Checker<\/a>\u00a0and the Annenberg Institute\u2019s\u00a0FactCheck.org<\/a>, only about half of the participants in the two-day summit fit that sort of fact-checker profile.<\/p>\n Others fall into the non-governmental organization category, like the UK\u2019s\u00a0FullFact<\/a>which conducts fact checks on journalists as well as politicians. Some are from the tech industry, like Amr Sobhy of Egypt\u2019s\u00a0MorsiMeter<\/a>\u00a0and John Pettus of Silicon Valley startup\u00a0Fiskkit, Inc.<\/a><\/p>\n Also at the meeting were representatives of the Omidyar Network and the National Endowment for Democracy, both of which helped sponsor the summit and have\u00a0supported fact checking worldwide. Other sponsors are\u00a0the Ford Foundation, Duke Reporters\u2019 Lab, and craigslist founder Craig Newmark\u2019s craigconnects.<\/p>\n What\u00a0attendees\u00a0do have in common, if the opening day of the summit is any indication, is an intense passion for taking apart factual distortions \u2013 or, in some cases, flat-out\u00a0lies \u2013 correcting and distributing them in a factual\u00a0form.<\/p>\n That passion led Matteo Agnoletto to use his graduation money to launch Italian fact-checking site\u00a0Il Politicometro<\/a>; and Margo Gontar to put her cherished music career on hold to co-found the Ukrainian\u00a0StopFake.org<\/a><\/p>\n The people gathered at the renowned London research university \u201care true believers,\u201d said keynote speaker Neil Brown, editor and vice president of the Tampa Bay Times, home of the Pulitizer prize-winning PolitiFact and now\u00a0PunditFact<\/a>. \u201cFact-checking is not a novelty. It\u2019s here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n But Brown acknowledged \u201cthe fragility of some of these operations\u201d mainly outside the U.S. Several participants discussed their shoestring budgets, endless workload and dependence on volunteers.<\/p>\n \u201cCrowd-sourcing\u201d information through\u00a0social media and fact-checking web sites is one way to wrangle bad facts, according to several organizations.\u00a0Africa Check<\/a>\u00a0invites readers to submit their own fact checks to be studied and vetted by staffers.<\/p>\n And to help fact-check live public speeches and debates, Argentina\u2019s\u00a0Chequeado<\/a>uses both experts and volunteers \u2013 40 of them at the last event. Watch their behind-the-scenes video of a fact check at a recent presidential speech.<\/p>\n![\"Untitled\"](\"https:\/\/zastone.ba\/app\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Untitled1.jpg\")
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