International Fact-Checking Network Holds First Meeting in Three Years, Event Doubled in Size

US media is report­ing on a meet­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Fact-Check­ing Net­work (IFCN). Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post report, with more than 500 par­tic­i­pants from 69 coun­tries, the gath­er­ing was twice the size of the last in-per­son Glob­al Fact sum­mit in Cape Town three years ago:

June 29, 2022 Mem­bers of fact-check­ing orga­ni­za­tions from around the globe met last week for their first in-per­son con­fer­ence in three years, con­fronting a world awash in base­less claims pro­mot­ed by politi­cians and even gov­ern­ments and increas­ing­ly embraced by recep­tive audi­ences. The tor­rent of false infor­ma­tion, such as the elec­tion-fraud claims that led to the assault on the U. S. Capi­tol, Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion about the inva­sion of Ukraine and pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic asser­tions about the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, has emerged despite the aston­ish­ing growth of the fact-check­ing move­ment. In 2021, there were 391 active fact-check­ing projects, accord­ing to an annu­al cen­sus by the Duke Reporters’ Lab, up from 168 in 2016. With more than 500 par­tic­i­pants from 69 coun­tries, the gath­er­ing was twice the size of the last in-per­son Glob­al Fact sum­mit in Cape Town three years ago. In 2014, some three dozen fact-check­ers met for the first time in Lon­don at a small col­lege class­room, hop­ing to spark greater glob­al coop­er­a­tion. That meet­ing led to the cre­ation of the Inter­na­tion­al Fact-Check­ing Net­work (IFCN), the umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion that is housed at the Poyn­ter Insti­tute. “Our col­lec­tive trust in reli­able and author­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion is being attacked by peo­ple in pow­er,” said Bay­bars Orsek, direc­tor of IFCN, when he opened this year’s four-day con­fer­ence on Wednes­day. “Their manip­u­la­tion of truth makes peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble to bad actors cap­i­tal­iz­ing on their lack of access to qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion for their own ben­e­fits. Auto­crat­ic gov­ern­ments and strong­men around the world are fol­low­ing sim­i­lar play­books to cen­sor free speech and dis­sent under the name of fight­ing against ‘fake news.’”

Read the rest here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has exten­sive­ly cov­ered the role of fact-check­ing con­cern­ing glob­al influ­ence operations.