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Key links:
Primary website:
factcheck.org
Primary Twitter:
@factcheckdotorg

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website devoted to fact-checking claims made in the U.S. media.

Most of FactCheck.org’s content consists of rebuttals to what it considers inaccurate, misleading, or false claims made by and politicians. The site has also made a point of checking and correcting misleading claims made by various partisan groups. It describes itself as a “‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.”

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation, a communication-oriented grantmaking institution, and receives additional funding from the Flora Family Foundation. In 2010, the project began accepting donations from individual members of the public, largely in response to previous unsolicited offers of support from its readers.

FactCheck.org is one of several fact-checking projects that have emerged in the past few years, the most notable being the Pulitzer-winning PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersberg Times; The Washington Post’s Fact Checker project, launched in early 2011; CNN.com’s “Fact Check” feature on its Political Ticker blog; and USC professor Andrew Lih’s experiment with a fact-checking wiki.

Besides maintaining its website, FactCheck.org has also experimented with podcasting. It aired 44 episodes of “FactCheck Radio” before discontinuing the show in January 2011.

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Primary author: Megan Garber. Main text last updated: May 31, 2011.
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The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is a national foundation that funds a variety of causes, including journalism projects and organizations. The foundation was founded in 1950 by the Knight brothers, who owned the Ohio-based Knight Newspapers, which later became Knight Ridder. Since 1950, the foundation has invested nearly $400 million in journalism…

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