On Wednesday, American Press Institute released three reports on fact-checking journalism as part of The Fact Checking Project. Here are a few details from the report, which you can read in full here:
– Fact checking increased by 300 percent between 2008 and 2012.
– Readers like rating scales, such as the Pinocchio scale from The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, but they’re not essential.
– While the majority of people polled had “a favorable view” of fact-checking journalism, partisanship did make a difference.
From the report:
First, people who are less informed, educated, and politically knowledgeable have less positive views of the format. The learning elects we observed in our study as a result of exposure to fact-checking content were also somewhat less among participants with lower political knowledge. Fact-checking is also viewed more favorably by Democrats than Republicans, particularly among those with high political knowledge at the conclusion of a political campaign. Fact-checkers need to determine how to better attract interest from less knowledgeable and informed voters and to electively communicate with them. Likewise, it is important to minimize the partisan divide on the merits of fact-checking, which could undermine the perceived neutrality of the format and the credibility of its practitioners’ conclusions.
Previously: On Monday, Poynter’s Jim Warren wrote about the research.
Correction: An earlier version of this story linked a quote to the wrong research paper from this report. It has been corrected.