The Week in Fact-Checking is a newsletter about fact-checking and accountability journalism, from Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network & the American Press Institute's Accountability Project

Your top fact-checking stories of 2017

To get a sense of what the past couple of years have been like for fact-checkers, go no further than the dictionary.

In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary (among others) proclaimed “post-truth” the word of the year. In 2017, the honor was bestowed by Collins on the term “fake news.”

There are excellent reasons to be skeptical about both the “Word of the Year” construct and the terms themselves. “Post-truth” defines a phenomenon as old as human nature, while “fake news” has been misused more often than it has been accurately deployed.

The internet ruins everything — even end-of-year listicles.

Exactly one year ago, one of the largest technology companies in the world turned to fact-checkers for help with its fake news problem.

In 2017, fake news was everywhere.

The Week in Fact-Checking is a newsletter about fact-checking and accountability journalism, from Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network & the American Press Institute's Accountability Project

Should journalists say 'fake news'?

It’s been a big year for fact-checkers.

From the Knight Foundation awarding more than $1.3 million for fact-checking projects, to Facebook partnering with organizations like PolitiFact and Snopes to debunk online hoaxes, fact-checking was in the spotlight throughout 2017. And now more organizations are getting in on the action.

Corrections: A previous version of this article incorrectly translated two debunks from Raskrinkavanje. This story addresses a false claim about a woman breastfeeding a 12-year-old, not giving birth to one, as previously reported.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated the bill attempts to criminalize sharing fake news. In fact, it's aimed at criminalizing the use of bots to spread political misinformation. We have updated the headline and a few sentences in the body as a consequence. Apologies for the missing nuance.

If you use a social media bot to spread political misinformation in Ireland, go directly to jail, do not pass go and possibly pay €10,000.

Instead of pool days and part-time jobs, Sreya Guha spends her summers with lines and lines of code.

A senior at the Castilleja high school in Palo Alto, California, Guha has spent the past two summers creating software. Her most recent project, Related Fact Checks, lets internet users paste article links and search to see if that topic has been already debunked by a fact-checking organization.