Fact-Checking Development Grant Program

Michael Bolden is managing director for the John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University. Previously, Bolden served as the first editorial director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he managed Knight’s content operations across its core communities and main investment areas, including journalism, the arts, cities, and technology innovation.

Bolden is a longtime member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Press Club, NLGJA-the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honorary. He serves on the board of directors of the SPJ Foundation, the 501(c)(3) charity that supports a free press and the educational mission of SPJ.

José Brito is a Communication Project manager on digital platforms with a focus on education, social impact campaigns and the use of Technologies for learning. Marketing professional, journalist and master in Social Sciences. He started his career as a reporter at Globo Ecologia, a TV show about environmental affairs. He was a university professor of cinema and communication at ESPM, editor in chief of journalism. Member of Association of Educational Journalists and advisor to the LUPA Agency.

Naglaa Emary  is a former reporter, presenter and editor for the BBC World Service – Arabic Service based in London. In 2003, she was the Baghdad Bureau chief. With the political changes in the Region in 2011, she became the Cairo bureau chief and the Editor for the BBCWS special projects in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition of being  in charge of the coverage, Naglaa was leading the BBC projects supporting local media especially in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq. Currently, Naglaa is a media consultant for a wide range of international organisations mainly UNESCO, Thomson Reuters Foundation and Deutsche Welle Akademie. She lectures at the British University in Egypt and the Jordan Media Institute in Amman.  Member of MILEN, Media and Information Literacy Experts Network, she works extensively on issues related to disinformation in different contexts. Naglaa holds a PhD degree in Media Studies from l’Universite de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle in France.

Surabhi Malik is a media trainer, a verification expert and a former journalist, currently working as the Program Director for India with Internews. In 2018, she launched and led the Google News Initiative India Training Network – a collaborative training effort that helped hundreds of journalists and journalism students in cities across India learn online verification and fact-checking skills and resulted in the launch of many dedicated fact-checking initiatives in the country. Her current focus is building a network of news and information literacy educators in India. As a Fellow with Google News Lab in 2016-2018, she held numerous workshops for journalists and newsrooms on data journalism, online verification and digital safety. She was previously the Deputy News Editor at NDTV and has also worked with the Times of India.

Pablo Ortellado is a Public Policy professor at the University of São Paulo. He is the head of the Public Policy for Information Access Research Group and is an Op-Ed columnist for Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo.

Alan is co-founder of Singapore-based Splice Media, which aims to drive the transformation of the media industry by supporting media startups across Asia. A career journalist for two decades, Alan has worked in radio, television, news wires, magazine, and online across Asia, giving him unique insight into how various newsrooms get things done—and where they get stuck. He started his career as a reporter and grew into other operational roles at Bloomberg, CNBC, Kyodo News, Star TV and Channel NewsAsia. He eventually led one of the largest digital news teams in the industry as Yahoo’s Managing Editor for India and Southeast Asia.

Mark Stencel is co-director of the Reporters’ Lab at Duke University, where he teaches journalism and tracks the growth of political fact-checking. He also is a part of the Duke Tech & Check Cooperative, which develops tools that increase fact-checkers’ impact. 

He previously worked at National Public Radio, Congressional Quarterly, The Washington Post and North Carolina’s News & Observer. At the Post, he worked on early fact-checking experiments during four presidential campaigns starting in 1992.

Al Tompkins is one of America’s most requested broadcast journalism and multimedia teachers and coaches. After nearly 30 years working as a reporter, photojournalist, producer, investigative reporter, head of special investigations and News Director, Tompkins joined the Poynter Institute where he is Senior Faculty for Broadcast and Online. He is the author of “Aim for the Heart” a textbook about multimedia storytelling that has been adopted by more than 100 universities worldwide. He has taught in 49 states, Canada, Egypt, Denmark, South Africa, Iceland and the Caymans.