ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (November 13, 2023) – Twenty groups have been awarded a total of $1 million in grants to help grow the capacity and sustainability of fact-checkers to fight misinformation around the world, the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute announced Monday.
Poynter, a global leader in journalism, is home to the IFCN, which is administering the $12 million Global Fact Check Fund, established by a grant from Google and YouTube. Today, the IFCN announced the winners of the Fund’s second phase of grants, called GROW, which are aimed at the development of organizations’ institutional capacity, competitiveness and sustainability in local and regional work.
The proposals selected for funding will all strengthen the global network of fact-checkers that is essential for the fight against dangerous misinformation, said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the IFCN.
“We are heartened by the diversity and innovation of the projects that fact-checking newsrooms have proposed that will increase the reach and impact of their work,” Holan said. “These projects will improve the information ecosystems in their home countries, and they will generate lessons and takeaways for fact-checkers around the world.”
The funded proposals include:
- The Philippine news organization Rappler, whose CEO Maria Ressa was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, will use the grant as seed money, including to provide asynchronous training to complement the work it is doing to instruct fellows and aspiring fact-checkers and to create more multimedia training for grant recipients and those who belong to its membership program.
- USA Today plans to fight misinformation and produce fact-checking in Spanish with its grant. A bilingual reporter will write fact-checks in Spanish and the organization will also translate some of its English-language work to Spanish. “Our goal in the coming year is to experiment with different ways of finding claims and publishing our work to find out what types of checks and distribution methods will best serve and engage America’s Hispanic community to guide our Spanish-language work going forward,” USA Today’s application said.
- Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) of Germany will work to train fact-checkers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in artificial intelligence and the ways it can affect misinformation. The grant will help promote “AI readiness among fact-checkers and journalists with a new online course to help them tackle AI-driven disinformation and use AI in editorial work.”
- Mizzima, of Myanmar, created a fact-checking desk following the 2021 coup in that country to combat increased mis- and disinformation and to educate Myanmar citizens about media literacy. Because the coup destabilized the organization financially, the grant will allow it to continue to build capacity and sustainability for its mission.
The GROW grants may be used to increase staffing, expand or create programs designed to boost content visibility, or for training, fundraising, data analytics tools, diversifying revenue streams and growing partnerships and collaborations.
The full list of GROW recipients is here, listed by name and country:
Africa Check (South Africa)
Asociacion de Periodismo de Investigacion Ojo Publico (Peru)
Belarusian Investigative Center z.s. (Belarus)
BOOM (India)
Demagog.cz (Czech Republic)
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa (Germany)
Factcheck Lab (Hong Kong)
Fonden ARIJ International (Jordan)
Krik (Serbia)
La Diaria (Uruguay)
Lakmusz.hu – Magyar Jeti Zrt. (Hungary)
Les Surligneurs (France)
Maharat Foundation (Lebanon)
Mizzima (Myanmar)
Newtral (Spain)
Rappler (Philippines)
The Self-Investigation (The Netherlands)
USA Today (United States)
VERA Files (Philippines)
Verify-Sy (Turkey)
These grants follow the first phase of the Fund, called BUILD, which awarded grants to verified signatories of the IFCN’s Code of Principles. The GROW phase allowed for non-signatory organizations to apply with the endorsement of a verified signatory as long as the projects worked to advance fact-checking. The GROW phase awarded five out of 20 projects to non-signatories, on topics such as improving fact-checkers’ mental health and well-being; encouraging fact-checking in Arabic; and exploring new formats for fact-checking in the Latin American region.
The third phase of the effort, ENGAGE, will open grant applications from Dec. 1 to Jan. 8. Those grants will support scaling local and regional audience engagement, including expanded staffing, programming and training, cross-pollination across technology channels, exploration of new markets, audience research, metrics and analytics, digital media, community engagement, and innovation and experimentation to develop tools for fact-checking.
The IFCN will hold a question-and-answer session on Dec. 13 to answer questions from the community about the ENGAGE grants.
Correction: This story was updated to correct a misspelling in the name of grant recipient Factcheck Lab.
Media Contact:
Angie Drobnic Holan
Director, International Fact-Checking Network
aholan@poynter.org
+1-727-410-1770
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and community building, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is a gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.
The Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise and PolitiFact are all members of the Poynter organization.
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About the International Fact-Checking Network
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter was launched in 2015 to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world and advocates of factual information in the global fight against misinformation. We enable fact-checkers through networking, capacity building and collaboration. IFCN promotes the excellence of fact-checking to more than 100 organizations worldwide through advocacy, training and global events. Our team monitors trends in the fact-checking field to offer resources to fact-checkers, contribute to public discourse and provide support for new projects and initiatives that advance accountability in journalism. We believe truth and transparency can help people be better informed and equipped to navigate harmful misinformation.
