ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (Nov. 21, 2019) – The Poynter Institute announces that its International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) will partner with Univision News to elevate international fact-checks of interest to Spanish language audiences living in the U.S. leading up to the presidential election.
U.S. political campaigns have even more sophisticated and diverse opportunities to reach their target audience than they did during the last election. There is also plenty of opportunity for mischievous forces, foreign and domestic, to pollute the messages of those campaigns with false information. While networks and social media platforms have taken steps to combat the spread of misinformation since 2016, many critics argue they have not gone far enough.
Professional fact-checkers continue to play a major role in cleaning up the digital ecosystem that informs voters as they participate in democracy. Since 2014, more than 70 fact-checking organizations have worked with the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute to define best practices, establish ethical guidelines and initiate collaboration.
The first step of Univision Noticias’ partnership with IFCN is to establish a weekly OpEd column by IFCN’s Associate Director, Cristina Tardáguila. She will publish on Univision Noticias, in Spanish, every Thursday.
The goal behind this first collaboration between Univision Noticias and the IFCN is to offer the Hispanic audience in the United States the opportunity to read about the important fact-checking work produced and published worldwide. The organizations also hope to encourage Hispanic voters to participate in the spirited debates that take place around the fight against mis/disinformation.
In the Univision Noticias’ Opinion section, handled by journalist Tamoa Calzadilla, readers can already find articles published by Tardáguila:
- Dance and sing while spreading a hoax — this is what TikTok looks like now
- Will the 2020 U.S presidential election be all about fake political online ads?
- What would the world be like without the “like”? Let’s talk about data checking
The English version of all the columns is also published every Thursday on IFCN’s and Poynter’s social networks.
“This collaboration between Univision and the IFCN will be an important megaphone to share the work of courageous fact-checkers, and to illuminate key issues for our Spanish-language audience,” said Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute.
“It is great to see fact-checking growing in Latin America and among Spanish-speakers. My goal in this weekly column is to make readers think about the harm misinformation can do to people and discuss ways to fight against it,” said Tardáguila.
“For Univision News, this collaboration is an opportunity to continue offering high-quality content and new tools that allow the Hispanic community to distinguish facts from fiction and helps them discern information from disinformation online and on social media,” said Daniel Coronell, president of Univision News. “It is also a way to fill the void that exists in U.S. Spanish-language media on the subject. Well informed citizens make better decisions.”
“The IFCN/Univision Noticias relationship for this project is a clear sign that cross-platform collaboration has only one purpose,” said Tardáguila. “That is to better inform the audience and empower content consumers so they can make fact-based decisions.”
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st-century public discourse. Poynter faculty teach seminars and workshops at the Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and at conferences and organizations around the world. Its e-learning division, News University, offers the world’s largest online journalism curriculum, with hundreds of interactive courses and tens of thousands of registered international users. The Institute’s website, poynter.org, produces 24-hour coverage about media, ethics, technology and the business of news. Poynter is the home of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact, the International Fact-Checking Network and MediaWise, a teen digital information literacy project. The world’s top journalists and media innovators come to Poynter to learn and teach new generations of reporters, storytellers, media inventors, designers, visual journalists, documentarians and broadcasters. This work builds public awareness about journalism, media, the First Amendment and discourse that serves democracy and the public good. Learn more at poynter.org.
Read the announcement in Spanish.
