3 Finding Already-Checked Facts

When you see a factual claim circulating on the internet that you want to check, someone may have already done the work for you. Particularly in the realm of current political news, there are a number of organizations that routinely examine claims made by public figures. Viral content online, too, is often fact-checked. Here are some prominent fact-checking sites:

• Politifact
• Factcheck.org
• Washington Post Fact Checker
• Snopes
• Truth be Told
• NPR Fact-Check
• Detector de Mentiras (Univision, Spanish language)
• Guardian Reality Check (UK)
• BBC Reality Check (UK)

Rather than prowl through these sites one by one, there’s a nifty search trick you can use. Pull together key words, phrases, or concepts from the claim you want to check and put them into a search bar, adding site: and the url of a fact-check site. Better yet, try two sites and compare them. For example, search:

George Soros paid caravan site:snopes.com

or George Soros paid caravan site:politifact.com

Because these fact-checking sites tend to focus on current political news, they have limited use when fact-checking something that isn’t headline news or a notorious viral hoax. The next chapter will offer more tricks and tips for strategically learning about a site.