Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

By conducting content analyses of 440 fact checks (N = 440), the study examined the fact-checking practices of three leading national newspapers (i.e., The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today) and three independent fact-checking organizations (i.e., FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and Snopes.com) in the United States during the 2020 presidential debates and town halls. The results found differences in fact-checking within three independent organizations, in terms of candidates, ratings, and used sources. Meanwhile, the three news outlets had differences in fact-checked candidates but consistency in sources and ratings. H1 was supported suggesting that three news organizations fact-checked Trump’s statements more than Biden’s, and as incorrect, compared with three independent organizations.

Keywords

fact-checking presidential debate content analysis U.S. election gatekeeping theory

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

AllSides. (2021). AllSides media bias chart. https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

Amazeen

M. A.

(2013). A critical assessment of fact-checking in 2012 [Research Paper]. New America Foundation. https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/10215-making-a-differ ence/Amazeen_-A_Critical_Assessment_of_Factchecking.4a3289cb3fcd4a8faf0d94f40ebcdc35.pdf

Amazeen

M. A.

(2015). Revisiting the epistemology of fact-checking. Critical Review, 27(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2014.993890

Amazeen

M. A.

(2020). Journalistic interventions: The structural factors affecting the global emergence of fact-checking. Journalism, 21(1), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917730217

Amazeen

M. A.

Thorson

Muddiman

Graves

(2018). Correcting political and consumer misperceptions: The effectiveness and effects of rating scale versus contextual correction formats. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699016678186

Arendt

(1971). Crises of the republic. Harcourt Brace and Company.

Ashley

Maksl

Craft

(2013). Developing a news media literacy scale. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 68(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077695812469802

Ben-Ghiat

(2020). Strongmen: Mussolini to the present. W.W. Norton & Company.

Bissell

K. L.

(2000). A return to “Mr. Gates”: Photography and objectivity. Newspaper Research Journal, 21(3), 81–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/073953290002100307

10.

Brandtzaeg

P. B.

Følstad

Chaparro Domínguez

M. Á

. (2018). How journalists and social media users perceive online fact-checking and verification services. Journalism Practice, 12(9), 1109–1129. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1363657

11.

Brewer

E. C.

Egan

(2021). Clear and present danger standard 100th anniversary: Examining Donald J. Trump’s “presidential” rhetoric as a clear and present danger. First Amendment Studies, 55(1), 44–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2021.1886967

12.

Bucciol

(2018). False claims in politics: Evidence from the US. Research in Economics, 72(2), 196–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2018.04.002

13.

Carpenter

(2008). How online citizen journalism publications and online newspapers utilize the objectivity standard and rely on external sources. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 85(3), 531–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900808500304

14.

Carr

(2012). A last fact check: It didn’t work. The New York Times. https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/a-last-fact-check-it-didnt-work/

15.

Cloud

D. L.

(2018). Reality bites: Rhetoric and the circulation of truth claims in US political culture. The Ohio State University Press. https://doi.org/10.26818/9780814213612

16.

Cunningham

(2003). Re-thinking objectivity. Columbia Journalism Review, 42(2), 24–32. https://archives.cjr.org/feature/rethinking_objectivity.php

17.

D’Alessio

Allen

(2000). Media bias in presidential elections: A meta-analysis. Journal of Communication, 50(4), 133–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02866.x

18.

Davis

(2013). Study: Media fact-checker says Republicans lie more. Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. http://www.cmpa.com/study-media-fact-checker-says-republicans-lie-more

19.

Demers

D. P.

(1994). Effect of organizational size on job satisfaction of top editors at U.S. dailies. Journalism Quarterly, 71(4), 914–925. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769909407100415

20.

Demers

D. P.

(1995). Autonomy, satisfaction high among corporate news staffs. Newspaper Research Journal, 16(2), 91–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/073953299501600208

21.

Dimitrova

D. V.

Nelson

(2018). Fact-checking and the 2016 presidential election: News media’s attempts to correct misleading information from the debates. In Warner

B. R.

Bystrom

D. G.

McKinney

M. S.

Banwart

M. C.

(Eds.), An unprecedented election: Media, communication, and the electorate in the 2016 campaign (pp. 134–150). Praeger. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/jlmc_pubs/19/

22.

Domke

Watts

M. D.

Shah

D. V.

Fan

D. P.

(1999). The politics of conservative elites and the “liberal media” argument. Journal of Communication, 49(4), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365099026002003

23.

Dunham

(2016). Press freedom in 2015: The battle for the dominant message. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2016/battle-dominant-message

24.

Dunn

S. W.

Butler

S. L.

Meeks

Collier

(2015). Communication Quarterly Rockin’ the gubernatorial vote? Young people’s normative democratic attitudes and behaviors in a low-involvement election. Communication Quarterly, 63(5), 603–619. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2015.1078830

25.

Edelman. (2018). 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer. https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2018-10/2018_Edelman_Trust_Barometer_Brands_Social.pdf

26.

Freelon

(2013). ReCal OIR: Ordinal, interval, and ratio intercoder reliability as a web service. International Journal of Internet Science, 8(1), 10–16. https://www.ijis.net/ijis8_1/ijis8_1_freelon.pdf

27.

Fridkin

Kenney

P. J.

Wintersieck

(2015). Liar, liar, pants on fire: How fact-check ing influences citizens’ reactions to negative advertising. Political Communication, 32(1), 127–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2014.914613

28.

Garrett

R. K.

Weeks

B. E.

(2013, February 23–27). The promise and peril of real-time corrections to political misperceptions. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 1047–1058). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441895

29.

Gaufman

(2018). The Trump carnival: Popular appeal in the age of misinformation. International Relations, 32(4), 410–429. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117818773130

30.

Golan

(2006). Inter-media agenda setting and global news coverage: Assessing the influence of the New York Times on three network television evening news programs. Journalism Studies, 7(2), 323–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500533643

31.

Golshan

(2016). Donald Trump has ushered in a whole new era of fact-checking in journalism. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/13/11944674/fact-checking-donald-trump

32.

Gottfried

J. A.

Hardy

B. W.

Winneg

K. M.

Jamieson

K. H.

(2013). Did fact checking matter in the 2012 presidential campaign? American Behavioral Scientist, 57(11), 1558–1567. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764213489012

33.

Graves

(2016). Deciding what’s true: The rise of political fact-checking in American journalism. Columbia University Press.

34.

Graves

(2018). Boundaries not drawn: Mapping the institutional roots of the global fact-checking movement. Journalism Studies, 19(5), 613–631. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1196602

35.

Graves

Amazeen

(2019). Fact-checking as idea and practice in journalism ( Nussbaum

, Ed.). Oxford University Press. http://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.808

36.

Graves

Bélair-Gagnon

Larsen

(2023). From public reason to public health: Professional implications of the “debunking turn” in the global fact-checking field. Digital Journalism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2218454

37.

Graves

Cherubini

(2016). The rise of fact-checking sites in Europe. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/rise-fact-checking-sites-europe

38.

Graves

Nyhan

Reifler

(2015). The diffusion of fact-checking (Vol. 22). American Press Institute. https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/The-Growth-of-Fact-Checking.pdf

39.

Grieco

(2020). Americans’ main sources for political news vary by party and age. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-for-political-news-vary-by-party-and-age

40.

Grossberg

(2018). Under the cover of chaos: Trump and the battle for the American right. Pluto Press.

41.

Grynbaum

(2017, February 17). Trump calls the news media the “enemy of the people.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html

42.

Gunther

A. C.

Edgerly

Akin

Broesch

J. A.

(2012). Partisan evaluation of partisan information. Communication Research, 39(4), 439–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650212441794

43.

Hahl

Kim

Zuckerman Sivan

E. W.

(2018). The authentic appeal of the lying demagogue: Proclaiming the deeper truth about political illegitimacy. American Sociological Review, 83(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0003122417749632

44.

Hasen

R. L.

(2022). Cheap speech: How disinformation poisons our politics—And how to cure it. Yale University Press.

45.

Hassell

H. J.

Holbein

J. B.

Miles

M. R.

(2020). There is no liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover. Science Advances, 6(14), Article eaay9344. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay9344

46.

Hayes

A. S.

(2008). Press critics are the fifth estate: Media watchdogs in America. Greenwood Publishing Group.

47.

Heimlich

(2012, September 11). Most say presidential debates influence their vote. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2012/09/11/most-say-presidential-debates-influence-their-vote/

48.

Holbrook

T. M.

(1999). Political learning from presidential debates. Political Behavior, 21(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023348513570

49.

Humprecht

(2019). How do they debunk “fake news”? A cross-national comparison of transparency in fact checks. Digital Journalism, 8(3), 310–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1691031

50.

Jamieson

K. H.

Waldman

(2004). The press effect: Politicians, journalists, and the stories that shape the political world. Oxford University Press.

51.

Katz

(2016, October 22). Presidential debates set ratings records in 2016, but does the format need to change? Adweek. http://www.adweek.com/tv-video/presidential-debates-set-ratings-records-2016-does-format-need-change-174205/

52.

Kessler

(2020, November 9). Fact-checking in a post-Trump era. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/09/fact-checking-post-trump-era/

53.

Kessler

Rizzo

Kelly

(2021, January 24). Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/

54.

Kurtzleben

(2016, September 27). Do fact-checks matter? National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/2016/09/27/495233627/do-fact-checks-matter

55.

Ladd

J. M.

(2011). Why Americans hate the media and how it matters. Princeton University Press.

56.

Le Cam

F. L.

Domingo

(2015). The tyranny of immediacy: Gatekeeping practices in French and Spanish online newsrooms. In Vos

Heinderyckx

(Eds.), Gatekeeping in transition (pp. 123–140). Routledge.

57.

Zhao

Cheng

Yang

(2018, November). An end-to-end multi-task learning model for fact checking. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Fact Extraction and VERification (FEVER) (pp. 138–144). Routledge. https://aclanthology.org/W18-5523.pdf

58.

Lim

(2018). Can fact-checking prevent politicians from lying? https://discuss.tp4.ir/uploads/default/original/2X/6/620e0f36b3d2898e3a4672aa572cb0c950448ed0.pdf

59.

Lowrey

(2017). The emergence and development of news fact-checking sites: Institutional logics and population ecology. Journalism Studies, 18(3), 376–394. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2015.1052537

60.

Luengo

García-Marín

(2020). The performance of truth: Politicians, fact-checking journalism, and the struggle to tackle COVID-19 misinformation. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 8(3), 405–427.

61.

Mantzarlis

(2016). Fact-checking under President Trump. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2016/fact-checking-under-president-trump/

62.

Marietta

Barker

D. C.

Bowser

(2015). Fact-checking polarized politics: Does the fact-check industry provide consistent guidance on disputed realities? The Forum, 13(4), 577–596. https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2015-0040

63.

Markowitz

(2020). Trump is lying more than ever: Just look at the data. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2020/05/05/trump-is-lying-more-than-ever-just-look-at-the-data/

64.

Missau

L. D.

Storch

L. S.

(2022). Fact-checking initiatives in Portuguese language countries: Checking methods and financing strategies. Online Media and Global Communication, 1(3), 600–625. https://doi.org/10.1515/omgc-2022-0028

65.

Nieminen

Sankari

(2021). Checking PolitiFact’s fact-checks. Journalism Studies, 22(3), 358–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1873818

66.

Nyhan

Reifler

(2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32(2), 303–330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2

67.

Nyhan

Reifler

(2012). Misinformation and fact-checking. Research findings. New America Foundation. https://www.issuelab.org/resources/15316/15316.pdf

68.

Ostermeier

(2011, February 10). Selection bias? PolitiFact rates Republican statements as false at three times the rate of Democrats. Smart Politics. https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-politifact-rate/

69.

Patterson

T. E.

(2016). News coverage of the 2016 general election: How the press failed the voters (HKS Working Paper No. RWP16-052). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2884837

70.

Pingree

R. J.

Brossard

McLeod

D. M.

(2014). Effects of journalistic adjudication on factual beliefs, news evaluations, information seeking, and epistemic political efficacy. Mass Communication and Society, 17(5), 615–638. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2013.821491

71.

Pingree

R. J.

Watson

Sui

Searles

Kalmoe

N. P.

Darr

J. P.

. . .Bryanov

(2018). Checking facts and fighting back: Why journalists should defend their profession. PLOS ONE, 13(12), Article e0208600. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208600

72.

Porter

Wood

T. J.

(2019). False alarm: The truth about political mistruths in the Trump era. Cambridge University Press.

73.

Raeymaeckers

Deprez

De Vuyst

De Dobbelaer

(2015). The journalist as a Jack of all trades: Safeguarding the gates in a digitized news ecology. In Vos

T. P.

Heinderyckx

(Eds.), Gatekeeping in Transition (pp. 104–119). Routledge.

74.

Reisner

A. E.

(1992). The news conference: How daily newspaper editors construct the front page. Journalism Quarterly, 69(4), 971–986. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769909206900416

75.

Rich

T. S.

Milden

Wagner

M. T.

(2020). Research note: Does the public support fact-checking social media? It depends whom and how you ask. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-46

76.

Rieder

(2020). Checking the facts in the world of Trump. FactCheck.org. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/checking-the-facts-in-the-world-of-trump/

77.

Ringel

(2021). Digitizing the paper of record: Archiving digital newspapers at the New York Times. Journalism, 24, 245–261. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211023849

78.

Robertson

C. T.

Mourão

R. R.

Thorson

(2020). Who uses fact-checking sites? The impact of demographics, political antecedents, and media use on fact-checking site awareness, attitudes, and behavior. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219898055

79.

Rogers

Niederer

(2020). The politics of social media manipulation. Amsterdam University Press.

80.

Schudson

(2000). The sociology of news production revisited (again). In Curran

Gurevitch

(Eds.), Mass media and society (pp. 175–200). Arnold.

81.

Schudson

(2012). The sociology of news (2nd ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.

82.

Schwartzman

(2021). Trumping reason: Political communication in the post-truth era. In Shedletsky

(Ed.), Rationalist bias in communication theory (pp. 269–295). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7439-3.ch015

83.

Singer

(2015). Leaning Conservative: innovation and presidential campaign coverage. International Simposium on Online Journalism, 6(1). https://isojjournal.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/leaning-conservative-innovation-and-presidential-campaign-coverage-by-u-s-newspaper-websites-in-the-digital-age/

84.

Shin

Thorson

(2017). Partisan selective sharing: The biased diffusion of fact-check ing messages on social media. Journal of Communication, 67(2), 233–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12284

85.

Shoemaker

P. J.

(1991). Gatekeeping. Sage.

86.

Shoemaker

P. J.

Eichholz

Kim

Wrigley

(2001). Individual and routine forces in gatekeeping. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78(2), 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900107800202

87.

Shoemaker

P. J.

Reese

S. D.

(2013). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media sociology perspective (3rd ed.). Routledge.

88.

Shoemaker

P. J.

Vos

T. P.

Reese

S. D.

(2009). Journalists as gatekeepers. In Wahl-Jorgensen

Hanizsch

(Eds.), The handbook of journalism studies (pp. 93–107). Routledge.

89.

Smith

G. R.

(2010). Politicians and the news media: How elite attacks influence perceptions of media bias. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 15(3), 319–343. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161210367430

90.

Snyder

(2017). On tyranny: Twenty lessons from the twentieth century. Penguin University Press.

91.

Stanley

(2020). How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House.

92.

Stencel

(2016). Global fact-checking up 50% in past year. Duke Reporters’ Lab. https://reporterslab.org/global-fact-checking-up-50-percent/

93.

Stencel

Ryan

Luther

(2022). Fact-checkers extend their global reach with 391 outlets, but growth has slowed. Duke Reporters’ Lab. https://reporterslab.org/fact-checkers-extend-their-global-reach-with-391-outlets-but-growth-has-slowed/

94.

Sullivan

(2017, August 23). Trump’s vicious attack on the media shows one thing clearly: He’s running scared. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trumps-vicious-attack-on-the-press-shows-one-thing-clearly-hes-running-scared/2017/08/23/4fc1a6a2-8802-11e7-a50f-e0d4e6ec070a_story.html

95.

Tran

H. D.

(2021). Studying the community of Trump supporters on Twitter during the 2020 US presidential election via hashtags #maga and #trump2020. Journalism and Media, 2(4), 709–731. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia2040042

96.

Tuchman

(2002). The production of news. In Bruhn Jensen

(Ed.), A handbook of media and communication research (1st ed., pp. 78–90). Routledge.

97.

Turvill

(2021, August 25). Top 25 US newspapers by circulation: America’s largest titles have lost 20% of print sales since Covid-19 hit. Press Gazette. https://pressgazette.co.uk/biggest-us-newspapers-by-circulation/

98.

University of Minnesota. (2016). Current popular trends in the newspaper industry. In Understanding media and culture: An introduction to mass communication. https://doi.org/10.24926/8668.2601

99.

Vos

T. P.

(2015). Revisiting gatekeeping theory during a time of transition. In Vos

T. P.

Heinderyckx

(Eds.), Gatekeeping in transition (1st ed., pp. 3–24). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315849652-2/revisiting-gatekeeping-theory-time-transition-tim-vos?context=ubx&refId=6fc9d816-5891-4fde-b753-55d706a5a056

100.

Vraga

E. K.

Tully

(2015). Media literacy messages and hostile media perceptions: Processing of nonpartisan versus partisan political information. Mass Communication and Society, 18(4), 422–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077695815623399

101.

Vraga

E. K.

Tully

(2016). Effectiveness of a non-classroom news media literacy intervention among different undergraduate populations. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 71(4), 440–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2014.1001910

Check the checks: A comparison of fact-checking practices between newspapers and independent organizations during 2020 U.S. election presidential debates

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References