This timely book examines the role of fact-checking journalism within political policy debates, and its potential contribution to public engagement. Understanding facts not to operate in a political vacuum, the book argues for a wide remit for fact-checking journalism beyond empirically-checkable facts, to include the causal relationships and predictions that form part of wider political arguments and are central to electoral pledges. Whilst these statements cannot be proven or disproven, fact-checking can, and sometimes does, ask pertinent critical questions about the premises of those claims and arguments. The analysis centres on the three dedicated national British fact-checkers during the UK’s 2017 snap general election, including their activity and engagement on Twitter. The book also makes a close political discourse and argumentation analysis of three key issue debates in flagship reporting from Channel 4 News and the BBC.

Over the past decade, American outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. Cited across social and national news media, these verdicts can rattle a political campaign and send the White House press corps scrambling. Yet fact-checking is a fraught kind of journalism, one that challenges reporters' traditional roles as objective observers and places them at the center of white-hot, real-time debates. As these journalists are the first to admit, in a hyperpartisan world, facts can easily slip into fiction, and decisions about which claims to investigate and how to judge them are frequently denounced as unfair play. Deciding What's True draws on Lucas Graves's unique access to the members of the newsrooms leading this movement. Graves vividly recounts the routines of journalists at three of these hyperconnected, technologically innovative organizations and what informs their approach to a story. Graves also plots a compelling, personality-driven history of the fact-checking movement and its recent evolution from the blogosphere, reflecting on its revolutionary remaking of journalistic ethics and practice. His book demonstrates the ways these rising organizations depend on professional networks and media partnerships yet have also made inroads with the academic and philanthropic worlds. These networks have become a vital source of influence as fact-checking spreads around the world.

This timely book examines the role of fact-checking journalism within political policy debates, and its potential contribution to public engagement. Understanding facts not to operate in a political vacuum, the book argues for a wide remit for fact-checking journalism beyond empirically-checkable facts, to include the causal relationships and predictions that form part of wider political arguments and are central to electoral pledges. Whilst these statements cannot be proven or disproven, fact-checking can, and sometimes does, ask pertinent critical questions about the premises of those claims and arguments. The analysis centres on the three dedicated national British fact-checkers during the UK’s 2017 snap general election, including their activity and engagement on Twitter. The book also makes a close political discourse and argumentation analysis of three key issue debates in flagship reporting from Channel 4 News and the BBC.

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

In a new Brookings Essay, Politico editor Susan Glasser chronicles how political reporting has changed over the course of her career and reflects on the state of independent journalism after the 2016 election. The Bookings Essay: In the spirit of its commitment to higquality, independent research, the Brookings Institution has commissioned works on major topics of public policy by distinguished authors, including Brookings scholars. The Brookings Essay is a multi-platform product aimed to engage readers in open dialogue and debate. The views expressed, however, are solely those of the author. Available in ebook only.