Fact-Checkers Can Make Mistakes Too
“factcheck can make mistake”
Summary
Fact‑checking organizations acknowledge that they sometimes produce incorrect assessments, and research shows that errors can occur due to bias, sampling choices, or misinterpretation. Credibility depends on accuracy, and occasional mistakes are documented across major fact‑checking outlets.
Sources 60 searched
- Cross-checking journalistic fact-checkers: The role of sampling and scaling in interpreting false and misleading statements - PMC
While our professional judgments resulted in a high level of agreement, news consumers—who may be untrained and whose judgments may be constrained by past exposure to the candidates, biased by repetitive exposure to the messages being checked, or influenced by the values of others with whom they interact—may not interpret fact-checking results with the same clarity or be universally forgiving if a mistakenly incorrect fact-check occurs. This suggests that the results not only need to be accurate, but they need to be credible. ... Click here for additional data file. (53.3KB, docx) The data
- Reuters Fact Check | Reuters
Fact Checkcategory·May 1, 2026 · Fact Check: Woman in video featuring shooting suspect Allen is not Usha Vance · A woman presenting at a 2017 conference on aging in California attended by Washington shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen has been ...
- Fact Check | CNN Politics
Fact check: Trump denied he made this remark about Iran.
- Fact check: Trump’s barrage of false or unproven claims about the Iran war | CNN Politics
When we asked the White House on ... links to three foreign outlets – one Israeli, one Turkish, one Saudi – that had quoted baseless Iranian statements about having struck the Lincoln....
- Fact checking doesn’t work (the way you think it does) – Full Fact
Secondly, we recognise that our ... life and how they are spread. Fact checkers do the legwork of understanding the problems of misinformation and disinformation in a way that nobody else does....
- Debunking Viral Claims Archives - FactCheck.org
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and others posted unfounded claims on social media about the political affiliation of the gunman arrested in the June 14 fatal shootings of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and the wounding of another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife.
- SciCheck Archives - FactCheck.org
FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy. It was launched in January 2015 with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. The foundation was founded by the late Frank Stanton, president of ...
- Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.
April 24, 2026 The feel-good story claimed Crosby funded more than 180 beds for Pittsburgh's homeless, but there's no evidence that happened.
- HKS Misinformation Review“Fact-checking” fact checkers: A data-driven approach | HKS Misinformation Review
However, these can invite criticism due to the subjective choice of claims to verify and the inconsistency in the evaluation process (Nieminen & Rapeli, 2019). Specifically, concerns have been raised about the potential uncertainty that may arise among individuals if different fact checkers provide conflicting assessments for the same claim (Marietta et al., 2015).
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