FactCheck is a central unit of Ireland’s leading digital native news site, The Journal. For over a decade, we have strived to be an independent and objective source of information in an online world that is full of noise and diversions.
Our mission is to reduce the noise levels and bring clarity to public discourse on the topics impacting citizens’ daily lives. To do this we are proud to be:
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Free of political, commercial or ideological influence
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Committed to the discovery and distribution of quality, trustworthy information
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Empathetic to the processes by which online users make informed decisions
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Transparent and generous about how we go about our work to meet these commitments
The Knowledge Bank is a project from The Journal’s FactCheck unit. Our team works on surfacing suspect content online and providing the facts to dispute or clarify this content.
Our Knowledge Bank aims to take this work a step further, out of our newsroom and into your hands. We want to share the insights we have gained over seven years into how stories are told online about important topics, the context behind the content you are seeing everyday and the tools to help you sift the authentic and helpful information from the untrue and harmful.
We have co-funded the building of this resource hub thanks to a grant from the International Fact-Checking Network’s Global Fact Check fund, under the BUILD program, and a contribution from our parent company, Journal Media Ltd.
It is very important to us that our readers can follow our fact-checks from nose to tail, for two key reasons.
Firstly, so that we can earn your trust in the consistency of our work by being transparent about every step, from how we choose a particular claim to factcheck to how we come to a verdict. We link to raw, public data where it exists and name and define clearly any expert advice and input from sources external to our factcheck team.
Secondly, we hope that by outlining our process clearly, we may equip readers with the tools to better distinguish good quality information from less trustworthy content for themselves, sending our factchecking principles out into the real world of public literacy.
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Ask for evidence
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Find the root of a claim
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Use public sources where possible
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Evaluate the quality and reliability of the evidence
The Journal FactCheck unit was established in early 2016 and is located within the newsroom of one of Ireland's most-read online news sources, The Journal. It fact-checks misinformation and disinformation across a wide range of subjects.
Our team also produces explanatory articles, prebunking materials, factfinds and deep dive journalism to help the public make informed decisions.
We have been the only verified Republic of Ireland signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) since 2017 and abide by the organisation's Code of Principles.
We are the fact-checker partner for the Ireland EDMO hub (European Digital Media Observatory); you can find more about our collaborative work across media literacy, research and other tools against disinformation here.
The Journal and The Journal FactCheck unit are fully-compliant members of the Press Council of Ireland.
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