What exactly to check
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:11 am
A fact-checker is simply obliged to question everything. Any information must be verified, preferably by several sources that have a reliable reputation. Although no one is immune from mistakes, as in the above publication in the Lancet, a highly authoritative scientific publication.
When fact-checking, the main things to pay attention to are:
Names and titles. For example, if the author of the news is I. S. Nekhlebaylo, first of all, you need to make sure that the information comes from Ivan Sergeevich Nekhlebaylo, and not from pharmaceutical email lists his namesake, whose name is Igor Semenovich. If the material mentions Frankfurt, Germany, keep in mind that along with Frankfurt am Main there is a city on the Oder with the same first part of the name.
Correctness of the indicated positions , experience, rank. In the practice of the Federal Bailiff Service of the Russian Federation, there was a case when complaints and petitions were received by territorial departments of the department from a person who called himself a major general of the FSSP. Meanwhile, such a rank simply did not exist at the time of receiving the corresponding correspondence in the service.
Numbers. Year of birth, date of event, age of a person, etc. One digit in the date of birth changed – and we have a different person in front of us. A typo in one sign when indicating the year of events – and what happened several months ago goes back to the era of deep antiquity. Remember "Yeralash" and the question of the character A. Loye: in what year did Napoleon Mamaia win?
Statistics. Try to use official publication sources, for example, Rosstat data. If this is not possible, do not be lazy to refer to the content of the study itself. Although, how can one not recall the expression: there is a small lie, a big lie and... statistics.
Contacts. In the search engines Yandex and Google, you can often come across outdated phone numbers, addresses, etc. For example, try calling the Arkhangelsk prosecutor's office at +7 (8182) 21-10-31, offered by Google, and instead of an employee of the relevant institution, you will hear the voice of an answering machine insistently offering to call the operator.
When fact-checking, the main things to pay attention to are:
Names and titles. For example, if the author of the news is I. S. Nekhlebaylo, first of all, you need to make sure that the information comes from Ivan Sergeevich Nekhlebaylo, and not from pharmaceutical email lists his namesake, whose name is Igor Semenovich. If the material mentions Frankfurt, Germany, keep in mind that along with Frankfurt am Main there is a city on the Oder with the same first part of the name.
Correctness of the indicated positions , experience, rank. In the practice of the Federal Bailiff Service of the Russian Federation, there was a case when complaints and petitions were received by territorial departments of the department from a person who called himself a major general of the FSSP. Meanwhile, such a rank simply did not exist at the time of receiving the corresponding correspondence in the service.
Numbers. Year of birth, date of event, age of a person, etc. One digit in the date of birth changed – and we have a different person in front of us. A typo in one sign when indicating the year of events – and what happened several months ago goes back to the era of deep antiquity. Remember "Yeralash" and the question of the character A. Loye: in what year did Napoleon Mamaia win?
Statistics. Try to use official publication sources, for example, Rosstat data. If this is not possible, do not be lazy to refer to the content of the study itself. Although, how can one not recall the expression: there is a small lie, a big lie and... statistics.
Contacts. In the search engines Yandex and Google, you can often come across outdated phone numbers, addresses, etc. For example, try calling the Arkhangelsk prosecutor's office at +7 (8182) 21-10-31, offered by Google, and instead of an employee of the relevant institution, you will hear the voice of an answering machine insistently offering to call the operator.