Fact-Checking: How to Improve Your Skills in Accountability Journalism
Course Overview
- Title:
- Fact-Checking: How to Improve Your Skills in Accountability Journalism
- Type:
- Self-Directed Course
- Cost:
- This $29.95 course is offered free of charge thanks to the support of the Democracy Fund, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, the Rita Allen Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
- Time Estimate:
- This course will take two to four hours to complete.
About Self-Directed Courses
In a self-directed course, you can start and stop whenever you like, progressing entirely at your own pace and going back as many times as you want to review the material.


We also offer a free Spanish-language edition of this course, Verificación de información: Cómo mejorar sus habilidades en el periodismo de responsabilidad on NewsU International.
What Will I Learn:
- Why fact-checking matters.
- What to fact-check.
- The process of fact-checking.
- Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
- Identifying and assessing credible sources.
- Finding funding sources for your fact-checking product.
- Reaching and responding to audiences.
- Best practices for live fact-checking.
- Adapting your fact-checking to the medium/platform (web, broadcast, print, social media).
Who should take this course:
Journalists from all types of news organizations whose jobs include reporting on the the accountability of decision-makers, government officials and any leaders with the power to impact civic life.
Non-journalists with a passion for the truth who want to learn basic fact-checking skills and best practices.
Journalists and non-journalists who want to establish fact-checking organizations and seek funding.
Course Instructors:

Alexios Mantzarlis
Alexios Mantzarlis joined Poynter to lead the International Fact-Checking Network in September of 2015. In this capacity he writes about and advocates for fact-checking. He also trains and convenes fact-checkers around the world.
As Director of the IFCN, Alexios has helped draft the fact-checkers' code of principles, shepherded a partnership between third-party fact-checkers and Facebook, testified to the Italian Chamber of Deputies on the "fake news" phenomenon and helped launch International Fact-Checking Day.

Jane Elizabeth
Jane is the director of accountability journalism at the American Press Institute. She is The Washington Post's former deputy local editor/digital; and has taught journalism at Old Dominion University, the University of Pittsburgh and Point Park University. A 2017 Knight-Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Jane’s work at five metropolitan U.S. newspapers has focused largely on politics and government.
She holds a master's degree in mass communications from Virginia Commonwealth University.