Checking A Source Against An Established Fact Check Database
Launch library · evergreen read
Established fact checking organisations carefully maintain searchable archives of previously checked claims going back years, which means a quick search for key terms drawn from a suspicious claim sometimes returns an existing, detailed assessment rather than requiring a full independent check to be started entirely from scratch by the reader themselves each time.
These databases are not fully exhaustive and cannot possibly cover every single claim currently in circulation, particularly newer or more narrowly local ones, so an absence of results does not confirm that a claim is accurate, only that it has not yet been formally examined by anyone.
Checking a database first, before beginning a more time consuming independent verification process of your own, is an efficient habit that often resolves common, widely circulated claims quickly and without much additional effort being required at all from the person doing the actual checking work involved in it each time.