Gwara Media joined the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), founded by the Poynter Institute. IFCN created a code of rules to build a community of trustworthy fact-checkers.

On the eve of the anniversary of the fact-checking bot Perevirka, we applied for an IFCN membership, and at the end of May, we received a confirmation message. Thus, Gwara officially became part of the international network of fact-checkers. Only three participants in Ukraine have this status, VoxCheck, StopFake, and Gwara Media.

Gwara Media joined IFCN fact-checking network

To join the IFCN network, the media outlet needs to provide readers with several guarantees. The rules include the following:

  • we don’t choose which news to check;
  • any person can contact us and suggest a topic for review;
  • our materials do not force readers to take our word for it but provide links to high-quality primary sources and professional analytics.
Aliesia Yaschenko, Perevirka fact-checking bot media analyst

“Joining IFCN, we prove to our readers that we are worth their trust. You can read our materials without double-checking them, as IFCN has done this for you. They have analyzed our media, policy, and financial statements and ensured that our motivation is unbiased and that politicians or third parties do not finance us,” says Aliesia Yaschenko, Perevirka fact-checking bot media analyst.

Since we launched the bot at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, more than 50,000 users contacted us, and fact-checkers have processed almost 82,000 requests. More than 12,000 of them turned out to be fake.

“Our department’s work constantly strives for improvement, double-checking and searching for sources. We always ask, “Who could benefit from that?” encountering questionable content and take numerous other aspects into account.

We love Ukraine and want the information surrounding our country to be more “honest.” Starting this fight, we have not even realized the propaganda scale and how it influences almost every sphere of our lives, from history and books to cinema,” comments Yuliana Topolnyk, Perevirka bot fact-checking editor.

The application for joining the network is considered in several stages. According to the standard instructions, the materials are first checked by an authorized expert of IFCN, who sends their conclusions. Then a decision is made by a special commission that carries out a second check and shares comments and recommendations. After considering all comments and conducting thorough research, our team received the long-awaited approval.

The work of the fact-checking department and the constant improvement of tools for interacting with the audience and processing information are priority tasks for our team. So, this spring, Gwara Media journalists and fact-checkers held a series of fact-checking workshops on media literacy in Kharkiv.

Read our fact-checking articles and investigations.

It may be challenging to understand whether the information is trustworthy. That is why we created the Perevirka bot. Send any news in Ukrainian or English, and within 24 hours, you will find out whether you can trust the chosen publication.

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