Check Your Fact is a stand-alone fact-checking website wholly owned by The Daily Caller.

http://checkyourfact.com/

http://checkyourfact.com/privacy-policy

http://checkyourfact.com/terms-of-service

Check Your Fact (CYF) is a dedicated fact-checking site operated by the newsroom of Washington, DC-based The Daily Caller, as explained prominently on the site's 'About Us' page. CYF's website is registered to The Daily Caller (TDC). As supporting documents CYF shared a 'Certificate of Status' for TDC's corporate registration in Delaware, first incorporated in 2009, as well as its own privacy policy and terms of service, both of which identify it as a project of TDC. (One area for possible improvement: the privacy policy and terms of service include generic language identifying CYF as a 'comprehensive news website' rather than a fact-checking site, as is made clear on the 'About US' page.)

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Update: CYF modified Privacy Policy to say 'fact-checking website'.

From September to November, 86 articles – or nearly 1 per day, on average – were published on Check Your Fact.

You can view all of our fact checks on our website: http://checkyourfact.com/

They are also housed on The Daily Caller website: http://dailycaller.com/

By my count CYF published 85 fact-checks in the 3-month period between September 1 and November 30, greatly exceeding the requirement of one per week. The site has published 28 more in the 5 weeks since, continuing its steady output.

Check Your Fact pursues a non-partisan mission of fact-checking public figures on both sides of the political spectrum. To ensure this, our writers have built out social media feeds on Tweetdeck (Twitter) and CrowdTangle (Facebook) that track the statements made by both conservatives and liberals.

Scanning sources across the political spectrum allows us to keep our claim selection neutral.

We have one feed that tracks what Republican members of Congress are tweeting and another that follows the tweets of Democratic members; one that tracks conservative advocacy groups and another that follows liberal ones; etc. On Facebook, we have separate feeds for right-wing and left-wing pages.

We avoid fact-checking opinions or claims with ambiguous wording, and generally focus on claims that follow the news cycle, have been shared widely on social media, or have been made by prominent public figures.

Once a claim is chosen, we ensure that every article is balanced. Check Your Fact has a dedicated editor who scrutinizes each article for fairness, ensuring that opposing viewpoints and all relevant context are represented.

We often reach out to experts to make sure our research is thorough and fair, and as a matter of course, we always contact the person who made the claim if the verdict appears to be false or unsubstantiated.

More information on our process can be found here:

http://checkyourfact.com/methodology

FACT CHECK: Does Elizabeth Warren Have Less Native American DNA Than The Typical White American?

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/19/fact-check-elizabeth-warren-native-american-dna-white/

FACT CHECK: Did Ilhan Omar Vote Against A Bill Making Female Genital Mutilation A Felony?

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/11/29/fact-check-ilhan-omar-vote-female-genital-mutilation-felony/

FACT CHECK: Was Kavanaugh Accuser Deborah Ramirez A Soros Fellow?

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/09/24/fact-check-kavanaugh-deborah-ramirez-soros/

FACT CHECK: Newt Gingrich Says 179 Million Latin Americans Want To Migrate To The US

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/25/fact-check-179-million-latin-americans-migrate-us/

FACT CHECK: Do Photos Show Anderson Cooper Exaggerating Flooding From Hurricane Florence

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/09/18/fact-check-anderson-cooper-florence-flooding/

FACT CHECK: Trump Says The US Pays For 70 Percent Of Japan’s Military

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/12/fact-check-us-70-percent-japans-military/

FACT CHECK: Does The Taliban Control Nearly 45 Percent Of Afghanistan?

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/11/07/fact-check-taliban-45-percent-afghanistan/

FACT CHECK: Stephen King Claims That Susan Collins Was Silent On ‘Unfair’ Treatment Of Merrick Garland

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/10/fact-check-stephen-king-susan-collins-silent-garland/

FACT CHECK: A Viral Image Wildly Mischaracterizes Which GOP Congressmen Were Voted Out In 2018

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/11/21/fact-check-viral-image-x-gop-voted-out-2018/

FACT CHECK: Andrew Cuomo Said The First Terror Attack In New York City Was The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/26/fact-check-andrew-cuomo-first-terror-attack-new-york-city-1993/

The ten fact-checks submitted by CYF, as well as the wider body of articles on the site, demonstrate that the site covers a range of subjects and speakers, and generally substantiate its claim to pursue 'a non-partisan mission of fact-checking public figures on both sides of the political spectrum' and to 'focus on claims that follow the news cycle, have been shared widely on social media, or have been made by prominent public figures'. In its application CYF describes a reasonable process for identifying newsworthy claims to check from both liberals and conservatives regarding a variety of subjects, relying primarily on social media feeds. While this assessment does not include an audit of newsroom routines, the evidence on the site suggests CYF has such procedures in place and uses them effectively to provide fact-checking with a broad current-affairs focus that is not obviously slanted towards one ideology or political agenda. Similarly, a close look at the evidence and reasoning used in individual fact-checks appears to bear out CYF's claim to consider relevant evidence from a variety of sources, including think tanks and experts with varying orientations where necessary. It is impossible to say without closer scrutiny whether a fact-checking organization 'assesses all claims using the same standards', but the submitted fact-checks and other recent work on the site suggest that CYF selects and analyzes claims in a fair-minded way. 

As a news outlet, we mandate that our employees do not advocate for individual politicians or candidates. Doing so would violate our journalistic code of ethics and make reporting the news in a non-biased way impossible.

Our writer’s agreement specifically addresses this point:

"Political Activities -- Writer agrees not to partake in any partisan political activity or other issue advocacy during the term of this Agreement. Writer understands that any such political activity or advocacy could cause others to question their independence as a reporter."

As evidence of its nonpartisanship policy, CYF submits a statement that employees are prohibited from advocating for political candidates, which 'would violate our journalistic code of ethics', as well as a quote from its writer's agreement specifying that writers agree not to be involved in 'any partisan political activity or other issue advocacy' while under the agreement. Three areas of clarification and/or revision exist here:

1. CYF does not specify whether these conditions apply to CYF or to TDC as whole, nor does it provide its code of ethics or a standard writer's agreement to place the provided language in context.

2. None of these policies relating to nonpartisanship appear to be disclosed publicly on either the CYF or TDC website, for instance on the 'About Us' or methodology pages.

3. The question of TDC's broader political orientation is not addressed either in the application or on the TDC website. 

4. The question of CYF’s connection to previously non-disclosed funders who run advocacy organizations should be disclosed. That is, CYF needs to explain to their readers how they are able to accept money from advocacy organizations while not engaging in “direct involvement” with those organizations, as stipulated by Criterion 2b and Criterion 4a.

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Update: CYF supplied full standard writer's agreement; directed assessors to its 'Nonpartisanship and fairness' page; and added language clarifying its policies and independence from TDC to that page and its 'About Us' page. Further, DCNF added extensive language on nonpartisanship to its own site. 

Rating changed from Partially Compliant to Fully Compliant. 

Each fact check is heavily dependent on reputable, primary sources.

Source material is hyperlinked extensively within the body of the article, and where a link is not available, the article tells readers where the information came from and the qualifications of the institution or individual who provided the content.

Check Your Fact also uses graphs and charts to clearly illustrate the verdict. The data is not only sourced within the graph, but also in the text of the fact check.

To help the reader understand the verdict, we put the most relevant information at the top – we summarize the gist of the article before delving into the details, and then try to establish the claim as early as possible.

For clarity, our lede sentence always states the claim that we have decided to fact check, followed by the verdict shortly thereafter.

CYF uses relevant, authoritative sources in an effective way to provide context for the claim being checked, to support the reasoning that led to its verdict, and to offer wider background about complex issues or questions. As indicated on its methodology page, CYF often relies on public data from official government or institutional sources, as well as experts from academia or think tanks; sources are clearly identified in the text and linked to when possible. (For instance, CYF's debunking of false claims that Sen. Elizabeth Warren's genetic tests showed less Native American heritage than the average American relied on two scientific reports and direct interviews with at least five scientists to reach a verdict, while also providing extensive and well-documented context on controversies over different ways of measuring ancestry.) Both the submitted fact-checks and other work on the site suggest that CYF seeks nonpartisan sources and conducts interviews with experts on different sides of an issue when relevant, identifying the orientation of the source.

http://checkyourfact.com/about-us

Check Your Fact is a for-profit subsidiary wholly owned by The Daily Caller, Inc. Majority owners of The Daily Caller, Inc. are co-founder and publisher Neil Patel and co-founder Tucker Carlson.

The Daily Caller’s fact-checking team is funded by The Daily Caller’s general news budget, as well as revenue generated through advertising. Expenditures for Check Your Fact include employee salaries and website maintenance.

Decisions about what to investigate, as well as our conclusions, are guided only by our journalists.

The Daily Caller has a licensing agreement with The Daily Caller News Foundation, a Delaware 501(c)(3) non-profit news organization. TheDCNF is a separate legal entity from The Daily Caller.

All content created by TheDCNF is available in full, free of charge to any reputable publisher that can provide a large audience. TheDCNF currently has over 250 publishers signed onto its free license to run its content on their sites.

The Daily Caller is one of these 250 licensees and does run content created by TheDCNF. The Daily Caller gets this content on the same terms as all other licensees with no special preference.

TheDCNF receives funding from individual donations and grants from non-profit foundations. DCNF contributors to Check Your Fact are supported by a $100,000 grant from the Searle Freedom Trust for investigative reporting.

CYF includes a section on its 'About Us' page stating that it is owned by TDC, naming the majority owners of TDC, and setting out its status as a licensee of the non-profit The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF). It also identifies one major contributor to DCNF, the Searle Freedom Trust.

CYF fails to make public any other details regarding the overall level of funding, major sources of funding, or an overview expenditures. No indication is given of the level of support from DCNF (e.g. share of content or staffing provided) and no link is provided to annual report or other financial documents from DCNF; these documents do not appear to be available on the DCNF's own web site. It is also worth noting that the 'About Us' page of the main TDC site provides a link to the DCNF website but does not specify the TDC's relationship to it. 

To fully comply with Criterion 4a, CYF needs to do more than provide a series of links. Rather, they need to engage in “detailing each source of funding over the past calendar year accounting for 5% or more of total revenue.”

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Update: DCNF now posts its most recent Form 990, which CYF links to from its 'About Us' page; TDC's 'About Us' page added language explaining the relationship to DCNF. In addition, assessors were supplied additional details on TDC and DCNF expenditures and on CYF revenue sources, as well as a partial list of contributors to DCNF. 

It is important to note that the level of detail supplied to assessors about expenditures and funding sources does not appear clearly on CYF or its sister sites. CYF states to assessors that its grant funding comes from only one DCNF donor, the Searle Freedom Trust, which is noted on the CYF site; this may bring the site into narrow compliance with Criterion 4a. However we stress that this falls short of the spirit of  the policy, and encourage the applicant to review the comprehensive and clearly organized funding page at e.g. FactCheck.org (https://www.factcheck.org/our-funding/).

http://checkyourfact.com/staff

Check Your Fact is managed by Geoff Ingersoll, The Daily Caller's editor-in-chief.

The Daily Caller employs a dedicated fact check editor, David Sivak, as well as Shane Devine, a reporter for the organization.

Check Your Fact also has two frequent contributors who are employed by The Daily Caller News Foundation: Emily Larsen and Brad Sylvester.

Fact checks may be performed by The Daily Caller staff and other freelance journalists who are thoroughly vetted by The Daily Caller's editorial team.

CYF's staff page list brief bios of TDC's editor-in-chief, of the dedicated CYF editor, and of frequent contributors, working either for TDC or DCNF. A similar staff page exists at TDC and at DCNF. No editorial or advisory board is mentioned.

http://checkyourfact.com/contact

We also encourage our readers to contact us on our methodology page, as well as at the bottom of each article.

http://checkyourfact.com/methodology

CYF offers detailed information on a contact page and invites reader contact in individual fact-checks as well as other pages on the site.

http://checkyourfact.com/methodology

CYF offers a readily accessible methodology page outlining in broad terms how the site selects and evaluates claims. The methodology page is linked from CYF's 'About Us' page. The posted methodology names major sources (e.g. politicians, social media) and primary criteria (e.g. 'popular but suspect claims', factual claims rather than opinions) for choosing claims to check; explains that the site relies experts and 'reputable source material', including from government, academia, and think tanks; and briefly defines the three verdicts used. It is not as detailed or comprehensive as methodology pages maintained by some major fact-checkers in the US and overseas, and may fall slightly short of a providing 'step-by-step' explanation.

It is not clear how CheckYourFact determines “how much” truth is required for a claim to be true as compared to false. The decisions the site makes appear to be reasonable given their description of their investigations of the claims they check, but I cannot find or articulate a site-wide criteria. 

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Update: CYF added detail to its methodology page. Rating changed to Fully Compliant.

http://checkyourfact.com/contact

http://checkyourfact.com/methodology

We encourage our readers to send us feedback, including recommendations on future fact-checks.

You may contact one of our reporters or send an email to either our tip line (sendtips@dailycaller.com) or fact-check editor, David Sivak (sivak@dailycaller.com).

What makes a good fact check? We avoid fact-checking opinions or claims that are overly broad. For example, “Assault rifles are used in most school shootings” can be readily fact-checked, whereas “Banning assault weapons would stop school shootings” is something we leave the public to debate. 

TDC operates a dedicated tips email (sendtips@dailycaller.com) to which readers are invited to send 'fact-check ideas' on the contact and methodology pages; in addition published fact-checks invite readers to send ideas directly to the author. A brief paragraph explaining 'what makes a good fact check/ is included at the end of the methodology page, under 'feedback'.

CYF does not offer a dedicated form for submitting fact-check ideas, and the primary call to action is not very prominent on the site. In addition, it may be confusing to use the generic TDC tips address and individual author addresses to solicit fact-check ideas, rather than a single CYF address and/or form. No statistics or other information about the value of reader ideas is published. However, CYF narrowly meets the criteria for compliance.

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Update: CYF now invites corrections directly to the top editor.

http://checkyourfact.com/corrections

While our job is to ascertain the truth, we will occasionally make mistakes. When we do, we commit to hastily correcting our errors so that our readers can get the real story. If you spot an error, please alert us via our tip line.

The prominence of our correction will be commensurate to the gravity of the error. Typos will be corrected without fanfare, minor corrections will be noted at the bottom of the article and major factual corrections will be noted at the top.

CYF offers a very brief public corrections policy on a dedicated page linked from the 'About Us' page, committing the site to 'hastily correcting our errors' and specifying three degrees of prominence depending on the seriousness of the error. The site instructs readers to submit corrections to the generic TDC tips email. The parent site TDC includes the same language at the end of its 'About Us' page, but does not label it as a corrections policy. On balance, the site's corrections policy is not very detailed or very prominent but meets a minimal standard for compliance.

Check Your Fact has not had to issue a correction over the last year.

We received one inquiry in December 2017 in regards to a fact check we published on military spending in the Middle East.

http://checkyourfact.com/2017/12/11/fact-check-has-the-us-spent-7-trillion-on-wars-in-the-middle-east/

President Donald Trump claimed: “We have spent as of two months ago almost $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have? We have nothing. It’s worse than it was 17 years ago when they started.”

The article rated Trump false because there were no studies to substantiate a figure that high, and the White House itself pointed TheDCNF to a much lower figure ($4.4 trillion).

A professor at the University of Tulsa contacted us after publication to provide a figure on military spending he had calculated – $6.8 trillion. The figure had been published in a journal and was very close to $7 trillion, so TheDCNF contacted him, scheduled a call, and talked through the study and his methodology.

No correction was ultimately made for the following reasons: the $6.8 trillion figure was outdated (it only went through 2007), whereas Trump said $7 trillion “as of two months ago”; the White House provided TheDCNF with a source that confirmed Trump was incorrect; the White House’s source, as well as the way Trump worded his claim, focused on war spending from 2001-2017, whereas the professor’s figure went back to 1976.

We received a second correction request in November 2018 in regards to a fact check we published on whether “illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born U.S. citizens.”

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/11/14/fact-check-crime-rates-lower-illegal-immigrants/

Jim Agresti, head of the right-leaning website Just Facts, took issue with our verdict, which we rated as ‘unsubstantiated.’ (He thought the verdict should have been ‘false.’)

Agresti called studies that show non-citizens are less likely to commit crimes “fatally flawed” and linked us to an article he had written on the topic earlier this year.

We reviewed that article and ultimately decided that the fact check was sturdy – it relied on reputable source material and fully represented the arguments of both sides.

An ‘unsubstantiated’ verdict is used when there is conflicting data, experts disagree on a matter, etc.

CYF states that it did not provide examples because it has not issued any corrections in the last year. It did share examples of two corrections requests which were reviewed and ultimately rejected as not relevant and/or unsubstantiated. CYF did not indicate whether it responded directly to the requesters, as some fact-checkers do.

It is worth noting that a more prominent corrections policy may lead to more requests for corrections.

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Update: CYF made contact information fro corrections more prominent, and solicits corrections on multiple pages. Rating changed to Fully Compliant.