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Istinomer is legally registered in the Registry of Public Media. Registry in Serbia doesn’t publish the exact purpose of the media (e.g. Fact-checking). Based on their website it’s mainly a fact-checking section. Beside fact-checking they publish interviews and similar forms of reporting.

Here is the link with all Istinomer’s fact checks published in the previous six months (we aren’t able to send link for three months period).

http://www.istinomer.rs/pregled_ocena/tipovi,3,4,5/period,6_months/pstr,10/strana,1/

There was only one case which doesn’t fit the criteria of the average of at least 1 report per week - 12 days without a report in November (3-15). For the rest of the 3 month period there were various reports up to 4 per week. 

We strive to use uniform standards and methodology for each fact check in order to ensure objectivity and fairness. We rate political figures and government officials focusing on the topic and statements of great importance to the public. Political affiliations of the people we rate play no role in our fact checks, but verifiable facts only.

We do focus on public officials, whether appointed or elected, as they have the opportunity to exercise power and should be accountable to the public. However, Istinomer has also rated different opposition politicians’ statements and constantly collects their promises. We also try to provide in-depth analysis based on multiple sources, as well as missing context as certain statements may be true, but misleading when taken out of the bigger picture.

During 2016 and 2017 Istinomer team evaluated 224 statements from more than 30 public officials and politicians:

1. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3344/Imamo%20manje%20stoke%20nego%201910.%20godine 
2. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3356/Proizvodnja%20u%20FAP-u%20od%20septembra%202014 
3. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3369/SNS%20ispunila%20sve%20što%20je%20obećala 
4. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3371/Nema%20novih%20investicija 
5. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3423/Penzioneri%20više%20umiru%20zbog%20smanjenja%20penzija 
6. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3507/U%20celoj%20Evropi%20samo%20Srbija%20beleži%20rast 
7. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3492/U%20Hercegovačkoj%20niko%20nije%20vezivan 
8. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3465/Počeli%20radovi%20na%20pruzi%20Stara%20Pazova-Novi%20Sad 
9. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3593/Do%20marta%20sistem%20elektronskog%20prijavljivanja%20beba 
10. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3683/Ne%20pada%20mi%20na%20pamet%20da%20se%20kandidujem%20za%20predsednika

We urge our readers to point out to important claims or promises we could check in the future in order to ensure more diversity of topics for our fact checks.

Istinomer cover mainly public officials, who in reality have the most media reach. Besides that, they focus on the opposition leaders and high ranking politicians. Sometimes they go deep in the past to fact-check a certain claims, e.g. before the mandate and during the mandate of the official. For most of the reports they use the same structure of the report.

Istinomer is a member of Press council, an independent, self-regulatory body that brings together publishers, owners of print and online media, news agencies and media professionals. As a member organization Istinomer is obliged to respect and to actively promote the Journalist’s Code of Ethics. Beside many fields of journalists and media work that this Code covers, prevention of corruption and conflict of interest is one of the most important (section III of the Code). Based on the above, Journalist’s Code of Ethics is integral part of Istinomer’s policies for preventing political involvement of Istinomer journalists and editors.

SECTION III/6

“Work in PR and marketing agencies, lobbying agencies, public bodies and institutions, and political parties, is incompatible with the profession.

Guidelines:

• Participation in a political, electoral or a media campaign (political parties / companies, and other) cannot be performed simultaneously with journalistic / editorial work. The political activity of the family members of journalists / editors could also cause real or apparent conflict of interest.”

Having in mind they’re policy of prevention of any political activism and involvement of their staff, it doesn’t seem likely that Istinomer can be involved in some kind of an orginized political campaign. It’s also forbidden for their staff to “work in PR and marketing agencies, lobbying agencies, public bodies and institutions, and political parties”

All the statements Istinomer rate are verbatim quotes published in different media outlets. We tend to use video materials when possible in order to avoid misquoting and misinterpretation. We always contact people we rate to request further information about the given statement, whether it be comment or data.

We also contact responsible institutions in a search for data. We use publicly available information, but we have repeatedly used FOI requests to obtain certain documents and contracts, which were not made public prior to our request. We upload full documents we obtained during the fact check process and whenever possible we also link to different sources of information cited in the text in order to enable readers to verify the data themselves and decide whether they agree with the rating or not.

We analyze reports of domestic and international institutions and think thanks, search credible databases and consult experts in different fields, university professors, NGOs. No conclusion in our fact checks could be made based on unnamed sources, as we use on-the-record sources and official documents.

We have developed internal methodology in this regard and all the members of the team underwent thorough training on how to find credible sources and make conclusion solely based on verifiable facts, which should also be transparent for our readers. 

It’s quite easy to fact-check some of the reports Istinomer publishes by comparing evidences. If the report is based on the document or some deep analyses it is well described how they came to that conclusion with graphics and other visualizations.

Istinomer is initiative of Serbian NGO CRTA which can be seen in registration doc that we are sending as integral part of this application. Istinomer is financed by projects mainly from international donor organizations. To preserve non-partisanship and unbiased reporting CRTA don’t apply for any grant that is financed from state or municipality budgets. All financial audit reports of CRTA are public and can be found on CRTA web site - http://crta.rs/sr/ko-smo-mi/ (on the page bottom)

On the web page there are information of donors for CRTA which is the NGO who founded Istinomer. In fact it’s not clear what amount of money is entitled to Istinomer by the single project. It should be listed clearly with all the other relevant information.

Here is the Istinomer’s impressum (on the page bottom - section TIM ISTINOMERA). http://www.istinomer.rs/o-istinomeru 

Short biographies can be found here, among other CRTA employees. http://crta.rs/en/who-we-are/

Biographies can be found only on CRTA’s website, among all the activists and fact-checkers and journalists.

http://www.istinomer.rs/kontakt/

It’s quite easy to reach management of Istinomer in order to complain or leave a comment.

On this page (http://www.istinomer.rs/o-istinomeru) we have a general explanation of the Istinomer's work, methodology and statement evaluations. In Criterion 3 you can also find more about methodology. Istinomer also have internal procedures regarding methodology that explains steps in creation of Istinomer's fact checks. This internal procedures oblige Istinomer journalists: to contact the actor for comment, always to refer on official information/research/statistical data (when is possible), to contact the expert (individual or organisation) for more information about researched topic, to follow the copyright rules (especially with photos) etc.  

Main part of the procedure is described on their website; the only thing that should be more explained is how they pick the claim of the day. Is it the top news in all the other media? Also they explain how the citizens can participate which is very innovative and useful.

We constantly invite readers to get involved in fact checking process by sending statements that they want to be evaluated or by proposing the topics for deep dive research (http://www.istinomer.rs/clanak/1681/Powered-by-citaoci). We have developed and launched the unique crowdsourcing tool “ProveriMe/fact check me” (http://www.istinomer.rs/clanak/1650/Proveri-me), which allows users to collect statements published on different online media platforms and easily nominate statements for fact-checking. As a result of deepening cooperation with Danas daily (danas.rs) and TV N1 (rs.n1info.com) websites Istinomer team succeed to post the "Istinomer button" on these websites and provide their readers with easy to use fact-checking function. On every page on Danas and N1 websites there is a field that readers can use for proposing the topics and statements to Istinomer team. Readers also use Istinomer’s social network channels (Facebook and Twitter) for submitting the claims for analysis. 

As well on their website readers can suggest claims on two different media websites as well, so it gives the impression that readers can have a big role in the whole process of fact-checking.

On our website, we have publically committed ourselves (http://www.istinomer.rs/o-istinomeru) to respecting Code of Ethics of Serbian Journalists in order to maintain highest professional standards, including those on correction policy. We are also obliged to respect the Law on Public Information and Media, which envisaged procedure for corrections in detail, which we fully respect. 

In the “about us” section they have an explanation of what happens if they make a mistake, and they admit it happens sometimes, which is quite honest to their readers.

1. http://www.istinomer.rs/ocena/3673/Smene-direktora-javnih-preduzeca-do-Nove-godine - In this first example, former director of the state company Elektromreze Srbije, requested correction of an article wrongly saying he resigned from the post, while he left the company after his term came to an end. Even though original article contained quote of him saying his term was over, Istinomer published the correction below the text with the link to a full response. 
2. http://www.istinomer.rs/clanak/1662/Mapa-preletaca-na-lokalu - After one local branch of the Social Democratic Party left the organization, in a text listing numerous examples of flyovers, Istinomer said the members of this branch also joined ruling Progressive Party before it was officially confirmed. After spotting this mistake, we have added the correction explaining what was amended. In a meantime, members of this branch also denied joining another party, but after several days local party chief confirmed they did join Progressives. After the official announcement, we added another update elaborating the change. 

Istinomer provided two examples in which the corrections were made according to the rules of Code of Ethics of Serbian journalists.