An Argentinian Fact-Checking Initiative Enters Its Seventh Year
The Chequeado team working on its verification tools and procedures. Photograph by Pablo Martín Fernández. Creative Commons.
Chequeado.com is Latin America's first online platform dedicated to the verification of the public discourse. Founded in 2010 by a group of Argentinian journalists and hosted at the Public Voice Foundation, the project the project is a self-described “non-partisan website that checks the statements of politicians, opinion leaders, businessmen, the media, and other institutions.”
Chequeado is part of a worldwide fact-checking movement, employing a strategy popularized in the United States in 2003, when Factcheck.org launched, monitoring public discourse in politics and popular culture for mistakes, inaccuracies, and untruths.
In a talk in October 2013, Laura Zommer, the head of Chequeado.com, described the importance of questioning all of the information that we receive with the aim of “reducing the margin of intellectual impunity” public figures often enjoy.
Los oficialistas nos acusan de opositores y los opositores de oficialistas. Menos mal, porque no vinimos a hacernos amigos de ellos, vinimos a crear una comunidad con vos. Creemos en averiguar los hechos y en que éstos priman sobre nuestros prejuicios y posiciones personales.
Government supporters accuse us of being opponents and the opponents [say we're] government supporters. It's just as well, because we're not here to be friends with any of them — we're here to create a community with you. We believe in finding out the facts and that this takes precedence over our personal prejudices and views.
Chequeado.com is an independent journalism investigation project that is financed by a diversification of funds strategy. It features a blog, pages on Facebook and Twitter, and also a newsletter.
Originally published in Global Voices.
