This website, informally called Fact-Check Central (FCC), highlights recent fact-checks from a selection of fact-checking websites. New entries are automatically retrieved several times a week. Clicking on an entry will take you to the corresponding page on the originating fact-checking site.
The format in which statements and their "truthiness" ratings are published varies between fact-checking websites. Some sites will publish the original statement, the source, and the fact-checker's conclusion from a strict number of options, such as: true, false or misleading. Other websites take a less structured approach. The different formats of the entries displayed on FCC reflects that diversity in formats.
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) is a creation of the Poynter Institute. The IFCN has developed a code of principles "...for organizations that regularly publish nonpartisan reports on the accuracy of statements by public figures, major institutions, and other widely circulated claims of interest to society."
Signatories to the IFCN code of principles agree to abide by the code, and submit to periodic independent assessment to retain their signatory status. Organizations that appear on FCC were chosen from the IFCN list of signatories.
The fact-checking websites featured here are regularly visited and checked for new entries, using a technique called web scraping.
Before scraping a web page, a human must analyze the page's (HTML) structure to determine how to identify (in a computer program) the parts of the page that are of interest. Next, a small program is written to "scrape" (i.e. retrieve) those parts of the web page.
Once the scraping program "knows" which parts of the web page we're interested in, it can be executed to retrieve those parts. Checking a website for new content merely requires executing the program on a regular basis, and checking to see if any of the interesting parts have changed.
To find out more about FCC and web scraping, including a few comments on the legality and ethics of scraping, visit Scraping for "Real" Facts.
The following technologies were used to develop Fact-Check Central: