Why do we fact-check?

Logically’s fact-checkers use data and analytics to source and prioritize claims with demonstrable reach, traction, or influence. We draw on the expertise of our analysts and researchers to assess the impact of each individual claim and the consequences of its spread. 

We are committed to publishing topical, original fact checks that align with the news cycle, public interest, and developments in the misinformation ecosystem. 

Logically will investigate a claim that meets the following criteria:

• It is a statement made in a public or publicly accessible online forum.
• It can be properly assessed as more or less reasonable or simply true or false.
• It can be adjudicated on the basis of publicly available evidence and commonly held standards of reasoning.
• Logically can only fact-check assertions or sentences which can be interpreted as assertions. An assertion is any sentence that aims to make somebody believe something to be true.
• Sometimes an otherwise valid claim cannot be settled by any evidence to which we have access, nor could we have access in the future. These will usually be claims which are entirely grounded in matters of taste, historical claims that no evidence can bear upon, or claims of a fundamentally moral or religious nature.
• We will not engage with claims where we believe it would be irresponsible to do so. This may be because we do not have the space, the expertise, or the capacity to give sufficient context to a claim, which would make any judgment we could make ultimately unhelpful. We will also not engage with trolls nor entertain harmful conspiracies unless there is a clear journalistic case for publishing a rebuttal.

How do we conduct fact checks?

We try to track the claim back to its origins, analyze its context and then find as many primary sources as possible to either support or refute it.

Once we have found enough evidence, we make a decision about how reliable we believe the claim is and write up a report about our findings, as well as the path we follow to find our evidence. This becomes the fact check itself, and once it passes through several levels of oversight and is checked and double-checked, we publish our findings.

Logically’s fact-checkers must find at least two sources to provide evidence for their fact checks. These can be but are not limited to first-hand quotes from experts, academic journals and research, and reports from established, reputable news sources as informed (but not exclusively so) by Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC). Once fact checkers have discovered a claim, it must be approved by a senior fact checker, the editorial lead, or the regional lead. Once a draft of the fact check is complete, Logically’s assistant editors are responsible for ensuring that the copy and sources are reputable, accurate, and free of grammatical errors. Assistant editors flag any queries over final judgments, sources, or other editorial decisions to the fact checker and a senior member of the fact-checking unit before the fact check is published. 

Senior staff within the fact-checking unit (the global head of fact-checking, regional lead, and editorial lead) are jointly responsible for oversight of our fact-checking unit's overall editorial direction and policy.

We apply four different ratings to our fact checks. They aim to give you a quick summary of our findings and verdict about the reliability of your claim.

Here's what they mean:

TRUE - This claim is entirely justified by the available evidence and helpful in understanding the point at issue.

PARTLY TRUE - This claim may be misleading in some insubstantive respects but is still helpful in understanding the point at issue.

MISLEADING - This claim is mostly unhelpful in understanding the point at issue, even though elements of this claim may be justified by available evidence.

FALSE - This claim is entirely unjustified by the available evidence.

Logically's mission is to reduce and eventually eliminate the harms associated with mis- and disinformation. We are proud supporters of free speech and oppose censorious approaches to individual expression online. However, where misleading and deceptive online discourse causes societal damage, we believe it needs to be identified and addressed. We believe that it is both possible and desirable to be politically engaged without being prejudicial, to debate and disagree with honesty and integrity, and to demand the highest standards of courtesy, rationality, and respect from political allies and opposition alike.

We believe that the best way to achieve this is by developing non-partisan, unbiased resources to establish what facts are beyond dispute, what positions can be reasonably held on the basis of those facts, and to give everybody the resources necessary to argue for what they believe without undermining our shared commitment to arguing on the basis of facts.

As employees of Logically, we understand that in order to play our part in establishing what is true and what is not, Logically must be trusted across the political spectrum. Furthermore, we understand that while being politically engaged is a civic duty, our role as an independent fact-checking organization requires that our work be motivated by broad political and ethical considerations which transcend our partisan political interests.

As such, we undertake to ensure that all our work at Logically is free from bias and partisan interest and that our personal political views will never influence our work, nor should our work ever permit reasonable suspicion of being unduly influenced by our own partisan or political views. Furthermore, we undertake to comport ourselves in our private lives and our online and other communications in ways that can never undermine the position of Logically as an unbiased, non-partisan organization.

Read more about why you can trust us

Our funders and clients have no control over our fact-checking workflow, nor can they offer any input in our editorial decision-making. Senior members of the fact-checking unit (regional operations and editorial leads) are jointly responsible for editorial rigor, quality, and consistency. The global head of fact-checking is ultimately responsible for editorial policy and standards throughout the global fact-checking team.

When dealing with claims and fact-checks, our fact-checkers work under the supervision of senior fact-checkers and assistant editors in a three-tier process.

Any potentially contentious editorial decisions, complaints, or necessary corrections involve the direct intervention of the editorial and operations leads, who also report to the global head of fact-checking.

A dedicated compliance and policy manager assists the head of the team to ensure the fact-checking team's standards remain in sync with the best practices and policies of the global fact-checking community.

Different kinds of evidence justify different kinds of claims; empirical claims may be justified by scientific research, economic predictions may be justified by appealing to expert bodies, political claims may be justified by polling data, or by appealing to generally agreed upon political principles. However, there are standards that many different kinds of evidence can meet, which makes them comparable in terms of quality.

This is our hierarchy of sources. We always prefer sources higher up the list than lower down. Wherever applicable, we also prefer primary sources (first-hand information) to secondary sources (information about primary sources). We will always state if there is reason to believe a cited source is unreliable or if there is a plausible conflict of interest in their reporting.

Our rule of thumb for determining the quality of a source is to ask, “how much would they have to lose by misleading us?" A source that has more to lose by making a bad mistake (like a respected researcher) will tend to be more reliable than one with less (such as an anonymous social media post). We require at least two sources of the highest available quality to confirm a judgment on a claim.

• Expert Consensus: Internationally respected organizations and experts in the relevant field explicitly accept this as an indisputable fact.
• Peer Reviewed Research: Articles in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals support this claim.
• Non-partisan government sources: Information, including statistics, policy, and law, from reliable, reputable, and non-partisan government agencies (this would include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and the World Bank, but would not include any statement from any partisan political figure or their spokespeople.
• Expert opinion: Non-peer-reviewed research or other forms of authoritative opinion given by people with strong existing ties to respectable international bodies relevant to the claim.
• Non-expert journalistic investigation: Investigation by people with no particular subject expertise but who have strong institutional ties to respectable journalistic outlets, investigative bodies, or research institutions.
• Eyewitness accounts: First-hand accounts of events by people who directly witnessed them (such accounts must always be corroborated).

Fact checks may need to be revised for several reasons, including the emergence of new information, the discovery of new evidence, or correcting typographical errors. If you believe we have made an error in any aspect of one of our fact checks, contact us through the calls to action on each of our published fact checks. 

Each fact check comes with a unique tracking code, allowing our editorial team to quickly trace any fact check that may be the subject of an update, complaint, or correction.

• Fact checks edited with substantive corrections will be marked with a 'correction' label on the sharable image.
• Fact checks edited with non-substantive corrections (to fix spelling, grammatical or other mistakes that do not contribute to the substance of the claim or judgment) will be marked as 'updated.'
• Complaints will be assessed by senior members of the fact-checking unit and promptly responded to, with reasons given for our decision to either correct a fact check or leave it as it stands.
• If you are not satisfied with our response, you will be able to issue a further complaint to our senior editorial members of the fact-checking unit, who will take any necessary steps to satisfactorily address the issue, up to and including appointing an independent advisor to investigate the claim.
• Users who have received or tracked a fact check which is the subject of an update or a correction, will be notified.

Journalistic Corrections and Right of Reply

If you notice something published in our journalistic, research, or educational output which you believe to be inaccurate, misleading, or unfair, please submit a correction request through the form at the end of the page. Any complaints will be raised to our editorial leads and responded to within 48 hours. Any complaint found to have substantive merit will be publicly corrected, and the correction is given equal prominence to the article in question. We offer anybody who was the subject of criticism in our reporting the right to reply, provided a prima facie case can be made that our criticisms can be fairly addressed. Reasons for any refusal to grant a right to reply will be published on our website.

If you believe Logically is violating the IFCN code of principles, you can inform the IFCN directly here.