Latest news with #factchecking
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
BBC Verify largely factchecks international stories – what about UK politics?
In a world of fake news and disinformation, factchecking claims and the veracity of images has become an important part of impartial journalism. People invest their trust in information sources they believe are accurate. With this in mind, the BBC launched its Verify service in May 2023. Its more than 60 journalists routinely factcheck, verify videos, counter disinformation, analyse data and explain complex stories. Then in June 2025, the BBC launched Verify Live, a blog that tells audiences in real time what claims they are investigating and how they are being checked. At the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University we have been monitoring BBC Verify since its launch. And we have systematically tracked the first month of BBC Verify Live from June 3-27 this year, examining all 244 blog posts as well as the hundreds of claims and sources that featured. We've found that the service places a heavy emphasis on foreign affairs. We argue that it could (and should) be used more to factcheck UK politics, enhancing the quality of the BBC's impartiality journalism and serving the public service broadcaster's domestic audiences. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. Our analysis found international stories made up 71% of all BBC Verify Live coverage. The coverage largely focused on verifying international conflicts and humanitarian crises, from the Middle East and Ukraine to the recent plane crash in India. This might reflect the large number of major international stories that occurred over the first month of BBC Verify Live's launch. But the emphasis on foreign news was also evident in our analysis of the main BBC Verify service over the last 18 months. We monitored how much the factchecking service appeared on the BBC's News at Ten, and found it was used more often in coverage of foreign affairs. One exception was during the 2024 general election campaign, when BBC Verify was used to challenge politicians' claims, and scrutinise policies around migration and the economy. BBC Verify has also covered recent major political developments, like the budget and announcements of flagship government policy. The emphasis on covering international conflicts is consistent with its editorial mission to 'analyse satellite imagery, investigate AI-generated content, factcheck claims and verify videos when news breaks'. BBC Verify regularly uses satellite mapping and geolocation data, which most newsrooms do not have at their disposal, to factcheck images and social media posts. However, the resources and expertise Verify has could also be used to more regularly factcheck false or misleading claims in domestic political issues. This could be important to building audience trust at a time when the BBC's impartiality is regularly questioned, while helping people better understand political debates in the UK. Our past research with media users suggests they want journalists to be bolder and more transparent when assessing the credibility of politicians' competing claims. BBC Verify is a logical tool to do this. Two years after it launched, Verify is considered one of the most trusted factchecking sources in the UK by the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the most used by media regulator Ofcom. BBC Verify has proved it can effectively use its resources and expertise to unpack and challenge domestic political claims – covering the spending review and party manifestos ahead of the 2024 general election. We have previously analysed how BBC Verify robustly challenged a misleading Conservative party claim about a future Labour government raising taxes during the election campaign. Interrogating real-time claims BBC Verify Live takes a variety of approaches to its analysis of real-time claims. We assessed all claims appearing in blogs throughout most of June 2025 and discovered that 22% were challenged to some extent (found to be inaccurate), while 23% were upheld (considered accurate) and 13% partially upheld. Meanwhile, 10% were still being verified at the time the blog was posted (but may have been upheld or challenged in subsequent coverage), and 12% had additional context added to them. One fifth of all claims were not subject to any clear judgement about their accuracy. BBC Verify Live most often used the UK or official foreign governments, and their militaries or agencies, as the main corroborating sources to factcheck claims, or the focus of the claim being investigated in some stories. These made up well over three quarters of sources in factchecking coverage. There was, comparatively, limited use of think tanks, policy institutes, nongovernmental organisations, experts, academics or eyewitnesses. Just over one in ten claims had additional context added to them (as opposed to verifying or challenging a claim). This was most often the case in blogs about domestic affairs and rival political claims. Given the recent cuts to the BBC's World Service, Verify's international news agenda will bolster the public service broadcaster's worldwide profile and credibility. Yet, for BBC Verify to enhance impartiality and trust with domestic audiences, we would argue it should play a more prominent role in routine political reporting, not just during elections or high-profile stories. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA and ESRC. Nathan Ritchie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
BBC News
3 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Analysing new Syria footage and behind the scenes of Gaza investigation
Update: Date: 09:45 BST Title: Welcome Content: Matt MurphyBBC Verify senior journalist Good morning from BBC Verify Live. Its a busy Friday here, and our fact-checkers, data journalists and verification specialists are working on these stories today: All that and more to come this morning. And remember, if there's anything you want BBC Verify to look into you can get in touch using this form.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Investigating Gaza aid site deaths and cost of Afghan resettlement plan
Update: Date: 09:38 BST Title: Welcome Content: Matt MurphyBBC Verify senior journalist Good morning from BBC Verify Live. It's a busy morning here. Our fact-checkers, data journalists and verification specialists are working on these stories today: All that to come, and later our fact-check team will be gearing up for Prime Minister's Questions, where Sir Keir Starmer will be grilled by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch in the final clash before summer recess.
Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Al Jazeera
AI as fact-checkers
AI as fact-checkers Digital Dilemma More and more people are using AI chatbots to fact check breaking news. But while information may be instant, does that make it true? Video Duration 05 minutes 09 seconds 05:09 Video Duration 04 minutes 58 seconds 04:58 Video Duration 05 minutes 56 seconds 05:56 Video Duration 04 minutes 08 seconds 04:08 Video Duration 04 minutes 34 seconds 04:34 Video Duration 03 minutes 34 seconds 03:34 Video Duration 04 minutes 23 seconds 04:23
The Independent
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Fact check: ‘Channel migrants' in prison and fake ‘Amazon' deals
This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. Are ' Channel migrants' 24 times more likely to go to prison than British citizens? New analysis from the Conservative Party last week claimed migrants who cross the Channel in small boats are 24 times more likely to go to prison than the average British citizen. We've repeatedly asked the Conservatives about their research but haven't received a response, so we don't have full details of their calculations. But based on the details reported, the claim that 'Channel migrants' are 24 times more likely to go to jail is not reliable. The University of Oxford's Migration Observatory says there is no reliable publicly available data on the proportion of small boat arrivals who go to prison. The first report of the claim said the Conservative analysis is 'based on the 10,838 foreign criminals' in prison in England and Wales in March 2025. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures do show that in March there were 10,838 'foreign nationals held in custody', a figure which excludes people who also held a British passport. (Some were awaiting trial or in prison for non-criminal reasons, so not all are necessarily 'criminals'.) These figures only show the number of foreign nationals in prison at a given point in time though, so can't reliably tell us how likely it is for a foreign national to go to prison at some point during their time in this country. The report went on to say that the March prison data suggests the rate of British citizens in jail is 0.14%, compared with 0.18% for foreign nationals, and that the rate is 'significantly higher for the nationalities who make up the largest small boat arrivals, including Somalians, Afghans, Iraqis, Albanians and Iranians'. It said the Conservative analysis suggests 'some 3.4% of small boat migrants could go to prison', and that this is 24 times the 0.14% British citizen imprisonment rate. It is not clear from the story how exactly the 3.4% figure was calculated — we don't know for sure all the nationalities it covers, what proportion of small boat arrivals those nationalities account for and over what period, or how else the figures may have been adjusted. The report did explain that imprisonment rates for specific nationalities were calculated by dividing the number of people of each nationality in custody in March by the number of people in England and Wales who held a passport from that country as of the 2021 Census (again excluding people with a British passport). But this is not a reliable way to calculate the proportion of foreign nationals in prison in 2025, because it takes no account of how the population of different nationalities in England and Wales may have changed since 2021. In recent years there have been significant changes to migration patterns to the UK and a surge in small boat crossings. The Migration Observatory told Full Fact: 'Getting accurate data on criminal conviction rates by nationality is very hard because the UK currently does not have accurate population data for each nationality. 'The migrant population has changed significantly since 2021… and more recent population estimates are highly uncertain due to data collection issues. Some groups of migrants are particularly likely to be undercounted, such as Albanians.' What's more, the prison data used in the Conservative analysis appears to refer to all those of each nationality in custody, not specifically those who arrived via small boat. Those counted are likely to include people who have migrated by a range of different routes—for example, some may have visas. And as the Home Office noted in its response to the analysis, these figures could also capture foreign nationals placed in custody while here temporarily (for example, while on holiday). The analysis appears to assume small boat arrivals are jailed at the same rate as others of the same nationality who arrived by another route. But we don't know whether or not this is the case. The Migration Observatory told us one reason for the variation in imprisonment rates between different nationalities was likely to be 'differences in socio-economic status among people arriving on different immigration routes'. It said: 'For example, people from comfortable backgrounds with high levels of education and professional jobs are much less likely to go to prison, and this is likely to be true among migrants too (such as those arriving on work visas for skilled jobs). Age and sex also play a role: young men have higher offending rates. 'As a result, it would not be surprising if people arriving in the UK through different routes (eg, on work visas versus small boats) had different offending rates, though the data are currently not good enough to understand these trends properly.' The Home Office said the comparison made in the analysis was 'completely unfounded', adding: 'It is inappropriate to apply foreign imprisonment rates to small boat arrival data as these consist of very different groups of people.' The MoJ told us that it does not currently collate data that would identify how foreign nationals in custody arrived in the country, or their immigration status (beyond figures for the number issued with an immigration detention order). It noted though that the justice secretary has asked civil servants to review what more data can be published, and similar work is also being carried out at the Home Office. Too-good-to-be-true 'Amazon' offers on Facebook In the last year we've fact checked at least 10 examples of fake offers supposedly from Amazon circulating on social media, promising everything from iPads to Dyson vacuum cleaners at very low prices or even for free. We wrote about one such offer for £3 laptops earlier this week, ahead of Amazon's Prime Day promotion. Amazon has repeatedly told us such Facebook posts, which often feature photos of piles of boxes in a warehouse with someone poorly edited into the picture beside them, are not genuine offers from the company. But we have sometimes seen them engaged with or commented on hundreds of times. The posts often urge Facebook users to fill in surveys or follow a link to claim the supposed deal. These links may then lead to poor imitations of the real Amazon website, or an apparently unrelated web page. Sometimes the web pages ask people for their personal information and payment details. This isn't a problem unique to Amazon – we see posts making similar false claims about other retailers too, such as Argos, Tesco and John Lewis. Here are a few tips on how to spot this kind of fake offer: – Always double-check posts sharing deals that seem too good to be true – if a post is promising a £3 Samsung TV or £1.78 PlayStation 5 console, it's probably not legitimate. – Check whether an offer has been shared by a company's official page on social media, which will often have a high number of followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a long post history. – If you click a link, a different URL and page layout to the official website can be giveaways that something isn't quite right, as can grammatical errors in the text.
