Dutch J-school students, "The Fact- Checkers"

Posted by Helena Humphrey on October 19, 2009 at 4:09 PM

It is now obligatory for fourth-year students from the Tilburg School of Journalism, part of Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, to participate in a three-week fact-checking program as part of their studies, the Columbia Journalism Review has reported. Every morning, students review the latest news and flag up stories they feel may contain inaccurate content and then set about the day's work of chasing up all suspect leads -subsequently publishing their findings on a blog. The students only ever publish a fact-checking mission after having spoken to the journalist of the original piece.

With its aim of teaching future journalists about the need for accuracy, as well as helping to keep the local media in check, the course leaders are now hoping that other j-schools will take up the idea and launch similar programs internationally.

According to instructor and Dutch journalist Theo Dersjant, approximately 80 % of stories checked have contained some form of error. The response to the program, he says, has been mixed: "At first, the journalists said what we are doing is a good idea. But soon the free newspapers and a press agency started getting a bit bored with us because we called them each and every week with more stories that are inaccurate. A lot of media cooperate with us, but one free paper said they will not talk to us anymore because they don't think they have any obligation to us, only to their readers."

Dersjant also voiced a common concern that journalists are making more mistakes because they have less time in which to do the work - and whilst he does sympathise he also feels few people are willing to tackle this problem head on. According to Dersjant setting up internal fact checking system would be easier than many organisations realise and although students only have three weeks to learn how to identify and check the inaccurate articles they "develop the nose quite quickly, and after two weeks they get bored because it's so easy. Now we're trying to give our students more complicated things to do, like take an issue of a magazine and turn it upside down and see what's wrong."

ANP, The national Dutch news agency, has been so impressed with the students work - which incidentally has flagged up a fair share of their own reports - that it has asked the group of students to spend a week checking its entire back catalogue of articles in order to discover more about the on the frequency and nature of its factual mistakes.

The program's success is being recognised further a field too, with Germany calling upon Dersjant to set up a similar arrangement over the border.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review