History of Fact Checking in Journalism
A focus on fact-checking in American journalism was spurred on by yellow journalism and muckraking practices of the late 19th century and early years of the 20th century.
The Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play that was founded in 1913 had the assignment to “correct carelessness and to stamp out fakes and fakers”. It served to find and apologize for already in print errors rather than preventing such errors from entering into print in the first place.
Time magazine was one of the earliest to use the actual term “fact checking” back in 1935 in an issue of Colliers that referred to the addition of “its researchers and fact-checkers from ten to twenty-two”.
