Journal article 754 views 105 downloads
Why media platforms police the boundaries of impartiality: A comparative analysis of television news and fact-checking in the UK
,
Ceri Hughes ,
Stephen Cushion ,
Maria Kyriakidou
Journalism, Volume: 26, Issue: 10, Pages: 2067 - 2086
Swansea University Author:
Ceri Hughes
-
PDF | Version of Record
© The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Download (580.26KB)
DOI (Published version): 10.1177/14648849241273599
Abstract
This article explores whether different media platforms across impartial news media supplied the same level of scrutiny in how they fact-checked political claims. While prior research has largely focused on independent fact-checking organisations, the fact-checking practices of legacy media through...
| Published in: | Journalism |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1464-8849 1741-3001 |
| Published: |
SAGE Publications
2025
|
| Online Access: |
Check full text
|
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67632 |
| Abstract: |
This article explores whether different media platforms across impartial news media supplied the same level of scrutiny in how they fact-checked political claims. While prior research has largely focused on independent fact-checking organisations, the fact-checking practices of legacy media through a cross-platform perspective have comparatively received limited attention. The study develops new lines of inquiry into the fact-checking practices of legacy media, presenting one of the largest and most forensic cross-platform studies of fact-checking to date. It draws on a systematic content analysis of 355 items from fact-checking sites, including 689 claims and 1850 instances where journalists or sources interacted with them in 2021, and assesses how they were covered by a further 280 television news items. Our findings demonstrate that the selection and degree to which journalists and sources scrutinised political claims varied across media platforms, with television news less inclined to report and analyse policy claims than dedicated fact-checking websites. Overall, we argue that the editorial boundaries of fact-checking are policed by journalists’ interpretations of impartiality, which differ across platforms (in television news or dedicated fact-checking websites) due to a range of editorial factors such as production constraints and news values. |
|---|---|
| Keywords: |
Misinformation, fact-checking, impartiality, television news, public service broadcasting, content analysis |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Funders: |
This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; AH/S012508/1. |
| Issue: |
10 |
| Start Page: |
2067 |
| End Page: |
2086 |