Wired and its fact-checking process

Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin and Susan Currie Sivek of Columbia Journalism Review write about how Wired magazine fact checks its online articles.

Bloyd-Peshkin and Sivek write, “Wired, another publication with a storied reputation for fastidious fact-checking, has a similar strategy for checking stories in print, says Deputy Managing Editor Joanna Pearlstein. ‘It’s important to us that we back up every assertion that we make with a source and that we feel good about that source.’ The reporters Wired hires as fact-checkers go over each story line by line, underlining and verifying facts with the use of transcripts, recordings, data, and other primary sources, and watching for errors of interpretation and missed lines of inquiry. ‘It’s definitely a re-reporting process,’ she says.

“But original content posted online generally isn’t fact-checked. ‘We don’t have the staff for that, and we operate usually very quickly on the web—you know, stories that are pitched in a meeting this morning will be live by this afternoon or tomorrow morning, which is very different than working on the print magazine,’ Pearlstein says. The only exceptions are online stories that might be legally sensitive, which are given ‘not a fact-check per se, but a review for accuracy.'”

Read more here.