Fact-Checking in Data Journalism: the Practice of Verifying Data in Mass Media

Fact-checking and verification of information have long been an integral part of the editorial process. In the academic field, fact-checking is considered as a mechanism that includes methods for verifying information that, according to some media researchers, are also suitable for working with data. But they do not consider the ethical side and the correctness of the use of data: availability, quality of execution, who collected it, the reasons for collecting it, and so on. With the advent of data journalism, the term began to take a completely different vector of development. A journalist who collects and processes data, relies on data as a source and must be able to check it correctly, it can be: numbers, texts, video and photo content, infographics. In turn, this requires certain skills, which are often omitted in existing works. This study considers the process of fact-checking not as a purely technological manipulation, but as a complex work with data: their collection, analysis, cleaning, verification to achieve the goal-the creation of data material. To achieve these goals, an analysis of the world standards of fact-checking, guidelines for fact-checking of foreign and Russian media was carried out. Their practical examples allowed us to develop our own detailed methods of data verification, which are designed in the form of a manual for students and practicing data journalists.