Faktabaari is a Finnish

fact-checking Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such che ...

and digital information literacy service. Since 2014, it has contributed to fact-based information circulation in Finland with projects and fact-checks, with a particular focus on national and European Parliamentary election debates. Faktabaari adheres to the Finnish ethical code for journalists and has subscirbed to the Code of Standards of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network. Faktabaari is a member of the

International Fact-Checking Network The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Netwo ...

IFCSN and the NORDIS hub of European Digital Media Observatory EDMO. Faktabaari has been awarded Europcom award, the Bonnier Grand Journalism Prize and two Chydenius medals (2018 and again 2021 with EDMO NORDIS).

Activities

Faktabaari does regular fact-checks. For example, in 2024 it did a thorough check on claims of

Smolensk air disaster On 10 April 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft operating Polish Air Force Flight 101 crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, and his wife, Maria ...

by the Finnish journalist

Jessikka Aro Jessikka Aro (born 19 December 1980) is a Finnish journalist working for Finland's public service broadcaster Yle and an author of a non-fiction book ''Putin's Trolls''. In September 2014, she began to investigate pro-Russian Internet trolls, but ...

. Aro claimed that the 2010 air disaster was caused by a Russian bomb attack, which was covered up by the Polish Government. Faktabaari's fact-check showed that two accident investigations carried out in Poland and research by a US aviation laboratory demonstrate that the plane transporting the president of Poland and senior military officers was destroyed upon impact with trees and not as the result of an explosion. Faktabaari has also focused on biases in algorithms of social media giants. In 2024 Faktabaari and CheckFirst showed that TikTok's search suggestions contained toxic language towards women and minorities in Finland and that YouTube's algorithm promoted right-wing content in the 2024 Finnish elections. In its media literacy activities, Faktabaari has produced for example popular voter literacy kits for schools and the wider public. These include exercises examining claims found in YouTube videos and social media posts, comparing media bias in an array of different "clickbait" articles, probing how misinformation preys on readers' emotions, and getting students to try their hand at writing fake news stories themselves.

References

{{reflist Fact-checking websites Truth Fake news Finnish websites Misinformation