With the ABC yet to announce the timing of its proposed internal fact-checking unit, ABC News Verify, audiences will need to do their own research now that RMIT ABC Fact Check has finished.

Signing off late last month, the highly successful and trusted service provided a guide to DIY fact checking.

And in an apparent message that fact checking politicians may not be part of News Verify’s remit, the fact checking team included this in their farewell message:

"The ABC will shortly be launching a new in-house verification reporting team, ABC News Verify, so watch this space.* But if you're looking for political fact checks, you should look no further than our friends at AAP Fact Check, who do excellent work."

While we expect that the new Verify team will do good work, it’s a concern that it may no longer carry out political fact checks.

“At a time when misinformation and disinformation are rife, we desperately need a robust and reliable fact checking service. We need a public broadcaster that calls the powerful to account. I very much hope that Verify will meet that requirement.”

Cassandra Parkinson, President 

As ABC Friends reported in March, ABC management announced that RMIT ABC Fact Check would be wound up in favour of an internal fact-checking team, known as ABC News Verify to be located within the investigative journalism and current affairs team led by Jo Puccini, Head of Investigations and Current Affairs.

Tracing its origins to analysis 11 years ago of a claim by then PM Kevin Rudd (found to be accurate), the ABC and RMIT have worked together to check the accuracy of claims by “politicians, public figures, advocacy groups and institutions engaged in the public debate”.

The ABC estimates that the Fact Check team provided hundreds of verdicts and produced some 200 editions of the CheckMate misinformation newsletter.

"In 11 years of publishing fact checks, not a single verdict has been overturned following a complaint, despite the almost constant push-back by claimants and their supporters," the team wrote.

At the time of the closure announcement, a recent study of public trust in several fact checking services showed that RMIT ABC Fact Check was the most trusted.

With its special emphasis on checking claims made by MPs and political figures of all persuasions, the Fact Check team said it was proud that “over the years, many politicians have used the unit's work to make a political point”.

“That politicians of all stripes, who often took issue with our verdicts when they did not go their way, still sought to use them to attack their opponents speaks to the value of political fact checking and the good record of the unit.”

Sophie Arnold
Enews Editor

STOP PRESS: ABC Verify is up and running, with one of its first stories being a detailed analysis of the ways in which "old tropes, falsehoods, and misinformation are being weaponised against Kamala Harris". Worth a read and a good sign for the future of Verify and for anyone who looks for analysis that goes beyond daily news stories.

See the story here.