Bill Adair | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Bill Adair

Bill Adair is the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University and was the creator of PolitiFact.

Fact-checking needs a reboot

“‘Informing democracy’ is not enough in an age of rampant lies about elections and public health and climate. Fact-checkers need to be more assertive in getting truthful information to the audience that needs it.”

The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

“Individual checks are now more important than the organizations that produce them.”

The future of fact-checking is all about structured data

“Liars say the same things over and over, which makes the fact-check we wrote last week or last month valuable for an extended period.”

A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song

“In campaigns around the country, there will be fewer exaggerations and falsehoods. Politicians will try to out-do each other by bragging about their good records for Pinocchios and Truth-O-Meter ratings.”

Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods

“He’s like an indestructible monster in a Godzilla movie. The authorities keep firing at him, but he just keeps walking through town, gaining power.”

November 27, 2018

The red couch experiments: Early lessons in pop-up fact-checking

“People have long mused about live fact-checking on television, but this marked the first in-depth study. It revealed our product could have tremendous appeal — but we need to explain it better to our users.”

The year of the fact-checking bot

“The falsehoods will continue, but the bots will be a force multiplier to provide people with the truth.”

June 6, 2016

What happens when a 50-something journalist gets a week’s worth of news from Snapchat Discover?

The founder of PolitiFact finds distracting soundtracks and stale headlines, but also a fair amount of lively and effective content.

Pants, burning

“Candidates will ignore a lot of the truth-squadding — except when they can use it to attack their opponents. (Politicians hate fact-checking, except when they love it!)”