American fact-checking organizations are joining forces ahead of the 2026 midterm elections
in a major collaboration:
a joint newsletter that shares findings with media professionals, content creators and election observers.
The newsletter will highlight common findings and identify election-year information trends across the United States.
Election-year collaborations among fact-checkers have long been common internationally, including in France, Brazil and Nigeria.
They’ve been rare in the competitive U.S. media environment, making this the first joint campaign of its kind among U.S. fact-checkers.
The growing spread of false information, driven by political polarization and AI-generated content, prompted U.S.-based fact-checkers to combine efforts.
People who would like to receive the newsletter may subscribe by signing up through an online form.
“There’s a rising tide of both AI slop, fakery and public mistrust as we head toward 2026 Election Day,”
said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network.
“I’m excited to see U.S. fact-checkers combine efforts as a bulwark against inaccurate and false information across the political spectrum.
The newsletter will help other news organizations and content creators better sort out fact from fiction as they cover the 2026 elections.”
The collaboration includes the following organizations:
♦️FactCheck.org bills itself as a “consumer advocate” for voters;
it aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Established in 2003,
it pioneered political fact-checking on the internet.
It focuses on politics and public policy with specialties in campaign messaging and science.
It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
♦️Lead Stories focuses on rapidly debunking falsehoods spread via social media
and says it “fact-checks at the speed of likes.”
Founded in 2015 by former CNN journalist Alan Duke and technical lead Maarten Schenk,
Lead Stories offers specialized feeds for political falsehoods about the left (“blue feed”) and the right (“red feed”),
as well as a feed dedicated to debunking AI-generated deepfakes.
♦️PolitiFact aims “to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.”
It specializes in fact-checking elections at the federal and state levels.
Year-round, it fact-checks public policy and congressional actions,
and it tracks President Donald Trump’s campaign promises through its MAGA-Meter.
Part of the nonprofit Poynter Institute, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its fact-checking of the 2008 presidential election.
♦️Factchequeado is a nonprofit collaborative journalism organization that works in Spanish to close the information gap for more than 68 million Latinos.
It distributes reports and findings in culturally relevant multimedia formats with a goal to empower the audience with critical thinking.
Started in 2022, Factchequeado won the Global Fact-Checking Award’s 2025 prize for best collaboration,
as well as the Trust Award from the Next Challenge for Media and Journalism.
♦️AFP Fact Check is part of Agence France-Presse,
a global news service with a mission “to provide accurate, balanced and impartial coverage of news wherever and whenever it happens in the world on a continuous basis.”
AFP is known for its comprehensive world coverage and transnational investigations.
AFP won the Global Fact-Checking Award’s Gold Standard prize in 2025 for an investigation on a coordinated network spreading disinformation about the South China Sea.
All five organizations are verified signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles.
The code sets universal standards for fact-checking organizations on accuracy, transparency, and independence, with rigorous outside verification for signatories on an ongoing basis.
