Fact-Checking for Reporters: A Step-by-Step Method

Dana filed a school budget story at 6 p.m. By 9 the next morning, the district's finance officer had emailed: the cut was $1.4 million, not $4.1 million. The right number was in her notes. Nobody had read the draft against them. (Dana is a composite, not a real person.)

Fact checking exists for errors like that. Most aren't lies or bad sources. They're transposed digits, a misspelled name, an outdated age or a quote that drifted by two words.

This guide gives you a seven-step method for checking your own story before you file, a claim log you can copy, a worked example and a printable checklist. It's written for reporters without a research desk.

What fact checking means for a reporter

Fact-checking comes in two kinds. Checking before publication catches errors in a story while they can still be fixed. Checking after publication rates claims others have already made, the work of outlets like PolitiFact. This guide covers the first kind.

The duty is in the SPJ Code of Ethics, revised October 4, 2026. Journalists should "take responsibility for the accuracy of their work before releasing it" and "use original sources whenever possible." Fact checking is how you meet those lines on deadline. The rest is in our guide to the journalism code of ethics.

The working definition: every statement a reader could treat as fact gets traced to a source you can show someone, before the story runs. Memory isn't a source.

Recording your interviews makes the quote checks fast. Try ParrotNotes free and keep every interview as a transcript on the phone you already carry.

The seven-step fact-checking process

Step 1: Step away, then change the format

You can't check a draft you just wrote. Your brain reads what you meant, not what's on the page. Take a break, even 20 minutes, then print the story or switch to a different screen and font.

Bill Adair, founder of PolitiFact and Knight Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke, described his routine to IJNet: "I read each sentence aloud and ask myself if I'm sure it is true."

Step 2: Mark every checkable claim in a claim log

Go through the draft sentence by sentence and pull out anything that could be wrong: every name, title, number, date, place, quote, paraphrase, superlative and description of a document or study. Put each one in a claim log.

Mariam Elba, a research reporter at ProPublica, recommends building this record as you report, with links, file names and audio timecodes for each fact, in her fact-checking guide for investigative reporters.

Step 3: Triage by risk

On deadline you may not get through everything twice. Check the claims that could do the most harm first (Elba's guide ranks them the same way):

• High: anything that could be defamatory, accuses someone of wrongdoing, or affects health, money or safety.
• Medium: numbers, dates, legal and financial details, summaries of studies, superlatives ("first", "only", "largest").
• Low: background facts with a stable public source, such as a city's founding year.

Step 4: Check each claim against the source that settles it

A source's memory of a date is a lead, not a confirmation. Match each claim type to the source that decides it.

The rule behind the table is SPJ's: original sources whenever possible. If a statistic came from a news story, find the report the story cited and check the number there.

Step 5: Check quotes and paraphrases against the recording

Anything inside quotation marks gets checked against the audio, not against your notes or a transcript alone. Listen to the line and to what came before it, so you know what question the source was answering.

Paraphrases need the same care. "She said the plan might work" can drift into "She backed the plan" across two rewrites. Our guide on how to quote an interview covers the word-for-word check and what you may change in a quote. If your outlet wants strict transcripts for the record, see verbatim vs clean verbatim transcription.

Step 6: Decide what to do with claims that won't verify

Some claims won't confirm before deadline. You have four honest options:

1. Cut it. The Write Life's fact-checking guide sums it up: "When in doubt, throw it out."
2. Attribute it. "According to the union" tells the reader whose claim it is. Only when the claim isn't defamatory.
3. Narrow it. "One of the largest" when you can't prove "the largest." "At least 40" when the count is 40 to 47.
4. Re-report it. Call, email or find the document. If it's central and won't confirm, the story waits.

What you never do is keep a claim because it's too good to lose.

Step 7: Read as your harshest critic, then archive

Brooke Borel, author of The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, told IJNet: "Read the story from the perspective of your biggest critic and plug any holes in logic/sourcing as appropriate."

Then save your sources, because pages change. Elba recommends archiving pages with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine or archive.is, and keeping recordings in one place with the claim log next to them.

A worked fact-checking example: one paragraph, seven claims

Here's a composite draft paragraph from Priya, a freelancer covering a regional transit story. (Priya and the story are composites, not real people or events.)

"Riverside Transit, the state's oldest bus agency, will cut 14 routes on March 3, a Monday. Director Tomás Reyes, 52, said the cuts were 'the only way to close a $9 million gap.' Ridership has fallen 30% since 2019, according to a recent federal report."

Her claim log for that paragraph:

Seven claims, five fixes, and none of them was a dramatic error. That's normal: fact checking pays off in small fixes.

Fact-checking with a recording on your phone

Claim 6 is where a recording earns its place. Priya's notes said "the only way." The audio said "the only realistic way." One word changed the director from absolute to cautious, and only the tape could settle it.

ParrotNotes records the interview on your iPhone, Android phone or Mac, transcribes it and lets you ask the recording where a line came up (on Pro, AI search looks across all your interviews), so you can find it fast and then listen to it. No meeting bot, and it keeps recording with the screen locked. Always get consent first; recording laws differ by place, and our guide to one-party consent states covers the US rules.

The Free plan gives you 100 minutes of recording a month, an AI summary on every recording and 5 AI-powered recordings with action items and chat. Pro ($19.99/month, or $14.99/month billed annually) adds 3,000 minutes a month, recordings up to 3 hours, speaker identification, transcription and translation in 99+ languages, and AI search across all your notes. Treat any transcript, AI or human, as a reading copy: it gets you to the line fast, and the audio decides what goes in quotes.

Check your next quote against the tape, not your memory. Download ParrotNotes free.

The pre-filing fact-checking checklist

Print this and run it on every story before you file.

1. I stepped away from the draft and reread it in a new format.
2. Every checkable claim is in my claim log.
3. High-risk claims (accusations, health, money, safety) were checked first.
4. Every name is spelled as the person or an official document spells it.
5. Every job title is current.
6. Every age is recalculated for publication day.
7. Every number matches the original dataset or report, with the right unit and year.
8. Every date matches its day of the week.
9. Every place name is checked against an official record or map.
10. Every direct quote is checked word for word against the recording.
11. Every paraphrase is no stronger than what the source said.
12. Every superlative survived a search for counterexamples.
13. Every summary of a study or document matches the document itself.
14. Claims that wouldn't verify are cut, attributed, narrowed or re-reported.
15. Sources, recordings and archived pages are saved with the claim log.

If AI tools touched the reporting, add the extra checks in our guide to AI for journalists.

After publication: corrections

Errors still get through. The SPJ code is direct about what happens next: "Acknowledge mistakes. Correct them promptly and prominently."

Professional fact-checkers hold themselves to the same standard. The IFCN Code of Principles, run by the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute, asks signatories to publish a corrections policy and "follow it scrupulously," and to show their sources, because signatories want "their readers to be able to verify findings themselves."

Dana's newsroom ran a correction that morning. She now keeps a claim log for every budget story, with each number checked against the agenda packet before she files.

Check it before your reader does

Fact checking isn't a final read. It's a method: step away, log every claim, check the risky ones first, match each claim to the source that settles it, check quotes against the tape, and cut what won't verify.

Start with your next interview. Record it with consent, keep the transcript, and run the 15-point checklist before you file. Get ParrotNotes free and make the recording your source for every quote.