ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how diversification of news-media forms and skills, and a transnational reckoning with identity-based power, challenge the core journalistic obligation to pursue and disseminate factual information of public interest. Traditional appeals to detachment or to a “discipline of verification” understate the range of influences under which journalists work, including external expectations and limitations as well as journalists’ own experientially formed interests, preferences and assumptions. However, the strict evidentiary disciplines of second-generation fact-checking outlets such as the Buenos Aires-based Chequeado embody an aggressive, post-disruption renovation of truth-seeking and truth-telling. This new approach adds an explicitly activist layer to journalism’s alliance with factuality through interventionist countering of disordered information without other ideological preference. While various forms of advocacy remain part of the broader journalistic repertoire, “standpoint epistemology” is irreconcilable with the accuracy-based standards that underpin claims to news-media autonomy.
