La importancia y necesidad de un departamento de fact checking (verificación) en los medios de comunicación. Estudio desde la experiencia del portal Ecuador Chequea.

Abstract

Fact checking is not a new term in journalism. However, Ecuador has not implemented departments regarding it within its newsrooms to avoid publication-dissemination of erroneous or fake news. As a consequence, the media is sanctioned, according to the Organic Law of Communication and its respective Regulations effected in the country since June 2013. The following academic work attempts to highlight the need and importance of a verification department in the media, both offline and online. To establish this, a qualitative approach has been applied and the experience of Ecuador Chequea, the only portal in the country dedicated to data verification that was founded during the presidential elections of 2017, has been analyzed. The objective of this research was to test the quality of the work carried out by the portal regarding 30 statements made by politicians during the second round of elections. For this, three parameters were established: language, visual elements and consulted sources. Among the investigative techniques used are: in-depth interviews with journalists, directives, journalist’s representatives and verification experts. The results exposed that the lack of economic resources is a limiting factor for the scarcity of verification departments. In addition, directives mentioned that it is the duty of journalist to verify and that a specialized department does not ensure that fines will be reduced, although they admit that quality could improve.