Fact-Check Comments on Your News Draft

Wait until the draft is nearly final. Brooke Borel, author of The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking, starts the check with the version the writer and editor feel is ready for scrutiny¹. Her chapter of MIT's KSJ Science Editing Handbook has the checker read it at least once, then again line by line, checking each fact against its source.

Underline every fact as you go, then sort each one by type, since each type goes wrong in its own way. NPR's accuracy checklist, meant for its correspondents and producers, lists the things to "double- or triple-check." For ages, it says: "Get the date of birth and do the math." Claims to be the first, best or worst, it warns, "are often wrong; never trust them."²

Keep style questions apart from fact questions. Whether to write "Gov." or "Governor" is for your house style guide to settle; whether she still holds the office is for the check.

The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics, revised in October 2026, tells journalists to use original sources whenever possible³. For a budget figure, that means the budget itself, not a story about it. For a study, read the paper rather than the press release. When a manuscript cites many sources, a reference and citation check tests each citation against the passage in the source that should back it up.

Treat another outlet's report as a lead, not a confirmation. NPR's ethics handbook calls checking facts through "second sources, such as other news media outlets," that lack direct knowledge "an all-too-common pitfall."⁴ One of its case studies is NPR's own false 2011 report that Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords had been killed. NPR hadn't pressed its sources on whether they knew firsthand or were passing on what they'd heard.

Before you trust an unfamiliar website, find out who is behind it. For a 2017 report, Stanford researchers watched 10 professional fact-checkers, 10 historians and 25 Stanford students evaluate websites. The fact-checkers read laterally⁵: they scanned a site quickly, then opened new tabs to see what other sources said about it. The historians and students tended to stay on the site and were often fooled by a professional-looking name and logo.

Some records aren't online at all, so request them while you report, not the night before publication. For federal records, a FOIA request and deadline tracker helps you ask for a usable file format and track the agency's deadline.

Check every quote against the recording or your notes, which means knowing where each one came from. Borel asks writers to give the time stamp for any quote from an interview recording¹, and page numbers for anything from a book. Then check the exact words, and that the right person said them.

Redo every calculation yourself. Make sure totals add up, each percentage uses the right base, and "millions" isn't really "billions." NPR's checklist also tells reporters to learn "percentage vs. percentage point"²: a rate that rises from 4% to 6% is up 2 percentage points, or 50%.

Superlatives need the most proof. Calling a contract the largest in a county's history means checking every earlier contract, not just the ones you remember.

Put any criticism of a named person or organization to them before you publish. The SPJ code tells journalists to "without exception, diligently provide fair opportunity"³ for the people they cover to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.

A vague request for comment isn't enough. Rolling Stone learned this with its 2014 story "A Rape on Campus," whose central account it later retracted. A Columbia Journalism School review found that seeking only "comment" cost the magazine the fraternity's detailed rebuttals before publication. Its lesson: routinely share specific, derogatory details⁶ with the people you report on.

Give them a real deadline and more than one way to reach you. If they don't answer, say so in the story.

Record each claim as you clear it: the source, the date you checked it, and what changed. At many outlets, Borel writes, checkers use tracked changes and comments in Word or Google Docs¹ to flag each fix and explain it to the writer and editor.

Then fix what's wrong, attribute what you can't confirm but still need, and cut the rest. Don't hold back a problem that undermines the story's premise; in the handbook's process, it goes to the editor immediately¹. And when an error gets through anyway, the SPJ code asks journalists to correct it promptly and prominently³.

To get through the first pass faster, paste your draft into the tool at the top of this page. It comments on every claim with the source that would settle it, checks public sources online, and leaves each quote for you to match against your recording.