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Media experts have urged the fact-checking community to seek alternative funding avenues amid shifts in funding opportunities toward information integrity.
This call was made during an X space by DUBAWA on Thursday, April 3, 2025, tagged “Navigating the shifting landscape of fact-checking: Challenges, opportunities and the future of information integrity.”
The space focused on the recent changes in the fact-checking landscape and highlighted the problems and opportunities such changes present.
Barely four months ago, the International Fact-checking Network (IFCN) received an announcement from tech giant Meta that it had decided to end its partnership with the fact-checking community in the United States. A year later, such would be the fate of other fact-checking platforms outside the US.
The shocking announcement means Meta will also end its funding aid to the network, which accounts for a significant 45.5 per cent of its financial resources. Consequently, the network will be dismayed about where its next funding mileage will come from. This also raises the question of the level of trust the rest of the world has in the capacity of fact-checking organisations to sustain the commitment to verification as a means to ensure a culture of truth.
The discussion began with the moderator, Nanji Nandang, a senior reporter at the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), who introduced the panel experts. Starting with DUBAWA’s editor, Kemi Busari, Nanji asked what might be the implications of these financial cuts for fact-checking platforms.
The multiple-award-winning journalist Kemi told the participants that Meta’s sudden decision would result in people losing their jobs because fact-checking organisations would struggle to pay their fact-checkers because of abrupt cuts from funders.
He added that fact-checking efficiency would become threatened as the “community notes” suggested that replacing fact-checking platforms may not be effective, especially in artificial intelligence-generated materials and local language-related claims, which take more time to verify.
“So if fact-checking organisations cannot pay fact-checkers because they no longer have funding from their traditional sources of funding, it is going to impact people’s jobs,” Kemi pointed out, adding, “Sometimes, false information comes in the form of local languages. Community notes cannot solve that. Moreover, images (and) website links could take months to verify.”
The editor also hinted that because most fact-checking organisations are non-profits, they soon turn partisan when they no longer receive funding, and have to depend on a situation where “he who pays the piper dictates the tune.”
Taking the discussion further, Nanji asked Rejoice Taddy, another panelist and a disinformation expert how Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) may be leveraged in the fight against mis- and disinformation. Rejoice stated that journalists and fact-checkers who can easily identify false information, especially in the current wake of artificial intelligence, need to utilise OSINT tools to verify fake news properly.
“It is important journalists, people in the media, those who come across disinformation like these, have the skill to debunk claims using Open Source Intelligence,” she observed.
Samad Uthman, a digital investigations journalist at Agence France-Presse, offered his thoughts on the alternative to adopt in the current face of financial strain that has hit the fact-checking community. He said fact-checking organisations need to engage more resources to be able to do the task at hand. He disclosed that there are more fake news items than fact-checkers, and pressed for the need to have an equilibrium.
Nanji then inquired from Kemi about the potential challenges that could arise from a collaboration between newsrooms, independent fact-checking platforms, and tech companies regarding information integrity, especially in the current situation where their relationship seems to be fractured.
In response, the editor stated that there has to be a necessary collaboration between all sides because society is already ridden with fake news, and a greater percentage of that happens on social media platforms owned by tech companies. He explained that a successful partnership is possible if fact checkers decide to strategise and impress upon tech proprietors that they, too, are equally important in the quest for information accuracy.
Kemi later divulged that fact-checking organisations need to consider other alternatives to finance their goals. He observed that fact-checking is not different from journalism, thus necessitating the a “need to have constant conversations about our business models such that if one fails, the other can also take up.”
The moderator then asked the panelists what effective method they would adopt to involve credible mainstream media in the fight against fake news.
In his reply, Samad stated that despite sharing media literacy content and communicating fact checks via local languages, society rather focuses on and engages in the activities of social media influencers: “Those are things that interest people.” So, the digital investigations journalist stated that since many youths actively use social media, journalists should shift their engagements online and purposely engage the community in the younger generation’s slang.
Rejoice spoke on the growing rise of social media influencers that state actors (local or foreign) actively use to spread fake narratives. However, the disinformation expert hoped that if fact-checkers maximally use media literacy content to disabuse people’s minds, especially at the grassroots, the situation can be salvaged.
Francophone editor of Africa Check, Valdez Onanina, pointed out that fact-checking platforms must adapt content delivery to the “same consumption habit of our audience.” He referenced content media such as videos, podcasts, and social media spaces, stating that fact-checkers have to be creative in the way they disseminate content.
Inquiring from Kemi for his thoughts about the subject, the editor critically pointed out that fact-checkers have to reconcile content that is in the “public interest” and is “interesting to the public.” He explained that most of their audience likes to engage in what interests them. Still, while that is happening, fact-checkers should not lose sight of being at the forefront of propagating the ideals of democracy.
While financial concerns linger within the fact-checking community, fact-checkers must now seek other alternatives, including content delivery methods and engagements, to safeguard information integrity and preserve democracy—because that is the core assignment!
