The idea for the project grew out of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s 1993 book Dirty Politics, which critiqued the 1988 presidential campaigns of President George W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Dr. Jamieson, the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, focused on the inaccurate advertisements that the press was featuring in news without correction. Then, with the help of Penn’s Annenberg School graduate students, she went on to develop a “visual grammar” for covering and fact checking ads in news, which networks began using. Brooks Jackson, a longtime political reporter who was at CNN at the time and now FactCheck.org’s director emeritus, joined the mission. In 2003, he joined the APPC and in December of that year, FactCheck.org was born, running out of the National Press Club building in Washington, DC.

In 2003, the internet was barely a dozen years old and fact-checking, as a standalone journalistic practice, was in its infancy. FactCheck.org’s coverage of the 2004 presidential election attracted serious public attention; Dick Cheney plugged it during a televised debate with Democratic rival John Edwards, causing thousands of visitors to flood the site and the server crashed. FactCheck.org improved its website and since then, it has grown both in staff and coverage, with no lack of material as the years have progressed: Ask FactCheck was added in 2007, Players Guide in 2010 and SciCheck, which focuses on false and misleading scientific claims, in 2015. Shortly after the 2016 election, FactCheck.org and others partnered with Facebook to identify and debunk hoaxes and malicious falsehoods posted on the social media site. Its articles are seen on its website and through partnerships with major media outlets, including MSN.com, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the websites of NBC-owned and operated stations in major cities, and in Gannett newspapers. It is now in its fourth year of producing weekly fact-checking segments that appear on the CNN Politics website and has partnered with NBCUniversal-owned television stations on weekly segments.

FactCheck.org moved to Penn’s campus in 2010 when the APPC’s new building was constructed, thanks to a $41.5 million gift from the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. Mr. Jackson hired journalist Eugene Kiely, formerly of The Philadelphia Inquirer and USA Today, as Philadelphia director of FactCheck.org. When Mr. Jackson decided to become director emeritus following the 2012 election, Mr. Kiely succeeded him as director.

In addition to its full-time journalists (currently there are seven, plus one part-time staffer), FactCheck.org began offering a paid fellowship program for undergraduate students at Penn beginning in 2010. The fellows participate in a full-time summer training program and then work part time during the school year. Since 2016, the FactCheck.org fellowship has been funded through donations by the Stanton Foundation. The program so far has benefited over three dozen undergraduate students.

FactCheck.org has earned nine Webby Awards for excellence on the internet, and it received the 2018 Webby for best politics website. It was twice named one of Time.com’s “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without,” and in 2006 the World E-Gov Forum named it one of 10 sites that “are changing the world.”  It earned a Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications in 2009. PC Magazine named FactCheck.org one of the 20 best political websites, and it made American Mensa’s top 50 websites 2010 list in the news and politics category, which called it “the ultimate source for truth in politics.” FactCheck.org won a 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for reporting on deceptive claims made about the federal health-care legislation.

Prior to fiscal 2010, FactCheck.org was supported by funds from the APPC’s own resources and from the Annenberg Foundation, and by grants from the Flora Family Foundation. In 2010, it began accepting donations from individual members of the public, disclosing the identity of any individual who makes a donation of $1,000 or more as well as the total amount, average amount and number of individual donations. It doesn’t accept funds from unions, partisan organizations, advocacy groups or corporations with the exception of Facebook, which provides funding as part of Facebook’s initiative to debunk viral deceptions circulating on the social media site. (Facebook has no control over its editorial decisions.)

In addition to the current stories featured on the homepage, visitors can browse the archives by date, section (e.g., Ask SciCheck, Fact of the Day, Special Reports), Person (e.g., Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump), Issue (e.g., Jobs, Climate Change) Location, or Other Tags.

FactCheck.org’s Greatest Hits

Here are the 15 stories with the highest number of page views on FactCheck.org since the site started tracking in April 2011, through 2018.

“Where Does Clinton Foundation Money Go?” 6/19/15

“Bogus Meme Targets Trump” 11/25/15

“Presidents Winning Without Popular Vote” 3/24/08; updated 12/23/16

“Caucus vs. Primary” 4/8/08

“Snopes.com” 4/10/09

“The Obamas’ Law Licenses” 6/14/12

“Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video” 7/21/15

“Obama’s Numbers” (January 2016 Update) 1/12/16

“The Reason for the Electoral College” 2/11/08

“Clinton’s 1975 Rape Case” 6/17/16

“Presidential Vacations” 8/28/14

“Donald Trump and the Iraq War” 2/19/16

“Obama’s ‘Sealed’ Records” 7/31/12

“Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts” 12/20/12

“Planned Parenthood” 4/18/11