In this time when "fake news" and "alternative facts" have become buzzwords, arts and humanities are more important than ever. Professional fact checker Sarah Turnnidge from Full Fact joins Bryony Armstrong to discuss:
Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find Sarah @sarah_turnnidge
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In this time when "fake news" and "alternative facts" have become buzzwords, arts and humanities are more important than ever. Professional fact checker Sarah Turnnidge from Full Fact joins Bryony Armstrong to discuss:
Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find Sarah @sarah_turnnidge
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Hello, and welcome to What's the Point, the podcast where we discuss the need for arts and humanities today. I'm your host, Bryony Armstrong. We're living in a time when the arts and humanities are under threat, and I know this firsthand, having studied both English and maths at university, and now doing a PhD in English. Each week, I'll be joined by a guest to talk about what arts and humanities do for the world. If you've ever wondered, what's the point of the arts and humanities, then this is the podcast for you. Hi, everyone, welcome back to What's the Point. My guest today is Sarah Turnnidge who's a professional fact checker at Full Fact. Some of you may have visited their website before, but for those who haven't, Full Fact is a charity that fact checks claims made by politicians, public institutions and journalists, as well as viral online content. Sarah did an English degree at university and is now one of their independent fact checkers fighting bad information and misleading claims. Let's get into the episode. Can you tell us a bit about your journey from English degree through to journalism through to fact checking?
Sarah Turnnidge:Yeah, sure. So I mean, to start with the degree, I'd love to say, like, I put a lot of thought into what I was gonna study, but I didn't. I'd just, kind of, I'd always been a big reader. I was kind of good at English at school. So when I realized I could go to university, and that was something I could do, I like, was just, like, I want to study English or creative writing. And, yeah, just really fell in love with it while I was there, and did a lot of creative writing and, kind of, Film Studies modules as well as, sort of, more traditional English studies. And yeah, so I graduated in 2017. And after I graduated, I did work experience at a local paper in Essex, where I'm from, called the Thurrock Independent, which I just really enjoyed. It was very, like, on the ground, sort of going out and meeting people, which I really loved. Then I went on to work full time at the Thurrock Independent for a few months. And then I moved on to another local paper in Essex, The Echo,where I was, yeah, again, doing like, kind of, on the ground sort of reporting, I then kind of wanted to move to Bristol. So I ended up getting a job at the Bristol Post. Again, that was really demanding, but a lot of fun. And I got to meet loads of really interesting people who, like, trusted me to tell their stories, and then moved on to HuffPost, UK, where I was their weekend editor. I really loved that job. I had a lot of space there to write about things that I cared about. And I also covered the first year of the pandemic, which was kind of a fascinating but really scary time. And that was, I think, where I started to get more of an insight into misinformation. So, kind of in the very early days, I think January 2020, I wrote kind of like Five Coronavirus Myths or something like that, it was headlined. And, yes, it was basically addressing five Coronavirus myths that we know about at the time. And that was kind of my first insight into how quickly and how damaging kind of, like, harmful misinformation could spread. So I ended up applying for another job at Full Fact and then, yeah, with my, kind of, work on COVID-19 already, I started to see the issue of misinformation coming up again and again. And, yes, I just got...I was really excited by how Full Fact kind of counters bad information. The way, like, bad information can promote hate and damage health...damage people's health and it hurts democracy as well. So I was interested in, kind of, figuring out a way that I can help counter that
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, and now you literally are a professional fact checker which is crazy because you have the boots on the ground in, like, probably one of our most talked about issues at the moment. Like, the buzzword fake news or alternative facts...terrifying term. I remember meeting you and being like I can't believe that's literally a job, that's amazing. I'm curious to know, like, considering your journey from...from English to this, like, how you use your humanities skills as a fact checker. So like, now that you're doing this full time, how do you feel like your humanities background has kind of prepared you for doing this?
Unknown:I think studying humanities has, yeah, helped massively. I think sometimes, in fact checking, when you're writing about really specialist stuff, it can feel like a bit of a disadvantage to be from a humanities background because, you know, especially with a pandemic, we're writing a lot about science, or, like, if you're, say...the government's budget comes out and you want to write about economics, you think, oh, I wish I had this background. But I think studying, like, looking at it more widely, I think studying humanities has given me kind of so much in fact checking. And I think if we look at kind of the process of writing a fact check, you can kind of see at every stage where, like, the skills you learn in humanities come through. So, for example, every morning, our team of fact checkers, we kind of split up and we do what we call monitoring where we see...where we look at...so, for example, one of us will look at four different...like the first five pages of four different newspapers or someone will look at Facebook, or be listening to the Today program on radio four and just sort of look through and see if any claims have been made that we're not sure about, or we haven't heard of before, that kind of raise red flags for us. And I think that really has a lot of parallels to like kind of close reading a text, you know, in English, which I think can feel a bit abstract. Like in, you know, in English, and you're maybe close reading a poem, and you're like picking out symbolism or themes. But it's actually really applicable to fact checking. You need to be, firstly, able to identify that a claim is actually checkable. So it's something it can't just be, for example, something about...we don't really fact, check the future, for example, because we don't really know what's gonna happen down the line. So it needs to be something identified or that we can identify as checkable. And then sort of also to do a close reading, sort of be able to understand a claim in context of recent events. And also identify any subtext to the claim where, I mean, people don't speak in perfect...like, they don't say perfect sentences and perfect claims. Sometimes you could be looking at subtext and things like that. So yeah, the close reading element is really important there. And then, so, yeah, the next stage, once, you know, our editors have kind of said, this is what we'd like you to look at, we get to kind of the scoping stage, which is where we basically research to fact check to see what we can say definitively. And then obviously, that kind of brings in a lot of research skills, like we're always trying to work within a short timeframe. So research skills are just really important. Being able to sort of read large quantities of information and digest them quickly...understand how to find, like, a relevant expert and get what you need from an interview. And sort of knowing the best places to find the right statistics. They're all super useful. And I do think that, like, studying humanities gives you like a really solid base for starting that work. And then I guess finally, just like the writing stage. I think we sort of sort of overlook how good a base just studying humanities can give you in terms of your writing style and writing, like, concisely and like, with a little bit of style that makes it like readable for an audience. With fact checking, you're kind of often trying to explain really complicated concepts in an accessible language. So having that practice of kind of distilling complex ideas or theories into a few paragraphs or a chapter, that really helps.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, oh, my God, all of my English essays at undergrad, I was constantly just trying to, like, cut it down so it wasn't over long and make it concise. And I think as well, like, for me, studying humanities has, it almost gives you a lens to look at tons of different topics. So you were talking there about like, maybe sometimes you felt like you had...you wish you had more of a background in like economics or more of a background in medicine, but I feel like in an English degree or other humanities degrees, you do tons of different modules and different topics. And you get all of these books, and then loads of like secondary sources, and they could be on anything. Like, English is...it's everything, basically just looking at tons of different topics through the lens of literature. So I feel like I've definitely found that sort of, like gives me a base to, like you say, sort of applying those skills to different topics, rather than, like, particularly specializing in one topic, which I think sometimes a lot of STEM degrees do steer people towards.
Unknown:Yeah, I think it gives you such a...I think...just kind of the skills of, yeah, approaching each topic in kind of a similar way. So you can kind of have like, kind of an...more of an analytical like, look at, yeah, look at different topics. I think that's really, really helpful, no matter kind of...what you're looking at.
Bryony Armstrong:Mmm, exactly. So, like, zooming out a little bit, I guess, in what ways do you think, like, humanities can contribute to combatting bad information and fake news, like, whether that's the skills you learn in the classroom or like the actual research that people are doing?
Unknown:I think...I think humanities are really, like, quite a natural place for misinformation studies and to learn different techniques to kind of combat misinformation. I think being able to, sort of, think critically is kind of one of the main components of being a fact checker and that also kind of applies to journalism more widely. I think humanities kind of encourage you to question beyond, you know, the fact as it were, and think kind of more holistically about the topic .Like should we trust a claim just because a senior politician has said it, for example, or maybe someone else that you think we should be able to trust. And I think humanities also just encourages us to be curious about, like, the context of a claim, and sort of any opposing viewpoints we might come across. And it's really, I found, it's really important to remember to kind of take those opposing views or counterpoints kind of seriously and think more widely about a claim to see if there are other interpretations that might be valid, for example, claims about poverty statistics. So for example, the number of people in poverty has dropped to x, or the number of people in poverty has risen to y, because poverty can be measured in like a number of different ways. Both could kind of technically be true at the same time. But it's really important to view a claim in its context, understand, like, what's really been implied. And I think humanities does really help in doing that. Because if you can contextualize something, and it's like, social context, or political, historical, and have, like, a wider view of something, you know, or know where to look to sort of find that information or who you might ask, that's really helpful. And I think in terms of research, like the problem of misinformation, it's just evolving so quickly, I think, particularly with like, the rapid development of like, open AI, it like, does really feel like this is...sorry, artificial intelligence...but it does feel like this is, like, another big moment of change. And yeah, I think humanities' further research into this would slot quite neatly into different research areas in the humanities, because it affects, yeah, every part of our lives really.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, totally. How does...How does AI relate to like fact checking and misinformation?
Unknown:So for example, to be honest, I mean, a lot of what we've done is fact checks of, like, edited or like AI generated images. So I don't know if you saw, like, a few weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago now, there was a viral picture of the Pope and like a big, white puffer jacket that people were sharing. And, like, that was AI generated, and we've seen other checks...we've done other checks for other pictures, for example, there were these, like, viral pictures that went round of AI generated...sorry, pictures went round of Prince Harry and Prince William, like, supposedly hugging at King Charles' coronation, and sort of the implication of that was that they have...that, you know, they're friends, again, everything's fine. And those pictures were completely generated. And I think those kind of examples, they might seem a bit...at the moment, a bit silly, a bit frivolous. But you can sort of, down the line, see the implications of generating images in like, more serious contexts. So, for example, when the Ukraine war broke out last year, all of our efforts, in terms of online fact checking, basically went to that because there were so many, like, misleading images and videos being shared. And yeah, I can't imagine...I mean, open AI wasn't really around then or wasn't being, kind of, as widely used as it is now. And I can't imagine what it would have been like, if...well, I can imagine it, it's terrifying...what it would have been like if people could just generate images? Because some of them do...some, like, there are tells in a picture that it is AI generated. But yeah, people just kind of...casual viewers on Facebook or Twitter or wherever, that has really has a huge harm...huge potential to be really harmful.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, I can honestly totally see someone looking at open AI images in, like, an art history PhD one day, or like some kind of like visual culture research group, because, like, visual culture is such a huge area of research. And like, where else is this kind of research going to be happening except humanities departments, basically?
Unknown:Yeah, I think it's going to open a lot of really interesting questions about how we kind of interact with...I don't know if you've seen those sort of generative AI things where it will be...so, for example, they'll put like Van Gogh's Sunflowers or something, and then they'll do a general...they'll do a generative image. So it's sort of outside the frame of the picture. So it fills in kind of an imaginary background that was never really there in the painting. And you just think that...how does that that open...so it's not really my area, but that opens some really interesting questions about how AI could be used in the future and what that's gonna do for our perception of what we can trust online and what we can't, really.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, totally. It's crazy how quickly this has all changed as well. One thing I was thinking about when you were talking about sort of, like, the wider view of how humanities can combat information, I feel like this comes up quite a lot when looking at like historical research or history, that idea of like, rewriting history, quote, unquote. I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but like, that's kind of a term that's been weaponized quite a lot, usually by right wing people saying, like, you can't just rewrite history, but I guess it's kind of occurred to me thinking about fact checking that, like, a lot of historians almost are fact checking in a way and like looking at the narratives that have been written and being like, actually, this is definitely not true. And like, for example, a lot of like, post colonial research going on is like, ah, who actually wrote this? Yeah, it just, it's interesting to like, think about the parallels, I guess, between like, actual, professional factchecking and like, a lot of the research that is going on in humanities departments at the moment, I think.
Unknown:Yeah, definitely. I think I'm...something I trying in my work is to be quite aware of saying, you know, when we're saying something definitively, thinking about what kind of gaps there are in knowledge, or gaps in research that could sort of, down the line, prove to be like more of a presumption than we realized. That like, that can be very hard to do, especially when you're trying to like, counter a claim quite quickly. But there's a lot of different like, conflicting things to think about when you're kind of writing and researching, but I do think, yeah, it's important to keep an open mind of like, what do we know? But also, what don't we know? And what would be useful to know, when we're in an ideal world?
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, I've noticed that on just looking at, like, Full Fact articles of basically just being like, well, that we can't necessarily give a definitive answer here. But this is what we do know. And this is the evidence that we have. And actually, while I was looking at the website and reading those, I was like, it just threw me back to being in a GCSE English classroom. And you know, when they always say to you, like point, evidence, explanation, and like, that's drilled into us when we're doing English class when we're young. And then somehow, sneakily, a lot of people like politicians kind of forget about the evidence part later, and it kind of ends up just being like, here's my point, here's my explanation. And I'm like, the English GCSE class was teaching us some really useful stuff that then, like, carries on being drilled into you. Yeah, I just, it was funny. It sort of like threw me back to that moment of like, writing PEE down on my, like, English notebook.
Unknown:Yeah, totally. I mean, I never thought about it in those terms. But yeah, so much of the work we do, especially on politics, is writing to MPs or ministers or whoever being like, okay, you made your point, you made a major explanation. But where's the evidence? And often, like, you know, we...we don't hear back, and we don't get supplied the evidence. And I think a lot of our campaigning work is trying to hold them to...hold politicians to a higher standard on that. And, yeah, it's really interesting to think about it in that way.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, yeah. I saw on the website, I think maybe it comes up on the homepage of like, how many MPs have actually corrected themselves after Full Fact wrote to them, and sadly, small numbers. So it kind of caught my ear earlier that you said you've done a lot of creative writing as well. I was curious to see like, if you kind of see a link between like, either fact checking and like storytelling skills, or alternatively like giving false information and storytelling skills. So obviously, like narrative strategies, I think, play quite a big role in presenting evidence and information, whether it's via Full Fact or whether it's like misinformation.
Unknown:Yeah, I think situating it in kind of a current narrative context is so...it's such a fundamental part of how misinformation works, particularly in, kind of, the last few years with COVID. And kind of what that's given rise to and by the way of misinformation, and I think I've personally seen, you know, it's maybe it started with people being opposed to lockdowns. And then people being hesitant about the vaccine and kind of the online spaces in which these things are discussed could sometimes give rise to a bigger narrative about whether or not, you know, it was about population control, or whether there was, kind of...there's kind of a more overarching kind of more nefarious plot to control population that, kind of, COVID was a cover for. That's something we see very often online. And I think the the narrative is so important to that. When people...I think research has shown that people kind of turn to misinformation and, like, conspiracy theories really kind of flourish in an environment where there's, like, a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. And I think, yes, and misinformation really thrives in this kind of narrative of, um, people being faced with a lot of change or people being anxious about what they should do, kind of, in a given situation. And so it's important, I think, to understand that kind of context. And I think that's also, to kind of move on from the misinformation side of it on to how we write a fact check in a narrative context as well, that's so important. So it's something we've been really focusing on quite recently in our work is situating all of our fact checks within, kind of, a wider context as well. So it's no longer, kind of, it's kind of no longer good enough just to do the fact check and leave it at that, you know, it's...we kind of want to fact check to make a difference and explain, kind of, the wider context of where this misinformation has come from and what people can do to combat it, or what we're asking people in power to do to kind of stamp out this problem. And yeah, putting it in this wider kind of narrative of, right, there's misinformation, this is a huge problem we have to kind of wrestle with, how can we actually do that when it feels such a difficult, huge task that's really important and kind of motivating people to take action as well, which is also what we want to do.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, I hadn't thought about that actually, sort of like people do also have to be on board with the narrative of facts need checking. Like another example, I guess, I was thinking of when you're talking about narratives that get portrayed in the media, like, I think immigration is coming up so much in pre Brexit, post Brexit, Britain, and like, wow, the misinformation that feeds on...on different narratives in in that is just it's kind of staggering, I think.
Unknown:Yeah, and we've, we've done, kind of, in about the past couple of years, I've done quite a bit of work on how the, sort of, the home offices used immigration statistics are not always sort of fully backed them up. We've, sort of, had ministers using kind of unpopular statistics, or just making kind of, yeah, unsubstantiated claims, and then not being able to provide the evidence when we asked for it. And we have a whole team at Full Fact to, kind of, once we publish a fact check, they then go on to kind of write to politicians and or newspapers or, yeah, people in power, basically, and ask for their evidence or ask for a correction. And, yeah, I think immigration has been one area in which this has like, particularly flourished. And we're kind of...because there's so much focus on the story, I think, if a minister, for example, says something, or the papers or journalists will kind of report what they said, but without having the kind of...the supporting evidence that they that, like the minister should be able to provide to say it. And yeah, so this kind of...this information just kind of spreads. And we're kind of always running behind saying, you know, where's the evidence for this, but by the time you get to that, you know, that kind of claim is already out there. So that work has been has been a lot, yeah, in the last couple of years.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, yeah. That seems to me to be quite like a unique, I guess, challenge for an organization like Full Fact, in theatit's, I guess, in a way, I suppose, like you are doing preventative work, but so much of it is like reactive to stories that are already being spread on social media and by newspapers. It must be such a big challenge.
Unknown:Yeah, it is, it can feel quite overwhelming sometimes when you're...especially when you think, you think you're done with a topic or you've just finished like a big load of...so, for example, last year, we'd kind of moved past a lot of the biggest claims about vaccine misinformation, or we'd addressed a lot of them. And that had been a lot of our work for a long time. And I think we had a couple of weeks of sort of thinking, oh, what can we do sort of proactively? Or what have we sort of...what are we interested in but haven't been able to write about so much, because we've just been writing about the pandemic. And then suddenly, the Ukraine war broke out, and all that misinformation just sort of flooded the online space, and it was kind of scrambling after that. So it can, it can feel exhausting at times. But it's good, in a way because it's constantly evolving. It's a very interesting area to work in.
Bryony Armstrong:Totally, totally. And I'm thinking a bit about as well, what you were saying that like, part of Full Fact's mission and being a fact checker is about sort of like getting other people on board with the narrative that things have to be checked. Can you share with us, like, any examples of strategies or techniques from the humanities that you think have sort of proven effective in, like, helping to communicate complex ideas about, like, debunking information to a broader audience?
Unknown:Yeah, I think...and it's not always sort of everyone's favorite element of study the humanities...but I think good, like sourcing and citation is so important in our work at Full Fact. We're, like, quite...we have a real emphasis on, we're not telling people what to think we're just putting information out there that they might not have that they might want to have in order to, kind of, make their own decisions. And so I think one of the strategies from the humanities that has really helped in that is how to sort of identify a reliable source of information. And also then find out if there are any other sources that either affirm that like first source or contradict it, and then you're figuring out like, well, what is the truth here? Or are they both true on different measures, and that sort of thing. We're trying to be really meticulous in kind of fully sourcing everything we write. So if we provide, like, a statistic, you can...we'll provide like a hyperlink, so you can click and check it yourself so as many people as possible can kind of see what we've done. And I think that's really important in reaching a broad audience, because we're not an omniscient kind of force. And we don't pretend to be, and like our critics will sometimes ask, you know, quote, unquote, like, who checks the fact checkers? And I think our answer to that would be like, you do. We provide...we're kind of so careful to provide the sources and as many sources as possible. So you can make up your own mind. And if you really want to, you can go back and check through all our work and see if you agree with what we've done. And if you don't like it, there are ways that people can and do get in touch with us to let us know that and we kind of consider those on an ongoing basis. So I think, yeah, thinking about humanities skills...I mean, citing and sourcing definitely wasn't my favorite thing to do as a student, but it is so important in making sure that people get...as many people as possible can trust that work, basically.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, wow. That, like just reminds me of, I did like university teaching during my PhD and marking student essays. And like, often, because I was marking first year essays, that included like giving them pointers about how to footnote properly and what sources, ie not Wikipedia, shouldn't be used and which sources can, ie usually peer reviewed articles. And that essentially, yeah, the point of a footnote is to show your working and let people, like, follow up on what you've said. And it never really occurred to me while I was marking those assays that like, how applicable this skill is to important stuff like fact checking. It's kind of cool to think about.
Unknown:Yeah, and I think I think it really is a new just kind of, yeah, see, I always remember it being such a chore. And we don't...I mean, to be fair, we don't...we're not like writing, I can't even remember what the different referencing styles are, we just kind of provide a link. But yeah, it's so important in making sure people, yeah, can trust...can trust our work. It's such a big part of that.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, exactly. You can't just use...what's that meme that says it came to me in a dream. It's not an option in a footnote. I think that's a great place to end. So thank you so much for coming on to What's the Point and telling us all about your work with fact checking.
Sarah Turnnidge:Thank you so much.
Bryony Armstrong:Thank you for listening to What's the Point. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe. You can also find us on Twitter at wtppod underscore and send us a DM if you want to get in touch. We'll see you next time with a brand new episode.