The Best Fact-Checking Websites for Claims Circulating in Singapore and Asia

A forwarded message lands in your family group chat claiming the government is about to shut down the MRT for a week. You need an answer now. Open Factually, the government's own portal. But it is not your only tool. This page profiles the six operations that actually cover claims circulating in Singapore and the region: who they are, what they check, which languages they publish in, and how to use them when the share button is burning a hole in your thumb. No single resource does everything. Here is the honest breakdown of which one to open for a government claim, a viral WhatsApp video, or a regional rumour with no source.

The Two Camps: Government and Independent

Singapore's ecosystem splits cleanly into two camps. The government side is anchored by Factually, which sits under the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) and publishes clarifications on falsehoods circulating locally. The independent side includes Black Dot Research, a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) Code of Principles, and the newsroom-based operations: CheckMate at The Straits Times, Sure Anot at CNA, plus the regional desks of AFP Fact Check and Reuters Fact Check. Knowing which camp a verdict comes from changes how you read it. A government correction carries the weight of the state. An independent check carries the weight of methodology disclosure and a public corrections policy. They serve different purposes, and this page tells you which one to reach for in a specific situation.

The Legal Backdrop: POFMA

The legal backdrop is the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (Act 18 of 2019), known as POFMA. This is not a fact-checking law. It is a legal mechanism that can compel correction or removal of online content deemed to be a false statement of fact. The POFMA Office publishes a blacklist of Declared Online Locations. The Minister may instruct the Competent Authority to issue Directions, Correction, Stop Communication, Targeted Correction, General Correction, Disabling, Access Blocking, or a Declared Online Location order. A POFMA direction is not the same as a fact-check article, though both address falsehoods. The government's own portal, Factually, works with the POFMA Office to publish the clarifications that follow a Correction Direction. When you see a Factually post, you are reading the official response to a specific legal finding, not an independent journalist's verdict.

• What: Six fact-checking operations cover Singapore and Asia: Factually (government), Black Dot Research (independent), CheckMate (Straits Times), Sure Anot (CNA), AFP Fact Check, and Reuters Fact Check.
• Government portal: Factually: Published by MDDI, launch year 2012 as gov.sg fact-checking, publishes POFMA-related clarifications, operates a WhatsApp AI chatbot at +65 8044 9669.
• Independent organisation: Black Dot Research: https://blackdotresearch.sg, verified IFCN signatory, based in Singapore, publishes local verifications and media literacy research.
• Newsroom fact-checks: CheckMate (Straits Times column) and Sure Anot (CNA segment) verify claims in public circulation; both are part of major Singapore newsrooms.
• International wire services: AFP Fact Check (https://factcheck.afp.com) and Reuters Fact Check (https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/) are IFCN-verified with dedicated Singapore/Southeast Asia teams.
• Verification framework: National Library Board's S.U.R.E. (Source, Understand, Research, Evaluate) is the teachable sequence embedded in Singapore's school curriculum and public libraries.

Factually is the government's own portal, first launched in 2012 under the gov.sg brand and now run by the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI). Its core job is to publish clarifications on false claims circulating in Singapore, particularly those that have attracted a POFMA correction direction. When the government issues a Correction Direction under POFMA, the affected website must carry a notice linking to a Factually article that sets out the correct facts. That makes Factually the authoritative destination for any claim that has triggered an official correction. If you see a Factually URL attached to a message, someone has already been legally compelled to correct the record.

Factually publishes in all four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. That is a major advantage for language coverage across Singapore's population. The portal also operates a WhatsApp AI chatbot at +65 8044 9669, launched in 2024, which answers user queries about viral claims using the government's fact-check database. The chatbot is free and works on the same WhatsApp app most Singaporeans already use for forwarded-as-received messages. It is a low-friction tool for in-the-moment verification. But note the limitation: Factually is a government communication channel, not an independent journalistic outfit. It does not sign the IFCN Code of Principles, and it does not publish methodology disclosure. What it offers instead is the weight of officialdom. If the portal says a claim is false, that is the government's formal position, backed by the full force of POFMA's legal machinery.

Black Dot Research is the most prominent independent organisation based in Singapore, operating at https://blackdotresearch.sg. It is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) Code of Principles. That means it has publicly committed to five non-negotiable standards: non-partisanship and fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding, transparency of methodology, and a policy of open and honest corrections. Unlike Factually, which is government-run, Black Dot Research is an independent, Singapore-based organisation that publishes its own verifications of local claims, often in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil to match the city-state's language mix. Its work goes beyond simple verdicts. It also conducts media literacy research and publishes explainers on how misinformation circulates in the Singapore context.

Hold onto the key distinction between Factually and Black Dot Research. Factually is the government's official voice, publishing clarifications on claims that have drawn POFMA attention. Black Dot Research is an independent check on both the government and the claims circulating in the public sphere. Its IFCN signatory status signals a commitment to methodology disclosure and a public appeals process. When you read a Black Dot Research verdict, you are getting a check conducted under an internationally recognised code, not a government position. The trade-off is one of reach. Factually's corrections are legally attached to the original falsehood via a POFMA direction. Black Dot Research's verdicts rely on search and social distribution to reach the same audience. If a claim is circulating in a group chat, Black Dot Research's rapid response is your best independent first stop. But you should still check Factually for the official position on the same claim.

CheckMate is The Straits Times' column, dedicated to verifying claims in public circulation across Singapore. It operates as a regular feature in one of the country's two main English-language newspapers. It covers the full range of falsehoods: health scams, financial frauds, political misinformation, and viral WhatsApp messages. CheckMate's particular strength is its newsroom backing. It has access to The Straits Times' reporters, researchers, and archives, which allows it to verify claims against primary sources quickly and with a high degree of source transparency. The column is not an IFCN signatory in its own right, which matters for readers who want that external seal of methodological credibility. But it does follow standard journalistic practice of naming sources and showing evidence in each article.

What CheckMate does better than most is cover the full lifecycle of a falsehood in Singapore, from the first forwarded-as-received message to the correction that eventually appears. The column's verdicts are published in English only. That is a real gap when you consider that a significant share of misinformation circulates in Chinese, Malay, or Tamil. Treat CheckMate as your second stop after the independent Black Dot Research and the government's Factually, particularly for claims that have been in the news cycle for more than a day. Its retraction policy is visible in practice. When CheckMate gets something wrong, it publishes a correction at the top of the article, which is more than many unverified blogs will do. But remember: CheckMate is a column, not a dedicated desk. Output varies with the news cycle, and it does not have the IFCN signatory status that would force it to publish a formal methodology and funding disclosure.

Sure Anot is CNA's segment, named after the Singlish phrase that roughly translates to 'Is that so?' or 'Are you sure?' It airs on CNA, the state-owned but editorially independent broadcaster, and focuses on examining viral claims spreading across Singapore and the surrounding region. The segment is produced by CNA's digital desk and covers the same ground as CheckMate: health misinformation, scams, political falsehoods, and household myths. But it has a different editorial flavour. Where CheckMate leans on the authority of a newspaper, Sure Anot is built for television and social video. Its verdicts are shorter, more visual, and quicker to produce. This makes it a useful resource if you prefer to watch a 90-second explanation rather than read a 1,000-word debunk.

Sure Anot does not appear to be an IFCN signatory in its own right, and its publication schedule is tied to the airing of new episodes. It is not a daily or even weekly service. Its language coverage is primarily English, though CNA also operates in Chinese and Malay across its other platforms, so content occasionally appears in those languages. Use Sure Anot as a complementary source rather than a primary one. If you have seen a viral video on Tikok claiming that a certain food additive causes cancer, a quick search for 'Sure Anot CNA' will often surface a segment that addresses exactly that claim. But for rigorous, methodology-heavy verification that IFCN signatories like Black Dot Research or AFP Fact Check provide, Sure Anot is best treated as an accessible entry point that points you toward the more detailed checks published elsewhere.

Why a Wire Service Matters for Singapore

AFP Fact Check is the verification arm of Agence France-Presse, one of the world's three major international news agencies, and it publishes at https://factcheck.afp.com. It is a verified signatory of the IFCN Code of Principles, and it maintains a dedicated team covering Singapore and Southeast Asia. That gives it a presence the local newsroom operations cannot match on scale or speed. AFP Fact Check's remit includes the full range of false claims crossing the region: politically motivated disinformation, health hoaxes, and AI-generated deepfakes. Its verdicts are published in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and more, depending on the coverage area. For Singapore-specific content, the team produces articles filed in English and then translated into the other official languages as needed. This gives AFP a language coverage advantage over the purely local operations.

Correction Reach and Verification Tools

The reason AFP Fact Check matters for a Singapore reader is its role in the broader ecosystem. Because AFP is a wire service, its checks are republished by hundreds of news outlets across the region. A single AFP verdict can reach a far larger audience than a verdict published only on a local site. This is the correction reach metric in action: a fast correction that nobody sees has limited real-world effect. An AFP check syndicated across multiple outlets has a much better chance of reaching the same people who saw the original falsehood. AFP Fact Check is also at the forefront of verification tooling. It developed the InVid-WeVerify browser extension, a free Chrome and Firefox plugin that helps journalists and the public verify images and videos. If you are dealing with a claim that involves a photo or a video, using the InVid-WeVerify extension to run a reverse image search is the single most effective first step you can take. AFP's own guides explain the process in detail.

Reuters Fact Check, published at https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/, is the verification unit of the world's largest international news agency. It is a verified signatory of the IFCN Code of Principles. Unlike AFP, Reuters does not maintain a permanent desk dedicated to Southeast Asia. Its global team of roughly 30 checkers covers the region on a rotating basis, filing in English and relying on local stringers for context. For a breaking claim out of Singapore, Reuters may take a few hours longer than AFP because its verification team works across time zones and has a global queue. However, when Reuters does publish a Singapore-related check, it carries the authority of a wire service with an exceptionally rigorous internal style guide. Its verdicts are syndicated by hundreds of outlets worldwide, which gives them enormous correction reach.

The difference between AFP Fact Check and Reuters Fact Check is mostly one of focus and speed. AFP is more likely to publish a same-day check on a viral claim originating in Singapore because its regional team is on the ground. Reuters is more likely to take a day to coordinate with its Singapore-based correspondents. For the reader, the practical guidance is to check AFP first for Asia-specific falsehoods, and then use Reuters as a second source to confirm a verdict you have already seen elsewhere. Neither wire service publishes in Chinese, Malay, or Tamil on a consistent basis. For claims in those languages, rely on Black Dot Research or the government's Factually for local language coverage. Reuters also has an edge in the tools it publishes: the agency has developed its own AI-driven image verification systems, and it is a partner in the Google Fact Check Tools ecosystem, which aggregates checks from all IFCN-verified publishers and makes them searchable by keyword and claim.

Google Fact Check Tools

Google Fact Check Tools is the single best entry point for verifying any claim that has already been checked by a reputable organisation. The service aggregates checks from all IFCN-verified publishers worldwide, including Black Dot Research, AFP Fact Check, and Reuters Fact Check. It lets you search by keyword, claim, or publisher. To use it, type a quote from the claim into the search bar on the Google Fact Check Tools page. The tool returns a list of published checks with their verdicts, the publisher name, and a link to the full article. This is the fastest way to see if a claim has already been debunked. It is far more reliable than a general Google search because it only indexes content from organisations that have committed to the IFCN Code of Principles, which mandates methodology disclosure and open corrections.

Two Free Utilities to Master

Beyond Google's tool, master two free verification utilities. The first is the InVid-WeVerify browser extension, developed by AFP and partners, which runs a reverse image search across Google Images, TinEye, and Yandex. Use this when you receive a forwarded image claiming to show a disaster, a protest, or a government building that looks suspiciously old. A reverse image search will tell you if the image has appeared before in a different context. It almost always has. The second is Hive Moderation, an AI-powered detection service that claims 99% accuracy on AI-generated image detection and is widely used by checkers. For a claim that involves a deepfake video or an AI-generated image, Hive can flag it as synthetic. Treat its output as a strong signal rather than a definitive verdict. No AI detector is perfect, especially for non-native English text that may be falsely flagged as machine-written.

A Critical Safety Note on Uploading Images

Uploading a suspicious image to a public site may reveal your identity or location. If the image was sent to you by a colleague who asked you to verify it, and the image itself is sensitive, a leaked document, a photo of a person, or a government building, then uploading it to TinEye or Google Images exposes it to those platforms' databases. For sensitive material, use Truepic, a content authenticity service that checks image provenance using C2PA-compliant infrastructure, or simply do not upload it at all.

The most common question a reader has is which of the two Singapore-based resources to trust: Factually or Black Dot Research. The answer depends entirely on the nature of the claim. If the claim involves a statement made by a government official, a government agency, or a policy decision, then Factually is the authoritative source. It publishes the official clarification that the government has issued, often under a POFMA correction direction. When you see a Factually URL attached to a message, that is the government's formal position. Accept it as fact for the purposes of not being misled.

If the claim is about a private company, an individual, or a non-government matter, a viral scam, a fake promotion, a false rumour about a celebrity, then Black Dot Research is more likely to have the independent verification you need. Black Dot Research's IFCN signatory status means it has publicly committed to transparency of sources and methodology. You can see exactly where its evidence comes from and how it reached a verdict. It also has the advantage of being faster to respond to claims that have not yet attracted official attention, because it is not waiting for a government direction. In practice, the winning strategy is to check both. Search for the claim plus 'Factually' and 'Black Dot Research' to see if either has published a verdict. If only one has, go with that one, but check the other to see if it has issued a correction or an update since the first check was published.

Understanding what happens after a POFMA correction direction is issued is essential for anyone who wants to gauge the credibility of a check or correct misinformation they have shared. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (Act 18 of 2019), the government can issue a Correction Direction against a website that has published a false statement of fact, requiring the site to carry a notice that links to a clarifications page on Factually. The website is not taken down. It is merely required to make the correction visible to its readers. Failure to comply is an offence, with penalties that escalate based on the nature of the falsehood. For a malicious falsehood against a public institution, an individual can be fined up to S$50,000 and face up to five years in prison, while a corporation faces a fine of up to S$1,000,000.

The POFMA Office publishes a blacklist of Declared Online Locations, sites that have been ordered to carry a correction or have shown a pattern of non-compliance. This list is public and searchable, which makes it a useful resource for verifying whether a website you are reading has been formally sanctioned. A POFMA direction is not the same as a fact-check. A direction is a legal order that compels a specific correction. A check is a journalistic or civic practice that publishes a verdict. The two often overlap. A Factually article is both a legal correction and a form of public verification, but a POFMA direction does not require the offending website to publish a check, only to link to the official clarification. This distinction matters when you see a website carrying a POFMA notice. It tells you the government has formally declared the content false. It does not tell you the independent community's assessment of that same claim, which may be more nuanced.

The National Library Board's S.U.R.E. framework, Source, Understand, Research, Evaluate, is the single most useful mental checklist for verifying any claim in Singapore. It is embedded in the school curriculum and public libraries across the country. The framework is deliberately simple. Check the Source of the information. Understand what the claim is actually saying. Research the claim against multiple independent sources. Evaluate the quality of the evidence before you share. For a reader facing a single forwarded message, S.U.R.E. provides a disciplined sequence that prevents two common failure modes: source confusion and verification bypass. Source confusion happens when you believe a claim because the person who forwarded it is trusted, without checking whether that person is the original source. Verification bypass is the more dangerous habit of sharing a claim with a comment like 'is this true?' before waiting for an answer. That behaviour amplifies the falsehood even as you ask for help verifying it.

The single most effective technique you can pair with S.U.R.E. is lateral reading. When you encounter a claim, open a new browser tab and search for the source, the claim, and the publisher before you even read the original content. Lateral reading is the opposite of vertical reading, where you stay on the original page and judge it on its own design and tone. That is the technique that makes officialdom halo errors so common. A message that uses a government logo, an official-sounding phrase like 'by order of the Ministry', or a .gov.sg-like URL is not automatically trustworthy. You must check the actual domain, the actual sender, and the actual source of the claim. Lateral reading forces you to verify the source before you accept the claim. It is the technique that professional checkers use on every story. The S.U.R.E. framework teaches you the habit. Lateral reading is the habit made visible. Combine the two, and you eliminate the single-source settlement failure mode, where a reader accepts a claim as true after finding one source that confirms it, without checking whether that source is independent or whether other sources disagree.

Verification Speed

When you compare organisations, three metrics matter more than any others: verification speed, correction reach, and source transparency. Verification speed is measured in hours from claim to published verdict. It is the difference between stopping a falsehood in its tracks and watching it spread to a million people. AFP Fact Check and Black Dot Research are the fastest in the Singapore market, with many verdicts published within 24 hours of a claim surfacing. Reuters is slower, often taking a full day or more because its global team works across time zones. The government's Factually portal is fastest of all in one narrow case: when a POFMA correction direction is served, the clarification goes up within hours, often in under six, because it is a legal requirement. But Factually only covers claims that have been formally sanctioned. It cannot proactively debunk a claim before the government decides to act. That is where the independent checkers fill the gap.

Correction Reach and Source Transparency

Correction reach is the estimated number of people who see a correction as a proportion of those who saw the original falsehood. A fast correction nobody sees has limited real-world effect. AFP and Reuters have the highest raw reach because their wire stories are syndicated to hundreds of outlets. But the reach of a single syndicated article is diluted by the fact that most people will not click through to read the correction. Black Dot Research and Factually have lower absolute numbers, but their corrections are highly targeted. Factually's reach is guaranteed by the POFMA order that requires the offending website to carry a notice. Black Dot Research's reach comes from its presence on Twitter and Telegram, where the original falsehoods are most often shared. The honest conclusion: no single metric is decisive. The best strategy is to check multiple sources and use the one that publishes a verdict first, then confirm with a second source to protect against the single-source settlement failure.

Source transparency is the third pillar: whether the checker names the original source and shows the evidence chain. A verdict without visible evidence is unverifiable by the reader, no matter how fast it was published. Every IFCN signatory, Black Dot Research, AFP, Reuters, is committed to source transparency as part of the Code of Principles. They all publish links or screenshots of the evidence they used. The government's Factually is less transparent in this regard because it publishes the official state position without the underlying evidence trail. You either trust the government or you do not. For the most complete picture, read an independent check's evidence and then cross-reference it against the Factually clarification to see if the two agree.

The rise of deepfakes and AI-generated content has fundamentally changed the landscape. Singapore's POFMA has been amended to cover digitally manipulated content that constitutes a false statement of fact. A sophisticated deepfake video of a government official is now explicitly within the law's reach, and the same correction mechanisms apply to it as to a textual falsehood. However, the verification challenge is entirely different. A deepfake is much harder to debunk than a text-based falsehood because it does not leave a clear paper trail, and the tools that detect it are imperfect. Hive Moderation, a commercial service used by checkers, claims 99% accuracy on AI-generated image detection. That figure is contested. Independent testing has shown false positive rates high enough to falsely flag human student writing as AI-generated, especially for non-native English writers. This is a critical caveat when you receive a message claiming that a particular document was written by AI: the tool that flags it may be wrong, and its output is not a reliable basis for accusing someone of fraud.

For the reader, the practical takeaway is that reverse image search and AI detection tools are useful but not definitive. A reverse image search on Yandex, which has strong facial recognition and coverage of Eastern European and Russian web content, can often uncover the original version of a photo used to create a deepfake. But it will not tell you if the video itself was synthesized. Truepic and other C2PA-compliant infrastructure can verify content authenticity by checking for cryptographic signatures embedded in the metadata of photos and videos. This only works for content that was signed at capture time. Most viral content is not signed. The most reliable defence against deepfakes remains the simplest: compare the claim against the official government portal (Factually), the independent IFCN signatories (Black Dot Research, AFP, Reuters), and the official social media accounts of the person or agency involved. If a deepfake purports to show a government official making a shocking announcement, a 30-second check of the official's verified social media account will almost always reveal that no such statement was made.

ScamShield: Your First Defence

Fact-checking websites are necessary but not sufficient for dealing with scams and phising attempts, which are the most common form of falsehood in Singapore. A check can tell you that a particular message is a scam after the fact. It cannot stop the scam from reaching you in the first place. For that, you need the ScamShield app, developed by Open Government Products under GovTech Singapore. It uses a combination of user reports and a database of known malicious phone numbers and URLs to block scam calls and messages on your phone. ScamShield is free, available on iOS and Android, and it is the single most effective technological defence against scam messages that have already been reported. However, ScamShield is not perfect. It only blocks numbers and URLs that have been reported, so a brand-new scam using a spoofed SMS sender ID will not be caught until someone has reported it.

When the Normal Route Is Closed

This is where the failure case becomes important. When the normal route is closed, when you receive a message that looks like it is from your bank but you are not sure, and you cannot reach the bank's official hotline because it is midnight, do not rely on a check or an app to save you. The correct response is to use the official channel. Call the bank's official hotline from the number printed on the back of your card. Log into your online banking through the official app. Do not call the number in the message. Do not click the link. Do not reply. The same rule applies to government messages: if you receive a claim that appears to be from the Singapore Police Force or MOH, check the official website or social media account for an actual advisory. A claimed endorsement does not make it real. A checking website can tell you a scam is circulating, but it cannot verify a message in real time. The burden of verification falls on you, the reader, and the only reliable method is to use a known-official channel rather than the one in the message.

A Note on Privacy

When you encounter a suspicious message, you may be tempted to upload the content to a public forum or reverse image search to verify it. Do not do this with sensitive material. Uploading a suspicious image to a public site may reveal the user's identity or location through the image's metadata. A spoofed SMS is one delivery mechanism where the sender ID is faked to appear as a legitimate organisation. The safest path is to delete the message, report it to the relevant platform (which flags content for removal under its terms of service), and then, if you have time, report it to the police. That is distinct from simply relying on platform reporting. Muting a conversation removes the content from your view without the sender's knowledge, but it does not stop the spread. Reporting to the platform flags content for removal, but it does not constitute a legal report. For the strongest response, do both.

Singapore's multilingual environment creates a unique verification challenge. A claim forwarded in Chinese, Malay, or Tamil may come with a translated summary that is inaccurate or deliberately misleading, and the resources you trust may not cover the original language. The government's Factually portal publishes in all four official languages. You can always find an official clarification for a claim that has been formally corrected. Black Dot Research also publishes in multiple languages, though its output is primarily in English with occasional Chinese translations. This leaves a gap for Malay and Tamil claims, where the volume of local checking is thinner. You may need to rely on the regional coverage of AFP Fact Check, which operates in multiple languages across Southeast Asia.

When you receive a forwarded message in a language you do not speak, the first step is to translate it using a service like Google Translate. Never rely on the translated text alone. Machine translation can introduce errors, and a translated summary may omit the very detail that would reveal the claim as false. Instead, take the original text and search for a unique phrase from it in Google Fact Check Tools. That will surface any IFCN-verified check that has been published on that claim, regardless of language. If no result appears, search for the claim in the original language using a search engine, because local media may have covered it. The most important habit: never forward a message that you cannot personally verify, in any language. The S.U.R.E. framework works the same way in every language. Check the source, understand the claim, research it against independent sources, and evaluate the evidence before sharing.

The measurable impact of a check on actual belief and sharing behaviour is frustratingly modest. People who see a check may update their factual beliefs, but they rarely change their sharing behaviour. A correction that reaches a million people may only change the behaviour of a few thousand, because most people share content on the basis of social identity, not factual accuracy. This is the correction blindness failure mode: a reader sees a check, but dismisses it because it comes from a source they distrust, or because it contradicts their prior belief. The implication for the best fact checking websites Singapore Asia has to offer is that you cannot outsource your judgment to a single website, no matter how reputable. You must triangulate: check a government source (Factually), an independent IFCN signatory (Black Dot Research, AFP, Reuters), and a newsroom operation (CheckMate, Sure Anot). Only then decide what to believe or share.

This is also why the meta-question of this page, which websites cover claims circulating in Singapore and Asia, has no single correct answer. The answer is all of them, used in combination, and each one serves a different purpose. If you only have time for one check, use Google Fact Check Tools to see if any IFCN signatory has already published a verdict on the claim. If you only have time for two checks, add Factually for the official position. If you have more time, read the full evidence from Black Dot Research or AFP, and then use the S.U.R.E. framework to evaluate how well the check matches the claim you received. The failure case is when you do none of this and simply forward the message, perpetuating the very falsehood you aimed to counter. The single most important recommendation this page can offer is to slow down. The falsehood will wait. A hasty share will not.

Here is the honest, operational answer, stripped of any promotional language. If you receive a claim that involves a government official, a government agency, or a government policy, open Factually first. That is where the official clarification will appear, usually within hours of a POFMA correction direction being issued. If no Factually article exists yet, search Google Fact Check Tools for the claim. If that yields nothing, check the official social media account of the agency involved. A claim that is not confirmed by the official channel is likely false. If the claim involves a private company, a scam, or a non-government matter, open Black Dot Research first. Its IFCN signatory status guarantees that you will see its sources and methodology, and it is faster than the newsroom operations. For a visual claim, a photo or video, use the InVid-WeVerify browser extension to run a reverse image search before you even read the caption.

For a claim in Chinese, Malay, or Tamil, your first stop should be Factually, because it is the only major operation that publishes in all four official languages. For an English-only claim, the order is Black Dot Research, then CheckMate, then Sure Anot, then AFP and Reuters for wire-level coverage. The one thing you should never do is rely on a single check, from any source, to settle a claim that matters to you. The IFCN Code of Principles exists to guarantee transparency, but it cannot guarantee infallibility. Every checker makes mistakes. The mark of a good checker is not that it never gets things wrong. It is that it publishes an open correction quickly when it does. Check the retraction policy: does the site have a visible mechanism for corrections? If it does not, you cannot trust it. If it does, you have found a resource worth consulting again.