There’s good information out there too… if you know how to find it!

There is a lot of bad information lurking on the internet, as we often say, but there’s masses of good information out there too. In fact, we rely on it to be able to do our jobs. 

Some of it is so easy to find that you could do your own fact check in a few seconds on your phone. This blog contains a few quick tips to get you started.

This article is part of the #FactsMatter campaign, which is highlighting the important work we do at Full Fact and why we believe it matters. Over the course of the campaign we’ll be talking about how we check facts, the challenges we face in getting to the heart of evidence and the difference we can make when we do so. 

We’re asking people to share what we publish, sign up to our newsletter and tell the world why #FactsMatter more than ever. Find out more about the campaign and how you can support it here.

How we find good information

Say someone says to you that there’s a lot more violent crime these days. How do you know whether they are right? Well, in this case even a quick search online for crime stats will uncover the latest bulletin from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)—where the section on violent crime shows that it has broadly fallen this century, at least in England and Wales.

Or you might be waiting for a hospital appointment, and wondering how long these waits usually take. This time with a bit more digging, if you’re in England, you can look up the data for your type of treatment where you live. (As it happens, we’ve put the trends over time into a table too.) 

Digging for data is a skill that anyone can learn, although at Full Fact we do get a lot of practice. And it can be fun, especially when you discover something interesting and unexpected, which happens often.  

Just recently for example, I was writing about how many schools have a rule banning mobile phones. But the question that hadn’t occurred to me to ask until I started digging was: how often are those rules actually followed? For people worried about phones in classrooms, it’s whether the phones are being used, not whether they’ve been banned, that actually matters.   

And as it turns out, there’s something called the National Behaviour Survey, in which—on Table 26 out of 44 in this spreadsheet—the government actually asked students this question. (And on Table 68 of 71 in this spreadsheet, they asked teachers too.) This is what the data shows.  

The point here is that even experienced fact checkers often find there’s much more good information out there than we expected.

You can see the number of migrants who arrive on small boats each day, how much people of different ages earn, the estimated number of people of each age in the UK, or even very detailed information, like the number of British Sign Language users who are out of work. 

And if you can’t find the information you need, and you think it might be held by a public authority, then you can just ask for it with a Freedom of Information request. The other day, someone used this to establish that the National Statistician doesn't use ChatGPT.  

So if you’re interested in what’s really going on in the world, start digging! You’ll be amazed what’s out there.