Multitasking, AI tools and 22,785 words of preparation: how we ‘live fact check’

It’s 8.59pm on Tuesday 4 June, and in a studio in Salford, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are about to go head-to-head in the first televised debate of the 2024 general election campaign.

In our office in south London, half the Full Fact editorial team are gathered around a big screen, laptops at the ready. The rest of the team, working remotely from locations all around the UK, are glued to the same feed.  

Over the next hour, Mr Sunak and Mr Starmer will engage in a rapid-fire, wide-ranging exchange on everything from small boat crossings and pensions tax to patient satisfaction in the NHS. And almost in real time, the Full Fact team will record and analyse their claims, giving those watching the debate (plus politicos and journalists) an almost instant verdict on their accuracy, plus important context where it is needed.

‘Live fact checking’ is one of the hardest—and one of the most exciting—things that Full Fact does. Making it work requires extensive preparation, second-by-second coordination and some deft multitasking. Here we explain exactly how we do it.

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.

Preparation is key

The secret to live fact checking is simple really—preparation, lots and lots of it. 

Our team will always do our best to scope novel or surprising claims as they are made, and can sometimes offer a snap verdict. Memorably, after Liz Truss claimed in her 2022 Conservative party conference speech that she was the first Prime Minister to have gone to a comprehensive school, one fact checker immediately started contacting the old schools of former Prime Ministers. (And found Theresa May too had attended a comprehensive, and confirmed she did so after the school in question became a comprehensive). 

Usually if we are able to offer a snap verdict though, it’s because we know where the relevant data (for example, from the Office for National Statistics or NHS England) lives, and can quickly check it. Being comfortable with spreadsheets is a must. 

But for the most part live fact checking relies on the Blue Peter approach—“here’s one we made earlier”.

The truth is, brand-new claims from politicians are rarer than many people perhaps realise. They’ll often have said what they’re saying before, which means we may have been able to fact check it before, and so can rapidly offer a verdict now.

So ahead of any live fact checking event, we prepare, as much as time allows. 

We compile a giant shared document full of previous claims that we’ve checked and think may come up again, along with what our verdict is and relevant sources or background. 

During the election, we kept such a document on a rolling basis, with more than a dozen fact checkers and volunteers adding to it and updating it throughout the campaign. By the time polling day arrived, it was 22,785 words long.

Serious multitasking

Once the event we’re live fact checking gets underway, it’s a team effort.

A team of fact checkers—normally at least four people, sometimes as many as 10—work collaboratively and simultaneously in a (different) document. One person has the job of transcribing claims as they are made, with each potentially checkable claim going in a different row. Our AI tools provide a transcript which helps with this, and also instantly flag any potential repeat claims, which we then prioritise for scoping.

Several fact checkers then work to scope claims as they are made, adding notes or verdicts to the document and flagging those they think it’s worth us covering. At least two editors work alongside them, deciding what we should write up and reviewing and subbing copy before it goes out. (Everything we publish normally has at least two additional pairs of eyes on it).

Typically we write up claims and conclusions in short bite-size chunks suitable for use on social media (usually Full Fact’s X and BlueSky accounts), though sometimes we’ll also produce longer paragraphs which can be used in live blogs, either on our site or with media partners we’re working with. 

And colleagues from our public affairs team work alongside us. For example, our social media manager publishes copy, sometimes adds video and looks at what else is being said online about the event we’re covering, while our interventions manager looks for any immediate opportunities to contact politicians (or their staff) and seek corrections or clarifications as appropriate. 

It goes without saying that coordination and concentration is crucial in all this. Being able to write a fact check of one claim while simultaneously listening and keeping tabs on an entirely different part of the debate requires some serious multitasking—and there are normally a blizzard of instant messages to stay across as well. 

Why we do this

Live fact checking’s challenging, impressive to watch and something people always want to hear about (we show people how to do it in person on some of our Full Fact Training courses). But it’s also important to do—because it allows us to inform a debate as it’s happening, correct claims before they can spread further and ensure fact checking is relevant to the political news cycle, which now unfolds minute-by-minute on social media. 

Ahead of the ITV debate on 4 June last year, our CEO Chris Morris gave a bit more insight into our live fact checking process in an interview on BBC News.

Our CEO @__ChrisMorris__ on what goes into live fact checking:
✅ Identify repeat claims
✅ Revise key datasets that we’re likely to use
✅ Publish explainers so good info is out there already
Follow along with us tonight for #SunakvStarmer #ITVDebate at 9pm pic.twitter.com/FJqS0Z8P8z

— Full Fact (@FullFact) June 4, 2024

That particular debate was perhaps the busiest of the general election campaign—we published more than 20 posts over the course of the debate. But it was also one of many. Over the course of the campaign we live fact checked nine different debates or TV events, from the big head-to-head debates to seven-party debates, leaders’ interviews and BBC Scotland’s leaders’ debate.

We don’t always have the resource to prep and staff live fact checks as we’d like to, but we live fact check Prime Minister’s Questions most weeks and cover big one-off political events, such as Sir Keir Starmer’s recent visit to the White House, when we can. Live fact checking will continue to be a key part of what we do, and a way to rapidly insert facts into political debate that, thanks particularly to social media, now plays out almost instantaneously.