Verify breaking news online
Show your work
Verify digital media consistently and openly for your team and your readers. You can collate and organize your findings on Checkdesk’s verification log so others can replicate the steps. Share your results confidently as you draw research from multiple sources.
Investigate together
Work quickly as a distributed team on Checkdesk with simple user accounts and group management. Open the door to contributions from your newsroom and your broader network of researchers, experts and citizen journalists.
Publish anywhere
Easily share and embed your findings on your primary news site. The Checkdesk embed automatically updates with new reports and a verification status, allowing you to safely share contested media.
“ When we’re verifying user generated content, it’s very important to be clear and transparent. What’s great about Checkdesk is that it lets us show every step we’ve taken along the way.
— Eliot Higgins,
“ While the training workshops equip participants with media monitoring skills, the Checkdesk tool provides them with a platform to express their opinions and to exchange views on how they are represented in media.
— Sawsan Zaideh,
Our History
Since 2011, the Checkdesk project has worked to build online tools, support independent journalists, and develop media literacy training resources that aim to improve the investigative quality of citizen journalism and help limit the rapid spread of rumors and misinformation online.
In addition to building software, we run workshops and panels, and we contributed to the European Journalism Centre’s Verification Handbook, edited by Craig Silverman, with case studies and an Arabic language translation.
Supporters & Partners
Checkdesk partners with the following media organizations. Please get in touch if you would like to be a media partner.
Install Checkdesk
Checkdesk is a multilingual, custom content management system (CMS) built upon the Drupal 7 PHP content management platform. It is available free and open source on Github.