The Providence Eye is proud to partner with Gigafact, which is on a mission to help local newsrooms like ours “respond constructively to everyday misinformation, rumors, confusions and claims that circulate in their communities.”
Through this partnership, we will be introducing a new weekly feature called “Fact Briefs,” which are 150-word responses to real claims circulating online, providing “Yes” or “No” answers with sources.
Other newsrooms who have incorporated Fact Briefs into their newsroom include CT Mirror, Maine Trust for Local News, and MinnPost, to name a few.
It’s our hope that this new feature will be an effective way to gain insight into unsupported claims relating to Providence life. Our small but mighty team is excited to hunt for claims swirling in the community, whether online or word of mouth. That said, we would love to hear directly from our readers if you have a claim that you would like fact-checked.
Readers of The Providence Eye can provide tips for future Fact Briefs at pvdeye.org/fact-briefs.
The founder of Politifact, Bill Adair, said “In the years that we’ve been studying the rise of misinformation, we’ve realized there simply aren’t enough fact-checks to counter all the falsehoods. Gigafact is addressing this head-on with a wonderfully simple approach that should yield a dramatic increase in fact checks.”
According to a 2025 Pew Research poll, 70% of Americans see the spread of false information online as a major threat to their country. At the same time, 48% of U.S. adults say most of the news they come across is not relevant to their lives.
Information is shared differently than it was a few decades ago. The Providence Eye wants to be a part of that conversation, and look forward to doing so with weekly Fact Briefs.
You can read the first Fact Brief here.
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