We all have those times when we become aware of something that suddenly seems to show up everywhere. It could be a number (17 anyone?), a car make and model (a 2017 Ford Fusion), or a song (“Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty). Recently, fact-checking has burrowed into my consciousness. I can explain in four movements.
Fact-checking intrudes on pop culture
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is currently streaming on Apple TV, and this show has everything: murder, suspense, deception, and fact-checking. If you feel you’ve stumbled into “One of these things is not like the other,” you are correct.
The show’s protagonist works at an apparently incredibly profitable, old-school publication that employs a team of fact-checkers (in 2026, in this economy?). The visual of the lead character using a red pencil to mark up printouts of articles is supposed to illustrate her laser-like concentration even as her world is falling apart. I think that’s the message, anyway; I’ll never know, as I tapped out after episode 3. Someone who finished the series will have to tell me if her red fact-checking pencil figures prominently in any major plot points.
The salad days of fact-checking
During my early days at the McKinsey Quarterly, one of my colleagues told me about her stint at The New Yorker, where she had started as a fact-checker. The publication was a stickler for accuracy: She said that if an article described a gray house on a specific corner in New Haven, Connecticut, the magazine would fly a fact-checker out to the city to verify those details in person.
That anecdote always stuck with me. The publication’s CEO must have been tempted from time to time to save some money by cutting corners. But how do you put a price tag on the trust between a writer and their audience?
Incidentally, The New Yorker’s commitment to fact-checking was so legendary that it was a major plot point in Letters to Juliet. Amanda Seyfried stars as an employee of the publication whose intrepid sleuthing helps to reunite lovers from WWII. (I didn’t catch that one, and you might not want to either.)
Why fact-checking still matters—and possibly more than ever
It’s a little disorienting to contemplate all that has changed in the past several decades and how the notions of trust and truth have morphed. Yet, in the age of algorithms that serve up the content in our chosen channels to confirm what we already believe, trust has never been more valuable, precarious, and elusive.
Today, the temptation to rely on technology to do seemingly low-value tasks often proves too great. Recently, global professional services firms that outsourced their research, fact-checking, and writing to AI have had their errors exposed in the most public ways. The reputational damage goes far beyond publishing: If a company outsources the heavy lifting on an article to AI, are its teams doing the same for analysis and strategy in client engagements? Companies really don’t want to plant that seed of doubt in potential clients.
Our commitment to doing fact-checking the right way
We’re in the midst of a vicious AI cycle in fact-checking: Companies are relying on AI to track down sources at the same time that people are using AI data scrapers to create brand new sources. That means it’s becoming harder to verify that a source is legitimate. If AI is simultaneously creating sources and identifying “sources,” how can companies combat that? It’s important to establish the sources (such as news publications, company reports, and press releases) that can be trusted.
I’m regularly floored by our team’s thoroughness in verifying sources as well as the cited numbers or assertions in those sources. We were recently asked by a client about our approach to fact-checking. Here’s our official policy:
“We do not use LLMs to verify sources. We hand-check every source that we are given by author teams to ensure the accuracy of fact. Similarly, we hand-check every source that we find via search to support a fact. We use only sources that are credible and are from experts, such as reputable news outlets, nongovernmental organizations, legitimate research or professional services organizations, government agencies, or articles published by universities or journals.”
We do it this way because we understand our clients rely on us to help maintain trust with their audiences, and sometimes there are no shortcuts.
If you need me, I’ll be heading to the casino to lay some money on the roulette table. Don’t be surprised by the number I’m betting on, my transportation, or the soundtrack.
