A day at the VRT NWS factcheck room: “Factchecking is often about details, but the impact is enormous”

“Every day looks different”, says coordinator and editor-in-chief Luc Van Bakel. He’s in charge of a team of ten VRT NWS journalists. It’s a relatively small team, but it’s very ambitious. “It’s a varied and diverse job”, they state with enthusiasm. “Every day we’re working with different colleagues and departments. Sometimes that’s people from VRT Innovation, or colleagues from Radio 1 we’re making a show with, or with external partners. They all have their own area of expertise. It’s inspiring to constantly work with different people. This makes for a dynamic work atmosphere.” The purpose is to turn every VRT NWS journalist into a factchecker, but the specialised core team remains a necessity for complex investigations.  

The right packaging for every channel 

Every day is different, but the factcheck staff are constantly working on the same issue: checking whether information and statements that arrive at VRT NWS are correct and truthful. Afterwards, these factchecks are used on different channels for varying target groups. Luc and his team deliver content for the VRT NWS Journal, the VRT NWS website and app, TikTok, Instagram, and also for several radio programmes. Not to mention their own podcast, The Hour of Truth.  

“It’s important to deliver the message in the right way for each individual channel”, says Nele Baeyens, at 25 the youngest member of the team. Her age doesn’t bother her, on the contrary. “I’m more aware of everything trending on social media. I know what goes on in the younger target group, and am able to suggest topics which don’t occur to other members of the team. I also work on interpreting for our social media posts, like TikTok and explainers on Instagram. You have to address young people in a different way than a somewhat older audience.” 

More traditional reporting, like an item for the VRT NWS Journal, is the responsibility of the experienced Tim Verheyden: “I’m responsible for items used on the TV news. You have to explain the whole story clearly in about a minute. That’s a challenge, but’s important to explain more complex subjects in an accessible and simple way. We deploy all our factchecks as widely as possible on different channels to reach a wide audience. This is part of our public mission. To inform as many Flemish people as possible with correct and truthful news facts.”

Eyes focused 

9.30 am: editorial team meeting at the factcheck room. The core team discusses what’s scheduled that day. Luc Van Bakel: “Each day starts with our core team. Colleagues from other departments join in, depending on the nature of the project. This might be major international tensions, which require a lot of time and several interested parties, like the factcheck marathon format VOTE24. Some things take less time, like a factcheck on the use of a VRT face whose voice has been dubbed using AI.” 

10.15 am: everybody knows what to focus on. “We all have our own specialities”, claims Ellen Debackere. “I’m one of the more conventional factcheck journalists. Some colleagues are constantly working on data. They use figures, and are able to explain a whole story or refute claims that way. Others primarily use OSINT techniques (refer to the next page) for their investigation. Some colleagues move away from standard investigatory practice, and specialise in the dark web (refer to the next page). It includes a treasure of information which we cannot overlook.” 

One of the less obvious applications used by factcheck journalists is SunCalc. “It’s a tool based on the position of the sun or the moon, and therefore shadows in an image, which helps to verify the time when a picture was taken”, Ellen clarifies. “Or the opposite, when the point in time is already known, the direction of filming or the photography.” This might seem insignificant, but it isn’t. It has often helped us confirming or denying certain claims. Factchecking is often about details. We’re trained to spot them. The impact of these details can be enormous. They can prove whether a story is correct or false.” 

From Russian espionage ships to political nonsense 

12.30 pm: some journalists are not getting a lunchbreak. The team is busy investigating a claim for their Dutch KRO-NCRV colleagues. It’s part of a major international research project into espionage by Russian fishing boats on the North Sea. Ellen Debackere and Luc Van Bakel are closely involved. “We’ve shown that a number of Russian fishing boats in the North Sea were probably involved in sabotage and espionage activities in the North Sea. This is shared research with factcheckers from the Finnish and German public broadcasters, and with our Dutch colleagues from the investigative programme Pointer (KRO-NCRV).” 

According to Luc the increased use of factchecking is a worldwide trend. “We’re increasingly cooperating with broadcasting colleagues from abroad. The BBC is a major player, and their journalists have developed factchecking in a big way. As the Flemish broadcaster, we’re not lagging behind. For some projects, working together with our northern neighbours is the obvious thing to do. For example, we worked together with our Dutch colleagues on online hate channels.” This sort of cooperation will only increase in the future. “We’re trying to tell a unique story, next to the major, international players. Disinformation knows no borders. Just think of war propaganda or climate deniers. These are typical international stories, suited to cooperation.” 

03.00 pm: some ‘faster’ checks are dealt with. They work on these all day, in between the major stories. The political factcheck is an often-returning subject. When politicians make doubtful statements, the factcheck team investigates them. “First of all, we try to find out which sources are used for the statements”, Ellen explains. “Depending on the outcome, we investigate further and contact our own sources. Or we opt for deeper analysis, and ask specialised academics for help. This will take longer, up to two days.”

Including dashcam footage 

Checking images for reliability is routine for the factcheck team. The increase of fake news brings with it increasing image manipulation. To find out whether particular pictures or videos have been shot at the claimed places and times, they often use OSINT techniques, and the factcheck team often has to be creative. Ellen: “When we receive Gaza war footage, we need to slightly adapt our strategy now. There is very little Google Streetview material available to verify image locations. What can sometimes be found are dashcam images from cars, which are uploaded on YouTube. This enables us to compare locations.”  

Still, verifying images is getting more difficult all the time. Artificial intelligence has something to do with this, and it’s a blessing in disguise for the factcheck team. On the one hand, the technology helps verifying certain claims more quickly, but on the other hand AI manipulated images, such as deepfakes, are getting more and more difficult to distinguish from the rest. Nevertheless, technology expert Tim Verheyden doesn’t think this specific technology poses an immediate threat. “Let’s not tempt fate here, but it doesn’t bother us too much in Belgium yet. It’s more obvious in the United States, because AI models are more developed in English. Dutch deepfakes are still quite easy to detect. It’s difficult to predict how this will evolve in the future. Everything’s moving so fast, we’re permanently chasing the facts.” 

04.50 pm: Tim is checking some footage. People are saying on social media that these have been manipulated using AI. This appears to be an increasing problem. Loads of AI footage is flooding social media, trying to lure people to particular websites to deceive them. Search results on browsers such as Perplexity AI and Google are also having more problems. “When using AI to look for answers, the technology starts hallucinating”, Tim explains. “Google has put its AI-controlled search engine on hold. When you asked Google how to make a pizza, you were advised to use glue to make it all stick together. Hundreds of bizarre answers appeared. The technology is far from faultless. Deepfake is not a major issue right now, but AI-controlled disinformation in text and images is.” 

International recognition 

05.50 pm: a busy working day is slowly coming to an end. The team is finalising an item which will be broadcast on VRT NWS Journal at 7 pm.  

Factchecking being a more than useful tool against online manipulation, and the fact that VRT plays an important part in this as the public broadcaster, is also made clear by VRT research. Eight out of every ten Flemish people are worried about disinformation. A lot of people are doubtful about the news they encounter on social media. It’s up to VRT to remove these doubts. The public broadcaster also wants to weapon the Flemish against increasing cyber crime through phishing. “We’re doing this through high-quality factchecks, which comply with the most stringent demands”, states Luc Van Bakel. “Recently, VRT NWS was give international recognition, first from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), and now from their European counterpart, the European Fact-checking Standards Network (EFCSN).” 7

OSINT 

OSINT means Open Source Intelligence, or the insight obtained by processing and analysing public data sources, such as radio and television, social media and websites. These sources deliver data in audio, image, video and text format. Some of the most used OSINT applications are: Google reverse image search (a reversed search command), Google Maps, Trint (an application to transcribe and translate video and audio in foreign languages), but also YouTube, or consulting public data through official government authorities. 

Darkweb

The darkweb is a part of the internet which is not accessible through standard search engines and browsers. Instead, you have to use special software, such as Tor (The Onion Router) to get access. 

“In a world where it’s increasingly difficult to see the difference between real and fake, we at VRT NWS want to focus strongly on checking statements, figures, photos and videos. It’s of major importance that everybody knows what can, and what can’t be believed. For VRT NWS, the quest for truth and reliability is one of most important future challenges.”  Liesbet Vrieleman, Information Director