Duke Reporter's Lab: Is Australia's Golden Age of Third-Party Fact Checking Over?

The ABC’s recent announcement that it will dissolve its third-party fact-checker partnership with RMIT University, known as ABC RMIT Fact Check, and replace it with an in-house unit called “ABC News Verify”, suggests Australia is not immune to global trends. Our study tested public trust in four current Australian fact checkers: RMIT ABC Fact Check, RMIT Factlab, AAP and Reuters Fact Check – an international fact checker operating in Australia. In its report titled the “Fact Check Files”, Sky News Australia accused RMIT FactLab (a separate entity from RMIT ABC Fact Check) of working with Meta to “censor Voice debate”.