Turning the Tide on Misinformation: Fact-checking in the Age of a 'Million Narratives'
Chris Morris, who left the BBC to lead fact-checking charity Full Fact, tells Josiah Mortimer that critical thinking skills are crucial amid a surge in false narratives and risky AI tools.
Josiah Mortimer: How are you finding the switch from journalism to the NGO and fact-checking world?
Chris Morris: It's been good. I left the BBC with a smile on my face. It's different…I spend considerable time trying to raise money, as you realise when you're a charity that you need money to pay salaries.
But it's also a good opportunity to think about the sector more broadly – trust and truth in politics and society, which I think is crucial. We're at a critical moment. We're only 15 years into what is probably a 100-year information revolution, and goodness knows where it's going to end up.
But reliability, accuracy, and ensuring people have access to decent information so they can make good choices on things that matter to them – these are worth fighting for. That's why I decided to come back into something adjacent to what I was doing, especially in my last few years at BBC when I was doing fact-checking with Reality Check.
Josiah Mortimer: The role of a big broadcaster like the BBC in mediating what is true or not – the BBC faces huge cuts now, with news departments being whittled down. Do you think that era of a mediated public sphere where there is an accepted set of facts is coming to an ungainly end?
Chris Morris: I hope not entirely. It's good that we're not in an era of deferential news, where the BBC or others handed down truth like tablets from the mountain. We don't want that – skepticism is good. The trouble is the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, where you've got a million narratives on social media.
The problem now is determining which are the good bits. Some people clearly struggle with this. There's also a debate where people sometimes confuse facts and truth. Some criticism towards people like us suggests we're trying to be the arbiters of truth. We're not – we're trying to ensure political debate, which is important and can include various opinions, is based on verifiable shared facts.
Facts and truth aren't the same. If somebody says "this is my truth", they're really saying "this is my opinion". Here are facts we can agree on, then have different interpretations or opinions about what to do with those facts. That's what politics should be based on.
When people aren't sure what those facts are anymore, you can't have good political debate. If we can't agree this is a mobile phone – you might like the cover I've got on it and I might not – but if we can't agree it's a mobile phone, we've got a problem.
Josiah Mortimer: How do you see that going over the next 10-20 years? We're already seeing very realistic videos being generated which look like politicians saying things they're not.
Chris Morris: This time last year, countless articles said 2024, with its many elections worldwide, would be the year AI destroyed and undermined elections. It didn't really happen.
Look at our election – we saw things like Nigel Farage or Keir Starmer playing Minecraft. That's satire. There wasn't serious concern about using fake imagery to undermine the electoral process. There were bits here and there, but much of it was slightly amateur satire. Could it happen elsewhere? Look at Romania and the Russian influence via TikTok, which caused the Constitutional Court to annul the presidential election. The threat is real. One reason it didn't happen much in the UK is that if you're running a bot farm in St Petersburg, when parties said three or four weeks before the election "we know we've lost", there's not much point in interfering.
The jury is still out on how much fakery influenced the US election. Their electoral system's vulnerabilities, where it comes down to tens of thousands of people in various states, make it ripe for potential foul play. But I don't think there's evidence it happened in a concerted way. The US is simply so divided and polarised that you have two sets of facts and little agreement on anything, which damages democracy.
Josiah Mortimer: That's an interesting point about closer elections offering more to gain from sowing doubt and misinformation through deep fakes. Do you fear that if the next election is closer, there will be more of this as the technology becomes more sophisticated?
Chris Morris: The technology is getting better constantly. Currently, it's relatively easy to tell when something is a video fake. Various initiatives are exploring ways to alter pixelation to show what's real – whether something started as a fake image or is real video. But as soon as a technical fix emerges, someone finds a way around it.
Assuming our next election isn't until 2029, I ask my head of AI where we'll be with technology and generative AI in three years, and he says it's hard to tell even three or four months ahead.
We must assume those who want to harm our system will have much more sophisticated tools by then. One way to guard against that is education – not just in schools, but lifelong learning too. People need critical thinking skills to navigate what is for many a very confusing world.
When we conducted focus groups on misinformation in the summer, asking what misinformation meant to people, financial scams targeting elderly relatives was by far the most common answer.
It's not the 14-16 year olds who've grown up with social media and technology and feel more comfortable in that world – it's often more vulnerable older groups who struggle. So it requires an all-society, lifelong learning process to ensure people have the confidence to navigate rapidly changing technology.
Josiah Mortimer: As a former journalist, do you see the decline of local and regional press as a particular risk?
Chris Morris: Absolutely. The business model for local journalism has collapsed. It's encouraging to see initiatives like The Mill beginning to rebuild local journalism around serious, long-form articles people want to read. Interestingly, people tend to trust local journalism more, partly because if something's happening at the end of their road, they can verify it themselves. Building media trust from the ground up at a local level is crucial.
But we also want people to trust information from the other side of the world. You can have different opinions about what it means, but we don't want people only believing things they can personally verify in their immediate world. That's why it's important to ensure people still believe there are trustworthy information sources.
Fact-checking specific data points can be very precise and particular, but it's an important part of a bigger toolkit. It doesn't work alone but can work alongside other things, like fact-checking narratives and adding nuance and context.
Politicians like to tell clear narratives – "here's a complex topic, we'll make it clear for you." Part of journalism's job is adding context, caveats and nuance, so people believe they have reliable information when making decisions.
Josiah Mortimer: Do you have much sense of whether politicians are becoming more or less trustworthy in the public's eyes? Political trust is often described as being at rock bottom. Do you think that will change, and is there anything politicians can do to rebuild it?
Chris Morris: I like to give politicians the benefit of the doubt, regardless of party. Most enter politics believing they can make a difference, with relatively honest intentions. Some are very ambitious for political power – nothing wrong with that. But the nature of politics and media coverage almost assumes distrust.
If somebody changes their mind, the headline screeches "U-turn" – it's not presented as acceptable. Scientists change their mind when facts change, when evidence changes. Not every decision to change course by a politician should be portrayed as a U-turn.
According to the latest Ipsos Mori Veracity Index, politicians remain at the bottom of the pile – only 11% of people in the UK believe they can trust politicians to tell the truth, up from last year's worst-ever 9%. That's appalling, and only politicians themselves can rebuild that trust.
Do we hold them to higher standards? Yes, because they're elected representatives. With public office comes public responsibility – being held to higher standards should be part of the job.
Josiah Mortimer: It must be difficult because journalists aren't much more trusted than politicians. If you've got one very distrusted profession scrutinising another, that's challenging. What needs to change in the media?
Chris Morris: Political journalism has always been a contact sport – sharp elbows, focused on who's up and who's down. Where I think it goes wrong is the obsession with personalities rather than policies. I understand it's easier to tell a story about person X winning and person Y losing than delving into intricate policy detail.
But there must be a belief that you can tell complex policy stories in accessible ways. More effort needs to be put into that. Politics is personality-driven, but compared to my time in Europe, there's more personality-driven coverage in the UK. It's important to tell complex policy stories well and in ways people want to consume that news.
Prime Minister's Questions always get the most attention from people who aren't interested in politics – it's literally theatre. That won't go away, but behind that, we need ways to explain to people the policies that will actually affect them.
Josiah Mortimer: As fact-checkers, you presumably have to hold yourselves to even higher standards than outlets or politicians. What kind of safeguards do you have?
Chris Morris: We don't want to be pompous about it, but you can reverse-engineer any of our fact-checks because we provide links to every source. If you want to delve into the tenth layer of the database where we got particular information, you can see our thought process on the page. You may disagree with our conclusion, but the information and how we obtained it is fully transparent.
We're doing more video content, which presents more challenges for transparency – it's harder than putting a link at the bottom of a page. The rigour of fact-checking is important, and if we get something wrong, we say so very publicly and transparently. That's what we ask of politicians too.
Admitting mistakes is a strength rather than a weakness. People understand that no one is perfect. If you're upfront about getting numbers wrong or misspeaking, people accept that. It's the weasel words that make people cynical about politics.
Josiah Mortimer: Are there structural changes needed within our political institutions? I know backbenchers can correct the record on Hansard more easily now, but that feels like low-hanging fruit.
Chris Morris: When more people get information online, and large language models look for information about British politics, Hansard is one source they'll use, assuming it accurately reflects what's been said. If they scrape incorrect information, it's important MPs can correct it.
We worked hard with parliamentary committees to improve that process. But there isn't agreement about what Parliament should do about MPs who refuse to correct the record, acknowledge mistakes, or deliberately mislead people.
Obviously, voters can remove their MPs at elections, but Parliament should think harder about taking collective responsibility for MPs who consistently mislead people. It's difficult because they must decide who's the judge and jury – could it be done through the committee system? A more transparent process of accountability, particularly for statements in the House but also on social media, might make people less cynical about politics.
Josiah Mortimer: If a politician shares a deep fake attacking a rival – while they'd be expected to correct untrue statements in Parliament, there's no expectation they'd address the House or a committee about social media posts, is there?
Chris Morris: We haven't had a clear example of [an MP] sharing what turns out to be a fake video. You'd hope anyone caught out would admit their mistake. It would be good to have a structure in place so people know how that works.
There's an ongoing discussion in the Welsh Senate about criminalising lying in politics. We have misgivings about this – who decides? We don't think courts should rule on politics. Criminalising lying is a major step, but surely there's a middle ground where parliaments themselves – Westminster, Welsh Parliament, Scottish Parliament – have clearer, transparent processes for maintaining standards.
Josiah Mortimer: So Full Fact wouldn't endorse the Welsh model?
Chris Morris: We don't think criminalising lying in politics is a good idea.
Josiah Mortimer: The Online Safety Act has ended up saying little about misinformation. Do you think it will have an impact?
Chris Morris: It will have some impact, but most misinformation we see online is legal but harmful [and therefore unregulated]. The Act essentially deals with illegal content and content aimed at children – all to the good. But the vast body of misinformation isn't covered, so Ofcom has no power over it.
The riots in August concentrated minds in Government. Labour didn't seem likely to prioritise revisiting the Act pre-election, focusing on implementation first. But secondary legislation or other bills could clarify or strengthen parts of it. We'll consistently call for more coverage of legal but harmful content and more pressure on major internet platforms to share their data.
Nobody knows more [than them] about how misinformation is created, how narratives develop, and what suppresses dangerous narratives than the platforms themselves. The problem is this data represents their algorithms and business model, and their lawyers resist sharing it.
We discuss this directly with internet companies, but we've effectively decided as a country to let them self-regulate. If our information is to be regulated, I'd rather it be done by our elected representatives than by tech executives in California and Beijing.
Josiah Mortimer: Do you have any engagement with Twitter/X?
Chris Morris: Not much at present. We're part of a European network of fact-checking organisations – not necessarily EU-based, but Europe-wide. When dealing with some of the world's largest companies, it helps to represent a consumer market of 500 million people. It gives us more influence in conversations. But we're getting very little from Twitter. I think our last engagement with them was probably a ‘poo’ emoji, their stock response at the time.
Josiah Mortimer: Is that the norm, or do you see better engagement from platforms like Google and Facebook?
Chris Morris: Google and Meta both engage considerably. Meta runs a third-party fact-checking programme we participate in – we're paid to fact-check certain Meta platforms. They have no editorial role in what we choose to fact-check.
If we see something wrong in a Facebook group and fact-check it, the post isn't removed – content removal should be a last resort for seriously harmful material. Instead, a box appears saying: "This organisation, Full Fact, thinks there may be something wrong here. You might want to read their explanation before forwarding." People might still forward it, but it provides that pause for thought.
Under our agreement with Meta, we can't discuss much about its effectiveness, but generally it seems to work – it encourages critical thinking rather than mindless sharing.
Josiah Mortimer: You've launched a new tool for checking Government commitments. That’s new, and didn’t happen under other Governments. Why is that?
Chris Morris: Yes, it was my idea and I’ve only been here a year. It seems natural – if we're talking about trust in politics, manifestos aren't contracts with the people, but they are what political parties write before taking power. It's reasonable to track their progress on manifesto pledges, noting whether they're succeeding, failing, or haven't started. We're also adding the new Missions from [this month’s Government] relaunch.
It's important for people who don't follow politics daily – most people most of the time – to have somewhere they can check specific subjects they're interested in. What is the Government saying? How close are they to fulfilling their promises?
It's a comprehensive way of auditing what actually happens and what people in power do. Given [Labour’s] large majority, we're fairly confident this will be a five-year process.
There's little point spending months setting up a tracker for a Government with only six months left. But there is if they serve a full term.