Transparency and Fact-checkers’ Claim to Objectivity in the World’s Largest Democracy

The undeniable pervasiveness of post-truth politics and a growing disinformation ecosystem have given rise to a fact-checking industry in the world. Positioned itself as a subfield within journalism, factchecking industry calls for empirical analysis of its epistemological struggles. Drawing on a theoretical underpinning that journalists’ claim to objectivity is achieved through methodological transparency, this study hypothesizes that fact-checkers’ claim to objectivity too is obtained through transparency. Using content analysis of fact-checking articles published by two kinds of organizations-- legacy media fact-checkers and newly emerged independent fact-checkers--in India, this study measures varying degrees of transparency in the practice of fact-checking. It finds that independent fact-checkers exhibit higher levels of transparency compared to the legacy media fact-checkers. This study contributes to the growing literature that gives richer understanding of the developing subfield of fact-checking within journalism.